GAMES OF THE HANGMAN

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  Fitzduane pushed the two licenses across the table to where Kilmara and Günther sat. "The facial types are familiar enough, so I could be tempted to say maybe I've seen them before. It's possible—but if so, it must have been in the most casual way. Certainly I don't recognize them." He shrugged.

  A Ranger came in and set three mugs of coffee on the table. Wisps of steam rose in the air.

  Kilmara placed a heavy book in front of Fitzduane. "Hugo," he said, "we found this in the terrorists' baggage. It could be coincidence...." He smiled. "But when you're involved, I tend to believe in coincidence just a little less."

  "Nice friendly reaction," said Fitzduane dryly, looking at the familiar volume. It had sold surprisingly well, and he still saw it in bookshops and in airport newsstands when he traveled. The soldier with the dove had been killed two days after the photo had been taken. He'd heard that the bird had survived. He indicated the book. "May I handle it?"

  "Sure," said Kilmara. "Forensics have done their thing."

  Fitzduane examined the book slowly and methodically. He turned back to the flyleaf. On it was written in pencil a price, a date, and a code: Fr 195—12/2/81—Ma 283. "A recent fan," he said.

  "A recent purchase anyway, it would appear," said Kilmara.

  "Francs?" asked Fitzduane.

  "French, Swiss, Belgian, or indeed from a whole host of French colonies," said Kilmara. "We're looking into it."

  "Any ideas," asked Günther, "why two killers should have bought your book? It's a heavy volume to carry if you're flying."

  "No," said Fitzduane, "but I'll think about it."

  "Hmm," said Kilmara. "Well, we've other things to worry about right now. Thanks for coming. I'll get Grady to drive you home."

  Fitzduane shuddered. "I think I'll be safer here. Mind if I hang around?"

  Kilmara looked at his friend for a moment and then nodded. "Günther will give you some ID," he said. "You know the form. Keep a low profile and your head down. It's going to be a bloody night."

  Fitzduane expressed surprise. "I thought a waiting game was the policy in a hostage situation."

  "It is," said the Ranger colonel, "when you have a choice. Here we don't have a choice. The nice young couple in the farmhouse have issued an ultimatum: a helicopter to take them to the airport at dawn and then a plane to some as yet unspecified destination—or they kill one hostage every half hour, starting with the youngest child, aged two, name of Daisy."

  "A bluff?"

  Kilmara shook his head. "We think they mean what they say. They killed the little girl's father for no other reason than to make a point. Well, they made it, and we can't let them get away and we can't let the hostages die—so in a few hours we're going in."

  A Ranger poked his head through the doorway. "Colonel," he said, "the cherry picker has arrived."

  The children were asleep at last. The three younger ones were sprawled on the king-size bed under the duvet. Rory, the eldest at nearly sixteen, lay in a sleeping bag on the floor. A large bloodstained bandage on his flushed forehead marked where the German with the black mustache had struck him savagely with the butt of his machine pistol.

  The master bedroom was dimly lit by one bedside lamp. Maura O'Farrell, her eyes betraying the classic symptoms of extreme shock, sat knitting in an armchair near the curtained windows. The knitting needles moved automatically with great speed, and the nearly completed double-knit scarf coiled around her knees and draped down to the floor. The scarf had been meant for Jack to keep him warm as he worked the four hundred acres of their prosperous farm. He would be so cold now. She knew they wouldn't let her, but she wanted to go out and wrap the scarf around his neck. It would at least cover the wound.

  She rose and went into the bathroom, whose door opened onto the master bedroom. Everywhere there were signs of Jack. His razor lay in its accustomed place, and his dressing gown hung behind the door. She unscrewed the cap of his after-shave and smelled the familiar, intimate odor; then she replaced the cap. She brushed her hair and checked her appearance in the mirror. She was a touch pale and drawn, which was understandable, but otherwise neat and well groomed. Jack was fussy about such things. He would be pleased.

