Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
"If possible, I'm not going to use the students in this fight.
I'm sure some of them have weapons training,
but unfortunately we don't know who we can trust, as our recent tragedy so
clearly shows.
Besides, whether they are
old enough to vote or whatever, I'm fed up with seeing kids who've had no
chance to live getting killed.
Keep one
thing in mind:
no strange faces.
If the face isn't one of ours, shoot it.
If you've any questions, they'll have to
wait.
Get to your posts.
Draker team, mount up.
Let's get the fuck out of here."
Fitzduane and de Guevain got into the front of the saboteurs' station
wagon, and the other four members of the group squeezed themselves flat in the
back.
Etan blew Fitzduane a kiss through
the window.
He almost seemed
,
she couldn't help noticing, to be smiling.
The son of a bitch, she thought.
Of course, danger is what this man is used
to; putting himself in harm's way is what he does.
War is what he is good at.
How will I react to danger
?
She wondered.
The next few hours would tell.
The image of the death of red-haired
Anne-Marie Fitzduane in the
there.
Death by
decapitation.
She imagined the
blade into her flesh and the shock and the agony and her blood fountaining, and
she felt sick with fear and horror.
Would this be her fate?
She
caressed the wooden stock of the Mauser she had been issued and resolved that
it would not.
She felt the adrenaline
flow, and with it, courage.
26
Outside Fitzduane's Castle — 1755 hours
The frogmen of Phantom Unit had trained in the relatively balmy, if
polluted, waters of the
Although they had been warned otherwise, the
clear skies and hot sun of that unusual Irish day had lulled them into a false
sense of familiarity with their environment.
It could almost have been the
The unpleasant reality of the near-freezing
temperatures of the
despite the wet suits all four men wore.
As the long swim progressed, the cold sapped the energies of the men,
and their responses slowed.
They would
make it, thought Giorgio Massana, Phantom Unit commander, but at a price.
Spare tanks of compressed air and other specialized equipment traveled
with them on a battery-powered underwater sled called a SeaMule.
The SeaMule was capable of pulling two men in
addition to its normal load, but there was a penalty to be paid in terms of
battery life, and the lack of physical activity as one was towed meant body
warmth drained away faster.
Massana
allowed only one man to be towed at a time, and then only for brief periods.
He had had batteries cut out on him before,
and he needed that equipment if he was to get into the castle.
There was no way they could pull the SeaMule
by themselves.
They had swum from the
Sabine
,
which was anchored off the headland.
Nearing the coastline they encountered shoals of seaweed dislodged by
recent storms, which in turn his numerous submerged rocks.
They had to proceed with the utmost care, and
their progress was labored.
Maneuvering
the SeaMule through this underwater obstacle course was both difficult and
exhausting.
It const them the life of one man.
Alonzo, a fellow Sardinian and the best
swimmer in the group, was smashed into a kelp-disguised rock when the undertow
threw the sled temporarily out of control.
There was no discernible noise and little blood, but the skull of the
one person in the world whom Massana really cared about was crushed
effortlessly as the
muscles.
They left Alonzo floating
semi-invisible in the seaweed.
In his
black wet suit he already looked like part of the undersea world.
The undertow smashed him again and again
against the rocks, and brain matter leached from the ripped hood.
They came ashore on seaweed-covered rocks with the gray mass of
Fitzduane's castle above them.
Near
invisible against the rocks in their black suits, they rested for a couple of
minutes.
As he gathered his strength,
Massana wondered why a seaborne assault by a specialized group was necessary
against only three or four unarmed civilians who would certainly not be
expecting an attack.
He had been briefed
on the likely presence of Hugo Fitzduane and two people who worked for him in
various capacities and who were sometimes in the castle.
A radio report from Draker had warned that
there might be some guests.
To Massana,
such targets were scarcely worthy of his team's special skills.
They certainly weren't worth losing Alonzo
for.
He felt a sudden hatred for Kadar;
then his training reasserted itself.
He
signaled his two companions to move.
They unpacked the assault equipment.
Three rubber-coated grapnels trailing ropes hissed from their compressed
carbon dioxide-powered launchers and lodged inside the castle defenses.
Massana and one other frogman began to
climb.
The third frogman, a silenced Ingram
at the ready, surveyed the keep and battlements, ready to lay down suppressing
fire.
Massana reached an aperture in the battlements and vanished from view,
closely followed by the second frogman.
A hand beckoned.
The third
frogman, who would now be covered by the first two, slung his Ingram and began
to climb.
Bloodlust rose in him as he relived past kills and anticipated the
shedding of more blood in the imminent future.
There was nothing
so
exciting as the taking of
human life.
He reached the battlements
and dropped between two crenellations to land in a crouch on the parapet.
He moved to unsling his weapon and at the
same time checked his surroundings.
Massana and the second frogman lay in pools of blood to his left.
