Beyond the fire door lay the corridor of a public wing inhabited mainly by geriatric patients who would now be having their lunch. Such patients frequently required help when eating, so it was a fair assumption that the nursing staff would be preoccupied. At the end of the corridor was another fire door, and beyond that a landing and another staircase. Across the landing was an armed Ranger, the two doors of the security zone, and the private wing.
One of the terrorists outside the third-floor fire door removed a battery-operated hand drill, made a small hole in the door, and inserted a probe.
Seconds later he had engaged the crash bar and opened the door. Just before the second terrorist entered the corridor, he turned and looked down at McGonigal and gave a thumbs-up signal. Immediately, he turned and vanished.
"Sixty seconds, Jim," said McGonigal, pressing the button on his stopwatch.
The two headed toward the entrance, muttered, "We're expected" at the indifferent receptionist, and headed up the stairs. On the half-landing just above the first floor, they opened their tool bags but did not yet remove their weapons.
McGonigal checked his stopwatch again. The counterterrorist special forces were not the only people who understood timing. The Ranger outside the third-floor security zone would hear them coming, but would not be suspicious of a couple of workmen. While he was distracted, he would be shot by the boys who had come up the fire escape.
It would then be just a matter of blowing a way in with the rocket launchers. And they had Semtex, too, if something heavier was needed.
The Libyans had provided some serious firepower.
* * * * *
Most people's mental image of a security television camera is of a highly visible, though compact, wall-mounted metal rectangular box fronted with a lens.
A security camera looks menacing. It whirs as it rotates to follow you. Its telephoto lens can watch you in intimate close-up while its operator remains concealed. It is not a friendly piece of equipment. However, its visibility and offputting presence is part of its purpose. It is there not just to observe but to deter.
Kilmara was making some use of conventional security cameras, but the bulk of his information was coming from devices which owed more to microsurgery than to the television industry.
They were small enough to fit inside a human artery. For all practical purposes they were invisible, and the information they transmitted traveled at the speed of light along optical fibers which looked to the uninitiated — in the rare cases where they were not concealed — like ordinary house wiring.
What he saw, as he looked at his monitors, did not please him.
Of the six Rangers normally either on duty or on call, he now had five, since one was away on emergency personal leave. Now another, who he had placed in a sniper role some three hundred meters away on top of a grain silo to cover the entrance to the hospital, would be of limited use. He had expected the terrorists to park in the front to ensure themselves the fastest possible getaway. Their parking at the side was quite unexpected and put them out of the line of fire. By the time the sniper could be brought into play, the main event would be over.
The second thing that caused him concern was the firepower displayed by the two terrorists on the third-floor fire escape. The image from the miniature lens was wide angle and not as clear as he would have liked, but there seemed little doubt that both men had rocket-propelled grenades in addition to automatic rifles. The specially installed doors of the security zone were going to be of little use.
He was comforted that he had taken the unarmed policeman at reception off his post and had redeployed the armed Ranger who was normally positioned outside the security zone. The terrorists might well suspect something when they found the second man absent too, but by then they would be committed.
Kilmara spoke briefly into his headpiece microphone and received three one-word acknowledgments. The fourth and fifth Rangers, Sergeants Grady and Molloy, were concealed in a linen cupboard on the half-landing above the third floor. From this position, using the electronic equivalent of a periscope, they could observe the landing area between the geriatric ward and the control zone, and also most of the last flight of stairs as it arrived at the third floor.
It was a good position, the best available, but it was not ideal. To fire, they had to open the door, and then their field of fire would be slightly restricted by the banisters. A secondary problem was that anyone advancing through the fire doors of the geriatric ward could jump back immediately if not hit in the first burst and then be immediately under cover. As a killing ground, the landing was not really large enough and cover was too close at hand.
But then, circumstances were rarely ideal. That was why elite counterterrorist forces trained daily in the Killing House under constantly varying circumstances.
Relentless training of Rangers who entered the unit as the best of the best could make all the difference when life of death was decided in fractions of a second. The ability to select targets in order of threat, change a magazine or unblock a weapon faster than the eye could follow, read terrain for the maximum cover without conscious thought, anticipate the actions of the enemy — these and numerous other skills were basic to their particular calling.
The best CRW — counterrevolutionary warfare — troops tended to be in their early thirties to mid-forties. It was a calling where training alone and youthful reflexes were never enough. Above all, you needed experience and judgment, and these strengths only developed over time.
In the ideal world, every Ranger waiting for the assault would have had access to the monitoring equipment. In practice, only Kilmara had access to all the incoming information, and there were areas that the cameras did not cover. He lost the two terrorists who had broken in through the fire-escape entrance. Fortunately, the external camera on the fire escape showed no more attackers coming from that quarter.
The last thing he wanted was shooting in a normal ward. With automatic weapons in a confined space there would be civilian dead — not to mention the potential for hostages. It was imperative that the action not commence until both terrorists were out of the geriatric area. On the third-floor landing or in the private ward, it was another matter. In these locations he had his firepower deployed and the discretion to do what was necessary.
There was a camera halfway along the corridor of the geriatric ward pointing toward the internal fire doors and the landing. He picked up the two terrorists as they passed it.
There was a lunch trolley in the way, being pushed by a ward attendant. Without breaking stride, the first terrorist hurled the trolley to one side and his companion smashed the attendant in the face, sending her sprawling. Both men were armed with AK-47s and RPGs. The man in front had his rifle at the ready. The man behind him had his rifle slung and the rocket-propelled grenade launcher ready to fire.
"Position One," said Kilmara to Grady and Molloy. "There are two coming from the geriatric ward on your left — rifle in front, RPG follows."
Kilmara was faced with two unpalatable alternatives. He could either order fire into the corridor and the geriatric ward, which could well incur civilian casualties, or else wait until the rocket launchers were fired across the landing and into the security doors — the direction in which he and three of his Rangers and the man he was supposed to protect were located. Thankfully, the security zone and the corridor behind had been evacuated.