Rules of the Hunt (6 page)
His brain was
not getting enough oxygen.
He was
confused, extremely
weak,
his heart rate was fast, his
eyes glazed.
His system was
closing down.
He was losing the physical
strength to live.
The chest
wound will just have to wait, thought
The thigh wound still represented the main
bleeding problem.
He applied direct
pressure against the leg, above the area of the wound.
He knew he would have to maintain the
pressure for at least five minutes, probably longer.
But there was
now a plug in the bath.
"You can
fill him up," said
Hannigan
inserted a cannula into a vein of each arm,
then
connected
the fluid bag.
The solution would make
it easier for the remaining blood to circulate and keep the vital organs
supplied with adequate amounts of blood, and hence oxygenated.
Lack of oxygen to the brain for ore than
three minutes meant that parts of it would start to die:
permanent brain damage.
Establishing
intravenous drip access to each side had taken less than four minutes.
Fitzduane's
blood pressure began to improve from sixty to seventy systolic.
It was critical.
Keeping a
close eye on Fitzduane's airway to make sure that the Guidel tube was not spit
out,
Hannigan applied a dressing to the entry and exit
wounds, taking care to stick each dressing down on three sides only, while
leaving the fourth open so that air could escape.
Sealing the wound totally could once again
cause a buildup of internal pressure.
They had been
working on Fitzduane for just over eleven minutes.
He was now stabilized to the best of their
ability, but he remained close to death.
As Hannigan
began to administer small incremental doses of morphine intravenously to
Fitzduane,
to from a splint, and together they slid him onto a ‘scoop’ stretcher and
strapped him into place.
incarnation of an avenging angel, watched over the Rangers at the ford.
When it was
over and the helicopter had departed, he rose and walked back the few paces to
the command Guntrack.
The Colonel looked
up from the console, his expression unfathomable.
He looked as if he was going to speak but
said nothing.
The radio
operator in the back of the Guntrack had the miniature folding satellite dish
extended.
There was a break in his
arcane work and he looked up and shook his head.
"It doesn't look good."
Lonsdale stood
there, knowing he had shot better that day than ever before in his life, but
that it still had not been good enough.
Could he have been just a few seconds faster?
*
*
*
*
*
The watcher,
higher up the hill, had a better overview of the terrain and was also less
tightly focused.
He had first
been alerted by the sight of a vehicle traveling at high speed toward the castle.
He hadn't warned his people below, both
because they were so close to achieving their goal and also because the vehicle
did not seem to represent any threat.
At
first it did not appear to be heading toward them.
Apart from its speed, there was nothing
unusual about it that he could see from a distance.
Then it turned toward them.
They had been
warned to expect a Land-Rover and maybe a car or two.
Nearer, this thing was unlike anything he had
ever seen before.
At first he thought it
must be some piece of tracked farm machinery.
He watched it
through his binoculars.
As it got
closer, his heart started to hammer as something close to panic gripped
him.
He could see a machine gun on a
mounting by the front passenger, and he realized that he was looking at
something designed solely for the purpose of killing.
The two flares
went off in the sky.'
He looked up,
then at the killing team below, and felt a sudden terrible fear.
He began to
run.
He had chosen his escape route
well.
He had found a slight dip in the
ground between two hills, which was so angled that it could not be seen from
the land below.
In addition, there was
cover from rocky outcrops and heather.
He ran and ran, his very being telling him that whatever mysterious
force had slaughtered his companions was now searching for him as well.
From time to
time as he fled, the watcher waited for a few moments to see if he was being
followed.
As he grew more confident, he
waited longer and it became clear that he had gotten away without being spotted.
He started to relax.
Soon he made it to the bowl in the hills
where the helicopter lay.
He was halfway
across the open ground to the helicopter when he heard a voice behind him.
His automatic rifle was in his hand and it
was cocked and loaded.
He had practiced
many times for this contingency and could turn and hit a target at fifty paces
in a fraction of a second.
His practice
nearly paid off.
He might have been a
shade faster than the Ranger behind him, though whether he would have got a
shot off in time was entirely another matter.
It was a moot point much debated thereafter.
As he turned,
the remaining two crew of the Ranger Guntrack that had been tasked for the
hills and redeployed to ambush the helicopter site double-tapped him twice each
through the upper body, then through the head, with armor-piercing
ammunition.
Body armor was getting
better and better and was turning up on the most undesirable people.
It was best to be sure.
*
*
*
*
*
A regular army
unit was ordered in to search the island, together with armed detectives.
The nearest
mainland hospital, Connemara Regional, was alerted and an army trauma team
experienced in gunshot wounds helicoptered to the hospital.
