Fitzduane 01 - Games of The Hangman

by O'Reilly-Victor

  He found it difficult since he was in pain, though the medication given to him by the Ranger medic — a grim figure in his blue-black combat uniform, blackened face, radio-equipped combat helmet, and mass of high tech weaponry — was starting to take effect. He was beginning to feel drowsy. Recent memory and current reality were becoming confused.

  He fought the drug. He knew he'd never experience anything like these last few minutes again. The firefight had been more intense, more savage, and more brutal than he had ever imagined. The saving grace was that it had been brief. The carnage in the tunnel had been over in a few terrible minutes, and now the floor and the walls and even the ceiling were streaked with blood and human matter, and shattered bodies littered the ground.

  The stench was that of a slaughterhouse.

  He remembered the door crashing onto the flagstones after the terrorists had cut through it. It was pitch-dark. The sound had reverberated in his ears for what seemed an eternity, and he had become convinced that under its cover the terrorists were advancing, that even as he cowered in fear, they were only seconds away, the blades of their fighting knives and bayonets ready to cut and slash at his body.

  Sit had a horror of knives. Clammy sweat poured off him as he crouched blind and helpless.

  "A soldier has three enemies," Fitzduane had said. "Boredom, imagination and the enemy. Lucky you — you won't have time to be bored. That leaves two: your imagination and the terrorists. Of the two, you'll find your own mind by far the more dangerous, so watch it. A little fear gets the adrenaline going and gives you a fighting edge; that's fine. Too much fear, on the other hand, paralyzes you like a rabbit caught in a car's headlights. That, my friends, gets you — and the comrades who depend on you — killed."

  He had smiled reassuringly: "The solution to excessive fear is to keep your mind busy with what has to be done and not what might happen. Think like a professional with a problem to solve and not some kid with his head under the bed sheets. Remember, chances are that there isn't anyone under the bed, but if there is, blow the motherfucker away." He had paused a beat. "This isn't a lecture from the textbooks. I've been there. Believe me, I know."

  Think like a professional! Think like a professional! The instruction ran through Sig's mind like a mantra, blocking out the terror that had so nearly overwhelmed him and giving him something very specific to focus on.

  He could hear footsteps moving toward him and make out the faint glow of a shielded flashlight. This wasn't his imagination. They were coming, and they seemed to think that they had found an undefended way into the keep; otherwise there would have been gunfire and grenades and certainly no flashlight. They believe we would have fired by now if defenders were in place, he thought. He heard voices speaking in whispers, and the intonations suggested relief. "Jesus Christ," he said to himself, "they really do think they have made it."

  * * * * *

  Andreas watched them in his image intensifier as they came through the door. First came a pair of scouts obviously primed for trouble — but with no grenades. And their bayonets were fixed. Could they be short of ammunition as well, or what this their routine when mounting a close assault? Had they fixed bayonets when they closed in on the gatehouse? He thought not, but he couldn't be sure.

  The first scout checked out the dummy emplacements and found no one. They had been arranged to look as if they had been abandoned uncompleted, as if it had been decided not to defend the tunnel. The ruse seemed to be working. The first scout signaled his partner, who in turn signaled back through the doorway. Reinforcements started slipping through. They came fast and then crouched on either side of the tunnel ready for the next phase of the assault. Andreas could still see no grenades. Of course, they could have them in ammunition pouches or fatigue pockets, but still, there would normally be some in evidence in this kind of attack. Could the defenders be having some luck for a change? They were going to need it. Eighteen terrorists were now in the tunnel — that seemed to be the entire strength of the assault group — and the scouts were preparing to move forward yet again.

  Andreas tapped Judith on the arm. She silently counted to five, giving him time to line up his SA-80 again. The first scout was only a few paces away. He was now beyond the killing ground of the Claymore.

  Judith fired the remote switch linked to the Claymore, and seven hundred steel balls were blasted by the directional mine down the tunnel into the advancing terrorists. Floodlights positioned to leave the defenders in darkness flashed on, revealing bloody carnage.

