Games of the Hangman (18 page)

Outside, a
stiff breeze sprang up, and the waiting perimeter of security forces cursed at
the effect of the wind chill 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."

The first
three members of the entry team reached the top of the ladders and placed a
large rectangle of explosive cord on the glass.
 
At the press of a detonator, the focused explosive charges would cut
through the glass, blowing any debris into the curtains.

"Entry
team ready," said Burke.

"Shit,
it's really starting to blow," said cherry picker team leader.

"Stand
by, front team," ordered Kilmara.

"Front team
ready," said the team leader.
 
The
three Rangers facing the front door had their grenade launchers pointed at the
fanlight above the door.
 
The grenades —
a mixture of blast and stun — were aimed to explode just below the top of the
stairs, creating a lethal wall between Tina and the hostages.

"Hostages
still in the master bedroom in same positions," said Acoustic
Surveillance.

"Very
well, we agree," continued Brannigan.
 
"The helicopter will arrive at precisely eight
a.m..
 
You will have to wait till that time if it is
able to reach us from its base.
 
It does
not have night-flying instrumentation."

"You
Irish are so backward," sneered Dieter, grinning at Tina.
 
She laughed.

"It's a
German helicopter," said Brannigan inanely.
 
It was clear he thought that he would be
unable to sustain the conversation much longer.
 
He signaled a hurry-up sign.

"We have
Dieter in clear shot — and Tina's shoulder," said cherry picker team
leader, "and we're steady for the moment."

"Cherry
picker, fire!" ordered Kilmara.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The apple
green bullet entered Dieter's head near the crown and exited through his upper
teeth and thick black mustache.
 
He
swayed slightly, and blood gushed from his mouth.
 
The telephone was still in his hand, and his
eyes were open, but he was already dead.

The second
sniper hit Tina in the upper right shoulder.
 
The high-penetration round drilled straight through the bone, and the
Skorpion dropped form her hand.

All the lights
were cut.

Forty-millimeter
grenades exploded on the stairs and in the front hall in a rolling series of
eyeball-searing flashes.
 
The front team
switched to machine-gun fire and the three belt-fed Minimis poured 750 rounds
into the confined space in fifteen seconds.

Simultaneously
the entry team detonated the explosive cord, and with a sharp crack the thick
glass of the double-glazed window dropped onto the bedroom floor.

The cherry
picker team poured rifle fire through the skylight.
 
After a couple of seconds, when the tough
glass was adequately weakened, the sniper with the grenade launcher opened
fire, his grenades punching straight through the remains of the skylight and
exploding in the hall below.

Night-vision
goggles in place, the entry team cut through the heavy curtains with
razor-sharp fighting knives, and Rangers leaped into the darkened bedroom,
covering the open doorway and spraying automatic rifle fire through it onto the
landing.
 
Then Lieutenant Burke moved
forward and tossed V-40 hand grenades out onto the landing and into the hall
below.
 
Each grenade
bust into 350 lethal fragments.

Meanwhile, the
second three Rangers of the entry team clipped the top of an emergency escape
chute to the window aperture and began sliding the four children to safety with
the backup team on the ground below.

"We're in
the bedroom," said Burke into the helmet microphone.
 
"Hostages are alive and being removed
now."

"Cherry
picker and front
teams,
cease fire," said
Kilmara.
 
"Restore perimeter
lighting.
 
Entry team,
secure house."

The second
three Rangers of the entry team slid the last child down the chute.
 
Burke was changing magazines and the
remaining two Rangers were checking the bathroom when Tina crawled in.

No trace of
the pretty young Italian girl remained.
 
Her clothes and body were shredded.
 
Her left cheek was gone, exposing the bone.
 
Blood and matter streamed from dozens of
wounds.
 
Her right arm hung uselessly,
and the fingers of its hand were missing.
 
But she had the Skorpion in her left hand.
 
Its muzzle wavered, and she fired.

Time seemed
suspended.
 
There was nothing the young
Ranger lieutenant could do.
 
There was a
stab of flame and a huge blow over his heart.
 
Burke spun around and collapsed against the wall.

The thing that
had been Tina gave a gurgling cry, and the Skorpion dropped from her hand.
 
