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.
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 muzz
le 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.
Fitzduane 03 - Devil's Footprint, The Page 13