8


"Legs," said Günther. "They might have got away if it hadn't been for the girl's legs. The corporal in the back of the Land Rover was enthusing about them over his radio to a buddy of his stationed at another roadblock a few kilometers away. And then came gunfire and screaming for split seconds, and then silence.

"The warning was enough. The terrorists' car was intercepted in less than three kilometers, and there was an exchange of fire. The terrorists abandoned their car and made a run for it under cover of a driveway hedge. At the end of the drive they burst into a farmhouse located a few hundred meters off the main road. The army, in hot pursuit, surrounded the house and kept them pinned down until reinforcements arrived.

"So far two policemen, one soldier, and the farmer are dead. Another soldier looks likely to die, and a nurse who went to help got shot to pieces. As best we can determine, the corporal must have mistaken her for a terrorist and put a burst of Gustav fire into her legs. That makes a total of four dead — and two pending." He was silent for a moment. "That we know about," he added.

"An obvious question," said Fitzduane. "Why?"

Günther shrugged. "We are pretty sure they aren't IRA, but other than that, we don't know who they are, what they were up to when they were intercepted, or anything much else about them."

Kilmara stood in the doorway. "We thought you might be able to help, Hugo," he said. He placed two plastic-covered bloodstained rectangles on the table in front of Fitzduane. "Look at them closely and think very hard."

Fitzduane picked up the first of the international driver's licenses. The face was smiling into the camera, displaying shining white teeth under a drooping mustache. He studied the photograph carefully and shook his head. He picked up the second license. This time the expression on the face looking into the camera was completely serious, almost detached. Again he shook his head.

Kilmara leaned over and placed the licenses side by side on the table. "Try looking at them together," he said, "and take your time."

Fitzduane looked down at the small photographs and racked his brain for even the slightest hint of familiarity. Mentally he ticked off the assignments he had been on during the last few years. The girl was supposed to be Italian, but she could be Arab — or Israeli, for that matter. The facial types were often very similar. For his part, the man was dark enough to be of Middle Eastern origin, but despite the mustache he looked European.

Fitzduane pushed the two licenses across the table to where Kilmara and Günther sat. "The facial types are familiar enough, so I could be tempted to say maybe I've seen them before. It's possible — but if so, it must have been in the most casual way. Certainly I don't recognize them." He shrugged.

A Ranger came in and set three mugs of coffee on the table. Wisps of steam rose in the air.

Kilmara placed a heavy book in front of Fitzduane. "Hugo," he said, "we found this in the terrorists' baggage. It could be coincidence..." he smiled. "But when you're involved, I tend to believe in coincidence just a little less."

"Nice friendly reaction," said Fitzduane dryly, looking at the familiar volume. It had sold surprisingly well, and he still saw it in bookshops and in airport newsstands when he traveled. The soldier with the dove had been killed two days after the photo had been taken. He'd heard that the bird had survived. He indicated the book. "May I handle it?"

"Sure," said Kilmara. "Forensics have done their thing."

Fitzduane examined the book slowly and methodically. He turned back to the flyleaf. On it was written in pencil a price, a date, anda code: For 195—12/2/81—Ma 283. "A recent fan," he said.

"A recent purchase anyway, it would appear," said Kilmara.

"Francs?" asked Fitzduane.

"French, Swiss, Belgian, or indeed from a whole host of French colonies," said Kilmara. "We're looking into it."

"Any ideas," asked Günther, "why two killers should have bought your book? It's a heavy volume to carry if you're flying."

"No," said Fitzduane, "but I'll think about it."

"Hmm," said Kilmara. "Well, we've got other things to worry about right now. Thanks for coming. I'll get Grady to drive you home."

Fitzduane shuddered. "I think I'll be safer here. Mind if I hang around?"

Kilmara looked at his friend for a moment and then nodded. "Günther will give you some ID," he said. "You know the form. Keep a low profile and your head down. It's going to be a bloody night."

Fitzduane expressed surprise. "I thought a waiting game was the policy in a hostage situation."

"It is," said the Ranger colonel, "when you have a choice. Here we don't have a choice. The nice young couple in the farmhouse have issued an ultimatum: a helicopter to take them to the airport at dawn and then a plane to some as yet unidentified destination — or they kill one hostage every half hour, starting with the youngest child, aged two, name of Daisy."