A distinguished-looking man in a fishing
jacket with a bloodied sword in his hand stood over them.
Too late the third frogman realized that the
cuff of the hand he had seen had been dark brown and not black.
He almost had the Ingram in firing position
when the point of a halberd emerged from his chest.
The Bear looked down at the dead frogman.
"Any more?" he asked Noble.
Noble stood there with a blood katana — a Japanese samurai sword from
Fitzduane's collection — in his hands, impressed at the power of the weapon and
the simplicity with which it killed.
"Not for the moment."
The Bear put his foot on the frogman and wrenched the halberd free.
It took effort.
He had thrust with all his force.
He waited for a few moments to get his breath
back before he spoke.
"They've got some kind of powered platform down there," he
said.
"I'd like to check it out, but
it would be wiser not to until the others get back."
Noble nodded in agreement.
He was
staring at his bloodstained hands as if mesmerized.
"I've been involved in the antiterrorism
business for years," he said, "but it's all been theory.
Reports, papers, meetings, seminars — none of
them prepares you for this."
He
gestured toward the crumpled bodies.
"They'd have killed you if you'd hesitated," said the
Bear.
"Believe me."
"I do."
"The Bear looked over in the direction of Draker.
"I wonder how Fitzduane and the team are
getting on."
*
*
*
*
*
Aboard The
Sabine
— 1806 hours
Kadar stood on the ‘monkey island,’ the small open deck on the roof of
the Sabine's enclosed bridge, which represented the best observation point on
the boat, short of climbing the three-legged radio mast rising above him.
He was looking through powerful
tripod-mounted naval binoculars.
He
could see the aircraft but not yet hear it.
As it flew closer, he made a positive identification.
It was the Islander carrying the airborne Phantom
Unit — Phantom Air.
Ziegle, his radio operator, who was wearing a Russian back-mounted
military radio, confirmed it:
"Phantom Air reporting in, sir.
They say that the bridge has been blown.
The bridge unit seems to be on the way back to Draker by vehicle as
arranged.
They want to know if they
should land immediately."
"Any news from
"They reported arriving at the base of the castle," said
Ziegle, "but nothing since then.
The signal strength was not good.
The castle walls may have interrupted further transmission."
Kadar was not overly concerned by the reply.
Taking out Fitzduane's castle was a
sideshow.
The key was the securing of
Draker and the hostages.
With the
hostages under his control, any other problems were matters of detail.
"Any news from Draker?"
Ziegle clasped his earphones to his ears and bent his head in
concentration.
His gesture reminded
Kadar that however brilliant his planning, his acceptance of Soviet-made radio
equipment from the Libyans for interunit communication had been a mistake.
Ziegle's heavy back-mounted set was powerful
enough, but the smaller radios used by the field units were on the margin of
acceptability.
Fortunately their short
range and poor quality would not matter once they were all positioned in
Draker, and for other communications, such as with the authorities, they had
the backpack unit and the powerful Japanese-made ship's radio.
The error was irritating but not serious.
Ziegle looked up.
"Draker is
secure.
The leader of the Sacrificers
reports no casualties on his side.
All
the guards are dead.
Two of the faculty
members had to be killed.
The remaining
faculty and all students are under guard in the assembly hall.
They are moving on to the next phase."
Kadar felt a surge of relief, though his face remained impassive.
His farsighted decision to use a suborned
group of students had paid off.
The
security people had never expected an attack from within.
Kadar believed that a strong force such as his would probably have
succeeded in capturing Draker without internal help, but the risks would have
been much greater.
Help could have been
summoned, and the weak points in the sea landing could have been shown up as
fatal.
The fact was that while
disembarking, the terrorists were vulnerable to even a small force on the
cliffs above, and they were even more vulnerable while ascending the tunnel
that led from Draker's small jetty to the college buildings at the top.
Getting up that tunnel against any sort of
armed opposition would have meant, at best, heavy casualties.
The advantages of the sea to land a large force were overwhelming, and
his use of the Sacrificers backed up by Phantom Air — an excess of caution, it
now seemed — had compensated for the risks.
Ziegle was looking at him.
"Tell the Sacrificers' leader congratulations," said
Kadar.
"Ask him to confirm that the
top end of the tunnel is secure.
Tell
Phantom Air to circle the island to see if anyone is out there and then to land
in ten minutes."
Ziegle spoke into his radio microphone.
Kadar watched the Islander bank to starboard and then, at a height of
about a thousand feet,
commence
a slow perusal of the
island.
"Reconnaissance is seldom
wasted," he said to himself, using the old army adage.
"
the
jetty access tunnel is secure,"
said Ziegle, "but there is only one man on guard there.
Another man is on guard at the main
entrance.
Sacrificer leader himself
needs the other three to guard the hostages.
He requests that you land reinforcements as soon as possible."