  Andreas shot the first terrorist scout through the torso and put a second round through his head. The five surviving terrorists rushed forward, guns blazing, knowing that speed and firepower were now their only defense. There was nowhere for them to hide and no time to flee.

  * * * * *

  Sig saw a bayonet slide toward his face and parried it with a desperate swing of his Uzi. Another AK-47 turned toward him, and he saw the muzzle flash and felt a savage blow on his shoulder. He raised the Uzi by the pistol grip and emptied half a magazine into the desperate face in front of him.

  Andreas was on the ground, locked in hand-to-hand combat with a terrorist. Judith seized the attacker by the hair, pulled back his head, and cut his throat.

  A fighting knife slashed at Sig's thigh, and then the hand wielding the knife was gripped by one of the student volunteers — it was Kagochev, the Russian — and the two went rolling over the sandbags into the bloodstained killing ground. Kagochev was thrown against the wall. As the attacker was about to finish him, an arrow sprouted from the terrorist's chest, and slowly he slid backward. A second arrow hit him as he was falling.

  Another terrorist leaped at de Guevain as he was drawing his bow for the third time, and the Frenchman fired at point-blank range, sending the arrow right through the attacker's body to pin him against a storeroom door.

  Andreas had the SA-80 in his hands again and was firing aimed shots. As if in slow motion, Sig swathe brass cartridge cases sail through the air to bounce off the wall or the ground. Andreas was moving in a fighting frenzy, shooting every terrorist he could see whether living or dead. And then his magazine was empty. He ejected it and slapped a fresh one in place. He worked the bolt and fired, and the click of firing pin on empty chamber in the tunnel was like a slap in the face. Andreas stopped and shook his head and looked around.

  He and Sig looked at each other and knew the attack was over. There was silence in the tunnel but for the sound of heavy breathing.

  Shortly afterward there was a warning shout and a quick exchange of identification, and the first of the Rangers appeared through the door they had been defending.

  "Doesn't look as if you really needed us," he said.

  Andreas smiled tiredly. "Maybe not," he said, "but it's very good to have you here. I don't think there was much more left in us."

  The Ranger glanced around. "There was enough," he said thoughtfully. "There was enough."

  * * * * *

  Above Duncleeve — The Keep of Fitzduane's Castle

  The infrared heat emissions generated by Kadar's Powerchute would have been picked up by Kilmara's IR-18 scanner in the Optica if he hadn't been so tightly focused on the heavy-machine-gun installations and the infiltrating Rangers. Kadar's second bit of luck was that the Rangers on the ground who did see him take off were keeping radio silence until the Milan opened fire — and at that stage they had other things on their minds.

  Kadar was not aware of the precise nature of the Optica's detection equipment, but as an added precaution against visual observation he circled around the front of the castle walls, flying only a few meters above the ground and thus out of sight of the defenders in the keep. He did not gain altitude until he was out over the sea.

  The castle lay ahead and below him.

  Beyond it he could see stabs of orange light and the sudden flash of grenade explosions. The Rangers must have arrived earlier than expected. It was fortunate there were so few of them. He was confiden
t his men could hold at least until he had secured the remaining portion of the castle — and then it really wouldn't matter. When he had the hostages, the tables would be turned.

  He noticed with relief that the heavy machine guns were no longer firing. He checked his watch. The plan was working. His men must have ceased fire at the time agreed. He hadn't noticed because he had been flying out to sea at that moment. It reminded him that he was operating more than a minute behind schedule. He tried to check with Sartawi by radio but received no reply. Sartawi was doubtless otherwise occupied. He tried to raise the small assault group now waiting in hiding at the foot of the keep and received a double microphone click in reply. It wasn't an orthodox acknowledgment, but he understood the circumstances. He was pleased. Things were looking good.

