A message from Ranger headquarters sounded in his ears. An emergency meeting of the Security Committee of the Cabinet had convened. Right now the primary task of the Rangers, it had been clearly laid down, was to ensure the safety and integrity of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin. No convincing case had been made for any change to those instructions. Colonel Kilmara and the airborne Ranger group were to return to Baldonnel immediately. Kilmara's request for backup army support on standby had been denied.
The Taoiseach's hostility was becoming a problem. Well, fuck him anyway. The pilot looked at Kilmara. He had not acknowledged the radio message, though the routine words had come instinctively to his lips. He had served under the colonel for a considerable period of time. Kilmara pointed at the long-distance radio and drew a finger across his throat. The pilot switched off the unit and grinned. "Doing a Nelson?" he asked.
Kilmara made a face. "I've no ambitions to be a dead hero or to be kissed as I lie there dying," he said into the intercom.
"But Nelson won the battle," said the pilot.
Kilmara raised his eyebrows and went back to looking at cows. On previous operations they had always had the reassuring backup of the regular army. This time it looked as if they'd be on their own.
The black silhouettes of the hills of Connemara showed up on the horizon, and there was the glint of moonlight off a lake below. "ETA twenty-two minutes, Colonel."
The colonel had his eyes closed. "Too many cows," he said.
The pilot checked the firing circuits of the Optica's electronically controlled machine guns and rocket pods. The aircraft had been designed for observation and endurance, but with lightweight armaments it had proved possible to give it some punch.
The firing circuit check light glowed green. All was in order. The Rangers flew on.
* * * * *
Fitzduane's Island — 2220 hours
All preparations had been completed more than twenty minutes earlier, but a glow had lingered longer than expected in the sky, and Kadar wanted the maximum benefit from the cover of darkness. The night still wasn't jet black, but given the near-perfect day and the half-moon, it was as dark now as it was going to get within his time frame, and the increase in cloud cover should provide the needed protection.
Fitzduane's castle had been well enough sited to cope with medieval warfare and even conventional musketry, but it had disadvantages when longer-range weapons were brought into play. Kadar had found several random jumbles of boulders in a semicircle about a thousand meters from the castle, and there he had constructed three sangars, rock-fortified emplacements, to hold his heavy machine guns and the SAM-7 missile. He was out of normal rifle range but well within the distance appropriate for a heavy sustained-fire weapon. The Russian 12.7 mm DShK 38/46 was effective up to two thousand meters.
Kadar regretted he hadn't brought any specialist night-vision equipment, but he doubted it would prove essential. Firing parameters had been constructed while there was still adequate light, and the basic structure of the castle was clearly outlined against the night sky. His covering fire might not be as accurate as he would have liked, but the volume would make up for it.
Another dull explosion sounded from within the castle courtyard — what the plans he had found in the DrakerCollege library called a bawn — and he again failed to identify its source. It was too loud and resonant for a rifle or shotgun but lacked the acoustic power of a heavier weapon. Perhaps it wasn't an explosion at all but some kind of pile-driving or hammering or attempt to signal. A signal — that was probably it. He smiled to himself. It was a brave attempt, but there was nobody to hear.
He had brought two Powerchutes on the Sabine for the primary purpose of providing an escape vehicle in an extreme emergency. A Powerchute would get him off the island to a place where a vehicle, money, and other emergency supplies were concealed. The second unit was a backup.
He knew that in committing the Powerchutes to the battle ahead, he was cutting off his own last retreat, but that didn't matter anymore. This was a fight he was going to win. He didn't want the second-class option. He wanted the exhilaration that makes men the world over attempt the impossible, the thrill that comes from taking the maximum risk: of committing everything or dying.
