Games of the Hangman (92 page)

There was a
low moan from behind the angle of the sandbags that concealed Etan.
 
The bags were arranged in a double zigzagging
line along the battlements to minimize the effects of exploding hand grenades
or mortar bombs.

Henssen turned
the angle.

Etan lay on
her back, her hands gripping her right thigh.
 
Blood, black in the darkness, welled through
her fingers.

*
   
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*
         
*
         
*

Outside Fitzduane's Castle — 2242
hours

Abu Rafa,
commander of Malabar Unit —the unit responsible for the attack on the gatehouse
— could scarcely contain his frustration.
 
In his considered professional opinion, Kadar, who might be brilliant at
planning terrorist incidents and kidnaps, was making a mess of a classic but
straightforward infantry problem:
 
the
capture of a weakly held strongpoint by superior military forces.

The correct solution
would have been to attack immediately on landing while the momentum of the
initial assault was with them and when daylight would have allowed them to
apply their superior firepower to full effect — and to hell with casualties,
which wouldn’t have been heavy anyway in a sudden, forceful attack.

Bringing up the heavy machine guns, waiting until dark, and using
such gadgetry as the Powerchutes and the tank-tractor struck Abu Rafa as a load
of pretentious shit.
 
Ironically
it reminded him of the warnings of his onetime archenemy, he of the black
eyepatch, General Moshe Dayan of
Israel
.
 
Dayan had become disturbed at the tendency of
the Israeli Army after the War of Independence to try for clever tactics
instead of forcing home the attack — what he called the ‘Jewish solution.’
 
Most times, Dayan argued, what counted was
less
how
you attacked than the spirit
and force with which you did it; the intention should be to ‘exhaust the
mission,’ to keep at it until you succeeded and not fuck around trying to be
clever.

Abu Rafa
thought that Dayan, may he rot in hell forever, was right, Allah knows.
 
The accursed Israelis had proved it often
enough — and unfortunately by combining the best of both approaches.

The Malabar
commander's frustration was further exacerbated by the latest
developments:
 
the tank-tractor, whose
attack should have coincided with the Powerchute assault, had broken down less
than five hundred meters from the gatehouse.
 
The fault wasn't serious and would mean only a fifteen-minute delay, but
it occurred after the Powerchutes were beyond recall so the benefits of a
combined strike had been lost.

The good news
was that the defenders' volume of fire was very light and not accurate, except,
it appeared, at close range — as the sapper had learned the hard way.
 
Apart from him, there had been no casualties
in Malabar.
 
Seeing the weakness of the
opposition and fed up with freezing in the chill night air, in what by Irish
standards was a comparatively balmy evening, the commandos of Malabar were raring
to go.

At first Abu
Rafa thought it must be some trick of the light, and then it became clear that
what he was seeing was really happening:
 
the portcullis, that much more serious obstacle than the now-destroyed
heavy oak gates, was rising.
 
A sally by the defenders?
 
Most unlikely.
 
A trick?
 
They wouldn't dare, given their inferior firepower.
 
No, either they were surrendering or the
incoming fire had affected the portcullis mechanism.
 
Or maybe the Sacrificer was still alive and
was working inside in their behalf.

Whatever the
reason, it was visible proof of which side Allah was backing.
 
Abu Rafa looked at his Russian radio and for
a second debated getting Kadar's permission to attack — and then frustration
won out.

"Malabar
first section," he shouted, "follow me!"
 
With a ferocity that General Dayan himself would
have admired, he ran forward, firing from the hip, followed by the shouting,
cheering me of the first section, automatic rifles blazing.
 
They stormed through the gateway and were
spreading to the left and right to secure the gatehouse and the battlements
when Abu Rafa first had the thought that maybe Allah was hedging his bets.

The courtyard
was suddenly illuminated by floodlights.
 
Straight ahead of him on the battlements there were sandbagged
emplacements.
 
A burst of fire hit him in
the chest, severing ribs and blowing apart his lungs.
 
He saw three of his men disintegrate as a
tongue of flame followed by a shattering roar burst forth from an opening in a
pile of sandbags.

The last sound
he heard before his body was shredded by the second concealed cannon at
point-blank range was that of the portcullis slamming shut.

*
         
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*

Fitzduane's Castle — 2250 hours

Eleven
terrorists had gotten in — rather more than had been planned for — before the
portcullis was dropped back into place.
 
As a killing ground the bawn was ideal, and for the first few seconds
surprise was total.
 
Facing the
terrorists were the two cannon manned by the Bear and de Guevain.
 
Fitzduane, Judith Newman, and Henssen fired
from the battlements.
 
Noble and Andreas
cut off the rear.

Seven
terrorists died in the defenders' first hail of fire before the lights were
shot out, and two more were caught by fléchette rounds fired from a murder
hole
by Andreas as the scrabbled at the portcullis and
called to their comrades outside.

The two
surviving terrorists had gone in the same direction but were now on different
levels.
 
One had made it to the
battlements about twenty meters from where Etan lay wounded and unconscious,
the bleeding now stopped temporarily by a tourniquet that had been applied by
Henssen.
 
The other, immediately below,
had made it to the cover of the outhouse — the one that had been used as a test
target for the cannon — located almost immediately under his comrade's hiding
place.
 
He was using the windows and
apertures to shoot from, and his short, professional bursts were
disconcertingly well placed.
 
The Bear
and de Guevain were pinned down.
 
They
couldn't get around the front of the cannon to reload without exposing
themselves to the crossfire from one of the two terrorist positions.