  He was not unaware of the hazardous nature of his mission, but even though he had the means to make his escape, he no longer considered such an option. He had heard that war generated its own momentum, and now he knew that it was true. His original objective, the capture of the hostages, hadn't changed, but his prime motivation now, regardless of the cost, was to win. He knew he was going to. It wasn't that his forces were stronger or better equipped or for any precise, quantifiable reason. Instead, it had to do with more ephemeral things such as the scale of his vision, the force of his leadership, and his sheer overwhelming willpower. He had always been successful in the end, despite difficulties at times. It had been so nice he had started to control his own destiny, and it would remain so.

  He tired to imagine how the defenders inside the keep would feel if they knew he was up here armed with a weapon that was virtually irresistible. Would they pray? Would they try to run? Where could they run to? How would they deal with the unbelievable horror of being burned to death — hair on fire, skin shriveling, eyeballs exploding, every nerve ending shrieking and screaming? In the end not a corpse, but a small, black, shrunken heap scarcely recognizable as ever having been human. On top of everything else it was, in Kadar's opinion, an undignified way to go.

  Ahead of him the sky turned red with fire as the roof of the great hall fell in and flames and sparks shot up into the night sky. God, but it was an impressive sight — a tribute to his, Kadar's, power and vision and a direct insult to Fitzduane. The castle was the man's home, and it had stood for hundreds of years — and now he, Kadar, was casually destroying it. He wondered if he would have the chance of burning Fitzduane to death — or was Fitzduane dead already? He rather hoped not. He would enjoy looking into his eyes before engulfing him in a stream — what flame gunners called a ‘rod’ of burning napalm.

  He decided to circle again, until the temporary increase in the intensity of the fire from the great hall had subsided. It was always like that when a roof fell in — a sudden flare-up that died down very quickly, a last show of strength before the end.

  He would be a couple of minutes late landing on the keep, but that shouldn't really make any difference. The heat from the great hall combined with the intense heavy-machine-gun fire must have rendered the top couple of floors untenable. Certainly he could see no one on the dugout roof now, and there had been reports that it had been manned earlier.

  He used the extra time while he circled, and the great hall fire waned, to rerun through his mind the details of his assault plan. The flamethrower was the same Russian LPO-50 model he had used to such good effect at CampMarighella in Libya. He had brought it not for any military reason — the remotest possibility of the scale of combat that had developed had never occurred to him, even in his most pessimistic evaluations — but to deploy on the hostages in case of intransigence. For this reason he had brought along only three ignition charges — tanks like divers' air bottles containing thickened fuel propelled by pressurizing charges that fired through one-way valves when the trigger was pressed — which permitted just nine seconds of continuous use — not enough for general combat but more than adequate for several very spectacular executions.

  The three charges would also, he was sure, be quite enough to turn the tables in the narrow stairs and rooms of the keep. One to two seconds per room should be more than sufficient to incinerate every defender inside. It had been pointed out to him by his instructor that the LPO-50 was, in fact, designed exclusively for outdoor use, for the very good reason that the heat it generated was intense and the oxygen usage quite enormous. Kadar had brushed aside such caveats. He was confident he could handle the flamethrower, even in the confined space of the keep, without either cooking himself or being asphyxiated. He was a master of the tools of killing.

  Initially he had considered flying around the keep and smothering each aperture with napalm, but that would have left him vulnerable to the defenders' fire. There was also the problem that the LPO-50 was bulky and almost impossible to use from the Powerchute without modifying the airframe, since the unit was designed to be worn as a backpack. He had also disliked the idea of being so close to all that flaming oil when the only thing that kept him up was a fragile nylon parachute canopy. He could see his wings melting and himself reliving Icarus's unenviable experience.

  He had therefore settled on the simpler plan of landing on the now-deserted roof, breaking through the sandbags to incinerate any defenders below, bringing up reinforcements by rope from the base of the keep, and then blasting his way, room by room, floor by floor, to the hostages. It was a simple, direct plan, and it was going to work because no one can stand and fight when facing a flamethrower. Very soon he would control the keep.

