'Five out of six with cyanide,' said the figure with the knife. 'Who called it right?' He was referring to the pool they had organized among themselves. There were ten Irish pounds riding on the result.
'I did,' said the figure with the Ingram.
Brogan's death throes provided a background to their conversation. His head and torso rose from the ground, and blood gushed from his mouth as he died. The body collapsed.
'Let's take them,' said the one with the knife. He removed Brogan's locker key and opened up the arms locker. He loaded an Uzi and put spare clips in his pockets.
Fitzduane's Castle – 1746 hours
Fitzduane – no sexist by most standards – had always had the strongest objections to women being put on the firing line. Seeing dead women in a dozen wars, often leaving orphaned children sometimes still being suckled, had hardened these views. In this case, however, more than a third of his little force was female, and that element was not prepared to be placed in a cellar out of danger. He also had to admit that like it or not, he need the extra manpower: the word personpower stuck in his throat.
He compromised on the basis of training and experience. He wasn't entirely happy with the result. Katia Maurer was no problem. As a nurse she had a clear role, and a medical facility was established in one of the empty storerooms in the tunnel complex. The Bear was visibly relieved. Oona was the logical person to take charge of the meals. She know the castle and the location of all the supplies. She got organized in the kitchens off the great hall.
The Israeli girl, Judith Newman, shot so competently in the target practice they had arranged in the main tunnel (wearing earplugs against the deafening noise), and it was so clear that she wanted a combat role – and had the experience to back it up – that he assigned her along with Murrough, de Guevain, Andreas von Graffenlaub, and Henssen to go with him to Draker.
That left Etan, inexperienced but determined to fight if she had to. The only consoling fact was that under the Bear's expert eye, she had begun to shoot well. Despite the need for combatants, Fitzduane had tried to dissuade her from active involvement. He had pulled her away from the others and had closed the door of his study, and for a few intense minutes he had argued with her. She had waited until he finished, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him gently. Then she had looked into his eyes. 'This isn't the Congo,' she had said. 'I'm not Anne-Marie. It's going to be all right.'
Fitzduane had started at the mention of his dead wife's name, and then his arms had tightened around her and he had hugged her to him and held her until called away.
Apart from Tommy Keane, who had relieved Murrough on the fighting platform, the entire party had assembled in the bawn. Everyone's clothes reeked of burned propellant and gun oil from target practice in the tunnel – Fitzduane wanted the existence of their weapons to remain a surprise – and everyone, including Katia Maurer and Oona, he noticed, was armed. He had made them all look at Dick Noble's body. He could see from their expressions that the reality of their predicament was beginning to sink home.
'I don't like splitting our group,' said Fitzduane, 'but our phones are down and our long-distance radio has been destroyed, and we've got to try to do something about those kids. Several of us here have already had experience of the opposition we're up against, and they are not the kind of people you negotiate with. They don't bluff; they kill. If we don't get to the students before they do, there will be no good ending.
'Draker is too big and sprawling; it's indefensible. My intention now is to head over there and bring the kids and the few faculty members back to the castle, and then hole up until help comes. We can hold out here for an adequate time – that's what a castle is all about – and it's a plan I've already discussed with Colonel Kilmara of the Rangers.
'I don't know what the Hangman's plan is, but I would guess his objective is a mass kidnap for money. Intelligence reports indicate that he has trained a force of seventy or so, and I'd venture that most of them are going to land from that cattle boat at the headland. Some may have come overland as well, I don't know. And there may be a plane involved in this thing. The point is that we are going to be pitted against a superior force with superior training and firepower. That means we don't fuck around. I want no heroics or thoughts about the Geneva Convention. This isn't war. It’s a fight for survival. We kill or we get killed – and no prisoners unless I order it. We can't afford the manpower to guard them.
'If possible, I'm not going to use the students in this fight. I'm sure some of them have weapons training, but unfortunately we don't know who we can trust, as our recent tragedy so clearly shows. Besides, whether they are old enough to vote or whatever, I'm fed up with seeing kids who've had no chance to live getting killed. Keep one thing in mind: no strange faces. If the face isn't one of ours, shoot it. If you've any questions, they'll have to wait. Get to your posts. Draker team, mount up. Let's get the fuck out of here.'
Fitzduane and de Guevain got into the front of the saboteurs' station wagon, and the other four members of the group squeezed themselves flat in the back. Etan blew Fitzduane a kiss through the window. He almost seemed, she couldn't help noticing, to be smiling. The son of a bitch, she thought. Of course, danger is what this man is used to; putting himself in harm's way is what he does. War is what he is good at.
How will I react to danger? She wondered. The next few hours would tell. The image of the death of red- haired Anne-Marie Fitzduane in the Congo nearly two decades earlier came to her, and it was as clear as if she had been there. Death by decapitation. She imagined the blade into her flesh and the shock and the agony and her blood fountaining, and she felt sick with fear and horror. Would this be her fate? She caressed the wooden stock of the Mauser she had been issued and resolved that it would not. She felt the adrenaline flow, and with it, courage.
26
Outside Fitzduane's Castle – 1755 hours
The frogmen of Phantom Unit had trained in the relatively balmy, if polluted, waters of the Mediterranean. Although they had been warned otherwise, the clear skies and hot sun of that unusual Irish day had lulled them into a false sense of familiarity with their environment. It could almost have been the Mediterranean. The unpleasant reality of the near-freezing temperatures of the Atlantic came as a shock despite the wet suits all four men wore. As the long swim progressed, the cold sapped the energies of the men, and their responses slowed. They would make it, thought Giorgio Massana, Phantom Unit commander, but at a price.
Spare tanks of compressed air and other specialized equipment traveled with them on a battery-powered underwater sled called a SeaMule. The SeaMule was capable of pulling two men in addition to its normal load, but there was a penalty to be paid in terms of battery life, and the lack of physical activity as one was towed meant body warmth drained away faster. Massana allowed only one man to be towed at a time, and then only for brief periods. He had had batteries cut out on him before, and he needed that equipment if he was to get into the castle. There was no way they could pull the SeaMule by themselves.
They had swum from the Sabine, which was anchored off the headland. Nearing the coastline they encountered shoals of seaweed dislodged by recent storms, which in turn his numerous submerged rocks. They had to proceed with the utmost care, and their progress was labored. Maneuvering the SeaMule through this underwater obstacle course was both difficult and exhausting.
It const them the life of one man. Alonzo, a fellow Sardinian and the best swimmer in the group, was smashed into a kelp-disguised rock when the undertow threw the sled temporarily out of control. There was no discernible noise and little blood, but the skull of the one person in the world whom Massana really cared about was crushed effortlessly as the Atlantic flexed its muscles. They left Alonzo floating semi-invisible in the seaweed. In his black wet suit he already looked like part of the undersea world. The undertow smashed him again and again against the rocks, and brain matter leached from the ripped hood.
They came ashore on seaweed-covered rocks with the gray mass of Fitzduane's castle above them. Near invisible against the rocks in their black suits, they rested for a couple of minutes. As he gathered his strength, Massana wondered why a seaborne assault by a specialized group was necessary against only three or four unarmed civilians who would certainly not be expecting an attack. He had been briefed on the likely presence of
