Games of The Hangman

28

Fitzduane's Castle — 2228 hours

The sandbags covering the arrow slits shook under a burst of heavy-machine-gun fire that raked across the front of the gatehouse. Fitzduane had stipulated that the sandy earth used to fill the bags be well dampened. The sweating students had groaned because the earth was noticeably heavier when wet, but the merit of this precaution now became obvious: the damp earth absorbed even the heavy machine-gun rounds, and though the sacks themselves were becoming bullet-torn, their contents stayed more or less in place. Their defenses against direct gunfire and the more dangerous problem within the stone confines of the castle — ricochets — were holding. Noble's mental image of the sandbags leaking their contents like a row of egg timers did not seem likely to materialize for some time.

Noble was just thinking that thanks to the castle's thick stone walls, the noise of the gunfire was almost bearable when a double blast sent tremors through the whole structure and temporarily deafened him. He removed a sandbag and peered through a murder hole overlooking the main gate. Two rocket-propelled grenades had blown huge gaps in the wooden gates. As he watched, two more grenades impacted. He hugged the floor while further explosions rent the air only a few meters away from where he lay. Blasts of hot air and red-hot grenade fragments seared through the open murder hole. When the clatter of shrapnel falling to the floor had died down, he snatched a look at the gateway again. The second set of explosions had finished the destruction of the wooden gates and blown the splintered remnants off their hinges. Burning pieces of the gates cast flickers of orange light into the darkness, and the familiar smell of woodsmoke blended with the acrid fumes from the explosives. His initial shock at seeing their defenses torn away so quickly turned to relief when he noticed that the portcullis still stood more or less intact, its rigid structure absorbing the shock waves and presenting a difficult target for the hollow-charge missiles.

A camouflaged figure darted out of the darkness and dropped to the ground. A few feet from Noble, Andreas was watching the perimeter through the night sight on his SA-80. The man was clutching a satchel charge. He lay in a slight dip, thinking he was concealed by the darkness while he regained his breath. He was still over a hundred meters away.

Andreas fought the desire to shoot when the green-gray image of the terrorist showed clear against the orange reticule of the sight. It would be so easy. The temptation was nearly overwhelming, but Fitzduane had given strict orders that the night-vision equipment was to be used only for observation until he gave the word. He wanted the attackers to get cocky, to come closer thinking they were concealed by the darkness. To enter the killing ground.

"Sapper at two o'clock — a hundred and twenty meters," he said to Noble. "You take him." Noble looked toward him uncertainly, hearing the noise but not the words, and Andreas realized he must still be deafened from the blast. He repeated his request, shouting into Noble's ear. Noble nodded and readied his Uzi.

The sapper advanced another twenty meters on his belly and then broke into a run. The heavy machine-gun began concentrating its fire on the gatehouse.

The sapper was fifty meters away when Noble, still dazed, fired and missed. The sapper hit the ground. He was now dangerously close, and Andreas was thinking that playing it smart and not using the SA-80s yet might mean not using the SA-80s ever. "Being too clever by half," as the English put it. The sapper showed himself again, and Andreas was about to fire when heavy machine-gun rounds hitting just above the arrow slit made him duck, granite chips filling the air. He heard Noble's Uzi give a long half-magazine burst. Then the air outside the gatehouse was in flames as the satchel charge blew up, the force of the blast blowing him back from his firing position.

"Got him," said Noble.

Andreas grunted in acknowledgment. His ears were ringing. He thought he heard Noble say something, and then all he could think of was crouching out of harm's way as the heavy machine gun again cut in and methodically traced and retraced its malevolent way across the front of the gatehouse. The damn gun would burn out its barrels soon if it kept up this rate of fire.

There was a pause in its firing s if the gunner had read his mind, and he snatched a look into the darkness again with the SA-80 sight. He could see shaped getting nearer and decided to examine the ground in front of them more methodically. The heavy machine gun was still quiet, and the automatic rifle fire, though intense, was mostly going high.

Fitzduane had been right. The opposition was getting cocky. Whereas earlier, during daylight — and even more recently when the firing had commenced — they had all been nearly invisible under cover, now, confident of the concealing darkness, they had emerged from their positions and were moving forward slowly for an assault.

The death of the sapper did not seem to deter them, so something else must be up. He scanned the line of men again. There were on signs of scaling ladders or any other obvious method of gaining access to the castle. He looked deeper into the darkness. The Kite image intensifier was at its limit of operational effectiveness of six hundred meters when he began searching the road that led up to the castle. At first he could detect nothing except a faint impression of slow movement, and then out of the darkness he could see a large black shape with some long object protruding in front of it. He waited while the shape slowly advanced another hundred meters and then, after a further look, passed the SA-80 to Harry Noble.

The ambassador looked where he indicated and then ducked as muzzle flashes stabbed from the armored monolith creeping toward them. "I think we're moving toward the surprise event," he said."

"I hate surprises," said Andreas.

Noble was speaking by hand radio to Fitzduane. He put down the radio and fired several single shots into the darkness toward the spread-out line of advancing terrorists. Andreas watched them dive to the ground and then cautiously rise again when they realized that no one had been hit and the opposition was light.

