"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.