Robert Asprin: For King and Country

It wouldn't have done any good to tell her they would already have gone after the Orangemen, if the sodding IRA sniper hadn't pinned them down, preventing it.

Meanwhile, smoke poured down the stairwell in the wake of the fleeing women. Stirling cursed under his breath. "Upstairs, double time, he'll make every shot count, now the building's been torched." If he hadn't gone already, running for safety in the confusion.

Two more flights up, twisting round the landings, and they'd gained the fifth floor. Doors stood open, flats abandoned by panic-stricken residents. A chatter of gunfire sounded through broken windows from the street below. The sound of return fire from the IRA gunman was unexpected music in Stirling's ears. Their sniper wasn't as well trained as he'd thought. He was still in the room, shooting. A fully trained IRA man would've bolted the moment he saw two SAS soldiers leave their squad to head his way. Stirling motioned for the constables to stay back, then eased forward, listening intently with every step. Murdoch crept from doorway to doorway, checking each room along the corridor before slipping past. They leapfrogged cautiously down the hall, then it came again: the crump of a heavy rifle firing, three doors along, and a male voice saying, "Keep your bloody head down, lad, bastards down there'll shoot it off!"

Bullets were ripping into the hallway, slapping through the hollow-core door and punching like icepicks through thin, poorly constructed walls, embedding themselves into the ceiling. Stirling's section was doing a marvelous job of pinning him down so he couldn't run without exposing himself worse than he was already. He keyed his radio and whispered, "Cease fire, we're going in," then nodded silently. Murdoch nodded back, exchanging ready signals. The firing from the street stopped and they entered with a diving roll through the smashed-down door. Murdoch and he fired simultaneously. The sniper jerked wildly and went down with a gurgling cry, hit at least five times. In one corner, hiding behind a bookcase, the boy crouched with both arms over his head, screaming.

"Get out of here, boy," Murdoch snarled, jerking him up from his corner by one thin arm. "Building's burning round your ears!"

"You shot me Da!"

"Life's tough, mate," Murdoch bit out, dragging the boy along. "He was trying to kill us, last I noticed. Move it, lad, or we'll leave you to burn with him."

"Easy, Murdoch," Stirling pulled the boy out of the younger man's grip, "he's a scared kid who's just watched his father die. C'mon, lad, you can't stay here. Where's your mother, then?"

The boy shook his head. "Orangemen shot her."

Wonderful. Another orphan who'd grow up hating Protestants and blaming the British army. It never ended. "I'm sorry about that, lad. Come on, now, before we're trapped by the fire." He glanced around for the constables and swore under his breath. They were ransacking the flat, snatching out drawers, dumping contents across the floor, rifling the gunman's pockets.

"What in hell are you doing?"

"Looking for evidence! Lists of his mates, telephone numbers—"

Murdoch grabbed the nearest by the shoulder and roared, "Leave it, you bloody stupid bastards! It's a battle zone out there and the building's on fire! Worry about arresting the IRA when the smoke clears!"

They cursed, but complied, stuffing handfuls of the dead man's personal papers into their own pockets on the way. Murdoch radioed down that they'd cleared the sniper and Stirling picked up the terrified boy, carrying him. He managed to snag a family photograph on his way out the door. "There's a good lad, hold this." He shoved the photo into the boy's hands and set out for the stairwell at a fast jog. They left the tenement considerably faster than they'd entered, plunging down the smoke-filled stairwell past blazing corridors and other fleeing refugees. Stirling saw a woman carrying nothing of her own.

"Here, take the lad, would you? He's just lost his dad and mum."

She took the boy wordlessly, fleeing ahead of them down the stairs.

They exited the way they'd come in, through the rear of the building, only to be met by a howling mob of Orangemen, emboldened once more by the silence of the sniper. "Get the civilians out of here!" Stirling shouted at the constables, then he opened fire with a three-shot burst of full-auto fire, bringing down a man pointing a pistol at them. The mob checked its forward momentum, dispersing instants later under a hail of live fire, giving the women and children time to get clear, running down an alleyway. "Bloody bastards!" Stirling growled, slamming another magazine home. "I've had just about enough... of Northern Ireland's Troubles! "

"Amen to that," Murdoch agreed, firing at another gunman who'd paused to snap off shots in their direction. "I'd give all the money in Threadneedle Street to be sitting in some pub in Cheapside, right about now!"

"Tell me one I don't know, mate. It's my bleeding birthday."

They cleared the remaining Orange mob, driving them into the fringes of a bottle-throwing pack of young Catholics bent on vengeance. For once, Stirling was inclined to let them settle it amongst themselves. At least the Orangemen would be too occupied to torch any more flats.

He and Murdoch had just reached the corner again, trying to rejoin their section, when a delivery van skidded round at high speed, plowing straight toward the melee of rock-throwing Catholics and, coincidentally, toward the rest of their unit and the embattled constables who'd taken cover with them. Halfway there, the driver skidded the brakes, bailing out as the van slewed and slowed. The man ran back toward Stirling and Murdoch at breakneck speed while the van careened in a spinning turn toward the SAS position.

Realization struck instants too late.

"Bomb!"

The concussion hurled Stirling five meters through the air. The whole city block erupted in flame. Murdoch slammed into a parked car, flung like a doll by the force of the explosion. Buildings to either side crumbled into the street, smashing down in a ruin of bricks, mortar, and twisted pipe. The rock-throwing Catholics vanished in a blazing rain of debris. A heavy tiled roof crashed down across Stirling's entire section, burying them under a belching avalanche of flame and broken buildings. Then Stirling smashed into something incredibly hard and the whole world faded into dim grey chaos.

He roused briefly into an unwanted reality where the only sensation was a throbbing mass of pain the length of his body. Some unknown stretch of time after that, a rosary swung into his field of view, dangling above his face. Urgent voices floated to him where he lay at the bottom of a very deep pit.

"Is he still alive, Father?"

"Yes, God be praised, help me carry him to an ambulance... ."

They lifted him from the pavement, instantly rousing all the demons of hell in a vengeful dance. They stampeded en masse from Stirling's skull to the toes of his combat boots. He tried to scream and mercifully lost consciousness, instead. He had no idea how long he'd been out when reality finally firmed again, piecemeal. Bits of him hurt worse than others and his ears didn't seem to be working properly. Sounds came in a confused jumble of voices and meaningless noise. Gradually Stirling differentiated various sensations as the tug of bandages, a sharp ache from an IV feed in the crook of one elbow, a plaster cast around one wrist, something stiff, a brace maybe, around one knee, and the tug of stitches along his face, down one arm, and across his torso. Stirling's hearing cleared up next, bringing order from the chaotic noise. He made out the sounds of monitors beeping softly, a rattle of glassware, hushed voices in a corridor somewhere nearby, sobbing voices farther off, and somewhere in close proximity, a very young child screaming in endless, mindless agony...