Games of the Hangman (98 page)

The moment the
destruction of the Hangman's 12.7s had been confirmed, Kilmara had given the
order for the remaining Ranger transport to go in and, this
time,
drop its cargo of six heavily laden and impatient Rangers within five hundred
meters of the outer perimeter of combat.
 
Within minutes the Ranger reinforcements were in action.
 
Günther now took over ground command.

It soon struck
Günther that hostile fire was slackening and had been lighter than expected
ever since they landed.
 
In the noise and
fury and chaos of the firefight it took a few minutes for the significance of
this to register, but when with three aimed three-round bursts of his SA-80 he
had killed a small group of men with bayonets fixed to their AK-47s, he thought
it worth investigating further.
 
He checked
the ammunition pouches on the corpses.
 
All were empty.
 
He checked the
clips on the AK-47s.
 
These were empty
also.

He radioed his
suspicions to Kilmara.
 
Seconds later a
‘Hold fire unless threatened’ order was given to the Rangers, and a loudspeaker-enhanced
voice boomed a call to surrender from the sky.
 
The command was repeated in French and German and Kilmara's rather basic
Arabic.

There was no
response.
 
The surrender plea had come
to
late.
 
As best they
could determine, all the terrorists outside the castle were now dead or
incapacitated, the fallen having been given an extra bust as they lay in
accordance with normal Ranger procedure in a firefight of making sure that what
goes down stays down.
 
Save prisoner
taking was impossible under such circumstances, but the threat of being shot by
a wounded fanatic — as experience had shown — was very real.

The battle
outside the castle was over.

30

The Tunnel
Under
Fitzduane's Castle — 0100 hours

Sig Bentquist
lay sprawled against some sandbags that had become dislodged in the fight and
tried to make sense of it all.

He found it
difficult since he was in pain, though the medication given to him by the
Ranger medic — a grim figure in his blue-black combat uniform, blackened face,
radio-
equipped
 
combat
helmet, and mass of high tech weaponry — was starting to take effect.
 
He was beginning to feel drowsy.
 
Recent memory and current reality were
becoming confused.

He fought the
drug.
 
He knew he'd never experience
anything like these last few minutes again.
 
The firefight had been more intense, more savage, and more brutal than
he had ever imagined.
 
The saving grace
was that it had been brief.
 
The carnage
in the tunnel had been over in a few terrible minutes, and now the floor and
the walls and even the ceiling were streaked with blood and human matter, and
shattered bodies littered the ground.

The stench was
that of a slaughterhouse.

He remembered
the door crashing onto the flagstones after the terrorists had cut through
it.
 
It was pitch-dark.
 
The sound had reverberated in his ears for
what seemed an eternity, and he had become convinced that under its cover the
terrorists were advancing, that even as he cowered in fear, they were only
seconds away, the blades of their fighting knives and bayonets ready to cut and
slash at his body.

Sit had a
horror of knives.
 
Clammy sweat poured
off him as he crouched blind and helpless.

"A
soldier has three enemies," Fitzduane had said.
 
"Boredom, imagination
and the enemy.
 
Lucky you — you
won't have time to be bored.
 
That leaves
two:
 
your imagination and the
terrorists.
 
Of the two, you'll find your
own mind by far the more dangerous, so watch it.
 
A little fear gets the adrenaline going and
gives you a fighting edge; that's fine.
 
Too much fear, on the other hand, paralyzes you like a rabbit caught in
a car's headlights.
 
That, my friends,
gets you — and the comrades who depend on you — killed."

He had smiled
reassuringly: "The solution to excessive fear is to keep your mind busy
with what has to be done and not what might happen.
 
Think like a professional with a problem to
solve and not some kid with his head under the bed sheets.
 
Remember, chances are that there isn't anyone
under the bed, but if there is, blow the motherfucker away."
 
He had
paused
a
beat.
 
"This isn't a lecture from
the textbooks.
 
I've been there.
 
Believe me, I know."

Think like a
professional!
 
Think like a
professional!
 
The instruction ran
through Sig's mind like a mantra, blocking out the terror that had so nearly
overwhelmed him and giving him something very specific to focus on.

He could hear
footsteps moving toward him and make out the faint glow of a shielded
flashlight.
 
This wasn't his
imagination.
 
They were coming, and they
seemed to think that they had found an undefended way into the keep; otherwise
there would have been gunfire and grenades and certainly no flashlight.
 
They believe we would have fired by now if
defenders were in place, he thought.
 
He heard
voices speaking in whispers, and the intonations suggested relief.
 
"Jesus Christ," he said to
himself
, "they really do think they have made it."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Andreas
watched them in his image intensifier as they came through the door.
 
First
came
a pair of
scouts obviously primed for trouble — but with no grenades.
 
And their bayonets were fixed.
 
Could they be short of
ammunition as well, or what this their routine when mounting a close assault?
 
Had they fixed bayonets when they closed in
on the gatehouse?
 
He thought not, but he
couldn't be sure.

The first
scout checked out the dummy emplacements and found no one.
 
They had been arranged to look as if they had
been abandoned uncompleted, as if it had been decided not to defend the
tunnel.
 
