"How long?" said Fitzduane.
"Two to three hours at least," said Kilmara, "possibly longer. And then only after we're sure they are needed. The problem is, the serious crime boys have a major operation on and the nearest army unit is tied-up with a search on the border. There was a shooting there last night. We're not high on the list of priorities. We've got suspicion. They are dealing with ongoing operations."
Resources were a constant problem for the Irish security services. The mainly unarmed police and army together totaled not much more than twenty thousand, and only a small percentage of these were equipped to deal with heavily armed terrorists. Not unnaturally, they were concentrated in centers of population and likely trouble spots, like the border. The poor quality of the road system hindered fast vehicle deployment. Helicopters, the obvious solution, were in chronically short supply. And to further exacerbate the helicopter shortage, they were often monopolized by politicians visiting their constituencies. In the real world, chasing votes got a higher priority than hunting down terrorists.
"If they've got Kathleen," said Fitzduane, "they are going to make her talk. That means they'll know where to hit, location and number of guards, weaponry — basically everything they need."
"They'll know everything Kathleen has seen," said Kilmara, "which is not quite the same thing. There are quite a few other precautions in place a layperson wouldn't notice."
"They'll know the essentials," said Fitzduane, who was thinking furiously, "and they'll do it quickly. And my guess is that they will blast their way in. This isn't a job for a rocket through the window. They will want to make sure, and heavy firepower is the IRAP style."
Kilmara was somewhat taken aback. The normal style in the North was to seize a hostage half a day or so ahead of the operation, and he had been thinking in terms of this pattern.
He now realized that Fitzduane could well be right. Allowing for time to make Kathleen talk and to put together a plan based on her information, travel, and reconnaissance, the hit could happen any minute. But they would almost certainly wait until doctors' rounds were over. On the other hand, if this was going to be an assault — a quick in-and-out — they wouldn’t want a clutter of visitors getting in the way, so it would happen before visiting hours.
They probably had an hour to prepare — at the most.
Kilmara picked Fitzduane's brain for a few more minutes and then briefed his small force. Certain changes were made. Fitzduane himself was moved from Room Number 2 on the left-hand side of the corridor to Room Number 4, the corner room on the right.
Kilmara did not fancy a firefight inside the hospital, but he had nowhere else to put Fitzduane that was secure, and at least the private wing had no other patients in it. He would have preferred to take any attackers in the parking lot, or otherwise away from the hospital, but he did not have enough manpower for that option and there was always enough activity directly outside the hospital to make civilian casualties likely.
The attackers could pick the time, the strength of their force, and the weapons, but Kilmara had picked the ground. It crossed his mind that a famous Irishman, the Duke of Wellington, had specialized in this tactic. He never fought a battle on terrain that he had not scouted in advance, and he never lost. However, sometimes he took truly terrible casualties.
Kilmara was confident his unit could survive an assault, but he was far from sanguine about the price.
* * * * *
For forty-five minutes, Sasada, knife in hand, interrogated Kathleen.
Over and over again, he asked the same questions, until the spark of defiance faded from her eyes and he was satisfied that she had told as much as she knew.
By the time he had finished, Kathleen's upper body was slippery with blood and she was deep in shock. Sasada had punctuated his questions with small, threatening cuts of his knife. The blade was so sharp, each cut in itself did not hurt at first, but the streaming blood and the terror he induced drove practically all hope from her mind.
McGonigal had watched the questioning with mounting irritation. He was operating away from his home turf, and he felt uneasy in strange surroundings. He was from the North of Ireland and knew the habits and methods of the British Army and the RUC — the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The gardai, the police of the Republic of Ireland, and the Irish Army were less of a known quantity.
When Sasada was finished, he ordered the two women tied and gagged and they were dumped unceremoniously on the floor of the front room. And extending table was pulled out from the wall, chairs put in place around it, and the detailed assault plan rehearsed.
McGonigal carried out the briefing. That he had survived on the run as long as he had was a tribute to his professionalism. Every attack was rehearsed meticulously, but he had trained all his men to improvise if things went wrong. He emphasized the importance of timing and of discipline. He restated the rules of fire and movement so that no one man advanced without cover from another. Ironically, he had served in the British Army as a young man. Subsequently, he had received further training in Libya and was an expert with Soviet-bloc weapons.
"It's a small hospital," he said, indicating the plans Sasada had brought, "rectangular in shape. The entrance is in the middle, with the reception desk to the left. Straight ahead, there is a staircase that runs up the center of the building. On each floor, the wards are to the left and to the right. The ward we want — what they call the private wing — is on the third floor on the left. The third floor is the top floor, although the stairs run up to a half-landing above it, where there are toilets and storerooms."
McGonigal used a knitting needle as a pointer. He had been reminded of his mother when he had found the knitting basket. She had loved to knit. She had been knitting when she had been killed by a stray bullet fired by British paratroops.
"The nurse says that since our target arrived, there is normally a uniformed garda or sometimes an armed detective at the foot of the stairs. He screens everybody going up and alerts another man on the third floor if anyone is heading up there. The uniformed cop isn't armed, but he does have a radio."
Jim, the black-haired terrorist, interrupted. "The fellow on the third floor?"
"The third floor — the private wing on the left — is guarded entirely by Rangers. They have installed what they call a control zone. There is a Ranger outside, then two sets of specially installed armored doors. The outside man checks you through one door. In the middle is a metal detector. If you are clear, then you go through the second set of doors, where there is the second Ranger. The doors are never opened together. Indeed, I gather they can't be. They have some kind of integrated electronic locks."
"Is there video surveillance?" said another terrorist.
McGonigal nodded. "There is a camera on the wall overlooking the outside of the two doors. It can see the length of the corridor to the top of the stairs. There were fire doors there, but they were removed by the Rangers. Anyone coming up the stairs or leaving the elevator, which is beside the stairs, is on camera from the moment he hits the third floor."
There was silence in the room, as each man evaluated what he had heard so far. Taking care of the policeman at reception would be no problem, but getting up three flights of stairs without alerting the armed Ranger at the top would not be so easy. Still, McGonigal normally had an idea. He was good at this kind of thing.