  She took a roll of adhesive tape from the medicine chest and returned to her chair. The knitting needles began to flash once more, and the scarf grew even longer.

  At regular intervals the young Italian girl checked her and the room and peered out of small observation holes cut in the thick curtains. Maura O'Farrell paid her no heed. From time to time the children moaned in their sleep but did not wake. The makeshift sedative of brandy and aspirin mixed with sweetened warm milk had done its work. For a few hours they could rest, oblivious of the memory of seeing their father slaughtered like a pig.

  For her part the young Italian girl felt tired but not too unhappy with their situation. They had been unlucky, but now things would work out. Those fools outside would have to give in. Killing the farmer had been a stroke of brilliance. It would cut short futile negotiations. At the agreed time of 3:30 a.m. the phone would ring and the authorities would announce their capitulation: a helicopter at dawn to the airport and then a requisitioned plane to Libya.

  The Irish government would never allow a mother and her four children to be killed. Tina was looking forward to that phone call. She could feel the warmth of the Libyan sun on her face already. Ireland had the most beautiful countryside, but the wind and the rain and the damp cold were just too much for a hot-blooded woman.

  The final preassault briefing took place in the twelve-meter-long Special Weapons and Equipment trailer. The walls of the mobile unit were lined with row after row of purpose-designed weaponry. Ammunition, scaling ladders, bullet-resistant clothing, and hundreds of other items of specialized combat equipment were stored in custom-built racks and cabinets. At one end of the trailer there was a giant high-resolution television screen flanked by huge pinboards covered with maps, drawings, and photographs. A long table ran for a third of the length of the trailer. On it, a scale model of the farmhouse and vicinity had been roughly constructed, using sand and children's building kits.

  Kilmara stood to one side of the giant screen, which was connected to the surveillance system controlled by the separate Mobile Command Center. The twelve Rangers of the assault group sat in folding chairs facing their colonel. Army and Special Investigations Branch liaison personnel swelled their numbers to more than twenty. A digital clock flashed away the seconds. Fitzduane sat discreetly in the background, thinking of how many times before he had watched the trained, attentive faces of troops being briefed—and afterward photographed their corpses. He wondered who in the room this night was going to die.

  Kilmara began the briefing. The twelve men in the assault group listened intently. "We're going in. Our objective is to release the hostages unharmed, using only such force as is necessary to achieve that objective. It is my judgment that this will entail killing or, at the minimum, very seriously wounding the terrorists. For the last two hours you have been practicing against a similar house a few miles away. What I'm telling you now incorporates the lessons learned during that exercise.

  "There are five hostages in all—specifically, Mrs. Maura O'Farrell and her four children. As best as we can determine from acoustic surveillance, they are being kept in the second-floor master bedroom. We believe that the windows of that room are locked and that the windows and the heavy tweed curtains have been nailed in place. Since there is a bathroom directly off the master bedroom, the terrorists can keep the hostages quite conveniently in one place under close observation and at the same time have freedom of movement themselves.

  "The farmhouse, as you've discovered, is a modern two-story building with one feature of particular interest to us, the hallway. That hallway is a small atrium. It runs the full height of the house and is lit from the top by a sloping skylight—which can open, incidentally, but is kept closed and locked this time of year. The hallway contains both the stairs to the second floo
r and the telephone.

  "Most of the time the two terrorists prowl the house and keep watch on us—and the hostages—on pretty much a random basis. However, our surveillance has shown that a pattern has developed during the negotiating sessions on the phone. During these times the German, Dieter Kretz, according to his papers, is in the hall near the front door, using the phone. He has no choice. The phone is directly wired in on that spot, and there are no other extensions in the house. Of course, the hall door and adjacent hall windows are covered with blankets nailed into place. They started to do this after O'Farrell was killed, and while they were hammering away, we used the opportunity to insert acoustic probes into all key external areas of the house; That means that while we cannot see the terrorists—with one notable exception that I'll talk about in a moment—from the sounds they make we do have a precise idea where they are at any time. I'm also pleased to be able to say that the equipment is sufficiently sensitive for us to be able to determine not only the presence of a person in a particular location but the identity of that person, provided he or she talks or moves around.

