STONY MAN WAS POISED, PREPPED FOR WAR

Hal Brognola stood at the back of the room, well-chewed but unlit cigar clamped between locked teeth as he surveyed the Farm’s operations center. Against the wall at the front of the room television screens flickered with images. One screen offered an overview of the island from the Farm’s dedicated Keyhole satellite. On another screen was the feed from the nose camera mounted in Jack Grimaldi’s Comanche attack helicopter. Two additional screens were linked to similar camera systems in the Predator drones controlled by Carmen Delahunt and Akira Tokaido at their respective workstations. The UAVs were outfitted with Hellfire missiles for the engagement.

The screen featuring a topographical map of the island was controlled by Hunt Wethers and showed the individual operators of both Phoenix Force and Able Team in icon form, allowing the Farm to visually follow their progress as the assault unfolded.

Barbara Price stalked back and forth in front of the screens, working her sat-com headset to coordinate last-minute logistical needs. Above her head a digital clock counted down to H-hour.

Target Acquisition
Don Pendleton

STONY MAN®

America’S Ultra-Covert Intelligence Agency

www.mirabooks.co.uk

TARGET ACQUISITION

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

Washington, D.C.

Hal Brognola strode down the east hall of the senate. He’d just been called before another pointless meeting with the Senate Subcommittee on Covert Action Oversight. He kept bringing them actionable intelligence and debriefs of successful operations, but they kept questioning the constitutionality of his original Sensitive Operations Group charter. The experience left him feeling like the cardboard silhouette at a shooting range.

He sighed heavily, picked up his pace and for the hundredth time that day wished he’d never quit smoking.

“Hal,” a gravelly voice barked. “Can I have a word?”

The highly polished linoleum floor squeaked under the big Fed’s feet as he slowed his pace and turned to address the man who had spoken to him.

“Brigadier,” Brognola said.

Brigadier General Brooks Kubrick, Joint Special Operations Command, walked up and put his hands on his hips. “We have a problem,” he announced.

“Don’t we always,” Brognola countered.

Kubrick looked up and down the hallway and, satisfied, pulled Brognola over to a quiet corner underneath an oil painting of Andrew Jackson. Kubrick was a big man, ex-Ranger and former Tenth Group Special Forces who’d been with Detachment Delta in El Salvador. His reputation as a no-nonsense operator and premier unconventional strategist preceded him, and Brognola was more than willing to listen to what he had to say.

“I got guys,” Kubrick began, “rolling out of four or five tours in the Sandbox or the Rockpile then disappearing into a sensitive security operation for Homeland for months on end.”

“Okay.” Brognola didn’t offer the man any help.

“Something I have on good authority my boys are calling Operation Blacksuit.”

“Really?”

“Really my ass, Hal. I got hard-core recon boys and SEALs coming back talking about a gang of cold-eye killers, some of them foreign nationals, doing very wild shit. I got Special Forces sergeants with twenty years in, talking about specialists with crazy mad skills. I got twenty-year-old Airborne Rangers telling me about men twice their age kicking their asses in training runs or during hand-to-hand drills.”

Brognola drew his mouth into a flat, sharp line. In the ranking of security clearances the operations the general described were deemed above top secret and were given something called code-name clearances. Admitting that you had knowledge of a code name you were not specifically assigned to was a criminal offense significant enough to have your general security clearance revoked and an internal security investigation launched.

Hal Brognola’s connection to the Justice Department was well established in the Capitol, even if the rest of his purview was decidedly murky. Brigadier General Brooks Kubrick had just taken a very big risk by admitting his knowledge of the assignment of special operations personnel to the security of Stony Man Farm.

Brognola knew such a savvy individual would not commit such a faux pas lightly.

“Sounds impressive,” he said, voice even.

“Impressive? You’re right, what I’m hearing is impressive. I’m stretched to the breaking point for operators, I got more missions than operators, I got casualty rates rivaling my train-up rates, I’m short guys, guns and goods but long on tangos and I discover the Justice Department is sitting on a crew of shooters that make the FBI’s hostage-rescue team look like beat cops.”

“You’re starting to make me feel like a cheerleader who’s just wandered into the locker room, Kubrick. Is there a point to this?”

The general turned away and released a pent-up breath. “I got a problem, Hal. I need help. The Agency has dumped a real dog of an operation in my lap. In Pakistan.”

“What are we talking about specifically?” Brognola asked.

“You know the KLPD?”

“Khadi Lun Pe Dhoka,” Brognola answered automatically. “A sort of ‘boys in the basement’ bureau in their intelligence agency.”

“Exactly, bad mojo boys. Thick with the Taliban back in the day. The only Pakistani intelligence group to have any worthwhile presence in the lawless tribal regions to the northwest. For all the wrong reasons.”

“That jives with what I know,” Brognola conceded.

“The Agency put a task force into Islamabad. Paramilitary operators, almost exclusively made up by ex-Special Forces communication sergeants. Their job is to do electronic countersurveillance on the Pakistani security apparatus.”

“Help us find out who are the bad guys pretending to be good guys.”

“Exactly.” Brooks nodded. “I’ve got a list of KLPD agents directing enemy combatant operations. They’re working with al Qaeda cells, Taliban splinter groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba. But everyone has a political patron in the government. They have juice or cover or plausible deniability. They’re operating with immunity. Every time we turn around they’re screwing us. We can’t put our boys up into Waziristan without these snakes fucking us.”

“What precisely are you asking me for, Brigadier?”

“I got a honey pot operation. I got time, place, an A-list of partygoers. I got a pipeline in and out under everyone’s noses. I got a money shot of a direct-action takedown.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Prince Ziad Jarrah bin Sultan al-Thani.”

“He is…what, a Saudi?”

“A crown prince, or the son of a crown prince. His father was very high up in the defense ministry. Very high up. So high up I can’t get a green light on this op because his highness the son of his highness Hadji son of a bitch is playing sleepover at my hit site. He’s dirty as hell, spending his allowance money funding suicide bombers and sport torturers.”

Brognola nodded. “You wearing a wire, Brigadier?”

“What?” Kubrick seemed genuinely bewildered, but Brognola wasn’t at his first rodeo.

“A wire. You working with a special investigator?” Brognola slapped him in the chest, feeling for a hidden microphone.

“Jesus, Hal, no! I swear on my kids,” Kubrick protested.

In a second Brognola relied on decades of street experience and made his decision. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a business card. He reached out and carefully placed it into the JSOC officer’s hand.

“That e-address is tight as a nun’s habit, Brigadier. You send me what you have and I’ll see what we can do.”

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

BROGNOLA LOOKED UP at Barbara Price.

“What do you think?”

The honey-blonde Stony Man mission controller sat on the edge of the War Room’s massive conference table, a cup of coffee in her hand. She cut her eyes away from Brognola toward Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, the head of her cyberteam. From his wheelchair Kurtzman deftly worked at the keyboard built into the unit.

“I think, Hal, that you handed me a complete operation tied up with a pretty pink bow.” The former NSA manager began ticking points off on her slender fingers. “Initial intelligence. Field reconnaissance. Logistical support to include transportation. Safehouse with arms, explosives, equipment and fresh changes of underwear.”

Brognola, seeing her starting to really warm up, gently interrupted. “Your point, Barb?”

“My point is that it’s one thing working with Agency, or Homeland or even Pentagon through SOG’s executive charter. It’s what, in part, we were designed to do from the beginning.”

“But?”

“But.” Kurtzman spoke up, “that’s not exactly what’s happening here.”

Price nodded. “This is a JSOC gig from scratch to burn. You’re just plugging the boys in as interchangeable with DEVGRU or CAG.” She paused and shrugged. “Or the Rangers, for all that goes.”

Barbara Price was listing off the premier units of the Joint Special Operations Command. The Combat Application Group, or CAG, was the elite Army counterterrorism and hostage rescue unit usually referred to as Delta Force, while DEVGRU, or the United States Naval Special Warfare DEVelopment GRoUp, was the successor to the more common reference of SEAL Team 6.

“You start doing this in this fashion,” Kurtzman added, “then where does it end? Remember Force Recon? The Marines tried for decades to keep that asset to themselves but now it’s out of Corps control and in JSOC’s.”

“The Marines got tired of seeing Green Berets and SEALs getting all the covert action and agreed to the move,” Brognola pointed out. “Look, this isn’t an attempt to poach our crews. It’s our specialty—last-minute, high degree of difficulty, direct action. This isn’t an attempt by the Pentagon to piss on our turf—it’s a professional favor. We’ve used and abused their personnel and equipment before, though they didn’t necessarily know it was us. What’s the problem?”

“I guess that is,” Kurtzman said. “JSOC initiated this…directly. It wasn’t a request or system of briefings channeled through Homeland or the Executive Office. They’ve thrown an end run, broken the cone of silence and come to us face-to-face. Something’s changed.”

“How do we know he’s not working with a Senate or Congressional special prosecutor? Times have changed, Hal. They’re trying to put covert-ops guys in prison these days.”

“Look, I ran Kubrick’s name past my Justice contacts. The FBI had nothing on him. Barb’s own check with NSA says Kubrick did some questionable things in El Salvador back in the day. He’s not a good candidate for setting us up. He checks out, guys. This is about killing bad guys with mass political protection. We’re all on the same side. The brigadier’s not working with the New York Times, people.”

Price pursed her lips then folded her arms. “I’ll alert the boys.”

THE WAR ROOM was crowded.

The five members of Phoenix Force and three of Able Team were arrayed around the conference table. The mood was upbeat and a current of emotional energy hummed in the room, just below everyone’s awareness. Clearly a mission was imminent, and the men of Stony Man were ready to take up the challenge.

“The KLPD is running a safehouse on the outskirts of Islamabad. It consists of six rooms, the entire seventh floor of a residential building, about half a block away from one of the largest mosques in the city and a local police precinct,” Barbara Price began.

From his wheelchair Kurtzman worked his keyboard. On the large screen recessed into the wall a digitized satellite map of the world appeared. Latitude and longitude readings scrolled down as the head of the cyberteam dialed up first Southwest Asia, then Pakistan, then Islamabad. On the screen, high-definition optics revealed buildings and streets.

Gary Manning, shoulders wide as barn doors, leaned over to Hermann Schwarz. “The resolution on that screen kicks ass.”

“That building is your target,” Price said.

On the screen the image split to accommodate a text scroll listing building materials, windowpane thickness, door construction, plumbing and electrical diagrams and a schematic drawing of the industrial blueprint.

Manning and Schwarz, the explosives specialist on each of their respective teams, began taking notes. Manning used a yellow legal pad while Schwarz employed a heavily modified CPDA, or Combat Personal Data Assistant.

Rosario Blancanales, a member of Able Team along with Schwarz, turned toward their unit commander, Carl Lyons, a blond and burly ex-LAPD detective. “We can put a sniper position on that building at the intersection across from the target. We’d have exposure on two sides to the building plus elevation on its roof. Also we can cover the major avenues of approach.”

“Not perfect,” Lyons agreed. “But just about all we can do.”

“We are going to ensure police response is down during the time frame,” Kurtzman said. “I have my team working on it now. We’ll simply crunch through their phone lines and shut everything down. We aren’t going there to leave Islamabad cops dead in the street.”

“What about any response from ISI assets?” Calvin James asked. The ex-SEAL reached up and stroked his close-cropped mustache with a hand the color of burnished onyx.

“The genesis of this operation is our problems with ISI boys getting U.S. boys dead. Most especially the KLPD branch,” Price said. “I’ve seen the information the ISA gave JSOC and it’s smoking-gun, slam-dunk stuff. The jackasses holed up in that apartment building are jihadists. They’re either just coming from some terror mission or they’re going to some terror mission. If KLPD wants to protect them, then they’re exactly the kind of targets within Pakistani intelligence we want to cull.”

“Bang bang,” T. J. Hawkins said.

