He peeled sharp left, taking up position along the wall their lorry had stopped beside, and directed his section out of their transports and into position along both sides of the street. In his own command squad, Balfour exited right, followed by Murdoch, who moved ahead of Stirling, then Hennessey, who took up position ahead of Balfour. The lorries lurched forward a few meters, giving them cover and spilling out other squads farther along the street, under Stirling's terse radio instructions. Static sputtered in his ear as more of his section reported taking up position.

Stirling swept the area with a quick, careful scrutiny, looking for trouble spots. The Catholic neighborhood consisted mainly of rundown flats, in grubby, multistory buildings owned by Protestants who refused to grant their tenants basic civil rights, never mind ordinary maintenance and upkeep, but charged rents triple the going rate across the border in the Irish Republic. Most of the windows in Stirling's line of sight were pouring black smoke and lurid flames, the classic trademark of the Orange paramilitary terror squads. Women and children ran like screaming ants, carrying whatever they'd managed to salvage and trying to stay clear of the gun battle raging from street to street. Sporadic weapons fire cracked like distant fireworks, the sharp reports of handguns and small-caliber carbines overlain by the deeper crashes and crumps of heavy rifles.

Stirling's hundred-twenty-man unit hadn't even finished piling out of their lorries when a howling mob of Orangemen burst into view from Divis Street, lobbing gasoline bombs through broken windows and raking the corner of Divis and Percy with small-weapons fire. Two women and several children, including a copper-haired little girl barely five years old, crashed to the pavement, screaming and writhing or bent at grotesque angles, ominously still in the glare of the flames. Then someone else opened fire from near the roof of a building three blocks distant and four Orangemen crumpled to the street, gut-shot.