There was an enormous explosion behind them from the direction of the keep. They both looked at the radio, which remained silent. Noble reached out and picked it up. He was about to press the call button when Fitzduane's voice crackled out of it. "Relax," it said. "That's part of the Bear's war, and he's doing just fine. Now get on with the gate."

Andreas looked at Noble. "Does he mean what I think he means?"

"It's what we planned," said Noble. "He wants us to open the portcullis." He pressed the switch, wondering if they still had power or if they would have to crank it by hand. The old motor whirred, then caught, and the spiked portcullis began to rise from the ground.

"This is crazy," said Andreas. "They'll get in."

"I think that's the whole idea," said Noble.

Andreas felt his bowels go liquid. He could hear Noble inserting a fresh magazine into the pistol grip of the Uzi and the click as the weapon was cocked. Noble indicated the Hawk grenade launcher and the bandolier of 40 mm grenades. "Fléchette rounds," he said, "then armor-piercing explosive."

* * * * *

The fighting platform of the keep was the best observation point in the castle. That was fine, except for the fact that it could clearly be seen to be so and as such was likely to attract unwelcome attention.

Apart from the anticipated volume of incoming fire, Fitzduane had been worried about its nature. The top of the keep was a flat, open rectangle with a high crenellated parapet that would tend to concentrate the effect of blast. It could be neutralized with one single mortar round or even a couple of grenades.

Fitzduane's solution led one student to remark that the Fitzduane family motto should be "Dig and Live" and its coat of arms a crossed pick and shovel on a background of sweat-saturated sandbags. A block and tackle were rigged on the platform, and a seemingly unending succession of sandbags and balks of timber and pieces of corrugated iron was hauled up. Te result was a fair reproduction of a First World War trench dugout in the sky. The roof was designed to be mortarproof — at least for the first couple of blasts (during which time the occupants, if they had any sense, would bug out to the floor below). As it happened, the construction of the dugout roof made all the difference.

The pilots selected for the Powerchutes, two brothers, Husain and Mohsen, were Iranians and followers of a modified version of the teachings of Hasane Sabbah, had founded the sect of the Assassins in the Elburz Mountains north of Teheran in the purity of assassination as a political tool had been tempered by the discovery that the game could work two ways. After an Israeli hit team had whittled their dedicated band of twenty down to just the pair of them, they had added the profit motive to the teachings of Hasane Sabbah. But they still retained enough fanaticism, or were just plain dumb enough, in Kadar's judgment, to be prepared to push their attacks to the absolute limit.

Photographs and drawings of the main features of Fitzduane's castle had been found in several books in the DrakerCollege library, so the brothers had been thoroughly briefed. The plan was for the first Powerchute, flown by Husain, to swoop in and drop a satchel charge on the keep's fighting platform while the second Powerchute, flown by Mohsen, would send its specially weighted charge through the slate roof of the great hall, into the yawning aperture made by the explosion of the weighted satchel charge, thus setting the top floor of the building alight —one guidebook made great reference to ‘the splendor of the carved oak beams dating back from medieval times’ — and rendering it uninhabitable. The pilots would then cut their engines and, using only the steerable ramjet parachutes of the Powerchutes, would land on the cleared fighting platform and hold it while their brethren reinforced them by climbing up from below on ropes.

The entire Powerchute attack, Kadar calculated, could be completed in less than ninety seconds. To check this, a rehearsal was carried out on the mock-Gothic keep of DrakerCollege. Using dummy bombs and in daylight, the two brothers clocked in, on their first attempt, at a creditable ninety-four seconds, including a final sweep of the ‘fighting platform’ with automatic rifle fire as they sailed down. They shaved a further five seconds off with practice.

The actual attack did not work out according to plan except that it accelerated the brothers' path to the goal of all followers of Hasane Sabbah killed in the line of duty: Eternal Paradise. But it was close.

The Powerchutes achieved total surprise. With the noise of their engines drowned by a fusillade from the cordon of terrorists, Husain was able to sweep in undetected and release his satchel charge — a webbing satchel containing plastic explosive, shrapnel, and a three-second fuse — exactly over the target. Unfortunately the light of the half-moon as it shone intermittently through the scurrying clouds made visibility difficult, and he didn't see the dugout that had been constructed on the platform.

The bomb glanced off the dugout and slid down toward the slate roof of the great hall. Exploding in near-perfect imitation of a directional mine, the shrapnel caught the second Powerchute on its approach, which was lower than intended thanks to the fickleness of the Irish wind, in a pattern that would have done credit to a champion skeet shooter.

Mohsen didn't even have time to complain about the Irish climate or to reflect that it might have been a good idea to practice in advance with real explosives or to curse his miscalculating brother seven different ways. He was killed instantly, his body pierced in a dozen places, and his Powerchute carried him across the castle walls to crash minutes later in a ball of flame against the cliffs of the mainland. Inside the dugout, protected by a triple layer of sandbags, the Bear and Murrough were scarcely affected by the explosion except to feel a little sick at the thought that their attackers seemed to have the very weapon they had feared most — a mortar. Expecting a barrage of further rounds now that the gunner had zeroed in on them with the first shot — not so common with a mortar — they headed as one for the circular stairs and took up fresh positions in Fitzduane's bedroom immediately below.