“Numbers?” David McCarter asked. The ex-SAS commando was the leader of Phoenix Force.

“Anywhere from a squad to a platoon,” Price answered. “Armed with light weapons, grenades, standard stuff.”

“That’s a little ambiguous,” McCarter pointed out.

“As far as it goes all you’re really, really concerned with is this man,” Kurtzman said.

He tapped a key and a picture of a young Middle Eastern man filled the screen. He was handsome and well groomed in traditional dress. Each member of the Stony Man teams scrutinized the picture closely, committing each detail to memory as closely as they had the target building’s industrial specifications.

“Who’s this bastard?” Hawkins asked.

“Prince Ziad Jarrah bin Sultan al-Thani,” Price replied. “And for the next twelve hours he is your raison d’être.”

Lyons leaned over toward Schwarz. “What did she say? The guy is our what?”

“Raisin entrée,” Schwarz replied.

Hawkins snorted out loud. “You guys are like Abbot and Costello.” The ex-Ranger trooper shifted his gaze over to Rosario Blancanales. “Sorry—Three Stooges.”

The Puerto Rican ex-Green Beret gave the Texan a wan smile. “Fuck you very much, T.J.”

“Did you say ‘Prince’?” Rafael Encizo interrupted.

“Yes,” Price answered. “Saudi oil actually—if there’s any other kind. His father is very high up in the defense ministry. He is, in fact, Osama bin Laden’s second cousin. He is a crown prince.”

Encizo leaned his stocky build back into his chair and whistled. He eyed the picture of the Saudi prince up on the screen the way an alcoholic eyed an unopened bottle of liquor.

“Meaning?” Schwarz asked.

“Meaning there are somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred princes in the Kingdom Saud, currently,” Price explained. “Of those only a very tight handful are even remotely likely to succeed to the throne. Bin Sultan al-Thani is one of them.”

Silence greeted her proclamation. Price smirked; she loved it when she was able to shut them up.

David McCarter let out a long, slow whistle as James shook his head in disbelief.

“This explains why the Agency punted to JSOC and JSOC handed off to us,” Manning muttered.

Brognola spoke up. “Technically only the paramilitary operations officers of the CIA’s Special Activities Division can legally do this. By handing off to JSOC, the Agency hoped to quash the deal. My contact hoped to pull a bureaucratic riposte by coming to us.”

“Who cares what’s holding up the pinheads. I’ve always wanted to kill royalty,” Lyons said.

“Then I suggest we get cracking,” Price replied. “We only have a narrow window to make this work.”

CHAPTER TWO

Islamabad, Pakistan

Carl Lyons regarded the target building through his night-vision scope.

He ran the Starlite model attached to his baffled SVD sniper rifle along the exposed windows, putting each dark square in his crosshairs before smoothly scanning onward. He looked for fixed points to use as quick landmarks once the shooting started as he played the optic across the building’s roof.

“Able Actual in position. All clear on roof,” he murmured into his throat mike.

Across the street on the second leg of their L-shaped overwatch positions Rosario Blancanales nestled in closer to the Pachmayr recoil pad on the buttstock of his own silenced SVD. “Able Beta in position. All clear on primary and secondary approach routes,” he replied.

Lyons shifted his scope, running it along the length of a fire escape leading down to the dark alley that would serve as Phoenix Force’s primary insertion point. “Able Epsilon, status please?”

“We barely ever get out of the Western Hemisphere,” Schwarz answered into the com link, “and you take me to a shithole like this? What? Was Paris blacked out on your frequent-flyer miles?”

“Are we clear on the ground floor, Able Epsilon?” Lyons repeated.

In the back of the blacked-out 1970s model delivery van Hermann Schwarz eased back the charging handle on his RPK machine gun. The muzzle of the weapon was set just back from the access panel covertly placed in the rear door of the vehicle.

“Six o’clock clear,” Schwarz conceded.

From his rooftop position Lyons touched a finger to his earbud. “You copy that, Stony?”

“Copy, Stony here,” Barbara Price’s cool voice responded on the other end of the satellite bounce. “Phoenix Actual, you are clear on approach.”

“Phoenix Actual copy,” David McCarter responded. “En route.”

Carl Lyons pulled his face away from his scope and quickly did a security check of his area. It was very early in the morning and the residential block was like a ghost town. Despite this, the leader of Able Team felt naked and exposed.

Unable to field adequate overwatch because of insufficient personnel assets, the Farm’s JSOC liaison had requested additional manpower. Price had no choice but to deploy Able Team as security element for Phoenix Force’s raid.

Because the Farm’s teams were operating black inside Pakistan, local coordination and cover had been impossible. Able Team had taken their positions only minutes prior to the strike. Dressed as Islamabad riot police to disguise their Western features and delay any alert to the authorities, they would be exposed to a confused, frightened and potentially hostile indigenous population should their positions be discovered.

Speed and decisive of action on the part of Phoenix Force was their best hope at this point.

Across the street from Carl Lyons, Rosario Blancanales shifted his scope and took in the alley running next to the target building. A blacked-out delivery van with a sliding side door identical to the one occupied by Schwarz suddenly swerved into the alley.

Instantly, Blancanales shifted his aim and began scanning his overwatch sectors to provide Phoenix Force with security.

In the alley Phoenix exited the vehicle, leaving the engine running. The dome and cargo lights had been disabled so that the five-man team looked like black shadows leaking from a dark box as they approached the building’s side entrance.

T. J. Hawkins produced a claw-toothed crowbar and the countdown began.

ON THE SIXTH FLOOR of the target building Ziad Jarrah bin Sultan al-Thani put his cup of strong coffee down and drew heavily on his cigarette. His eyes squinted against the harsh smoke as he surveyed the room.

Three hollow-eyed men in Western business suits with Skorpion machine pistols were spread across the room while a fourth man, their boss, spoke with quiet tones into a satellite phone. A Wahhabite cleric had a Koran open in his lap and was reading a passage to a sweating teenage boy sitting in a straight-backed kitchen chair.

Two men, explosives experts from the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, carefully rigged the boy with a suicide bomber vest packed with powerful Semtex plastic explosive.

It was a warm night in Islamabad but all the doors and windows to the apartment were tightly closed for security reasons. Ziad Jarrah had stripped off his expensive robes and was wearing only a ribbed cotton white muscle shirt, his olive skin damp with sweat.

The Saudi carefully lined up packets of riyals on the table. The currency totaled the equivalent of five thousand U.S. dollars. The sum would be paid to the suicide bomber’s family upon his detonation. The bomber’s rewards would come later, in heaven.

Ziad Jarrah thought how nice and cool the vice dens of Dubai would be, or his palace in Riyadh. But he grew so bored there. He loved being out on the edge of the jihad—not too close, but close enough to feel the vicarious thrill of murder plotted and murder committed.

He placed the last stack of money on the table, made eye contact with the bomber, nodded, then began putting the money into a manila envelope. Once he was done he stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. He smoothed down each side of his thin mustache where it ran into the sparse hair of his goatee.

He drew in deeply, filling his lungs with smoke. Across the room the leader of the KLPD unit abruptly clicked off his phone. He turned toward the kitchen table and his suit coat swung open, revealing his own machine pistol in a shoulder holster.

“Abdul.” The security service officer smiled. “My brother, we are ready. You go to glory!”

The bomber looked down as one of the terrorist explosives engineers placed the detonator in his hand. Another Lashkar-e-Taiba operative stepped forward and began to use black electrician’s tape to secure the ignition device to the bomber’s hand. Neither Ziad Jarrah nor the KLPD officer bothered to tell the martyr in the chair that there was a ignition failsafe built around a Nokia cell phone constructed directly into the bomb.

One push of the Pakistani intelligence agent’s speed dial and any hesitation the teenager might feel would disappear instantly.

Ziad Jarrah could feel a sense of euphoria, a giddiness at what was about to happen, surge through him. The illicit thrills of Dubai paled in comparison.

HAWKINS LEVERED the crowbar into place beside the dead bolt and wrenched it open. The metal-and-mesh outer security door popped open and swung wide. Sidestepping it like a dancing partner, Hawkins moved forward and reinserted the crowbar into the doorjamb.

The Texan’s shoulders flexed hard against the resistance, and in an instant the dead bolt was ripped out of its mooring. He stepped to the side and threw the crowbar down. Rafael Encizo, AKS-74U Kalashnikov carbine held at port arms, ran forward and kicked the door out of the way.

He darted into the building, sweeping his muzzle down. Calvin James followed in close behind him, his own AKS carbine covering a complementary zone vector. Directly behind them Manning and McCarter folded into the assault line, weapons up in mirror positions.

Freeing up a Russian AK-47 RAK .12-gauge automatic shotgun, Hawkins stepped into position and began covering the team’s rear security as they penetrated the building.

Across the street from his elevated vantage Lyons spoke into his sat-com, “Phoenix is hot inside. Phoenix is hot inside.”

A second later Barbara Price acknowledged him. “Copy.”

Both Blancanales and Schwarz made additional sweeps of their zones. The streets remained deserted, buildings dark and silent. Inside the target building Phoenix Force rushed down starkly illuminated hallways and up dim staircases.

From the outside Lyons played the scope of his 7.62 mm SVD along the windows of the target floor. As he swept the crosshairs past a window it suddenly exploded with light as heavy drapes were thrust aside by a swarthy man in a muscle shirt.

Instantly, Lyons reorientated his weapon. His focus narrowed down, and the man’s face leaped into sight with superb clarity. Lyons felt the corners of his mouth tug upward in a grin. Ziad Jarrah-el-asshole, Lyons thought to himself. Merry Christmas to me.

He initiated radio contact. “Be advised,” he warned. “Be advised. I have eyes on Primary. Primary confirmation.”

“Phoenix copy,” McCarter responded. “We are at the door now.”

“Understood,” Lyons replied.

He tightened the focus on his sniper scope. Lighting a cigarette, Ziad Jarrah moved out of the way, revealing an angle into the room. Lyons’s optic reticule filled with the image of a second man seated on a kitchen chair. The ex-LAPD detective felt his eyes widen in the sudden shock of recognition. Suddenly a balaclava-clad man in a business suit appeared in the window and snapped the curtains shut.

Lyons held back on his shot, trying desperately to work his com link in time. “Phoenix!”

On the other end of the com link McCarter was giving Hawkins a nod. The ex-Ranger stepped forward and swung up the RAK 12 and placed the big vented muzzle of the shotgun next to the doorknob and lock housing. The .12-gauge roared as the breeching round tore through the mechanism like a fastball burning past a stupefied batter.

Hawkins folded back as the massive shape of Gary Manning stepped forward, sweeping up a solid leg into a tight curl. He exploded outward in a heel-driven front snap kick that burst the already damaged door inward.

Rafael Encizo shot through the opening and peeled left, AKS-74U up and tracking as Calvin James peeled off to the right. As McCarter, followed by Hawkins and Manning, sprinted into the room Encizo killed a man armed with a Skorpion submachine gun. Men started cursing.

“Phoenix! Phoenix suicide bomber—” Lyons’s voice was loud and frantic in Phoenix Force’s earbud.

The warning came too late to stop the assault force’s forward momentum. McCarter swung around, searching for the threat. He saw Ziad Jarrah throw himself through the air, leaping away from a terrified teenager strapped down with a tan vest festooned with blocks of Semtex and bundles of wires.

“Bomb!” McCarter screamed.

Bullets burned across the room as the situation descended into a slow-motion montage. Manning struck Calvin James with a brutal shoulder block, knocking the ex-SEAL back into McCarter and toward the door.

Skorpion-wielding men in business suits spun and began trying to track targets. McCarter was driven backward as his eyes found the bomber’s. The kid’s gaze had glazed over, his mouth hanging slack. From out of his peripheral vision the Phoenix Force leader saw the other members of his team crowding in as he fell through the door.

Over their shoulders he saw the teenager squeeze his hand into a desperate fist, thumb hunting for the ignition. We’re not going to make it, he thought.

