Rules of the Hunt (3 page)
Kilmara hadn't
taken the Lockheed Combat Talon — it actually belonged to the U.S. Air Force —
he had merely borrowed it and its highly skilled crew in a complex arrangement
with Delta.
He had a tendency toward
elegantly complex barter deals, because then, in his experience, no bureaucrat
could ever possibly unravel them.
A
much-simplified interpretation of this particular arrangement was that the
Irish were given access to the Combat Talon and certain other goodies in
exchange for Delta being allowed to train in
new high-speed, heavily armed FAV — Fast Attack Vehicle —
know
as the Guntrack.
None of this,
needless to say, had been arranged through official channels.
However, all of it was supported by
appropriate paperwork.
Kilmara had
operated in this outrageous manner for years.
He got away with it because he was very good at what he did.
And he was consummate at working the system.
The Guntrack
was a Rangers innovation and had been inspired by Fitzduane.
The primary purpose of the exercise was to
test the dramatic-looking, black, tracked vehicle under simulated combat
conditions.
The C130 would infiltrate
the ‘enemy’ airspace of Fitzduane's island, flying little higher than the roof
of a suburban house, and then drop down to the approximate level of the top of
the front door.
The rear door s of the
Lockheed would be open.
At a precise
point, a cargo parachute attached to the palleted Guntrack would activate ad
the vehicle would be pulled sharply out of the rear doors and fall only a few
feet onto the ground — hopefully in one piece.
The technique
was know as LAPES — low-altitude parachute extraction system — and provided the
pilot didn't sneeze while flying a bulky cargo plane at 120 mile an hour five
feet above the ground at night in new terrain.
LAPES was considered a safer way to put cargo on the ground than by
actually dropping things from a height.
It was regularly used by airborne troops, even for substantial items
like armored vehicles.
The whole
procedure tended to scare the shit out of Kilmara.
He could just see the pilot absentmindedly
spill his coffee at the wrong moment.
Fortunately, LAPES was not recommended for people.
The drill was to drop the equipment first,
the climb to five hundred feet and start throwing out the human element.
Five hundred feet just about allowed a
parachute to open, but the enemy didn't have much time to shoot you as you
dangled silhouetted against the sky.
And, with luck, they would be asleep.
The pioneers
of airborne had tried dropping people first and then the heavy equipment on top
of them.
The survivors had suggested
that this had not been a good idea.
The trouble
with
congested.
There just weren't enough
places where you could drop things and shoot things without damaging the
locals.
The nice thing about Fitzduane's
island was that all you were likely to flatten, if you picked the right spot,
was the heather.
The warning
light came on.
Hydraulics began to
whine.
Outside, the night was dark and
cold and looked bloody miserable.
The
Combat Talon was now so low that Kilmara found he could look
up
at some of the terrain.
He just hoped that all the microchips that
made this kind of lunatic flying possible were getting on well with their
electrons.
He wanted to live to be a
general in two days.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane had
reached the stage of an evening where, although he knew common sense dictated
getting some sleep, he just hadn't the energy to make a move.
He was
thinking about what he was going to do with his life.
Apart from the part-time occupation of acting
as something of a ‘think tank’ for the Irish Rangers as they expanded their
operations, for the last few years he had tended to take the easier way out, to
let his accountant take care of his affairs and to concentrate on bringing up
Boots.
It was not good enough.
He now had a feeling that this course would
change, and it brought with it a sense of forboding.
He checked the
security system and then went to pot Boots.
His small son lay there, long eyelashes over closed eyes, cheeks pink
and tanned from the wind, lithe young body sprawled in over and around the
duvet.
He looked very beautiful.
His bed was very wet.
Fitzduane
stripped the bed, meditated briefly on bladder control and a three-year-old's
potty training, then carried his son to his own big bed.
He hadn't the energy to remake the cot — or
that is what he told himself.
Father and son
slept side by side in the big bed throughout the night.
Fitzduane's sleep was somewhat disturbed,
since Boots tended to wriggle.
In the
early hours he thought he heard the sound of a familiar aircraft, but before
the thought had fully registered
he
was asleep again.
2
Fitzduane's
Boots was
giving Oona, the housekeeper, a hard time in the kitchen.
It was
staggering, thought Fitzduane affectionately, how much time, effort, and
emotional energy such a very small person could soak up.
He imagined having twins or — he went pale at
the thought — triplets.
In fact, right
now, he couldn't really contemplate looking after more than one child at a
time.
How did women
do it, and, as often as not these days, combine raising a family with a career?
In truth, he had considerable sympathy for
Etan, Boots's mother.
It was partly her
strength of character that he had initially found so attractive.
