"Cheeky bastards," he muttered under his breath. "Why do these terrorist blokes always think they've got to trash a place?"
"Reggie," Armont whispered back, "these gentlemen did not attend Eton. You have to learn to make allowances. And right now they appear to be trying to deliver an atomic bomb into somebody's backyard, which would tend to suggest they're not model citizens. One has to expect a disheartening want of tidiness in such an element." He checked his watch. "All right, get ready."
Ahead of them the doors to Command were closed—who knew if they were locked or even booby-trapped? But it didn't matter. The C-4 had already been attached around the frame. Exploding it and the other door opposite would serve as a diversion, drawing the first fire and giving Hans and Marcel the moment they needed to make their own ingress, rappelling in under cover of flash grenades and mopping up.
That was the plan, at any rate. A three-point entry, with flash grenades and tear gas. It usually worked.
Armont clicked on his walkie-talkie again and checked his watch. "All teams alert. Assault begins in three-zero seconds. Starting now."
Peering down into the room through the overhead grating, Hans felt his palms grow sweaty. This was the moment he always hated. Even after all his years with the assault squads, Spezialen-satztrupp, in GSG-9, he had never gotten over this moment of soul-searching panic.
Twenty seconds.
He glanced up from his watch, then tested the rope he and Marcel would use to rappel down into the room. Finally he adjusted the hood of his balaclava one last time in an attempt to quell his nerves. It never worked, of course, and it wasn't working now. Still, he always did it. More helpful was checking the clip on his MP5. He had a spare taped to the one now loaded, making it possible to just flip them over. A third was taped to his wrist. It should be enough. Ten seconds.