Rules of the Hunt (28 page)

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.

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."

He moved
across to the corridor wall on the right, and with Jim Daid beside him began
moving up slowly.
 
Ahead were Rooms, 6,
5, and 4.

He felt the
door frame of Room 6 and briefly considered blasting his way in and opening the
windows to get some light.
 
Instead, he
decided the darkness could work to his advantage also.

Grady and two
other Rangers watched the two terrorists through their night-vision
equipment.
 
All had activated their laser
sights.
 
The thin beams were invisible
except to those wearing the appropriate goggles.
 
As it was, the Rangers could see each of the
two terrorists fixed with pinpoints of imminent death.
 
No one fired.