"The mule tamer did not reply. He stood directly in front of the mule as if daring it to bite him, and then, as it lunged, he swing the hammer in a mighty blow and hit the mule smack on top of his head.
"Everyone could hear the dreadful sound of the hammer hitting the mule.
Thunk!
"The mule collapsed. It went straight down just like that and lay on the ground motionless. Not even a quiver.
"There was an awed group intake of breath from the crowd, and then silence. Too surprised to say anything at first, but then words came sputtering out. ‘What – what did you do that for? I hired you to tame the animal.’
"The mule tamer looked at the rich mule owner with a clear, steady gaze. ‘First,’ he said, ‘I had to get the mule's attention.’"
Kathleen smiled as she remembered. It was one of Fitzduane's favorite stories. Despite her chains and thirst, she drifted into sleep content.
Rheiman had been deeply upset. But she was now convinced she had his attention.
There were six rooms divided by a central corridor in terrorist killing house.
The object was to clear the house of fourteen terrorists while preserving two hostages. The location of the hostages was not known in advance.
Initial exercises were carried out with silenced 9mm Calico submachine guns firing live ammunition and using electronic targets, with each assault team member going through alone. When hit, the human-shaped targets registered the accuracy of fire by individual round on a computer and, in addition, each assault was timed, videoed from several angles, and observed by umpires. The final score was a matrix of time and accuracy. Including gaining access, all were within two and a half minutes.
At the end of five run-throughs by each team member, the top three shooters were Chifune Tanabu, Al Lonsdale, and Peter Harty of the Irish Rangers.
Fitzduane came in a politically acceptable fifth. In his opinion, he had done at least as well as he deserved, given his recent lack of regular firearms training, but his competitive nature still urged him to do better. It was not going to be easy. The standard was high.
Changing magazines or clearing stoppages too place so fast, it was scarcely possible to see the action except on slow-motion video. Neither remedial action should have been necessary given that the Calico could take a hundred-round magazine that functioned near flawlessly given the right ammunition, but Fitzduane wanted the shooters to start off working for a living. For initial training, magazine capacity was limited to thirty rounds, and two dud rounds were placed at random in each shooter's loads.
The result of years of expensive investment in the training and equipment of top-quality Western counterterrorist forces could be observed. These were people who typically shot more rounds in a week than most regular soldiers did in a couple of years – and it showed. They moved through the grim business of killing with a sureness and elegance that was stunning to watch.
Fitzduane then changed the exercise. Whereas before each shooter was using live ammunition on targets, now they would use Simmunition against their peers.
Simmunition was real ammunition that was powerful enough to cycle the weapon and allow full automatic fire but fired projectiles made of a special material that stung and left a visible red mark but were otherwise harmless.
The prospect of being hit – and being rated accordingly – caused behavior to change.
The true combat shooters started to surface. The league table changed slightly. Fitzduane moved up from fifth to second place. Chifune still remained the top shooter.
The final series of exercises involved each unit member clearing the killing house against fourteen armed occupants who were spread throughout the rooms and not dug in but engaged in normal nighttime off-duty activities. The killing house was blacked out and the attacker had the advantage of surprise, night-vision goggles, and a silenced Calico now equipped with a hundred-round magazine and a laser sight that could only be seen by the person wearing the specially filtered goggles.
Fitzduane was encouraged to find that eleven out of his little force, now fully in the rhythm, were able to make a silent entrance and kill everyone inside without being hit in under ninety seconds.
Such clinically precise killing was frightening to behold, but it gave him hope.
Fitzduane contemplated the screen of his notebook computer.
Whom to choose? Some choices were obvious. On the margin it was not so clear-cut.
He had fourteen slots to fill in addition to himself, and nineteen people to pick from. For security and resource reasons, he did not really like training anybody who was not going on the mission, but training accidents were a fact of life and one had to be prepared.
He had originally planned on three alternates as an adequate safety margin, but then Lee Cochrane had made his case and finally Maury had volunteered. It was just as well that Dan Warner was still in Mexico, or doubtless he would have volunteered also. As it was, he was going to be faced with four unhappy people.
Why did human beings in good health volunteer so readily to get killed?
He switched focus to consider the mission training. He had been tempted to carry out the initial training in the Ranger facility on his island back in Ireland. Most of the facilities of the special-forces trade were located there, and it would have had the advantage that he was intimately familiar with the resources available.
He had rejected the Irish option with regret. There would have been logistical difficulties given the distances involved, and anyway, rain-sodden Ireland was not really the right environment in which to train for Mexico, even if you had a better-than-average sense of humor.
Kilmara had quipped that if he was going to use Ireland he would need twice as many people – the extra hands to hold umbrellas for the assault team.
Fitzduane had settled in the end for operating from Lamar's Son Tay estate in Virginia – form which they could easily access the Aberdeen Proving Grounds – and then a final intensive session at the U.S. Army's National Training Center in the Mojave Desert, a particularly godforsaken part of California.
The NTC was hot and dry and dusty and generally miserable, and as close to the terrain in Tecuno as would make no difference. Also, the NTC had a resident opposing force equipped with Russian armor whose sole purpose in life was to give the U.S. Army units training there a hard time. Sine they knew the terrain intimately and had the luxury of being there all the time instead of only a couple of weeks, the resident opposition were horrible people to go up against. To make matter worse, they normally won.
But you learned fast. The damn place was equipped with pop-up targets and laser simulators and concealed video cameras and all kinds of toys to monitor progress. Fitzduane could not think of a better place to hone the unit in dealing with the kind of opposition that Tecuno could muster. The concept of a heavily armed but unarmored fast attack vehicle like the Guntrack being able to combat traditional tanks was a theory. Fitzduane had never actually seen it in practice. At the NTC they would have a chance to find out. Of course, what he would do if his theories didn't pan out in practice was another matter.
However the war games turned out, there was one immutable as far as Fitzduane was concerned. The mission was not going to be aborted.
There was a knock on the door.
As mission commander, he had a hut to himself. There was accommodation in plenty. It made Fitzduane wonder what Grant Lamar got up to from time to time. Lamar, the evidence would appear to indicate, was a man with complex interests.
He blanked the screen and checked his watch. It was near midnight. When this was all over he was going to sleep for a week. Maybe longer. One thing was certain: The military did not sleep enough.