GAMES OF THE HANGMAN

by VICTOR O'REILLY

"I think our visitor is coming my way," said Henssen into the radio. "He's grenading each zig and zag as he comes."

  "Give ground," said Fitzduane.

  "Why do you think we're still alive?" cried Henssen. "But it's slow pulling Etan. If he rushes us, we're fucked."

  "If he rushes you, blow his head off."

  "Hugo," said Murrough, "I'm within a whisper of a clear shot. When he next raises his head, I'll get him."

  "Jesus," said Fitzduane, "where the hell are you?"

  "Top of the keep," said Murrough. "Top of the dugout, in fact."

  Judith slid in beside Henssen, smelling of poteen and gasoline from the bag of Molotov cocktails she carried. "Get her out of here," she said to Henssen, who hesitated. "Now!" she whispered urgently. Henssen did as he was told. He crawled away, dragging the unconscious Etan along the gritty stone behind him.

  Judith lit two of the Molotov cocktails and tossed them over the angled wall of sandbags, where they burst farther down the battlements. She lit two more and threw them. A line of flame lit up the night, exposing two attackers who were climbing through the crenellations behind where the terrorist was concealed.

  Fitzduane and Murrough fired instantly, hitting the same man. Already dead, he collapsed forward into the burning gasoline. The second climber died a second later when Judith took his head off with a burst from her Uzi. The original terrorist, his keffiyeh and camouflage a mass of flame, ran screaming along the battlements toward Judith, a fighting knife in his hand and all caution driven from his body by the intense pain.

  There was a double stab of flame from a shotgun, and the burning terrorist was hurled back against the sandbags, his lower body a bloody, wet mass. Katia Maurer reloaded the shotgun and went back to tending Etan. Judith replaced the empty magazine on her Uzi and tried to stop shaking.

  Henssen took the lighter from her trembling hands and lit a succession of Molotov cocktails and sent them hurtling down to the base of the battlements. There were screams and cries from below. Through a firing slit figures could be seen retreating into the darkness. One dropped after Murrough fired from the dugout roof. Judith crawled along the battlements and swung two Molotov cocktails tied to a length of electrical wire through the windows of the outhouse below, turning the remaining terrorist's hiding place into a furnace. Seconds passed, and then, with a cry, a burning figure ran out into the combined gunfire of Fitzduane and Judith.

  Suddenly, as if by agreement between the two opposing forces, the shooting stopped, and there was almost complete silence. Fitzduane became aware of the sound of the sea and of the wind as it blew across the battlements, and he could hear the hiss as the flames encountered the wetness of body tissue and blood. He could hear the cries of the wounded outside the castle. By the light of the nearly spent Molotov cocktails he could see bodies littering the bawn below, where the Bear and Christian de Guevain had emerged from their sandbag emplacements and were already halfway through loading the cannon.

  He became aware of something else, a voice repeating something again and again. It seemed to make no sense; there was no one there. He sat down and shook his head. The voice continued. He could see himself as if he were detached from his body and floating in the darkness. He looked down, and he could see the castle spread out below and fires burning inside it and outside the walls.

  Slowly he felt himself being drawn back into the castle, and then, the Bear was shaking him gently by the shoulder and talking into the radio, and he could hear the faint sound of suppressed aircraft engines overhead.

  Above Fitzduane's Island—2305 hours

  "I don't believe it," said the pilot. "It's nearly the end of the twentieth century, and there is a siege going on that's straight from the Middle Ages."

  "Not exactly the Middle Ages," said Kilmara. Two lines of heavy-caliber tracer curved out of the darkness and converged on the castle.

  "Green tracer, 12.7-millimeter," said the pilot. He had flown forward air control in Vietnam. "Kind of makes me feel nostalgic. We're out of range at this height, though a few thousand feet lower it'll be no day at the beach. I wonder what else they've got."

  "I expect we'll find out," said Kilmara. "Get Ranger HQ on the radio."

  The transport twins and their cargoes of Rangers had been left to circle out of sight and earshot over the mainland while the Optica went ahead to do what it was good at: observe. They were flying at five thousand feet above the island for a preliminary reconnaissance while Kilmara tried to establish radio contact with Fitzduane below and to determine the scale and location of what he was up against.

