Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
The
peeled-back armor and the close range did offer some possibilities.
Andreas lowered his aim.
Perhaps he could knock out a wheel or disable
the steering mechanism.
His last
armor-piercing round seemed to have little effect, but three high-explosive
grenades fired in quick succession from less than forty meters at the right
front wheel of the armored tractor jammed a steering rod and forced the vehicle
marginally out of alignment with the gate.
Still the
vehicle came on.
Firing was now
incessant on all sides.
The terrorists
sensed that they were close to breaching the castle, and the defenders, casting
aside all attempts at restraint, used their night vision-equipped SA-80s and
full firepower to devastating effect.
It wasn't
enough.
Six terrorists died in the hail
of accurate automatic rifle fire before the remainder realized what they must
be up against and sought physical cover — but then sheer numbers began to
tell.
A gap in the clouds meant that
moonlight illuminated the battleground for a few critical minutes.
Windows and firing slits could be seen as black
rectangles against the gray mass of the castle walls.
Accurate automatic rifle fire kept the
defenders pinned down while the tank prepared to advance to point-blank range,
where it would detonate the explosives it carried on a boom.
Keeping
Fitzduane's castle between it and the SAM-7 position, the Optica screamed low
over the sea at near-zero height, causing Murrough on the roof of the dugout to
duck as the futuristic-looking aircraft flashed above him before it climbed at
the last moment and then banked and dived.
The SAM-7 fired a split second before a stream of tracer bullets
followed by rockets blew the entire missile crew to pieces and the launcher
into the undergrowth.
The SAM-7 had
been aimed at the Ranger transport carrying out its low level drop on the north
side of the island.
Six Rangers had
jumped before the missile, traveling at one and a half times the speed of
sound, hit the port engine.
The
high-explosive head ignited on contact, blasting the engine and wing off the
aircraft and setting fire to the fuel tanks.
The sky lit up, and the flaming mass, raining debris, knifed its way
through the night air and exploded against the hillside, mercifully cutting
short the agonies of the pilot and copilot and the remaining two Rangers still
aboard.
One more Ranger was killed by a
piece of red-hot engine cowling as he swung from his parachute.
Five Rangers,
including both members of the
When they linked up with Lieutenant Harty, the unit commander, checked
in by radio with Kilmara.
Then he spoke
into his helmet microphone.
"Let's
do it, lads," he said.
"Time for them to pay the bill."
Spread out in
combat formation, faces blackened, heavily laden with weapons, ammunition, and
equipment, the unit moved toward the action.
The sound of firing, the crump of grenades, the arcing of
tracers,
and a burning glow indicated with brutal simplicity
the location of the battleground.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane's Castle — 2338 hours
Andreas loaded
his last two high-explosive grenades.
The noise inside the gatehouse was deafening.
Beside him, Harry Noble,
reinforced now by the Bear and de Guevain, fired burst after burst at the
elusive, threatening figures outside.
The terrorists had learned from their earlier casualty rate and now made
use of every scrap of cover, including the lumbering shape of the tank.
Their fire had increased in accuracy and was
backed by the heavy machine guns, which made accurate defense nearly impossible
even when a clear target could be made out.
The tank was
less than twenty meters away — it was now obvious that the boom with the
explosive charge was inside some sort of protective metal casing — when Andreas
released his very last grenade.
The tank
lurched as if it were human.
The right
wheel and steering rods had been blown away completely.
Already veering to the right of the gate
before the final grenade hit, the tank now slewed off the road completely and
tottered over on its side.
Andreas and
Noble gave a cheer.
"Down!"
shouted the Bear, pushing Andreas to the floor.
The entire building rocked as the boom charge exploded.
The blast funneled through firing slits and
murder holes, throwing Noble, who had
reacted
a shade
too slowly, against the portcullis winding mechanism.
The main gear wheel tore open his body in a
dozen places, killing him instantly.
The
Bear glanced through a murder hole.
The
main force of the blast had been dissipated against the thick walls of the
bawn.
The
portcullis,
though twisted and bent and bearing the scars of the earlier RPG-7 assault, was
still intact.
He checked the castle approach,
where the wrecked tank, now reduced to twisted mass of hot metal, lay to one
side.
As he watched, thick smoke,
billowing from a row of smoke grenades, began to obscure the access road to the
portcullis.
The temporary lull in the
firing from the terrorists in front of the castle ceased, and yet again
automatic fire thudded off the castle walls and whine through the firing slits.
A roaring
shape, a Land Rover, shot out of the smoke and smashed into the
portcullis.
The Bear glimpsed a figure
jumping from it just before impact, and again he flung Andreas to the floor.
This time the
force of the explosion was truly horrific in its immediacy and intensity.
The floor heaved and ripped open, revealing
the mangled remains of the portcullis below.
It was no longer an effective barrier.
Dazed and breathless from the blast and unable to respond, the Bear
watched helplessly as figures ran through the open gateway.
He heard
running footsteps on the stairs outside, and a hand grenade was thrown into the
room.
The small black object bounced
across the floor before the Bear's eyes, coming to a halt less than two meters
from him.
