Jack Terral: Battlecraft (2006)

Battlecraft

Seals 03

Jack Terral

A Cut Above

The Four Goons Seemed To Materialize In Front Of Him Out of the gloom. Mike Assad sized them up as the local tough guys; a quartet of miserable buffoons who shared the same qualities and quantities of meanness and stupidity, and would happily kill him to strip his corpse to get a few rupees for his clothing. They pulled knives from beneath their chadors, and grinned.

They didn't waste time. The leader led his buddies into the fray. Mike sidestepped, and the guy was sent sprawling with a wicked wakite punch to the kidneys. A quick yubi punch to the second dropped him straight down in the dirt, while a vicious marui kick knocked the third over on his back. The fourth, who had been bringing up the rear, wisely jumped over his prostrate buddies and ran away down the alley into the darkness.

Mike stopped long enough to take a calming breath and then picked up the three knives. He chose the best to keep, and tossed the rest onto the top of the nearby mud huts.

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TABLE OF ORGANIZATION

BRANNIGAN'S BRIGANDS

COMMAND ELEMENT

Lieutenant William "Wild Bill" Brannigan

(Commanding Officer)

P02C Francisco "Frank" Gomez (Rifleman/Commo Chief)

P03C James "Doc" Bradley (Rifleman/Hospital Corpsman)

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FIRST ASSAULT SECTION

Lieutenant (JG) James Cruiser (Section Commander)

P02C Bruno Puglisi (SAW Gunner)

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ALPHA FIRE TEAM

CPO Matthew "Matt" Gunnarson (Fire Team Leader)

P02C Garth Redhawk (Rifleman)

P03C Chadwick "Chad" Murchison (Rifleman)

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BRAVO FIRE TEAM

POIC Michael "Connie" Concord (Fire Team Leader)

P02C David "Dave" Leibowitz (Rifleman)

P03C Arnold "Arnie" Bernardi (Rifleman).

2ND ASSAULT SECTION

SCPO Buford Dawkins (Section Commander)

P02C Josef "Joe" Miskoski (SAW Gunner)

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CHARLIE FIRE TEAM

POIC Michael "Milly" Mills (Fire Team Leader)

P02C Reynauld "Pech" Pecheur (Rifleman)

P02C Peter "Pete" Dawson (Rifleman)

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DELTA FIRE TEAM

POIC Guttorm "Gutsy" Olson (Fire Team Leader)

P02C Andrei "Andy" Malachenko (Rifleman)

P03C Guy Devereaux (Rifleman)

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ATTACHED

Lieutenant (JG) Veronica Rivers (Navigation/Weapons Systems Officer)

POIC Paul Watkins (Helmsman)

P02C Bobby Lee Atwill (Turbine System Technician)

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Excerpt from Sun Tzu's The Art of War as paraphrased by Petty Officer 2nd Class Bruno Puglisi of Brannigan's Brigands:

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It don't matter so much if you outnumber the enemy as long as the son of a bitches got no idea how many guys you really got. In a case like that, it's the way you deploy your troops that'll determine whose ass gets kicked.

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Reprint of an article that appeared in a recent edition of Advanced Technological and Scientific Design Magazine.

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THE WATERFLYER

By Eduard Andiwaczeski

Two Florida brothers have produced a prototype of an ACV that could revolutionize commercial traffic on United States rivers.

The Waterflyer is an ACV (Air-Cushion Vehicle) but is not designed to carry passengers as are other similar craft. Instead, its unique function is to serve as a pusher-vessel in barge operations moving cargo via river transportation systems. The craft was created and built by brothers John and Harry DuBose at their workshop facilities along the Indian River in Brevard County, Florida. This river is part of the Intracoastal Waterway, which allows boat travel from Key West, Florida, all the way north to Boston on the Atlantic coast. On the Gulf of Mexico, the waterway connects Apalachee Bay, Florida, with Brownsville, Texas. The DuBose brothers--John, the older, is forty-two and Harry is thirty-eight--got the idea for their ACV from watching barge traffic passing by their Pine Island home.

"The barges were slow and ponderous," John explained. "Harry and I figured the transport of their loads would turn a better profit if the deliveries were faster. The biggest challenge of the concept was to have pusher-vessels that would be powerful drivers, yet could maintain high speeds at the same time."

'Technical projects are a hobby of ours," Harry added. "We've been coming up with ideas and inventions since we were kids. At first we thought that a propulsion system that combined both underwater and air propellers might do the trick."

"But when we considered the drag on the pusher-vessel going through the water, we knew that wasn't a practical approach," John said. "So we had to try a completely different methodology."

Although neither brother has had any scientific or technical schooling, their innate ability to solve physical and abstract problems has amazed even the quintessential rocket scientists at nearby Cape Canaveral. The brothers admit they have consulted with several of their aerospace friends on questions involving certain disciplines and scientific difficulties that stymied their progress now and then. One NASA engineer who wished to remain anonymous described them as 21st-century Wright Brothers who have the ability to absorb technical knowledge, then turn it into reality. It also helps that their private funding is practically unlimited. John and Harry are heirs to the long-established DuBose Citrus Farms in Orange County, Florida.

"We eventually turned to an air-cushion-vehicle concept," John explained. "That eliminated the drag problem, but there wasn't much of a possibility for it to be a powerful pusher."

"Right," Harry interjected in their characteristic way of speaking in turn. "The problem was the power plant. We had to have something really strong to move that hummer along while shoving tons of weight ahead of it."

"We got on the internet and started making inquiries until we found out about this outfit in Argentina," John said. 'They had developed a real ass-kicking engine for moving sled-type equipment vehicles down in Antarctica. We flew down and took a look at it."

"The problem was that it was too small," Harry added. "So we sat down with their chief design engineer and came up with some solid ideas. The company boss was so impressed that he retooled one section of his factory to accommodate the concept."

This company, Poder-Ventaja, S. A. of Cabo Blanco, offered a part ownership in the resultant product, but the brothers settled for a free engine with the options of claiming two more in the future. Four months after their return to Florida, their power plant arrived from Argentina and was installed aboard the newly christened Waterflyer.

"Things worked out better than expected," John stated happily. "My brother and I have ended up with an excellent product. We made a couple of short runs for a local barge outfit with great results."

"We just have to find somebody who'll buy it," Harry pointed out. "So far, none of the barge companies we've contacted are interested. They don't seem to be overly concerned about speeding up their operations."

"They simply don't have a 'hurry-up' frame of mind," John said.

The vessel is forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and propelled by a pair of eight-foot, six-bladed variable-pitch airscrews mounted on the stern. These and oversize rudders provide a fantastic turning radius that whips the ACV around on the proverbial dime. The lift comes from a ten-foot, twelve-bladed fan located on the bottom of the craft. The engine is a 1,000-horsepower Poder-Ventaja Marine Gas Turbine from Argentina. It has moved the vessel at a speed of ninety miles per hour over open ocean without a load. The brothers estimate that they could push forty tons of barges along at half that speed. Needless to say, it is not fuel-efficient!