Outside the building a wave of fire suddenly erupted into the night, filling the optic of both Lyons and Blancanales.

“Phoenix! Phoenix!” Lyons shouted into his throat mike.

There was no answer.

Black smoke roiled up into the air as orange flames licked at the inside of the building. Lyons popped up, breaking down the SVD sniper rifle with quick motions. He quickly slung the carryall over his shoulder and stepped to the edge of the building, where he snapped his rappel rope into the D-ring carabiners of his slide harness.

He went over the edge and dropped six stories to the street. Lights were coming on in buildings up and down the street. Lyons came out and saw Blancanales already on the ground and sprinting for the van where Hermann Schwarz was at the wheel.

Suddenly, David McCarter’s voice was audible. “Be advised,” McCarter growled. “We are up and we are bloody leaving.”

The relief in Barbara Price’s voice was obvious even over the sat link. “Good copy, Phoenix.”

Sliding into the van’s passenger seat, Lyons turned toward Schwarz as Blancanales jumped into the back. “Let’s make sure all five of our birdies make it into their rig and then make a rapid strategic advance to the rear.”

“Are we calling this a success?” Schwarz asked.

“Close enough for government work,” Lyons replied.

INSIDE THE BUILDING Phoenix Force picked themselves up off the floor in the hallway. Their ears rang from the sharp crack of the explosion, and dark smoke obscured the interior ceiling above their heads.

“Let’s go, people,” McCarter said.

Hawkins looked around. The door to the target apartment had been blown off by the suicide vest blast and he could see that the outside wall on that side of the building had been blown outward, leaving a sagging ceiling and a gaping hole exposing empty space out over the street below. Fire burned in lively pockets.

“Jesus,” Encizo suddenly cursed. “The stairs we came up hugged that wall—there’s like a fifteen-foot gap here!”

Around them in the building Phoenix could hear people stirring, calling out in panic and milling in confusion. The building was rife with extremist foot soldiers. McCarter instantly went on alert, his weapon up.

“Gary,” he ordered, “check the staircase down the hall.”

“I’m on it,” Manning answered, moving out. He ran down the hall, bent low to avoid the thickest part of the smoke, and kicked open a door at the opposite end of the corridor. “It’s good!”

“You heard him,” Calvin James barked. “Let’s move, people.”

McCarter spun and covered the hall as his men ran down the passage and entered the stairwell. “Go!” he snapped. “I’ve got security!”

The other four members of Phoenix rushed through the doorway just as the first of the enemy combatants exploded into the hall. The man, bearded and dressed only in pants with a automatic pistol in his fist, shouted an angry warning and lifted his weapon.

McCarter killed him but there was a chorus of answering shouts. A volley of fire erupted outside the hall, initiating a storm of lead that tore into the corridor. More glass from the few unbroken windows shattered, falling inward, and the wood paneling was shredded. After his initial burst McCarter threw himself to the floor, directing his momentum over a shoulder, and rolled clear of the hall, keeping below the hail of gunfire.

McCarter spotted a big man armed with a black machine pistol appear from the door of a room directly across the hall from the suicide bomber. The giant shouted an order and peeled back from the doorway. A second man ran forward, Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his shoulder and across his back.

McCarter swore. The man went to one knee and leveled an RPG-7 at the end of the hall. Rising, McCarter turned and sprinted. The 84 mm warhead could penetrate twelve inches of steel armor; it would blow through even a reinforced door with ease. McCarter scrambled across the floor and leaped up into the air.

McCarter struck the floor and slid across as a fireball blew through the door where he had been and rolled into the already devastated room like a freight train. Shrapnel and jagged chunks of wood lanced through the air.

McCarter’s ears still rang from the explosive concussion and his face bled from a dozen minor lacerations, but his hand was steady on the trigger as Pakistani gunmen rushed through the front door.

CHAPTER THREE

The first shooter breached the door, AKM assault rifle up and at the ready. McCarter put him down with a burst from his submachine gun. The combatant hit the burning floor like a bag of wet cement. The man running in behind him looked down as the point man hit the floor. He looked back up, searching for a target, and McCarter blew off the left side of his face.

The third man in the line tripped over the second man’s falling corpse. McCarter used a burst to scythe the man to the ground and then put a single shot into the top of his skull. Through the swirling smoke and angry screams McCarter saw a black metal canister arc into the room.

McCarter recognized the threat instantly as an RG-42 antipersonnel hand grenade. He popped up off his belly onto his hands and knees as the grenade hit the floor inside the hall and bounced toward him. Leaving the AKS where it lay, McCarter dived forward, scooping up the bouncing hand grenade, and wrapping his hands around the black cylinder.

He hit the floor hard from his short hop, absorbing the impact with his elbows. He rolled over onto one shoulder and thrust out his arm, sending the grenade shooting away from him. It cleared the corpses in the entranceway and bounced up and out the hall doorway on the far side. McCarter heard a sudden outburst of curses and buried his head in his arms.

The grenade detonated and another cloud of smoke billowed in through the doorway on the heels of the concussive force.

McCarter came to his feet, scooping up the AKS submachine gun. He shuffled backward and crouched next to the wall, heading for the door to the staircase down to the street level. McCarter caught a flash of movement and spun toward the blown-out doors of two apartments across from their original target.

“David!” Encizo’s voice blared in McCarter’s earbud. “We’re coming, brother!”

“Negative!” McCarter shouted.

He saw two men in khaki jackets rush up to the shattered windows, AKM rifles clutched in their hands. McCarter dropped to one knee beside the wall and brought up the AKS. He beat the men to the trigger and his submachine gun spit flame. It recoiled sharply in his hands and shell casings arced out to spill across the floor.

“The stair is too narrow. I’m coming to you!”

McCarter put two rounds into the face of the first man. Bloody holes the size of dimes appeared, slapping the man’s head back. Blood sprayed in a mist behind his head and he slumped to the ground, his weapon clattering at his feet.

McCarter shifted smoothly, like ball bearings in a sling swivel, toward the second gunman. They fired simultaneously. The muzzle-flash of the man’s weapon burst into a flaming star pattern. The sound of the heavier assault rifle firing was thunderous compared to the more subdued sound of McCarter’s 9 mm subgun.

The 7.62 mm caliber rounds tore into the molding of the wall just to McCarter’s right. The rounds punched through the building material, tearing fist-size chunks from the wall and door frame, spilling white plumes of chalky plaster dust into the air.

McCarter’s burst hit the man in a tight pattern. The bullets drilled into the receiver of the AKM, tearing it from the stunned gunner’s hands. Two more rounds punched into his chest three inches above the first, staggering him backward.

McCarter came to his feet, the AKS held up and ready. He triggered two rounds into the stunned gunman and took him down, blowing out the back of his neck. McCarter danced to the side and, still facing the front of the hall, held the AKS up and ready in one hand. He stepped back into stairway door.

A gunman came around the corner of one of the rooms, Kalashnikov firing. McCarter put a burst into his knee and thigh, knocking the screaming man to the floor. He put a double tap through the top of his head. Brain matter and bits of skull splattered outward.

McCarter moved in a shuffle back toward the stair, realizing that what had been billed as a safehouse by intelligence had actually been more along the lines of a barracks—a significant and unsubtle difference. He took fire from the open door and swiveled to meet the threat as another pair of gunmen rounded the corner from the front hall. McCarter threw himself belly down, his legs trailing out behind him down the stairs, angling his body so he was out of sight from the shooters in the hall.

McCarter swept his submachine gun in a wide loose arc, spraying bullets at the gunman firing through the shattered hall. One of the men’s weapons suddenly swung up toward the ceiling and McCarter caught a glimpse of him staggering backward into the dark though he never saw his own rounds impact.

He lay on the stairs, only his arms and shoulders emerging from the door to the stairwell. He rotated up onto his right shoulder to get an angle of fire on the entranceway. He saw one of the terrorist gunmen rushing forward and shot the man’s ankles, bringing him to the floor. McCarter fired another burst into the prone man, finishing him off, only to have his bolt lock open as his magazine ran dry.

McCarter let the AKS dangle across his chest as a second terrorist leaped over the body of the first and charged forward. The skeletal folding stock of his AKS-74U pressed tight into his shoulder and he fired the weapon as he bounded forward.

McCarter put his hands against the floor and snapped up, clearing the edge of the doorway. Bullets tore into the floor where his head had just been. He twisted on the stair and jumped downward. He landed at the bottom, his legs bending to absorb the impact, just as he had been taught during paratrooper training. He took the recoil, felt it surge up through his heels, and rolled off to the side. He turned in the direction of the side door to the lower level of the building. He got up and ran down to the ground floor, men screaming above him.

A burst of gunfire echoed in the stairwell and 5.45 mm rounds tore into the floor where McCarter had landed. He went up against the wall at his back and pulled a 9 mm Glock 17 from its holster. He heard boots thundering on the stairwell and he bent, swiveled and thrust his gun arm around the corner. He triggered four shots without exposing himself.

There was a satisfying thump as the gunman pitched forward and bounced down the stairs. He spilled out at the bottom of the stairs, sprawling in front of McCarter, and his weapon skidded out from his hands. The ex-SAS trooper triggered a round into the back of the man’s head and snatched up his fallen weapon.

Another figure appeared at the top of the stairs and took a shot at him. McCarter leaped back out of view of the stairwell, grabbing up the AKS-74U by its shoulder sling. Bullets struck the corpse of the dead Pakistani terrorist. McCarter caught a motion from his right side in time to see a khaki-clothed figure come through an interior door.

McCarter fumbled to bring the AKS to bear but didn’t have time. He let it dangle from the strap and brought up his 9 mm pistol as he dropped to one knee. Instead of firing from the hip, his adversary brought the AKS up to his shoulder for a more accurate shot.

McCarter’s shot took him in the throat. From the door to the alley outside, Hawkins fired a second burst, dashing the thug’s brains out. McCarter immediately spun in a tight crouch and fired blindly up the stairwell for the second time. There was an answering burst of automatic gunfire, but no sound of bodies hitting the floor.

McCarter holstered his pistol and took up the AKS. He quickly ducked his head into the stairwell before thrusting his carbine around the corner to trigger a burst. Using the covering fire to keep the enemy back, McCarter snagged the dead man at the bottom of the stairs over to him by his belt.

“Can we go, boss?” Hawkins shouted. “Engines running!”

“Too hot!”

McCarter pulled a Soviet-era RGD-5 antipersonnel hand grenade from the dead terrorist’s belt. Like the RG-42, it had a blast radius of slightly more than seventy-five feet. He held his AKS by the pistol grip and stuck out his thumb. He used his free hand to help hook the pin around his extended thumb. He made a tight fist around the pistol grip of the AKS and pulled with his other hand, releasing the spring on the grenade.

McCarter let the spoon fly. He turned and put a warning burst up the staircase to buy time. He counted down three seconds and then chucked the grenade around the corner and up the stairs. He turned away from the opening as the blast was funneled by the walls up and down the staircase, spraying shrapnel in twin columns.

Ears ringing, McCarter made for the door to the building down the short entrance hall. He came up to it, AKS held at the ready. The door hung open, broken. From outside he heard gunfire as the Phoenix Force commandos engaged targets firing from the windows above them. A figure darted past the open door and McCarter gunned him down as Hawkins backed toward the running vehicle, directing rounds at targets above him.

A terrorist jumped into the hall and flopped down onto his belly, throwing a bipod-mounted RPK 7.62 mm machine gun down in front of him. McCarter jerked back outside the doorway as the machine gunner opened up with the weapon, sending a virtual firestorm in McCarter’s direction.

McCarter’s heart pounded as he moved, beating wildly in his chest. His perception of time seemed to slow as adrenaline speeded up his senses to preternatural levels of awareness. His mind clicked through options like a supercomputer running algorithms. His head swiveled like a gun turret, the muzzle of his weapon tracking in perfect synchronicity.