It seemed to pause before
toppling over through the crack in the floor and exploding a spit second later.
A
camouflage-clad figure, the keffiyeh around his neck wet with blood from a long
slash on his right cheek, burst into the room, firing an AK-47.
Lying on the floor just behind him and out of
sight, de Guevain, who had been reloading, grabbed a cavalry saber and slashed
the terrorist across the back of the knees.
The terrorist pitched forward, his automatic rifle dropping from his
hands.
Andreas, also sprawled on the
floor, extended his SA-80 with one hand and pressed the muzzle against the
terrorist's neck.
The three-round burst
exploded the man's head and filled the room with a red mist.
A second
grenade was lobbed into the room, but in his excitement the terrorist in the
doorway had forgotten to pull the pin.
The Bear, still shaken but forced into action by the desperate need to
survive, seized it, pulled the pin, and threw it back through the doorway.
The terrorist
concealed there couldn’t run for cover down the narrow circular stairs because
of the men behind him.
There wasn't time
to throw the grenade back into the room.
He chose the only option he could think of and dived into the room away
from the grenade, rolled, and came up firing.
Rounds pumped into Harry Noble's dead body.
The grenade exploded at the top of the
circular staircase, temporarily blocking access to the room.
Andreas shot the terrorist in the stomach
before he had time to change his point of aim.
De Guevain ran
to the concealed door that led to the tunnel and swung it open.
Andreas and the Bear grabbed what extra
weapons and ammunition they could and, with a last glance at Harry Noble's
body, ran for safety.
De Guevain
followed, pulling the massive door behind him and ramming home the series of
bolts and securing bars.
They had bought
some time at the cost of yet another life — but the Hangman's forces were now
inside the castle.
*
*
*
*
*
Above Fitzduane's Castle — 2351 hours
The
Sabine
had moved to within five hundred
meters of the shore and then had opened fire on the keep with a pair of heavy
machine guns.
Murrough had been swept
off the dugout roof by this concentration of fire from an unexpected quarter,
and his body now lay outside the castle walls.
Circling high
above the battlefield, his ammunition low, Kilmara had expended the last of his
ordnance on this new threat.
In two
low-level attacks he had put the heavy machine guns out of action and holed the
ship below the waterline.
The cattle
boat, essentially a series of open ramp-linked decks with the engine and crew
quarters at the stern, had no bulkheads, and seawater had rushed in through the
holes.
The
Sabine
was sinking.
The few
surviving crew had headed toward land in an inflatable.
With the Optica's external weaponry out of
ammunition, Kilmara instructed the pilot to fly low.
He killed the remaining three survivors with
his automatic rifle, using the Kite night sight and shooting through a firing
port in the door.
The SAM-7
missile was out of commission, and there was no sign that the terrorists had
brought more than one unit, so the Optica was now operating as it had been
built to — as a combined observation aircraft and command post.
Kilmara's eyes were fixed mainly on the IR
viewer screen, with intermittent glances at the flames and tracers and other
graphic signs of the intense combat below.
Keeping above the effective range of the surviving land-based heavy
machine guns, the Optica circled the combat zone, monitoring developments,
providing precise enemy position locations for the advancing Rangers, and
keeping in touch with Fitzduane,
and the remaining Ranger transport, which was still circling, ready to drop its
force as soon as the heavy machine guns were silenced.
As commander,
Kilmara found that the hardest part of any combat situation was the necessity
of remaining aloof from the main action while his men fought and, all too
often, died.
He had a near-overwhelming
desire to parachute from his transparent bubble in the sky, but he kept it
suppressed and concentrated on what the modern military termed ‘C3I’:
command, control, communications, and
intelligence.
Or, as he had once termed
it:
"Fucking around with a fiddle
while
If only the
Rangers on the ground could clear the heavy machine guns out of the way, then
he could bring the balance of his force into action.
"If only" — a pretty useless phrase
in the real world.
Kilmara
pressed the radio transmit button to call the Rangers on the ground but after a
moment released it without speaking.
His
men knew full well what to do.
*
*
*
*
*
Ironically,
considering the arrival of the Rangers on the island and the recent news that
regular army reinforcements were at last on the way — although they would not
arrive for several hours — the situation on the ground had never looked
worse.
The terrorists were now inside
the castle.
They had taken the gatehouse
and occupied the outhouses and battlements of the bawn.
Fitzduane had just made the decision to
abandon the great hall and consolidate in the keep and the tunnel below.
He hadn't much choice, since the terrorists
occupied the floors below the great hall.
Fitzduane's
original force had been whittled down to seven effectives, including the two
middle-aged women who were primarily non-combatants.
Several of the seven were wounded, lightly in
most cases but with the inevitable toll on energy and stamina.
Henssen had lost the use of one arm.
Ammunition, given the intensity of the
combat, was running low.
The grenades
and other specialized weaponry had been largely expended.
With great
reluctance, Fitzduane deployed the ten student volunteers.
At the rate things were going, he'd soon be
down to a bunch of teenagers and medieval weaponry.