Rules of the Hunt (22 page)
In the second week of Fitzduane's stay in the hospital, when the basic
precautions had been in place and the man himself out of intensive care,
Kilmara had sent the problem to Ranger headquarters in
There the scenario had been evaluated by two teams.
One team had worked out how to defeat the
security and kill Fitzduane.
The second
had looked at current and past terrorist methodology and current and past
counterterrorist protection techniques.
The findings had been pooled and the exercise repeated several
times.
The final conclusions had led
Kilmara to implement several more security measures.
Above all, he wished he could move Fitzduane,
but that would have to wait a few weeks longer.
He was recovering, but needed — absolutely had to have — the specialized
care of the hospital.
Set against that
certainty, the possibility of another assassination attempt was a minor
risk.
Or so said the
computer.
Kilmara looked at the screen when the finding came up.
He remembered a game he used to play with his
girlfriends as a teenager.
You'd pluck
the petals from a daisy one by one.
“She
loves me; she loves me not; she loves me; she loves me not.”
The last petal would decide the issue.
"I don't trust computers any more than I trusted daisies," he
said to the screen.
The cursor winked back
at him.
"Nothing personal," he
added.
The first finding of the Ranger attack-scenario exercise had been that
the maximum point of vulnerability at the hospital was not the security
deployment as such, but the people.
"Between you and me, and these four walls," said Kilmara to the
screen, "I really didn't need a computer to tell me that."
He rubbed the gray hairs in his beard.
"Life has a habit of instilling that
lesson."
The computer continued to wink at him.
He quite liked the beasts and they were damn useful, but sometimes they
got on his nerves.
He pressed the off switch and, with some satisfaction, watched the
monitor die a little death.
*
*
*
*
*
They had opened the door with Kathleen's key and then pushed her down the
hall in front of them.
Her parents were in the large kitchen at the back, her mother at the Aga
stove stirring porridge, her father sitting at the table reading yesterday's
Irish Times
.
‘The Pat Kenny Show’ was on the radio in the
background.
The kitchen had picture windows on two sides and there were no
blinds.
One of the gunmen went instantly
to close the curtains, but the leader, the man with the smile, shook his head.
"Doesn't look natural," he said.
"Bring them into the front
room."
He pushed Kathleen and
grabbed her mother.
She was still
stirring the porridge, as yet unable to take in what was happening.
The pot crashed to the floor.
A third man came into the room and pulled the
chair out from under Kathleen's father and half-pushed, half-kicked the
gray-haired man out through the door.
Social life in the home in rural
kitchen.
The front room is kept for
visitors and special occasions and tends to have the heating turned off and to
feel somewhat unlived-in.
The Flemings'
sitting room was fairly typical in this respect.
The room was chilly and the venetian blinds
half closed.
There were family
photographs on the mantelpiece and a fire was laid but not lit.
There were drinks on a low cabinet for
visitors.
The main seating consisted of
a sofa and two armchairs, with several upright chairs set against the wall to
deal with any overflow.
An oil painting
of Kathleen in nurse's uniform with her parents, Noel and Mary, hung over the
fireplace.
Kathleen's parents were pushed onto the sofa, where they tried to regain
some composure.
Noel put his arm around
his wife's shoulders.
Kathleen was
thrust into one of the armchairs, and the man who appeared to be the leader
took the other.
Sitting back in the
chair, he reached into an inside pocket and removed a cylindrical object, which
he attached to the barrel of his automatic.
"Fuck,
it's
bloody freezing," he
said.
"Jim, will you turn on the
heating or something."
Jim, a heavyset man in his late twenties with black hair and facial
stubble to match, turned on the radiator controls and then lit the fire.
The firelighters caught and the kindling
crackled.
It was a sound that Kathleen
associated with home and safety and comfort.
The sight of the silencer being screwed into place made her feel sick.
None of the men wore masks.
They did not seem to be worried about being
identified later.
The conclusion was all
too obvious.
"My name's Paddy," said the leader.
He pointed at the others.
"That's Jim."
Jim was now leaning against the radiator, soaking
up the spreading warmth.
He didn't
react.
"And the baldy fellow behind
me" — he gestured with his left thumb over his shoulder — "is
Eamon."
Eamon nodded.
He looked to be only
in his early twenties, but his bald head shone with a patina of sweat.
He had an automatic rifle cradled in his
arms.
Kathleen recognized it as an AK-47
assault rifle.
There had been a great
deal about them on the news when a ship bringing in weapons for the terrorists
had been arrested off
Apparently, the armaments aboard had
originated in
Paddy leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
The pistol was now clasped loosely in both
hands between his legs.
He looked
straight at Kathleen and spoke softly, almost intimately.