He saw no movement other than his team down the alley. Inside the hallway he saw woodchips fly off in great, ragged splinters from the withering machine-gun fire. He heard the staccato beat of the weapon discharging. He sensed something and twisted toward the staircase. A khaki-clad man with a beard rushed off the stairs.

McCarter had the drop on him and gunned him down. The AKS bucked hard in the big Briton’s hands and he stitched a line of slugs across the Pakistani gunman’s chest. Geysers of blood erupted from the man’s torso and throat as the kinetic energy from McCarter’s rounds drove him backward. The man’s heel caught on the outflung arm of his compatriot and he tumbled over, dead before he struck the ground.

McCarter scrambled back out the door. He saw a flash from the stairs and felt the air split as rounds blew by his face. He fired wildly behind him for cover as he rolled up and across the alley. He swung back around and covered the staircase and the side door, prepared to send a volley in either direction. His finger tensed on the smooth metal curve of the trigger.

There was a lull in the firing for a moment and McCarter heard Manning screaming instructions. Cold anger burned deep inside of the Phoenix Force leader. A haze of smoke hung in the hall and the stench of cordite was an opiate to McCarter’s hyperstimulated senses. A burst of fire broke out from behind him.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” James shouted.

McCarter stood, weapon up, and made to turn toward the vehicle. A final, crazed jihadist burst out the door as more weapons fire burned down from above. The Briton’s 5-round burst tore out the man’s throat as the van pulled up next to him. Hawkins leaped in the back and spun, spraying covering fire.

McCarter turned, pumped his legs and dived in the back. He landed hard on the vehicle floor and heard the sound of squealing rubber over the din of weapons fire. He tried to get to a knee but Manning jerked the wheel hard as they took the corner and he was thrown into James.

“Are we calling this a win?” the ex-SEAL asked, voice dry.

“Let’s call it a push,” McCarter replied.

Burj Dubai Tower, Dubai

United Arabic emirates

THE EMIR LOVED the old ways.

He loved having sixteen wives, riding his Arabian stallions through the desert, drinking tiny cups of strong black coffee in the company of wise men, smoking his tobacco from a hookah. Despite this love of all things archaic, the emir was a pragmatist. He knew his ability to enjoy those wives and high-blooded horses came from the seemingly endless supply of oil, the petroleum sold to the infidel in volumes so staggering it was impossible to imagine it ending.

So the emir wore his traditional dress as he stood staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows in a penthouse suite of the Burj Dubai, the tallest man-made structure in the world and a wonder of modern engineering. It was a luxurious building he’d arrived at via jet-helicopter from his home city of Riyadh.

Among all its other wonders, Dubai also offered the finest in Filipina child prostitutes.

The emir turned away from the massive bed where the silent, hollow-eyed girl sat motionless, curled up on herself. He felt exhilarated and when he stared out the tinted windows into the uniquely blue waters of the Persian Gulf he felt like a master of the very universe.

From behind him he heard a discreet throat clearing and recognized the voice of his majordomo immediately.

“Yes, Abdulla,” the emir said without turning. “Take her away, pay her purveyor and tell him I wish three more for this evening after our meeting with survey committee of the Bank of Kuwait and the Exxon-Mobil geologists.”

“Sir…” Abdulla hesitated.

“Yes? What is it?” the emir snapped.

“It’s about your son…Ziad?”

The emir turned, regarded the slightly built man who, despite appearances, was irreplaceable in running his holdings. “Ziad? He is here? I thought he was spreading the jihad in Islamabad among those barbarians and American foot-lickers, the Pakis.”

Abdulla turned toward the child and clapped his hands fast three times before making a hissing sound. The child rolled out of bed and scurried toward the door to the suite. Bruises lined her skinny thighs in vivid relief.

“What? What is it?”

“It’s about your son,” Abdulla said.

Just like that the emir knew. Forty-five minutes later he began to use his billions of dollars in oil money to fund his vengeance against the largest consumer of that product: the United States of America.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sadr City, Baghdad

The Blackhawks came thumping over the horizon.

Baghdad lay spread out below them, the sprawling slum of Sadr City emerging from the amorphous squalor. The Shiite stronghold was block after block of slammed-together buildings, jigsaw structures, twisting alleys stacked on asymmetrical courtyards and narrow, crowded streets.

In the northern district of the massive Sadr City slum the U.S. military had run into a problem as the beleaguered country lurched toward stability. The Sixth Infantry Division remained engaged in house-to-house combat with splinter-element insurgents of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iranian-backed Mahdi army. The ground forces had established a perimeter encircling the combat zone along with elements of the Iraqi National Army.

Fighting remained fierce in the face of the ratification of certain documents of nationalism by the Iraqi government, but five years of preparation had turned the urban terrain into a labyrinthine fortress extending from the tops of buildings to the sewers and basements below street level. An army of well-armed zealots manned the battlements.

At the center of the combat perched Abu Hafiza, al Qaeda torture master, cell leader and consultant strategist behind the Madrid, Spain, bombings. Hafiza waited, entrenched and surrounded by a hard-core bodyguard unit willing to die for jihad and the liberation of the Shiite people.

For obvious political reasons the U.S. had opted for a surgical strike rather than the use of massive force. Going into the snake pit to get Abu Hafiza was a suicide mission.

At the request of Brigadier General Kubrick, relayed through Brognola, Phoenix Force had deployed to Iraq.

American forces were arrayed around the landing strip, guns orientated outward, enforcing the security perimeter as the Blackhawk helicopters settled into position. Immediately a colonel, the division executive officer, moved forward into the brunt of the rotor wash to greet the arrivals.

The cargo door on the Blackhawk slid open under the spinning blades and five figures emerged from the helicopter transport. Dressed in black fatigues with faces covered by balaclava hoods, the men moved easily under a burden of upgraded body armor and unorthodox weaponry, the colonel noted.

The first man to reach the American officer stuck out his hand and shook with a hard, dry clench. When he spoke, a British accent was evident.

“You here to get us up to speed?” David McCarter asked.

The colonel nodded. “Have your men follow me,” he said.

With the rest of Phoenix Force following, McCarter fell into step with the colonel. “Has the situation changed at all?” he asked.

“Just as we left,” the colonel replied. “The Iraqi National Army moved into Sadr City to quell violent demonstrations. They ran into heavy resistance and our reinforcement brigade was called in. We rolled forward and discovered Abu Hafiza has prepped this slum the way Hezbollah did southern Lebanon for the Israelis back in 2007. It’s just a mess. But we’ve beaten them back to their final redoubt.” The colonel indicated a Stryker vehicle with its ramp down. “But it’s a hell of a redoubt,” he added as they climbed into the APC. “We can either bring in the bunker busters or throw away hundreds of men in a frontal assault. Neither of which is going to look too goddamn good on twenty-four-hour cable news feed.”

“Or you can call us,” T. J. Hawkins noted dryly.

“Yes.” The colonel nodded. “Whoever the hell ‘you’ happen to be.”

“We do like our little mysteries,” Calvin James acknowledged from behind his balaclava.

“You somehow manage to pull the rabbit out of this hat and I’ll call you mommy if that’s what you want.”

“That won’t be necessary,” McCarter assured the man as the Stryker ramp buttoned up and they rolled deeper into the city. “Just don’t call us late for dinner.”

THE BLAST from a helicopter missile had knocked a hole in the street. The explosion ripped up the asphalt and punched a hole in the ground deep enough to reveal the sewer line. Workers had managed to clear enough rubble out of the crater to keep the sewage stream flowing, but there had not been enough security or money for complete repairs. A line of rubble like a gravel-covered hillside led up out of the sewer to the street.

While the rest of Phoenix Force crouched in the shadows, Calvin James eased his way up the uncertain slope to reconnoiter the area. He crawled carefully, using his elbows and knees with his weapon cradled in the crook of his arms. As tense as the situation was, there was a large part of him that was grateful to escape the stinking claustrophobia of the pit. Just blocks over, combined Iraqi and American forces hammered the Shiite positions to provide cover and distraction for the inserting special operators.

James eased his way to the lip of the blast crater and carefully raised his head over the edge. The Sadr City neighborhood appeared deserted at the late hour. Tenement buildings rose up above street level shops, the structures book-ending right up against each other. Rusted iron fire escapes adorned the fronts of the old buildings. Brightly colored laundry hung from windows and clotheslines. The roofs were a forest of old-fashioned wire antennae. The street was lined with battered old cars, some of them up on concrete blocks and obviously unusable. Across the street feral dogs rooted through an overflowing garbage bin.

Carefully, James extended his weapon and scanned the neighborhood street through his scope. He detected no movement, saw no faces in windows and doorways, no figures silhouetted on the fire escapes and rooftops. He looked down to the end of the street and saw nothing stirring, then turned and checked the other direction with the same result.

Satisfied, he looked down. He gave a short low whistle and instantly McCarter appeared at the foot of the rubble incline.

“All clear. Come have a look,” James whispered.

McCarter nodded once in reply and re-slung his M-4 carbine before scrambling quickly up the rubble. He slid into place next to Hawkins and carefully scanned the street, as well.

“There,” he said. “That building.” He indicated a burned-out six-story apartment complex with a thrust of his sharp chin. “That’s the building. That’ll give us the entry point into the compound.”

“Sounds good,” McCarter agreed. “We’ll run this exactly like we did our insertion in the Basra operation a while ago.”

“Only without the sewer crawl.”

“Which is nice.”

Eighteen months before the building had been assaulted by an Iraqi National Army unit with American Special Forces advisers after intelligence had revealed it served as an armory and bomb-making factory for the local Shiite militias.

“I haven’t noticed any sentries yet,” James said. His gaze remained suctioned to the sniper scope as he scanned the building.

“They’re there,” McCarter said. “That’s the back door to the militia complex.”

“Heads up,” James suddenly hissed.

Instantly, McCarter attempted to identify the threat. Up the street a Toyota pickup turned onto the avenue and began cruising toward their position. The back of the vehicle held a squad of gunmen and there were three men in the vehicle cab.

McCarter and James froze, nestling themselves in among the broken masonry of the bomb crater. Advancing slowly, the vehicle cruised up the street. Moving carefully, McCarter eased his head down below the lip of the crater and transferred his carbine into a more accessible position.

Beside him James seemed to evaporate, blending into the background as the pickup inched its way down the street. The former Navy SEAL commando watched the enemy patrol with eyes narrowed, his finger held lightly on the trigger of his weapon.

The vehicle rolled closer and now both Phoenix Force members could hear the murmur of voices in casual conversation. James watched as a pockmarked Iraqi in the back took a final drag of his cigarette and then flicked it away.

The still smoking butt arced up and landed next to the prone Phoenix Force sniper with a small shower of sparks that stung his exposed face. The cigarette bounced and rolled down the incline to come to rest against McCarter’s leg.

A gunman in the back of the vehicle said something and the others laughed as the pickup cruised past the two hidden men headed toward the fighting. Playing a hunch, James risked moving to scan the burned-out building across the street with his scope. His gamble paid off as a man armed with a SVD Soviet-era Dragunov sniper rifle appeared briefly in a third-story window to acknowledge the patrol rolling past his position.

James grinned. The pickup reached the end of the street and disappeared around a corner. “Got you, asshole,” he whispered. “I got a security element on the third floor,” he told McCarter.

“Does he interfere with movement?” McCarter scooped loose dirt over the burning cigarette, extinguishing it.

“He’s back in the shadow now. I might have a shot with IR,” Hawkins explained. “But he’s definitely doing overwatch on this street.”

“He the only one?”

“Only one I saw,” James said. “But he could have a spotter or radio guy sitting next to him who’ll sound the alarm if I put the sniper down.”

“What’s our other option?”

“I guess send the team across and hope he doesn’t notice until we can be sure of how many we’re dealing with.”

“The clock is ticking,” McCarter pointed out.

