volunteers – it was Kagochev, the Russian – and the two went rolling over the sandbags into the bloodstained killing ground. Kagochev was thrown against the wall. As the attacker was about to finish him, an arrow sprouted from the terrorist's chest, and slowly he slid backward. A second arrow hit him as he was falling.
Another terrorist leaped at de Guevain as he was drawing his bow for the third time, and the Frenchman fired at point-blank range, sending the arrow right through the attacker's body to pin him against a storeroom door.
Andreas had the SA-80 in his hands again and was firing aimed shots. As if in slow motion, Sig swathe brass cartridge cases sail through the air to bounce off the wall or the ground. Andreas was moving in a fighting frenzy, shooting every terrorist he could see whether living or dead. And then his magazine was empty. He ejected it and slapped a fresh one in place. He worked the bolt and fired, and the click of firing pin on empty chamber in the tunnel was like a slap in the face. Andreas stopped and shook his head and looked around.
He and Sig looked at each other and knew the attack was over. There was silence in the tunnel but for the sound of heavy breathing.
Shortly afterward there was a warning shout and a quick exchange of identification, and the first of the Rangers appeared through the door they had been defending.
'Doesn't look as if you really needed us,' he said.
Andreas smiled tiredly. 'Maybe not,' he said, 'but it's very good to have you here. I don't think there was much more left in us.'
The Ranger glanced around. 'There was enough,' he said thoughtfully. 'There was enough.'
Above Duncleeve – The Keep of Fitzduane's Castle
The infrared heat emissions generated by Kadar's Powerchute would have been picked up by Kilmara's IR-18 scanner in the Optica if he hadn't been so tightly focused on the heavy-machine-gun installations and the infiltrating Rangers. Kadar's second bit of luck was that the Rangers on the ground who did see him take off were keeping radio silence until the Milan opened fire – and at that stage they had other things on their minds.
Kadar was not aware of the precise nature of the Optica's detection equipment, but as an added precaution against visual observation he circled around the front of the castle walls, flying only a few meters above the ground and thus out of sight of the defenders in the keep. He did not gain altitude until he was out over the sea.
The castle lay ahead and below him.
Beyond it he could see stabs of orange light and the sudden flash of grenade explosions. The Rangers must have arrived earlier than expected. It was fortunate there were so few of them. He was confident his men could hold at least until he had secured the remaining portion of the castle – and then it really wouldn't matter. When he had the hostages, the tables would be turned.
He noticed with relief that the heavy machine guns were no longer firing. He checked his watch. The plan was working. His men must have ceased fire at the time agreed. He hadn't noticed because he had been flying out to sea at that moment. It reminded him that he was operating more than a minute behind schedule. He tried to check with Sartawi by radio but received no reply. Sartawi was doubtless otherwise occupied. He tried to raise the small assault group now waiting in hiding at the foot of the keep and received a double microphone click in reply. It wasn't an orthodox acknowledgment, but he understood the circumstances. He was pleased. Things were looking good.
He was not unaware of the hazardous nature of his mission, but even though he had the means to make his escape, he no longer considered such an option. He had heard that war generated its own momentum, and now he knew that it was true. His original objective, the capture of the hostages, hadn't changed, but his prime motivation now, regardless of the cost, was to win. He knew he was going to. It wasn't that his forces were stronger or better equipped or for any precise, quantifiable reason. Instead, it had to do with more ephemeral things such as the scale of his vision, the force of his leadership, and his sheer overwhelming willpower. He had always been successful in the end, despite difficulties at times. It had been so nice he had started to control his own destiny, and it would remain so.
He tired to imagine how the defenders inside the keep would feel if they knew he was up here armed with a weapon that was virtually irresistible. Would they pray? Would they try to run? Where could they run to? How would they deal with the unbelievable horror of being burned to death – hair on fire, skin shriveling, eyeballs exploding, every nerve ending shrieking and screaming? In the end not a corpse, but a small, black, shrunken heap scarcely recognizable as ever having been human. On top of everything else it was, in Kadar's opinion, an undignified way to go.
Ahead of him the sky turned red with fire as the roof of the great hall fell in and flames and sparks shot up into the night sky. God, but it was an impressive sight – a tribute to his, Kadar's, power and vision and a direct insult to Fitzduane. The castle was the man's home, and it had stood for hundreds of years – and now he, Kadar, was casually destroying it. He wondered if he would have the chance of burning Fitzduane to death – or was Fitzduane dead already? He rather hoped not. He would enjoy looking into his eyes before engulfing him in a stream – what flame gunners called a ‘rod’ of burning napalm.
He decided to circle again, until the temporary increase in the intensity of the fire from the great hall had subsided. It was always like that when a roof fell in – a sudden flare-up that died down very quickly, a last show of strength before the end.
He would be a couple of minutes late landing on the keep, but that shouldn't really make any difference. The heat from the great hall combined with the intense heavy-machine-gun fire must have rendered the top couple of floors untenable. Certainly he could see no one on the dugout roof now, and there had been reports that it had been manned earlier.
He used the extra time while he circled, and the great hall fire waned, to rerun through his mind the details of his assault plan. The flamethrower was the same Russian LPO-50 model he had used to such good effect at CampMarighella in Libya. He had brought it not for any military reason – the remotest possibility of the scale of combat that had developed had never occurred to him, even in his most pessimistic evaluations – but to deploy on the hostages in case of intransigence. For this reason he had brought along only three ignition charges – tanks like divers' air bottles containing thickened fuel propelled by pressurizing charges that fired through one-way valves when the trigger was pressed – which permitted just nine seconds of continuous use – not enough for general combat but more than adequate for several very spectacular executions.
The three charges would also, he was sure, be quite enough to turn the tables in the narrow stairs and rooms of the keep. One to two seconds per room should be more than sufficient to incinerate every defender inside. It had been pointed out to him by his instructor that the LPO-50 was, in fact, designed exclusively for outdoor use, for the very good reason that the heat it generated was intense and the oxygen usage quite enormous. Kadar had brushed aside such caveats. He was confident he could handle the flamethrower, even in the confined space of the keep, without either cooking himself or being asphyxiated. He was a master of the tools of killing.
Initially he had considered flying around the keep and smothering each aperture with napalm, but that would have left him vulnerable to the defenders' fire. There was also the problem that the LPO-50 was bulky and almost impossible to use from the Powerchute without modifying the airframe, since the unit was designed to be worn as a backpack. He had also disliked the idea of being so close to all that flaming oil when the only thing that kept him up was a fragile nylon parachute canopy. He could see his wings melting and himself reliving Icarus's unenviable experience.
He had therefore settled on the simpler plan of landing on the now-deserted roof, breaking through the sandbags to incinerate any defenders below, bringing up reinforcements by rope from the base of the keep, and then blasting his way, room by room, floor by floor, to the hostages. It was a simple, direct plan, and it was going to work because no one can stand and fight when facing a flamethrower. Very soon he would control the keep.
His mind flashed back to those early, vulnerable, happy days in Cuba when he and Whitney were lovers. He had been naive then, naive and ignorant of the reality of the human condition, which is to control or to be used or to die. He remembered Whitney's death; it hadn't been in vain. That terrible episode had made Kadar strong and invulnerable. He recalled his meticulous plotting and execution of his mother and Major Antonin Ventura. There had been so many since then. It had become easier over time. More recently the violence had become an end in itself. It had become a necessity. It was now an exquisite sensual pleasure.
The Hangman prepared to attack. Sixty seconds from making a landing on the keep, his Powerchute engine
