Sounds like a UV laser…
Can’t be too many floating around
UV laser would be my guess too, and I think they’re pretty common nowadays. I’ve experienced UV eye burns related to arc welding and the symptoms they’re describing sound very similar.
IR laser also seems like a possibility, except I think the bad guys would avoid that since security is probably monitoring the area in IR. IR also seems to require higher power than UV to do eye damage, so it might require a bulkier laser source.