“Then I say let me take him.”

“Encizo and I will cross the street and try to secure the ground floor before the rest of you come over.”

“It’s your call,” James said simply. He clicked over the amplifier apparatus on his night scope and scanned the windows. A red silhouette appeared in the gloom of the third-story window. “I got him. No other figures present themselves from this angle.”

“That’ll have to do,” McCarter said.

James held down on his target as McCarter called Encizo up and the two men slowly climbed into position. Encizo had left his Hawk MM-1 behind with Hawkins and held his silenced H&K MP-7 at the ready. McCarter slid his M-4/M-203 around to hang from his back and had pulled his own sound-suppressed weapon, the Browning Hi-Power, from its holster.

James settled snugly into his position as Phoenix Force gathered around him. His finger took up the slack on the curve of his trigger and he settled the fiber-optic crosshairs on the silhouette in the window.

The Mk 11 sniper rifle discharged smoothly, the muzzle lifting slightly with the recoil and pushing back into the hollow of James’s shoulder. The report was muted in the hot desert air and the subsonic round cut across the space and tore through the open window.

In his scope James saw the figure’s head jerk like a boxer taking an inside uppercut. There was an instant of red smear in his sight as blood splashed, then the enemy sniper spun in a half circle and fell over.

“Go,” James said.

McCarter was instantly up and sprinting. Behind him Encizo scrambled over the edge of the hole and raced after him. Both men crossed the street in a dead run, weapons up and ready as James began shifting his weapon back and forth in tight vectors to cover the building front.

McCarter crossed the open street and spun to throw his back into the wall beside the front door of the building. Half a second later Encizo repeated the motion, his MP-7 pointed down the street.

McCarter checked once before proceeding through the gaping doorway. He charged into the room, turning left and trying to move along the wall. Encizo came in and peeled right, coming to one knee and checking the room with his muzzle leading the way. Both men scanned the darkened chamber through their low-light goggles.

The front doors to the building had been blown out during the Iraqi raid and the room saturated with grenades and automatic-weapons fire. The two Phoenix warriors found themselves in a small lobby with a cracked and collapsed desk, a line of busted and dented mailboxes, a pitted and pocked elevator and two fire-scarred doorways. One of the interior doors had been blown off its hinges, revealing a staircase leading upward. The second sagged in place, as perforated as a cheese grater.

McCarter carefully moved forward and checked both doorways before turning and giving Encizo the thumbs-up signal. The combat swimmer turned and went to the doorway so that James could see him. He lifted a finger and spoke into his throat mike.

“Come across,” he said. “We’ll clear upward.”

“Acknowledged,” James replied.

Encizo turned back into the room just as he heard footsteps on the staircase. Booted feet pounded the wooden steps as someone jogged downward making no effort to conceal his movement. Encizo blinked and McCarter disappeared, moving smoothly to rematerialize next to the stairway access, back to the wall and sound-suppressed Browning pistol up.

Wearing a headscarf and American Army chocolate-chip-pattern camouflage uniform, a Shiite militia member with an AKM came out of the stairway and strolled casually into the room. On one knee Encizo centered his machine pistol on the irregular.

Oblivious to the shadows in the room, the man started walking across the floor toward the street. McCarter straightened his arm out. The Browning was a bulky silhouette in his hand, the cylinder of the suppressor a blunt oval in the gloom.

There was a whispered thwat-thwat and the front of the Iraqi’s forehead came away in jigsaw chunks. The man dropped straight down to his knees, then tumbled forward onto his face with a wet sound.

Encizo kept the muzzle of his machine pistol trained on the doorway in case the man wasn’t alone, but there was no sign of motion from the staircase as McCarter shifted his aim and cleared the second door.

Behind Encizo, Hawkins entered the room and peeled off to the left to take cover, followed closely by Manning and then Calvin James. Each member of the unit looked down at the dead Iraqi, his spilling blood clearly visible.

“We take the stairs,” McCarter said in a low voice. “There’s no way to clear a building this size with our manpower so it’s hey-diddle-diddle, right-up-the-middle till we reach the roof, then over and in. Stay with silenced weapons for as long as we can.”

The ex-SAS trooper swept up his Browning Hi-Power and advanced through the doorway as the rest of Phoenix Force fell into line behind him in an impromptu entry file. Hawkins took up the final position with his silenced Mk 11, replacing Gary Manning as rear security.

Weapons up, Phoenix Force continued infiltrating Baghdad.

RAFAEL ENCIZO opened his hand.

Greasy hair slid through his loosened fingers as he plucked the blade of his Cold Steel Tanto from the Iraqi militia member’s neck. Blood gushed down the front of the man’s chest in a hot, slick rush, and the gunman gurgled wetly in his throat.

Standing beside Encizo Calvin James snatched the man’s rifle up as it started to fall. The eyepieces of the two commandos’ night optics shone a dull, nonreflective green as they watched the man fall to his knees. Encizo lifted his foot and used the thick tread of his combat boot to push the dying Iraqi over.

The final Shiite soldier on the building roof struck the tarpaper and gravel as the last beats of his pounding heart pushed a gallon of blood out across the ground. As James set the scoped SVD sniper rifle down, Encizo knelt and cleaned his blade off on the man’s jeans before sliding it home in its belt sheath.

Seeing the sentry down, McCarter led the rest of the team out of the stairwell and onto the roof. Phoenix Force crouched next to a 60 mm mortar position beside the parapet and overlooked the cluster of buildings in the Baghdad slum. Below them, in the shadow of the militia sentry building, a large flat-roofed home stretched out behind an adobe-style wall. Armed guards walked openly or stood sentinel at doorways. In the courtyard near the front gate a Dzik-3 with Iraqi police markings stood, engine idling.

Hawkins took up a knee and began using the night scope on his Mk 11 to scan nearby buildings for additional security forces. As David McCarter took up his field radio Manning knelt behind him and began to loosen the nineteen-pound grappling gun from the Briton’s rucksack.

“Super Stud to Egghead,” McCarter said.

“That’s so very funny,” Akira Tokaido replied, voice droll.

“You have eyes on us?”

“Copy that,” Tokaido confirmed.

At the moment the Predator drone launched by Jack Grimaldi from the Coalition-controlled Iraqi airport floated at such an altitude that it was invisible to either Phoenix Force or, more importantly, to the Iraqi Special Groups HQ below. Despite that, the powerful optics in the nose of the UAV readily revealed the heat-signature silhouettes of Phoenix to Akira Tokaido in his remote cockpit as they crouched on the Baghdad rooftop.

It was a little known fact that most of the larger drone aircraft seeing action in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Iraq, were piloted by operators at McCarren Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As soon as Kurtzman and Price had seen the remote pilot setup used by both the Air Force and the CIA they had gone to Brognola with a request for the Farm to field the same capabilities using the Stony Man cyberteam as operators.

Both Kurtzman and Carmen Delahunt had proved skilled and agile remote pilots, but it had been the good Professor Huntington Wethers who’d proved the most adept at maneuvering the UAV drones and he had consistently outflown the other two in training.

But Akira Tokaido, child prodigy of the videogame age, had taken the professor to school. The Japanese-American joystick jockey had exhibited a genius touch for the operations, and Kurtzman had put the youngest member of the team as primary drone pilot for the Farm.

Now Tokaido sat in the remote cockpit unit, or RCU, and controlled a MQ-1c Warrior from twenty-five thousand feet above Baghdad. He had four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and a sensory/optics package in the nose transplanted from the U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk, known as the Hughes Integrated Surveillance And Reconnaissance—HISAR—sensor system.

From a maximum ceiling of twenty-nine thousand feet, Tokaido could read the license plate of a speeding car. And then put a Hellfire missile in the tailpipe.

Having seen the effects of the coordinated air strikes during training with the FBI’s hostage-rescue team at a gunnery range next to the Groom Lake facility known as the Ranch, David McCarter was more than happy to have the air support.

The ex-SAS leader of Phoenix Force touched his earbud and spoke into his throat mike. “You see the wheeled APC at the front gate?” he asked.

“Copy.”

“That goes. I want a nice big fireball to draw eyes away from us while we come in the back door.”

“That should obstruct the main entrance to the property,” Tokaido allowed, voice calm. “That changes the original exit strategy Barb briefed me on.”

“Acknowledged,” McCarter responded. “But the truth on the ground has changed. Adapt, improvise, overcome.”

“Your call, Phoenix,” Tokaido confirmed. “I’ll put the knock-knock anywhere you want.”

“Good copy, that. Put one in the armored car and shut down the gate. You get a good cluster of bad guys outside in the street use Hellfires two and three at your discretion. Just save number four for my word.”

“Understood.” Tokaido paused. “You realize that if you’re inside that structure when I let numbers two and three go you’ll be extremely danger close, correct?”

“Stony Bird,” McCarter said, “you just bring the heat. We’ll stay in the kitchen.”

“Understood. I’ll drop altitude and start the show.”

“Phoenix out.” McCarter turned toward the rest of the team. “You blokes caught all that, right?” Each man nodded in turn. “Good. Hawkins, you remain in position. Clean up the courtyard and stay on lookout for Hajji snipers outside the compound.”

Hawkins reached out and folded down the bipod on his Mk 11. “I’ll reach out and touch a few people on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America.” The Texan shrugged and grinned. “It’s just a customer service I provide. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

“Just try to stay awake up here, hotshot,” McCarter said. “I’ll put the zip-line on target. The rest of you get your Flying Fox attachments ready.”

“I’m going first,” Manning said. “You hit the mark with the grappling gun but we’ll use me to test the weight.”

“Negative, I’m point,” James said. “The plan calls for me to slide first.”

Manning shook his head. “That was before we got burned. Those assholes down there know we’re coming. We’ll only get the one line. I should go first.” He stopped and grinned. “Besides, Doc, if you fall, who’ll patch you up?”

McCarter lifted a hand. “He’s right, Cal. We’ll send Gary down first.”

The ex-SWAT sniper took up his SPAS-15. “Doesn’t seem right, a Canadian going before a SEAL, but I’ll make an exception this time.” He reached out a fist and he and the grinning Manning touched knuckles.

“Get set,” McCarter warned.

CHAPTER FIVE

McCarter lifted the launcher of the T-PLS pneumatic tactical line-throwing system to his shoulder. The device sported 120 feet of 7 mm Kevlar line and launched the spear grapnel with enough force to penetrate concrete. Despite himself McCarter paused for a moment to savor the situation.

He felt adrenaline pump through his system like a bullet train on greased wheels. He knew that he was not only among the most competent warriors on the face of the earth, but also he was their leader. He could sense them around him now, reacting not with fear but with the eagerness of dedicated professionals.

They had the brutal acumen of men about to face impossible odds and achieve success. McCarter smiled to himself in cold satisfaction as he recalled the motto of the SAS—Who Dares Wins.

As his men, other than Hawkins, slid on their protective masks, McCarter’s finger took up the slack in the grappling gun.

There was a harsh tunk sound as the weapon discharged, followed by the metallic whizzing of the line playing out. The sound of the impact six stories below was drowned out by the sound of Akira Tokaido’s Hellfire taking out the Dzik-3 APC. A ball of fire and oily black smoke rose up like an erupting volcano. The blazing hulk leaped into the air and dropped back down with a heavy metal crunch that cracked the cobblestone court.

“Now we’re on,” Encizo declared, and Phoenix sprang into action.

THE MEN SLOWLY CHEWED their food as they watched the body hanging from chains set into the wall. The imam had dared to speak out against the random violence that claimed the lives of Baghdad’s women and children, preaching in front of the prayer mats in the mosque that the Koran did not direct the slaughter of Muslim innocents in the name of Allah.

On his way to the market an Iraqi police car had stopped and two officers had thrown a sack over the imam’s head and pushed him into the vehicle. When his hood had been ripped off, the cleric found himself chained to the wall and in the hands of the very extremists he had railed against.