The defenders on the battlements outside scarcely had time to think at all. First a huge black shape sailed by, spraying blood like some vampire celebrating the abolition of garlic, and then automatic weapons fire from the sky made the point that the first vampire wasn't flying about alone.

Etan, crouched in a sandbag cocoon on the inland-facing battlements, was the first to react. The rapid semiautomatic fire of her Mauser caused Husain to take a raincheck on Paradise and to swerve away violently, abandoning any thoughts of dropping the incendiary on this pass. He banked and climbed to prepare for another run. All Etan could see was a black figure almost invisible against the clouds while the moon was obscured.

"What the fuck is that?" asked Henssen, who was wiping something wet off his face and hoping it wasn't what he thought it was or, if it was, that it wasn't his. He couldn't feel any pain, but his heart felt as if it were going to pound its way out of his body.

"I don't know," said Etan, "some kind of flying thing, I think. Its' like a balloon, but quick."

Fitzduane ran up in a crouching run, holding himself easily as if he'd done this kind of thing many time before — which he had. If nothing else, combat taught you very quickly to make yourself small. Fitzduane was an expert. He seemed to have visibly shrunk.

Etan pointed. Fitzduane, squatting well down behind the parapet and the sandbags, raised his SA-80 and examined the area she had indicated with the night sight. He could see nothing at first, given the Kite's limited field of view — one disadvantage of using a telescopic sight instead of wide-angle binoculars — but a quick pan picked up the image of a light metal frame containing a sitting figure with legs outstretched as if driving a go-cart. A checked keffiyeh was wrapped around its head and mouth, the ends streaming close to a giant propeller enclosed in a circular protective guard like that of a swamp boat. For an instant Fitzduane thought that if the keffiyeh would only stream back a couple of centimeters, the problem might solve itself. Then he looked further and saw the familiar outline of a military ramjet cargo parachute. The metal frame turned to head directly toward him, and he could see stabs of flame. He switched the fire selector of the SA-80 to automatic reluctantly, bearing in mind his own strictures on the subject, and opened fire.

The powered parachute was moving deceptively fast — somewhere in excess of forty kilometers per hour at a guess — and it sailed low over the castle before he could fire a second burst. A small black shape left the metal frame as it passed and landed on the opposite battlements, exploding among the zigzagging double line of sandbags and sending smoke and flames into the air and streams of liquid fire into the bawn below.

The powered parachute came into his line of vision again when it turned and prepared for a further attack. He could see the pilot in profile less than two hundred meters away. He fired again. This time the figure arched and its head sagged. The metal frame with its swamp boat propeller dipped but flew on and vanished into the darkness.

"Holy shit," said Henssen in relief, "but they're an all-singing, all-dancing outfit." He turned toward Etan, who seemed to have sunk out of sight behind the sandbags. "Good for you, Etan," he said. "If it hadn't been for you and your broom handle, we might have been barbequed."

There was a low moan from behind the angle of the sandbags that concealed Etan. The bags were arranged in a double zigzagging line along the battlements to minimize the effects of exploding hand grenades or mortar bombs.

Henssen turned the angle.

Etan lay on her back, her hands gripping her right thigh. Blood, black in the darkness, welled through her fingers.

* * * * *

Outside Fitzduane's Castle — 2242 hours

Abu Rafa, commander of Malabar Unit —the unit responsible for the attack on the gatehouse — could scarcely contain his frustration. In his considered professional opinion, Kadar, who might be brilliant at planning terrorist incidents and kidnaps, was making a mess of a classic but straightforward infantry problem: the capture of a weakly held strongpoint by superior military forces.

The correct solution would have been to attack immediately on landing while the momentum of the initial assault was with them and when daylight would have allowed them to apply their superior firepower to full effect — and to hell with casualties, which wouldn’t have been heavy anyway in a sudden, forceful attack.

Bringing up the heavy machine guns, waiting until dark, and using such gadgetry as the Powerchutes and the tank-tractor struck Abu Rafa as a load of pretentious shit. Ironically it reminded him of the warnings of his onetime archenemy, he of the black eyepatch, General Moshe Dayan of Israel. Dayan had become disturbed at the tendency of the Israeli Army after the War of Independence to try for clever tactics instead of forcing home the attack — what he called the ‘Jewish solution.’ Most times, Dayan argued, what counted was less how you attacked than the spirit and force with which you did it; the intention should be to ‘exhaust the mission,’ to keep at it until you succeeded and not fuck around trying to be clever.

Abu Rafa thought that Dayan, may he rot in hell forever, was right, Allah knows. The accursed Israelis had proved it often enough — and unfortunately by combining the best of both approaches.

The Malabar commander's frustration was further exacerbated by the latest developments: the tank-tractor, whose attack should have coincided with the Powerchute assault, had broken down less than five hundred meters from the gatehouse. The fault wasn't serious and would mean only a fifteen-minute delay, but it occurred after the Powerchutes were beyond recall so the benefits of a combined strike had been lost.

The good news was that the defenders' volume of fire was very light and not accurate, except, it appeared, at close range — as the sapper had learned the hard way. Apart from him, there had been no casualties in Malabar. Seeing the weakness of the opposition and fed up with freezing in the chill night air, in what by Irish standards was a comparatively balmy evening, the commandos of Malabar were raring to go.

