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 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.
It 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 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 seen the 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 capture or destroy whatever 12.7s survived the initial attack. To achieve this goal, what they lacked in manpower they compensated for in 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 kitted 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 all 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, low 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 through 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 a little 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 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 HiPower 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 shotg
un 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 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 early 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 had 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 than 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 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.
"We're about to take out the 12.7s," Kilmara informed him. "We'll be dropping the second stick—Günther's lot—almost immediately and near the action. It shouldn't be much longer. What's your situation?"
"We're close to the bow and arrow stage," said Fitzduane, "and we're kind of low on arrows."
"Try charm," said Kilmara. "One extra thing: your roof is on fire. I can't see anything yet, but there's a heat buildup like you wouldn't believe on the IR."
"Well, fuck 'em," said Fitzduane. "Now I'm really pissed off. It's my home they're messing with."
"Will the heat be a problem?" said Kilmara. "Can you defend the keep if there's an inferno next door?"
"I think so," said Fitzduane. "Heat rises, and the walls are damned thick. It might get hot in here, but it shouldn't become untenable."
"I'll hold you to that," said Kilmara. "Got to go. It's show time."
The tunnel under the castle—0023 hours
Andreas watched the heavy iron door, which was all that separated the defenders from their attackers, glow cherry red as the oxyacetylene cutting flame bit into it. The door was old—made generations before the invention of modern hardened metals—and the flame was cutting through it effortlessly. Sparks poured into the tunnel, and soon the cutting flame itself could be seen.
The radio wouldn't function underground, so Andreas sent one of the students to inform Fitzduane that things were about to liven up again. The good news was that their use of a torch to break in suggested that the attackers were either very low on, or out of, explosives.
Andreas's main fear was grenades. He tried to think whether he'd taken enough precautions against them. The defenders had prepared their normal sandbag barricades, of course, but they had also made extensive use of chicken wire and fishing net screens, which they could shoot through but which should, while they lasted, deflect any thrown object.
He wondered if the tunnel defense was a strong enough force to hold. The addition of the ten students had seemed like a major boost, but after the two fatalities, and once the runner was subtracted, the net gain was only seven—and four of those were on duty at various locations in the keep. The tunnel force actually numbered just six: Andreas himself, Judith, de Guevain, and three students. Henssen was now unconscious under Katia's care, and Oona was acting as den mother to the noncombatants.
Six amateur defenders against a trained attacking force didn't sound quite enough somehow, though now that he thought of it, he, Lieutenant Andreas von Graffenlaub of the Swiss Army, wasn't exactly an amateur—and these bastards who were trying to break in were already responsible for the deaths of three members of his family.
He switched off the main lights in the tunnel and brought his SA-80 up to the point of aim. A light-colored outline in his image intensifier marked the line of the cutting torch. The door was almost through. The tunnel defenders were about to find out if there was a grenade problem.
The severed door crashed forward onto the stone flags of the tunnel. The sudden noise was followed by absolute silence.
Beside Andreas, Sig Bengtquist licked his lips and tried to swallow. He had no night vision equipment, and all was threatening darkness. "Day and Night": he thought of Osman with a sense of terrible loss and sadness, and then anger and a resolute determination to hit back, to put a stop to this evil, gripped him.
The Milan team outside Fitzduane's castle—0023 hours
The pre-aim mark of the Ranger Milan was aligned with the protruding barrel of the first heavy-machine-gun position. The terrorist gun crew was hidden by the stacked rocks and improvised sandbags of the emplacement, but Grady could imagine the scene inside: the heat from the weapon as belt after belt of ammunition snaked its way through the receiver to be sundered into brass cartridge case, propellant, and projectile. The crew members would be concentrating solely on the mechanics of aiming and operating the weapon, relying on their comrades to secure them from any unexpected attack. They would be tired but exhilarated, infected by the power of the weapon the
y served. They would be young men with mothers and families and children and dreams, motivated to be here on this island far from their home for reasons Grady would never know or even really want to know—what difference would it make?
He pressed the firing button, sending a signal to the junction box. From there a powerful current ignited the gas generator at the back of the missile, simultaneously launching the missile and blasting the now-useless launch tube away from the launcher. Once the rocket was free of the launcher, its motor cut in. The missile accelerated up to its maximum velocity of more than nine hundred meters per second, trailing its guidance wire behind it.
With the weight of twelve kilos of missile now free of the firing post, the pre-aim mark was no longer needed, and Grady concentrated on keeping the missile within the "80 mil" circle at the center of the reticule sight on the target. The trick was, in fact, to concentrate on the target, not the missile, since the Milan's tracking computer monitored the missile's position by reading the infrared signals emitted by the missile's rocket motor and sending any fresh guidance instructions along the hair-thin guidance wire.
For the first four hundred meters the missile's flight path was normally erratic, but beyond that distance the missile would follow the instructions transmitted by the wire and could be flown with unjammable accuracy onto the target. In simple terms, where Grady pointed the eight-power sight on the firing post, the missile went. Grady was flying it the way a child flies a model airplane, only at a speed and with a precision and purpose that had little to do with any child.
The missile hit precisely as aimed. Designed for punching through the thick superstrength metal skin of a main battle tank, the warhead achieved its purpose by a savage transfer of kinetic energy rather than conventional explosives. Massive shock waves spread through the rock emplacement, shattering it into lethal fragments and destroying men and weapon in a millisecond.
GAMES OF THE HANGMAN Page 56
