Fitzduane fired back low, and then as his assailant buckled, he put a second burst into his head.
"KILMARA! SHANLEY!" he shouted. He could not remember where Shanley's room was, and this was no time for playing hide-and-seek.
There was an answering shout from down the corridor. Then a door opened and the long muzzle of a Barrett emerged.
Fitzduane thought through the next action. The block they were in had three stories and the one across the way had five. So if they went up on the roof they would still have the low ground. Worse still, they would be exposed.
They could head through the main body of the hotel and try and get up to the higher roof that way. That would take too long, and who knew what shit was going down in the middle.
The best solution seemed to be to fire form the second floor from the cover of a room window. They would be shooting at a diagonal and up, but since the Barrett round could travel eight miles, gravity at that short range should not be much of a problem. The distance across the pool area to the parapet was less than a hundred and fifty meters.
"One floor up," said Fitzduane.
"My thoughts exactly," said Kilmara.
Shanley made to lead, but Fitzduane beckoned him to one side. The Barrett had many fine qualities, but close-in fighting going up stairs was more the job of a lighter, short-barreled weapon. The Barrett weighed well over twenty pounds. You could drop it on someone's toe and put him out of action.
The stairs were empty. The second-floor corridor was empty.
Fitzduane kicked at a door with the flat of his foot and the room door splintered at the lock and sprang open. The room was empty. The blinds were drawn, but the glass had been blasted away by terrorist gunfire from across the pool area. The walls of the room were pockmarked with bullet holes.
He could hear a series of other crashes from the corridor as Kilmara kicked in the doors. First, he did not want any surprises, and second, they wanted to be able to move from room to room at will. It made no sense to present a static target when you could move around.
Kilmara would watch their back from the corridor while he and Shanley took on the other side. It was not something they had discussed. They had worked together for so long and trained so often that the moves came naturally.
They could hear the whump of rotor blades but could not see it from their position. He tried to judge the helicopter's location. It sounded as if it had landed on the roof of the main block. The terrorists were withdrawing. The parapet was still manned, but any second now they would start pulling away out of sight.
"I've only got seven rounds," said Shanley apologetically. He had remembered to put acoustic plugs in his ears, Fitzduane observed. A very good idea, given the decibel count of a. 50 in a confined space.
"I'm going hot," said Shanley.
Fitzduane put his fingers to his ears and was glad he had. There was a deafening crack, and a large chunk of parapet blew away, carrying a black-hooded gunman with it.
Shanley fired again and again in a measured sequence, demolishing a long chunk of the parapet. A figure rose from the rubble, and Fitzduane snapped the AKM to his shoulder and dropped him.
The terrorist helicopter rose from behind the dome of the main block and swiveled its machine guns toward their position.
Shanley was taking aim with the Barrett. Fitzduane grabbed him and pulled him down.
A long, intense burst of fire raked along the second floor and blew every remaining window apart.
Fitzduane and Shanley crouched down below the window as the air was filled with fire. Then they could hear the helicopter pulling away. They stood up and Shanley raised the Barrett hopefully, but already it was out of sight behind the cover of the hotel and receding into the distance.
"How many rounds have you got left in that thing?" said Fitzduane.
Shanley removed the magazine. It was empty. He worked the bolt. The round was ejected. "One," he said.
Fitzduane contemplated his companion. The man was surprisingly calm for someone who had seen action for the first time. His forehead was beaded with sweat, but he was in control.
"Shanley," he said. "You are a piece of work."
Kilmara came in brushing plaster dust from his clothing and eyed the damage to the parapet across the way. It looked as if a demolition crew had been at work for a morning. "The hotel may not like you," he said.
"Don was planning to take on the helicopter with one round," said Fitzduane. "This is a man who believes in his weapon."
Kilmara was still eyeing the destruction. "One round, one helicopter! Well, by the looks of that mess it would probably be enough."
Shanley did not say anything. He could not stop it. Tears flooded from his eyes. He felt confused, tired, and terribly sad. As he looked up at the wrecked parapet he could see only Texas still alive. And then she was blasted apart and falling through this terrible red mist.
It could not have happened. It was his imagination. All of this was some elaborate war game. It was simulated. Soon everyone would get up and walk around and the music would start up again.
He looked down to the poolside below.
It was a mistake.
Her body was still there. Nothing had changed. It was not a dream. The water was now a solid, glowing, backlit crimson.
He slumped to his knees and sobbed uncontrollably.
Fitzduane reached out and rested his hand on Shanley's shoulder. He knew it helped. It had been done to him under very similar circumstances.
Kilmara looked at them and remembered. Fitzduane had been young then. They both had.
There was always a reaction. After a while it did not show, but it stayed with you.
Maury had designed his mobile home to be as near soundproof as possible. He wanted to be able to work anywhere without interruption.
In this case, matters were made even more convenient by the fact that the Bastogne Inn, which specialized in conferences and exhibitions, had a special serviced area for mobile homes and trailers. You had to pay, of course, but you could plug into the hotel phone system, cable TV, power and plumbing, and even utilize room service if you wanted. For Maury, it was an ideal arrangement.
He was oblivious to the terrorist attack. He was also so buried in his analysis that he had completely forgotten to pass on a message he had received. It had not struck him as particularly urgent, and then Lee Cochrane had phoned and the fax had beeped and the note got buried under a file.
After a while, the phone became a nuisance and he hit the mute button and engaged the answering machine. He needed to focus. There were aspects to this Mexican thing that did not make sense. There had to be more to it. There was an agenda he was missing, he was sure of it. But what?
He learned about the attack when Kilmara came to get him. Immediately he tried to notify Cochrane but could not get through.
Feeling decidedly shaken and, for no rational reason, guilty for not having been there, he went to help Fitzduane and Kilmara do what they could with the injured and the shell-shocked survivors. A stream of ambulances was already beginning to arrive, and medical teams were soon hard at work. The air was filled with the sound of medevac and other helicopters. Local, state, and federal law-enforcement units poured in.
The message remained forgotten.
Fitzduane watched the ambulance doors close and the vehicle accelerate away, siren screaming and lights flashing.
That was the last of the wounded taken care of. There would now be the whole wretched business of being questioned by the bevy of law-enforcement people who had spent the last couple of hours installing themselves in strength and debating jurisdiction. Some had tried to question him earlier, but apart from giving what descriptions he could of the terrorist helicopter, he had refused to say any more until the wounded were attended to.