"A bluff?"

Kilmara shook his head. "We think they mean what they say. They killed the little girl's father for no other reason than to make a point. Well, they made it and we can't let them get away and we can't let the hostages die — so in a few hours we're going in."

A Ranger poked his head through the doorway. "Colonel," he said, "the cherry picker has arrived."


* * * * *


The children were asleep at last. The three younger ones were sprawled on the king-size bed under the duvet. Rory, the eldest at nearly sixteen, lay in a sleeping bag on the floor. A large bloodstained bandage on his flushed forehead marked where the German with the black mustache had struck him savagely with the butt of his machine pistol.

The master bedroom was dimly lit by one bedside lamp. Maura O'Farrell, her eyes betraying the classic symptoms of extreme shock, sat knitting in an armchair near the curtained windows. The knitting needles moved automatically with great speed, and the nearly completed double-knit scarf coiled around her knees and draped down to the floor. The scarf had been meant for Jack to keep him warm as he worked the four hundred acres of their prosperous farm. He would be so cold now. She knew they wouldn't let her, but she wanted to go out and wrap the scarf around his neck. It would at least cover the wound.

She rose and went into the bathroom, whose door opened onto the master bedroom. Everywhere there were signs of Jack. His razor lay in its accustomed place, and his dressing gown hung behind the door. She unscrewed the cap of his after-shave and smelled the familiar, intimate odor; then she replaced the cap. She brushed her hair and checked her appearance in the mirror. She was a touch pale and drawn, which was understandable, but otherwise neat and well groomed. Jack was fussy about such things. He would be pleased.

She took a roll of adhesive tape from the medicine chest and returned to her chair. The knitting needles began to flash once more, and the scarf grew ever longer.

At regular intervals the young Italian girl checked her and the room and peered out of the small observation holes cut in the thick curtains. Maura O'Farrell paid her no heed. From time to time the children moaned in their sleep but did not wake. The makeshift sedative of brandy and aspirin mixed with sweetened warm milk had done its work. For a few hours they could rest, oblivious of the memory of seeing their father slaughtered like a pig.

For her part the young Italian girl felt tired but not too unhappy with their situation. They had been unlucky, but now things would work out. Those fools outside would have to give in. Killing the farmer had been a stroke of brilliance. It would cut short futile negotiations. At the agreed time of 3:30 a.m. the phone would ring and the authorities would announce their capitulation: a helicopter at dawn to the airport and then a requisitioned plane to Libya.

The Irish government would never allow a mother and her four children to be killed. Tina was looking forward to that phone call. She could feel the warmth of the Libyan sun on her face already. Ireland had the most beautiful countryside, but the wind and the rain and the damp cold were just too much for a hot-blooded woman.


* * * * *


The final preassault briefing took place in the twelve-meter-long Special Weapons and Equipment trailer. The walls of the mobile unit were lined with row after row of purpose-designed weaponry. Ammunition, scaling ladders, bullet-resistant clothing, and hundreds of other items of specialized combat equipment were stored in custom-built racks and cabinets. At one end of the trailer there was a giant high-resolution television screen flanked by huge pinboards covered with maps, drawings, and photographs. A long table ran for a third of the length of the trailer. On it, a scale model of the farmhouse and vicinity had been roughly constructed, using sand and children's building kits.

Kilmara stood to one side of the giant screen, which was connected to the surveillance system controlled by the separate MobileCommandCenter. The twelve Rangers of the assault group sat in folding chairs facing their colonel. Army and Special Investigations Branch liaison personnel swelled their numbers to more than twenty. A digital clock flashed away the seconds. Fitzduane sat discreetly in the background, thinking of how many times before he had watched the trained, attentive faces of troops being briefed — and afterward photographed their corpses. He wondered who in the room this night was going to die.

Kilmara began the briefing. The twelve men in the assault group listened intently. "We're going in. Our objective is to release the hostages unharmed, using only such force as is necessary to achieve that objective. It is my judgment that this will entail killing or, at the minimum, very seriously wounding the terrorists. For the last two hours you have been practicing against a similar house a few miles away. What I'm telling you now incorporates the lessons learned during that exercise.

