Read The Devil's Footprint Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Fitzduane laughed.
"A rather
important distinction," he said.
Kilmara grinned.
"Yeah,
that's my conclusion when I get philosophical, and it doesn't hurt that I
believe it.
Love for your fellow man is
all very well and has to be the better way, but until Utopia arrives after the
talking stops, there will always be a need to hold the line.
And that's what people like those marines did
and do."
"Fortunately for us," said Fitzduane quietly.
Fortunately for us, thought Kilmara, looking at Fitzduane.
Fitzduane caught the look and smiled.
"You got me into all this, Shane,"
he said.
Kilmara shook his head.
"It
was always there, Hugo.
Blame your
ancestors.
A willingness to serve:
It's something that is bred into you."
Fitzduane leaned on the railings and gazed out over
"Quite a country," he said with feeling.
"I love the place, the land, the energy,
many of the structures, and the sense that in the
But some pundits argue that
gravitating inexorably toward
other axis.
Think so, Shane?"
Kilmara was looking again at the
"We're both Irish," he said, "and these days we are both
European, but the reality is that
.
We are all of a piece
and we are not going to go away."
He turned to Fitzduane.
"Hugo," he said firmly.
"You're going to get Kathleen back.
But don't get killed.
Do what you
have to and then get the hell out.
We
have enough dead heroes."
Fitzduane smiled.
"Deal!" he said.
They went back inside.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane slept for several hours and then he woke.
It was still dark, but he could not sleep.
He put on some running gear and jogged down
to the
Somehow it seemed to bring comfort.
He was thinking of Kathleen.
Was she
really where he thought she was?
Could
he really bring her back?
Were his plans
the best that could be devised?
Was
there an alternative strategy?
Should he
go in with helicopters, as everyone else had recommended?
Was it all as impossible as some had argued?
Endless doubts coursed through his mind.
He was not just putting his own life at risk.
Apart from the C130 pilots and crew, he was
taking with him fourteen others.
All of
those people had their own relationships and dependents, and it was near
certain that some would die.
This was
too dangerous a mission for all to get through unscathed.
Life was not like that.
Had he the right to get other people killed
and to wreck other lives?
He walked slowly around the memorial.
Such self-doubt, he knew, was futile.
In the end you did your best and lived or died with the
consequences.
And that was all you could
do.
But above all, you had to try.
Dawn was coming.
Could Kathleen
see the sky as he could, or was she held chained and blindfolded like so many
hostages?
Was she alive at all?
At first he had been so horrified and angered by her kidnapping that it
had taken all his self-control not to head down to
could.
But that would have been futile
and he knew it.
The initial shock and
fury had passed.
Now there was just a
cold anger that stayed with him every waking hour and an absolute determination
to get Kathleen back.
He stood back and looked at the marines raising the flag on
He was sure it had not been quite as depicted, but he was equally sure
it was close enough.
He raised his hand in a silent salute and went jogging toward
Behind him his shadow ran easily, ever watchful.
Dana had been strangely touched by what she
had seen.
It was not his country, but he
still seemed to care.
She had lost her partner.
She was
not going to lose her charge.
And when
the mission was mounted she was going to be damn sure she was on it.
friends,
and her killing was not going to go unpunished.
She smiled as she cried.
too.
Outrageous
sometimes, humorous practically always.
She thought
It should be somehow sad, given all the dead
and the memories they evoked, but it was not.
It was magnificent.
Fitzduane ran steadily toward a tombstone not too far from the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier.
Then he stopped
beside the tombstone, took something out of his pocket, and placed it on the
base.
Next he stepped back and stood
with his head bowed for a good ten minutes.
After he had left, Dana checked the headstone:
JAMES N. “NICK” ROWE
COLONEL
ARMY
Then she remembered.
This grave
had particular significance for
special forces
.
The inscription closed with the stark line:
KILLED BY TERRORISTS
,
MANILA
Fitzduane had left an Irish Rangers shoulder patch on the base, held in
place by a small stone.
The rituals of
warriors before battle, Dana thought.
We
think we have changed, but we have not.
We prepare, we draw strength from our heroes, we pay our dues, and then
we fight.
Ancient
Roman, Norman knight, or twentieth-century special forces.
Different causes, different customs,
different weapons, but when it came to facing the reality of combat, common
traditions.
