The Devil's Footprint (22 page)

He had thought
about it and even raised it at a local-state-federal security meeting.
 
He had been brushed aside.
 
He had done nothing.
 
It was hard to go up against the system.
 
You questioned it at your peril.

There was not
a serious terrorist threat in the
United States of America
.
 
That was the conventional wisdom.

It was
accurate in a bizarre way.
 
It was not a
threat anymore.
 
It was happening.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Fitzduane put
his hand inside his light cotton jacket and adjusted his holster.
 
It was idiotic having to cart around a lump
of metal at a social occasion, but he had been caught short on the Hill and did
not feel like making the same mistake twice.

He could hear
the buzz of a light aircraft.
 
So could
others.
 
A ripple ran through the
crowd.
 
The aircraft drew nearer and then
began to circle.
 
A wind indicator was
dropped and fluttered to the surface.
 
There was little wind that evening.
 
It would not be a factor in the drop.

The aircraft
climbed until it was about 3,000 feet.
 
All eyes were fixed on it, waiting for the first free-fall parachutist
to emerge.
 
They could see a small black
dot and then a stream of pink smoke.
 
The
jumper had a smoke canister clipped to his boot.

Accelerating
at 32 feet per second, the jumper fell through the air until he reached a
terminal velocity of 120 miles an hour.
 
At that point, wind resistance offset the tendency to accelerate.
 
Seemingly liquid air fostered the illusion
that it was providing a cushion and that you were really flying as surely as a
swimmer was supported by the sea.

It was an
illusion that had killed on more than a few occasions when a sky diver left
pulling the D ring until too late.

The jumper
hurtled toward the upturned faces below.
 

Suddenly there
was a flash of color as the rectangular ram air parachute was pulled open by
the miniature drag line ‘chute.
 
At the
same time, a second smoke canister on the jumper's other boot ignited.

He now
presented quite a spectacle.
 
His
parachute, helmet, and jumpsuit were scarlet and he streamed pink and yellow
smoke.
 
As he came nearer, Fitzduane
could see that the jumpsuit had been modified to look like a pantomime
devil.
 
The helmet had little horns and
there was even a tail at the back.

Ram air
parachutes were highly maneuverable, Fitzduane knew.
 
Toggles on the left and right of the jumper
allowed air to be spilled and the direction of the glide to be controlled.
 
In some ways, ram-air parachutes were more like
flying wings than the traditional umbrella-shaped model.

In this case the jumper was not doing anything too exotic.
 
Now that his ‘chute was open he was merely
spiraling around in large circles, trailing smoke.
 
The plan, Fitzduane could now see, was to
make the final approach over the parking lot at the back of the hotel and glide
in between the two accommodation wings to land by the pool.
 
Maybe even in the pool, if he really wanted
to please the
crowd
, who, after over an hour's steady
drinking, were in a boisterous mood.

Four more figures had emerged from the aircraft, but the focus was on the
first sky diver as he commenced the last spiral ready to make his approach.

Kilmara was watching through military field glasses that gave him
10x magnification
.
 
Fitzduane was using a motor drive-equipped
Nikon with a zoom lens.
 
Boots would have
loved this, he reflected.
 
Still, since
the Rangers trained on his island, his son was no stranger to spectacles such
as this.

Up on the roof,
Texas
was doing what her security training had taught her.
 
She was keeping her eyes moving.
 
She glanced occasionally at the sky divers,
but her main concern was the bigger picture.

The line dancers had stopped for the moment and were gazing skyward like
everyone else, but the sound of music had not diminished.
 
It had increased.
 
The pool loudspeakers, turned up full volume,
were now blasting out "The Ride of the Valkyries."
 
It fit the mood of the exhibitors, many of
whom were
Vietnam
veterans, since they associated it with the helicopter assault in
Apocalypse Now
, but it was so loud it
was hard to hear yourself think.

It was too damn noisy for good security.

The first sky diver, still spewing smoke, was circling for the final
approach.
 
Everyone was looking toward
the direction he was coming from.

Texas
panned around to look in the opposite direction.
 
More surprises!
 
A helicopter flying low was heading straight
for the center block of the hotel.
 
Black
masked figures wearing SWAT assault gear were standing on the skids to the left
and right, ready to jump down.

It was a dramatic sight, and the audience below was going to love
it.
 
Just when they were looking in one
direction, this mock helicopter assault would take them in the rear.
 
She could see it now.
 
Simulated explosions.
 
Black-clad figures running into assault
positions.
 
The chatter
of blanks from automatic weapons.
 
Thrills for the crowd.

All of this had once thrilled her too, when she was doing it.
 
Now she increasingly felt she would like to
do something more constructive.
 
Like
make something.
 
A baby seemed like a
good place to start.
 
She had fought
against being stereotyped as a woman, but recently her hormones seemed to be
telling her something.

She glanced down at Shanley.
 
He
was standing in the same group as Fitzduane and Kilmara.
 
And Kilmara was shouting something and
pointing.

At that moment, Shanley looked up at her and pointed also at the first
sky diver who was coming in to land, and she saw the three men head behind a
low wall as if diving for cover.

She turned again to look at the helicopter that was now almost at the
hotel and she saw lights flashing underneath it.
 