At first Abu Rafa thought it must be some trick of the light, and then it became clear that what he was seeing was really happening: the portcullis, that much more serious obstacle than the now-destroyed heavy oak gates, was rising. A sally by the defenders? Most unlikely. A trick? They wouldn't dare, given their inferior firepower. No, either they were surrendering or the incoming fire had affected the portcullis mechanism. Or maybe the Sacrificer was still alive and was working inside in their behalf.

Whatever the reason, it was visible proof of which side Allah was backing. Abu Rafa looked at his Russian radio and for a second debated getting Kadar's permission to attack — and then frustration won out.

"Malabar first section," he shouted, "follow me!" With a ferocity that General Dayan himself would have admired, he ran forward, firing from the hip, followed by the shouting, cheering me of the first section, automatic rifles blazing. They stormed through the gateway and were spreading to the left and right to secure the gatehouse and the battlements when Abu Rafa first had the thought that maybe Allah was hedging his bets.

The courtyard was suddenly illuminated by floodlights. Straight ahead of him on the battlements there were sandbagged emplacements. A burst of fire hit him in the chest, severing ribs and blowing apart his lungs. He saw three of his men disintegrate as a tongue of flame followed by a shattering roar burst forth from an opening in a pile of sandbags.

The last sound he heard before his body was shredded by the second concealed cannon at point-blank range was that of the portcullis slamming shut.

* * * * *

Fitzduane's Castle — 2250 hours

Eleven terrorists had gotten in — rather more than had been planned for — before the portcullis was dropped back into place. As a killing ground the bawn was ideal, and for the first few seconds surprise was total. Facing the terrorists were the two cannon manned by the Bear and de Guevain. Fitzduane, Judith Newman, and Henssen fired from the battlements. Noble and Andreas cut off the rear.

Seven terrorists died in the defenders' first hail of fire before the lights were shot out, and two more were caught by fléchette rounds fired from a murder hole by Andreas as the scrabbled at the portcullis and called to their comrades outside.

The two surviving terrorists had gone in the same direction but were now on different levels. One had made it to the battlements about twenty meters from where Etan lay wounded and unconscious, the bleeding now stopped temporarily by a tourniquet that had been applied by Henssen. The other, immediately below, had made it to the cover of the outhouse — the one that had been used as a test target for the cannon — located almost immediately under his comrade's hiding place. He was using the windows and apertures to shoot from, and his short, professional bursts were disconcertingly well placed. The Bear and de Guevain were pinned down. They couldn't get around the front of the cannon to reload without exposing themselves to the crossfire from one of the two terrorist positions.

Andreas had released his loaded fléchette rounds. The next 40 mm grenades in the Hawk were dual-purpose armor piercing. He checked the ammunition reserve. After he had fired the two in the weapon, he would have two armor-piercing left. Most of the ammunition supply consisted of the standard M406 HE (High Explosive), although there still remained some other specialized rounds for specific applications.

Fitzduane was on the battlements across from the terrorists. The sandbags were now working in the terrorists' favor. The infiltrator on the parapet was well concealed behind the zigzagging fortifications and was well positioned to sweep most of the bawn with fire. More seriously, if he could hold his position, he would be joined by reinforcements climbing up that section of the wall. It was beginning to look to Fitzduane as if his plan to whittle down the opposition in a killing ground might backfire.

Fitzduane spoke into the radio. "Harry, what's that armored tractor of theirs up to?"

"It's halted about five hundred meters away." Nobel peered through the night sight. "There are a couple of people working on it, so I guess it broke down. Probably caused by all that weight. I wouldn't count on its staying that way for long. And by the way, we've only got four rounds of armor-piercing left."

"Have you a shot at either of our visitors?"

"Without moving, negative. What us to give it a try?"

"No," said Fitzduane. "You and Andreas stay where you are and hold that gate. Use the SA-80 on single shot, and see if you can take out the guys working on the tank. We need to buy some time." Fitzduane clicked the radio to another channel. "Check in, Henssen."

"Etan needs help," answered Henssen. "I'm okay."

"You've got a hostile about twenty meters away, gatehouse direction," said Fitzduane.

"I know," said Henssen. "I'm going to take him out."

"No," said Fitzduane. "No crawling around corners yet. Use the Molotov cocktails. I'm sending Judith along to help."

There was the explosion of a grenade from behind the battlement sandbags facing Fitzduane, followed by a burst of AK-47 fire. There was a pause of about thirty seconds, and the routing was repeated.

"I think out visitor is coming my way," said Henssen into the radio. "He's grenading each zig and zag as he comes."

"Give ground," said Fitzduane.

"Why do you think we're still alive?" cried Henssen. "But it's slow pulling Etan. If he rushes us, we're fucked."

"If he rushes you, blow his head off."

"Hugo," said Murrough, "I'm within a whisper of a clear shot. When he next raises his head, I'll get him."

"Jesus," said Fitzduane, "where the hell are you?"

"Top of the keep," said Murrough. "Top of the dugout, in fact."

Judith slipped in beside Henssen, smelling of poteen and gasoline from the bag of Molotov cocktails she carried. "Get her out of here," she said to Henssen, who hesitated. "Now!" she whispered urgently. Henssen did as he was told. He crawled away, dragging the unconscious Etan along the gritty stone behind him.

