Defective Equipment +22
The night in Riyadh's old quarter was more dazzling than the day.
As the sun went down and the heat finally loosened its grip, the city, which had looked dead and brown in the afternoon, woke up beneath golden lights.
The air was thick with the smell of spices rising from every corner, with boisterous Arabic voices and the sounds of foreign music layered over one another.
At an open-air restaurant in the middle of that noisy night market, Cho Yerin and I sat across from each other in comfortable casual clothes.
On the table were mandi, a Saudi dish of lamb steamed with rice, and a chilled lime mint juice.
“Huu... I finally feel alive again.”
Cho Yerin took a sip of juice and let out a long breath.
The expression she had worn all day, while working in grease-stained overalls and practically exhaling hostility, was nowhere to be seen.
With her hair let down and her face bare of makeup, she looked less like a conglomerate executive and more like an exhausted junior coworker at the end of a long day.
“You worked hard. You really got put through the wringer today.”
“Yeah. But you're still fine, Senior? When I saw you welding that heavy track link earlier, I knew your stamina was no joke.”
“If a field engineer doesn't have stamina, they're a corpse. Anyway, weren't you worried about heat distortion during that weld just now? The APS frame is aluminum alloy, so it should be sensitive to heat.”
“Come on, the track link you brought over was high-tensile steel with a high carbon content. I figured its low thermal conductivity would make it okay. Right?”
As expected.
The years she'd spent under me, learning while I tore drawings apart in front of her, hadn't gone anywhere.
For a while after that, we ate while talking shop.
Every time a conversation came up that only engineers could properly have, Cho Yerin's eyes would sparkle.
Then, all at once, she propped her chin in her hand and stared at me.
“Senior.”
“Yes, Executive Director.”
“No, we're not at the company. Why are you calling me that? Just be casual. It's only the two of us.”
“...Casual?”
“Yeah. Senior, Oppa, whatever works. Just drop the title. You know I'm not the kind of person who makes a fuss over that.”
I hesitated, looking a little lost, and Cho Yerin smirked with a mischievous look.
“What, am I too hard to deal with because I'm an executive?”
“No, it's not that you're hard to deal with, it's just...”
“Oh, please. Liar. Don't you remember when I was a newbie? You were shouting, ‘Hey, Cho Yerin! Hey, you bastard! Did you draw this blueprint with your feet?’ and ripping the drawings to shreds. You weren't even remotely intimidated then.”
“Ahem...”
I coughed without meaning to.
Back then, I really had been a bit... ruthless.
“That was... sorry. I didn't have much patience back then...”
“No, I don't want an apology. I'm actually grateful.”
Cho Yerin's expression turned serious.
“Because of you, I got stubborn enough to keep going. My brothers at home all said things like, ‘What does a woman know about machines? Go take management classes,’ and looked down on me... but you were the only one who treated me like an engineer. Even if you did tear up the drawings.”
She smiled bitterly and fiddled with her juice glass.
The youngest daughter of a glamorous chaebol family.
And yet, beneath that polished surface was the lonely figure of an engineer who had had to claw her way toward recognition.
She had probably volunteered to come all the way out to the middle of the desert for that same stubbornness.
I looked at her for a moment, then spoke in a flat voice.
“We'll ease into the casual thing. Slowly. But in return...”
“In return?”
“Tomorrow, just sit back and watch comfortably. I'll handle the technical stuff.”
Well, she did ask me to make things easy for her.
That should be fine, right?
“Yerin, you handle the board. You're good at that kind of thing. You've always had a pretty sharp political instinct.”
At that, Cho Yerin's eyes widened, then curved into a bright smile.
“Wow... that's reassuring. Got it. I'll lay out the board. Senior, you just dance.”
“Good. Eat plenty. You need to fill up if you want the strength to stomp the Chinese guys tomorrow.”
“Are you calling me fat without saying it?”
“So you've noticed you've put on some weight since before?”
“What, does age only come for me? Looks like you're starting to get a belly too.”
Cho Yerin said that with a grin.
Seeing that old expression again after so long, I laughed softly and raised my glass.
As our glasses met lightly in the air, the desert night wind blew cool and clean across the market.
