Games of the Hangman (100 page)

The Bear crouched
down on the access ladder behind cover and restrung his crossbow and fitted a
fresh bolt.

Kadar sobbed
in agony and frustration and groped for a fresh magazine for his
automatic.
 
There was nothing there.
 
He remembered his fatigues ripping when he
landed.
 
The spare clips must have fallen
out of his
torn
 
cargo
pocket.
 
He glanced around and saw one of
the magazines on the edge of the roof.
 
As he limped hesitatingly toward it, a second crossbow bolt smashed into
his back.
 
It failed to penetrate his Kevlar
body armor, but the momentum of the missile threw him forward, and he stumbled
onto his knees.

The impact of
the roof on his
wounded knee
and broken leg caused
pain so extreme that he felt cocooned in a miasma of pure horror.
 
Beads of sweat broke out on his face, and it
was only through the maximum exertion of his formidable willpower that he was
able to remain conscious.
 
He fought to
stay in control.
 
His nightmare of suffering
was worse than anything he had ever known or could have believed possible.
 
His cries echoed into the flame-lit darkness,
and tears ran down his cheeks.
 
He tried
to crawl toward the magazine.
 
He
whimpered.

Fitzduane,
blood streaming from his furrowed cheek and momentarily disoriented by his
fall, took long seconds to recover.
 
Still somewhat dazed and oblivious of the shotgun strapped to his back,
he dragged himself to his feet and with both hands grabbed the heavy coil of
rope he had tripped over.

Kadar sensed
Fitzduane's approach as he was reloading his automatic.
 
He worked the slide, chambered a round, and
cocked the weapon, then turned to shoot the Irishman.

Fitzduane
slashed down hard and at an angle with the rope, lacerating Kadar's face and
knocking his gun hand to one side.
 
He
then dropped the rope and grabbed Kadar's hand as it moved back toward
him.
 
Groggy from his wounds and the
near-unendurable pain, Kadar tried to fire but could not; Fitzduane had his
thumb inserted between the hammer and firing pin, and he gripped the slide
tightly.
 
Slowly Fitzduane forced the
weapon away from where it had been pointed, but he had to remove his thumb as
the Hangman twisted the automatic.
 
Kadar
fired repeatedly in a frenzy of desperation, but the rounds blasted futilely
into the night.

Fitzduane
waiting until the Hangman's weapon was empty and then butted him in the face
with his head, smashing his opponent's nose.
 
As the Hangman reeled and cried out in agony, Fitzduane loosened his
grip on the man's arms and drew his fighting knife.
 
He plunged it under the body armor into the
terrorist's stomach and twisted and ripped with the blade.
 
A terrible keening moan filled the air.

The Bear came
up,
another bolt fitted to his crossbow, and fired
point-blank at Kadar's threshing, contorted face.
 
The Hangman's head was twisted to one side at
the moment of being struck, so the bolt cut through both cheeks, clefting the
palate and smashing teeth.
 
His whole
body convulsed at the impact, but frenzied, he fought on.
 
Blood and mucus frothed from his lips and
bubbled from the holes in his cheeks, and terrible gagging animal sounds came
from him.
 
The Bear felt nauseated as he
strained to reload his weapon.

Fitzduane
withdrew his fighting knife, angled it toward the vitals, and then thrust it
hard into Kadar's side and left it there.
 
Without a pause he flicked open the coil of rope, knotted it around the
Hangman's neck, and kicked the spasming body over the side of the keep.
 
The roped hissed through the pulley and then
snapped taut.

Fitzduane lay
down on the roof and looked over the edge.
 
The rope from the block and tackle ended in a shape twisting and turning
in the glow of the fire from the great hall.
 
It hung just a few feet from the ground.

Fitzduane
hauled himself off the roof and descended the circular stairs to the bawn
below.
 
The Bear followed him.

When they
reached the courtyard, Fitzduane turned and looked up at the hanging form.
 
A Ranger shone a light on the distorted and
bloody head.
 
The crossbow wounds dripped
blood and matter.
 
The damage done to the
face was extensive.
 
Nonetheless, they
could see that it was, without question, the Hangman.
 
The body was still twitching.

Fitzduane
looked at his friend and then back at the Hangman.
 
The killing rage had subsided.
 
What he saw sickened him.

"It must
be finished," said the Bear.

The Irishman
hesitated for a moment, and then he thought of Rudi and Vreni and Beat von
Graffenlaub and Paulus von Beck and of all the pain and bloodshed and horror
that this man — this man he had once liked — had been responsible for.
 
He thought of the time he had gone to Draker
to tell them of the hanging and how he had stood there in his wool socks
talking to a lived-in but still attractive brunette in her mid-thirties who
wore granny glasses.
 
He thought of the
carnage in Draker when they had gone to rescue the students, and of a
blood-smeared body perforated with Uzi fire, one hand still holding her granny
glasses.
 
He thought of Ivo and Murrough
and Tommy Keane and Dick Noble and of the woman he loved, her thigh pumping
blood.
 
He thought that he was tired and
that the Bear was right and that this thing must come to an end.
 
He didn't care about the reasons anymore.

The body
twitched again and swung slightly on the rope.

Fitzduane slid
his automatic shotgun into firing position and released four XR-18 rounds into
Kadar's form, smashing the torso completely, ripping the heart from the body,
but leaving the head and hands intact.

"Dead?"
he said to the Bear.

"I think
it is quite probably," said the Bear, going very Swiss and cautious all of
a sudden.
 
There was a pulpy mess where
Kadar's middle had been.
 
