She glanced down at Shanley. He was standing in the same group as Fitzduane and Kilmara. And Kilmara was shouting something and pointing.
At that moment, Shanley looked up at her and pointed also at the first sky diver who was coming in to land, and she saw the three men head behind a low wall as if diving for cover.
She turned again to look at the helicopter that was now almost at the hotel and she saw lights flashing underneath it. Then she half-turned back again to look down at Shanley as the long burst of heavy-caliber machine gun fire smashed into her and blew her off the roof in a mist of blood and flesh and bone.
Her body plummeted down and smashed into the barbecue area below, scattering hot charcoal in every direction.
Shanley died a little as he watched. Then his head hit the ground hard as Fitzduane knocked him down behind cover.
'Look at his arms, Hugo!' Kilmara had shouted. 'They are strapped to his sides. He's not controlling his own ‘chute.'
Fitzduane had snatched the binoculars. The sky diver's head lolled forward. He looked lifeless, like some full- sized puppet. There was a device on his chest with wires connecting it to the toggles.
And then the import of what they had seen hit them and, grabbing Shanley and shouting at the others, they dived for cover.
The sky diver floated in for what looked like a perfect landing.
The crowd made way as he glided in, then surged forward as he touched down.
It was at that moment that the flechette-packed bomb strapped to the radio-controlled corpse of the sky diver exploded, sending several thousands of miniature metal darts in every direction. The man's body was blasted into a fragmented pink cloud of blood and fragments of flesh and bone.
The flash of the explosion was followed by the noise of the blast. Confined and magnified within the confines of the pool area, it seemed to last for an eternity. The ground shook under them.
As the initial shock faded, there were further sounds of glass and other debris crashing to the ground in a rain of destruction.
Fitzduane was disoriented for several seconds. Then realization returned. He raised his head from behind the low wall that had saved their lives. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, and farther away from the main blast survivors were standing or slumped, dazed with shock. Many were bleeding from injuries, some superficial, some serious.
Others had been blasted into the pool, and some survivors went forward to aid them.
Fitzduane was just moving out of cover to help also when he saw the helicopter pulling away from the roof of the block where Texas had been and masked black-clad figures appearing at the parapet. For a moment he thought it might be the local SWAT team coming to help, and then he heard the chatter of automatic weapons and saw the helpers at the poolside cut down one after the other as if an invisible saw had sliced through them.
The water in the pool frothed as machine-gun fire from both the helicopter and the terrorists who lined the roof was poured down into the pool area. What had been the location for a poolside party was now a killing ground.
Fitzduane watched appalled as the gunfire reached a trio of line dancers and they jerked like marionettes as the rounds punched into them.
He ducked down. Kilmara and Shanley lay there also. Kilmara had drawn his automatic but made no move to fire back. Given the sheer weight of fire raining down upon the area, it would have been suicide.
The door into the accommodation block was only twenty feet away, but to cross that divide meant inviting death. As they watched, one of the exhibition security men made a run for it, turning around halfway to return covering fire from his pistol and then sprinting on.
A rocket hissed down from the parapet and blew the legs off the unfortunate man and his torso back into the open corridor.
'We've got to get out of here,' said Kilmara. 'Our friendly wall will stop rounds, but RPGs will walk right through it. All ideas welcome. I haven't got a fucking clue how to move without getting perforated. And that's a hell of an admission for a general.'
Fitzduane was a great believer in the principle that any decision was better than no decision but in this case it seemed wiser to put that particular aphorism on hold. As of now they had a place out of the line of fire. Better yet, the terrorists did not seem to know they were there or a few more rockets would have come their way.
'My room is just up the corridor,' said Shanley. He sounded shaky, but he was hanging in there. 'I've got an M16 and a Barrett inside which I use for demonstrations. If we can get at them, we can do something. They're locked up in security boxes, of course, but I have the keys.'
Fitzduane was struck by the irony of it all. Here they were surrounded by every conceivable light infantry weapon in the exhibition, but most of the weaponry had no ammunition and all was locked up. A further irony was that no one was going to react to all the shooting. The hotel was freestanding, and the fact that there was going to be some kind of special-operations demonstration had been widely announced precisely to prevent the local citizenry from getting worried. And the police had also been informed. So for the next few minutes at least they were on their own. And people were dying.
'Ammunition?' he said.
'Not a lot,' admitted Shanley. 'I used most of it at the range. Perhaps thirty rounds for the M16 and half that for the Barrett.'
'How about your Stinger missile?' said Kilmara.
'It's a mock-up,' said Shanley. 'The case is real, but there is no electronics or firing mechanism.'
'What's your Barrett's ammo?' said Fitzduane. His life had once been saved by a marksman with a Barrett, and he had made a point of finding out everything he could about the weapon, down to visiting the plant in Tennessee. The Barrett was a large rifle ingeniously designed to make it possible for an individual soldier to fire rounds the size of a cigar without being flattened by the recoil. The benefits for certain situations were considerable. You could snipe at up to two kilometers, you could penetrate light armor, and you could fire right through a concrete wall. 'Rafoss multipurpose,' said Shanley.
Fitzduane looked at Kilmara and nodded. The Norwegian-made rounds were armor piercing with an explosive core and incendiary characteristics. They would do a very nice job on the parapet of the wall from which the fire was coming – and on whoever was behind the wall.
But there was still the problem of getting at the weapons. Also, if the black-clad terrorists were on the roof opposite, there was a reasonable chance that they had landed people on the opposite block. Carrying that thought further, some terrorist might be working their way down to the pool to finish off the job.
In other words, as they made a dive for the door to Shanley's room to get the heavier weapons they could meet terrorists coming in the other direction.
Fitzduane did not like this scenario at all. They had to move. And there had to be a way.
Doors crashed open about fifty feet away and a hotel employee emerged pushing a trolley stacked high with freshly starched laundry, apparently oblivious to the mayhem around him. The earphones of a Walkman were clamped to his ears and he pushed his heavy load with his head down, doing little dance steps from time to time.
All three men shouted warnings, but the laundryman was in another world. He advanced down the path toward where they lay. He seemed to have a charmed life. At first he was unnoticed by the terrorists, and then their fusillades missed both him and the trolley.
It was a distraction.
Shanley and Kilmara leapt for the open doorway and just made it before heavy fire raked the wall behind them.
Fitzduane aimed his automatic with care a and shot the laundryman below the knee. He fell behind the safety of the low wall and stared around frantically, shocked and terrified.
'STAY DOWN!' shouted Fitzduane, and made a gesture with his arm.
The laundryman looked at him, his mouth open. He was only about thirty feet away, but there was a gap in the low wall and fire was pouring through it. The Walkman had fallen off the laundryman as he had collapsed, but the earphones were still clipped around his head. Fitzduane fired at the machine and blew it apart.
The laundryman's eyes became round saucers. Then he suddenly seemed to realize the earphones and ripped