"There are five hostages in all — specifically, Mrs. Maura O'Farrell and her four children. As best we can determine from acoustic surveillance, they are being kept in the second floor master bedroom. We believe that the window of that room are locked and that the windows and the heavy tweed curtains have been nailed in place. Since there is a bathroom directly off the master bedroom, the terrorists can keep the hostages quite conveniently in one place under close observation and at the same time have freedom of movement themselves.

"The farmhouse, as you've discovered, is a modern two-story building with one feature of particular interest to us, the hallway. That hallway is a small atrium. It runs the full height of the house and is lit from the top by a sloping skylight — which can open, incidentally, but is kept closed and locked this time of year. The hallway contains both the stairs to the second floor and the telephone.

"Most of the time the two terrorists prowl the house and keep watch on us — and the hostages — on pretty much a random basis. However, our surveillance has shown that a pattern has developed during the negotiating sessions on the phone. During these times the German, Dieter Kretz, according to his papers, is in the hall near the front door, using the phone. He has no choice. The phone is directly wired in on that spot, and there are no other extensions in the house. Of course, the hall door and adjacent hall windows are covered with blankets nailed into place. They started to do this after O'Farrell was killed, and while they were hammering away, we used the opportunity to insert acoustic probes into all key external areas of the house. That means that while we cannot see the terrorists — with one notable exception that I'll talk about in a moment — from the sounds they make we do have a precise idea where they are at any time. I'm also pleased to be able to say that the equipment is sufficiently sensitive for us to be able to determine not only the presence of a person in a particular location but the identity of that person, provided he or she talks or moves around.

"While the telephoning is going on, the girl normally sits halfway up the stairs so that she is near enough to the hostages and yet at the same time can talk with Dieter and put her two cents worth into the negotiations. Sometimes she actually descends the stairs and listens in on the oncoming call. The crucial time is therefore during telephone contact. Not only is Dieter in a predictable location then — and Tina, too, with luck — but we can actually see him."

Kilmara spoke quietly into a miniature microphone attached to a compact earpiece. Almost immediately the picture on the screen changed from a medium shot of the whole house to a small yellow rectangle. Kilmara spoke into his microphone again, and the yellow rectangle blurred and increased in size until it filled the whole screen. There was an adjustment of focus, and suddenly the assembled men realized they were looking directly through the skylight into the hall of the besieged farmhouse. They saw Dieter come into camera view, pause, look at the phone, and then walk out of sight in the direction of the front sitting room. The long-focus lens gave the picture an unreal, ethereal quality.

Kilmara continued. "The terrorists have said that if we attempt to approach any closer than the agreed perimeter of about two hundred meters from the house, they will kill a hostage. On the terrorists' instructions, we have floodlit the area up to about ten meters from the house. This allows the terrorists to see out without being dazzled. Now, the effect of all this is that although it is exceedingly difficult for us to cross that floodlit perimeter area undetected — and we have not yet been willing to take that risk because of the hostages — at the same time our friends inside cannot see beyond the wall of light surrounding them. They look out into the perimeter, no problem. But if they look up, then they just see the glare of the wall of floodlights."

The Ranger colonel spoke into the microphone again, and the picture on the screen changed. It now showed a giant metal arm with a platform on the end, the whole device being mounted on a self-propelled chassis.

"That picture of the hall," he said, "was taken from the top of that cherry picker crane. There is enough space on the platform for at least three people; the range into the hall from the platform is about two hundred and eighty meters. The problem is that the skylight is double-glazed and made out of toughened glass set at an angle to the direction of fire. It will deflect a conventional rifle round.

"So there are the main elements of our problem — and this is exactly what we're going to do."


* * * * *


Fitzduane watched the assault group select and check its weapons. His profession made him more knowledgeable than most about tactical firepower. Of the three Rangers in the cherry picker, two were armed with accurized M-21 assault rifles fitted with high-magnification image-intensifier sights. Early models of these sights had “whited out” when exposed to a sudden increase in light — say a room light being switched on — but the current version was microprocessor-controlled and could adapt without the marksman's losing his aim. The ammunition had the lethal apple green tips of special-purpose TKD high-penetration rounds. The Teflon-coated rounds lost stopping power as a corollary of their penetrating ability, but with the massive tissue destruction effect of the high-velocity 7.62 mm bullets, that problem would be a little academic.

