Word: whump
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...quickly unmasked as an illusion. And last week, somewhere outside the city, somebody aimed a mortar at the center of the crowded market, dropped a 120-mm round into the tube and fired. The shell slammed into a table crowded with shoppers and exploded with a concussive whump that echoed off the buildings surrounding the square. The force of the explosion twisted tables, shattered glass and ripped the canvas used to cover stalls...
Serb artillery shoots from the slopes on one side of the city, and Muslim shoots from the other. Sometimes they throw shells at each other. Sometimes they drop them into town. The big shells arrive with a crisp, concussive WHUMP! But sniper fire you hear only at the shooting end -- an irregular background noise of flat, hard pops. You look up wildly at the hills and imagine the snipers squinting through cross hairs. You wonder what they may be able to see through the mist. You pause to decode the physics: the sound you hear has been taking its time...
...then louder and louder still A faint red glow appears at the edges of the cockpit windows, then spreads across them and seems to curl up over the fuselage ... As it slows and the air no longer supports its raised nose, the forward landing gear falls with a jarring whump ... A spaceship has landed on earth...
...points involve hitting the dirt: at the southern end of the airport compound, snipers are as close as 150 yds., and incoming grenades and light rockets occasionally fall near by. At night it is cool and damp. The lush sound of the Mediterranean surf is punctuated by the regular whump of outgoing mortar rounds aimed into the Chouf foothills and, every ten minutes or so, the clatter of a Lebanese Army .50-cal. machine gun firing at Druze militiamen and their allies. Each morning before 8 a.m. the troops finish breakfast (eggs to order, French toast and, as ever, Spam...
...pinball machines, a loud jukebox, and a driving machine that whirrs like a racing engine and goes "whump" whenever the player brushes another car are the entertainment at Omnivare...