Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Games of the Hangman (87 page)
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The
The pilot of the Islander took his eyes off the group of students running
toward him.
They were now spread out in
an irregular field more than a hundred yards long.
He calculated that he could bring the aircraft
to a halt about a quarter of a mile ahead of the leading runners, allowing
plenty of time for the Phantom Air team to deplane and set up blocking
positions.
The pilot felt his wheels touch the ground in a near-perfect
landing.
Ahead of him he saw the runners
break to left and right and a Volvo station wagon accelerate from their midst
and head straight toward him.
Frantically he applied the brakes; the Volvo, bouncing and vibrating at
high speed, he eaten up his runway margin in less than seven seconds.
The pilot tried to imagine the effect of a
head-on crash at a combined speed of more than a hundred miles an hour.
He knew that whatever the outcome, after it
was over, the respective occupants would be unlikely to take much interest in
the matter.
He looked at the patch of bright green boggy ground that bordered the
road to his left and then back at the Volvo, now only seconds away from
impact.
His resolve faltered.
Better chicken than dead, he decided, and
slid the plane off the road into the bright green grass.
A mere fraction of a second later the Volvo
skidded to a tire-burning halt on the other side of the road.
"A draw!" the terrorist pilot said to himself, feeling pleased
that the Volvo driver's nerve had cracked only a split second after his.
But the pilot's glee didn't last long.
The bright green grass was, in fact, algae,
he noted, and his aircraft, complete with the entire Phantom Air Unit, sank in
twelve feet of scummy brown water.
"Fuck that for a caper," said Fitzduane as he stood on the
verge and watched air bubbles make patterns on the green surface.
"It's always easier to play a match on
your home ground."
Runners streamed past him, and he waved them on toward the castle.
De Guevain and Henssen puffed to a halt
beside the Volvo.
"You're absolutely crazy," said de Guevain, shaking his
head.
Sweat streamed off him.
"Crazy but effective," corrected Henssen.
Fitzduane grinned,
then
opened the tailgate of
the Volvo.
"You old people,"
he offered, "need a lift?"
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Fitzduane's
The castle portcullis crashed into place as the first of the terrorists
reached the top of the cliff.
Farther
down the road there was a series of scummy plops as the two surviving members
of Phantom Air who had escaped from the aircraft pulled themselves out of the
algae and started to walk back to the college.
Neither was looking forward to Kadar's reception, but there was nowhere
else to go.
27
Ranger Headquarters,
The director general of the Irish Tourist Board was an urbane-looking
silver-haired political appointee in his early fifties.
His main operational tools — whatever the
issue — were his smile, his connections, and his ability to say virtually
nothing endlessly until the opposition was worn down.
In this case the issue was the proposed detention of a group of Middle
Eastern travel agents by the Rangers.
His aides had assured him that arresting visiting travel agents was
unlikely to advance the cause of Irish tourism — and it would look and sound
really lousy on television.
"Lousy on television" — the director general reacted to such
stimuli like a dog to Pavlov's bell.
He
salivated, nearly panicked, and demanded an immediate crisis meeting with the
commander of the Rangers.
It took Kilmara ninety minutes to get rid of the idiot and his supporting
cast.
Only then did he return to his
desk to find that the informal two-hourly radio check he had agreed upon with
Fitzduane during their last call had not been made and that the telephone line
seemed to be out of order.
A call to the
security detail at
equally abortive, which was not surprising since all the phones on the island
ran off the same cable.
He put a call in
to the police station at Ballyvonane, the nearest village on the mainland.
He knew the station itself would be closed at
this time of the evening, but the normal routine was for calls to be
transferred to the duty policeman at his home.
The phone was answered on the tenth ring by a noticeably out-of-breath
voice.
Kilmara was informed by
O'Sullivan, the local
policeman, that
he had just
cycled back form the bridge access to Fitzduane's
superintendent to answer a small matter to do with an assault on a water
bailiff.
Kilmara had the feeling that
O'Sullivan might expire before the conversation finished.
He waited until the policeman's breathing
sounded less terminal.
"I gather
you didn't find the sergeant?
"
Kilmara finally
asked.
"No, Colonel," said O'Sullivan.
"What's this about the bridge access?
Why didn't you cross onto the island?"
"Didn't I tell you?" answered the policeman.
"The bridge seems to have
collapsed.
There is nothing there except
wreckage.
The island is cut off
completely."
Kilmara hung up in frustration.
It
was now nearly 2000 hours.
What the hell
was happening on that island?
The
evidence was stacking up that all was not well, but it was still not
conclusive.