Judith lit two of the Molotov cocktails and tossed them over the angled wall of sandbags, where they burst further down the battlements. She lit two more and threw them. A line of flame lit up the night, exposing two attackers who were climbing through the crenellations behind where the terrorist was concealed.

Fitzduane and Murrough fired instantly, hitting the same man. Already dead, he collapsed forward into the burning gasoline. The second climber died a second later when Judith took his head off with a burst from her Uzi. The original terrorist, his keffiyeh and camouflage a mass of flame, ran screaming along the battlements toward Judith a fighting knife in his hand and all caution driven from his body by the intense pain.

There was a double stab of flame from a shotgun, and the burning terrorist was hurled back against the sandbags, his lower body a bloody, wet mass. Katia Maurer reloaded the shotgun and went back to tending Etan. Judith replaced the empty magazine on her Uzi and tried to stop shaking.

Henssen took the lighter from her trembling hands and lit a succession of Molotov cocktails and sent them hurtling down to the base of the battlements. There were screams and cries from below. Trough a firing slit figures could be seen retreating into the darkness. One dropped after Murrough fired from the dugout roof. Judith crawled along the battlements and swung two Molotov cocktails tied to a length of electrical wire through the windows of the outhouse below, turning the remaining terrorist's hiding place into a furnace. Seconds passed, and then, with a cry, a burning figure ran out into the combined gunfire of Fitzduane and Judith.

Suddenly, as if by agreement between two opposing forces, the shooting stopped, and there was an almost complete silence. Fitzduane became aware of the sound of the sea and of the wind as it blew across the battlements, and he could hear the hiss as the flames encountered the wetness of body tissue and blood. He could hear the cries of the wounded outside the castle. By the light of the nearly spent Molotov cocktails he could see bodies littering the bawn below, where the Bear and Christian de Guevain had emerged form their sandbag emplacement and were already halfway through loading the cannon.

He became aware of something else, a voice repeating something again and again. It seemed to make no sense; there was no one there. He sat down and shook his head. The voice continued. He could see himself as if her were detached from his body and floating in the darkness. He looked down, and he could see the castle spread out below and the fires burning inside it and outside the walls.

Slowly he felt himself being drawn back into the castle, and then the Bear was shaking him gently by the shoulder and talking into the radio, and he could hear the faint sound of suppressed aircraft engines overhead.

* * * * *

Above Fitzduane's Island — 2305 hours

"I don't believe it," said the pilot. "It's nearly the end of the twentieth century, and there is a siege going on that's straight from the Middle Ages."

"Not exactly the Middle Ages," said Kilmara. Two lines of heavy-caliber tracer curved out of the darkness and converged on the castle.

"Green tracer, 12.7-millimeter," said the pilot. He had flown forward air control in Vietnam. "Kind of makes me feel nostalgic. We're out of range at this height, thought a few thousand feet lower it'll be no day at the beach. I wonder what else they've got."

"I expect we'll find out," said Kilmara. "Get Ranger HQ on the radio."

The transport twins and their cargoes of Rangers had been left to circle out of sight and earshot over the mainland while the Optica went ahead to do what it was good at: observe. They were flying at five thousand feet above the island for a preliminary reconnaissance while Kilmara tried to establish radio contact with Fitzduane below. And to determine the scale and location of what he was up against.

Already he realized that he had underestimated the opposition. The sight of the Sabine offshore told him how the Hangman's main force had arrived, and that suggested very strongly that the Dublin operation was a bluff.

The Rangers had nearly been caught off guard completely. As it was, most of his force was more than two hours away even if it was released immediately — which he doubted would happen.

* * * * *

Fitzduane's Castle — 2307 hours

Sheltered in the storeroom off the main tunnel, the surviving students felt more than heard the initial noises of combat above and around them. The subsequent sound of cannon fire almost directly overhead was more immediate and menacing. It brought home the unpleasant thought that they were not out of danger yet — and that the defenders of the castle might lose. The prospect of being held hostage again by people as ruthless as these terrorists accelerated the process of selecting volunteers to join in the fighting.

There had at first been some resentment at Fitzduane's decision to kept them unarmed and away from the firing line, but the logic of his reasoning soon won out. They had to face the unpalatable fact that the initial threat had come from their own student body — and there was not guarantee that one or two or more Sacrificers might not be left. The discussion of how to resolve this dilemma had begin enthusiastically but not very productively. Things changed when the Swede, Sig Bengtquist, a mathematician and a distant relative of the Nobel family, started to speak. Up to now he had been silent, but the notepad he seemed never to be without, even when dragged unwillingly into some sporting activity, was covered with neat jottings in his microscopic handwriting.

"There is no foolproof way of ensuring that we do not select a Sacrificer by accident," he said. "But I think we can establish some orderly criteria to improve our chances of choosing the right people."

"You've worked out a mathematical formula," said a voice.

"Yes," said another. "We're going to draw the lucky winners out of a hat or roll dice to see who gets a chance to be shot at."

There was strained laughter. They had decidedly mixed feelings about experiencing any further the lethal realities of combat. Some were terrified at the thought. Others were itching for a chance to hit back and be players and not merely pawns in this game of life and death. What they had seen earlier in the day — the slaughter in the college — had left them with no illusions about glory or the supposed glamour of war.