The ruse seemed to be
working.
 
The first scout signaled his
partner, who in turn signaled back through the doorway.
 
Reinforcements started slipping through.
 
They came fast and then crouched on either
side of the tunnel ready for the next phase of the assault.
 
Andreas could still see no grenades.
 
Of course, they could have them in ammunition
pouches or fatigue pockets, but still, there would normally be some in evidence
in this kind of attack.
 
Could the
defenders be having some luck for a change?
 
They were going to need it.
 
Eighteen terrorists were now in the tunnel — that seemed to be the
entire strength of the assault group — and the scouts were preparing to move
forward yet again.

Andreas tapped
Judith on the arm.
 
She silently counted
to five, giving him time to line up his SA-80 again.
 
The first scout was only a few paces away.
 
He was now beyond the killing ground of the
Claymore.

Judith fired
the remote switch linked to the Claymore, and seven hundred steel balls were
blasted by the directional mine down the tunnel into the advancing
terrorists.
 
Floodlights positioned to
leave the defenders in darkness flashed on, revealing bloody carnage.

Andreas shot
the first terrorist scout through the torso and put a second round through his
head.
 
The five surviving terrorists
rushed forward, guns blazing, knowing that speed and firepower were now their
only defense.
 
There was nowhere for them
to hide and no time to flee.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Sig saw a
bayonet slide toward his face and parried it with a desperate swing of his
Uzi.
 
Another AK-47 turned toward him,
and he saw the muzzle flash and felt a savage blow on his shoulder.
 
He raised the Uzi by the pistol grip and
emptied half a magazine into the desperate face in front of him.

Andreas was on
the ground, locked in hand-to-hand combat with a terrorist.
 
Judith seized the attacker by the hair, pulled
back his head, and cut his throat.

A fighting
knife slashed at Sig's thigh, and then the hand wielding the knife was gripped
by one of the student volunteers — it was Kagochev, the Russian — and the two
went rolling over the sandbags into the bloodstained killing ground.
 
Kagochev was thrown against the wall.
 
As the attacker was about to finish him, an
arrow sprouted from the terrorist's chest, and slowly he slid backward.
 
A second arrow hit him as he was falling.

Another
terrorist leaped at de Guevain as he was drawing his bow for the third time,
and the Frenchman fired at point-blank range, sending the arrow right through
the attacker's body to pin him against a storeroom door.

Andreas had
the SA-80 in his hands again and was firing aimed shots.
 
As if in slow motion, Sig swathe brass
cartridge cases sail through the air to bounce off the wall or the ground.
 
Andreas was moving in a fighting frenzy,
shooting every terrorist he could see whether living or dead.
 
And then his magazine was empty.
 
He ejected it and slapped a fresh one in
place.
 
He worked the bolt and fired, and
the click of firing pin on empty chamber in the tunnel was like a slap in the
face.
 
Andreas stopped and shook his head
and looked around.

He and Sig
looked at each other and knew the attack was over.
 
There was silence in the tunnel but for the
sound of heavy breathing.

Shortly
afterward there was a warning shout and a quick exchange of identification, and
the first of the Rangers appeared through the door they had been defending.

"Doesn't
look as if you really needed us," he said.

Andreas smiled
tiredly.
 
"Maybe not," he said,
"but it's very good to have you here.
 
I don't think there was much more left in us."

The Ranger
glanced around.
 
"There was
enough," he said thoughtfully.
 
"There was enough."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Above Duncleeve —
The
Keep of Fitzduane's Castle

The infrared
heat emissions generated by Kadar's Powerchute would have been picked up by
Kilmara's IR-18 scanner in the Optica if he hadn't been so tightly focused on
the heavy-machine-gun installations and the infiltrating Rangers.
 
Kadar's second bit of luck was that the Rangers
on the ground who did see him take off were keeping radio silence until the
Milan
opened fire — and at
that stage they had other things on their minds.

Kadar was not
aware of the precise nature of the Optica's detection equipment, but as an
added precaution against visual observation he circled around the front of the
castle walls, flying only a few meters above the ground and thus out of sight
of the defenders in the keep.
 
He did not
gain altitude until he was out over the sea.

The castle lay
ahead and below him.

Beyond it he
could see stabs of orange light and the sudden flash of grenade
explosions.
 
The Rangers must have
arrived earlier than expected.
 
It was
fortunate there were so few of them.
 
He
was confident his men could hold at least until he had secured the remaining
portion of the castle — and then it really wouldn't matter.
 
When he had the hostages, the tables would be
turned.

He noticed
with relief that the heavy machine guns were no longer firing.
 
He checked his watch.
 
The plan was working.
 
His men must have ceased fire at the time
agreed.
 
He hadn't noticed because he had
been flying out to sea at that moment.
 
It reminded him that he was operating more than a minute behind
schedule.
 
He tried to check with Sartawi
by radio but received no reply.
 
Sartawi
was doubtless otherwise occupied.
 
He
tried to raise the small assault group now waiting in hiding at the foot of the
keep and received a double microphone click in reply.
 
It wasn't an orthodox acknowledgment, but he
understood the circumstances.
 
He was
pleased.
 
Things were looking good.