Then she half-turned back again to look down
at Shanley as the long burst of heavy-caliber machine gun fire smashed into her
and blew her off the roof in a mist of blood and flesh and bone.

Her body plummeted down and smashed into the barbecue area below,
scattering hot charcoal in every direction.

Shanley died a little as he watched.
 
Then his head hit the ground hard as Fitzduane knocked him down behind
cover.

"Look at his arms, Hugo!
"
Kilmara had
shouted.
 
"They are strapped to his
sides.
 
He's not controlling his own
‘chute."

Fitzduane had snatched the binoculars.
 
The sky diver's head lolled forward.
 
He looked lifeless, like some full-sized puppet.
 
There was a device on his chest with wires
connecting it to the toggles.

And then the import of what they had seen hit them and, grabbing Shanley
and shouting at the others, they dived for cover.

The sky diver floated in for what looked like a perfect landing.

The crowd made way as he glided in, then surged forward as he touched
down.

It was at that moment that the fléchette-packed bomb strapped to the
radio-controlled corpse of the sky diver exploded, sending several thousands of
miniature metal darts in every direction.
 
The man's body was blasted into a fragmented pink cloud of blood and
fragments of flesh and bone.

The flash of the explosion was followed by the noise of the blast.
 
Confined and magnified within the confines of
the pool area, it seemed to last for an eternity.
 
The ground shook under them.

As the initial shock faded, there were further sounds of glass and other
debris crashing to the ground in a rain of destruction.

Fitzduane was disoriented for several seconds.
 
Then realization returned.
 
He raised his head from behind the low wall
that had saved their lives.
 
Bodies lay
strewn everywhere, and farther away from the main blast survivors were standing
or slumped, dazed with shock.
 
Many were
bleeding from injuries, some superficial, some serious.

Others had been blasted into the pool, and some survivors went forward to
aid them.

Fitzduane was just moving out of cover to help also when he saw the
helicopter pulling away from the roof of the block where
Texas
had been and masked black-clad figures
appearing at the parapet.
 
For a moment
he thought it might be the local SWAT team coming to help, and then he heard
the chatter of automatic weapons and saw the helpers at the poolside cut down
one after the other as if an invisible saw had sliced through them.

The water in the pool frothed as machine-gun fire from both the
helicopter and the terrorists who lined the roof was poured down into the pool
area.
 
What had been the location for a
poolside party was now a killing ground.

Fitzduane watched appalled as the gunfire reached a trio of line dancers
and they jerked like marionettes as the rounds punched into them.

He ducked down.
 
Kilmara and
Shanley lay there also.
 
Kilmara had
drawn his automatic but made no move to fire back.
 
Given the sheer weight of fire raining down
upon the area, it would have been suicide.

The door into the accommodation block was only twenty feet away, but to
cross that divide meant inviting death.
 
As they watched, one of the exhibition security men made a run for it,
turning around halfway to return covering fire from his pistol and then
sprinting on.

A rocket hissed down from the parapet and blew the legs off the
unfortunate man and his torso back into the open corridor.

"We've got to get out of here," said Kilmara.
 
"Our friendly wall will stop rounds, but
RPGs will walk right through it.
 
All
ideas welcome.
 
I haven't got a fucking
clue how to move without getting perforated.
 
And that's a hell of an admission for a general."

Fitzduane was a great believer in the principle that any decision was
better than no decision but in this case it seemed wiser to put that particular
aphorism on hold.
 
As of now they had a
place out of the line of fire.
 
Better
yet, the terrorists did not seem to know they were there or a few more rockets
would have come their way.

"My room is just up the corridor," said Shanley.
 
He sounded shaky, but he was hanging in
there.
 
"I've got an M16 and a
Barrett inside which I use for demonstrations.
 
If we can get at them, we can do something.
 
They're locked up in security boxes, of
course, but I have the keys."

Fitzduane was struck by the irony of it all.
 
Here they were surrounded by every
conceivable light infantry weapon in the exhibition, but most of the weaponry
had no ammunition and all was locked up.
 
A further irony was that no one was going to react to all the
shooting.
 
The hotel was freestanding,
and the fact that there was going to be some kind of special-operations
demonstration had been widely announced precisely to prevent the local
citizenry from getting worried.
 
And the
police had also been informed.
 
So for
the next few minutes at least they were on their own.
 
And people were dying.

"Ammunition?" he said.

"Not a lot," admitted Shanley.
 
"I used most of it at the range.
 
Perhaps thirty rounds for the M16 and half that for
the Barrett."

"How about your Stinger missile?" said
Kilmara.

"It's a mock-up," said Shanley.
 
"The case is real, but there is no electronics or firing
mechanism."

"What's your Barrett's ammo?" said Fitzduane.
 
His life had once been saved by a marksman
with a Barrett, and he had made a point of finding out everything he could
about the weapon, down to visiting the plant in
Tennessee
.
 
The Barrett was a large rifle ingeniously designed to make it possible
for an individual soldier to fire rounds the size of a cigar without being
flattened by the recoil.
 
The benefits
for certain situations were considerable.
 
You could snipe at up to two kilometers, you could penetrate light
armor, and you could fire right through a concrete wall.
 
"
Rafoss
multipurpose," said Shanley.