"Go on, Sig," said the deep baritone voice of Osman Ba, a Sudanese from the northern part of the country and the Swede's best friend. From the contrast in their coloring they were known as “Day and Night.” There were nods of agreement from the others. There were about fifty students in the room — representing half as many nationalities — and since there weren't enough chairs, most were sitting on boxes or on rugs on the floor. Empty sandwich plates and glasses were piled next to the door. Several of the students, worn out by the excitement of the day and the post-stress reaction, had fallen asleep. The others all looked tired, but what they were trying to do held their interest, and their eyes, though mostly red-rimmed from strain and fatigue, were keen and alert.

"I have drawn up a matrix," said Sig, "a spread sheet if you're accountancy-minded, cross-referencing all who have volunteered to fight with the criteria. As it happens, this approach produces sixteen names, so we still have to find some way to whittle down the list to the ten names we've been asked for. I would suggest nothing more scientific than reviewing the sixteen names and, after any objections, putting all the remaining ones into a hat and pulling out the first ten."

"Makes sense," said Osman Ba.

"What are these criteria?" asked one of the Mexicans. "I think it's only fair that we should know how these names have been selected."

"Of course," said Sig. "The points are mostly obvious. All additional suggestions are welcome." There was silence in the room before Sig spoke again. They could hear the sounds of gunfire and more explosions. The prospect of leaving their safe underground haven was looking less appealing by the minute.

"Not a member of the ski club," said Sig. "All the known Sacrificers were, you will recall."

"That lets me out," said a Polish student, "but it doesn't make me a Sacrificer."

"Eighteen or over," continued Sig, "familiar with weapons, good health, and eyesight and no serious physical defects, good reflexes, good English — that seems to be the common language among the existing defenders. Not an only child." The list went on for another dozen points. "And someone we all instinctively trust. Gut feel," he added.

He read out the sixteen names. Three were vetoed. At Sig's suggestion, no reasons were given. The remaining thirteen names were placed in the now-empty bread bin. Three minutes later the chosen ten looked at each other in the knowledge that before dawn one or some or all of them might be wounded, even dead.

Sig was elected leader of the volunteers.

"Why only ten of us, I wonder?" asked Osman Ba. "They could have asked for more. Why not twelve like the apostles?"

"One of the twelve was a traitor," said Sig. "I guess Fitzduane is trying to improve the odds." He was reflecting that his little group was about as multinational as it could be. Would it help that traditional enemies — Russian and Pole, Kuwaiti and Israeli, French and German among them — were now on the same side? Did it make any difference what nationality you were when you were dead?

His mouth was dry, and he swallowed. Osman was doing the same thing, he noticed. That made him feel marginally better.

* * * * *

Above Fitzduane's Castle — 2307 hours

"Quite a party," said Kilmara into his helmet microphone.

"About bloody time," answered Fitzduane. The signal strength was good, and though his tone was professionally neutral, the relief in his voice was palpable. "I hope you've brought some friends. The Hangman is here in strength."

"Situation report," said Kilmara.

Fitzduane told him, his summary succinct and almost academic, detailing nothing of the fear and pain and the gut-churning tension of combat.

"Can you hold?" asked Kilmara. "I'll have to locate my DZ well north of you or the 12.7s won't leave much of us. It could take an hour or longer to link up with you."

"We'll hold," said Fitzduane, "but it's getting hairy. We don't have enough bodies to man the full perimeter properly. We may have to fall back to the keep."

"Very well," said Kilmara. A heat signature blossomed on the IR-18 screen. Reflexes already primed, virtually simultaneously the pilot punched a switch to ripple-fire flares and, banking away from the oncoming missile, put the Optica into a series of violent maneuvers culminating in a steep dive.

"A fucking SAM," said the pilot seconds later when it was clear that the heat-seeking missile had been successfully decoyed by the intense heat of the flares. "Who would have thought it? A heat-seeking SAM-7 at a guess. Good thing we got away or we'd be fireworks."

"Brace yourself for more fancy flying," said Kilmara. "We're going to have to keep their heads down during the jump." He broke off to bark instructions to the two Ranger transport aircraft, which were preparing for a run to the drop zone. In response, the lead plane peeled off to starboard, leaving the second Islander alone heading toward the DZ. It was out of range of the heavy machine guns, but a SAM-7, what the Russians called a Strela or “Arrow” — has a range of up to 4,500 meters, depending on the model, and the slow Islander, low and steady for the drop, would be a tempting target. A possible tactic was to fly very low because a SAM-7 isn't at its best below 150 meters, but there was the small matter of allowing the parachutes time to open. In addition, budget constraints had meant that automatic flare dispensers weren't fitted to the transports, though conventional Very pistols were carried and might be of some help.

Kilmara raised Fitzduane again for a brief discussion of tactics and the disposition of the Hangman's forces. The primary targets would be the missile position and the heavy-machine-gun emplacements. The other threats would have to wait.

Unfortunately they wouldn't. As the Optica prepared for its strafing run and the Ranger transport flew toward the DZ, the Hangman launched another attack on the castle, with the tank spearheading the thrust.

* * * * *

Fitzduane's Castle — 2318 hours

The tank was advancing very slowly. The weight of its armor alone was unlikely to account for its pace, nor would there be any tactical reason for advancing at a crawl, so either the machine wasn't working properly or there were more unpleasant surprises in store.