*
The next morning, 10:00 a.m., at the MRO base.
As the appointed time drew near, Lieutenant Fahad came over escorting someone in our direction.
It was a middle-aged man in a sharply pressed uniform, with two stars gleaming on his shoulders.
The pressure he carried was a different kind of weight from Sergeant Major Khalid's.
“Allow me to introduce him. This is my uncle, Major General Abdullah bin Saud, Commander of Saudi Land Forces Logistics.”
Logistics Commander.
One of the real power brokers, the man who oversaw the Saudi Army's supplies.
I had assumed only Khalid would be coming, but the scale of this had grown far larger than I'd expected.
Without meaning to, my shoulders stiffened.
Shit... I really can't screw this up.
Just as I was trying to brace myself and stand at attention, Khalid, standing beside me, laughed heartily and gave my shoulder a light smack.
“What's the matter? Korean Wizard. You didn't even blink when you tore that tank apart yesterday, and now you're getting jumpy because a general showed up?”
“N-no, sir. I'm just showing proper respect.”
“Relax. This guy looks stern on the outside, but he's softer inside than I am.”
At Khalid's joke, Major General Abdullah wore a dignified smile and extended his hand to me.
“Good to meet you. I've heard quite a lot about you from my nephew. I hear you worked magic on our tank yesterday. I'm looking forward to today as well.”
“I'll do my best, Commander.”
Major General Abdullah's hand was broad and warm.
His eyes held curiosity more than authority.
Not a bad start.
We headed straight for the hangar where the problem vehicle was kept.
But there were already unwelcome guests waiting in front of it.
“Stop right there!”
Colonel Hassan of the Saudi military and Chief Engineer Wang, the Chinese side's lead engineer, blocked our path.
According to what Cho Yerin had told me beforehand, Colonel Hassan was one of the leading pro-China figures in Saudi Arabia, and a man from the faction that had driven the purchase of the problematic Chinese weapons.
“Commander, with all due respect, this is unacceptable! Showing classified equipment to an outsider, and to a Korean engineer from a rival company at that? This is a clear security violation!”
Right after Colonel Hassan, Chief Engineer Wang joined in.
“That's right. The Chinese government side will protest strongly as well. Allowing a third party to access the data is a breach of contract. This is grounds for an international lawsuit!”
Their resistance was fierce.
That was only natural.
In a situation where their own flaws might be exposed, security regulations were the strongest shield they had left to wave around.
Cho Yerin looked at me.
Her eyes seemed to ask, What do we do?
If I couldn't see the data, proving the exact defect would become much harder.
Just as I was wondering whether I should step in, Major General Abdullah spoke in a calm voice.
“Security, is it...”
With his hands behind his back, the general looked down at Wang.
“Who said we were asking you to hand over your missile guidance codes or IFF encryption keys?”
“What...?”
“What we're looking at isn't that. Oil temperature, motor RPM, vibration readings. Just basic vital signs to see whether the machine is alive or dead.”
Major General Abdullah's gaze sharpened.
“If a doctor wants to check a patient's pulse and you block him with a security excuse... it only looks like the patient is already dead and you're trying to hide the corpse.”
Wang's face turned pale.
Khalid, who had been listening beside him, folded his arms and drove the nail in deeper.
“Exactly right, Commander. If it's something you can't even show basic operating data for, then we should just judge it unusable and start disposal procedures immediately. Along with a claim for breach-of-contract damages.”
Disposal. Damages.
At those words, Hassan and Wang crumbled.
The two of them ground their teeth.
They must have thought that, even if they kept resisting on their own, there was no way they could do anything once the logistics commander himself had shown up.
“...Understood. However, data viewing will be limited to the monitor screen only. No opening the interior.”
Wang gritted his teeth and opened the hangar door.
*
Inside the hangar.
A massive silhouette emerged from the darkness.
CS/AA-7 Cheonryong.
On top of the futuristic, angular 8x8 armored chassis sat a vicious-looking 30mm six-barrel Gatling gun and missile pods.
On the turret roof, a dish-shaped detection radar spun nonstop.
Just by appearance, it looked like the kind of cutting-edge weapon you'd only see in a Hollywood movie.
