The actual attack did not work out according to plan except that it accelerated the brothers' path to the goal of all followers of Hasane Sabbah killed in the line of duty: Eternal Paradise. But it was close.
The Powerchutes achieved total surprise. With the noise of their engines drowned by a fusillade from the cordon of terrorists, Husain was able to sweep in undetected and release his satchel charge — a webbing satchel containing plastic explosive, shrapnel, and a three-second fuse — exactly over the target. Unfortunately the light of the half-moon as it shone intermittently through the scurrying clouds made visibility difficult, and he didn't see the dugout that had been constructed on the platform.
The bomb glanced off the dugout and slid down toward the slate roof of the great hall. Exploding in near-perfect imitation of a directional mine, the shrapnel caught the second Powerchute on its approach, which was lower than intended thanks to the fickleness of the Irish wind, in a pattern that would have done credit to a champion skeet shooter.
Mohsen didn't even have time to complain about the Irish climate or to reflect that it might have been a good idea to practice in advance with real explosives or to curse his miscalculating brother seven different ways. He was killed instantly, his body pierced in a dozen places, and his Powerchute carried him across the castle walls to crash minutes later in a ball of flame against the cliffs of the mainland. Inside the dugout, protected by a triple layer of sandbags, the Bear and Murrough were scarcely affected by the explosion except to feel a little sick at the thought that their attackers seemed to have the very weapon they had feared most — a mortar. Expecting a barrage of further rounds now that the gunner had zeroed in on them with the first shot — not so common with a mortar — they headed as one for the circular stairs and took up fresh positions in Fitzduane's bedroom immediately below.
The defenders on the battlements outside scarcely had time to think at all. First a huge black shape sailed by, spraying blood like some vampire celebrating the abolition of garlic, and then automatic weapons fire from the sky made the point that the first vampire wasn't flying about alone.
Etan, crouched in a sandbag cocoon on the inland-facing battlements, was the first to react. The rapid semiautomatic fire of her Mauser caused Husain to take a raincheck on Paradise and to swerve away violently, abandoning any thoughts of dropping the incendiary on this pass. He banked and climbed to prepare for another run. All Etan could see was a black figure almost invisible against the clouds while the moon was obscured.
"What the fuck is that?" asked Henssen, who was wiping something wet off his face and hoping it wasn't what he thought it was or, if it was, that it wasn't his. He couldn't feel any pain, but his heart felt as if it were going to pound its way out of his body.
"I don't know," said Etan, "some kind of flying thing, I think. Its' like a balloon, but quick."
Fitzduane ran up in a crouching run, holding himself easily as if he'd done this kind of thing many time before — which he had. If nothing else, combat taught you very quickly to make yourself small. Fitzduane was an expert. He seemed to have visibly shrunk.
Etan pointed. Fitzduane, squatting well down behind the parapet and the sandbags, raised his SA-80 and examined the area she had indicated with the night sight. He could see nothing at first, given the Kite's limited field of view — one disadvantage of using a telescopic sight instead of wide-angle binoculars — but a quick pan picked up the image of a light metal frame containing a sitting figure with legs outstretched as if driving a go-cart. A checked keffiyeh was wrapped around its head and mouth, the ends streaming close to a giant propeller enclosed in a circular protective guard like that of a swamp boat. For an instant Fitzduane thought that if the keffiyeh would only stream back a couple of centimeters, the problem might solve itself. Then he looked further and saw the familiar outline of a military ramjet cargo parachute. The metal frame turned to head directly toward him, and he could see stabs of flame. He switched the fire selector of the SA-80 to automatic reluctantly, bearing in mind his own strictures on the subject, and opened fire.
The powered parachute was moving deceptively fast — somewhere in excess of forty kilometers per hour at a guess — and it sailed low over the castle before he could fire a second burst. A small black shape left the metal frame as it passed and landed on the opposite battlements, exploding among the zigzagging double line of sandbags and sending smoke and flames into the air and streams of liquid fire into the bawn below.
The powered parachute came into his line of vision again when it turned and prepared for a further attack. He could see the pilot in profile less than two hundred meters away. He fired again. This time the figure arched and its head sagged. The metal frame with its swamp boat propeller dipped but flew on and vanished into the darkness.
"Holy shit," said Henssen in relief, "but they're an all-singing, all-dancing outfit." He turned toward Etan, who seemed to have sunk out of sight behind the sandbags. "Good for you, Etan," he said. "If it hadn't been for you and your broom handle, we might have been barbequed."
There was a low moan from behind the angle of the sandbags that concealed Etan. The bags were arranged in a double zigzagging line along the battlements to minimize the effects of exploding hand grenades or mortar bombs.
Henssen turned the angle.
Etan lay on her back, her hands gripping her right thigh. Blood, black in the darkness, welled through her fingers.
* * * * *
Outside Fitzduane's Castle — 2242 hours
Abu Rafa, commander of Malabar Unit —the unit responsible for the attack on the gatehouse — could scarcely contain his frustration. In his considered professional opinion, Kadar, who might be brilliant at planning terrorist incidents and kidnaps, was making a mess of a classic but straightforward infantry problem: the capture of a weakly held strongpoint by superior military forces.
The correct solution would have been to attack immediately on landing while the momentum of the initial assault was with them and when daylight would have allowed them to apply their superior firepower to full effect — and to hell with casualties, which wouldn’t have been heavy anyway in a sudden, forceful attack.
Bringing up the heavy machine guns, waiting until dark, and using such gadgetry as the Powerchutes and the tank-tractor struck Abu Rafa as a load of pretentious shit. Ironically it reminded him of the warnings of his onetime archenemy, he of the black eyepatch, General Moshe Dayan of Israel. Dayan had become disturbed at the tendency of the Israeli Army after the War of Independence to try for clever tactics instead of forcing home the attack — what he called the ‘Jewish solution.’ Most times, Dayan argued, what counted was less how you attacked than the spirit and force with which you did it; the intention should be to ‘exhaust the mission,’ to keep at it until you succeeded and not fuck around trying to be clever.
Abu Rafa thought that Dayan, may he rot in hell forever, was right, Allah knows. The accursed Israelis had proved it often enough — and unfortunately by combining the best of both approaches.
The Malabar commander's frustration was further exacerbated by the latest developments: the tank-tractor, whose attack should have coincided with the Powerchute assault, had broken down less than five hundred meters from the gatehouse. The fault wasn't serious and would mean only a fifteen-minute delay, but it occurred after the Powerchutes were beyond recall so the benefits of a combined strike had been lost.