Rules of the Hunt (5 page)
Kilmara put
himself in the position of a killing team with unfriendly intentions toward
Fitzduane and searched accordingly.
The
team would want to oversee their target and have good cover.
They would have an escape route back to the
helicopter.
They would not wish to fire
into the sun — not much of a risk in this part of
With
binoculars alone he would have seen nothing — the killing team was excellently
positioned and concealed.
The
It could pick up body heat.
"Two
hostiles," said Kilmara, and indicated the TV screen.
He had activated the laser system.
The target was now illuminated by a laser
beam which was visible only if special goggles were worn.
The range was also determined.
On the screen it read 1,853 meters, well over
a mile.
"It's
yours," he said to Lonsdale.
Supposedly they were on a training exercise.
The Guntracks were not carrying longer-range
standoff weapons.
Lonsdale had
already moved when Kilmara spoke.
He
positioned himself on the brow of the hill, the
In his heart he knew it was a near-impossible shot — and anyway they
were almost certainly too late.
But he also
knew, the way you do sometimes, when everything comes together, that this was a
special time — and on this day he would shoot better than he ever had before in
his life.
Through his
goggles he could see the laser beam pinpoint the target.
The 16x telescopic sight was calibrated to
the ballistics of the .50 ammunition.
He
acquired the target.
The sniper's body
was totally concealed in a fold of ground.
He could just see a burlap-wrapped line that was the rifle barrel and an
indistinct blob that was the head.
Behind him,
Kilmara fired off two red flares in a desperate attempt to distract the
assassins and alert Fitzduane.
The
flares in this color sequence had been the abort signal twenty years earlier
when they had fought together in the
It was an inadequate gesture, but it was all
he could think of.
*
*
*
*
*
As they
approached the ford, Boots grew animated.
The place he particularly liked to play in required crossing the stream,
and he loved the sensation of traversing the water on high, perched safely on
Pooka's back.
From this
vantage point he could sometimes see minnows or even bigger fish darting
through the water, and there were interesting-looking stones and dark, strange
shapes.
The hint of hidden danger that
provided part of the excitement was nicely offset by the reassuring presence of
his father.
They crossed
at walking pace, the peat-brown water gurgling around Pooka's hooves.
Halfway across, Boots shouted,
"Stop!
Stop!"
He had pieces of stick he wanted to drop into
the stream so that he could follow them as they bobbed in the rushing water.
Red blossomed
in the sky
.
Fitzduane looked up at the flare, then
leaned back slightly to see more easily, as the second flare exploded.
A sense of imminent danger coursed through
his body, and Pooka shifted uneasily.
The sniper
fired.
His rifle had
an integral silencer, and he was using subsonic ammunition.
Fitzduane
heard nothing.
He just saw
the back of Boots's head open up in a crimson line and felt his son grow
limp.
Stunned at first, he screamed in
anguish and desperation as the horror of what he was seeing hit home.
Pooka reared
up.
Distracted,
the sniper fired again before fully reestablishing his aim.
Blood spewed from Pooka's head as he
collapsed, throwing Boots several feet away into the shallow water.
The sniper's
third shot hit Fitzduane in the thigh, smashing the femur.
Fitzduane was now partially caught under his
dead horse.
With a desperate effort he
tried to roll free, but then his strength gave out.
"BOOTS!
"
Fitzduane cried, oblivious to his pain, his arms
outstretched toward the boy, who lay face up in the water just out of arm's
reach.
The horse was
shielding his target, so the sniper had to rise for the killing shot.
He had the luxury of a little time now.
His victim was down and defenseless.
The spotter
decided to help finish the business.
He fired a
burst from his silenced submachine gun at the boy as he lay in the water.
The rounds impacted in a ragged group around
the boy's head, causing Fitzduane to make a superhuman effort to release
himself
and go to the assistance of his son.
He pulled free and tried to rise, and as he
did so, he exposed his upper body.
Two more shots
for a certain kill, thought the sniper:
one to the heart and one through the head.
He didn't believe in relying on a one-shot
kill.
Subsonic ammunition might not
inflict the massive trauma of a fully loaded round, but it did make for a
silent kill and the corollary of extra time to make sure the job was properly
done.
He and
The sniper's
round created a small entry wound as it entered Fitzduane's body one inch above
his right nipple and two inches to its left at the fourth rib space.
Continuing its
path of destruction, it pierced the chest wall, smashed the front of the fourth
rib, and then — now combined with bone fragments — divided the fourth
intercostal artery, vein, and neurovascular bundle.
Fragments of rib became embedded in the right
lung and the bullet plowed through it, damaging minor pulmonary arteries and
veins.
The round
missed the trachea, went slightly
lateral
to the
esophagus, missed the vagus nerve and thoracic duct, grazed the skin of the
heart, went to the right of the aorta, and entered the posterior chest
wall.