But my eyes could already see the sickly interior hidden beneath that flashy shell.
“Look. The radar is operating perfectly.”
Wang pointed at the monitor and said with confidence.
“It's just that during firing, tiny grains of desert sand create static electricity from barrel friction, which causes temporary noise. It's essentially a natural disaster.”
Lying to the very end, huh.
I snorted and stepped forward.
“Static electricity... That's an interesting theory. Then let's check it.”
“Check what?”
“Run it empty. No rounds, just spin the barrel.”
Wang hesitated.
“Empty run? If no rounds are firing, no static will be generated either. That's a meaningless test.”
“Whether it's meaningless or not, we'll know once it runs. Unless you've got a reason you're afraid to spin it?”
My provocation made Wang's face flush red.
He snapped at the operator.
“Do it! Show the Korean engineer the power of our Cheonryong!”
Whiiiir—!
With the roar of a massive motor, the 30mm Gatling gun's barrels began to rotate.
The monstrous spinning speed that could unleash 4,000 rounds a minute.
Even without rounds, the rotation alone made the surrounding air seem to tremble.
And all the while, I was watching.
The drive shaft of the high-speed rotating barrel.
The energy that began there flowed through thick hydraulic lines into the heart of the machine.
Normally, that energy should have looked blue.
But what I saw now was a scarlet wave of vibration, twitching as if its veins might burst.
Just as I thought.
That red wave wasn't being absorbed by the dampers.
Instead, it was seeping into the metal block where the hydraulic and coolant lines crossed deep inside the machine, into the manifold.
Like ink spreading through clear water, the red vibration contaminated the blue coolant line.
And that contaminated flow then surged upward, mercilessly battering the radar's core component, the T/R module.
A radar that looked fine on the outside but inside was swaying like someone with a concussion.
At this point it wasn't even just a bad part; the whole thing was wrong from birth.
You wouldn't be wrong to call it a fatal, and frankly petty, design flaw.
“There, see! There's nothing wrong with it, is there?”
Wang shouted.
From the outside, the equipment was just humming and vibrating, with nothing obviously abnormal about it.
But I calmly raised a finger and pointed at the maintenance monitor.
“Nothing wrong? You can still say that after seeing that?”
Everyone's eyes turned to the monitor.
The clean radar screen was now riddled with crackling noise, like rain had splashed across it.
The green square that had been tracking the target was bouncing around aimlessly.
“Th-this is...”
Wang panicked.
“No rounds are even being fired, and it's already getting noise? Static electricity, was it?”
“T-that... it's just temporary mechanical resonance...”
“Mechanical resonance, my ass.”
I strode toward the equipment.
Colonel Hassan tried to stop me, but one look from Major General Abdullah made him flinch and step back.
Pretending it was for maintenance, I roughly ripped away the loosely fastened side panel.
Then I placed my hand on the silver metal block buried deep inside—the manifold block.
“Just as I thought. It's insanely hot.”
Hot enough to cook an egg.
I tapped the manifold a few times and looked at Major General Abdullah and Khalid.
“Chief Engineer Wang. Did you actually conduct proper high-temperature tests on this thing?”
“W-what nonsense are you talking about? Of course we did! We proved it could operate in sixty-degree Celsius conditions!”
“Sixty degrees? Ah, I see. You did, did you?”
Unbelievable.
You tested it up to 60 degrees and this is the result?
“The hydraulic oil flowing through here is thin as water right now. The heat is so intense that all the viscosity has broken down.”
“Viscosity...?”
“When the oil thins out, the frequency of the vibrations the pump generates changes. It becomes much sharper and faster.”
I went on, speaking to Wang, whose face was gradually hardening.
“That damper you installed looks like it was tuned for the weather in some ordinary part of China. It's letting this mutated vibration, transformed by Saudi heat, pass through without catching any of it.”
At my explanation, Major General Abdullah's eyes shone.
“So... you're saying they ignored our Saudi heat and brought over a cheaply made piece of junk?”
“Exactly. This isn't a defective part. It's a failure of environmental optimization.”
“Absurd! That's just the normal sound of the hydraulic pump running!”
