Games of The Hangman f-1

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  Oona kissed him on the forehead. "Now look, Hugo," she said, "we all have to die, and Murrough died in a good cause, to save other people, and children at that. He died fighting and, may the Lord have mercy on his soul, but he loved to fight."

  When Fitzduane took her in his arms, he could feel her sobs, he could hear Murrough talking to him, he could see him, and he knew then whatever the Hangman might attempt this time, he was going to be stopped.

  Oona gently freed herself and wiped the tears from her eyes. "Eat you food and don't worry about Etan," she said. "And then put a stop to the Hangman once and for all."

  Fitzduane smiled thinly. "No problem."

  Oona hugged him again, then returned to helping the others.

  As she left, the Bear came into the room and sat down on another sandbag facing Fitzduane. He was puffing slightly. "Castles," he finally managed, "weren't built for people of my dimensions and stature."

  "If you wore armor regularly," said Fitzduane, "you got into shape fast enough, and hopping up and down circular stairs was no problem. Also, everyone was smaller in those days."

  "Hmph," muttered the Bear. He ate the rest of Fitzduane's sandwich in silence.

  "You did an ammunition check?" asked Fitzduane.

  "Uh-huh," — the Bear nodded — "another one. You won't be surprised to hear the situation has worsened. I'm impressed at how much we've been able to get through. I guess it's not surprising when you can empty a thirty-round in less than three seconds."

  "So how many seconds do we get per man?" said Fitzduane with a tired smile.

  "For automatic weapons, less than five. We're better off for shotgun rounds and pistol ammunition, though not by much. We're out of grenades and Molotov cocktails. We've go two Claymores left and plenty of antique weaponry — and food."

  "Food?"

  "Lots of it. If an army really does fight on its stomach — and who should know better than Napoleon? — we're going to be fine."

  "I am glad to hear that," said Fitzduane.

  * * * * *

  Fitzduane's Island — 0013 hours

  If there was one thing in the world — leaving out drink and women — that Ranger Sergeant Geronimo Grady loved more than driving fast cars at somebody else's expense, it was firing the Milan Missile at government expense.

  At least he was one taxpayer who knew exactly where his money was going, for each missile cost as much as he would earn in two years, and the supporting equipment, such as the computerized simulator he had spent so many hours, days, and weeks practicing on, cost more than he was likely to earn in a lifetime. It was a sobering thought, and it added a definite piquancy to his pleasure.

  Oddly enough, he had never considered firing the Milan at a real human target. Up to now it had been more like a giant video game, even when he'd fired live missiles in the Glen of Imaal. He wondered how he'd feel as he pressed the firing button knowing that other human beings were about to be obliterated by his action. Given his relentless Ranger training, the briefing on the Hangman, and the basic fact that if he did not eliminate the opposition first, it would be quite delighted to do that small thing to him, he thought he'd feel just fine, but he didn't know. He wouldn't actually know until he'd done it — and that experience was only scant minutes away. His hands felt sweaty, but he couldn't move to wipe them.

  Twenty meters ahead of him Lieutenant Harty was about to kill two terrorists posted on the Hangman's perimeter to take out any Rangers who had survived the SAM-7. Grady could have done it — they looked close enough to touch and smell through the gray-green image of his four-power night sight — but it was to be done silently. Harty specialized in such tasks and was equipped accordingly.

  The double thunk of the specially built heavy-caliber subsonic weapon was scarcely perceptible in the gusting wind. Grady saw the effect before he heard the noise, and the result was all the more obscene for being rendered bloodless by the limited-color filtered image in his telescopic sight. It was as if the first man's face had suddenly been wiped away and replaced with a dark smear. The second terrorist turned his head in a reflex action toward his dead comrade. The modified Glaser bullet struck him on the cheekbone and blew off the top of his skull.

  Grady and his loader ran forward and slid into the captured position. A regular army Milan had a four-man section to direct, load, and fire the missile, but in the Rangers, as always, you did more with less, better and faster. Or you didn't get in, or you died.

