Rules of the Hunt (27 page)
The policeman gently disentangled himself and wrote down what he had
heard in his notebook.
The second policeman had telephoned for an ambulance and other assistance
and then ministered to Kathleen's mother.
The ambulance would come from
but where it could safely go would require some thought.
The detective, a father of four and an experienced graying sergeant in
his forties, a man noted if not for brilliance, then for reliability, went into
the kitchen and saw Eamon sprawled on the floor.
"One of them?" he said to the Bear.
The Bear indicated the AK-47 and nodded.
Blood dripped from a long cut on the back of his hand, but he seemed
oblivious to it.
"Have a look next door," said the detective heavily.
His Uzi was now pointed at Eamon.
The Bear lowered his pistol and headed toward the front room.
The detective walked closer to Eamon.
The terrorist smiled at him nervously.
The man looking down at him was more of a known quantity.
A policeman always looked like a
policeman.
There would be an ambulance
and medical assistance and a cop by his bedside while he recovered.
There would be questioning and a trial and a
sentence to some high-security prison.
He would either escape or be with his own kind.
It wouldn't be too bad.
It went with the job.
The detective took up the pressure on the trigger and looked into Eamon's
eyes, and for an instant Eamon knew he was about to die.
He was screaming as the detective fired and continued firing until the
magazine was empty.
The Bear carried Kathleen out of the charnel house that was the front
room and laid her on the big bed in the master bedroom.
She had fainted briefly, but her eyes opened
again as he covered her.
He sat beside
her and held her hand.
There was a glimmer of recognition in Kathleen's eyes.
She had never seen this man before, but she
knew
.
"You're the Bear," she said.
"Hugo told me about you."
The Bear knew his nickname well enough, but he was never so called to his
face.
There were conventions in these
matters.
Anyway, he rather liked his
given name of Heinrich — Heini, for short — and Sergeant worked fine for those
who knew him less well.
Still, this was a woman of courage, and it was not time to stand on
ceremony.
"I am the Bear," he
said, nodding his large and shaggy head.
Kathleen started to laugh and cry, and the Bear sat on the edge of the
bed and held her in his big arms until the ambulance came.
*
*
*
*
*
McGonigal had three of his own men with him — Jim Daid, Tim Pat Miley,
and Gerry Dempsey — and Sasada.
His men were a known quantity on an operation; Sasada was not.
It had been agreed that he would stay with
the cars unit they had completed the hit.
The persuasive argument had been that
a Japanese
,
in this backwater, would attract attention.
McGonigal was not sure who true this was.
Japanese businesses seemed to be everywhere these days.
They arrived at the hospital shortly after midday.
Doctors' rounds would be over.
Lunch would just be starting.
Visitors' hours would not start until two
o'clock.
The place would be just about
as quiet as it could be except at night.
They had considered doing a nighttime hit but had scrapped it.
It was too predictable.
The parking lot would be nearly empty and
security, as like as not, doubled.
People expected a night attack.
And escaping on strange roads by night was another problem.
The hospital parking lot surrounded the hospital on three sides.
To the rear
was
a
goods-delivery area and various utility buildings, including the boiler house
and mortuary.
McGonigal had considered
going in the back way, but there was a porter there to monitor deliveries and
prevent theft.
A second factor against
that plan was that the route through the kitchens was longer.
They were housed in a single-story extension
at the rear, and the terrorists would have to pass through that before entering
the main building.
The parking spaces directly in front of the hospital were reserved for
the senior medical staff, and there was a clearway for ambulances.
Since this facility was old and small, both
visitors and emergency patients were brought in through the same entrance at
the front.
Emergency
itself
was at the front across from reception.
The arrangement would not have worked in a busy city hospital.
They parked on the right side of the building, out of sight of the front
of the hospital, but only a few yards away from the fire escape that led up to
the ward facing the private wing.
McGonigal and his men were all dressed in maintenance workers' blue
overalls.
They got out of the cars and
opened the trunks.
The weapons inside
were concealed under painter's tarpaulins.
McGonigal's nerves had been at fever pitch as he drove in.
Every sense was honed for the slightest hint
of danger, but he could see nothing amiss.
The hospital, an ugly, raw, concrete construction at the best of times
and even worse when wet, and its bumpy, black asphalt parking area looked
depressingly normal.
The rain had
stopped, but water lay in pools everywhere.
The sky overhead was still heavily overcast and obscured the slightest
hint of direct sunlight.
The chill air
complemented the gloom.
The dreadful
weather and the drab environment reminded McGonigal of Belfast.
He nodded at Jim Daid.
The terrorist walked around to the front of the hospital and asked to use
the rest room.
The receptionist paid him
little attention.
Daid looked around and
noticed that no policeman was present.
However, a
garda
raincoat hung
from a hook in the reception area.
"Excuse me," he said politely to the receptionist.
There was no reaction.
He cleared his throat.
"Excuse
me,
I'm
looking for my brother."
The receptionist, a middle-aged barrel-shaped woman to whom life had not
been kind, looked up from the book she was reading.
This was outside visiting hours and one of
the quieter times of the day, and she resented the interruption.
The heroine in the book with whom she
identified was young, attractive, and currently being made love to by an
equally attractive hero.
She was not pleased to be reminded of real life when fantasy was so much
more pleasant.
"Who?"
she said unpleasantly.
"He's a policeman," said Daid.
"I thought he might be on duty here."
He nodded toward the coat.
The receptionist shrugged.
"Lunch, the rest room, who knows?"
Daid looked at her and decided further conversation was pointless.
He had just come from the rest room, and that
had been empty.
Lunch meant the cop
would return at any time, which could be inconvenient.
He then remembered that the uniforms in the Republic were not armed.
It would have been neater to take him out in
advance, but if he showed up later, what the fuck.
Daid turned and went back to McGonigal.
McGonigal thought about what Daid had told him.
The policeman's absence disturbed him, but it
was too late to turn back now.
"Go," he said to Tim Pat and Gerry Dempsey.
Immediately, they removed the heavy canvas
tool bags from the cars and commenced climbing up the fire escape.
The metal staircase, designed to allow the ill and elderly to escape, had
originally been an attractive construction.
Now it was pitted and rusty, a victim of tight budgets, sloppy
management, and the unrelenting Irish weather.
But it was more than adequate for fast access.
The two terrorists were outside the
third-floor fire door in seconds.
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.