Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Slowly he felt
himself being drawn back into the castle, and then the Bear was shaking him
gently by the shoulder and talking into the radio, and he could hear the faint
sound of suppressed aircraft engines overhead.
*
*
*
*
*
Above Fitzduane's
"I don't
believe it," said the pilot.
"It's nearly the end of the twentieth century, and there is a siege
going on that's straight from the
Middle
Ages."
"Not
exactly the Middle Ages," said Kilmara.
Two lines of heavy-caliber tracer curved out of the darkness and
converged on the castle.
"Green
tracer, 12.7-millimeter," said the pilot.
He had flown forward air control in
"Kind of makes me feel nostalgic.
We're out of range at this height, thought a
few thousand feet lower it'll be no day at the beach.
I wonder what else they've got."
"I expect
we'll find out," said Kilmara.
"Get Ranger HQ on the radio."
The transport
twins and their cargoes of Rangers had been left to circle out of sight and
earshot over the mainland while the Optica went ahead to do what it was good
at:
observe.
They were flying at five thousand feet above
the island for a preliminary reconnaissance while Kilmara tried to establish
radio contact with Fitzduane below
.
And to determine
the scale and location of what he was up against.
Already he
realized that he had underestimated the opposition.
The sight of the
Sabine
offshore told him how the Hangman's main force had arrived,
and that suggested very strongly that the
The Rangers
had nearly been caught off guard completely.
As it was, most of his force was more than two hours away even if it was
released immediately — which he doubted would happen.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane's Castle — 2307 hours
Sheltered in
the storeroom off the main tunnel, the surviving students felt more than heard
the initial noises of combat above and around them.
The subsequent sound of cannon fire almost
directly overhead was more immediate and menacing.
It brought home the unpleasant thought that
they were not out of danger yet — and that the defenders of the castle might
lose.
The prospect of being held hostage
again by people as ruthless as these terrorists accelerated the process of
selecting volunteers to join in the fighting.
There had at
first been some resentment at Fitzduane's decision to
kept
them unarmed and away from the firing line, but the logic of his reasoning soon
won out.
They had to face the
unpalatable fact that the initial threat had come from their own student body —
and there was not guarantee that one or two or more Sacrificers might not be
left.
The discussion of how to resolve
this dilemma had
begin
enthusiastically but not very
productively.
Things changed when the
Swede, Sig Bengtquist, a mathematician and a distant relative of the Nobel
family, started to speak.
Up to now he
had been silent, but the notepad he seemed never to be without, even when
dragged unwillingly into some sporting activity, was covered with neat jottings
in his microscopic handwriting.
"There is
no foolproof way of ensuring that we do not select a Sacrificer by
accident," he said.
"But I
think we can establish some orderly criteria to improve our chances of choosing
the right people."
"You've
worked out a mathematical formula," said a voice.
"Yes,"
said another.
"We're going to draw
the lucky winners out of a hat or roll dice to see who gets a chance to be shot
at."
There was
strained laughter.
They had decidedly
mixed feelings about experiencing any further the lethal realities of
combat.
Some were terrified at the
thought.
Others were itching for a
chance to hit back and be players and not merely pawns in this game of life and
death.
What they had seen earlier in the
day — the slaughter in the college — had left them with no illusions about
glory or the supposed glamour of war.
"Go on,
Sig," said the deep baritone voice of Osman Ba, a Sudanese from the
northern part of the country and the Swede's best friend.
From the contrast in their coloring they were
known as “Day and Night.”
There were
nods of agreement from the others.
There
were about fifty students in the room — representing half as many nationalities
— and since there weren't enough chairs, most were sitting on boxes or on rugs
on the floor.
Empty sandwich plates and
glasses were piled next to the door.
Several of the students, worn out by the excitement of the day and the
post-stress reaction, had fallen asleep.
The others all looked tired, but what they were trying to do
held
their interest, and their eyes, though mostly
red-rimmed from strain and fatigue, were keen and alert.
"I have
drawn up a matrix," said Sig, "a spread sheet if you're
accountancy-minded, cross-referencing all who have volunteered to fight with
the criteria.
As it happens, this
approach produces sixteen names, so we still have to find some way to whittle
down the list to the ten names we've been asked for.
I would suggest nothing more scientific than
reviewing the sixteen names and, after any objections, putting all the
remaining ones into a hat and pulling out the first ten."
"Makes
sense," said Osman Ba.
"What are
these criteria?" asked one of the Mexicans.
"I think it's only fair that we should
know how these names have been selected."
"Of
course," said Sig.
"The points
are mostly obvious.
All additional
suggestions are welcome."
There was
silence in the room before Sig spoke again.
They could hear the sounds of gunfire and more explosions.
The prospect of leaving their safe
underground haven was looking less appealing by the minute.
"Not a
member of the ski club," said Sig.
"All the known Sacrificers were, you will recall."
"That
lets me out," said a Polish student, "but it doesn't make me a
Sacrificer."