Andreas had
released his loaded fléchette rounds.
 
The next 40 mm grenades in the Hawk were dual-purpose armor
piercing.
 
He checked the ammunition
reserve.
 
After he had fired the two in
the weapon, he would have two armor-piercing left.
 
Most of the ammunition supply consisted of
the standard M406 HE (High Explosive), although there still remained some other
specialized rounds for specific applications.

Fitzduane was
on the battlements across from the terrorists.
 
The sandbags were now working in the terrorists' favor.
 
The infiltrator on the parapet was well
concealed behind the zigzagging fortifications and was well positioned to sweep
most of the bawn with fire.
 
More
seriously, if he could hold his position, he would be joined by reinforcements
climbing up that section of the wall.
 
It
was beginning to look to Fitzduane as if his plan to whittle down the
opposition in a killing ground might backfire.

Fitzduane
spoke into the radio.
 
"Harry,
what's that armored tractor of theirs up to?"

"It's
halted about five hundred meters away."
 
Nobel peered through the night sight.
 
"There are a couple of people working on it, so I guess it broke
down.
 
Probably caused
by all that weight.
 
I wouldn't
count on its staying that way for long.
 
And by the way, we've only got four rounds of armor-piercing left."

"Have you
a shot at either of our visitors?"

"Without moving, negative.
 
What us to give it a try?"

"No,"
said Fitzduane.
 
"You and Andreas stay
where you are and hold that gate.
 
Use
the SA-80 on single shot, and see if you can take out the guys working on the
tank.
 
We need to buy some time."
 
Fitzduane clicked the radio to another
channel.
 
"Check in, Henssen."

"Etan
needs help," answered Henssen.
 
"I'm okay."

"You've
got a hostile about twenty meters away, gatehouse direction," said
Fitzduane.

"I
know," said Henssen.
 
"I'm
going to take him out."

"No,"
said Fitzduane.
 
"No crawling around
corners yet.
 
Use the Molotov
cocktails.
 
I'm sending Judith along to
help."

There was the
explosion of a grenade from behind the battlement sandbags facing Fitzduane,
followed by a burst of AK-47 fire.
 
There
was a pause of about thirty seconds, and the routing was repeated.

"I think
out visitor is coming my way," said Henssen into the radio.
 
"He's grenading each zig and zag as he
comes."

"Give
ground," said Fitzduane.

"Why do
you think we're still alive?" cried Henssen.
 
"But it's slow pulling Etan.
 
If he rushes us, we're fucked."

"If he
rushes you, blow his head off."

"Hugo,"
said Murrough, "I'm within a whisper of a clear shot.
 
When he next raises his head, I'll get
him."

"Jesus,"
said Fitzduane, "where the hell are you?"

"Top of
the keep," said Murrough.
 
"Top of the dugout, in fact."

Judith slipped
in beside Henssen, smelling of poteen and gasoline from the bag of Molotov
cocktails she carried.
 
"Get her out
of here," she said to Henssen, who hesitated.
 
"Now!" she whispered urgently.
 
Henssen did as he was told.
 
He crawled away, dragging the unconscious
Etan along the gritty stone behind him.

Judith lit two
of the Molotov cocktails and tossed them over the angled wall of sandbags,
where they burst further down the battlements.
 
She lit two more and threw them.
 
A line of flame lit up the night, exposing two attackers who were
climbing through the crenellations behind where the terrorist was concealed.

Fitzduane and
Murrough fired instantly, hitting the same man.
 
Already dead, he collapsed forward into the burning gasoline.
 
The second climber died a second later when
Judith took his head off with a burst from her Uzi.
 
The original terrorist, his keffiyeh and
camouflage a mass of flame, ran screaming along the battlements toward Judith a
fighting knife in his hand and all caution driven from his body by the intense
pain.

There was a
double stab of flame from a shotgun, and the burning terrorist was hurled back
against the sandbags, his lower body a bloody, wet mass.
 
Katia Maurer reloaded the shotgun and went
back to tending Etan.
 
Judith replaced
the empty magazine on her Uzi and tried to stop shaking.

Henssen took
the lighter from her trembling hands and lit a succession of Molotov cocktails
and sent them hurtling down to the base of the battlements.
 
There were screams and cries from below.
 
Trough a firing slit figures could be seen
retreating into the darkness.
 
One
dropped after Murrough fired from the dugout roof.
 
Judith crawled along the battlements and
swung two Molotov cocktails tied to a length of electrical wire through the
windows of the outhouse below, turning the remaining terrorist's hiding place
into a furnace.
 
Seconds passed, and
then, with a cry, a burning figure ran out into the combined gunfire of
Fitzduane and Judith.

Suddenly, as
if by agreement between two opposing forces, the shooting stopped, and there
was an almost complete silence.
 
Fitzduane became aware of the sound of the sea and of the wind as it
blew across the battlements, and he could hear the hiss as the flames
encountered the wetness of body tissue and blood.
 
He could hear the cries of the wounded
outside the castle.
 
By the light of the
nearly spent Molotov cocktails he could see bodies littering the bawn below,
where the Bear and Christian de Guevain had emerged form their sandbag
emplacement and were already halfway through loading the cannon.

He became
aware of something else, a voice repeating something again and again.
 
It seemed to make no sense; there was no one
there.
 
He sat down and shook his head.
 
The voice continued.
 
He could see himself as if her were detached
from his body and floating in the darkness.
 
He looked down, and he could see the castle spread out below and the
fires burning inside it and outside the walls.