11
Fitzduane flew into
picked up a rented Ford Bronco, and drove north and east.
He had debated phoning rather than making the trip, but he rationalized
that if he was going to ask Al to put his life on the line it was something he
had better do face-to-face.
In reality, he was desperate for a change of environment.
The mission was coming together, but
reminder of Kathleen.
He needed space
and a chance to get some perspective.
He was heading for the newly incorporated city of
It was about three hours' steady driving time
from
He could have rented a light aircraft and
flow the last hop, but he had mixed feelings about light aircraft he did not
know, and anyway he had heard
the that
the Medora
airstrip was on top of a butte.
Since a butte, as best he could recall, was a sheer-sided mountain
jutting out of the ground rather like a rocket, its top, even if flat, did not
seem a terrific place to land.
The pilot
could miss or you could fall of the edge or something.
Fitzduane preferred his airstrips on the
ground, preferably very flat ground without things to bump into.
A few miles outside
the highway climbed steadily.
The
rolling foothills stretched away on either side and the ground looked hard and
arid.
This was high desert dotted with
scrub and mesquite and cacti.
Some
people found it harsh and forbidding.
Fitzduane relished the contours of the land and the clear light and the
sense of space, and found it achingly beautiful.
It was so different from his home country.
altogether smaller and more human scale.
Here, the vistas were immense and mankind almost insignificant.
It was hard to imagine how anyone had survived in such a vast, rugged,
water-starved landscape, yet this was the terrain that the Apaches had made
their own and over which Geronimo had been hunted.
Five thousand troops trying
to find thirty men in an era before helicopters and radios and modern
technology.
Endless
locations in the heavily contoured landscape to hide in.
The difficulties and hardships overcome in
the hunt were hard to comprehend.
Al Lonsdale's mother had been a full-blooded Apache.
His father, the sheriff of a border town in
English and Irish stock, and the combination had produced a striking-looking
man.
Al had thick black hair, a high
forehead, deep-set thoughtful eyes, high cheekbones, and a strong nose and
chin.
He stood six feet three in his
socks.
Lonsdale had followed in his father's profession and spent a few years as
a sheriff's deputy, but then had joined the U.S. Army in search of wider
horizons.
He had grown up with weapons,
and hunting was a family tradition, so the transition to U.S. Army Special
Forces had been smooth.
But Lonsdale
wanted to be the best of the best, so he volunteered for the top-secret U.S.
Army counterterrorist unit, Delta, which had been set up Colonel Charlie
Beckwith on SAS lines.
When he was
accepted by Delta, Al Lonsdale felt he had arrived.
The Irish
equivalent of Delta were
the Rangers
commanded by General Shane Kilmara.
Master Sergeant Al Lonsdale had been on secondment to them, training on
Fitzduane's island off the West of Ireland, when they had stumbled across a
terrorist assassination attempt.
Superb long-range shooting by Lonsdale with a .50 Barrett at over 1,800
meters had saved the lives of both Fitzduane and his son, Boots.
Subsequently, Lonsdale had fought beside
Fitzduane and Chifune Tanabu on a counterterrorist action in
It was a relationship born and tempered under fire, and as a consequence,
Lonsdale was a natural choice for the Mexican mission.
But whether he could be persuaded to join the
team was another matter.
Al's leaving
Delta had been unexpected.
His
appointment as Chief of Police of the tiny city of
Fitzduane had tabbed Al Lonsdale as hard-core military through and
through.
A caliber
soldier.
A warrior.
His reasons for abandoning a promising
military career for the vicissitudes of the civilian world were unknown.
Still, Fitzduane had faith in Al Lonsdale.
There would be reasons, and they would be
good.
Well, he hoped they would be good.
People were people the world over.
All were a little flaky.
In its
way, the consistency of the human factor was kind of reassuring.
*
*
*
*
*
"Mrs. Zanduski," said Chief of Police Al Lonsdale patiently,
"what we're looking for here, ma'am is a certain dynamic tension.
Simply put, your right hand holding the
firearm pushes out and is braced against your left arm pulling in.
The result is — or should be — a stable
weapons platform."
"I don't want a weapons platform, Chief," said five-foot-two
seventy-eight-year-old Mrs. Zanduski, her outstretched hands holding the .357
Magnum with the six inch barrel hesitantly.
"I want to hit the goddamn target.
I want to blow the motherfuckers away."