He gave the signal. The Powerchutes started their engines and moved forward. Each powered parachute consisted of a tricycle framework with a propeller mounted at the rear. Forward momentum and the slipstream from the propeller inflated the parachute canopy. Within a few yards the Powerchutes were airborne and climbing rapidly. The Powerchute was a parachute that could go up as well as down; it could be maneuvered much like a powered hang glider, reach a height of ten thousand feet, fly at fifty kilometers per hour — or descend slightly with the engine cut off. Each Powerchute had a maximum payload of 350 pounds, and in this case it was being used to the absolute limit. Each was fully laden with pilot, weapons, grenades, satchel charge, and homemade incendiaries.
Kadar turned to his final surprise. The welders of Malabar Unit had done an excellent job. The big German tractor and the trailer they had found at DrakerCollege had been armored with steel plate — front, back, and sides — thick enough to stop high-velocity rifle bullets. Firing ports had been cut at regular intervals for the crew's automatic rifles, and an explosive charge protruded from a girder at the front.
Kadar had made himself a tank. He spoke into one of the Russian field radios and the tank's-tractor's engines burst into life.
"Geranium force," he ordered. "Attack! Attack! Attack!"
The darkness around the castle was rent with streams of fire.
28
Fitzduane's Castle — 2228 hours
The sandbags covering the arrow slits shook under a burst of heavy-machine-gun fire that raked across the front of the gatehouse. Fitzduane had stipulated that the sandy earth used to fill the bags be well dampened. The sweating students had groaned because the earth was noticeably heavier when wet, but the merit of this precaution now became obvious: the damp earth absorbed even the heavy machine-gun rounds, and though the sacks themselves were becoming bullet-torn, their contents stayed more or less in place. Their defenses against direct gunfire and the more dangerous problem within the stone confines of the castle — ricochets — were holding. Noble's mental image of the sandbags leaking their contents like a row of egg timers did not seem likely to materialize for some time.
Noble was just thinking that thanks to the castle's thick stone walls, the noise of the gunfire was almost bearable when a double blast sent tremors through the whole structure and temporarily deafened him. He removed a sandbag and peered through a murder hole overlooking the main gate. Two rocket-propelled grenades had blown huge gaps in the wooden gates. As he watched, two more grenades impacted. He hugged the floor while further explosions rent the air only a few meters away from where he lay. Blasts of hot air and red-hot grenade fragments seared through the open murder hole. When the clatter of shrapnel falling to the floor had died down, he snatched a look at the gateway again. The second set of explosions had finished the destruction of the wooden gates and blown the splintered remnants off their hinges. Burning pieces of the gates cast flickers of orange light into the darkness, and the familiar smell of woodsmoke blended with the acrid fumes from the explosives. His initial shock at seeing their defenses torn away so quickly turned to relief when he noticed that the portcullis still stood more or less intact, its rigid structure absorbing the shock waves and presenting a difficult target for the hollow-charge missiles.
A camouflaged figure darted out of the darkness and dropped to the ground. A few feet from Noble, Andreas was watching the perimeter through the night sight on his SA-80. The man was clutching a satchel charge. He lay in a slight dip, thinking he was concealed by the darkness while he regained his breath. He was still over a hundred meters away.
Andreas fought the desire to shoot when the green-gray image of the terrorist showed clear against the orange reticule of the sight. It would be so easy.
The temptation was nearly overwhelming, but Fitzduane had given strict orders that the night-vision equipment was to be used only for observation until he gave the word. He wanted the attackers to get cocky, to come closer thinking they were concealed by the darkness. To enter the killing ground.
"Sapper at two o'clock — a hundred and twenty meters," he said to Noble. "You take him." Noble looked toward him uncertainly, hearing the noise but not the words, and Andreas realized he must still be deafened from the blast. He repeated his request, shouting into Noble's ear. Noble nodded and readied his Uzi.
The sapper advanced another twenty meters on his belly and then broke into a run. The heavy machine-gun began concentrating its fire on the gatehouse.