  It was a natural depression, nearly ideal as a Milan position, though devoid of the top cover that was a basic requirement if you were going after tanks. But there were certainly more than the five meters of clearance that you needed to the rear to avoid toasting yourself in the backblast.

  Eighteen kilos of firing post — the unglamorous term applied to the expensive missile-launching setup containing tripod, aiming mechanism, electronic sight, and firing button — were placed in position and carefully leveled. Grady lay down behind the weapon, and twelve kilos of factory-sealed missile were placed in position on the firing post.

  Ahead of him, slight to his right and just under a thousand meters away, were the heavy-machine-gun emplacements pinpointed by the colonel circling in the Optica overhead. Nearly a full kilometer couldn’t be considered point-blank, but it was close enough. At that distance Grady could achieve almost one hundred percent accuracy on armored moving targets, at least in training. So the first gun position shouldn't be a problem.

  The second position might be harder, since it would have time to locate the Rangers and open fire before he could reload. If they had infrared equipment, the backblast would give him away immediately. Theoretically, since the missile would take perhaps twelve seconds to complete its flight, both emplacements could fire back for vital seconds if they reacted fast enough. On the other hand, if they were concentrating on the castle and didn't have any specialized gear, he might just get that second missile off in time. It was possible to fire up to five missiles in a minute under some circumstances, but in this case, if he allowed for reloading and changing the point of aim — not to mention firing in the dark under combat conditions — the minimum time window, assuming two first-time hits, should be estimated at around thirty seconds.

  He calculated that in those thirty seconds the Russian-made 12.7 mm heavies could put about six hundred rounds into him, Geronimo Grady, personally. It was an incentive to shoot straight.

  I occurred to Grady that he was doing much the same job as Harty had just carried out, though on a larger scale. He tried to cleanse his mind of the images of two human beings being so casually swatted away. He tried not to think what Geronimo Grady would look like after six hundred 12.7 mm rounds had done their worst to him. Then training and discipline took over, primed by a healthy dose of fear. Harty tapped him on the shoulder. "Engage," he said.

  * * * * *

  Fitzduane's Island — 0013 hours

  Five Rangers out of the first stick designated to jump had survived the SAM-7 strike.

  While Harty, Grady, and Roche, who was acting as a loader, concentrated on setting up the Milan missile position, the balance of the tiny force, Sergeants Quinlan and Hannigan, infiltrated through the terrorists' perimeter defenses and set up a strike position less than a hundred meters from the two heavy-machine-gun positions and well to one side of the Milan's projected line of flight.

  The two men had sent he effect of a Milan strike on a number of occasions and had no desire to encounter an errant missile. They comforted themselves with the thought that not only was the Milan under Grady's hand devastatingly accurate, but it was so programmed that if, for example, Grady were hit and lost control, the missile would ground itself and self-destruct instantly. Or should.

  It was Quinlan and Hannigan's job to do any required tidying up after the Milan had done its work — to kill any and all survivors and either or capture or destroy whatever 12.7s survived the initial attack. To achieve this goal, what they lacked in manpower they compensated for i
n weaponry.

  The term heavy battle order meant just that. In the weapons canister attached to his leg by a cord when he jumped, each man had brought with him a Minimi machine gun equipped with Kite image intensifier telescopic sights, ammunition belts in special lightweight containers that could, if required, be clipped directly onto the weapons, spare barrels, reserve ammunition in clips — the Minimi could use either belts or the standard NATO clip found in the SA-80 — grenade launchers, 40 mm grenades, hand grenades, Claymore antipersonnel mines, automatic pistols, and fighting knives.

  Heavy battle order looked impossible the first time you saw all the gear laid out on the ground, and it felt absolutely impossible the first time you knitted up, but the right candidate and training, training, and more bloody training, thought Quinlan, made all the difference. Now he regarded it as routine not only to be able to carry such a load but, if necessary, to move silently and swiftly and to fight while draped in it like a Christmas tree.

