Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Eighteen kilos
of firing post — the unglamorous term applied to the expensive
missile-launching setup containing tripod, aiming mechanism, electronic sight,
and firing button — were placed in position and carefully leveled.
Grady lay down behind the weapon, and twelve
kilos of factory-sealed missile were placed in position on the firing post.
Ahead of him,
slight to his right and just under a thousand meters away, were the
heavy-machine-gun emplacements pinpointed by the colonel circling in the Optica
overhead.
Nearly a full kilometer
couldn’t be considered point-blank, but it was close enough.
At that distance Grady could achieve almost
one hundred percent accuracy on armored moving targets, at least in
training.
So the first gun position
shouldn't be a problem.
The second
position might be harder, since it would have time to locate the Rangers and
open fire before he could reload.
If
they had infrared equipment, the backblast would give him away
immediately.
Theoretically, since the missile
would take perhaps twelve seconds to complete its flight, both emplacements
could fire back for vital seconds if they reacted fast enough.
On the other hand, if they were concentrating
on the castle and didn't have any specialized gear, he might just get that
second missile off in time.
It was
possible to fire up to five missiles in a minute under some circumstances, but
in this case, if he allowed for reloading and changing the point of aim — not
to mention firing in the dark under combat conditions
—
the
minimum time window, assuming two
first-time hits, should be estimated at around thirty seconds.
He calculated
that in those thirty seconds the Russian-made 12.7 mm heavies could put about
six hundred rounds into him, Geronimo Grady, personally.
It was an incentive to shoot straight.
I occurred to
Grady that he was doing much the same job as Harty had just carried out, though
on a larger scale.
He tried to cleanse
his mind of the images of two human beings being so casually swatted away.
He tried not to think what Geronimo Grady
would look like after six hundred 12.7 mm rounds had done their worst to
him.
Then training and discipline took
over, primed by a healthy dose of fear.
Harty tapped him on the shoulder.
"Engage," he said.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane's
Five Rangers
out of the first stick designated to jump had survived the SAM-7 strike.
While Harty,
Grady, and Roche, who was acting as a loader, concentrated on setting up the
Milan missile position, the balance of the tiny force, Sergeants Quinlan and
Hannigan, infiltrated through the terrorists' perimeter defenses and set up a
strike position less than a hundred meters from the two heavy-machine-gun
positions and well to one side of the Milan's projected line of flight.
The two men
had sent
he
effect of a
no desire to encounter an errant missile.
They comforted themselves with the thought
that not only was the Milan under Grady's hand devastatingly accurate, but it
was so programmed that if, for example, Grady were hit and lost control, the
missile would ground itself and self-destruct instantly.
Or should.
It was Quinlan
and Hannigan's job to do any required tidying up after the
survivors and either or capture or destroy whatever 12.7s survived the initial
attack.
To achieve this goal, what they
lacked in manpower they compensated for in weaponry.
The term
heavy battle order
meant just that.
In the weapons canister attached to his leg
by a cord when he jumped, each man had brought with him a Minimi machine gun
equipped with Kite image intensifier telescopic sights, ammunition belts in
special lightweight containers that could, if required, be clipped directly
onto the weapons, spare barrels, reserve ammunition in clips — the Minimi could
use either belts or the standard NATO clip found in the SA-80 — grenade
launchers, 40 mm grenades, hand grenades, Claymore antipersonnel mines,
automatic pistols, and fighting knives.
Heavy battle
order looked impossible the first time you saw all the gear laid out on the
ground, and it felt absolutely impossible the first time you knitted up, but
the right candidate and training, training, and more bloody training, thought
Quinlan, made all the difference.
Now he
regarded it as routine not only to be able to carry such a load but, if
necessary, to move silently and swiftly and to fight while draped in it like a
Christmas tree.
The most
frustrating thing about infiltration, thought Hannigan,
was
having
to bypass all those juicy targets in favor of one designated
goal.
Quinlan seemed to enjoy the actual
business of evasion, but Hannigan always got frustrated at having to exercise
such restraint.
In this case he couldn't
deny the logic of taking out the 12.7s first, but it hurt him particularly to
have to remain impotent, with his marvelous collection of tools of destruction
unused, while a pair of hostiles chatted in plain sight a couple of stone's
throws away before one of them climbed into a strange-looking contraption,
started up an engine, and lo and behold, but wasn't science wonderful, shot off
into the sky suspended from a parachute — a device that, up to that moment,
Hannigan had always suspected of being used solely for descending.
There was a double click in the radio
earpiece built into his helmet.
He
forgot about flying
parachutes,
and the unsettling
fact that the pilot seemed to have been wearing something unpleasantly like a
Russian-made flamethrower, and concentrated on the heavy-machine-gun positions.
Grady
was about to do his stuff.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane's
He knew he
didn't have to fly the Powerchute himself, and he also knew that if he did, he
could use it for the purpose for which he had originally included it:
to fly to the mainland if things went wrong.
Nonetheless,
he thought as he strapped himself in, it just felt right to do the job himself,
to show all of them, friend and foe alike, that he was not just a thinker and a
planner but a true Renaissance man — scholar and artist and man of action.