It was scarcely surprising now that she
wanted to make her mark on the world.
That was where
the age difference came in.
Fitzduane
had personal wealth, and, after the army, had reached the top of his chosen
profession of combat photographer, strange occupation though it was.
He had been ready to settle down.
Etan still had
to achieve some personal goal before she would be content.
They hadn’t fallen out of love.
It was more a case of being out of sync.
How many relationships foundered on career
conflicts and bad timing?
But Etan had
one her own way, and that was the way of it.
Fitzduane
tried to convince himself that someday soon she would return and they would at
last get married and be a family unit, but deep down he no longer believed
it.
He suddenly felt a terrible
loneliness, and tears came to his eyes.
He was lost in
thought, staring out the glass wall at a choppy green black sea, when Boots
came tearing in hood up, garbed for the outdoors, bright red
"Daddy!
Daddy!
Let's go!
Let's go!"
He skidded to a halt.
"Daddy, why are you crying?"
Fitzduane
smiled.
Children were disconcertingly
observant at times.
"I've got a
cold," he said, sniffing ostentatiously and wiping his eyes.
Boots reached
into his anorak and explored a pocket.
A
small hand
emerged,
clutching a tissue that looked
like it was beyond recycling.
A
half-eaten hard candy was stuck to it.
He proffered the combination to Fitzduane.
"Sharing is caring," he said,
repeating Oona's carefully drummed-in propaganda.
"Can I have a sweetie?"
Fitzduane
laughed.
"Three years old and
working the angles," he said.
He
had read all the books about the importance of feeding children properly and
not encouraging bad habits, but he was fighting a losing battle where Boots and
candy were concerned.
He tossed Boots an
apple taken from the fruit bowl on the sideboard.
Boots made a
face,
then
grabbed the apple with one hand and
Fitzduane's arm with the other:
"Daddy!
Let's go!
Let's go!
Let's go!"
*
*
*
*
*
The sniper
reflected that the vast majority of his fellow citizens had never even held a
weapon, let alone fired one.
abjured war.
An army, as such, was
specifically forbidden by the constitution.
There was no conscription.
The
self-defense forces were manned exclusively by volunteers.
The police carried guns but almost never drew
them, let alone used them.
The streets
were safe.
Criminals threatened only
each other, and even then mostly used swords.
The sniper
spat.
His country was degenerating,
suborned by materialism and false values.
The politicians were corrupt.
The
rulers of his country had lost direction.
The warrior
class had been contaminated by commerce
and were
effete.
The true wishes
of the Emperor — views he never communicated or expressed but which they knew
he must, at heart, profess — were being ignored.
A new
direction was required.
As always in
history, a few people of strong will and clear vision could change destiny.
The sniper
emptied the magazine of his rifle and reloaded it with hand-loaded match-grade
ammunition.
He checked every round.
Beside him, the spotter had placed his
automatic weapon to hand and was sweeping the killing ground in front of them
with binoculars.
The watcher
was in position fifty meters above and to the left of them.
All three saw
the portcullis of the castle rise, and horse, rider, and passenger emerge.
The killing
team settled in to wait.
It would be
about an hour.
They could
hear the sounds of the small waterfall flowing into the stream below them.
The stream widened and became shallower at
this point.
It was a location where
people had traditionally established a crossing point or ford.
The name wasn't marked on any map, but it was
known, by the Fitzduanes, as Battleford.
At that spot,
centuries earlier,
held, and died.
*
*
*
*
*
It was a
truism of
special forces
that nothing ever went
entirely to plan.
In this case
the objective was to test the air deployment of three Guntracks and nine
personnel onto the ground at night via LAPES, then mount a simulated assault on
the abandoned
opposite end of the island to Duncleeve.
Kilmara didn't want Fitzduane complaining about having his beauty sleep
disturbed.
He had longer-term plans for
the island which depended on his retaining his friend's goodwill.
Good training areas were in short supply.
The first two
Guntracks had made an uneventful landing by the standards of this truly
terrifying technique.
The third
Guntrack, mounted on its special shock-absorbing pallet, had its landing ever
further cushioned by a flock of panic-stricken sheep.
Seven seemed unlikely to wake up again.
Kilmara winced.
He knew Fitzduane, and was having nightmares
of an outsized trophy board being delivered to Ranger headquarters.
He was never going to live this down.
The second
hitch was that they had misplaced three Rangers — actually Delta troopers on
secondment from
The Irish were well-practiced in jumping in
the unusually windy and gusty conditions of the West of Ireland.
The Delta
team were
at the start of the learning curve and were going to have to leg it,
cross-country and at night, to catch up.