  Already he realized that he had underestimated the opposition. The sight of the Sabine offshore told him how the Hangman's main force had arrived, and that suggested very strongly that the Dublin operation was a bluff.

  The Rangers had nearly been caught off guard completely. As it was, most of his force was more than two hours away even if it was released immediately—which he doubted would happen.

  Fitzduane's castle—2307 hours

  Sheltered in the storeroom off the main tunnel, the surviving students felt more than heard the initial noises of combat above and around them. The subsequent sound of cannon fire almost directly overhead was more immediate and menacing. It brought home the unpleasant thought that they were not out of danger yet—and that the defenders of the castle might lose. The prospect of being held hostage again by people as ruthless as these terrorists accelerated the process of selecting volunteers to join in the fighting.

  There had at first been some resentment at Fitzduane's decision to keep them unarmed and away from the firing line, but the logic of his reasoning soon won out. They had to face the unpalatable fact that the initial threat had come from their own student body—and there was no guarantee that one or two or more Sacrificers might not be left. The discussion of how to resolve this dilemma had begun enthusiastically but not very productively. Things changed when the Swede, Sig Bengtquist, a mathematician and a distant relative of the Nobel family, started to speak. Up to now he had been silent, but the notepad he seemed never to be without, even when dragged unwillingly into some sporting activity, was covered with neat jottings in his microscopic handwriting.

  "There is no foolproof way of ensuring that we do not select a Sacrificer by accident," he said. "But I think we can establish some orderly criteria to improve our chances of choosing the right people."

  "You've worked out a mathematical formula," said a voice.

  "Yes," said another. "We're going to draw the lucky winners out of a hat or roll dice to see who gets a chance to be shot at."

  There was strained laughter. They had decidedly mixed feelings about experiencing any further the lethal realities of combat. Some were terrified at the thought. Others were itching for a chance to hit back and be players and not merely pawns in this game of life and death. What they had seen earlier in the day—the slaughter in the college—had left them with no illusions about glory or the supposed glamour of war.

  "Go on, Sig," said the deep baritone voice of Osman Ba, a Sudanese from the northern part of the country and the Swede's best friend. From the contrast in their coloring they were known as "Day and Night." There were nods of agreement from the others. There were about fifty students in the room—representing half as many nationalities—and since there weren't enough chairs, most were sitting on boxes or on rugs on the floor. Empty sandwich plates and glasses were piled next to the door. Several of the students, worn out by the excitement of the day and the post-stress reaction, had fallen asleep. The others all looked tired, but what they were trying to do held their interest, and their eyes, though mostly red-rimmed from strain and fatigue, were keen and alert.

  "I have drawn up a matrix," said Sig, "a spread sheet if you're accountancy-minded, cross-referencing all who have volunteered to fight with the criteria. As it happens, this approach produces sixteen names, so we still have to find some way to whittle the list down to the ten names we've been asked for. I would suggest nothin
g more scientific than reviewing the sixteen names and, after any objections, putting all the remaining ones into a hat and pulling out the first ten."

  "Makes sense," said Osman Ba.

  "What are these criteria?" asked one of the Mexicans. "I think it's only fair that we should know how these names have been selected."

  "Of course," said Sig. "The points are mostly obvious. All additional suggestions are welcome." There was silence in the room before Sig spoke again. They could hear sounds of gunfire and more explosions. The prospect of leaving their safe underground haven was looking less appealing by the minute.

  "Not a member of the ski club," said Sig. "All the known Sacrificers were, you will recall."

  "That lets me out," said a Polish student, "but it doesn't make me a Sacrificer."

  "Eighteen or over," continued Sig, "familiar with weapons, good health and eyesight and no serious physical defects, good reflexes, good English—that seems to be the common language among the existing defenders. Not an only child." The list went on for another dozen points. "And someone we all instinctively trust. Gut feel," he added.

  He read out the sixteen names. Three were vetoed. At Sig's suggestion, no reasons were given. The remaining thirteen names were placed in the now-empty bread bin. Three minutes later the chosen ten looked at each other in the knowledge that before dawn one or some or all of them might be wounded, even dead.

