Sunspot by James Axler Page A

with real chem warheads?”
    “No, of course not,” Magus told him. “To lock in the range and the direction and amount of wind drift on the battlefield, the gunners fire a series of smoke rounds. They should be sufficient to convince you that I can do what I say.”
    At his command, the eight-man crew loaded a projectile and adjusted the aim. Then they clapped their hands over their ears.
    Anticipating the blast, Haldane did the same.
    Magus, on the other hand, simply reached up and turned his off.
    Steel Eyes signaled and the gunner jerked the lanyard. With a rocking boom, the Lyagushka jumped on its trails, belching flame and smoke. The 122 mm round squealed as it sailed away.
    Haldane raised the spotting scope to his eye and reacquired the target. Seconds later a puff of white smoke erupted downrange, followed by a rolling thunderclap. The impact was about two hundred yards short of the shack and one hundred yards to the left.
    Through the lens, Haldane saw a family of mutie jackrabbits hightailing it across the scrub. They had seen enough.
    The crew readjusted for distance and windage, reloaded the gun and fired off another round. This time the smoke puff was one hundred yards too long but directly in line with the shack.
    Their third shot landed within thirty feet of the ruined shed, pelting it with rock and wreathing it in dense cottony smoke.
    The elapsed time from first to last shot was about four minutes.
    “You can do that to Sunspot?” Haldane said.
    “Sunspot is much bigger, so it will be even easier to hit,” Magus said.
    “Piece of cake,” the gunner confirmed, grinning up at his half man–half machine master. “And nobody’s going to be shooting back at us from eight miles away.”
    “Did you notice how my crew used the wind drift to make the smoke sweep over the target?” Magus asked. “They’ll do the same thing with the nerve gas.”
    “How many rounds will it take?” the baron said.
    “To saturate a ville of that size with CW agent, it’ll take a dozen of the binary munitions, give or take a few depending on the wind’s speed and direction.”
    “And once that’s done?”
    “Every red-blooded living thing inside the Sunspot berm will be dead,” Magus said.
    Haldane couldn’t help but ask the awful question. “How badly will they suffer?”
    “Charming of you to be so considerate of your intended victims, Baron,” Magus said.
    The observation wasn’t meant as a compliment.
    “If we used the liquid lewisite instead of sarin,” Magus continued, “their agony would be much prolonged. The blister agent causes immediate burning pain in the chest and eyes, temporary blindness, and after a latency period of a few hours causes severe inflammation of the lungs leading to death. On the other hand, high doses of sarin gas chill relatively quickly, if not painlessly. The nerve agent disrupts the normal functioning of the body’s muscles. They go into spasm or cease to operate altogether. Unlike lewisite, its victims once poisoned don’t move very far. They collapse, go into convulsions, then total paralysis sets in, which causes suffocation. Salting the earth and water around Sunspot with liquid sarin will make it uninhabitable for many years to come. Anyone who comes within a mile of the ruins and takes a deep breath or touches the ground will get a fatal dose. A permanent solution to your quandary is what you wanted. That’s what you’ve got.”
    “Yes, so it would appear.”
    “And you’re ready to pay the price?”
    “I’ll pay what we agreed on, after the job is done.”
    Magus stared at him in silence for a long moment. It was difficult for Haldane to say whether what passed over that godawful mouth of his was a smile. What lips remained to him turned up at the corners as guy wires slipped through Teflon grommets, coiling somewhere under steel skin onto tiny hidden spools. “Just to make sure you don’t change your mind after Sunspot falls, I’ve brought along an