Body Count by James Rouch

mask the smell of the gun smoke as Revell moved quickly inside. Not much of the irritant had yet found its way to this quarter of the building.
    He knew the armoury was on the top floor. The cloud of gas would grow thicker as they moved upwards and towards the front of the building. That was where the brunt of the barrage was taking place.
    After the hours of darkness, it seemed strangely unreal to be in a well-lit building. Holding up his hand for silence, Revell listened for any clue to the whereabouts or the approach of the Russians. There was only the sound of his own breathing, muted by the filtering mask over his face.
    Pausing only to let those men who would accompany him reload, the major moved onward. The building was an enormous maze. If he posted men to guard every intersecting corridor, then before he was on the third floor, he'd be on his own. The alternative was to search every room as they went. There was not the time nor the manpower to do that.
    Finding the short flight of stairs that he'd been looking for, Revell started up. At its top, glass double doors opened into a broad passageway that ran the length of the building. He knew it would be covered.
    Try as he could, he couldn't remember which way the doors opened - inwards towards the stairs or out into the corridor. He was scrutinizing them, endeavouring to judge, by the way the hinges were mounted, when he noticed the gap between them.
    Visible for only a tiny fraction of its length, a filament of fire wire bridged the gap on the side away from him. Signalling the others back, Revell edged down the stairs until the barrel of his pump gun rested on the top tread. He lined it up, ducked low, and squeezed the trigger.
    The report of the firing was drowned by the roar of the detonating booby-trap grenade as the doors burst open. A mad hail of glass, wood, and plaster smothered them. Before it had begun to settle, Revell was leading his men through the wreckage.
    No shots came, and they crouched low, hugging the walls as they waited for the smoke to clear. It did so to reveal two bodies. Both - a man and a woman - were in police uniforms.
    The woman's was close enough for Ripper to reach out and touch. Cautiously he rolled the body over. Dust from the explosion failed to hide the closely spaced holes across face and neck.
    “Not our doing.”
“Never mind them. We keep moving.”
    Dashing to the next staircase, Revell sent a blast from his shotgun straight up it, then stepped aside. Other members of the team fired baton rounds against the wall at its top.
    The cylinders of plastic deformed on impact and whirled away to right and left. For a few precious seconds, anyone who waited up there in ambush for them would be either flat on the floor taking cover, or knocked down and in no state to fight.
    Flanked by submachine gunners, Revell went up two steps at a time. As he reached the top, a bullet smacked plaster from the wall beside him. He turned to see a Russian paratrooper being hurled backwards by the impact of the contents of a magazine.
    Revell stripped the body of three fragmentation and one stun grenade, even as it made its last twitching movements.
    Through fire doors at the far end of a corridor another figure appeared. A Kalashnikov was levelled and already spitting bullets.
    Shotguns and automatics blazed a return fire, and the Russian was almost torn apart by the multiple impacts. He crashed to the floor, flailing in his death throes.
    Darting in to retrieve another stun bomb clipped to the dying man's webbing, Revell found himself at the foot of yet another set of stairs. He noticed them at the same instant he saw a grenade tumbling down towards him.
    Lunging forward, he caught it before its final impact, and thrust it under the partially dismembered body beside him. Throwing himself aside, he was only a couple of meters away when it detonated.
    The corpse was lifted by the blast. Blood and intestines spattered the walls and ceiling. Revell felt