'You did an ammunition check?' asked Fitzduane.
'Uh-huh,' – the Bear nodded – 'another one. You won't be surprised to hear the situation has worsened. I'm impressed at how much we've been able to get through. I guess it's not surprising when you can empty a thirty- round in less than three seconds.'
'So how many seconds do we get per man?' said Fitzduane with a tired smile.
'For automatic weapons, less than five. We're better off for shotgun rounds and pistol ammunition, though not by much. We're out of grenades and Molotov cocktails. We've go two Claymores left and plenty of antique weaponry – and food.'
'Food?'
'Lots of it. If an army really does fight on its stomach – and who should know better than Napoleon? – we're going to be fine.'
'I am glad to hear that,' said Fitzduane.
Fitzduane's Island – 0013 hours
If there was one thing in the world – leaving out drink and women – that Ranger Sergeant Geronimo Grady loved more than driving fast cars at somebody else's expense, it was firing the Milan Missile at government expense.
At least he was one taxpayer who knew exactly where his money was going, for each missile cost as much as he would earn in two years, and the supporting equipment, such as the computerized simulator he had spent so many hours, days, and weeks practicing on, cost more than he was likely to earn in a lifetime. It was a sobering thought, and it added a definite piquancy to his pleasure.
Oddly enough, he had never considered firing the Milan at a real human target. Up to now it had been more like a giant video game, even when he'd fired live missiles in the Glen of Imaal. He wondered how he'd feel as he pressed the firing button knowing that other human beings were about to be obliterated by his action. Given his relentless Ranger training, the briefing on the Hangman, and the basic fact that if he did not eliminate the opposition first, it would be quite delighted to do that small thing to him, he thought he'd feel just fine, but he didn't know. He wouldn't actually know until he'd done it – and that experience was only scant minutes away. His hands felt sweaty, but he couldn't move to wipe them.
Twenty meters ahead of him Lieutenant Harty was about to kill two terrorists posted on the Hangman's perimeter to take out any Rangers who had survived the SAM-7. Grady could have done it – they looked close enough to touch and smell through the gray-green image of his four-power night sight – but it was to be done silently. Harty specialized in such tasks and was equipped accordingly.
The double thunk of the specially built heavy-caliber subsonic weapon was scarcely perceptible in the gusting wind. Grady saw the effect before he heard the noise, and the result was all the more obscene for being rendered bloodless by the limited-color filtered image in his telescopic sight. It was as if the first man's face had suddenly been wiped away and replaced with a dark smear. The second terrorist turned his head in a reflex action toward his dead comrade. The modified Glaser bullet struck him on the cheekbone and blew off the top of his skull.
Grady and his loader ran forward and slid into the captured position. A regular army Milan had a four-man section to direct, load, and fire the missile, but in the Rangers, as always, you did more with less, better and faster. Or you didn't get in, or you died.
It was a natural depression, nearly ideal as a Milan position, though devoid of the top cover that was a basic requirement if you were going after tanks. But there were certainly more than the five meters of clearance that you needed to the rear to avoid toasting yourself in the backblast.
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 Island – 0013 hours
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 Milan strike on a number of occasions and had 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 Milan had done its work – to kill any and all 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