"Yes," he said, nodding.
 
"Yes, he is very definitely dead."

"Swiss
timing," said Fitzduane.

"So it is
over," said the Bear.
 
He was
looking at Fitzduane with compassion and not a little awe.
 
The business of killing was a tawdry
activity, whatever the need, but it was a business, like most human activities,
that demanded talent.
 
Fitzduane,
sensitive and sympathetic though he was by nature, had a formidable talent for
violence, a hard and bloody edge to his character.
 
Here was a decent man who had tried to do a
decent thing and who had stumbled into a bloodbath, had participated in that
slaughter.
 
What scars would his friend's
soul now carry?
 
The Bear sighed
quietly.
 
He was weary.
 
He knew that he, too, was tainted.

He shook his
head, depressed, then pulled himself together and gave a quiet growl and stared
at the remains of the Hangman.
 
Fuck him
anyway; he deserved to die.
 
It had to be
done.

Fitzduane
looked out over the glowing remains of the great hall and beyond the bawn.
 
There were no lines of tracer, no explosions,
no
screams of pain or sounds of gunfire.
 
Rangers were moving into the sandbagged
emplacements on the battlements.
 
Kilmara
in his Optica still circled in the sky above.

Fitzduane reached
out for his radio.
 
"You still up
there?"

"Seems
like it," said Kilmara.
 
"It's
really quite beautiful from the air, but there's nowhere to pee."

"The
Hangman's dead," said Fitzduane.

"Like the
last time?" said
Kilmara.
 
"Or did you manage a more permanent
arrangement?"

"I shot
him," said Fitzduane, "and knifed him and the Bear shot him and we
hanged him and he's still here — well, most of him.
 
Enough to identify
anyway."

"How
often did you shoot him?" said Kilmara for no particular reason.
 
Stress reaction was setting in.
 
He suddenly felt very tired.

"Quite a
lot," said Fitzduane.
 
"Why
don't you come down and take a look?"

"So the
fat lady has finished singing," said Kilmara.

"Close,"
said Fitzduane.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Duncleeve — Fitzduane's Castle — 0300 hours

Fitzduane and
Kilmara finished their tour of inspection, and then Kilmara was called away to
take a radio message from Ranger headquarters in
Dublin
.

Kilmara was
limping but otherwise in good shape.
 
He
had sent the Optica back to refuel an hour ago and had parachuted into the
bawn.
 
It had been a perfect jump, but he
had landed on one of the cannon and twisted his ankle.

The immediate
threat seemed to be over, but until the island had been thoroughly searched by
daylight, they couldn't be sure, and it was prudent to play safe.
 
Accordingly the exhausted defenders and the
only marginally fresher Rangers stood to and manned the full castle perimeter
again but left the territory outside to the dead and whatever else chose to
roam around at that hour of the morning.

Ground
transport brought regular army units to the mainland end of the island road,
and a company of troops was sent over by rope while the engineers set to
building a Bailey bridge.
 
Mortar and
light artillery emplacements were set up to give fire support if needed.
 
As dawn was breaking, around five in the
morning, the first regular army unit arrived on the island.

Kilmara had
been absent longer than expected.
 
He
returned looking distinctly annoyed, sat on a sandbag, and poured some whiskey
into the mug of coffee a trooper brought in.

"I've got
good news and ridiculous news," he said.
 
"What do you want to hear first?"

"You
choose," said Fitzduane.
 
He was
sitting on the floor, his back resting against the wall.
 
His wounded cheek had been tended to by a
Ranger medic.
 
It appeared quite likely
there would be a scar.
 
Etan was nestled
in his arms, half asleep.
 
Without
conscious thought he was stroking her gently, as if seeking reassurance that
she was indeed alive.
 
"I'm too
bloody tired.
 
I don't think I've ever
been so tired.
 
If this is what a siege
is like, I'm glad I missed out on the Crusades.
 
Imagine this kind of caper going on for months on end in a temperature
like a furnace while you're wearing the equivalent in metal of half a car body
under a caftan with a cross painted on it for the other side to shoot at.
 
They must have had iron balls in those
days."

"Or died
young," said the Bear.

"Start
with the good news," said Etan, who was bandaged and in slight pain but
cheerful; she was just glad to be — more or less — unharmed.
 
The Ranger medic had said the wound wasn't
serious and would heal quickly.

"We've
got a prisoner —a guy named Sartawi, one of their unit commanders," said
Kilmara, "and nearly in one piece for a change.
 
And he's talking.
 
It will make explaining away all these dead
bodies a lot easier if we have the background.
 
All I can say so far is that it's just as well you had your shit
together, Hugo; otherwise we really would have been headed for a bad
scene.
 
The Hangman didn't intend to
leave any survivors.
 
There was a hidden
agenda, and Sartawi was in the know.
 
All
the students were to go in the exchange.
 
It was the Hangman's idea of a little joke."

"What's
the ridiculous news?" asked the Bear.

"We're
having a visitor," said Kilmara.
 
"He's flying in by chopper — piloting the damn thing himself — in
less than an hour, and he's being tailed by a press helicopter.
 
This is all going to be a media event."

"The
little fucker doesn't miss a trick," said Fitzduane.
 
"I take it you tried to put him
off?"

"Need you
ask?" said Kilmara.
 
"I told
both him and his press guy that the time wasn't right, and anyway, the place
isn't secure."

"But he
didn't believe you," said Fitzduane.

"No,"
said Kilmara.
 
"He did not."

"Why
don't we kill him?" said Fitzduane.
 
"I've had a lot of practice lately."