At 150 meters, Andreas opened fire with the Hawk, acutely conscious that he had only four armor-piercing rounds left. A Kalashnikov bullet ricocheted through the arrow slit as he fired the first projectile, and he missed completely. Shaken, he aimed again. When the tank was about 120 meters away, he fired. This time the round punched through the armor plate and exploded. Still the tank came on.

At eighty meters Andreas fired two more armor-piercing rounds. One 40 mm grenade hit the facing armor plate close to where it butted against the side armor. The explosion blew the welding, peeling open the front of the tank like the lid of a sardine can. Still the tank came on, and only then were the slow speed of the vehicle and its resistance to the armor-piercing grenades explained. Behind the steel plate was a second multilayer wall of concrete blocks and sandbags, their sheer physical mass impossible to penetrate with the light weaponry at the defenders' disposal.

The peeled-back armor and the close range did offer some possibilities. Andreas lowered his aim. Perhaps he could knock out a wheel or disable the steering mechanism. His last armor-piercing round seemed to have little effect, but three high-explosive grenades fired in quick succession from less than forty meters at the right front wheel of the armored tractor jammed a steering rod and forced the vehicle marginally out of alignment with the gate.

Still the vehicle came on. Firing was now incessant on all sides. The terrorists sensed that they were close to breaching the castle, and the defenders, casting aside all attempts at restraint, used their night vision-equipped SA-80s and full firepower to devastating effect.

It wasn't enough. Six terrorists died in the hail of accurate automatic rifle fire before the remainder realized what they must be up against and sought physical cover — but then sheer numbers began to tell. A gap in the clouds meant that moonlight illuminated the battleground for a few critical minutes. Windows and firing slits could be seen as black rectangles against the gray mass of the castle walls. Accurate automatic rifle fire kept the defenders pinned down while the tank prepared to advance to point-blank range, where it would detonate the explosives it carried on a boom.

Keeping Fitzduane's castle between it and the SAM-7 position, the Optica screamed low over the sea at near-zero height, causing Murrough on the roof of the dugout to duck as the futuristic-looking aircraft flashed above him before it climbed at the last moment and then banked and dived. The SAM-7 fired a split second before a stream of tracer bullets followed by rockets blew the entire missile crew to pieces and the launcher into the undergrowth.

The SAM-7 had been aimed at the Ranger transport carrying out its low level drop on the north side of the island. Six Rangers had jumped before the missile, traveling at one and a half times the speed of sound, hit the port engine. The high-explosive head ignited on contact, blasting the engine and wing off the aircraft and setting fire to the fuel tanks. The sky lit up, and the flaming mass, raining debris, knifed its way through the night air and exploded against the hillside, mercifully cutting short the agonies of the pilot and copilot and the remaining two Rangers still aboard. One more Ranger was killed by a piece of red-hot engine cowling as he swung from his parachute.

Five Rangers, including both members of the Milan missile team, reached the ground alive. When they linked up with Lieutenant Harty, the unit commander, checked in by radio with Kilmara. Then he spoke into his helmet microphone. "Let's do it, lads," he said. "Time for them to pay the bill."

Spread out in combat formation, faces blackened, heavily laden with weapons, ammunition, and equipment, the unit moved toward the action. The sound of firing, the crump of grenades, the arcing of tracers, and a burning glow indicated with brutal simplicity the location of the battleground.

* * * * *

Fitzduane's Castle — 2338 hours

Andreas loaded his last two high-explosive grenades. The noise inside the gatehouse was deafening. Beside him, Harry Noble, reinforced now by the Bear and de Guevain, fired burst after burst at the elusive, threatening figures outside. The terrorists had learned from their earlier casualty rate and now made use of every scrap of cover, including the lumbering shape of the tank. Their fire had increased in accuracy and was backed by the heavy machine guns, which made accurate defense nearly impossible even when a clear target could be made out.

The tank was less than twenty meters away — it was now obvious that the boom with the explosive charge was inside some sort of protective metal casing — when Andreas released his very last grenade. The tank lurched as if it were human. The right wheel and steering rods had been blown away completely. Already veering to the right of the gate before the final grenade hit, the tank now slewed off the road completely and tottered over on its side. Andreas and Noble gave a cheer.

"Down!" shouted the Bear, pushing Andreas to the floor. The entire building rocked as the boom charge exploded. The blast funneled through firing slits and murder holes, throwing Noble, who had reacted a shade too slowly, against the portcullis winding mechanism. The main gear wheel tore open his body in a dozen places, killing him instantly. The Bear glanced through a murder hole. The main force of the blast had been dissipated against the thick walls of the bawn. The portcullis, though twisted and bent and bearing the scars of the earlier RPG-7 assault, was still intact. He checked the castle approach, where the wrecked tank, now reduced to twisted mass of hot metal, lay to one side. As he watched, thick smoke, billowing from a row of smoke grenades, began to obscure the access road to the portcullis. The temporary lull in the firing from the terrorists in front of the castle ceased, and yet again automatic fire thudded off the castle walls and whine through the firing slits.

A roaring shape, a Land Rover, shot out of the smoke and smashed into the portcullis. The Bear glimpsed a figure jumping from it just before impact, and again he flung Andreas to the floor.