  Sig was elected leader of the volunteers.

  "Why only ten of us, I wonder?" asked Osman Ba. "They could have asked for more. Why not twelve like the apostles?"

  "One of the twelve was a traitor," said Sig. "I guess Fitzduane is trying to improve the odds." He was reflecting that his little group was about as multinational as it could be. Would it help that traditional enemies—Russian and Pole, Kuwaiti and Israeli, French and German among them—were how on the same side? Did it make any difference what nationality you were when you were dead?

  His mouth was dry, and he swallowed. Osman was doing the same thing, he noticed. That made him feel marginally better.

  Above Fitzduane's castle—2307 hours

  "Quite a party," said Kilmara into his helmet microphone.

  "About bloody time," answered Fitzduane. The signal strength was good, and though his tone was professionally neutral, the relief in his voice was palpable. "I hope you've brought some friends. The Hangman is here in strength."

  "Situation report," said Kilmara.

  Fitzduane told him, his summary succinct and almost academic, detailing nothing of the fear and the pain and the gut-churning tension of combat.

  "Can you hold?" asked Kilmara. "I'll have to locate my DZ well north of you or the 12.7s won't leave much of us. It could take an hour or longer to link up with you."

  "We'll hold," said Fitzduane, "but it's getting hairy. We don't have enough bodies to man the full perimeter properly. We may have to fall back to the keep."

  "Very well," said Kilmara. A heat signature blossomed on the IR-18 screen. Reflexes already primed, virtually simultaneously the pilot punched a switch to ripple-fire flares and, banking away from the oncoming missile, put the Optica into a series of violent maneuvers culminating in a steep dive.

  "A fucking SAM," said the pilot seconds later when it was clear that the heat-seeking missile had been successfully decoyed by the intense heat of the flares. "Who would have thought it? A heat-seeking SAM-7 at a guess. Good thing we got away or we'd be fireworks."

  "Brace yourself for more fancy flying," said Kilmara. "We're going to have to keep their heads down during the jump." He broke off to bark instructions to the two Ranger transport aircraft, which were preparing for a run to the drop zone. In response, the lead plane peeled off to starboard, leaving the second Islander alone heading toward the DZ. It was out of range of the heavy machine guns, but a SAM-7—what the Russians call a Strela or "Arrow"—has a range of up to 4,500 meters, depending on the model, and the slow Islander, low and steady for the drop, would be a tempting target. A possible tactic was to fly very low because a SAM-7 isn't at its best below 150 meters, but there was the small matter of allowing the parachutes time to open. In addition, budget constraints had meant that automatic flare dispensers weren't fitted to the transports, though conventional Very pistols were carried and might be of some help.

  Kilmara raised Fitzduane again for a brief discussion of tactics and the disposition of the Hangman's forces. The primary targets would be the missile position and the heavy-machine-gun emplacements. The other threats would have to wait.

  Unfortunately they wouldn't. As the Optica prepared for its strafing run and the Ranger transport flew toward the DZ, the Hangman launched another attack on the castle, with the tank spearheading the thrust.

  Fitzduane's castle—2318 hours

  The tank was advancing very slowly. The weight of its armor alone was unlikely to account for its pace, nor would there be any tactical reason for advancing at a crawl, so either the machine wasn't working properly or there were more unpleasant surprises in store.

  At 150 meters, Andreas opened fire with the Hawk, acutely conscious that he had only four armor-piercing rounds left. A Kalashnikov bullet ricocheted through the arrow slit as he fired the first projectile, and he missed completely. Shaken, he aimed again. When the tank was about 120 meters away, he fired. This time the round punched through the armor plate and exploded. Still the tank came on.

  At eighty meters Andreas fired two more armor-piercing rounds. One 40 mm grenade hit the facing armor plate close to where it butted against the side armor. The explosion blew the welding, peeling open the front of the tank like the lid of a sardine can. Still the tank came on, and only then were the slow speed of the vehicle and its resistance to the armor-piercing grenades explained. Behind the steel plate was a second multilayer wall of concrete blocks and sandbags, their sheer physical mass impossible to penetrate with the light weaponry at the defenders' disposal.