The third Ranger on the cherry picker team selected a semiautomatic GLX-9 grenade launcher actually custom-built in the Ranger armory. Inspired by the original single-shot M-79 launcher, this weapon held four rounds in a rotary magazine and could hurl a stream of grenades with considerable accuracy for up to four hundred meters.

The actual entry into the house would be made by a team of six Rangers under the command of Lieutenant Phil Burke. They took British-made SA-80 5.56 mm assault rifles and Dutch V-40 hand grenades. The rifle ammunition was a derivation of the Glaser safety round and had the unusual characteristic of expending virtually all its energy in the target. It inflicted the most appalling wounds on the victim and yet did not ricochet.

The task of the third group was to provide intensive fire support from the front of the house. They took grenade launchers and Belgian-made 5.56 mm belt-fed minimi light machine guns.

The plan provided that the cherry picker team would take out Dieter first, and then Tina if she was by the phone. If she kept to her normal position on the stairs, it was calculated that the combined firepower of grenades and concentrated machine-gun fire would cut her to pieces before she could reach the hostages in the master bedroom. Meanwhile, Phil Burke's team would cross the perimeter and enter the master bedroom using lightweight scaling ladders. There three of them would pour covering fire out through the bedroom door into the hall toward the stairs while the balance of the team hurled the hostages down a chute to safety below.

The danger lay with Tina. If she climbed the stairs to the hostages without being incapacitated by the volume of fire and before Burke's team made it into the bedroom, the hostages would die in a burst of Skorpion fire. It was that simple.

In Fitzduane's opinion it was going to be very close — or as Kilmara put it to the assault group: "If at first you don't succeed, well, so much for skydiving."


* * * * *


The men on the cherry picker team moved off first. They needed time to maneuver into the best firing position and to attach the rifle mounts to the platform rail. Their main fear was that a gust of wind would jar the platform ever so slightly at the crucial moment. Kilmara had requested stabilizing cables with hydraulic mounts, but the truck carrying them had suffered a double flat tire and would not arrive in time. Fortunately, the night so far had been calm.

The six men of the Ranger entry team were hideous in blackface camouflage and night-vision goggles. They wore light mat black helmets made of ballistic material and containing miniature radios. Fitzduane was reminded of the head of a deformed fly.

With twenty minutes to zero, all units had completed checking in. The digital clock in the command center flashed second by second through the remaining time.

Outside, a stiff breeze sprang up, and the waiting perimeter of security forces cursed at the effect of the wind chill factor in the damp cold and huddled into their parkas.

At 3:30 a.m. the negotiator, Assistant Commissioner Brannigan, picked up the phone to tell the terrorists that the government, reluctantly, would agree to their terms. It was the signal to commence the assault. Now a series of different actions had to mesh together. Seconds were critical. A twenty-round Skorpion magazine can be fired in under two seconds.

It could take even less time to kill a defenseless woman and four young children.


* * * * *


"This is Kretz," said Dieter.

"He's in the hall," said Acoustic Surveillance.

"We see him," said the cherry picker team leader. "A clear shot but no sign of Tina."

"Tina is moving," said Acoustic Surveillance. "She's leaving the second-floor landing and moving down the stairs. She's stopped."

"Entry team — go!" said Kilmara into his microphone.

On the giant screen the six Rangers of the entry team could be seen sprinting across the two hundred meters of the perimeter. Each pair carried a single rubber-covered titanium alloy scaling ladder.

"...but in exchange for our providing a helicopter at first light to take you to the airport, you must agree to release the hostages before entering the helicopter," continued Brannigan. His face was creased with strain.

"Tina's moving," said Acoustic Surveillance.

"Can't see her," said cherry picker team leader.

"Where?" said Kilmara.

"Can't tell exactly," said Acoustic Surveillance. "The noise doesn't sound right. Hell, I think she's just kicking her leg against the banister. Wait! She's definitely moving now — down the stairs."

"Dieter still a clear shot," said cherry picker team leader.

"Du Arschloch!" shouted Dieter. "Do you think we're idiots? You'll agree to our terms immediately, or I will kill one of the children here and now. You understand, huh?"

Brannigan waited a few seconds before replying. His face was dripping sweat, and he looked ill. "Kretz," he said, "Kretz, for God's sake, hold it. Don't touch another hostage."