The sapper was fifty meters away when Noble, still dazed, fired and missed. The sapper hit the ground. He was now dangerously close, and Andreas was thinking that playing it smart and not using the SA-80s yet might mean not using the SA-80s ever. "Being too clever by half," as the English put it. The sapper showed himself again, and Andreas was about to fire when heavy machine-gun rounds hitting just above the arrow slit made him duck, granite chips filling the air. He heard Noble's Uzi give a long half-magazine burst. Then the air outside the gatehouse was in flames as the satchel charge blew up, the force of the blast blowing him back from his firing position.
"Got him," said Noble.
Andreas grunted in acknowledgment. His ears were ringing. He thought he heard Noble say something, and then all he could think of was crouching out of harm's way as the heavy machine gun again cut in and methodically traced and retraced its malevolent way across the front of the gatehouse. The damn gun would burn out its barrels soon if it kept up this rate of fire.
There was a pause in its firing s if the gunner had read his mind, and he snatched a look into the darkness again with the SA-80 sight. He could see shaped getting nearer and decided to examine the ground in front of them more methodically. The heavy machine gun was still quiet, and the automatic rifle fire, though intense, was mostly going high.
Fitzduane had been right. The opposition was getting cocky. Whereas earlier, during daylight — and even more recently when the firing had commenced — they had all been nearly invisible under cover, now, confident of the concealing darkness, they had emerged from their positions and were moving forward slowly for an assault.
The death of the sapper did not seem to deter them, so something else must be up. He scanned the line of men again. There were on signs of scaling ladders or any other obvious method of gaining access to the castle. He looked deeper into the darkness. The Kite image intensifier was at its limit of operational effectiveness of six hundred meters when he began searching the road that led up to the castle. At first he could detect nothing except a faint impression of slow movement, and then out of the darkness he could see a large black shape with some long object protruding in front of it. He waited while the shape slowly advanced another hundred meters and then, after a further look, passed the SA-80 to Harry Noble.
The ambassador looked where he indicated and then ducked as muzzle flashes stabbed from the armored monolith creeping toward them. "I think we're moving toward the surprise event," he said."
"I hate surprises," said Andreas.
Noble was speaking by hand radio to Fitzduane. He put down the radio and fired several single shots into the darkness toward the spread-out line of advancing terrorists. Andreas watched them dive to the ground and then cautiously rise again when they realized that no one had been hit and the opposition was light.
There was an enormous explosion behind them from the direction of the keep. They both looked at the radio, which remained silent. Noble reached out and picked it up. He was about to press the call button when Fitzduane's voice crackled out of it. "Relax," it said. "That's part of the Bear's war, and he's doing just fine. Now get on with the gate."
Andreas looked at Noble. "Does he mean what I think he means?"
"It's what we planned," said Noble. "He wants us to open the portcullis." He pressed the switch, wondering if they still had power or if they would have to crank it by hand. The old motor whirred, then caught, and the spiked portcullis began to rise from the ground.
"This is crazy," said Andreas. "They'll get in."
"I think that's the whole idea," said Noble.
Andreas felt his bowels go liquid. He could hear Noble inserting a fresh magazine into the pistol grip of the Uzi and the click as the weapon was cocked. Noble indicated the Hawk grenade launcher and the bandolier of 40 mm grenades. "Fléchette rounds," he said, "then armor-piercing explosive."
* * * * *
The fighting platform of the keep was the best observation point in the castle. That was fine, except for the fact that it could clearly be seen to be so and as such was likely to attract unwelcome attention.
Apart from the anticipated volume of incoming fire, Fitzduane had been worried about its nature. The top of the keep was a flat, open rectangle with a high crenellated parapet that would tend to concentrate the effect of blast. It could be neutralized with one single mortar round or even a couple of grenades.
Fitzduane's solution led one student to remark that the Fitzduane family motto should be "Dig and Live" and its coat of arms a crossed pick and shovel on a background of sweat-saturated sandbags. A block and tackle were rigged on the platform, and a seemingly unending succession of sandbags and balks of timber and pieces of corrugated iron was hauled up. Te result was a fair reproduction of a First World War trench dugout in the sky. The roof was designed to be mortarproof — at least for the first couple of blasts (during which time the occupants, if they had any sense, would bug out to the floor below). As it happened, the construction of the dugout roof made all the difference.