Traveling slightly downward, it
then smashed the back of the fifth rib, went to the right of the vertebrae and
exited out of the upper left side of the back, producing a large exit wound.
Fitzduane made
a slight noise as the shock of the bullet drove the air from his body, and
folded slowly, his arms stretched toward Boots.
Lonsdale's
bullet had longer to travel.
It was
approximately five times the mass of a modern automatic-rifle projectile and
had a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second.
Part of the mass consisted of explosives.
The spotter
saw the center of the sniper's body explode as the corpse was flung back
against the hillside.
He could see no
sign of threat ahead of them.
He was turning
when Lonsdale's second round arrived and drilled through his right arm from the
side before exploding inside his torso.
*
*
*
*
*
Kilmara
watched his friend and his young son through the
The image of Boots
and then Fitzduane getting hit and tumbling into the rushing water was replaced
by the sight of Fitzduane's desperate attempts to help his child.
And then he lay still.
The Ranger
Colonel continued to monitor developments and to issue orders, his face
immobile.
The Guntrack originally tasked
for the castle was the first unit that could make it to the scene, and at full
cross-country speed it arrived in less than two minutes.
Three Rangers
—
All Rangers were BATLS,
Battlefield Advanced Trauma Life Support, trained.
BATLS was a combat version of the ATLS
techniques pioneered in the
The reasonable assumption, given the Rangers
line of work, was that they would be under fire.
The emphasis was on speed.
Of the
two, he was clearly the more seriously wounded.
Drenched in blood, he was dying before their eyes.
He was bluish, very agitated, in severe
respiratory distress, and in deep shock.
His wounded leg looked bent and visibly shorter.
It was clear the femur was shattered.
"Chest
and leg," said
microphone.
"Lung penetrated; leg
looks bad; looks like the femoral."
The boy's wound looked like a graze.
He was mildly concussed and the back of his
head was bleeding, but he was very much alive.
Within a few moments, he regained consciousness.
"Boy grazed but OK," said
Fitzduane was
critical, however.
"
A reply would have meant that Fitzduane was
conscious and his airway clear.
There was no
reply.
"Shit," said
Their patient
was dying.
He moved
to check Fitzduane's airway.
Satisfied,
he inserted a hollow tube, a Guidel airway, which would act to maintain access.
The whole
procedure took about twenty seconds.
"Airways OK," said
Hannigan had
been cutting open Fitzduane's clothing and assessing the two wounds.
Blood was everywhere but was cascading from
the thigh wound in a positive torrent.
He estimated that the man had lost up to a liter of blood in the first
minute, and though the pressure had now eased off slightly as the blood supply
diminished, the flow was still major.
The femoral artery was like a power shower.
Fitzduane's
clothes were saturated and the ground was sticky with blood.
Immediately, Hannigan wrapped a bandage above
the area of the thigh wound and applied pressure on it.
The flow diminished, though it did not stop.
The
man's lung was punctured.
The likelihood
was that air was leaking into the chest cavity and could not escape.
Pressure was building and blocking blood flow
to and from the heart.
In addition, the
pressure in his chest kept his ribs and diaphragm expanded, so he could not
breathe in and out properly.
Fitzduane
was gasping.
He was running out of
oxygen.
Working very
fast, Hannigan checked Fitzduane's trachea, then percussed his chest.
The first dull sound confirmed the leakage of
blood into the pleural space.
The second
sound, a booming resonance, confirmed the excess of air.
"Fuck
it," he said.
"We've got a
tension."
Without
hesitation, he thrust a wide-bore cannula into the front of the chest.
The cannula looked like a slim ballpoint-pen
refill and consisted of a hollow needle protruding slightly inside a hollow
plastic tube.
As the needle
penetrated, he heard a massive blow-off of trapped air.
Immediately, Fitzduane's breathing
improved.
There was still blood and air
in the space, but it was no longer under tension.
The procedure
had taken one minute.
Fitzduane
regained partial consciousness.
"C-ca…
he gasped faintly.
"My son, look
after…"
"Be my
guest," said Hannigan and put a Ventimask over Fitzduane's mouth and connected
it to a cylinder of compressed oxygen.
At a rate of ten to twelve liters per minute, the oxygen would last only
fifteen minutes or less.
Time was still
critical.
As Hannigan slipped on
cervical and neck collars,
Ventimask tapes.
Another minute had
passed.
"I'll
plug," said
He would try to stop the bleeding while
Hannigan worked at establishing intravenous access.
There was no point to inserting drips if the
liquid was immediately going to leak out, and yet Fitzduane needed extra liquid
fast.
He was in a state of shock.
His normal blood volume was five and a half
to six liters, and he looked close to losing half of that.