His brain was not getting enough oxygen. He was confused, extremely weak, his heart rate was fast, his eyes glazed.
His system was closing down. He was losing the physical strength to live.
The chest wound will just have to wait, thought Newman. The thigh wound still represented the main bleeding problem. He applied direct pressure against the leg, above the area of the wound. He knew he would have to maintain the pressure for at least five minutes, probably longer.
But there was now a plug in the bath.
"You can fill him up," said Newman.
Hannigan inserted a cannula into a vein of each arm, then connected the fluid bag. The solution would make it easier for the remaining blood to circulate and keep the vital organs supplied with adequate amounts of blood, and hence oxygenated. Lack of oxygen to the brain for ore than three minutes meant that parts of it would start to die: permanent brain damage.
Establishing intravenous drip access to each side had taken less than four minutes.
Fitzduane's blood pressure began to improve from sixty to seventy systolic. It was critical. Normal was around one-twenty.
Newman was still maintaining pressure on the thigh wound.
Keeping a close eye on Fitzduane's airway to make sure that the Guidel tube was not spit out, Hannigan applied a dressing to the entry and exit wounds, taking care to stick each dressing down on three sides only, while leaving the fourth open so that air could escape. Sealing the wound totally could once again cause a buildup of internal pressure.
Newman glanced at his watch. They had been working on Fitzduane for just over eleven minutes. He was now stabilized to the best of their ability, but he remained close to death.
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.
3
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.