Tim Pat gripped his rifle and looked at his stopwatch. A glass safety panel was set into the heavy wooden fire door, but he did not want to alarm the Ranger opposite by sneaking a look. This was where surprise was all. The door was hung on a two-way hinge. He would push through it and fire. No matter how well-trained the Ranger opposite was, he would not have time to react.
The camera on the landing picked up two men in boilersuits and Halloween masks coming up the last flight of stairs before the third floor.
As Kilmara watched, they removed automatic rifles from heavy bags and slung heavy satchels over their shoulders. Shit! They could have grenades.
Tim Pat burst through the door, firing. Rounds stitched across the security door.
There was no Ranger there.
McGonigal and Jim Daid rushed up the last few stairs, slight surprised that they had not seen the guard yet, but not concerned, as the outer security door was a good ten yards back along the corridor and did not come into view until you reached the top of the stairs and turned the corner.
Nothing! No guard sprawled on the ground in a pool of his own blood. Instantly, McGonigal knew something was wrong.
Matters started to develop very fast indeed.
Dempsey stepped through the fire door with the RPG-7 on his shoulder and fired, blowing aside the first security door and impacting on the frame of the metal and explosive detector inside and blowing it to pieces.
At the landing at the top of the stairs, McGonigal had flung himself to the ground, twisting around and searching desperately for an ambush position.
"One, GO!" said Kilmara a split second after he saw that both terrorists had moved beyond the fire door into the killing zone.
Tim Pat had unslung his RPG-7 and fired at the second security door. It exploded with a roar and blew the steel structure aside. The air was thick with fumes.
McGonigal spotted the linen cupboard at the precise moment that Molloy emerged, and fired a long desperate burst, hitting the Ranger in his torso and face, killing him instantly and knocking him back into Grady.
McGonigal then picked himself up and rushed forward down the corridor into the private ward, firing. The lust of battle was on him and he was determined that whatever happened, he was going to do what he came for and kill a few of these pigs into the bargain.
Sick at Molloy's death and cursing himself for not having moved faster, Sergeant Grady pushed his comrade's body aside and brought his weapon into action.
He was using an automatic shotgun with a twenty round rotary magazine that fired fléchette ammunition. Known as a force multiplier, it allowed one man to put out the firepower of several in the crucial first few seconds that normally determine the outcome of a firefight. Each Magnum cartridge held twelve long steel darts. It was of little use at ranges of over a hundred and fifty meters, but at close quarters it was highly effective.
The corridor was lit by recessed fluorescent tubes and, normally, such daylight as filtered in through he fanlights over each of the six doors. In addition, there was backup lighting in the event of power failure.
Some of the fluorescents had been smashed in the blast of the exploding rockets, but enough still functioned to illuminate the corridor adequately.
McGonigal crouched behind the smashed metal detector. Jim Daid came up beside him and dropped into firing position. McGonigal glanced over his shoulder. Tim Pat was in position behind the twisted door frame of the first security door, and Dempsey was just coming up on the other side. All his force was unharmed and the fellow in the ambush position had been taken out.
McGonigal began to feel confident.
Up ahead, there were three rooms on his left and three on his right. Normal procedure would be to secure each room as he advanced with grenades and a few quick bursts of automatic fire.
But in this case, he wouldn’t bother. He had a target and knew exactly where it was. He and Dempsey would head straight for Room Number 4. A quick kick at the door or burst at the door lock, and in with the firepower.
It would be over in seconds. There had to be other Rangers waiting in the rooms, expecting them to clear them out as normal before heading for Fitzduane. Well, they could bloody well wait. If they opened the doors, he was confident the covering fire of Tim Pat and Dempsey could deal with them.
He made a quick hand signal to Jim Daid and readied himself to run forward. First, they both threw grenades forward. The corridor looked empty, but they could not see everything from behind cover.
The grenades exploded in two shattering blasts, blowing open the doors at either side of the end of the corridor.
Rooms 3 and 4 were now open to attack. This was an extra bonus as far as McGonigal was concerned. Both doorways seemed to stare at him blankly. Something was wrong. And then it came to him.
It was the middle of the bloody day and there was no light.
Sergeant Grady moved out of the linen cupboard and started down the stairs. One of the terrorists spotted the movement and turned, and as he did so, Grady fired a three-round burst.
Thirty-six steel darts sliced through the air and turned the wall behind the terrorist into a stipple of blood, bone, and flesh.
Tim Pat turned to see horror as the skin and tissue of Dempsey's body was flayed off him by the hail of metal.
The sight was terrible, and he was momentarily frozen as his friend's body disintegrated as if sliced by unseen blades.
He turned toward the angle of threat and started to fire. He could see a figure in black combat clothes and some sort of high-tech helmet with a microphone and strange goggles.
Grady fired a second longer burst.
The man in front of him seemed to come to pieces, as if his clothes and flesh were being blown off him by some terrible wind. For a split second he could see the man's bone structure, and then the half-man, half-skeleton was a heap on the floor.
Kilmara cut the lights and activated a switch.
There was a metallic roar as a specially installed folding partition fell from a box on the ceiling. It was similar in design to that used to protect shop windows while still keeping the display visible, but it was painted a matte black. The principle was practically as old as warfare itself: In case you lose your outer defenses, always have a strong point to which to retreat.
The end of the corridor hosing the last four of the six rooms was now sealed off.
It was now near total darkness as far as McGonigal and Jim Daid were concerned. About to rush forward, they hesitated at his unexpected development.
McGonigal fired a burst.
The muzzle flashes were blinding in the darkness, but he was just able to orient himself. He tried to fire again, but his magazine was empty. He changed in the darkness. It was an effortless maneuver practiced hundreds of times before.
He turned around, expecting to see some minimal light from the stairwell of the corridor behind him. There was almost nothing. Just a faint illumination from the safety panel of the fire door of the geriatric ward.
As he watched, that too vanished. It was now utterly dark. Too late, he remembered that the heavy curtains covering the windows of the stairwell had been drawn as they had ascended. It had been a gloomy day and the lights had been on, so he had thought nothing of it.
Rage gripped him. This was such a simple, foolish way to be defeated. It was the middle of the day. How could he have been expected to foresee darkness?
He reached out for Jim Daid, who gave a start as McGonigal gripped his arm.
"Relax, man," said McGonigal. "We'll follow the wall up. Fuck their tricks. We'll get the job done and be out of here in a moment."