The sniper fired.
His rifle had an integral silencer, and he was using subsonic ammunition.
Fitzduane heard nothing.
He just saw the back of Boots's head open up in a crimson line and felt his son grow limp. Stunned at first, he screamed in anguish and desperation as the horror of what he was seeing hit home.
Pooka reared up.
Distracted, the sniper fired again before fully reestablishing his aim. Blood spewed from Pooka's head as he collapsed, throwing Boots several feet away into the shallow water.
The sniper's third shot hit Fitzduane in the thigh, smashing the femur. Fitzduane was now partially caught under his dead horse. With a desperate effort he tried to roll free, but then his strength gave out.
"BOOTS!" Fitzduane cried, oblivious to his pain, his arms outstretched toward the boy, who lay face up in the water just out of arm's reach.
The horse was shielding his target, so the sniper had to rise for the killing shot. He had the luxury of a little time now. His victim was down and defenseless.
The spotter decided to help finish the business.
He fired a burst from his silenced submachine gun at the boy as he lay in the water. The rounds impacted in a ragged group around the boy's head, causing Fitzduane to make a superhuman effort to release himself and go to the assistance of his son. He pulled free and tried to rise, and as he did so, he exposed his upper body.
Two more shots for a certain kill, thought the sniper: one to the heart and one through the head. He didn't believe in relying on a one-shot kill. Subsonic ammunition might not inflict the massive trauma of a fully loaded round, but it did make for a silent kill and the corollary of extra time to make sure the job was properly done.
He and Master Sergeant AlLonsdale fired at the same time.
The sniper's round created a small entry wound as it entered Fitzduane's body one inch above his right nipple and two inches to its left at the fourth rib space.
Continuing its path of destruction, it pierced the chest wall, smashed the front of the fourth rib, and then — now combined with bone fragments — divided the fourth intercostal artery, vein, and neurovascular bundle. Fragments of rib became embedded in the right lung and the bullet plowed through it, damaging minor pulmonary arteries and veins.
The round missed the trachea, went slightly lateral to the esophagus, missed the vagus nerve and thoracic duct, grazed the skin of the heart, went to the right of the aorta, and entered the posterior chest wall. Traveling slightly downward, it then smashed the back of the fifth rib, went to the right of the vertebrae and exited out of the upper left side of the back, producing a large exit wound.
Fitzduane made a slight noise as the shock of the bullet drove the air from his body, and folded slowly, his arms stretched toward Boots.
Lonsdale's bullet had longer to travel. It was approximately five times the mass of a modern automatic-rifle projectile and had a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second. Part of the mass consisted of explosives.
The spotter saw the center of the sniper's body explode as the corpse was flung back against the hillside. He could see no sign of threat ahead of them.
He was turning when Lonsdale's second round arrived and drilled through his right arm from the side before exploding inside his torso.
* * * * *
Kilmara watched his friend and his young son through the FLIR.
The image of Boots and then Fitzduane getting hit and tumbling into the rushing water was replaced by the sight of Fitzduane's desperate attempts to help his child. And then he lay still.
The Ranger Colonel continued to monitor developments and to issue orders, his face immobile. The Guntrack originally tasked for the castle was the first unit that could make it to the scene, and at full cross-country speed it arrived in less than two minutes.
Three Rangers — Newman, Hannigan, and Andrews — jumped out. All Rangers were BATLS, Battlefield Advanced Trauma Life Support, trained. BATLS was a combat version of the ATLS techniques pioneered in the U.S. The reasonable assumption, given the Rangers line of work, was that they would be under fire. The emphasis was on speed.
Newman and Hannigan ran to Fitzduane. Of the two, he was clearly the more seriously wounded. Drenched in blood, he was dying before their eyes. He was bluish, very agitated, in severe respiratory distress, and in deep shock. His wounded leg looked bent and visibly shorter. It was clear the femur was shattered.
"Chest and leg," said Newman into his helmet-mounted microphone. "Lung penetrated; leg looks bad; looks like the femoral."
Andrews went to Peter. The boy's wound looked like a graze. He was mildly concussed and the back of his head was bleeding, but he was very much alive. Within a few moments, he regained consciousness. "Boy grazed but OK," said Andrews.
Fitzduane was critical, however. "Hugo," Newman said, "can you hear me?" A reply would have meant that Fitzduane was conscious and his airway clear.
There was no reply. "Shit," said Newman. Their patient was dying. Newman gave him five minutes at best. He moved to check Fitzduane's airway. Satisfied, he inserted a hollow tube, a Guidel airway, which would act to maintain access.
The whole procedure took about twenty seconds. "Airways OK," said Newman.
Hannigan had been cutting open Fitzduane's clothing and assessing the two wounds. Blood was everywhere but was cascading from the thigh wound in a positive torrent. He estimated that the man had lost up to a liter of blood in the first minute, and though the pressure had now eased off slightly as the blood supply diminished, the flow was still major. The femoral artery was like a power shower.
Fitzduane's clothes were saturated and the ground was sticky with blood. Immediately, Hannigan wrapped a bandage above the area of the thigh wound and applied pressure on it. The flow diminished, though it did not stop.
Newman suspected a tension peumothorax. The man's lung was punctured. The likelihood was that air was leaking into the chest cavity and could not escape. Pressure was building and blocking blood flow to and from the heart. In addition, the pressure in his chest kept his ribs and diaphragm expanded, so he could not breathe in and out properly. Fitzduane was gasping. He was running out of oxygen.
Working very fast, Hannigan checked Fitzduane's trachea, then percussed his chest. The first dull sound confirmed the leakage of blood into the pleural space. The second sound, a booming resonance, confirmed the excess of air.
"Fuck it," he said. "We've got a tension."
Without hesitation, he thrust a wide-bore cannula into the front of the chest. The cannula looked like a slim ballpoint-pen refill and consisted of a hollow needle protruding slightly inside a hollow plastic tube.
As the needle penetrated, he heard a massive blow-off of trapped air. Immediately, Fitzduane's breathing improved. There was still blood and air in the space, but it was no longer under tension.
The procedure had taken one minute.
Fitzduane regained partial consciousness. "C-ca… brea…," he gasped faintly. "My son, look after…"
"Be my guest," said Hannigan and put a Ventimask over Fitzduane's mouth and connected it to a cylinder of compressed oxygen. At a rate of ten to twelve liters per minute, the oxygen would last only fifteen minutes or less. Time was still critical. As Hannigan slipped on cervical and neck collars, Newman secured the Ventimask tapes. Another minute had passed.
"I'll plug," said Newman. He would try to stop the bleeding while Hannigan worked at establishing intravenous access. There was no point to inserting drips if the liquid was immediately going to leak out, and yet Fitzduane needed extra liquid fast. He was in a state of shock. His normal blood volume was five and a half to six liters, and he looked close to losing half of that.