There was no live video feed available, for which Harry was grateful. He didn't need to see what happened when you unleashed a Multipurpose Augmented Ground Attack device on a target that wasn't prepared for it. He'd been amongst the first troops into Algiers after the French Mediterranean Fleet "reduced" the city in retaliation for the radiological attack on Marseilles. Biggin Hill was a little sturdier than the mud brick capital of Algeria, but not so much as made any difference.
The SAS men and their Norwegian colleagues had cheered when the screen in the Trident's main hangar had shown the first two Lavals veering off course. But the cheering had died out as it became obvious there'd be no reprieve from the third missile. Harry had turned away from the screen, and was busying himself checking their gear for the short hop back to Portsmouth when Sergeant St. Clair called out.
"Look, guv, the primary didn't go off."
Harry looked up and was amazed to discover that his RSM was right. The Combat Intelligence indicated that the submunitions had fired, but not the main warhead. That would have excavated about three quarters of Biggin Hill down to a depth of thirty meters in less than one second.
"Has it moved on to a secondary target?" he asked. A part of him was afraid that the Germans had figured out how to program the missile to strike at multiple points, as it was meant to do.
But no. A flashing dialog box indicted that the ship's Nemesis arrays were no longer tracking the weapon, and hadn't registered any primary detonation of the Laval's subfusion plasma yield warhead.
Most likely it had simply crashed somewhere.
"Vive la France," Harry murmured. Whoever had been able to dicker with the first two shots, he must have been interrupted before he could finish with number three. The SAS commander wished him-or her-good luck, wherever they were.
Even so, Biggin Hill was a write-off. But he wondered if the Germans knew what had happened.