Victor O'Reilly - Rules of The Hunt

As Hannigan began to administer small incremental doses of morphine intravenously to Fitzduane, Newman bandaged Fitzduane's legs together to from a splint, and together they slid him onto a ‘scoop’ stretcher and strapped him into place.

Master Sergeant Lonsdale, Barrett at the ready like a modern-day incarnation of an avenging angel, watched over the Rangers at the ford.

When it was over and the helicopter had departed, he rose and walked back the few paces to the command Guntrack. The Colonel looked up from the console, his expression unfathomable. He looked as if he was going to speak but said nothing.

The radio operator in the back of the Guntrack had the miniature folding satellite dish extended. There was a break in his arcane work and he looked up and shook his head. "It doesn't look good."

Lonsdale stood there, knowing he had shot better that day than ever before in his life, but that it still had not been good enough. Could he have been just a few seconds faster?

The watcher, higher up the hill, had a better overview of the terrain and was also less tightly focused.

He had first been alerted by the sight of a vehicle traveling at high speed toward the castle. He hadn't warned his people below, both because they were so close to achieving their goal and also because the vehicle did not seem to represent any threat. At first it did not appear to be heading toward them. Apart from its speed, there was nothing unusual about it that he could see from a distance. Then it turned toward them.

They had been warned to expect a Land-Rover and maybe a car or two. Nearer, this thing was unlike anything he had ever seen before. At first he thought it must be some piece of tracked farm machinery.

He watched it through his binoculars. As it got closer, his heart started to hammer as something close to panic gripped him. He could see a machine gun on a mounting by the front passenger, and he realized that he was looking at something designed solely for the purpose of killing.

The two flares went off in the sky.'

He looked up, then at the killing team below, and felt a sudden terrible fear.

He began to run. He had chosen his escape route well. He had found a slight dip in the ground between two hills, which was so angled that it could not be seen from the land below. In addition, there was cover from rocky outcrops and heather. He ran and ran, his very being telling him that whatever mysterious force had slaughtered his companions was now searching for him as well.

From time to time as he fled, the watcher waited for a few moments to see if he was being followed. As he grew more confident, he waited longer and it became clear that he had gotten away without being spotted. He started to relax. Soon he made it to the bowl in the hills where the helicopter lay.

He was halfway across the open ground to the helicopter when he heard a voice behind him. His automatic rifle was in his hand and it was cocked and loaded. He had practiced many times for this contingency and could turn and hit a target at fifty paces in a fraction of a second.

His practice nearly paid off. He might have been a shade faster than the Ranger behind him, though whether he would have got a shot off in time was entirely another matter. It was a moot point much debated thereafter.

As he turned, the remaining two crew of the Ranger Guntrack that had been tasked for the hills and redeployed to ambush the helicopter site double-tapped him twice each through the upper body, then through the head, with armor-piercing ammunition. Body armor was getting better and better and was turning up on the most undesirable people. It was best to be sure.

A regular army unit was ordered in to search the island, together with armed detectives.

The nearest mainland hospital, Connemara Regional, was alerted and an army trauma team experienced in gunshot wounds helicoptered to the hospital.

Other precautions and contingency plans were implemented. Nationwide, the Rangers and the various security organizations were put on full alert. Passengers and vehicles entering and leaving the country were suddenly subject to intense scrutiny. Such precautions were usually a massive waste of time, but not always. There were certain security advantages to Ireland's being an island with limited access and exit points.

Tokyo, Japan

January 2

Detective Superintendent AkiAdachi was lying on the couch in his private office in Keishicho, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's headquarters, with his shoes off, his shirt open, and his tie hanging from a desk lamp.

He rarely used his office, preferring to sit in the general office with his team when he was officially working, but for serious relaxation such as that required after a particularly energetic kendo bout at the police dojo, a horizontal position and a couch were more appropriate.

The only trouble was that the couch was not long enough. In Adachi's opinion, the bureaucrats who supplied such things were like civil servants the world over and running a couple of decades behind the times. They had not yet wised up to the fact that today's Japanese were several inches taller than their parents – and their children, brought up on McDonald's hamburgers and milk shakes in addition to sensible things like rice, raw fish, seaweed, raw egg, and miso soup, looked like they were heading skyward still further.

Adachi looked at his feet, which rested on the armrest of what was supposed to be a three-man sofa. At forty-two, and five foot ten inches, he was a little long in the tooth for the Big Mac generation, but had grown to above average height anyway. This was useful if you were staring down a suspect, but a bit of a pain if you were trying to tail somebody. Still, those days of pounding the streets and hiding in doorways were mostly over. Rank was a wonderful thing.

He wriggled his toes and practiced his foot-stretching and ankle exercises. He had been a paratrooper for ten years before transferring on fast-track promotion to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and jumping out of airplanes meant that sometimes you landed in the wrong way and in the wrong place. Which at times was not healthy. His tendons complained. His ligaments were appalled. Still, what the hell; it had been a lot of fun. And he still jumped occasionally. It was a thoroughly ridiculous activity for a sane adult in his middle years, and that appealed to him.

Adachi swung his legs off the sofa and poured himself a generous slug of sake, then another. The alcohol on top of the pleasant lethargy imparted by his recent violent exercise gave him a pleasant buzz. He swung his legs back on the sofa and idly picked up a report. It showed comparative crime statistics. The twenty-three wards of Tokyo, with a population of eight million, had seen ninety-seven murders last year. New York, with a slightly smaller population, came in at just under two thousand. Robbery came in at three hundred and forty-three for Tokyo and ninety-three thousand for New York. The rape figures were a hundred and sixty-one compared to over three thousand two hundred.

He smiled in satisfaction. It appeared as if the Tokyo cops were doing something right. On the other hand, paradoxically, he liked New York and wouldn't mind at all living there. Man does not live by crime-free streets alone. Still, for making his outstanding contribution to Toyko's law enforcement efforts, he felt entitled to a rest. And he did not grudge his forty-one thousand fellow metropolitan cops their share of the glory. He closed his eyes, thought of Chifune looming over him naked and beautiful and sexy, and slept.

Outside in the general office, the seven members of the special task force investigating the links between organized crime and politics nodded approvingly to one another. They had wagered useful money on Adachi winning the detectives' kendo championships, and they wanted their man to keep his strength up. Besides, things were quiet.