Orbital Velocity

“No response from the Farm?” Manning asked.

McCarter confirmed Manning’s query. “On the bright side, they might have had the kind of data you couldn’t access over a TV news screen.”

“And far superior physics simulation programming to allow for air current effects upon objects in motion,” Manning replied.

“Would that make it easier to determine what the weapon was?” McCarter asked.

“Slightly,” Manning answered. “They’d also know if a radioactive element was utilized in the kinetic darts.”

“Radioactive metal? You think we’d have to deal with that again?” McCarter asked.

Manning shrugged his brawny shoulders. “I always assume the worst, but even with the rod assault being made of conventional materials, it carries enough kinetic energy to obliterate entire city blocks and infrastructure. You noted the flames.”

“Gas mains and electrical lines disrupted,” McCarter agreed. “They haven’t confirmed the dead, but if just one of those rods hit a crowded tube, er, subway…”

Manning grimaced at that thought. “It wouldn’t have to hit dead-on. If my calculations of the mass of the orbital impact objects are correct, we’re looking at a landing within a quarter mile of a subway tunnel. According to the map I was working from, we’re looking at between four and seven tunnels collapsed, as well as at least three transit platforms. The death toll underground can reach over two thousand, independent of above-surface structural collapse.”

McCarter’s mood matched the expression on Manning’s face. Since the Canadian was a demolitions expert, the Briton had little cause to doubt his friend’s calculations. McCarter returned his attention to the hooligans, whose numbers had tripled as they met up with more groups of their comrades. He felt a moment of uncertainty, judging the superior numbers he and Manning would face if their quarry decided to turn en masse and confront them. The Phoenix Force veterans were survivors of multiple riots, having fought off dozens of crazed opponents alongside their other three Phoenix Force partners, but in those situations, they had terrain and training advantages. The hooligans were something different from what they would be used to—men who used their strength of numbers as a lethal weapon against foes unlucky to get into their path.

McCarter spotted hammers and sharpened shanks of steel in some of the hooligans’ hands, and the football fans were uniformly buzzed on beer, drunk enough to surrender their individuality to the madness of the mob but not so inebriated that they couldn’t concentrate on targets of rage and opportunity. With weapons in hand, these men were a threat to anyone they encountered, and even though the group had tripled in size, they still hadn’t reached their final destination. Manning slipped his backpack off his shoulder, allowing McCarter to reach in surreptitiously and withdraw the stubby shotgun and transfer it under his windbreaker. Suddenly the ex-SAS commando was wishing that he had his preferred Cobray submachine gun, a well-tuned little chatterbox that could spit out its deadly 9 mm kisses at 800 hits per minute.

“It’s not going to be much if they turn on us,” Manning noted.

McCarter managed a smirk. “As long as they don’t have guns, we can at least use the shotguns as clubs.”

Manning nodded at the suggestion. “Sometimes your optimism can be contagious.”

McCarter snorted. “But this isn’t one of those times.”

“You read my mind,” Manning replied with a chuckle.

McCarter’s cell phone beeped, letting the Briton know that he’d received a text message from Stony Man Farm. He fished out the phone.

“Message received. Network shows thugs assembling at Piccadilly Circus,” the text read. From the use of full words, but terse wording, McCarter could tell that it had been Carmen Delahunt who had sent the message. Akira Tokaido would have used abbreviated terms, while Huntington Wethers would have written out entire sentences, including prepositions.

McCarter quickly typed a reply. “Alert locals, incl Flying Squad.”

The growing mass, headed to one of the most famous shopping districts in the free world, would turn into a rampaging stampede of bulls in a proverbial china shop. The sight of hammers and shivs in various hands showed a capacity for violence. He checked his watch. At 10:00 a.m. there would be hundreds if not thousands of shoppers on hand for the buzzed, hostile hooligans to menace. The mention of the Flying Squad, London Metropolitan Police’s premier emergency response team, was one of McCarter’s hopes for evening the odds, as well as limiting the chances of fatalities. The Met’s Flying Squads were made up of rough-and-ready men, many of them veterans of the SAS like McCarter himself, or of the Royal Marines. But they were more than just gun-toting civil servants. The warriors in the “Sweeney” units, named for the Flying Squad’s rhyme of Sweeney Todd, were also trained in emergency first aid, as well as riot suppression. If the Flying Squad wasn’t on hand to immediately squelch the hooligans’ violence, they could provide vital life-saving assistance to their victims.

