The watcher saw them first. He took no action. His main concern was guarding their rear and their escape route. It was all clear.
Below him, the spotter picked them up as they emerged around the base of a foothill and headed toward the waterfall. He spoke to the sniper.
The rifleman adjusted his point of aim in response to this information.
Seconds later, rider and son on horseback entered the limited field of vision of his telescopic sight.
* * * * *
Kilmara had often noticed there was a natural temptation to consider the movement in itself a positive result. In his opinion, this tendency had bedeviled maneuver warfare since Cain initiated the process by terminating Abel.
But Kilmara was an old hand. He went for the high ground — a protruding foothill — and there positioned himself on a reverse slope. He then spoke into his headset microphone, and a telescopic mast began to extend from the back of the Guntrack. It stopped when it was just over the brow of the hill. A higher slope behind them meant nothing was silhouetted against the skyline.
Kilmara could now view most of the low-lying terrain as far as Duncleeve and beyond. There was some dead ground due to natural variations in the fall of the land and there were hills on the north side of the island — to his left from where he was positioned — but it was the best he could do in the time available, and Kilmara rarely worried about the theoretical optimum. He wasn't an idealist; he was a pragmatist. He had learned over more than three decades that the profession of arms was a practical business.
Mounted on the extended mast was a FLIR — forward looking infrared observation unit. This operated like a variable, very-high-magnification telescope, but with the added advantage of a wider angle of vision linked with the ability to see through mist and rain and smoke and darkness. The image was transmitted to a high-resolution television screen which was built into the console in front of him.
Methodically, he began an area search, operating the FLIR head with a small joystick. Concurrently, he had ordered the other two Guntracks forward. One was following the line of the foothills. The other was advancing toward Duncleeve at high speed on the track that ran the length of the island.
Behind Kilmara, in the heavy-weapons gun position, a Ranger tried to link up with Duncleeve by radio. His satellite communications module was capable of bouncing a signal off a satellite orbiting in space and reaching around the world through a network of relay stations, but it could not get through to Duncleeve about three miles away. The satellite was connected to Ranger headquarters in Dublin, who had then patched the call into the Irish telephone system.
This was one link too far. Fitzduane's local telephone exchange was old and tired and low on the priority list for modernization. Some days it just seemed to need to rest up. And this was one of those days.
Master Sergeant Lonsdale sat in the driver's seat, irritated at himself for not reporting the helicopter sooner, despite the fact that the Colonel, when he had cooled down, had said there was no reason he could have known its significance. The Colonel was right, but that didn't make him feel any better. He had a strong sense of unit pride, and the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force was his world. He felt he had been shown up in front of the Irish, and he was determined to redeem himself.
The Irish were good — damn good, in fact — but nobody could touch the best of the best, and in Lonsdale's opinion that designation went to Delta. Beside him was a heavy piece of milspec green metal topped by a telescopic sight. The awesome-looking weapon looked oversize and brutal when placed beside a conventional sniper's piece. It was the newly developed Barrett .50 semiautomatic rifle. Each round was the size of a large cigar and could throw a 650-grain bullet over three and a half miles. That was the theoretical range. On a practical basis, given the limitations of the ten-power telescopic sight and human eyesight, the maximum in the hands of an absolute master was about one third of this, or 2,000 yards. The longest combat shot that Lonsdale had ever heard of was around 1,800 yards.
Hits in excess of 1,000 yards from even the best of sniper rifles were the stuff of myth and legend until the Barrett came on the scene. They still required extraordinary skill.
"I've got Fitzduane," said Kilmara, and tightened the focus on the FLIR. He passed the location to the two other Guntracks. One continued toward the castle. The other was in a side valley and out of sight of Fitzduane's location.
Kilmara put himself in the position of a killing team with unfriendly intentions toward Fitzduane and searched accordingly. The team would want to oversee their target and have good cover. They would have an escape route back to the helicopter. They would not wish to fire into the sun — not much of a risk in this part of Ireland.
With binoculars alone he would have seen nothing — the killing team was excellently positioned and concealed. The FLIR changed the ground rules. It could pick up body heat.
"Two hostiles," said Kilmara, and indicated the TV screen. He had activated the laser system. The target was now illuminated by a laser beam which was visible only if special goggles were worn. The range was also determined. On the screen it read 1,853 meters, well over a mile.
"It's yours," he said to Lonsdale. Supposedly they were on a training exercise. The Guntracks were not carrying longer-range standoff weapons.
Lonsdale had already moved when Kilmara spoke. He positioned himself on the brow of the hill, the Barrett extended on its bipod in front of him. In his heart he knew it was a near-impossible shot — and anyway they were almost certainly too late.
But he also knew, the way you do sometimes, when everything comes together, that this was a special time — and on this day he would shoot better than he ever had before in his life.
Through his goggles he could see the laser beam pinpoint the target. The 16x telescopic sight was calibrated to the ballistics of the .50 ammunition. He acquired the target. The sniper's body was totally concealed in a fold of ground. He could just see a burlap-wrapped line that was the rifle barrel and an indistinct blob that was the head.
Behind him, Kilmara fired off two red flares in a desperate attempt to distract the assassins and alert Fitzduane. The flares in this color sequence had been the abort signal twenty years earlier when they had fought together in the Congo. It was an inadequate gesture, but it was all he could think of.
* * * * *
As they approached the ford, Boots grew animated. The place he particularly liked to play in required crossing the stream, and he loved the sensation of traversing the water on high, perched safely on Pooka's back.
From this vantage point he could sometimes see minnows or even bigger fish darting through the water, and there were interesting-looking stones and dark, strange shapes. The hint of hidden danger that provided part of the excitement was nicely offset by the reassuring presence of his father.
They crossed at walking pace, the peat-brown water gurgling around Pooka's hooves. Halfway across, Boots shouted, "Stop! Stop!" He had pieces of stick he wanted to drop into the stream so that he could follow them as they bobbed in the rushing water.
Red blossomed in the sky. Fitzduane looked up at the flare, then leaned back slightly to see more easily, as the second flare exploded. A sense of imminent danger coursed through his body, and Pooka shifted uneasily.