Fitzduane watched appalled as the gunfire reached a trio of line dancers and they jerked like marionettes as the rounds punched into them.
He ducked down. Kilmara and Shanley lay there also. Kilmara had drawn his automatic but made no move to fire back. Given the sheer weight of fire raining down upon the area, it would have been suicide.
The door into the accommodation block was only twenty feet away, but to cross that divide meant inviting death. As they watched, one of the exhibition security men made a run for it, turning around halfway to return covering fire from his pistol and then sprinting on.
A rocket hissed down from the parapet and blew the legs off the unfortunate man and his torso back into the open corridor.
"We've got to get out of here," said Kilmara. "Our friendly wall will stop rounds, but RPGs will walk right through it. All ideas welcome. I haven't got a fucking clue how to move without getting perforated. And that's a hell of an admission for a general."
Fitzduane was a great believer in the principle that any decision was better than no decision but in this case it seemed wiser to put that particular aphorism on hold. As of now they had a place out of the line of fire. Better yet, the terrorists did not seem to know they were there or a few more rockets would have come their way.
"My room is just up the corridor," said Shanley. He sounded shaky, but he was hanging in there. "I've got an M16 and a Barrett inside which I use for demonstrations. If we can get at them, we can do something. They're locked up in security boxes, of course, but I have the keys."
Fitzduane was struck by the irony of it all. Here they were surrounded by every conceivable light infantry weapon in the exhibition, but most of the weaponry had no ammunition and all was locked up. A further irony was that no one was going to react to all the shooting. The hotel was freestanding, and the fact that there was going to be some kind of special-operations demonstration had been widely announced precisely to prevent the local citizenry from getting worried. And the police had also been informed. So for the next few minutes at least they were on their own. And people were dying.
"Ammunition?" he said.
"Not a lot," admitted Shanley. "I used most of it at the range. Perhaps thirty rounds for the M16 and half that for the Barrett."
"How about your Stinger missile?" said Kilmara.
"It's a mock-up," said Shanley. "The case is real, but there is no electronics or firing mechanism."
"What's your Barrett's ammo?" said Fitzduane. His life had once been saved by a marksman with a Barrett, and he had made a point of finding out everything he could about the weapon, down to visiting the plant in Tennessee. The Barrett was a large rifle ingeniously designed to make it possible for an individual soldier to fire rounds the size of a cigar without being flattened by the recoil. The benefits for certain situations were considerable. You could snipe at up to two kilometers, you could penetrate light armor, and you could fire right through a concrete wall. "Rafoss multipurpose," said Shanley.
Fitzduane looked at Kilmara and nodded. The Norwegian-made rounds were armor piercing with an explosive core and incendiary characteristics. They would do a very nice job on the parapet of the wall from which the fire was coming – and on whoever was behind the wall.
But there was still the problem of getting at the weapons. Also, if the black-clad terrorists were on the roof opposite, there was a reasonable chance that they had landed people on the opposite block. Carrying that thought further, some terrorist might be working their way down to the pool to finish off the job.
In other words, as they made a dive for the door to Shanley's room to get the heavier weapons they could meet terrorists coming in the other direction.
Fitzduane did not like this scenario at all. They had to move. And there had to be a way.
Doors crashed open about fifty feet away and a hotel employee emerged pushing a trolley stacked high with freshly starched laundry, apparently oblivious to the mayhem around him. The earphones of a Walkman were clamped to his ears and he pushed his heavy load with his head down, doing little dance steps from time to time.
All three men shouted warnings, but the laundryman was in another world. He advanced down the path toward where they lay. He seemed to have a charmed life. At first he was unnoticed by the terrorists, and then their fusillades missed both him and the trolley.
It was a distraction.
Shanley and Kilmara leapt for the open doorway and just made it before heavy fire raked the wall behind them.
Fitzduane aimed his automatic with care a and shot the laundryman below the knee. He fell behind the safety of the low wall and stared around frantically, shocked and terrified.
"STAY DOWN!" shouted Fitzduane, and made a gesture with his arm.
The laundryman looked at him, his mouth open. He was only about thirty feet away, but there was a gap in the low wall and fire was pouring through it. The Walkman had fallen off the laundryman as he had collapsed, but the earphones were still clipped around his head. Fitzduane fired at the machine and blew it apart.
The laundryman's eyes became round saucers. Then he suddenly seemed to realize the earphones and ripped them off.
"STAY THE FUCK DOWN!" shouted Fitzduane again. "THIS ISN'T SOME WAR GAME. IT'S REAL. STAY RIGHT DOWN AND DO NOT MOVE!"
The laundryman nodded frantically and then squeezed himself up as small as he could in the angle formed by the wall and the path.
Fitzduane got ready, waited until the focus of fire had moved away for a moment, and then launched himself at the trolley. Linen flew in every direction as he threw himself flat on the top and propelled it through the open doorway into the corridor. It shot down the corridor and smashed into a mirror.
"Seven years bad luck," said Fitzduane savagely to himself, "and I was doing so well."
He picked up a piece of mirror and used it as a crude periscope to check around the next corner.
A hooded terrorist clad in the familiar black was moving carefully up the corridor. As Fitzduane had feared, they were moving down to finish the job. But there just could not be that many of them, or they would be checking the rooms too. There should be at least one backup, but he could see no one. It was bad military practice, but this seemed like a lone scout.
The terrorist came around the corner. As he did so, Fitzduane pushed his weapon up and rammed the mirror splinter into his throat.
The man gurgled, and then blood poured through the fabric of his hood and he slumped. Fitzduane broke his neck. A dying enemy could still be a dangerous enemy.
The man was carrying a Russian version of the M16, and AK-74. It helped to explain the intensity and accuracy of the fire. The weapon was equipped with double forty-round plastic magazines on a neat device that allowed a magazine change by simply sliding the empty magazine to one side and the one into place. It also came with an unusually effective muzzle brake, which allowed more-accurate automatic fire. The downside was that the gases were deflected to either side wit a considerable risk of doing not good to your companions.
Fitzduane checked the ammunition pouches of the dead man. He had come loaded with fifteen magazines, six hundred rounds, and only three spare magazines were left in addition to the two on the rifle. That, and the sheer risk of local law enforcement being alerted eventually, suggested that the terrorists would be pulling out soon.
He lay down and rolled over once so he could check the corridor while presenting a minimum target. He knew he should have used the mirror trick again, but the sliver he had used before was deep in the terrorist's throat and he did not feel like going back to the broken mirror. He wanted to link up with Kilmara and Shanley, and quickly.
Muzzle flash blinded him and rounds sliced through the air above his head. If he had been standing or even kneeling, it would have been inconvenient. There was a backup man, and he had fired instinctively from the hip when he had seen movement. He was very fast, but his target was not where he had expected it to be.