Then he saw two men, one in the uniform of the Baghdad police, calmly eating. The two men continued eating as other men caught his tongue in a pair of pliers and cut it off with a bayonet. They had continued eating as the torturers had taken a ball-peen hammer to first his fingers and then his toes. Then, when his naked body was slick with his own blood, they had driven the slender shaft of an ice pick into his guts, perforating the large intestine and allowing his own fecal matter to flood into his system, causing sepsis.

From outside of the building the militia of the faithful held the Iraqi National Army bootlickers and their American allies at bay. The troops around the man now were those returning from the line to grab a meal and resupply. Despite their exhaustion and wounds the Shiite extremists remained upbeat—happy with their performance.

Then a vengeful god rained fire from the sky.

Abu Hafiza jumped out of his chair at the sound of the explosion. Around him his men scrambled to respond and he looked across the table to the Iraqi police officer Saheed el-Jaga.

“It’s them!” he hissed, stunned.

“Ridiculous. They never could have gotten close. It must be an air strike. I told you to leave the city,” Saheed el-Jaga snapped back.

Abu Hafiza thought about Ziad Jarrah sitting in Dubai like a spider at the center of his web. He thought of telling the crown prince how he had failed, how the Americans had driven him from the Shia stronghold in Baghdad.

“No,” the Shiite terrorist said simply. “I’m safer here.”

“I’m not!”

Then they heard the gunfire burning out around them and they knew it was more than an air strike. They knew then that against all odds the unknown commandos had made it into the Shiite slum, had come for them. They both realized that whoever these clandestine operators were they would never give up.

Instantly they rose up and ran to rally their men.

“Fall in around me!” Saheed el-Jaga snarled.

“To the roof and perimeter!” Abu Hafiza said in turn.

Men were scrambling into positions and snatching up weapons.

THE LINE DIPPED under Manning’s weight as he rode the Flying Fox cable car down the Kevlar zip-line. He sailed down the six stories and applied the hand brake at the last possible moment. He pivoted his feet up and struck the roof of the building on the soles of his combat boots.

Because of the size of his primary weapon, the cut-down M-60E, he couldn’t roll with the impact and instead bled off his momentum by sliding across the roof like a batter stealing second. With the last of his forward energy the big Canadian sat up and took a knee, swinging his machine gun into position and clicking off the safety.

Behind him he heard the sound as Calvin James hit the roof and rolled across one shoulder to come up with SPAS-15 ready. Above them they heard the muffled snaps as Hawkins cut loose with the silenced Mk 11 from his overwatch position. Below them in the courtyard around the sprawling house they heard men scream as the 7.62 mm rounds struck them.

Covering the exposed roof, Manning turned in a wide arc as Rafael Encizo slid down to the roof, putting his feet down and his shoulder against the line to arrest his forward motion. The Cuban combat swimmer came off his Flying Fox and tore his Hawk MM-1 from where it rested against the front of his torso.

McCarter landed right behind Encizo and rushed across the roof, M-4/M-203 up and in his hand. Gunfire burst out of a window in a mosque across the road. Manning shifted and triggered a burst of harassment fire from the hip. His rounds arced out across the space and slammed into the building, cracking the wall and shattering the lattice of a window. Red tracer fire skipped off the roof and bounced deeper into the city.

Above the heads of Phoenix Force in their black rubber protective masks, T. J. Hawkins shifted the muzzle of his weapon on its bipod and engaged the sniper. He touched a dial on his scope and the shooter suddenly appeared in the crosshairs of the reticule on his optics.

The man had popped up again after Manning’s burst had tapered off and was attempting to bring a 4-power scope on top of an M-16 A2 to bear on the exposed Americans.

Hawkins found the trigger slack and took it up. He let his breath escape through his nose as he centered the crosshairs on the sniper’s eyes. For a brief strange second, it was as if the two men stared into each other’s eyes. The Iraqi pressed his face into the eyepiece on the assault rifle. The man shifted the barrel as he tried for a shot.

The silenced Mk 11 rocked back against Hawkins’s shoulder. The smoking 7.62 mm shell tumbled out of the ejection port and bounced across the tarpaper-and-gravel roof. In the image of his scope the Iraqi sniper’s left eye became a bloody cavity. The man’s head jerked and a bloody mist appeared behind him as he sagged and fell.

Autofire began hammering the side of the building below Hawkins’s position. He rolled over on his back, snatching up his sniper rifle. He scrambled up, staying low, and crawled through the doorway of the roof access stair. He intended to shift positions and engage from one of the windows overlooking the compound in the building’s top floor.

Below his position McCarter found what he was looking for. He pulled up short and shoved a stiffened forefinger downward, pointing at an enclosed glass skylight that served to open up and illuminate the breakfast area. The opening had appeared as a black rectangle on the images downloaded from the Farm’s Keyhole satellite, and from the first McCarter had seized on the architectural luxury as his means of ingress.

“We have control,” Manning barked, and from half a world away Barbara Price and the Farm’s cyberteam watched from the UAV’s cameras. “We have control,” McCarter repeated.

To create a distraction on the hard entry Gary Manning had prepared explosive charges. Being unable to precisely locate their target before the strike, nonlethal measures had been implemented. Working with Stony Man armorer John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Canadian demolitions expert had prepped a series of flash-bang charges using stun grenades designed to incapacitate enemy combatants in airplane hangars, factories or warehouses. In addition to the massive SWAT noise-distraction device Manning and Kissinger had layered in several devices from ALS Technologies that contained additional payloads of CS gas.

McCarter slipped into his own SAS model protective mask, then gave Calvin James a thumbs-up signal. “Five, four, three, two, one.”

The ex-SEAL jogged forward and pointed the SPAS-15 at the skylight. The semiautomatic shotgun boomed and eight .38-caliber slugs smashed through the reinforced commercial-grade window.

“Execute, execute, execute!” McCarter ordered.

Instantly, Manning stepped up and threw his satchel charge into the hole. As it plunged through the opening, the entry team turned their backs from the breach, shielding their eyes and ears. Instantly the booming explosion came. Smoke poured out of the opening like the chimney of a volcano.

James spun and stepped up to the ledge before dropping through the hole. He struck the ground and rolled to his left out along the side of his body, absorbing the impact from the ten-foot fall. He came up, the SPAS-15 tracking for a target in the smoke and confusion.

A running body slammed into him, sending them both spinning. Ignoring the combat shotgun on its sling, James reached out with his left hand and tore the AKM from the figure’s grip, tossing it aside as he rolled to his feet. His Beretta appeared in his fist. He pulled the guy closer but didn’t recognize the stunned terrorist and put two 9 mm bullets through his slack-jawed face.

David McCarter dropped down through the breach into chaos.

He saw James drop a body and spin, his pistol up. Around him the whitish clouds of CS gas hung in patches but the interior space was large enough that the dispersal allowed line-of-sight identification.

The Briton was violently thrown into a momentary flashback to his experience in the assault on London’s Iranian embassy after Arab separatists had taken it hostage. He saw a coughing, blinded gunman in an Iraqi police uniform stumble by and shot him at point-blank range with the M-4.

The man was thrown down like a trip-hammered steer in a Chicago stockyard. McCarter went back down to a knee and twisted in a tight circle, muzzle tracking for targets. Behind him a third body dropped like a stone through the skylight breach.

Rafael Encizo landed flat-footed then dropped to a single knee, his fireplug frame absorbing the stress of the ten-foot fall. His MM-1 was secured, muzzle up, tightly against the body armor on his chest and his MP-7 machine pistol was gripped in two hands.

Through the lens of his protective mask Enzcio saw two AKM-wielding men in headdresses and robes stumble past. The Cuban lifted his weapon and pulled the trigger, firing on full automatic from arm’s length. He hosed the men ruthlessly, sending them spinning into each other like comedic actors in a British farce. He turned, saw an Iraqi policeman leveling a folding-stock AKM at him and somersaulted forward, firing as he came up. His rounds cracked the man’s sternum, struck him under the chin and cored out his skull. The corrupt Iraqi dropped to the ground, limbs loose and weapon tumbling.

Gary Manning dropped through the breach, caught himself on the lip of the skylight with his gloved hands and hung for a heartbeat before dropping down. He landed hard with his heavier body weight and went to both knees. He grunted at the impact on his kneepads and orientated himself to the other three Phoenix members, completing their defensive circle as he brought up the cut-down M-60E.

Without orders the team fell into their established enclosed-space clearing pattern. Manning came up and charged toward the nearest wall, clearing left along the perimeter of the room while James followed closely behind him, then turned right. Encizo tucked in behind Manning as he turned left, and McCarter, also charged with coordination, followed James.

Manning kicked a chair out of the way and raced down the left wall of the room. Weapons began firing in the space and he saw muzzle-flashes flare in the swirling CS gas. He passed a dead man hanging by chains from the wall. A close-range gunshot had cracked the bearded man’s skull and splashed his brains on the wall behind his head.

Manning suddenly saw a police officer standing with a pistol, three men with Kalashnikovs in a semicircle in front of him. The Canadian special forces veteran triggered the M-60E in a tight burst, and the 7.62 mm rounds tore the first police bodyguard away as he rushed forward. From behind him Encizo used the MP-7 to cut down the left flank bodyguard before the Iraqi police officer could bring his weapon around.

Manning took two steps forward and shoved the muzzle of his machine gun into the throat of the final bodyguard as Encizo swarmed around him. The Iraqi stumbled backward, at the blunt-tipped spearing movement, his hands dropping his weapon and flying to his throat. As he staggered back, Manning lifted a powerful leg and completed a hard front snap kick into the man’s chest, driving him farther backward and into the police officer.

Both men fell as Encizo reached forward and thrust the muzzle of his smoking-hot machine gun into the coughing and half-blinded Saheed el-Jaga’s face, pinning him to the floor. With his other hand Encizo broke the man’s wrist, sending his pistol sliding away.

Hot shell casings rained down on Encizo as Manning cracked open the bodyguard’s chest with a 5-round burst from the M-60. Blood splashed Saheed el-Jaga’s face as he grimaced in pain, and the stunned and terrified traitor squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

Manning halted his advance and swung the machine gun up to cover them as Encizo flipped the Iraqi over onto his stomach and used a white plastic riot cuff to bind his hands. Saheed el-Jaga screamed in pain as the shattered bones of his wrists were ground against their broken ends by the Phoenix commando’s rough treatment.

A block of light appeared in the gas-choked gloom. A knot of well-armed reinforcements surged through the open door from the outside. Manning shifted on a knee, swinging around the M-60. He saw one of the reinforcements fall, the side of his head vaporizing, then a second fell and Manning realized Hawkins had found his range even at this acute angle.

Manning pulled back on the trigger of his machine gun and the weapon went rock and roll in his grip. He scythed down the confused Iraqi terrorists, cutting into their ranks with his big 7.62 mm slugs. The men screamed and triggered their weapons into the ground as they were knocked backward. He let the recoil against his hand on the pistol grip push the muzzle up, and his rounds cut into the terrorists’ bodies like buzz saws.

“Phoenix, we have company,” Tokaido warned over the team’s earbuds. “Hellfire number two is away. Danger close.”

Calvin James spun, bringing up the SPAS-15.

The combat shotgun boomed like a cannon in his hands and steel shot scythed through the CS-tinged air to strike two AKM-wielding figures. The Iraqi terrorists were thrown backward and spun apart, arms flying in the air, weapons tossed aside by the force of the blasts.

One of them tripped over a wastepaper basket and went down hard. The second bounced off a wall and tumbled into a chair. James moved between them, double checking as he went. The one on the floor was leaking red by the gallon from a chewed-up throat and torn-open chest. The second was missing enough of his face that the ex-SWAT officer could see his brains exposed.

