Standing not three metres away was a man – an AK47 raised and pointing towards the doorway.

The man pulled his trigger a second time, but he had been blinded and disoriented by the flash from the explosion and his wild, unaimed burst rattled harmlessly high into the wall above the door.

And then his magazine was empty.

McMullen fired rapidly into the centre of the shooter, knocking him backwards and down, large chunks of meat and bone exploding from the exit holes in his back.

At the same time, McMullen saw something move, near the wall to the left of the man, and realised it was a girl.

Dressed in shapeless black.

She started to scream.

Six seconds.

Room combat is all about speed, aggression and surprise: you trust your partner to cover his arc, you kill everyone who needs killing in yours, and you live or die by how well you execute these skills.

Carr had punched through the murder hole immediately after McMullen, going right and clearing the opening.

As he’d gone through, he’d first heard the AK, and the rounds smacking into the plasterwork above his head, and then the reply from Kev’s weapon.

He resisted the urge to turn and help, and instead searched for targets of his own.

In the choking dust and darkness, he picked out a woman, curled up on a bed, hands over her head, and the shape of a man, moving purposefully from left to right.

Instantly, John Carr fired two shots.

The first clipped the guy in the right elbow, deflecting the bullet down and out of his arm at the wrist, taking out both of those joints, along with the controlling tendons and most of the muscle, and rendering his arm useless.

The second round took the man in the hip, ripped onwards through his stomach, and dropped him, blood spraying and pumping, to the floor.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Carr congratulated himself: not bad shooting, when you’ve just had a dozen 7.62mm rounds fired six inches over your head.

The target was screaming and writhing in pain, but he was also trying to drag himself into the corner of the room, his good arm stretching out for something.

Carr fired a single shot into the crawling man’s head.

The round smashed his skull open, painting the floor and wall with brain and other tissue, and the overpressure forced his eyes from their sockets.

He flopped to the floor, blood pulsing from his shattered body and quickly beginning to pool around him.

Eight seconds.

‘Clear the room, Kev,’ shouted Carr.

He maintained a firing position, half-turned to watch McMullen, but keeping his weapon aimed at the girl sitting on the mattress in front of him.

From outside, came the heavy, percussive rattle of several AK47s, and responding bursts of fire – controlled, deliberate, aimed – from the Minimis of Geordie Skelton and Fred West.