Del peeked from the doorway across the hall two doors down. ''Maybe it's not.. .'' he shouted.

But as he said it, LaChaise peeked from his end of the hall. His face was clean-shaven but unmistakable, as was the hard black form of his rifle. Del snapped a shot, missing, and Franklin jerked one off and thought it'd probably gone into the ceiling. Then LaChaise was out of sight for a second, and the next second, the muzzle of the rifle came around the corner and began chattering down the hall, a ferocious up-close pounding followed by a hail of plaster from the walls, the bits and pieces of. 223 slugs zipping past like bees, the sound of shattering glass, and then the quick hollow boom of Del's automatic.

With plaster pouring on him like rain, Franklin peeked down the hall, saw movement and fired three quick shots. Somebody screamed, ''No,'' a yelp, the sound of a man hit. Then the machine gun opened up again, and more plaster rained down, and the door above his head exploded in plastic and chipboard splinters.

Del, across the hallway, heard the man scream ''No,'' and thought that Franklin had hit one of them. Franklin fired three more times and Del popped back out and fired three evenly spaced shots: Franklin was working a revolver, and he'd need time to reload. There was now so much dust in the hallway that Del could barely see the end of it. Then there was movement again and he jerked his head back and the walls came apart again and something slashed at his throat. He touched it, he could feel something sticking out. A bone? A piece of his jawbone? Shocked, he turned and looked at Cheryl, whomhe'd rolled off the bed onto the floor. She was looking at him and began screaming and crawling forward, toward him.

He was hurt, but he didn't feel hurt: he popped out the door and fired another half-dozen shots down the hall, then snapped on an empty chamber.

Franklin came in with two shots: Del groped for another magazine, dropped the empty out of the gun butt, and slapped the next one in and jacked a shell into the chamber. Cheryl was on top of him, trying to hold him, and he was trying to push her away, get back to the door.

Franklin was yelling, and dimly, he heard, ''Hold it, hold it. I think they're gone.''

Del looked down the hall, but saw nothing. Then Cheryl was screaming something he couldn't make out, fear in her eyes, and she grabbed at his throat.

MARTIN WAS HIT. THE SLUG, A LUCKY SHOT, WENT through the inside part of his thigh, just below his testicles, catching mostly skin. There was a big artery there, he knew, and he pulled back and ripped open his pants leg. His leg showed a raw open wound but no heavy pulse of blood. He was bleeding, all right, but wouldn't bleed to death-not in the next minute or so. LaChaise was screaming at him, ''You hit? You hit?'' as he slammed another magazine into the

''Yeah, I'm hit. This is no good, man.''

LaChaise jumped into the hallway, fully exposed, like in the cop and cowboy shows, and blew the entire thirty-shot magazine down the halls, playing it like a hose. Martin had gone to the elevators. He pushed the ''down'' button and the doors slid back: ''Let's go!''

''One more,'' LaChaise screamed. He poured another magazine down the hall, then skipped across the hallway and piled into the elevator and the doors closed and they started down.

''Maybe somebody waiting,'' LaChaise said. He shovedhis last magazine into his rifle. The wells around his eyes were white, his nostrils wide as he gasped for breath: ''How bad is it?''

''Bad enough, but I ain't gonna die from it,'' Martin grunted. ''Watch the doors,'' LaChaise said, and they leveled their rifles at the opening elevator doors. Nobody.

The lobby was deserted and they ran out toward the hall that would lead to the car.

They'd been inside for little more than a minute.

LUCAS SKIDDED TO A STOP IN THE PARKING LOT, ON the opposite side of the building from the emergency room entrance. Del's wife was screaming on the radio: ''Del's hurt, Del's hurt… they're going away, but Del's hurt…''

Lucas had everything on the street headed for the hospital, and Dispatch said more guys were running down from City Hall. They'd be there in a minute, in thirty seconds… He jammed the truck into park and got the shotgun off the seat and ran toward the lobby doors. As he ran up, he saw the elevators open, and LaChaise and Martin lurched out, Martin hobbling.

They turned the other way, not seeing him, heading down a hall that would lead to the emergency room exit. He was behind them, sixty or eighty feet away, on the wrong side of the hospital. He pulled at the door and nearly fell down: locked.

Without thinking, he backed up a step, pointed the shotgun at LaChaise's back through the glass and fired. The glass exploded, and he pumped and fired through the hole, and pumped again, was aware that somebody was screaming, and then the glass panes ten feet to his left blew out and he could see the flash of a machine gun rolling toward him. He went down and automatically ducked his head, and the shattering glass ripped at his coat and pants.

When the long play of the machine gun passed, he got to his knees and fired two more shots as quickly as he could, got no response and stood up.

The hall opposite him was empty. There was a sudden, keen local silence, as though he had suddenly gone deaf. Then the sound of sirens faded in, and he stepped through the holes in the glass doors and ran across the lobby.

He ducked behind the wall at the reception desk, and saw a woman with a bleeding face looking at him from the floor where she'd crawled for cover. He waited, listening, then hurried down the hall, ready to take someone at the corner…

Another body, the security guard, breathing but blowing bubbles of blood. There was a double blood-trail, going out the door, one stopping five feet from the curb, the other going all the way to the curb. They had a car, but they were gone.

A cop car skidded into the lot, and Lucas stepped out with his hands up, waved, groped for his radio and said, ''They're on the streets… look for the brown car, the big brown car. They're not more than fifteen seconds out of the lot.

They got machine guns, they're hit…''

A doctor was running down the hall toward him. He glanced at Lucas, then bent over the security guard and shouted back toward the emergency room: ''We need a cart, get a goddamn cart.''

Lucas said, ''There's another one by the reception desk.''

The doctor screamed, ''We need two carts…''

As the cops broke out of the incoming car, Lucas turned and ran back to the lobby. The elevator doors were open, the floor a pool of crimson blood. There was only one puddle, he noticed, with two footprints in it. The other man hadn't been hit yet, so he'd got him with the shotgun.

He pushed two, rode up, and when the doors started to open, he yelled,

''Davenport coming in.''

He could hear a woman shouting, and he hurried aroundthe corner toward Del's room. Del was on the floor, with Franklin and Cheryl, both in hospital gowns, bent over him. A nurse was hurrying down the hall with a cart.

''How bad?'' Lucas yelled as he came up.

''He's not gonna be as pretty as he used to be,'' Franklin said grimly.

Lucas knelt beside Cheryl and Del looked up at him: a splinter of Formica, thin as a knife, and about the width of a pencil, was sticking through Del's neck, inside the lines of his jaw. He looked at Lucas and shook his head, his eyes wobbling.

Cheryl turned to the nurses and shouted, ''Hurry,'' and to Lucas, in a calmer voice, ''It goes all the way through, up in the roof of his mouth.''

''Jesus, let's get him…''

The nurses came up and Lucas picked Del up and laid him on the cart. ''Down to the ER,'' one of the nurses said. The other one pointed at Cheryl: ''And you've got to lie back down, you can't be up…'' And at Franklin: ''You too…''