  The most frustrating thing about infiltration, thought Hannigan, was having to bypass all those juicy targets in favor of one designated goal. Quinlan seemed to enjoy the actual business of evasion, but Hannigan always got frustrated at having to exercise such restraint. In this case he couldn't deny the logic of taking out the 12.7s first, but it hurt him particularly to have to remain impotent, with his marvelous collection of tools of destruction unused, while a pair of hostiles chatted in plain sight a couple of stone's throws away before one of them climbed into a strange-looking contraption, started up an engine, and lo and behold, but wasn't science wonderful, shot off into the sky suspended from a parachute — a device that, up to that moment, Hannigan had always suspected of being used solely for descending.

  There was a double click in the radio earpiece built into his helmet. He forgot about flying parachutes, and the unsettling fact that the pilot seemed to have been wearing something unpleasantly like a Russian-made flamethrower, and concentrated on the heavy-machine-gun positions.

  Grady was about to do his stuff.

  * * * * *

  Fitzduane's Island — 0013 hours

  He knew he didn't have to fly the Powerchute himself, and he also knew that if he did, he could use it for the purpose for which he had originally included it: to fly to the mainland if things went wrong.

  Nonetheless, he thought as he strapped himself in, it just felt right to do the job himself, to show all of them, friend and foe alike, that he was not just a thinker and a planner but a true Renaissance man — scholar and artist and man of action.

  "Commander," said Sartawi, after he had checked Kadar's flamethrower and other weaponry — and after he had decided he'd shoot Kadar down if he showed the slightest sign of trying to desert the battle, "I wish you'd reconsider. You are too important to risk." Sartawi was also aware that only Kadar knew the details of how the hostage negotiations were to be conducted.

  Kadar grinned. He felt no fear, though the danger was obvious. To risk one's own life was the ultimate sensual thrill. He felt powerful, indestructible.

  "Sir," insisted Sartawi, "have you considered the risk from the Ranger aircraft circling above?"

  "Sartawi," said Kadar, "I'm making the flight, and I want no more arguments. As for the Ranger aircraft, it is toothless. It has obviously expended all its ammunition or it would be participating in the battle. Now are you clear as to what we are doing?"

  Sartawi nodded. "Yes, sir," he said. "The heavy machine guns will keep the top of the keep and designated apertures under fire until you are in position to strike. On your radio command — or as signaled by the first use of the flamethrower — the machine guns will cease fire and you will attack the top of the tower with the flamethrower. You will then land on the dugout and be joined by an assault team currently in position at the base of the tower. Using the flamethrower to clear the way, you will then sweep the tower floor by floor. Simultaneously we shall break though into the tunnel." He paused.

  "The machine guns," prompted Kadar.

  "Once the keep has been taken," continued Sartawi, "the heavy machine guns and all units now outside the castle will withdraw to within the castle. There, with the hostages captured, we shall negotiate as originally planned. The Rangers will have arrived too late."

  "There you are," said Kadar, "a nice simple plan with a healthy risk-to-reward ratio — and our defenders further distracted by a little heat from the side once the great hall goes up in flames."

  Sartawi looked blank. "It's a good plan I'm sure, sir. But risk-to-reward ratio? I'm afraid that I don't understand this term."

  "Quite," said Kadar unkindly. "Not to worry: you'll understand the result." He gunned his engine, and the backwash from the propeller behind his seat inflated the parachute. The craft rolled forward and was airborne in seconds.

  Sartawi resisted the impulse to empty his Kalashnikov into the arrogant bastard. He didn't know what a hard time Ranger Sergeant Martin Hannigan was having resisting a similar impulse, but with Sartawi himself as the target.

