Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Kadar, feeling at that moment, he thought, more exhilarated than General
MacArthur could ever have felt even when he had retaken the
gave the order to land.
At Kadar's
signal the waiting terrorists, laden with weapons and explosives, climbed down
scrambling nets into inflatable assault boats and headed for shore.
Kadar followed with Ziegle and his personal bodyguard.
As they landed on the jetty, they received a
message that a figure wearing the black combat gear of
Several bodies had been sighted as well.
So at last Fitzduane was dead.
Kadar felt a sense of relief at the news.
Although probably by instinct rather than
deliberation, Fitzduane had a bad habit of turning up at the wrong
moments.
News of his death was
comforting:
it was a good omen for the
mission.
*
*
*
*
*
The road to
Fitzduane resisted the urge to press the accelerator to the floor.
High speed would look suspicious, and anyway
the road surface was not in great shape.
He could now guess at some of the elements in the Hangman's plan.
In hindsight, making his move just after the
staff bus was off the island had been obvious.
The landing would be taking place right now.
The question was
,
were the Sacrificers being used as he feared?
Henssen was lying on his back, squeezed between Murrough and the left
side of the Volvo station wagon's wheelhousing.
He held de Guevain's strung longbow in his hands, and an AK-47 they had
found in the car rested between his knees.
He looked out through the rear window.
"We've got company.
Some kind of small twin-engine plane.
Maybe it's the good guys," he added
hopefully.
"I wouldn't bet on it," said Fitzduane.
"On the basis of the timing, I think
we're going to be between a rock and a hard place if we're not careful.
Does it look as if it's going to land?"
"Shit!" cried Henssen.
The Volvo had hit a pothole, and the AK-47 bounced and crashed back into
his balls.
Fitzduane turned his head quickly and saw what had happened.
"Silly place to keep a
weapon."
"That's a very unfunny remark," said Henssen, rubbing his
private parts with his free hand.
"The plane is banking by the looks of it.
It's probably going to circle until we get
out of the way.
If it's landing here, we're
screwing up its airstrip."
Fitzduane's eyes were fixed on the road ahead.
fast.
He could see a figure by the
gate.
"I know all the guards by
sight.
If we see one, then maybe we're
in time.
If it's something else" —
he glanced at de Guevain — "you're on.
Think you can do it from eighty meters?"
"We'll know soon enough."
De Guevain was wearing a checked keffiyeh that
he'd found in the car.
Fitzduane was
similarly attired.
The Frenchman's
manner was withdrawn and focused, and his hands were clasped around the slender
shaft of a heavy hunting arrow.
The figure in the animal mask up ahead waved at them with his left
hand.
His right hand was clasped around
the pistol grip of
a
Uzi submachine gun.
Fitzduane slewed the car to a halt, using the
hand brake to demonstrate a suitable degree of fishtailing.
The rear of the car was seventy-five meters
from the Sacrificer.
*
*
*
*
*
They'd done it, they'd actually done it, the Sacrificer on guard at the
main gate was thinking.
His father was a
Spanish industrialist who had prospered under the Franco regime but now felt it
expedient to keep a low profile.
He
spent more and more time pursuing various business interests — and women — in
His
younger son, Carlos, was something of a disappointment.
The lad lacked the realism necessary to
survive in this world, and the machismo.
He was, to be frank, an embarrassment.
until something could be worked out.
His
father did not spend much time thinking about what that solution might be.
He was a master practitioner of the ‘out of
sight, out of mind’ philosophy, and there were so many more enjoyable
distractions.
Carlos's hatred of his father created a void.
The camaraderie of the Sacrificers filled
that void and gave Carlos a sense of power and self-esteem which, up to that
time, he had very obviously lacked.
He
was impressed by his own daring.
Only
minutes before he had actually killed two human beings with cyanide.
Now he waited for the saboteurs of Phantom
Unit who had been assigned to blow the bridge.
He didn't know them by sight, but he had been briefed on the make and
registration number of their car, and he knew their estimated time of arrival.
The Volvo had stopped just out of easy shooting distance, as if it had
hit a rock or had some mechanical trouble.
Maybe it had a flat tire; the way it had slewed suggested that.
He made a thumbs-up sign to show that they
had taken the college successfully and walked forward to give them a hand.
The driver and the passenger got out, and the driver kicked the left rear
wheel in irritation.
The other man
opened the back of the station wagon and peered inside.
Carlos could see the tip of what looked like
a tire iron.
He was torn between going
to help and staying at his post as instructed.
He cupped his hands to shout that he would like to help but that he was
under orders.
The passenger stepped out from behind the car with something in his hands
that seemed pointed above Carlos's head.