  "While the telephoning is going on, the girl normally sits halfway up the stairs so that she is near enough to the hostages and yet at the same time can talk with Dieter and put her two cents' worth into the negotiations. Sometimes she actually descends the stairs and listens in on the incoming call. The crucial time is, therefore during telephone contact. Not only is Dieter in a predictable location then—and Tina, too, with luck—but we can actually see him."

  Kilmara spoke quietly into a miniature microphone attached to a compact earpiece. Almost immediately the picture on the screen changed from a medium shot of the whole house to a small yellow rectangle. Kilmara spoke into his microphone again, and the yellow rectangle blurred and increased in size until it filled the whole screen. There was an adjustment of focus, and suddenly the assembled men realized they were looking directly through the skylight into the hall of the besieged farmhouse. They saw Dieter come into camera view, pause, look at the phone, and then walk out of sight in the direction of the front sitting room. The long-focus lens gave the picture an unreal, ethereal quality.

  Kilmara continued. "The terrorists have said that if we attempt to approach any closer than the agreed perimeter of about two hundred meters from the house, they will kill a hostage. On the terrorists' instructions, we have floodlit the area up to about ten meters from the house. This allows the terrorists to see out without being dazzled. Now, the effect of all this is that although it is exceedingly difficult for us to cross that floodlit perimeter area undetected—and we have not yet been willing to take that risk because of the hostages—at the same time our friends inside cannot see beyond the wall of light surrounding them. They look out into the perimeter, no problem. But if they look up, then they just see the glare of the wall of floodlights."

  The Ranger colonel spoke into the microphone again, and the picture on the screen changed. It now showed a giant metal arm with a platform on the end, the whole device being mounted on a self-propelled chassis.

  "That picture of the hall," he said, "was taken from the top of that cherry picker crane. There is enough space on the platform for at least three people; the range into the hall from the platform is about two hundred and eighty meters. The problem is that the skylight is double-glazed and made out of toughened glass set at an angel to the direction of fire. It will deflect a conventional rifle round.

  "So there are the main elements of our problem—and this is exactly what we're going to do."

  Fitzduane watched the assault group select and check its weapons. His profession made him more knowledgeable than most about tactical firepower. Of the three Rangers in the cherry picker, two were armed with accurized M-21 automatic rifles fitted with high-magnification image-intensifier sights. Early models of these sights had "whited out" when exposed to a sudden increase in light—say, a room light being switched on—but the current version was microprocessor-controlled and could adapt without the marksman's losing his aim. The ammunition had the lethal apple green tips of special-purpose TKD high-penetration rounds. The Teflon-coated rounds lost stopping power as a corollary of their penetrating ability, but with the massive tissue destruction effect of the high-velocity 7.62 mm bullets, that problem would be a little academic.

  The third Ranger on the cherry picker team selected a semiautomatic GLX-9 grenade launcher actually custom-built in the Ranger armory. Inspired by the original single-shot M-79 launcher, this weapon held four rounds in a rotary magazine and could hurl a stream of grenades with considerable accuracy for up to four hundred meters.

  The actual entry into the house would be made by a team of six Rangers under the command of Lieutenant Phil Burke. They took British-made SA-80 5.56 mm assault rifles and Dutch V-40 hand grenades. The rifle ammunition was" a derivation of the Glaser safety round and had the unusual characteristic of expending virtually all its energy in the target. It inflicted the most appalling wounds on the victim and yet did not ricochet.

  The task of the third group was to provide intensive fire support from the front of the house. They took grenade launchers and Belgian-made 5.56 mm belt-fed Minimi light machine guns.