This time the force of the explosion was truly horrific in its immediacy and intensity. The floor heaved and ripped open, revealing the mangled remains of the portcullis below. It was no longer an effective barrier. Dazed and breathless from the blast and unable to respond, the Bear watched helplessly as figures ran through the open gateway.

He heard running footsteps on the stairs outside, and a hand grenade was thrown into the room. The small black object bounced across the floor before the Bear's eyes, coming to a halt less than two meters from him. It seemed to pause before toppling over through the crack in the floor and exploding a spit second later.

A camouflage-clad figure, the keffiyeh around his neck wet with blood from a long slash on his right cheek, burst into the room, firing an AK-47. Lying on the floor just behind him and out of sight, de Guevain, who had been reloading, grabbed a cavalry saber and slashed the terrorist across the back of the knees. The terrorist pitched forward, his automatic rifle dropping from his hands. Andreas, also sprawled on the floor, extended his SA-80 with one hand and pressed the muzzle against the terrorist's neck. The three-round burst exploded the man's head and filled the room with a red mist.

A second grenade was lobbed into the room, but in his excitement the terrorist in the doorway had forgotten to pull the pin. The Bear, still shaken but forced into action by the desperate need to survive, seized it, pulled the pin, and threw it back through the doorway.

The terrorist concealed there couldn’t run for cover down the narrow circular stairs because of the men behind him. There wasn't time to throw the grenade back into the room. He chose the only option he could think of and dived into the room away from the grenade, rolled, and came up firing. Rounds pumped into Harry Noble's dead body. The grenade exploded at the top of the circular staircase, temporarily blocking access to the room. Andreas shot the terrorist in the stomach before he had time to change his point of aim.

De Guevain ran to the concealed door that led to the tunnel and swung it open. Andreas and the Bear grabbed what extra weapons and ammunition they could and, with a last glance at Harry Noble's body, ran for safety. De Guevain followed, pulling the massive door behind him and ramming home the series of bolts and securing bars. They had bought some time at the cost of yet another life — but the Hangman's forces were now inside the castle.

* * * * *

Above Fitzduane's Castle — 2351 hours

The Sabine had moved to within five hundred meters of the shore and then had opened fire on the keep with a pair of heavy machine guns. Murrough had been swept off the dugout roof by this concentration of fire from an unexpected quarter, and his body now lay outside the castle walls.

Circling high above the battlefield, his ammunition low, Kilmara had expended the last of his ordnance on this new threat. In two low-level attacks he had put the heavy machine guns out of action and holed the ship below the waterline. The cattle boat, essentially a series of open ramp-linked decks with the engine and crew quarters at the stern, had no bulkheads, and seawater had rushed in through the holes. The Sabine was sinking.

The few surviving crew had headed toward land in an inflatable. With the Optica's external weaponry out of ammunition, Kilmara instructed the pilot to fly low. He killed the remaining three survivors with his automatic rifle, using the Kite night sight and shooting through a firing port in the door.

The SAM-7 missile was out of commission, and there was no sign that the terrorists had brought more than one unit, so the Optica was now operating as it had been built to — as a combined observation aircraft and command post. Kilmara's eyes were fixed mainly on the IR viewer screen, with intermittent glances at the flames and tracers and other graphic signs of the intense combat below. Keeping above the effective range of the surviving land-based heavy machine guns, the Optica circled the combat zone, monitoring developments, providing precise enemy position locations for the advancing Rangers, and keeping in touch with Fitzduane, Dublin, and the remaining Ranger transport, which was still circling, ready to drop its force as soon as the heavy machine guns were silenced.

As commander, Kilmara found that the hardest part of any combat situation was the necessity of remaining aloof from the main action while his men fought and, all too often, died. He had a near-overwhelming desire to parachute from his transparent bubble in the sky, but he kept it suppressed and concentrated on what the modern military termed ‘C3I’: command, control, communications, and intelligence. Or, as he had once termed it: "Fucking around with a fiddle while Rome burns."

If only the Rangers on the ground could clear the heavy machine guns out of the way, then he could bring the balance of his force into action. "If only" — a pretty useless phrase in the real world.

Kilmara pressed the radio transmit button to call the Rangers on the ground but after a moment released it without speaking. His men knew full well what to do.

* * * * *

Ironically, considering the arrival of the Rangers on the island and the recent news that regular army reinforcements were at last on the way — although they would not arrive for several hours — the situation on the ground had never looked worse. The terrorists were now inside the castle. They had taken the gatehouse and occupied the outhouses and battlements of the bawn. Fitzduane had just made the decision to abandon the great hall and consolidate in the keep and the tunnel below. He hadn't much choice, since the terrorists occupied the floors below the great hall.

Fitzduane's original force had been whittled down to seven effectives, including the two middle-aged women who were primarily non-combatants. Several of the seven were wounded, lightly in most cases but with the inevitable toll on energy and stamina. Henssen had lost the use of one arm. Ammunition, given the intensity of the combat, was running low. The grenades and other specialized weaponry had been largely expended.

With great reluctance, Fitzduane deployed the ten student volunteers. At the rate things were going, he'd soon be down to a bunch of teenagers and medieval weaponry.