"Commander,"
said Sartawi, after he had checked Kadar's flamethrower and other weaponry —
and after he had decided he'd shoot Kadar down if he showed the slightest sign
of trying to desert the battle, "I wish you'd reconsider.
You are too important to risk."
Sartawi was also aware that only Kadar knew
the details of how the hostage negotiations were to be conducted.
Kadar
grinned.
He felt no fear, though the
danger was obvious.
To risk one's own
life was the ultimate sensual thrill.
He
felt powerful, indestructible.
"Sir,"
insisted Sartawi, "have you considered the risk from the Ranger aircraft
circling above?"
"Sartawi,"
said Kadar, "I'm making the flight, and I want no more arguments.
As for the Ranger aircraft, it is
toothless.
It has obviously expended all
its ammunition or it would be participating in the battle.
Now are you clear as to what we are
doing?"
Sartawi
nodded.
"Yes, sir," he
said.
"The heavy machine guns will
keep the top of the keep and designated apertures under fire until you are in
position to strike.
On your radio
command — or as signaled by the first use of the flamethrower — the machine
guns will cease fire and you will attack the top of the tower with the
flamethrower.
You will then land on the
dugout and be joined by an assault team currently in position at the base of
the tower.
Using the flamethrower to
clear the way, you will then sweep the tower floor by floor.
Simultaneously we shall break though into the
tunnel."
He paused.
"The
machine guns," prompted Kadar.
"Once the
keep has been taken," continued Sartawi, "the heavy machine guns and
all units now outside the castle will withdraw to within the castle.
There, with the hostages captured, we shall
negotiate as originally planned.
The
Rangers will have arrived too late."
"There
you are," said Kadar, "a nice simple plan with a healthy
risk-to-reward ratio — and our defenders further distracted by a little heat
from the side once the great hall goes up in flames."
Sartawi looked
blank.
"It's a good plan I'm sure,
sir.
But
risk-to-reward ratio?
I'm afraid
that I don't understand this term."
"Quite,"
said Kadar unkindly.
"Not to
worry:
you'll understand the result.
"
He gunned his
engine, and the backwash from the propeller behind his seat inflated the
parachute.
The craft rolled forward and
was airborne in seconds.
Sartawi
resisted the impulse to empty his Kalashnikov into the arrogant bastard.
He didn't know what a hard time Ranger
Sergeant Martin Hannigan was having resisting a similar impulse, but with
Sartawi himself as the target.
*
*
*
*
*
The Keep of Fitzduane's Castle — 0023 hours
Fitzduane had
passed the last of his SA-80 ammunition to Andreas, who seemed to have a talent
with the weapon, and was now armed with his Browning 2000 self-loading shotgun,
a Browning Hi-Power 9 mm automatic pistol, and his katana.
Score two out
of three for John Browning, he thought.
How many people had been killed with weapons designed by Browning?
Was a weapons designer a war criminal or
merely a technician whose designs were abused?
Did it matter a fuck anyway?
His Browning
shotgun was no longer its long rib-barreled, elegant self.
Faced with the space restrictions of
close-quarters combat within the castle confines, he had taken a hacksaw and,
feeling like a vandal for desecrating such an integrated design, had sawed the
barrel virtually in half.
The muzzle now
started only two fingers' width beyond the wood-encased tubular magazine that
supported it.
The resultant weapon
looked crude and deadly, and loaded with XR-18
ammunition,
it was still effective up to about fifty meters.
He ran through
his defenses, trying to work out his strengths and weaknesses — and what the
Hangman might do.
His perimeter was now
confined to the keep itself and the tunnel complex below.
The rest of the castle was in enemy
hands.
The likely points of attack were
the steel door into the tunnel, the door between the keep and the great hall,
and the top of the keep itself.
There
was also the risk of penetration at any one of the narrow slit windows of the
keep, although most would be a tight squeeze even for a very slim man.
They could, however, be fired through by an
attacker and therefore had to be either blocked up or guarded.
If the
attackers got into the tunnel, the defenders could — in extremis — retreat into
the keep.
On the other hand, since they
already held the gatehouse end of the tunnel, if the attackers captured the
keep, the Hangman would for all practical purposes have his hostages, even if
his men never actually penetrated the tunnel itself — for who outside could
tell the difference?
The question
of how best to defend the tunnel had been much debated.
Finally Fitzduane had decided that since the
terrorists would most probably blow the door — something the defenders couldn't
really do much about except try to contain the blast — the best solution would
be to build another series of defenses in depth in both the tunnel and the
rooms to either side.
So, using
sandbags, furniture cases of food, and anything else that came to hand, the
defenders had constructed a series of funnel-shaped killing grounds, each one of
which could be abandoned in turn if the attackers used grenades or otherwise
made the position indefensible.
In
addition, the remaining Claymores had been sited to sweep the killing grounds.
The ability of
the defenders to hold the tunnel depended to a significant extent on the
weaponry remaining to the terrorists.
The defenses were adequate against small-arms fire, but intensive use of
grenades and RPG-7s would turn the tide no matter how hard the defenders
fought.
Fortunately it seemed the
terrorists were low in such weaponry since its use, intensive in the early
phases of the battle, had now trailed off to virtually nothing.