The Devil's Footprint (23 page)

Fitzduane looked at Kilmara and nodded.
 
The Norwegian-made rounds were armor piercing with an explosive core and
incendiary characteristics.
 
They would
do a very nice job on the parapet of the wall from which the fire was coming —
and on whoever was behind the wall.

But there was still the problem of getting at the weapons.
 
Also, if the black-clad terrorists were on
the roof opposite, there was a reasonable chance that they had landed people on
the opposite block.
 
Carrying that
thought further, some terrorist might be working their way down to the pool to
finish off the job.

In other words, as they made a dive for the door to Shanley's room to get
the heavier weapons they could meet terrorists coming in the other direction.

Fitzduane did not like this scenario at all.
 
They had to move.
 
And there had to be a way.

Doors crashed open about fifty feet away and a hotel employee emerged
pushing a trolley stacked high with freshly starched laundry, apparently
oblivious to the mayhem around him.
 
The
earphones of a Walkman were clamped to his ears and he pushed his heavy load
with his head down, doing little dance steps from time to time.

All three men shouted warnings, but the laundryman was in another world.
 
He advanced down the path toward where they
lay.
 
He seemed to have a charmed
life.
 
At first he was unnoticed by the
terrorists, and then their fusillades missed both him and the trolley.

It was a distraction.

Shanley and Kilmara leapt for the open doorway and just made it before
heavy fire raked the wall behind them.

Fitzduane aimed his automatic with care
a and
shot the laundryman below the knee.
 
He
fell behind the safety of the low wall and stared around frantically, shocked
and terrified.

"STAY DOWN!" shouted Fitzduane, and made a gesture with his
arm.

The laundryman looked at him, his mouth open.
 
He was only about thirty feet away, but there
was a gap in the low wall and fire was pouring through it.
 
The Walkman had fallen off the laundryman as
he had collapsed, but the earphones were still clipped around his head.
 
Fitzduane fired at the machine and blew it
apart.

The laundryman's eyes became round saucers.
 
Then he suddenly seemed to realize the
earphones and ripped them off.

"STAY THE FUCK DOWN!" shouted Fitzduane again.
 
"THIS ISN'T SOME WAR GAME.
 
IT'S REAL.
 
STAY RIGHT DOWN AND DO NOT MOVE!"

The laundryman nodded frantically and then squeezed
himself
up as small as he could in the angle formed by the wall and the path.

Fitzduane got ready, waited until the focus of fire had moved away for a
moment, and then launched himself at the trolley.
 
Linen flew in every direction as he threw
himself flat on the top and propelled it through the open doorway into the
corridor.
 
It shot down the corridor and
smashed into a mirror.

"Seven years bad luck," said Fitzduane savagely to
himself
, "and I was doing so well."

He picked up a piece of mirror and used it as a crude periscope to check
around the next corner.

A hooded terrorist clad in the familiar black was moving carefully up the
corridor.
 
As Fitzduane had feared, they
were moving down to finish the job.
 
But
there just could not be that many of them, or they would be checking the rooms
too.
 
There should be at least one
backup, but he could see no one.
 
It was
bad military practice, but this seemed like a lone scout.

The terrorist came around the corner.
 
As he did so, Fitzduane pushed his weapon up and rammed the mirror
splinter into his throat.

The man gurgled, and then blood poured through the fabric of his hood and
he slumped.
 
Fitzduane broke his
neck.
 
A dying enemy could still be a
dangerous enemy.

The man was carrying a Russian version of the M16, and AK-74.
 
It helped to explain the intensity and
accuracy of the fire.
 
The weapon was
equipped with double forty-round plastic magazines on a neat device that
allowed a magazine change by simply sliding the empty magazine to one side and
the one into place.
 
It also came with an
unusually effective muzzle brake, which allowed more-accurate automatic
fire.
 
The downside was that the gases
were deflected to either side wit a considerable risk of doing not good to your
companions.

Fitzduane checked the ammunition pouches of the dead man.
 
He had come loaded with fifteen magazines,
six hundred rounds, and only three spare magazines were left in addition to the
two on the rifle.
 
That, and the sheer
risk of local law enforcement being alerted eventually, suggested that the
terrorists would be pulling out soon.

He lay down and rolled over once so he could check the corridor while
presenting a minimum target.
 
He knew he
should have used the mirror trick again, but the sliver he had used before was
deep in the terrorist's throat and he did not feel like going back to the
broken mirror.
 
He wanted to link up with
Kilmara and Shanley, and quickly.

Muzzle flash blinded him and rounds sliced through the air above his
head.
 
If he had been standing or even
kneeling, it would have been inconvenient.
 
There was a backup man, and he had fired instinctively from the hip when
he had seen movement.
 
He was very fast,
but his target was not where he had expected it to be.

Fitzduane fired back low, and then as his assailant buckled, he put a
second burst into his head.

"KILMARA!
 
SHANLEY!" he shouted.
 
He
could not remember where Shanley's room was, and this was no time for playing
hide-and-seek.

There was an answering shout from down the corridor.
 
Then a door opened and the long muzzle of a
Barrett emerged.

Fitzduane thought through the next action.
 
The block they were in had three stories and
the one across the way had five.
 
So if
they went up on the roof they would still have the low ground.
 
Worse still, they would be exposed.