  The peeled-back armor and the close range did offer some possibilities. Andreas lowered his aim. Perhaps he could knock out a wheel or disable the steering mechanism. His last armor-piercing round seemed to have little effect, but three high-explosive grenades fired in quick succession from less than forty meters at the right front wheel of the armored tractor jammed a steering rod and forced the vehicle marginally out of alignment with the gate, Still the vehicle came on. Firing was now incessant on all sides. The terrorists sensed that they were close to breaching the castle, and the defenders, casting aside all attempts at restraint, used their night vision-equipped SA-80s and full firepower to devastating effect.

  It wasn't enough. Six terrorists died in the hail of accurate automatic rifle fire before the remainder realized what they must be up against and sought physical cover—but then sheer numbers began to tell. A gap in the clouds meant that moonlight illuminated the battleground for a few critical minutes. Windows and firing slits could be seen as black rectangles against the gray mass of the castle walls. Accurate automatic rifle fire kept the defenders pinned down while the tank prepared to advance to point-blank range, where it would detonate the explosives it carried on a boom.

  Keeping Fitzduane's castle between it and the SAM-7 position, the Optica screamed low over the sea at near-zero height, causing Murrough on the roof of the dugout to duck as the futuristic-looking aircraft flashed above him before it climbed at the last moment and then banked and dived. The SAM-7 fired a split second before a stream of tracer bullets followed by rockets blew the entire missile crew to pieces and the launcher into the undergrowth.

  The SAM-7 had been aimed at the Ranger transport carrying out its low-level drop on the north side of the island. Six Rangers had jumped before the missile, traveling at one and a half times the speed of sound, hit the port engine. The high-explosive head ignited on contact, blasting the engine and wing off the aircraft and setting fire to the fuel tanks. The sky lit up, and the flaming mass, raining debris, knifed its way through the night air and exploded against the hillside, mercifull
y cutting short the agonies of the pilot and copilot and the remaining two Rangers still aboard. One more Ranger was killed by a piece of red-hot engine cowling as he swung from his parachute.

  Five Rangers, including both members of the Milan missile team, reached the ground alive. When they linked up Lieutenant Harty, the unit commander, checked in by radio with Kilmara. Then he spoke into his helmet microphone. "Let's do it, lads," he said. "Time for them to pay the bill."

  Spread out in combat formation, faces blackened, heavily laden with weapons, ammunition, and equipment, the unit moved toward the action. The sound of firing, the crump of grenades, the arcing of tracers, and a burning glow indicated with brutal simplicity the location of the battleground.

  Fitzduane's castle—2338 hours

  Andreas loaded his last two high-explosive grenades. The noise inside the gatehouse was deafening. Beside him, Harry Noble, reinforced now by the Bear and de Guevain, fired burst after burst at the elusive, threatening figures outside. The terrorists had learned from their earlier casualty rate and now made use of every scrap of cover, including the lumbering shape of the tank. Their fire had increased in accuracy and was backed by the heavy machine guns, which made accurate defensive fire nearly impossible even when a clear target could be made out.

  The tank was less than twenty meters away—it was now obvious that the boom with the explosive charge was inside some sort of protective metal casing—when Andreas released his very last grenade. The tank lurched as if it were human. The right wheel and steering rods had been blown away completely. Already veering to the right of the gate before the final grenade hit, the tank now slewed off the road completely and tottered over on its side. Andreas and Noble gave a cheer.

  "Down!" shouted the Bear, pushing Andreas to the floor. The entire building rocked as the boom charge exploded. The blast funneled through firing slits and murder holes, throwing Noble, who had reacted a shade too slowly, against the portcullis winding mechanism. The main gear wheel tore open his body in a dozen places, killing him instantly. The Bear glanced through a murder hole. The main force of the blast had been dissipated against the thick walls of the bawn. The portcullis, though twisted and bent and bearing the scars of the earlier RPG-7 assault, was still intact. He checked the castle approach, where the wrecked tank, now reduced to a twisted mass of hot metal, lay to one side. As he watched, thick smoke, billowing from a row of smoke grenades, began to obscure the access road to the portcullis. The temporary lull in the firing from the terrorists in front of the castle ceased, and yet again automatic fire thudded off the castle walls and whined through the firing slits.