There was a burst of rifle fire and the SPAS-15 was knocked from James’s hands. Heavy slugs slammed into the ceramic chest plates of his Kevlar body armor. He staggered backward and grunted. His shoulder hit the wall and he went to one knee. Reflexively his hands flew to his Beretta. As he drew the handgun David McCarter lunged past, the M-4 carbine up and locked into his shoulder, the muzzle erupting in a star pattern blast.

He saw the figure wearing an expensive black silk thobe at the last moment and pulled his shot. The 5.56 mm rounds struck the man in his legs and swept him to the floor of the building. Bright patches of blood splashed in scarlet blossom on the figure’s thighs.

Behind them the front of the building exploded as Tokaido’s Hellfire struck.

CHAPTER SIX

McCarter was thrown to his knees. He grunted with the impact as something heavy and wet struck him between the shoulder blades, then he looked down and saw a severed arm lying on the floor. He felt the heat of the raging blaze behind him.

He struggled to his feet.

“Talk to me, people!” Akira Tokaido shouted over the line. “Talk to me!”

McCarter didn’t answer but lunged forward. Abu Hafiza was screaming from his shattered thighs but was pulling a Jordanian JAWS pistol from out of his robes. McCarter slashed out with his M-4. His bayonet caught the man across the forearm, slicing a long ugly gash. The Iranian screamed again as he dropped the pistol.

Still on all fours McCarter scrambled forward, wielding the M-4 in one fist. The blade of the wicked M9 bayonet jabbed into the soft flesh of Abu Hafiza’s throat and pushed the man backward.

“Freeze!” McCarter snarled in Arabic. “Move one fucking millimeter and I’ll put your brains on the wall!” He lashed out with the bayonet again, lancing the tip into the meat of the Iranian’s shoulder and opening a small wound.

“Speak to me, Phoenix!” Tokaido hollered again.

“Manning up,” Gary Manning answered. “That was very danger close, my man,” the Canadian special forces veteran said.

“Pescado, is good,” Encizo said. “I’m knee deep in tango guts, but that blast blew the front off the building.”

“Copy that,” Tokaido said. “They had two platoon-size elements as reinforcements at the door. Forty, fifty guys all bunched up at the entrance.”

“McCarter up,” McCarter said. “But Cal took a round and I have our boy.” He paused. “If we’re clear, I need help.”

Instantly there was a reaction from behind him and the massive frame of Gary Manning appeared by his side as Encizo scrambled over to pull security near the prone Calvin James.

Encizo leaned in close, his eyes hunting for enemy motion from behind the lenses of his protective mask. “Speak to me,” he demanded. “You okay, bro?”

James turned his head and opened his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. Encizo, ears still ringing from the Hellfire blast, shook his head to clear his hearing.

“Speak, bro!” the Cuban demanded.

James lifted his head and muscles along his neck stood out with the effort. His lips formed the words under his protective mask and his eyes bulged with his effort under the lens but no sound came out. Finally there was a rush of air through the blunt nose filter.

“That hurt!” he wheezed. “Jesus, that hurt. I think I cracked my ribs.”

“Is he good?” McCarter demanded over one shoulder. His weapon’s muzzle never wavered from Abu Hafiza’s face. “Is he good?”

Beside the Briton, Manning fired his M-60E in a short 4-round burst. A crawling Iraqi terrorist shuddered under the impact of the 7.62 mm slugs and lay still. Encizo turned toward the Phoenix Force leader and shouted back.

“Yeah, he just had the wind knocked out of him. Maybe bruised ribs, maybe cracked—we don’t know, but he’s ambulatory.”

“He’s also right goddamn here,” James snapped, sitting up. “He doesn’t need you talking about him as if he were incapable of speech.”

“Good,” McCarter replied, his voice echoing weirdly under the mask. “I got our boy but he needs patching up before we yank him back to Wonderland.” McCarter switched to his throat mike. “Akira, how we look out there?”

“You got vehicles coming up the street. You’ll have more bad guys on site very shortly. I’m still sitting on Hellfire number three.”

“Fine. Hit ’em at the gate and cause a further choke-point but save number four for my direction.”

“Understood.”

McCarter pulled back as James moved forward, medic kit in hand. Abu Hafiza looked at the black man with real hatred as the ex-SEAL ripped open the thobe and began to treat the Iranian’s wounds.

“Give him morphine,” McCarter said as he rose. “We’re going to have to carry him anyway with those leg wounds. It’ll keep him docile.”

“I’ll be the one to play doctor here,” James said.

“Fine, you’re the medic—what do you want to do?”

“Probably going to give him a heavy dose of morphine to keep him docile.”

“Whatever you think is best.” McCarter shook his head.

Encizo spoke up. “What about the son of a bitch Saheed el-Jaga?”

McCarter looked over at the Cuban combat swimmer. “You guys tag and bag him?”

“Yep,” Manning interrupted as he rose. “We got him against the wall.” The big Canadian began to move down the length of the room toward the blazing hole in the building, checking each of the downed bodies as he did so.

“We aren’t prepped to carry two deadweights out of here,” McCarter pointed out.

“What’s the penalty for treason?” Manning asked.

“Firing squad,” Encizo said, an ugly smile splitting his face.

James looked up from bandaging the glowering Abu Hafiza. “Where will we find volunteers?”

McCarter turned, lifted his M-4 to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. Across the stretch of floor broken by the rapidly thinning clouds of CS gas the corrupt Iraqi police officer Saheed el-Jaga caught the 3-round burst in the side of the head.

Blood gushed like water from a broken hydrant and the blue-gray scrambled eggs of his brains splashed across the floor with bone white chips of skull in the soupy mess. McCarter lowered his smoking M-4.

The ex-SAS commando leaned down close to the wounded Iranian. “Abu Hafiza, you see I’m a serious bastard now?”

The al Qaeda commander paled under the scrutiny of the coldblooded killer. His eyes shifted away from the death mask McCarter’s face had become. Then he jerked and winced as James unceremoniously gave him an intramuscular shot of morphine.

The black man smiled with ghastly intensity at the captured Iranian terror master. “Don’t worry,” he said. “If we shoot you, it’ll only be in the gut.”

Manning and Encizo reached down and jerked the now stoned Abu Hafiza to his feet. McCarter spoke into his throat mike. “Akira, how we look?”

“Clock’s ticking. You got stubborn bad guys trying to dig their way through the burning barricade I made out of the first-wave vehicles. I’m still sitting on my last Hellfire.”

“Good copy,” McCarter said. “We’ll be rolling out the back door in about ten seconds. Why don’t you go ahead and blow me a hole out the back fence now?”

“One escape hatch coming up,” Tokaido replied.

“Phoenix,” McCarter said. “We are leaving.”

En route to Bolivia

IN THE BACK OF THE Cessna executive turbojet Able Team prepared for their mission briefing. Scrambled with their preassembled kits directed by Barbara Price, the Stony Man direct-action unit had been wheels up and flying south even before Hal Brognola had finished being fully briefed by the President.

Now, via sat link the big Fed and director of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group gave them a rundown on the situation.

“Currently FBI counterintelligence, counterterror and hostage-rescue units are scrambling to deal with a crisis. In Boliva, Juan Evo Morales holds power. A committed socialist and champion of the coca-leaf growers, he is a strong ally of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, and no friend of the United States.

“A plane filled with U.S. citizens has been taken hostage in the eastern lowlands where thick tracts of Amazonian rainforest carpet the topography. Officially the Morales government is helping the U.S. with the situation. Behind the scenes the government is restricting the movement, investigation and resource deployment of the FBI field team in order to maintain ‘sovereign integrity.’

“NSA has managed to discover that covertly, the Bolivian special forces, the Polivalente, are running a joint operation with Venezuela’s DISIP, or Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services. Faced with this obstruction we need you to run a simultaneous black operation to locate and free the kidnapped hostages independent from the official FBI efforts. You must infiltrate the country, acquire intelligence, perform tactical reconnaissance and execute the rescue.” Brognola paused. “Tactical specifics will be given to you once you arrive in Bolivia.”

Schwarz cocked an eyebrow and turned toward Blancanales. “Is it me or does the old man seem to be getting even more blasé as we pull off one impossible stunt after the other?”

Blancanales shrugged. “What am I going to do at my age? Start over and teach school?”

Lyons leaned forward and addressed Brognola through the sat link system. “No worries. We’re on it.”

La Paz, Bolivia

THE TAXI took Lyons away from the more affluent area and into the poorer neighborhoods, far from the Hyatt hotel, American consular branch office and the giant grocery store. Here Colombian refugees formed a strong minority, completely dominating some neighborhoods stacked with poorly constructed tenements and scattered with small shops.

This fact was punctuated to Lyons by his driver, named Jose, who spoke serviceable if broken English. At one point he noted to Lyons that they had entered an area exclusive to Colombians, a tent city from 1978 that had grown up into a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets separating concrete apartment buildings and one-room shops of every description.

After fifteen minutes of travel, the taxi entered another Colombian enclave and stopped in front of a four-story apartment building. Standing on the street, waiting for him, was Hermann Schwarz in street clothes. The American had allowed his beard to grow in under his thick mustache.

Lyons paid the driver and got out of the cab. Schwarz was holding open a steel door and he nodded and smiled in greeting.

“Que pasa, jefe?” he said, letting Lyons through the gate into a small courtyard, then directing him into the building itself. Lyons nodded a greeting and began to ask the Able Team commando a question, but Schwarz shook his head and whispered, “Upstairs.”

Lyons followed Schwarz as they climbed four stories up a narrow, bare concrete staircase. At each landing there was a large square window open to the outside. On the fourth floor the two men entered a stark, poorly lit hallway. At the end of the hall Lyons saw a woman in a traditional dark dress duck into a doorway to avoid them.

Obviously waiting for them, Rosario Blancanales, stubble-faced and dressed identically to Schwarz in street clothes, opened the door to their apartment. Lyons entered the room, shaking Blancanales’s hand once he was inside. Schwarz shut the door behind them and flipped a series of dead bolts closed.

Immediately upon entering the apartment, Lyons saw that there was a short, alcove-style hall to the left leading to an open closet and the bathroom. A U.S. Claymore antipersonnel mine was set up in the entranceway, angled at the door so the back blast would be funneled into the alcove. The ignition cord trailed down the hall, taped to the ground to avoid tripping anyone, and leading around a corner.

“What’s up?” Lyons asked. “Didn’t want anyone hearing us speak English?”

“I want to avoid it as much as possible.” Schwarz nodded. “Blancanales and I might fit in better than McCarter or Hawkins would, but nobody around here’s really fooled. English is pretty common here but it shouts ‘outsider’ in a way that makes me nervous in these Colombian ’hoods.”

“It’s like in my old neighborhood when I was growing up,” Rosario Blancanales added. “Everybody knows who belongs in the ’hood. Cops try to send in a plain-clothes and he was always spotted. The gangs know if a guy comes from three streets over, let alone from out of town. We look like the Bolivian version of lost tourists come to the big city as long as we don’t open our mouths.”

“It’s only going to get worse once we make our final approaches,” Lyons observed.

Blancanales shrugged. “Like I said, Gadgets and I are better than McCarter or Hawkins and in crowded markets or just out and about we’ll move easier. We knew it was going to be tough. You look like the giant gringo you are, my friend.”

They led Lyons deeper into the cramped four-room apartment. The walls and floor were of the same bare concrete as the staircase. Lyons realized there would be no insulation, though the windows at least had glass in them.

“Plumbing okay?” he asked.

“Toilet and shower are weak but working. Don’t drink the water,” Blancanales answered.

“How’s it going?” Lyons asked, meaning the surveillance operation.

Blancanales led him to the large common area at the rear of the apartment. Lyons saw a battered old futon next to a kerosene stove and several battery-operated lanterns. Schwarz and Blancanales had put down foam mattresses and sleeping bags on the concrete, with an additional one meant for Lyons.

