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 Island – 0013 hours
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.
Fitzduane considered the problem of ammunition shortage. The only solution to that, barring the hope of resupplying from enemy casualties, was to fall back on the antique weapons. Muskets, a blunderbuss, the crossbows, and de Guevain's longbow had all been prepared for use. Pikes and swords and other nonprojectile weapons, down to his set of French kitchen knives, lay at hand.
The student volunteers were an agreeable surprise. They were bright and zealous, concealing their fear under stuck-out chins and other resolute expressions. They were also – in the literal sense – fighting mad. They had seen people they had lived and worked closely with slaughtered, and they wanted revenge. Giving them weapons had turned this desire into an achievable reality. They were determined to get even.
Sadly the stark truth of what they were up against had been brought home to them in the most fundamental way within minutes of their initial briefing. A young Sudanese, Osman something or other – Fitzduane hadn't time to learn most of their names – had been killed while keeping watch at a murder hole. He had taken a shade too long to check his area, and just as he was about to replace the rope-suspended sandbag that covered the hole, he had been hit in the head and virtually decapitated by a 12.7 mm heavy-machine-gun bullet. Less that two minutes later a blond Polish boy had died the same way. The eight survivors had learned from this fast. They now moved and reacted with as if every action in battle were a matter of life and death – which, pretty much, it was.
The radio beside him came to life. 'Receiving you,' said Fitzduane.
'We're about to take out the 12.7s,' Kilmara informed him. 'Well be dropping the second stick – Gunther's lot
