Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

The Volvo had stopped just out of easy shooting distance, as if it had hit a rock or had some mechanical trouble. Maybe it had a flat tire; the way it had slewed suggested that. He made a thumbs-up sign to show that they had taken the college successfully and walked forward to give them a hand.

The driver and the passenger got out, and the driver kicked the left rear wheel in irritation. The other man opened the back of the station wagon and peered inside. Carlos could see the tip of what looked like a tire iron. He was torn between going to help and staying at his post as instructed. He cupped his hands to shout that he would like to help but that he was under orders.

The passenger stepped out from behind the car with something in his hands that seemed pointed above Carlos's head. His brain, pre-conditioned to see a spare wheel or a jack, rejected the initial message of his eyes. His brain was still making an attempt to process what he was seeing when the arrow struck the center of his chest, smashing through his ribs and penetrating his lungs. A second arrow followed almost immediately and hit him lower in the abdomen. He collapsed without a sound. He was thinking as he died that the day had gotten colder.

DrakerCollege – 1810 hours

De Guevain was temporarily stunned by the consequences of his act. His face lost all its color, and he stood, unmoving, the bow dangling in his hands. Fitzduane tore the bow from his grasp and threw it into the back of the Volvo, then pushed de Guevain roughly into the passenger seat and slammed the door after him. With the tailgate still open, he accelerated the car and roared through the main entrance into the forecourt inside.

The place was deserted. Several cars stood there with their hoods open and engines wrecked.

"Do it very fucking fast," said Fitzduane.

Murrough, how knew the college layout, signaled Andreas to follow. Together they ran around the back of the college to where the jerry tunnel emerged. Murrough, his. 303 sniper rifle strapped to his back, had an SA-80 in his hand with the fire selector switched to auto. Andreas carried Fitzduane's pump-action Remington and the Hawk grenade launcher. The Hawk was, essentially, a giant semi-automatic two-handed weapon loaded with twelve 40 mm grenades in a rotary magazine that it could discharge in six seconds. It was heavy and took practice to use accurately, but as a close-assault weapon it was devastating.

They could only hope that the attack force had not yet made it out of the tunnel. It was the one location where they might hold off a superior force. They had been instructed not to fire, if possible, until Fitzduane had secured the hall, where he knew the students normally assembled. "Right now we've got surprise on our side," he said, "but that's strictly a one-shot deal."

Murrough's heart gave a leap when he saw that the mouth of the jerry tunnel was empty. He was fifteen meters away when two camouflaged figures emerged. He hit the ground, and Kalashnikov fire sliced the air around him. There was a double roar as Andreas's Remington went into action. A hail of fire was returned from the tunnel, which had suddenly filled with men.

Murrough lay on the ground, the fire too intense to permit him to move. A grenade tumbled through the air and blew a garden water butt to pieces beside him, drenching him. Sick at heart, he knew they were too late. They couldn't hold the tunnel.

He felt his legs being pulled, and he slid backward over the gravel path. An accented voice told him to stop being an idiot, and he began to struggle. Stone splinters and earth cut his face; rounds sliced the ground where he had been an instant before. He emerged behind the brick base of a greenhouse. Andreas, panting with the effort, let go of Murrough's ankles. "It seemed like you were glued there," he said.

"I was," said Murrough.

The fire from the tunnel slackened, and four terrorists ran out. Recovering quickly, Murrough dropped two with an SA-80 burst, and Andreas got a third with the Remington. The fourth went to ground in the garden. The firing from the tunnel mouth increased again, and they knew another wave would emerge any moment. There were too many to stop. It was now just a matter of time.

"I think we're out of the surprise business," said Andreas.

"Maybe," said Murrough. He racked his brain to recall what he knew of the garden and tunnel layout. There had to be some way to buy some time.

DrakerCollege – 1813 hours

Fitzduane, followed by de Guevain, Henssen, and Judith Newman, headed into the main building toward the assembly hall.

Judith had sprinted back to the dead guard at the gate to relieve him of his Uzi and spare magazines. Her eyes had lit up when she saw the Israeli-made weapon. She had learned to shoot with one on the kibbutz before anyone had gotten around to teaching her to cook or sew, and from her early teens she could outshoot most of her fellow sabras. She caught up with the others as they moved swiftly but cautiously through the long corridors that led to the hall.

Fitzduane had briefed them on what he remembered of the geography of the place. He was far from familiar with much of the DrakerCollege layout, but details of the main public rooms remained in his mind. The assembly hall, which doubled as a theater, had a stage at one end and an L-shaped gallery equipped with an organ at the other. The main doors opened to the right of the stage end. The room, which had two sections of seats divided by a central aisle, could accommodate about two hundred and fifty. There were windows at the second-floor level, and you could see out through some of them to the grounds at the rear. He hoped like hell Murrough and Andreas were not being targeted from a window overhead. He had forgotten to warn them of that particular possibility. There was a second door on the other side of the stage, directly facing the main doors. There were no doors at the rear of the room that he could recall, though stairs led to the gallery from that end and the gallery itself had an exit at the second-floor level.

He guessed he was up against no more than four to six of the Sacrificers. Given the layout of the room, they'd be on the stage, by the doors, and – probably – in the gallery.

He pointed at a small door set into the paneling farther down the corridor. "Henssen and Judith, that's yours," he said. "There's a circular staircase behind it that leads to the gallery. Get up there and move when I do. Remember, take out the opposition fast or we'll have a massacre on our hands." The two nodded and vanished through the paneling.

Fitzduane braced himself outside the main doors with de Guevain, now with some color back in his cheeks, to one side. A burst of fire came from the rear of the college. Fitzduane, carrying his own Browning automatic shotgun loaded with XR-18 ammunition, nodded to de Guevain. Acting as one, they flung open the double doors, sending one guard standing on the inside of the door sprawling. In the center of the stage, a Sacrificer who had been threatening the rows of students below him swiveled his weapon toward the intruders and died instantly under a blast from Fitzduane's shotgun. Fitzduane fired a second time at another Sacrificer standing by the facing door. Wheeling around, de Guevain shot the guard they had knocked to the ground as they entered the room.

Judith mounted the circular staircase ahead of Henssen. The sound of firing from the rear of the building came as she was opening the gallery door a crack to take a look. A Sacrificer who had been positioned in the center of the gallery to keep watch over the hostages ran across to the windows to see the cause of the disturbance outside. He turned in alarm at the sound of Fitzduane bursting in below and for a split second stood there uncertain which way to move. Judith shot him three times in the torso while he was making up his mind. Henssen, seeing the body still upright, fired over her shoulder with his AK-47, sending chips of bone flying in a spray of blood out of the corpse's head. The body collapsed against the gallery rail, pouring blood onto the students below.