Other
precautions and contingency plans were implemented.
Nationwide, the Rangers and the various
security organizations were put on full alert.
Passengers and vehicles entering and leaving the country were suddenly
subject to intense scrutiny.
Such
precautions were usually a massive waste of time, but not always.
There were certain security advantages to
an island with limited access and exit points.
3
January 2
his private office in Keishicho, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's
headquarters, with his shoes off, his shirt open, and his tie hanging from a
desk lamp.
He rarely used
his office, preferring to sit in the general office with his team when he was
officially working, but for serious relaxation such as that required after a
particularly energetic
kendo
bout at
the police
dojo
, a horizontal
position and a couch were more appropriate.
The only
trouble was that the couch was not long enough.
In Adachi's opinion, the bureaucrats who supplied such things were like
civil servants the world over and running a couple of decades behind the
times.
They had not yet wised up to the
fact that today's Japanese were several inches taller than their parents — and
their children, brought up on McDonald's hamburgers and milk shakes in addition
to sensible things like rice, raw fish, seaweed, raw egg, and miso soup, looked
like they were heading skyward still further.
Adachi looked
at his feet, which rested on the armrest of what was supposed to be a three-man
sofa.
At forty-two, and five foot ten
inches, he was a little long in the tooth for the Big Mac generation, but had
grown to above average height anyway.
This was useful if you were staring down a suspect, but a bit of a pain
if you were trying to tail somebody.
Still, those days of pounding the streets and hiding in doorways were
mostly over.
Rank was a wonderful thing.
He wriggled
his toes and practiced his foot-stretching and ankle exercises.
He had been a paratrooper for ten years
before transferring on fast-track promotion to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police
Department, and jumping out of airplanes meant that sometimes you landed in the
wrong way and in the wrong place.
Which at times was not healthy.
His tendons complained.
His ligaments were appalled.
Still, what the hell; it had been a lot of
fun.
And he still jumped
occasionally.
It was a thoroughly
ridiculous activity for a sane adult in his middle years, and that appealed to
him.
Adachi swung
his legs off the sofa and poured himself a generous slug of
sake
, then another.
The alcohol on top of the pleasant lethargy
imparted by his recent violent exercise gave him a pleasant buzz.
He swung his legs back on the sofa and idly
picked up a report.
It showed
comparative crime statistics.
The
twenty-three wards of
with a population of eight million, had seen ninety-seven murders last
year.
population, came in at just under two thousand.
Robbery came in at three hundred and forty-three for
York
The rape
figures were a hundred and sixty-one compared to over three thousand two
hundred.
He smiled in
satisfaction.
It appeared as if the
something right.
On the other hand,
paradoxically, he liked
Man does not live by crime-free streets alone.
Still, for making his outstanding
contribution to Toyko's law enforcement efforts, he felt entitled to a rest
.
And he did not grudge his forty-one thousand fellow
metropolitan cops their share of the glory.
He closed his eyes, thought of Chifune looming over him naked and
beautiful and sexy, and slept.
Outside in the
general office, the seven members of the special task force investigating the
links between organized crime and politics nodded approvingly to one
another.
They had wagered useful money
on Adachi winning the detectives'
kendo
championships, and they wanted their man to keep his strength up.
Besides, things were quiet.
And then the
phone rang.
*
*
*
*
*
Senior Public
Prosecutor Toshio Sekine, a gray-haired man in his early sixties and actually
rather slight, had the kind of physical presence and gravitas that would have
dominated the big
screen
if
his orientation had been that way.
Instead, he had settled for the law and a
life of public service and a career of distinction even by the high standards
of the Tokyo Public Prosecutor's office.
Sekine-
san
specialized in putting bent
politicians behind bars.
In most
countries that was a career with unlimited lifetime potential.
In
complication of major links with the Boryokudan, the organized crime
syndicate.
Further, the whole corrupt
mess was so institutionalized that it was becoming hard to know what was
actually illegal anymore.
If the norm in
politics was corruption, was it corruption anymore or merely the way the system
worked?
The prosecutor
sipped his green tea.
He came from a
samurai
background wit a tradition of
service to the state.
He regarded the
Japanese political system with distaste.
It seemed to him that most elected politicians were small-minded and
venal.
Fortunately, they were largely
irrelevant to the orderly governance of
The country had an excellent and largely
incorrupt civil service and a law-abiding population driven by the Confucian
work ethic.
In Sekine's opinion, elected
politicians were more akin to a branch of the entertainment business.
They provided distraction but had little to
do with the serious business of running a country.