The pilots selected for the Powerchutes, two brothers, Husain and Mohsen, were Iranians and followers of a modified version of the teachings of Hasane Sabbah, had founded the sect of the Assassins in the Elburz Mountains north of Teheran in the purity of assassination as a political tool had been tempered by the discovery that the game could work two ways. After an Israeli hit team had whittled their dedicated band of twenty down to just the pair of them, they had added the profit motive to the teachings of Hasane Sabbah. But they still retained enough fanaticism, or were just plain dumb enough, in Kadar's judgment, to be prepared to push their attacks to the absolute limit.
Photographs and drawings of the main features of Fitzduane's castle had been found in several books in the DrakerCollege library, so the brothers had been thoroughly briefed. The plan was for the first Powerchute, flown by Husain, to swoop in and drop a satchel charge on the keep's fighting platform while the second Powerchute, flown by Mohsen, would send its specially weighted charge through the slate roof of the great hall, into the yawning aperture made by the explosion of the weighted satchel charge, thus setting the top floor of the building alight —one guidebook made great reference to ‘the splendor of the carved oak beams dating back from medieval times’ — and rendering it uninhabitable. The pilots would then cut their engines and, using only the steerable ramjet parachutes of the Powerchutes, would land on the cleared fighting platform and hold it while their brethren reinforced them by climbing up from below on ropes.
The entire Powerchute attack, Kadar calculated, could be completed in less than ninety seconds. To check this, a rehearsal was carried out on the mock-Gothic keep of DrakerCollege. Using dummy bombs and in daylight, the two brothers clocked in, on their first attempt, at a creditable ninety-four seconds, including a final sweep of the ‘fighting platform’ with automatic rifle fire as they sailed down. They shaved a further five seconds off with practice.
The actual attack did not work out according to plan except that it accelerated the brothers' path to the goal of all followers of Hasane Sabbah killed in the line of duty: Eternal Paradise. But it was close.
The Powerchutes achieved total surprise. With the noise of their engines drowned by a fusillade from the cordon of terrorists, Husain was abl
e to sweep in undetected and release his satchel charge — a webbing satchel containing plastic explosive, shrapnel, and a three-second fuse — exactly over the target. Unfortunately the light of the half-moon as it shone intermittently through the scurrying clouds made visibility difficult, and he didn't see the dugout that had been constructed on the platform.
The bomb glanced off the dugout and slid down toward the slate roof of the great hall. Exploding in near-perfect imitation of a directional mine, the shrapnel caught the second Powerchute on its approach, which was lower than intended thanks to the fickleness of the Irish wind, in a pattern that would have done credit to a champion skeet shooter.
Mohsen didn't even have time to complain about the Irish climate or to reflect that it might have been a good idea to practice in advance with real explosives or to curse his miscalculating brother seven different ways. He was killed instantly, his body pierced in a dozen places, and his Powerchute carried him across the castle walls to crash minutes later in a ball of flame against the cliffs of the mainland. Inside the dugout, protected by a triple layer of sandbags, the Bear and Murrough were scarcely affected by the explosion except to feel a little sick at the thought that their attackers seemed to have the very weapon they had feared most — a mortar. Expecting a barrage of further rounds now that the gunner had zeroed in on them with the first shot — not so common with a mortar — they headed as one for the circular stairs and took up fresh positions in Fitzduane's bedroom immediately below.
The defenders on the battlements outside scarcely had time to think at all. First a huge black shape sailed by, spraying blood like some vampire celebrating the abolition of garlic, and then automatic weapons fire from the sky made the point that the first vampire wasn't flying about alone.
Fitzduane 01 - Games of The Hangman Page 53