"I spit on your God," said Dieter. "You'll follow our terms exactly." He gave a thumbs-up sign to Tina and beckoned for her to come over and listen.

The entry team had made it across the floodlit section of the perimeter and was now crouched in the ten meters of shadowy darkness immediately surrounding the house. The men placed the three ladders outside the rear window of the master bedroom, and the first three Rangers started to climb. The balance of the unit hunkered down in firing position, ready to give covering fire.

"She's definitely going for the phone," said Acoustic Surveillance.

"We can see the edge of her shoulder," said cherry picker team leader. "Not enough for a shot."

The first three members of the entry team reached the top of the ladders and placed a large rectangle of explosive cord on the glass. At the press of a detonator, the focused explosive charges would cut through the glass, blowing any debris into the curtains.

"Entry team ready," said Burke.

"Shit, it's really starting to blow," said cherry picker team leader.

"Stand by, front team," ordered Kilmara.

"Front team ready," said the team leader. The three Rangers facing the front door had their grenade launchers pointed at the fanlight above the door. The grenades — a mixture of blast and stun — were aimed to explode just below the top of the stairs, creating a lethal wall between Tina and the hostages.

"Hostages still in the master bedroom in same positions," said Acoustic Surveillance.

"Very well, we agree," continued Brannigan. "The helicopter will arrive at precisely eight a.m.. You will have to wait till that time if it is able to reach us from its base. It does not have night-flying instrumentation."

"You Irish are so backward," sneered Dieter, grinning at Tina. She laughed.

"It's a German helicopter," said Brannigan inanely. It was clear he thought that he would be unable to sustain the conversation much longer. He signaled a hurry-up sign.

"We have Dieter in clear shot — and Tina's shoulder," said cherry picker team leader, "and we're steady for the moment."

"Cherry picker, fire!" ordered Kilmara.


* * * * *


The apple green bullet entered Dieter's head near the crown and exited through his upper teeth and thick black mustache. He swayed slightly, and blood gushed from his mouth. The telephone was still in his hand, and his eyes were open, but he was already dead.

The second sniper hit Tina in the upper right shoulder. The high-penetration round drilled straight through the bone, and the Skorpion dropped form her hand.

All the lights were cut.

Forty-millimeter grenades exploded on the stairs and in the front hall in a rolling series of eyeball-searing flashes. The front team switched to machine-gun fire and the three belt-fed Minimis poured 750 rounds into the confined space in fifteen seconds.

Simultaneously the entry team detonated the explosive cord, and with a sharp crack the thick glass of the double-glazed window dropped onto the bedroom floor.

The cherry picker team poured rifle fire through the skylight. After a couple of seconds, when the tough glass was adequately weakened, the sniper with the grenade launcher opened fire, his grenades punching straight through the remains of the skylight and exploding in the hall below.

Night-vision goggles in place, the entry team cut through the heavy curtains with razor-sharp fighting knives, and Rangers leaped into the darkened bedroom, covering the open doorway and spraying automatic rifle fire through it onto the landing. Then Lieutenant Burke moved forward and tossed V-40 hand grenades out onto the landing and into the hall below. Each grenade bust into 350 lethal fragments.

Meanwhile, the second three Rangers of the entry team clipped the top of an emergency escape chute to the window aperture and began sliding the four children to safety with the backup team on the ground below.

"We're in the bedroom," said Burke into the helmet microphone. "Hostages are alive and being removed now."

"Cherry picker and front teams, cease fire," said Kilmara. "Restore perimeter lighting. Entry team, secure house."

The second three Rangers of the entry team slid the last child down the chute. Burke was changing magazines and the remaining two Rangers were checking the bathroom when Tina crawled in.

No trace of the pretty young Italian girl remained. Her clothes and body were shredded. Her left cheek was gone, exposing the bone. Blood and matter streamed from dozens of wounds. Her right arm hung uselessly, and the fingers of its hand were missing. But she had the Skorpion in her left hand. Its muzzle wavered, and she fired.

Time seemed suspended. There was nothing the young Ranger lieutenant could do. There was a stab of flame and a huge blow over his heart. Burke spun around and collapsed against the wall.

The thing that had been Tina gave a gurgling cry, and the Skorpion dropped from her hand. She moved her fingers up to her throat and scrabbled uselessly at the knitting needle that emerged through it, then collapsed onto her back, her heels drumming against the floor in her agony of death.