"Eighteen
or over," continued Sig, "familiar with weapons, good health, and
eyesight and no serious physical defects, good reflexes, good English — that
seems to be the common language among the existing defenders.
Not an only child."
The list went on for another dozen
points.
"And someone we all
instinctively trust.
Gut feel," he
added.
He read out
the sixteen names.
Three were
vetoed.
At Sig's suggestion, no reasons
were given.
The remaining thirteen names
were placed in the now-empty bread bin.
Three minutes later the chosen ten looked at each other in the knowledge
that before dawn one or some or all of them might be wounded, even dead.
Sig was
elected leader of the volunteers.
"Why only
ten of us, I wonder?" asked Osman Ba.
"They could have asked for more.
Why not twelve like the apostles?"
"One of
the twelve was a traitor," said Sig.
"I guess Fitzduane is trying to improve the odds."
He was reflecting that his little group was
about as multinational as it could be.
Would it help that traditional enemies — Russian and Pole, Kuwaiti and
Israeli, French and German among them — were now on the same side?
Did it make any difference what nationality
you were when you were dead?
His mouth was
dry, and he swallowed.
Osman was doing
the same thing, he noticed.
That made him feel
marginally better.
*
*
*
*
*
Above Fitzduane's Castle — 2307 hours
"Quite a
party," said Kilmara into his helmet microphone.
"About
bloody time," answered Fitzduane.
The signal strength was good, and though his tone was professionally
neutral, the relief in his voice was palpable.
"I hope you've brought some friends.
The Hangman is here in strength."
"Situation
report," said Kilmara.
Fitzduane told
him, his summary succinct and almost academic, detailing nothing of the fear
and pain and the gut-churning tension of combat.
"Can you
hold?" asked Kilmara.
"I'll
have to locate my DZ well north of you or the 12.7s won't leave much of
us.
It could take an hour or longer to
link up with you."
"We'll
hold," said Fitzduane, "but it's getting hairy.
We don't have enough bodies to man the full
perimeter properly.
We may have to fall
back to the keep."
"Very
well," said Kilmara.
A heat
signature blossomed on the IR-18 screen.
Reflexes already primed, virtually simultaneously the pilot punched a
switch to ripple-fire flares and, banking away from the oncoming missile, put
the Optica into a series of violent maneuvers culminating in a steep dive.
"A
fucking SAM," said the pilot seconds later when it was clear that the
heat-seeking missile had been successfully decoyed by the intense heat of the
flares.
"Who would have thought
it?
A heat-seeking
SAM-7 at a guess.
Good thing we
got away or we'd be fireworks."
"Brace
yourself
for more fancy flying," said Kilmara.
"We're going to have to keep their heads
down during the jump."
He broke off
to bark instructions to the two Ranger transport aircraft, which were preparing
for a run to the drop zone.
In response,
the lead plane peeled off to starboard, leaving the second Islander alone
heading toward the DZ.
It was out of
range of the heavy machine guns, but a SAM-7, what the Russians called a
Strela
or “Arrow” — has a range of up to
4,500 meters, depending on the model, and the slow Islander, low and steady for
the drop, would be a tempting target.
A
possible tactic was to fly very low because a SAM-7 isn't at its best below 150
meters, but there was the small matter of allowing the parachutes time to
open.
In addition, budget constraints
had meant that automatic flare dispensers weren't fitted to the transports,
though conventional Very pistols were carried and might be of some help.
Kilmara raised
Fitzduane again for a brief discussion of tactics and the disposition of the
Hangman's forces.
The primary targets
would be the missile position and the heavy-machine-gun emplacements.
The other threats would have to wait.
Unfortunately
they wouldn't.
As the Optica prepared
for its strafing run and the Ranger transport flew toward the DZ, the Hangman
launched another attack on the castle, with the tank spearheading the thrust.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane's Castle — 2318 hours
The tank was
advancing very slowly.
The weight of its
armor alone was unlikely to account for its pace, nor would there be any
tactical reason for advancing at a crawl, so either the machine wasn't working
properly or there were more unpleasant surprises in store.
At 150 meters,
Andreas opened fire with the Hawk, acutely conscious that he had only four
armor-piercing rounds left.
A
Kalashnikov bullet ricocheted through the arrow slit as he fired the first
projectile, and he missed completely.
Shaken, he aimed again.
When the
tank was about 120 meters away, he fired.
This time the round punched through the armor plate and exploded.
Still the tank came on.
At eighty
meters Andreas fired two more armor-piercing rounds.
One 40 mm grenade hit the facing armor plate
close to where it butted against the side armor.
The explosion blew the welding, peeling open
the front of the tank like the lid of a sardine can.
Still the tank came on, and only then were
the slow speed of the vehicle and its resistance to the armor-piercing grenades
explained.
Behind the steel plate was a
second multilayer wall of concrete blocks and sandbags, their sheer physical
mass impossible to penetrate with the light weaponry at the defenders'
disposal.