Wang was desperate now.
It was clear I needed to show the link between the loud noise and the radar failure with something people could see.
If I didn't, he'd keep denying it to the very end.
I let out a sigh and looked around.
Then I spotted a red object mounted on the wall.
“Fine. I'll prove it. Very clearly.”
I walked over and grabbed the CO2 fire extinguisher hanging on the wall.
Hassan gasped at my sudden move and shouted, “W-what are you doing? You're going to spray an extinguisher on the machine?”
“It's because of the heat in there that this whole mess happened.”
Without giving him a chance to object, I pulled the safety pin and aimed the hose at the manifold block.
“I told you earlier, didn't I? The problem was that Saudi heat had thinned the oil out like water.”
“S-so what!”
“So I'm going to force-cool it. Like the weather in ordinary parts of China.”
Fshaaaa—!
White carbon dioxide gas roared out and slammed into the overheated metal block.
As the minus-70-degree CO2 touched it, white frost began to form across the manifold surface.
A sudden, brutal cooling.
The temperature of the hot hydraulic oil flowing inside the block dropped in an instant.
And then a miracle happened.
“W-wha...?”
The operator watching the monitor screamed.
The crackling noise on the radar screen, which had been boiling with static, began to vanish as if it had never been there.
As the thinned oil cooled and recovered its viscosity, the vibration frequency returned to normal, and only then did the damper finally do its job and absorb the shock.
The screen cleared.
The green target box locked onto the target with perfect precision.
“See it?”
I set the extinguisher down and pointed at the manifold, now white with frost.
“Cool it down, and it works just fine. That's proof enough that you did your environmental testing in a completely half-assed way.”
“........”
Wang opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out.
But as the extinguisher gas dispersed and the desert heat began warming the metal again—
Crackle, crackle.
Noise started crawling back onto the monitor.
It was as if the machine had been sentenced to suffer forever, so long as it remained in Saudi Arabia.
“You... swindlers!”
Major General Abdullah exploded in fury.
“How dare you try to deceive us? You tampered with a weapon meant to defend my country? Clear out this scrap metal at once! Cancel the contract, and recover every payment made so far! Prepare a breach-of-contract lawsuit too!”
Colonel Hassan lowered his head and backed away.
In the midst of that savage atmosphere of purging, Cho Yerin jabbed my side and whispered quietly.
“Now, Senior.”
I nodded and stepped back.
The engineer had already set the table; now it was the merchant's turn to pick up the spoon.
“Commander.”
Cho Yerin stepped forward at exactly the right moment, her manner composed but never light.
“If those scrap machines go out, you'll have a gap in your air-defense net right away... but you don't need to worry.”
“........?”
“Hanseo Defense's self-propelled anti-aircraft gun, Biho, can fill that gap perfectly.”
Her eyes flashed with confidence.
“The Republic of Korea is a country where heat above 40 degrees Celsius and cold below minus 20 degrees Celsius repeat over and over. Our equipment is designed from the ground up to withstand extreme temperature swings. Vibration isolation? Desert heat? Those are just standard specifications for us.”
Major General Abdullah's gaze shifted from Cho Yerin to me.
“Director Baek.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Can you guarantee it? Can Korean weapons keep their eyes open in this desert?”
I looked once at Cheonryong, then met the general's eyes squarely and answered with certainty.
“I'll stake my name on it. They're a hundred times better than that thing. At the very least, we don't build machines that collapse because they got heatstroke.”
At my firm answer, the general's hardened face finally eased.
“Good. If the Korean wizard guarantees it, then I believe it. Khalid! Work with Executive Director Cho and set up the test schedule immediately. If the results are good, I'll give all the budget we recovered from the Chinese to you people.”
“Thank you!”
Cho Yerin cheered and shot me a wink.
As we left the hangar, Khalid grasped my hand tightly.
“You opened my eyes. Thank you, my friend.”
“Don't mention it. I had to earn my keep.”
With that, Saudi Arabia was settled.
And the credibility of Chinese weapons would be in the gutter, with the vacant space there falling entirely into our hands.
I could almost hear the sound of our overseas market share rising from here.
---