Maura O'Farrell, her two hands clenched around the adhesive tape handle of the knitting needle, withdrew the makeshift blade and plunged it in again and again until a Ranger pulled her away.


* * * * *


They picked their way through the wreckage. It seemed inconceivable to Fitzduane that anyone could have survived the destruction in the hallway. There was scarcely a square centimeter of the floor, walls, and ceiling that was not scarred with shrapnel or pocked with the huge bullet holes of the modified Glaser rounds.

A Ranger technical team was meticulously photographing the scene with both video and still cameras. There was always something to be learned for the next time.

Dieter lay facedown. The pool of blood he lay in was sprinkled with fallen plaster and pieces of debris. His whole back was pitted with wounds from the salvo that had followed the initial fatal shot. Fitzduane bent down and examined first the right wrist, which bore a gold identity bracelet, and then the left, after removing a heavy gold wristwatch. The glass was intact, and the watch was still working. He dropped it on the body. "Nothing," he said to Kilmara.

The staircase had been shot almost to pieces.

"Beats me how she got up," said Kilmara. "We'll get a ladder. I'm buggered if I'm going to break my neck at this stage of the game."

Two Rangers brought one of the scaling ladders and placed it against a protruding joist of the landing.

The body of the once-pretty young Italian terrorist — if, indeed, her stated nationality was not as much a lie as her stated name — lay just inside the doorway of the master bedroom. It looked as if it had been hacked and chopped by some sort of infernal machine. The blood from a dozen or so puncture marks in her neck and throat had run together in an obscene halo around her head. Prepared though he was, Fitzduane felt the bile rise in his throat.

Kilmara emerged from the bathroom, a damp washcloth in his hand. "My turn," he said.

He lifted the corpse's right arm and wiped away the thick crust of congealing blood. The body smelled of blood, feces, and perfume. He saw that a grenade fragment or bullet had sliced into the wrist and carved a furrow in the soft surface flesh. He sponged around the rough edges. The light wasn't good. They were depending on external floodlights shining through the window. He removed a flashlight from the right thigh pocket of his combat uniform and shone the beam on the lifeless wrist.

The mark was very small and partially obliterated by the furrow. Nonetheless, most of the small tattoo could be seen: the letter "A" surrounded by what looked like a circle of flowers. He looked up at Fitzduane, and their eyes met. The Ranger colonel nodded and rose to his feet. He tossed the bloodstained washcloth thought the open bathroom door and then bent down to pick up several of the small cartridge cases lying beside the corpse. He put them in his pocket.

They descended the ladder and picked their way through the organized chaos of snaking floodlight cables and departing security force vehicles. Engines roared, and vehicle after vehicle drove away.

"How do you do it?" asked Kilmara. Fitzduane smiled, spread his arms, and shrugged.

"Do you know what Carl Gustavus Jung wrote?" said Kilmara.

"I didn't know he was call Carl Gustavus."

"A rough translation," said Kilmara, "and I quote: ‘There are no coincidences. We think they're coincidences because our model of the world doesn't account for them. We're tied up in cause and effect.’"

"And now you're gonna tell me Jung's nationality."

"Sharp lad," said Kilmara with a smile, "so you tell me."

"Swiss."

They walked across to the Mobile Surgery trailer. Inside, an army doctor was playing cards with a Ranger lieutenant. A bottle of Irish whiskey and two glasses beside them displayed evidence of current use. Kilmara removed two more glasses from a wall rack and poured generous measures, then topped up the glasses of the doctor and the lieutenant. "Souvenirs," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"I've got a sprained wrist, and I'm bruised as hell," said Burke. "It's no fun being shot."

Lucky she was using a Skorpion," said Kilmara. "It uses a piss-poor underpowered pistol cartridge. It'll kill well enough, but it's got little penetrating power."

"There is a lot to be said for being dressed right for the occasion," said Burke, indicating the scarred but otherwise undamaged Kevlar bullet-resistant vest hanging on a hook on the wall. He suddenly went pale and rushed to the adjacent toilet. They could hear the sounds of retching through the door.

"He's physically okay," said the doctor, "but there may be post-traumatic stress involved. He was bloody lucky."