  * * * * *

  The Keep of Fitzduane's Castle — 0023 hours

  Fitzduane had passed the last of his SA-80 ammunition to Andreas, who seemed to have a talent with the weapon, and was now armed with his Browning 2000 self-loading shotgun, a Browning Hi-Power 9 mm automatic pistol, and his katana.

  Score two out of three for John Browning, he thought. How many people had been killed with weapons designed by Browning? Was a weapons designer a war criminal or merely a technician whose designs were abused? Did it matter a fuck anyway?

  His Browning shotgun was no longer its long rib-barreled, elegant self. Faced with the space restrictions of close-quarters combat within the castle confines, he had taken a hacksaw and, feeling like a vandal for desecrating such an integrated design, had sawed the barrel virtually in half. The muzzle now started only two fingers' width beyond the wood-encased tubular magazine that supported it. The resultant weapon looked crude and deadly, and loaded with XR-18 ammunition, it was still effective up to about fifty meters.

  He ran through his defenses, trying to work out his strengths and weaknesses — and what the Hangman might do. His perimeter was now confined to the keep itself and the tunnel complex below. The rest of the castle was in enemy hands. The likely points of attack were the steel door into the tunnel, the door between the keep and the great hall, and the top of the keep itself. There was also the risk of penetration at any one of the narrow slit windows of the keep, although most would be a tight squeeze even for a very slim man. They could, however, be fired through by an attacker and therefore had to be either blocked up or guarded.

  If the attackers got into the tunnel, the defenders could — in extremis — retreat into the keep. On the other hand, since they already held the gatehouse end of the tunnel, if the attackers captured the keep, the Hangman would for all practical purposes have his hostages, even if his men never actually penetrated the tunnel itself — for who outside could tell the difference?

  The question of how best to defend the tunnel had been much debated. Finally Fitzduane had decided that since the terrorists would most probably blow the door — something the defenders couldn't really do much about except try to contain the blast — the best solution would be to build another series of defenses in depth in both the tunnel and the rooms to either side. So, using sandbags, furniture cases of food, and anything else that came to hand, the defenders had constructed a series of funnel-shaped killing grounds, each one of which could be abandoned in turn if the attackers used grenades or otherwise made the position indefensible. In addition, the remaining Claymores had been sited to sweep the killing grounds.

  The ability of the defenders to hold the tunnel depended to a significant extent on the weaponry remaining to the terrorists. The defenses were adequate against small-arms fire, but intensive use of grenades and RPG-7s would turn the tide no matter how hard the defenders fought. Fortunately it seemed the terrorists were low in such weaponry since its use, intensive in the ear
ly phases of the battle, had now trailed off to virtually nothing.

  Fitzduane considered the problem of ammunition shortage. The only solution to that, barring the hope of resupplying from enemy casualties, was to fall back on the antique weapons. Muskets, a blunderbuss, the crossbows, and de Guevain's longbow had all been prepared for use. Pikes and swords and other nonprojectile weapons, down to his set of French kitchen knives, lay at hand.

  The student volunteers were an agreeable surprise. They were bright and zealous, concealing their fear under stuck-out chins and other resolute expressions. They were also — in the literal sense — fighting mad. They had seen people they had lived and worked closely with slaughtered, and they wanted revenge. Giving them weapons had turned this desire into an achievable reality. They were determined to get even.

  Sadly the stark truth of what they were up against had been brought home to them in the most fundamental way within minutes of their initial briefing. A young Sudanese, Osman something or other — Fitzduane hadn't time to learn most of their names — had been killed while keeping watch at a murder hole. He had taken a shade too long to check his area, and just as he was about to replace the rope-suspended sandbag that covered the hole, he had been hit in the head and virtually decapitated by a 12.7 mm heavy-machine-gun bullet. Less that two minutes later a blond Polish boy had died the same way. The eight survivors had learned from this fast. They now moved and reacted with as if every action in battle were a matter of life and death — which, pretty much, it was.

  The radio beside him came to life. "Receiving you," said Fitzduane.