A Soviet Dragunov 7.62 mm sniper rifle with the standard PSO-1 scope mount was set up on a bipod in the middle of the room. Against the wall were three AK-104 Kalashnikov carbines. On a card table near the couch and stacked weapons sat a VINCENT sat-com unit, a laptop, two Nikon cameras—one digital and one 35 mm—as well as a satellite phone.

“The Bureau set us up good,” Blancanales said. “Your wish list for weapons and equipment was waiting for us when we got here. They got us Jordanian pistols instead of the more generic Makarovs, but since they’re used by the Bolivian army I didn’t bitch.”

Lyons grunted. The Viper JAWS—Jordanian Arms & Weapon System—had a great reputation for a 9 mm pistol, especially when compared to the older Soviet Makarov and Tokarev, and was the product of a joint American-Jordanian effort. He supposed that with the weapons going into service with the Royal Jordanian Army it was feasible that some would have made it out onto the black market. The fact that the Bolivian military services had all been outfitted with them only helped matters.

“Good enough. What about our good Juan Hernandez?” Lyons asked.

“Take a look for yourself,” Schwarz said, and indicated where the Dragunov had been set up.

The designated infantry support weapon was set up on the ground on a foam shooter’s pad. It was pointed out of a sliding-glass door that opened up on a railing around a patio that extended about six inches out. The glass door opened up on a narrow alley, and Blancanales and Schwarz had hung drapes, keeping them only open a few inches, to avoid being seen by anyone across the way.

Lyons settled into position. The PSO-1 scope was angled through the wide-set wrought-iron bars of the balcony and out toward the mouth of the alley, which opened up on a busy avenue. The crosshairs of the sniper rifle were focused on a balcony across that street, the fifth one up from the bottom and two over from the left edge of the target building. The balcony there was as narrow and unadorned as the one attached to Able Team’s own safehouse.

Inside the apartment Lyons could clearly distinguish the front door through his sniper scope. A battered old television with a rabbit-ears antenna played what Lyons took to be a local soap opera. He had a clear image of the back of a large, balding head facing away from the open balcony.

“Looks like our guy,” Lyons said. “I guess. The FBI triangulated the communications of the Bolivian army commander in charge of the rescue to here?”

“Yep exactly. Akira did a computer enhancement match on photos we took. It came up on an NSA data file. The guy is a communications officer for Colombian intelligence. He’s working as a scramble relay for Caracas.”

“Ugly bastard,” Lyons grunted.

“Got him?” Blancanales asked. “Good. Now come here. I want to show you our little glitch.”

“Christ,” Lyons muttered as he stood. “There’s always a glitch.”

Blancanales led Lyons to the edge of the drapes covering all but two inches of their apartment balcony. Lyons stood at the edge of the curtain and looked out. He heard the sounds of the street, smelled exhaust fumes from the cars. In the distance he could hear a radio blaring latino music through cheap loudspeakers. Heavy carpets aired out over balconies. Clotheslines filled the space above the street between buildings, draped with laundry.

On the street women in traditional blouses and skirts hustled by on errands while men in dirty jeans and battered old sandals rode in threes and fours in the open backs of pickup down the narrow avenue. He saw street vendors selling vegetables and cutting meat from hanging carcasses.

The unemployed lounged in little clusters and argued and laughed with animated hand gestures. School-age children kicked grimy soccer balls in the gutter. Rebar struts stuck from the unfinished corners of old buildings.

“Look down, against the wall, across the alley. See him?”

Lyons looked down. He saw what appeared to be a vagrant dressed in filthy Western shirt and pants under a grimy poncho. His beard was patchy, almost mangy, and the man’s overall appearance was completely unkempt. Lyons narrowed his eyes. There were two empty bottles of the potent Bolivian beer called Orso lying empty beside the man who clutched a brown paper bag.

Lyons frowned. “A drunk? In the open?”

“Exactly. Here.” Blancanales handed Lyons a compact pair of Zeiss binoculars. “Check out his right ear under the ball cap.”

Lyons took the offered Zeiss binoculars and zeroed in on the lounging man. A small earpiece was fitted into the man’s ear. Lyons grunted at the wireless communications tech. “Pretty upscale for a gutter drunk. Our boy Juan is being watched. I’m guessing not by Bolivian security, either, considering how the observer’s screwing it up.”

“Probably it’s the Venezuleans doing overwatch on their boy. A secondary security operation,” Schwarz said.

“Hell,” Blancanales snorted. “Pretending to be a drunk, in Bolivia? I think that rules out any first-tier Western operators, as well.”

Lyons narrowed his focus on the glasses. He took in how the man’s hawk nose was more pronounced from having obviously been broken more than once. “You don’t think he’s on to us?” Lyons handed Blancanales back the Zeiss binoculars. “What happens when Juan leaves his apartment? That guy tail him?”

“No.” Schwarz smiled. “Another guy, taller and thinner, tails him in a white Celica. They’re definitely following our good Mr. Juan Hernandez. I followed him following Juan shopping one day. I could have sliced his throat at any time, he was positively asleep, real tunnel vision.” The ex-Green Beret mimed drawing a finger across his neck. “I took some photos instead. Besides, what’s the range on a wireless earpiece like that? Even with the receiver in the bag? We’re clean for bugs in here and he’d be set up differently if he was using a parabolic mic. They must already have a bug in Hernandez’s apartment.”

“I assume you got film on that jackass down there, as well?” Lyons asked.

“Yep.” Blancanales nodded. “Sent it off to Bear. He said he’ll get back to us.”

“We have to know who they are before we roll,” Lyons said. “The Bolivians could have tipped someone or Venezuela could have sent a team hoping to ambush anyone who checks Juan Hernandez out. Whoever they are they’ve just made number one on our list of priorities,” Lyons decided. “What happens at night?” he asked, pensive.

“Third man,” Schwarz answered. “Juan isn’t exactly a playboy. They keep the indigent in place until dark, then they have a nightshift guy, different than the daytime shadow, in a late-model Ford V-8 van. He parks in the alley crawls into the back and pulls the curtain. Must have a sibling transceiver to the one used by our Mr. Bum-by-day down there.”

“He goes first, then,” Lyons said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Able Team settled in to wait.

Lyons took one of the 9 mm Viper JAWS pistols and kept it on him. He changed into street clothes and a poncho. With his darkly tanned complexion and two-day beard he didn’t stand out awfully, but he knew better than to think he could pull off any complicated subterfuge.

They made strong coffee and took turns behind the PSO-1 scope, watching Juan Hernandez’s apartment. The Venezuelan electronic intelligence specialist was a diligent man. The spook in the alley outside whiled away the time with a patience that Lyons had to admit was professional.

While Schwarz took a watch behind the sniper scope the sat-phone on the card table next to the laptop buzzed. Blancanales picked it up. “Go,” he said.

He listened for a minute and Lyons heard the smile in his voice when he answered. “Nice, Bear, nice.”

While Lyons watched, Blancanales moved to the laptop and nudged the finger-mouse pad to disrupt the screensaver. A rectangle graph showing an incoming download appeared. Once the download was complete, Blancanales said, “Got it. We’ll call as we move forward. Out.”

He hung up the phone and clicked on the download icon. Instantly classified photos with accompanying text appeared on the screen. Lyons came in close and studied the screen.

“Got a match on DEA international files. Cross-hit in Interpol. These guys are cartel mob freelancers,” Lyons read.

“Venezuelans?” Blancanales mused. “We got cocaine cowboys pulling security on a Colombian intel op.”

“Blackmail,” Lyons grunted. “Maybe, anyway. But more likely there’s a power struggle in Chavez’s crews. The army doesn’t trust intel, or intel the army, or something. So one side called in outside players they could trust. They’re here because someone is afraid someone is running Juan Hernandez down. If they were a hit team they’d have taken him out by now.”

“Christo,” Schwarz agreed from behind the rifle. “They’re Colombian. They would have blown up the whole damn building or gone in and chewed him up with a chain saw in front of his family by now if they’d been paid to take him out.”

“So we take them out?” Blancanales asked Lyons.

“We can’t have them at our six o’clock when we go in after Juan,” Lyons said, thoughtful.

“We take them out, then whoever called in the shadow will know we’re in Bolivia and onto Juan,” Schwarz pointed out.

Lyons ticked off his points on his fingers, one by one. “This op is bloody wet already. Subterfuge will only take us so far. Speed and aggression is our key now, just like always. We hit them. We hit Juan. We hit the plane.”

Schwarz and Blancanales nodded.

“So we take ’em out before we interview Juan,” Blancanales stated.

“Yes,” Lyons replied. “But I want to make sure I get every last one of them possible. Not just the point men.”

“Find the nest?” Schwarz said.

“And clean it out,” Lyons finished. “The clock is ticking. We need to interview Juan. We can’t do it with that surveillance and I’m not predisposed to letting Colombian hitmen run around at will if I can have anything to do with it.”

“I heard that,” Schwarz said.

“I think we have an understanding,” Blancanales said. “We go in, shoot and loot. At best we get some paperwork, a hard drive and/or some cell phones. Otherwise we simply put some bad operators out of business. Once our six o’clock is clear, we start stage two immediately.”

“Win-win situation,” Lyons said.

“THEY’RE ON THE FIFTH floor,” Schwarz said. “Room 519. There’s at least three of them in there but I think more like twice that.”

“Building materials?” Blancanales asked.

“Reinforced concrete for load-bearing structural, but only Sheetrock covered by wood between rooms. The doors have a lock, a single dead bolt and a security chain.”

“Windows?”

“Commercial variety. Set in the wall with no balcony. They open inward with a metal-clasp locking mechanism. The glass is set into four even quadrants of windowpane around standard molding and wood frames. High quality but not security level.”

“Wall penetration will be a problem with our weapons. Even the nine millimeters,” Lyons said.

“C-2 breaching charges on the door and shotguns with buckshot or breach-shot for the takedown?” Blancanales suggested.

“What’s security like in the hotel?”

“They have a Bolivian police officer out front armed with a pistol and a submachine gun. He liaisons with hotel private security, who have a heavy presence in the lobby and restaurant area. They make hourly passes through the guestroom halls. They all carry 9 mm side arms,” Schwarz answered. “I think we could get in and do the takedown. It’s getting out without slugging through security forces I’m doubtful of.”

“Position to snipe on the window?” Blancanales asked.

“Negative. The Inca Mall is across the street. Seventy-five thousand square feet. No defilade and no angle other than up-trajectory. Lousy for shooting.”

“Yes, but does it have frozen yogurt? You know how I feel about my frozen yogurt.” Blancanales laughed.

“That kind of exposure rules out rappelling down the outside, even if we could get to the roof.” Lyons rubbed at his beard, thoughtful.

“Bait and switch followed by a bum rush?” Schwarz suggested.

“How do we get out?” Blancanales countered.

Lyons smiled. “Schwarz, I’ll need you to find us a good covert LZ on the edge of the city, out toward the jungle, and pinpoint the GPS reading.”

“That’ll work. Depends on how fast Stony Man can get us a bird. This’ll have to be black from JSOC, and even from FBI. And fast. Very goddamn fast,” Blancanales said.

“Has Barb ever let us down yet?” Lyons asked.

SCHWARZ WALKED OUT of the hotel and dodged traffic as he crossed the busy street. Blancanales pulled out from the curb and met him as he crossed the median. Schwarz opened the passenger side door and slid into the seat.

“It’s a go,” he said.

“Good,” Lyons replied from the backseat of the vehicle. “Let’s do it.”

Driving quickly, the Stony Man team circumnavigated the luxury hotel and pulled into the parking lot of the urban mall, quickly losing themselves among the acres of parking for up to 1,500 vehicles. A State Department courier with no association to the mission would pick up the vehicle ten minutes after Able Team left the area.

Over the horizon, in the hot Bolivian night, Jack Grimaldi was already inbound in an AH-6J Little Bird attack helicopter. The clock had started running on a tightly scheduled and overtly aggressive Able Team operation. Dressed in street clothes under colorful regional ponchos, the men moved quickly toward their objective.

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