Geranium Day in
to a combat jump onto Fitzduane's
Or did it if you threw in Fitzduane's vibes
about the Hangman's track record?
He looked at the paperwork on the Middle Eastern group, which was due to
arrive on the last flight from
The flight had originated in
Was it credible that such a group wouldn't at
least overnight in
He had a sudden insight that he was approaching the problem the wrong
way.
The question wasn't whether the
travel agents were genuine or otherwise.
The question was how to deal with two problems at once, and the answer,
from that perspective, was obvious.
In a
way he had that cretin from the tourist board to thank for pointing it
out.
It took him twenty-five minutes on
the phone to make the arrangements.
He found Günther in the operations room.
The German looked up as he entered.
He had been trying the direct radio link to Fitzduane, but now he shook
his head.
"Nothing," he
said.
"Completely
dead."
He followed Kilmara back to his office.
Kilmara gestured for him to close the door.
"The British owe us a few favors,"
he said.
Günther raised his eyebrows.
"So?"
"I've called one in," said Kilmara.
"The Brits aren't too happy, but they'll
do it."
"Fuck me," said Günther.
"You're getting the British to handle the problem at the stopover
in
Kilmara nodded.
"We can't
stand down the embassy security until it's done and we've sorted out our
Japanese friends.
But it does clear the
decks a little and allow us to take a trip with a clear conscience."
"So we drop in on Fitzduane."
"We do," said Kilmara.
"Let's move."
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Baldonnel Military Air Base outside
Voices crackled in his headphones.
They were being cleared for takeoff.
In an ideal world, Kilmara began to think — but then he brushed the
thought from his mind.
He had spent most
of his career working within financial constraints when it came to equipment,
and lusting after night-flying helicopters in a cash-strapped economy like
wasn't going to achieve much right now.
Truth to tell, apart from the helicopter deficiency — the most expensive
items on his shopping list by far both to buy and to maintain — the Rangers
were well equipped and were as highly trained as he could ever hope.
They'd find out soon enough whether it would
all come together as planned.
This was
going to be like no other operation the Rangers had carried out — and it would
be their first combat jump as a unit.
Of course, it could all be a false alarm, yet somehow Kilmara knew it
wasn't.
Something told him that on the
other side of
Spontaneously
his right hand felt for the steel and plastic of the SA-80 clipped into place
beside his seat.
He looked through the transparent Perspex dome of the Optica cockpit at
the runway ahead,
then
glanced behind him to where the
two Islander twin-engine light transports waited with their cargoes of Rangers
and lethal equipment.
The pilot's voice
sounded in his earphones.
The Optica had
been specially silenced so that normal conversation was possible without using
the intercom, but external communications made the intercom mandatory.
"We're cleared," the pilot said.
"Final check," ordered Kilmara.
Günther's voice crackled in immediately, followed by that of the
commander of the second plane.
Kilmara looked at the pilot.
"Let's get airborne."
They took off and headed west into the setting sun.
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As reversal followed reversal, while outwardly showing scant reaction,
Kadar had experienced the full spectrum of emotions from paralyzing fear to a
rage so intense that he felt as if his gaze alone would destroy.
The news that Fitzduane was, in fact, still
alive did nothing to help his mood.
Executing the pilot of the Islander had provided the cathartic outlet he
needed.
A smear of algae on the floor
and a head-high blood and brain matter stain on the wall were all that remained
of that incompetent.
His mind had adjusted to face the change in developments head-on.
He could now see the advantages of the
situation.
He was confronted with the
most satisfying challenge of his professional life and an adversary worthy of
his talents.
Operation Geranium would
succeed, but only after effort and total commitment.
It would be a fitting finale to this stage of
his career, and to look on the bright side, fatalities on the scale he had
suffered meant a much-enhanced bottom line.
A reduction of overhead, you might say.
Kadar studied the map and the aerial photographs.
He now knew who and what he was up against —
and where they were.
The island was
isolated.
Fitzduane's castle was
surrounded, and Kadar had the men and the weapons to do the job.
That damned Irishman was
about to learn some military facts of life.
Lesson one:
His medieval castle
would prove no match for late-twentieth-century firepower.
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Fitzduane's Castle — 2118 hours
Fitzduane had let the rest for ten minutes after they made it back to the
castle and then put them all to work in an organized frenzy of effort.
The terrorists had appeared not long after
the portcullis had slammed into place but at first had made no attempt to
approach closer than about a thousand meters.
Then, as the evening shadows deepened, movement could be detected in
brief flashes.
The noose was tightening.