His brain, pre-conditioned to see a spare wheel or a jack, rejected the
initial message of his eyes.
His brain
was still making an attempt to process what he was seeing when the arrow struck
the center of his chest, smashing through his ribs and penetrating his
lungs.
A second arrow followed almost
immediately and hit him lower in the abdomen.
He collapsed without a sound.
He
was thinking as he died that the day had gotten colder.
*
*
*
*
*
De Guevain was temporarily stunned by the consequences of his act.
His face lost all its color, and he stood,
unmoving, the bow dangling in his hands.
Fitzduane tore the bow from his grasp and threw it into the back of the
Volvo, then pushed de Guevain roughly into the passenger seat and slammed the
door after him.
With the tailgate still
open, he accelerated the car and roared through the main entrance into the
forecourt inside.
The place was deserted.
Several
cars stood there with their hoods open and engines wrecked.
"Do it very fucking fast," said Fitzduane.
Murrough, how knew the college layout, signaled Andreas to follow.
Together they ran around the back of the
college to where the jerry tunnel emerged.
Murrough, his .303 sniper rifle strapped to his back, had an SA-80 in
his hand with the fire selector switched to auto.
Andreas carried Fitzduane's pump-action
Remington and the Hawk grenade launcher.
The Hawk was, essentially, a giant semi-automatic two-handed weapon
loaded with twelve 40 mm grenades in a rotary magazine that it could discharge
in six seconds.
It was heavy and took
practice to use accurately, but as a close-assault weapon it was devastating.
They could only hope that the attack force had not yet made it out of the
tunnel.
It was the one location where
they might hold off a superior force.
They had been instructed not to fire, if possible, until Fitzduane had
secured the hall, where he knew the students normally assembled.
"Right now we've got surprise on our
side," he said, "but that's strictly a one-shot deal."
Murrough's heart gave a leap when he saw that the mouth of the jerry
tunnel was empty.
He was fifteen meters
away when two camouflaged figures emerged.
He hit the ground, and Kalashnikov fire sliced the air around him.
There was a double roar as Andreas's
Remington went into action.
A hail of
fire was returned from the tunnel, which had suddenly filled with men.
Murrough lay on the ground, the fire too intense to permit him to
move.
A grenade tumbled through the air
and blew a garden water butt to pieces beside him, drenching him.
Sick at heart, he knew they were too
late.
They couldn't hold the tunnel.
He felt his legs being pulled, and he slid backward over the gravel
path.
An accented voice told him to stop
being an idiot, and he began to struggle.
Stone splinters and earth cut his face; rounds sliced the ground where
he had been an instant before.
He
emerged behind the brick base of a greenhouse.
Andreas, panting with the effort, let go of Murrough's ankles.
"It seemed like you were glued
there," he said.
"I was," said Murrough.
The fire from the tunnel slackened, and four terrorists ran out.
Recovering quickly, Murrough dropped two with
an SA-80 burst, and Andreas
got
a
third with the Remington.
The fourth went to ground in the garden.
The firing from the tunnel mouth increased
again, and they knew another wave would emerge any moment.
There were too many to stop.
It was now just a matter of time.
"I think we're out of the surprise business," said Andreas.
"Maybe," said Murrough.
He racked his brain to recall what he knew of the garden and tunnel
layout.
There had to be some way to buy
some time.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane, followed by de Guevain, Henssen, and Judith Newman, headed
into the main building toward the assembly hall.
Judith had sprinted back to the dead guard at the gate to relieve him of
his Uzi and spare magazines.
Her eyes
had lit up when she saw the Israeli-made weapon.
She had learned to shoot with one on the
kibbutz before anyone had gotten around to teaching her to cook or sew, and
from her early teens she could outshoot most of her fellow sabras.
She caught up with the others as they moved
swiftly but cautiously through the long corridors that led to the hall.
Fitzduane had briefed them on what he remembered of the geography of the
place.
He was far from familiar with
much of the
details of the main public rooms remained in his mind.
The assembly hall, which doubled as a
theater, had a stage at one end and an L-shaped gallery equipped with an organ
at the other.
The main doors opened to
the right of the stage end.
The room,
which had two sections of seats divided by a central aisle, could accommodate
about two hundred and fifty.
There were
windows at the second-floor level, and you could see out through some of them
to the grounds at the rear.
He hoped
like hell Murrough and Andreas were not being targeted from a window
overhead.
He had forgotten to warn them
of that particular possibility.
There
was a second door on the other side of the stage, directly facing the main
doors.
There were no doors at the rear
of the room that he could recall, though stairs led to the gallery from that
end and the gallery itself had an exit at the second-floor level.