Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

"I don't know what the Hangman's plan is, but I would guess his objective is a mass kidnap for money. Intelligence reports indicate that he has trained a force of seventy or so, and I'd venture that most of them are going to land from that cattle boat at the headland. Some may have come overland as well, I don't know. And there may be a plane involved in this thing. The point is that we are going to be pitted against a superior force with superior training and firepower. That means we don't fuck around. I want no heroics or thoughts about the Geneva Convention. This isn't war. It’s a fight for survival. We kill or we get killed – and no prisoners unless I order it. We can't afford the manpower to guard them.

"If possible, I'm not going to use the students in this fight. I'm sure some of them have weapons training, but unfortunately we don't know who we can trust, as our recent tragedy so clearly shows. Besides, whether they are old enough to vote or whatever, I'm fed up with seeing kids who've had no chance to live getting killed. Keep one thing in mind: no strange faces. If the face isn't one of ours, shoot it. If you've any questions, they'll have to wait. Get to your posts. Draker team, mount up. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Fitzduane and de Guevain got into the front of the saboteurs' station wagon, and the other four members of the group squeezed themselves flat in the back. Etan blew Fitzduane a kiss through the window. He almost seemed, she couldn't help noticing, to be smiling. The son of a bitch, she thought. Of course, danger is what this man is used to; putting himself in harm's way is what he does. War is what he is good at.

How will I react to danger? She wondered. The next few hours would tell. The image of the death of red-haired Anne-Marie Fitzduane in the Congo nearly two decades earlier came to her, and it was as clear as if she had been there. Death by decapitation. She imagined the blade into her flesh and the shock and the agony and her blood fountaining, and she felt sick with fear and horror. Would this be her fate? She caressed the wooden stock of the Mauser she had been issued and resolved that it would not. She felt the adrenaline flow, and with it, courage.

Outside Fitzduane's Castle – 1755 hours

The frogmen of Phantom Unit had trained in the relatively balmy, if polluted, waters of the Mediterranean. Although they had been warned otherwise, the clear skies and hot sun of that unusual Irish day had lulled them into a false sense of familiarity with their environment. It could almost have been the Mediterranean. The unpleasant reality of the near-freezing temperatures of the Atlantic came as a shock despite the wet suits all four men wore. As the long swim progressed, the cold sapped the energies of the men, and their responses slowed. They would make it, thought Giorgio Massana, Phantom Unit commander, but at a price.

Spare tanks of compressed air and other specialized equipment traveled with them on a battery-powered underwater sled called a SeaMule. The SeaMule was capable of pulling two men in addition to its normal load, but there was a penalty to be paid in terms of battery life, and the lack of physical activity as one was towed meant body warmth drained away faster. Massana allowed only one man to be towed at a time, and then only for brief periods. He had had batteries cut out on him before, and he needed that equipment if he was to get into the castle. There was no way they could pull the SeaMule by themselves.

They had swum from the Sabine, which was anchored off the headland. Nearing the coastline they encountered shoals of seaweed dislodged by recent storms, which in turn his numerous submerged rocks. They had to proceed with the utmost care, and their progress was labored. Maneuvering the SeaMule through this underwater obstacle course was both difficult and exhausting.

It const them the life of one man. Alonzo, a fellow Sardinian and the best swimmer in the group, was smashed into a kelp-disguised rock when the undertow threw the sled temporarily out of control. There was no discernible noise and little blood, but the skull of the one person in the world whom Massana really cared about was crushed effortlessly as the Atlantic flexed its muscles. They left Alonzo floating semi-invisible in the seaweed. In his black wet suit he already looked like part of the undersea world. The undertow smashed him again and again against the rocks, and brain matter leached from the ripped hood.

They came ashore on seaweed-covered rocks with the gray mass of Fitzduane's castle above them. Near invisible against the rocks in their black suits, they rested for a couple of minutes. As he gathered his strength, Massana wondered why a seaborne assault by a specialized group was necessary against only three or four unarmed civilians who would certainly not be expecting an attack. He had been briefed on the likely presence of Hugo Fitzduane and two people who worked for him in various capacities and who were sometimes in the castle. A radio report from Draker had warned that there might be some guests. To Massana, such targets were scarcely worthy of his team's special skills. They certainly weren't worth losing Alonzo for. He felt a sudden hatred for Kadar; then his training reasserted itself. He signaled his two companions to move. They unpacked the assault equipment.

Three rubber-coated grapnels trailing ropes hissed from their compressed carbon dioxide-powered launchers and lodged inside the castle defenses. Massana and one other frogman began to climb. The third frogman, a silenced Ingram at the ready, surveyed the keep and battlements, ready to lay down suppressing fire.

Massana reached an aperture in the battlements and vanished from view, closely followed by the second frogman. A hand beckoned. The third frogman, who would now be covered by the first two, slung his Ingram and began to climb.

Bloodlust rose in him as he relived past kills and anticipated the shedding of more blood in the imminent future. There was nothing so exciting as the taking of human life. He reached the battlements and dropped between two crenellations to land in a crouch on the parapet. He moved to unsling his weapon and at the same time checked his surroundings.

Massana and the second frogman lay in pools of blood to his left. A distinguished-looking man in a fishing jacket with a bloodied sword in his hand stood over them. Too late the third frogman realized that the cuff of the hand he had seen had been dark brown and not black. He almost had the Ingram in firing position when the point of a halberd emerged from his chest.

The Bear looked down at the dead frogman. "Any more?" he asked Noble.

Noble stood there with a blood katana – a Japanese samurai sword from Fitzduane's collection – in his hands, impressed at the power of the weapon and the simplicity with which it killed. "Not for the moment."

The Bear put his foot on the frogman and wrenched the halberd free. It took effort. He had thrust with all his force. He waited for a few moments to get his breath back before he spoke.

"They've got some kind of powered platform down there," he said. "I'd like to check it out, but it would be wiser not to until the others get back."

Noble nodded in agreement. He was staring at his bloodstained hands as if mesmerized. "I've been involved in the antiterrorism business for years," he said, "but it's all been theory. Reports, papers, meetings, seminars – none of them prepares you for this." He gestured toward the crumpled bodies.

"They'd have killed you if you'd hesitated," said the Bear. "Believe me."

"I do."

"The Bear looked over in the direction of Draker. "I wonder how Fitzduane and the team are getting on."

Aboard The Sabine – 1806 hours

Kadar stood on the ‘monkey island,’ the small open deck on the roof of the Sabine's enclosed bridge, which represented the best observation point on the boat, short of climbing the three-legged radio mast rising above him. He was looking through powerful tripod-mounted naval binoculars. He could see the aircraft but not yet hear it. As it flew closer, he made a positive identification. It was the Islander carrying the airborne Phantom Unit – Phantom Air.