Exit wound

Paul (not Pavel) lifted the green tube off its stand. He stood with it on his shoulder. ‘The SA-16, as I’m sure you know, Mr Manley, has no IFF interrogator. The SA-16M – the improved version you see here – retains the simplicity and robustness of the original design but adds the IFF interrogator. We are conscious that customers demand high levels of safety and assurance from the weapons that we sell them and so we have provided Identify Friend or Foe technology in our product. Nobody wants to be responsible for… What do you British call it? A blue-on-blue? A friendly-fire incident, anyhow…’

‘Is that it?’

‘Well, there are some further modifications, but it would be wrong of me to discuss them in any depth.’

‘Countermeasures? It’s got to be. It’s all about getting the missile past the aircraft’s defences, isn’t it?’

‘You know your subject, Mr Manley. You look like you were once a military man…’

‘I was in the British Army. Way back. We used to fire the Blowpipe system. Not the easiest of man-portable weapons to use.’

Paul (not Pavel) laughed sympathetically. He was right. Blowpipe was a heap of shit. ‘I, too, was in the army, for many years. That is why I know this is an excellent piece of engineering for the man on the ground.’ He shrugged a little to adjust the weapon still on his shoulder. ‘It is completely fire-and-forget. It is so simple, a child could use it. And, with the SA-16M, the added bonus is that it is effectively immune to all the very latest countermeasure systems.’

I pointed at the missile. ‘I hear the seeker’s faulty.’

He laughed again, but uncomfortably this time. He took it almost as a personal insult. ‘No, these rumours are just that, rumours. We have been improving the seeker’s capability. It has been a period of development, not repair.’

‘Could you knock down an Apache with one of these?

He paused. ‘Mr Manley, you are drawing me into a technical discussion that I would prefer not to have. So let’s just say that with the SA-16M and even the non-IFF version, the SA-16, we have found an ingenious way of combating dark flares. That took some time to perfect. But if you know how to discriminate against dark flares, then you can defeat all countermeasure systems. You understand what I mean?’

I nodded. I did.

‘I expect you would like a simulation, yes?’

He handed me the missile launch tube. It felt pretty much the same weight as the Stingers I’d used in Afghanistan – against the Mi-24 Hinds these lads had flown in the eighties. Paul (not Pavel) looked the right sort of age to have been there. I threw it onto my right shoulder.

Paul (not Pavel) directed me to look through the sight. ‘First thing you must do is position the aircraft within the range ring – you need to keep it positioned there throughout the engagement sequence. The SA-16M is an all-aspect missile, which means you can engage the target from any angle. You understand?’

I nodded.

‘Next, you must interrogate the aircraft to see if it is friendly or not. The IFF interrogation switch is on the left-hand side of the gripstock. Here. You’ve got it?’

I felt for the switch with my thumb.

‘If the aircraft is friendly, it will transmit a coded signal back to the IFF interrogation system within the launcher. The system emits an audible signal that tells you whether the aircraft is confirmed friendly, possible friendly or unknown.’ He flicked a switch on the simulator console.

I heard a succession of short electronic beeps coming from the missile by my ear.

‘You hear that? That tells you the aircraft is a confirmed friendly.’

The beeps changed into a succession of longer signals.

‘This means possible friendly…’

The longer beeps changed into one continuous signal – a high-pitched wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

‘And this means the aircraft is unknown – for our purposes, therefore, it is the enemy. Clear so far?’

Clear, I told him. It was very much like a Stinger, but easier. Like he said, a child’s toy.

‘So, now you must select the arming switch, here on the other side of the gripstock. Feel it?’ He directed my forefinger to the switch. ‘Now, push it forward. This readies the weapon for firing – super-cooling the seeker to allow it to lock onto the target’s primary heat-source, most likely its engine. When enough infrared energy is detected, you will once more notice a high-pitched signal – there, you hear it?’

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…

Like before, only louder.

‘That tells you the seeker has a firm lock and is tracking the heat-source.’

Once the missile was tracking the target, there was precious little its pilot could do, Paul (not Pavel) said. The missile operator just had to flick a switch forward of the gripstock from safety to armed, then pull the trigger. Provided the aircraft was below 10,000 feet, its destruction was 99.9 per cent guaranteed.