  The plan provided that the cherry picker team would take out Dieter first, and then Tina if she was by the phone. If she kept to her normal position on the stairs, it was calculated that the combined firepower of grenades and concentrated machine-gun fire would cut her to pieces before she could reach the hostages in the master bedroom. Meanwhile, Phil Burke's team would cross the perimeter and enter the master bedroom using lightweight scaling ladders. There three of them would pour covering fire out through the bedroom door into the hall toward the stairs while the balance of the team hurled the hostages down a chute to safety below.

  The danger lay with Tina. If she climbed the stairs to the hostages without being incapacitated by the volume of fire and before Burke's team made it into the bedroom, the hostages would die in a burst of Skorpion fire. It was that simple.

  In Fitzduane's opinion it was going to be very close—or as Kilmara put it to the assault group: "If at first you don't succeed, well, so much for skydiving."

  The men on the cherry picker team moved off first. They needed time to maneuver into the best firing position and to attach the rifle mounts to the platform rail. Their main fear was that a gust of wind would jar the platform ever so slightly at the crucial moment. Kilmara had requested stabilizing cables with hydraulic mounts, but the truck carrying them had suffered a double flat tire and would not arrive in time. Fortunately, the night so far had been calm.

  The six men of the Ranger entry team were hideous in blackface camouflage and night-vision goggles. They wore light mat black helmets made of ballistic material and containing miniature radios. Fitzduane was reminded of the head of a deformed fly.

  With twenty minutes to zero, all units had completed checking in. The digital clock in the command center flashed second by second through the remaining time.

  Outside, a stiff breeze sprang up, and the waiting perimeter of security forces cursed at the effect of the windchill factor in the damp cold and huddled into their parkas.

  At 3:30 a.m. the negotiator, Assistant Commissioner Brannigan, picked up the phone to tell the terrorists that the government, reluctantly, would agree to their terms. It was the signal to commence the assault. Now a series of different actions had to mesh together. Seconds were critical. A twenty-round Skorpion magazine can be fired in under two seconds.

  It could take even less time to kill a defenseless woman and four young children.

  "This is Kretz," said Dieter.

  "He's in the hall," said Acoustic Surveillance.

  "We see him," said the cherry picker team leader. "A clear shot but no sign of Tina."

  "Tina is moving," said Acoustic Surveillance. "She's leaving the second-floor landing and moving down the stairs. She's stopped."

  "Entry team—go!" said Kilmara into his microphone.

>   On the giant screen the six Rangers of the entry team could be seen sprinting across the two hundred meters of the perimeter. Each pair carried a single rubber-covered titanium alloy scaling ladder.

  "...but in exchange for our providing a helicopter at first light to take you to the airport, you must agree to release the hostages before entering the helicopter," continued Brannigan. His face was creased with strain.

  "Tina's moving," said Acoustic Surveillance.

  "Can't see her," said cherry picker team leader.

  "Where?" said Kilmara.

  "Can't tell exactly," said Acoustic Surveillance. "The noise doesn't sound right. Hell, I think she's just kicking her leg against the banister. Wait! She's definitely moving now—down the stairs."

  "Dieter still a clear shot," said cherry picker team leader.

  "Du Arschloch!" shouted Dieter. "Do you think we're idiots? You'll agree to our terms immediately, or I will kill one of the children here and now. You understand, huh?"

  Brannigan waited a few seconds before replying. His face was dripping sweat, and he looked ill. "Kretz," he said, "Kretz, for God's sake, hold it. Don't touch another hostage."

  "I spit on your God," said Dieter. "You'll follow our terms exactly." He gave a thumbs-up sign to Tina and beckoned for her to come over and listen.

  The entry team had made it across the floodlit section of the perimeter and was now crouched in the ten meters of shadowy darkness immediately surrounding the house. The men placed the three ladders outside the rear window of the master bedroom, and the first three Rangers started to climb. The balance of the unit hunkered down in firing position, ready to give covering fire.

  "She's definitely going for the phone," said Acoustic Surveillance.

  "We can see the edge of her shoulder," said cherry picker team leader. "Not enough for a shot."