She moved her fingers up to her throat and
scrabbled uselessly at the knitting needle that emerged through it,
then
collapsed onto her back, her heels drumming against the
floor in her agony of death.

Maura
O'Farrell, her two hands clenched around the adhesive tape handle of the
knitting needle, withdrew the makeshift blade and plunged it in again and again
until a Ranger pulled her away.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

They picked
their way through the wreckage.
 
It
seemed inconceivable to Fitzduane that anyone could have survived the destruction
in the hallway.
 
There was scarcely a
square centimeter of the floor, walls, and ceiling that was not scarred with
shrapnel or pocked with the huge bullet holes of the modified Glaser rounds.

A Ranger
technical team was meticulously photographing the scene with both video and
still cameras.
 
There was always
something to be learned for the next time.

Dieter lay
facedown.
 
The pool of blood he lay in
was sprinkled with fallen plaster and pieces of debris.
 
His whole back was pitted with wounds from
the salvo that had followed the initial fatal shot.
 
Fitzduane bent down and examined first the
right wrist, which bore a gold identity bracelet, and then the left, after
removing a heavy gold wristwatch.
 
The
glass was intact, and the watch was still working.
 
He dropped it on the body.
 
"Nothing," he said to Kilmara.

The staircase
had been shot almost to pieces.

"Beats me
how she got up," said Kilmara.
 
"We'll get a ladder.
 
I'm
buggered if I'm going to break my neck at this stage of the game."

Two Rangers
brought one of the scaling ladders and placed it against a protruding joist of
the landing.

The body of
the once-pretty young Italian terrorist — if, indeed, her stated nationality
was not as much a lie as her stated name — lay just inside the doorway of the
master bedroom.
 
It looked as if it had
been hacked and chopped by some sort of infernal machine.
 
The blood from a dozen or so puncture marks
in her neck and throat had run together in an obscene halo around her
head.
 
Prepared though he was, Fitzduane
felt the bile rise in his throat.

Kilmara
emerged from the bathroom, a damp washcloth in his hand.
 
"My turn," he said.

He lifted the
corpse's right arm and wiped away the thick crust of congealing blood.
 
The body smelled of blood, feces, and
perfume.
 
He saw that a grenade fragment
or bullet had sliced into the wrist and carved a furrow in the soft surface
flesh.
 
He sponged around the rough
edges.
 
The light wasn't good.
 
They were depending on external floodlights
shining through the window.
 
He removed a
flashlight from the right thigh pocket of his combat uniform and shone the beam
on the lifeless wrist.

The mark was
very small and partially obliterated by the furrow.
 
Nonetheless, most of the small tattoo could
be seen:
 
the letter "A"
surrounded by what looked like a circle of flowers.
 
He looked up at Fitzduane, and their eyes
met.
 
The Ranger colonel nodded and rose
to his feet.
 
He tossed the bloodstained
washcloth thought the open bathroom door and then bent down to pick up several
of the small cartridge cases lying beside the corpse.
 
He put them in his pocket.

They descended
the ladder and picked their way through the organized chaos of snaking
floodlight cables and departing security force vehicles.
 
Engines roared, and vehicle after vehicle
drove away.

"How do
you do it?" asked Kilmara.
 
Fitzduane smiled, spread his arms, and shrugged.

"Do you
know what Carl Gustavus Jung wrote?" said Kilmara.

"I didn't
know he was
call
Carl Gustavus."

"A rough
translation," said Kilmara, "and I quote:
 
‘There are no coincidences.
 
We think they're coincidences because our
model of the world doesn't account for them.
 
We're tied up in cause and effect.’"

"And now
you're gonna tell me Jung's nationality."

"Sharp
lad," said Kilmara with a smile, "so you tell me."

"Swiss."

They walked
across to the Mobile Surgery trailer.
 
Inside, an army doctor was playing cards with a Ranger lieutenant.
 
A bottle of Irish whiskey and two glasses
beside them displayed evidence of current use.
 
Kilmara removed two more glasses from a wall rack and poured generous
measures, then topped up the glasses of the doctor and the lieutenant.
 
"Souvenirs," he said.
 
"How are you feeling?"