"Jung also wrote: ‘Every process is partly or totally interfered with by chance,’" said Fitzduane. "Not everybody knows that."

"Good grief," said the doctor, and drained his glass.

As Fitzduane and Kilmara left the trailer, the two dead terrorists were carried by on stretchers on the way to the morgue. Fitzduane felt the good mood induced by the banter inside the Mobile Surgery trailer vanish. "A depressing waste," he said soberly.

"I'd feel a lot more depressed if it was us in those body bags," said Kilmara cheerfully. "You've got to see the up side in this game."


* * * * *


They arrived at Kilmara's house at just after five-thirty in the morning. Inside the security perimeter all was quiet until the Saab crunched to a halt on the gravel. The two Irish wolfhounds came bounding around the corner of the big Georgian house.

"One would wonder if they were dogs or elephants with hair," said Fitzduane. "They're enormous bloody brutes."

"You'd know if you visited more often," said Kilmara. "Now stay quiet until I identify you."

Fitzduane did not need to be told twice. He watched while Kilmara called the two hounds to heel. Each dog was well over a meter and a quarter high and, he guessed, weighed at least as much as a fully grown man. Long pink tongues lolled over sharp rows of teeth.

"Ailbe and Kilfane," said Kilmara. "Fairly recent acquisitions."

The two men entered the house through the courtyard door and made their way to the large country-house kitchen.

"Do you know the story of the original Ailbe?"

"Remind me," said Fitzduane.

"There was a renowned Irish wolfhound called Ailbe in the first century," said Kilmara, "owned by MacDatho, King of Leinster. Now Ailbe was such a remarkable dog that he could travel from one side of the kingdom to the other in a single day, and of course he was unsurpassed in hunting and war. Ailbe became so famous that both the King of Ulster and the King of Connaught coveted him, and an offer of no less than six thousand milch cows, a chariot with two fine horses, and the same again after a year was made. This was an offer MacDatho could hardly refuse. At the same time he knew he still had a problem because the king who did not get the hound would give MacDatho a most difficult time. It was a real dilemma.

"So what did MacDatho do?"

"MacDatho promised the hound to both kings," said Kilmara. "When they arrived to conclude the deal, no sooner did they see one another than they forgot all about the hound and fell to fighting. MacDatho, in the manner of a politician, watched the battle from a nearby hill, and an excellent battle it was, with heroics and bravery all over the place and regular pauses for light refreshment and harp playing. However, Ailbe, the bionic wolfhound, was no voyeur. He tossed a coin and entered the fray on the side of the King of Ulster — and had his head chopped off."

"Is there a moral to this story?"

"Pick your battles."

Kilmara gestured Fitzduane to a seat at the big kitchen table and then strode across to the cast-iron range. He poked the cooker into life and stood for a moment enjoying the waves of heat coming from the stove. He donned an apron over his combat fatigues and hummed as he cooked.

Fitzduane dozed a little. It was nearly dawn. Images flickered through his mind. He awoke with a start when Kilmara put a plate of food in front of him.

"Bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding, white pudding, and fried bread," he said. "You won't see the likes of this in Switzerland." He poured them both coffee from an enamel pot that looked as if it had been around since MacDatho's time.

Fitzduane picked up his mug of coffee. "That book of mine you found in the terrorists' car—"

"Uh-huh," said Kilmara.

"You thought it had to do with me?"

"It's a possibility," said Kilmara. "Maybe on one of your foreign forays you photographed some local supremo from his bad side or something, and our friends were sent to teach you a permanent lesson. They didn't seem to be slap-on-the-wrist types. Well, who knows? I'll worry about the reasons after I've had some sleep."

"I've got another idea," said Fitzduane. "Since you took this job, no photographs of you have been published. Right?"

"Right."

"So two things," said Fitzduane. "First, our terrorist friends were killed no more than ten miles from this house while heading in this direction. Second, my book contains a large photo of you at that reunion in Brussels. It's probably the most up-to-date picture of you that's freely available."

"You're suggesting that I could have been the target?" Kilmara had a forkful of bacon and black pudding and fried bread poised for demolition.

"You're sharp this morning," said Fitzduane.

Kilmara munched away. "Ho and hum," he said. "You really should leave such suggestions until after breakfast."

The first shading of dawn appeared through the windows. Outside, a cock began to crow.


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