  His mind flashed back to those early, vulnerable, happy days in Cuba when he and Whitney were lovers. He had been naïve then, naive and ignorant of the reality of the human condition, which is to control or to be used or to die. He remembered Whitney's death; it hadn't been in vain. That terrible episode had made Kadar strong and invulnerable. He recalled his meticulous plotting and execution of his mother and Major Antonin Ventura. There had been so many since then. It had become easier over time. More recently the violence had become an end in itself. It had become a necessity. It was now an exquisite sensual pleasure.

  The Hangman prepared to attack. Sixty seconds from making a landing on the keep, his Powerchute engine sputtered and cut out. It was out of fuel — the result of a slow leak caused by one of Etan's rapidly fired broom handle Mauser bullets during the flying machine's previous attack.

  Terror and rage suffused Kadar's being. His mood crashed from euphoria to panic. For several seconds he sat in the Powerchute, motionless, incapable of deciding what to do. Then he noticed the craft's forward motion, and his confidence returned. Unlike a helicopter, which went vertical rather quickly when the power was cut off, the Powerchute was a forgiving beast when engineless. It was, after all, no more than a parachute with something like a propeller-equipped lawn mower engine tacked on. The parachute was quite big enough and strong enough to bring both pilot and appendages to the ground in a mild and gentle manner.

  Unfortunately for Kadar — given the chute's forward momentum and the way the wind was gusting — the immediate ground was represented by the burning cavern that had been the great hall.

  Slowly he sailed nearer and nearer to it until he could feel the heat sear his face. The metal of the Powerchute frame became too hot to touch. The flamethrower was going to explode and douse him with burning napalm. Horror overwhelmed him. He began to shake with fear.

  Frantically he tried to free himself of the flamethrower and at the same time to steer away from the conflagration.

  The flamethrower had been clipped to the Powerchute frame with D-shaped carabiners — the things climbers use. They were easy to manage and utterly reliable if handled at the right angle, but in this case Kadar had to twist awkwardly back, and the release of each one of the four carabiners in turn was an endless nightmare. His fingers slipped and skidded and became slimy with blood from his scrabbling fingernails. He was physically sick with fear and panic.

  He unclipped three of the carabiners, but the fourth evaded his every atte
mpt. The flamethrower remained tied to the Powerchute as if it had a mind of its own and were determined to go down with its owner and burn him to death.

  Kadar saw that he was not going to make it if he stayed with the doomed aircraft. He hit the quick-release buckle on his safety-harness, balanced himself on the edge of the Powerchute's metal frame, and, timing it as well as he could, threw himself through the air toward the edge of the dugout.

  The drifting Powerchute still retained some momentum, which caused him to land hard on a corrugated-iron-reinforced corner of the dugout. The edge of the rusty metal sliced into his torso, and he heard a crack. He felt a terrible pain in his leg, as if his femur were broken. He felt himself sliding, and his hands flailed frantically, trying to find something to grip. He found a makeshift sandbag, but the material, previously slashed by heavy-machine-gun bullets, tore in his hands.

  He was screaming — he couldn't stop screaming — and he couldn’t see because blood from a slash on his forehead mixed with earth from the sandbag was streaming into his eyes, and he felt a sudden, terrible rush of heat from the flames when the fire in the great hall burned through the metal casing of the abandoned flamethrower, igniting the whole twenty-three-kilo backpack.

  He felt himself being gripped by his left arm and pulled forward away from the edge and dumped facedown on the sandbagged center of the roof. He slid his right hand under his body and drew his pistol. The weapon was already cocked with a round in the chamber. He slid the safety catch to the off position.

  "Turn around," said Fitzduane, who had decided to reoccupy the top of the keep after the heavy-machine-guns positions had been destroyed. A further incentive had come from a Ranger report of some as-yet-unaccounted-for flying machine that had been seen taking off with a hostile aboard.