If the occasion had been different, he might
have been addressing a lover.
"Kathleen, my darling," he said, "I need your help."
Kathleen's mouth had gone dry.
She
was nauseous, her stomach ached from where she had been kicked, and her terror
was so great that she felt paralyzed.
At
the same time, her brain was in overdrive.
This must have to do with Fitzduane.
So this was the reality of his world.
It was worse than anything she could have imagined.
What could she do?
How could she help?
What did these frightening men want?
Silently, she determined to resist when and
how she could.
If everybody fought these
kind
of people as best they could, they would be
defeated.
Paddy McGonigal looked into her eyes.
He could read the pain and the defiance.
How little these people know, he thought.
How fragile their lives are.
How irrelevant in the scheme of things.
I bend my finger and she dies.
An effortless physical act.
That is all there is to it.
And
they think they matter, that somehow they can resist.
The dreams of fools.
He felt anger.
Why do they not understand how fucking
unimportant they are, these little people, these pawns of fortune?
"I need to know about the hospital," he said.
"There is a fellow called Hugo Fitzduane
I want to visit.
I want to know where he
is.
I want to know about the
security.
I want the routines and the
passwords and all the little details."
Kathleen had removed her nurse's headgear on going off duty but was still
wearing her uniform under her cloak.
The
cloak was navy, but the lining was of some scarlet material.
The effect over the crisp white of her
one-piece garment was striking.
For the first time, McGonigal looked at her as a woman.
She was, he realized, a very beautiful
woman.
Her eyes were particularly
striking, her breasts were full,
her
legs were long
and slender.
He noticed that her dress
buttoned up the front.
The skirt had
risen above her knees.
"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head.
"I'm afraid you've got the wrong
person.
I don't know who you're talking
about."
McGonigal reached out with his automatic and placed the silencer and
barrel under her skirt and lifted it.
He
undid the bottom button of her skirt with his left hand and then started on
another button.
There was the hint of
lace.
Noel Fleming leaped to his feet at the same time that Kathleen's hand
cracked full force against McGonigal's face.
He could taste blood.
Jim, the
terrorist leaning against the radiator, jumped forward and smashed her father
back onto the sofa with the butt of his gun.
Mary Fleming screamed and clasped her husband.
A long gash had opened in his skull, and
crimson leached into his silver hair and soaked his wife's blouse.
He lay against her, dazed and in pain and
bewildered by what was happening.
McGonigal put a hand to his lip.
There was blood on his finger when he took it away.
He licked his lips and swallowed, but the
metallic taste remained in his mouth.
The left side of his face hurt.
This was a strong woman.
But vulnerable.
"Kathleen," he said "you're brave and you're beautiful,
but you're foolish.
How does it help you
if you make me angry?
Now answer me
that."
Kathleen shook her head.
The
feeling of paralysis had left her since she had struck this man in front of
her.
She no longer felt quite so
helpless, so afraid.
She remembered that
she hadn't called in.
She had to buy
time.
McGonigal stood up.
He transferred
the automatic to his left hand and removed from his pocket what looked, at
first, like a large pen-knife.
There was
a click and a longer thin blade glittered dully in a shaft of light coming
through the blinds.
He looked at the
portrait.
"You've a nice family," he said, looking down at Kathleen
.
"Close-knit
is the phrase, I think."
He
transferred his gaze back to the portrait and slowly cut a large X through her
image.
The sound of the canvas parting
under the pressure of the blade was unsettling.
To Kathleen it was an obscene, wanton gesture.
"I could hurt you, Kathleen," he said, "but where would
that get me?
It's you I need to hear
from."
He turned back to the
portrait
.
"Life
is about choices," he said.
"It just isn't possible to have everything."
He brought the blade up again and seemed to hesitate.
He turned and looked carefully at her
parents, then nodded to himself.
His
gaze reverted to the portrait.
He raised the blade again.
"It wouldn't surprise me at all," he said, "if you
weren't just a little bit keen on Hugo.
He a wounded hero and all that.
Romance has blossomed at many a bedside — and
has died in many a bed."
He
laughed.
"But the thing is,
darling, you can't have it all."
The blade sliced through the image of her father.
Kathleen cried out.
The terrible
fear had returned.
Her mother screamed.
"No!
No!" she
said.
"This is — this is
wrong.
It's all wrong.
You must go.
You can't do this."
Anger flared in McGonigal.
He
turned and thrust the automatic pistol in his hand at the bald-headed
terrorist, then grabbed Kathleen's father by his bloodied white hair and hauled
the elderly man to his feet.
"Fuck you," he said.
"Fuck all you little people.
You know nothing."
He placed
the edge of his knife under Kathleen's father's ear and cut and pulled,
severing his throat from ear to ear.