The mob scattered, burning and shooting as they went. Stirling clenched his jaw and gripped his MP5 until his knuckles whitened, aching to fire into the thick of those bastards, but he was not about to shoot live ammunition into a crowd with women and children scattered through it. His radio sputtered with Ogilvie's voice, shouting, "The police are trying to contain them before they reach St. Peter's church and the school! Move out by sections and drive those damned Orangemen back, trap 'em between the police barricades and our guns! And for God's sake, watch the rooftops, we've got IRA sniper fire coming from everywhere, they're likely to take potshots at us for the sheer fun of it!"

"Bloody lovely!" Balfour snarled as their section ran forward in a flanking movement toward the Orangemen, leapfrogging their way under whatever cover was available. "The election of the century, they call it. Catholics claim they finally got a majority, while the Orangemen are claiming fraud, and bloody Sinn Fein's all set to vote in reunification with Dublin, like the IRA wanted for years. And now we've got the bleeding Orangemen bombing us. Goddamned Ministry of Defense would've done better to let us wipe this country down to bedrock!"

It was a common enough sentiment in the SAS, one that Stirling didn't share, as it happened; but he understood it, only too well. "Button it, Balfour," he snapped. "Before some Orange bastard blows your head off! You can't do a job while you're complaining! And put your bloody respirator on, we're about to pump CS at them!"

He jammed his own gas mask on, then they were in the thick of it and there was no time for anything but survival. They moved down Percy Street in relays, with McCrombie driving their armored command lorry at a slow crawl to provide cover wherever possible. Every doorway and window offering possible cover for gunmen brought sweat prickling out beneath Stirling's body armor. Unpleasant trickles ran down his brow and dripped stinging salt sweat into his eyes under the rubber mask, an added misery courtesy of the sticky, hot June weather. He blinked furiously to clear his vision, cursing the heat and the bloody "Troubles" that made tear gas necessary.