They could head through the main body of the hotel and try and get up to
the higher roof that way.
 
That would
take too long, and who knew what shit was going down in the middle.

The best solution seemed to be to fire form the second floor from the
cover of a room window.
 
They would be
shooting at a diagonal and up, but since the Barrett round could travel eight
miles, gravity at that short range should not be much of a problem.
 
The distance across the pool area to the
parapet was less than a hundred and fifty meters.

"One floor up," said Fitzduane.

"My thoughts exactly," said Kilmara.

Shanley made to lead, but Fitzduane beckoned him to one side.
 
The Barrett had many fine qualities, but
close-in fighting going up stairs was more the job of a lighter, short-barreled
weapon.
 
The Barrett weighed well over
twenty pounds
.
You could drop it on someone's toe and
put him out of action.

The stairs were empty.
 
The second-floor
corridor was empty.

Fitzduane kicked at a door with the flat of his foot and the room door
splintered at the lock and sprang open.
 
The room was empty.
 
The blinds
were drawn, but the glass had been blasted away by terrorist gunfire from
across the pool area.
 
The walls of the
room were pockmarked with bullet holes.

He could hear a series of other crashes from the corridor as Kilmara
kicked in the doors.
 
First, he did not
want any surprises, and second, they wanted to be able to move from room to
room at will.
 
It made no sense to
present a static target when you could move around.

Kilmara would watch their back from the corridor while he and Shanley
took on the other side.
 
It was not
something they had discussed.
 
They had
worked together for so long and trained so often that the moves came naturally.

They could hear the
whump
of
rotor blades but could not see it from their position.
 
He tried to judge the helicopter's location.
 
It sounded as if it had landed on the roof of
the main block.
 
The terrorists were
withdrawing.
 
The parapet was still
manned, but any second now they would start pulling away out of sight.

"I've only got seven rounds," said Shanley apologetically.
 
He had remembered to put acoustic plugs in
his ears, Fitzduane observed.
 
A very good idea, given the decibel count of a .50 in a confined
space.

"I'm going hot," said Shanley.

Fitzduane put his fingers to his ears and was glad he had.
 
There was a deafening crack, and a large
chunk of parapet blew away, carrying a black-hooded gunman with it.

Shanley fired again and again in a measured sequence, demolishing a long
chunk of the parapet.
 
A figure rose from
the rubble, and Fitzduane snapped the AKM to his shoulder and dropped him.

The terrorist helicopter rose from behind the dome of the main block and
swiveled its machine guns toward their position.

Shanley was taking aim with the Barrett.
 
Fitzduane grabbed him and pulled him down.

A long, intense burst of fire raked along the second floor and blew every
remaining window apart.

Fitzduane and Shanley crouched down below the window as the air was
filled with fire.
 
Then they could hear
the helicopter pulling away.
 
They stood
up and Shanley raised the Barrett hopefully, but already it was out of sight
behind the cover of the hotel and receding into the distance.

"How many rounds have you got left in that thing?" said
Fitzduane.

Shanley removed the magazine.
 
It
was empty.
 
He worked the bolt.
 
The round was ejected.
 
"One," he said.

Fitzduane contemplated his companion.
 
The man was surprisingly calm for someone who had seen action for the
first time.
 
His forehead was beaded with
sweat, but he was in control.

"Shanley," he said.
 
"You are a piece of work."

Kilmara came in brushing plaster dust from his clothing and eyed the
damage to the parapet across the way.
 
It
looked as if a demolition crew had been at work for a morning.
 
"The hotel may not like you," he
said.

"Don was planning to take on the helicopter with one round,"
said Fitzduane.
 
"This is a man who
believes in his weapon."

Kilmara was still eyeing the destruction.
 
"One round, one helicopter!
 
Well, by the looks of that mess it would
probably be enough."

Shanley did not say anything.
 
He
could not stop it.
 
Tears flooded from
his eyes.
 
He felt confused, tired, and
terribly sad.
 
As he looked up at the
wrecked parapet he could see only
Texas
still alive.
 
And then she was blasted
apart and falling through this terrible red mist.

It could not have happened.
 
It was
his imagination.
 
All of this was some
elaborate war game.
 
It was
simulated.
 
Soon everyone would get up
and walk around and the music would start up again.

He looked down to the poolside below.
 

It was a mistake.

Her body was still there.
 
Nothing
had changed.
 
It was not a dream.
 
The water was now a solid, glowing, backlit
crimson.

He slumped to his knees and sobbed uncontrollably.

Fitzduane reached out and rested his hand on Shanley's shoulder.
 
He knew it helped.
 
It had been done to him under very similar
circumstances.

Kilmara looked at them and remembered.
 
Fitzduane had been young then.
 
They both had.

There was always a reaction.
 
After
a while it did not show, but it stayed with you.

*
         
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*

Maury had designed his mobile home to be as near soundproof as
possible.
 
He wanted to be able to work
anywhere without interruption.

In this case, matters were made even more convenient by the fact that the
Bastogne Inn, which specialized in conferences and exhibitions, had a special
serviced area for mobile homes and trailers.
 
You had to pay, of course, but you could plug into the hotel phone
system, cable TV, power and plumbing, and even utilize room service if you
wanted.
 
For Maury, it was an ideal
arrangement.