“Notified,” Delahunt’s message returned.

McCarter ran his thumbs across his phone’s minikeyboard. “Moscow news?”

“Situation remains fluid,” Delahunt told him.

“Fluid,” Manning grumbled. “Moscow’s football gangs are of a slightly more violent level of hostility than London’s.”

“Not by much,” McCarter said. He typed a quick question to send to the Farm. “Riots in Moscow?”

“Confirmed,” Delahunt answered. “Moscow police overwhelmed.”

McCarter and Manning looked to the sky. If London was going to be the site of flash mob violence, there was the possibility that the city on the Thames would receive a hammering from the same weapon that had scarred the Russian capital. The Briton typed in another question. “We expecting rain?”

“Wish we could tell,” Delahunt answered.

McCarter grit his teeth. “So while we’re looking at these berks, someone could be targeting my city?”

“Berks?” Manning asked.

“Berkshire Hunts,” McCarter explained. It was more rhyming slang, and Manning shook his head as he figured out the curse that his term stood in for.

“It’s unlikely that our opposition could stage a second orbital weapon launch, nor probable that they would assault this city without a declaration of intent,” Manning said. “According to the news, Moscow broadcast sources received a threat a few hours before the attack.”

“And Carmen would have told us if there was something for London,” McCarter said. He texted again. “No warnings?”

“None. Yet,” was the response.

McCarter’s brow wrinkled in concern. “Get C, R and T.J. on deck.”

“Already done.”

McCarter pocketed his phone. They were already on Haymarket Road, and in the distance, even in the morning daylight, he could see the bright, glowing signs of the Piccadilly Circus. McCarter could tell that they were on Haymarket due to the presence of four rearing horses off to one side. They were carved in black marble, and were beautifully polished. This statue, nestled in a semicurved corner over a small fountain, was one of McCarter’s favorite pieces of art in London, a visage of natural beauty and power. Its fame would always be in the shadow of Eros at the center of Piccadilly Circus, the massive cherub that was poised on one foot, aiming its bow at some distant lover’s heart, surrounded by the blazing neon of Piccadilly’s shops. McCarter squinted and he could barely make out the tall form in the distance over the heads of the massing hooligans.

The throng they trailed had swelled even further in size. Four more groups had hooked up to form a mob of potential rioters that seemed like an army. Throughout the crowd, he and Manning took note of dozens of glass bottles held up like torches of liberty. A more ominous sight along the edges of the crowd were the black handles of knives poking out of waistbands here and there. A couple of men carried gym bags, signaling that they were devotees of the Manchester Blacks. McCarter was too aware that those satchels could easily conceal firearms, as he and Phoenix Force had managed to disguise their arsenal that way in the past.

“I see four men with those bags on this end of the throng,” Manning stated.

“Who knows how many are mixed in with that lot,” McCarter grumbled. “I’ll need a distraction.”

Manning nodded, knowing that McCarter would need to ambush one of the bag carriers to see what he had hidden in a nylon sack. The Briton slipped closer to a hooligan he’d picked since he was the rearmost of the group. This particular soccer thug looked sober and too well groomed to be in with this lot, despite the fact that he wore team colors.

It was a simple prisoner snatch, something he had done in both service to Britain and to the Sensitive Operations Group. Off to the side, a sudden crackle of a dozen firecrackers popping drew all eyes. That was Manning’s distraction, utilizing a small portion of explosives that the demolitions genius always kept on his person. McCarter slipped his forearm around the bagman’s throat and brought up his free fist, driving the bottom edge of it hard against his target’s ear. The hooligan was paralyzed with agony as his eardrum was ruptured by the boxing of his ear, and luckily the man’s nerves were frozen, maintaining the death grip on the nylon web straps of his bag. McCarter swiftly backed into a small nook between shopfronts, sliding down the narrow entryway.

The prisoner struggled to speak, but McCarter cut him off with a sharp blow that landed just above his navel, driving the wind from his lungs. He was unable to cry out for assistance in the dark and narrow walkway down which McCarter and his captive had disappeared. The thug reached up with one hand, fingers hooked like claws, but the Briton grabbed his wrist and burst his knuckles on the brick wall. McCarter was more concerned with what his opponent’s other hand was doing, and he yanked on the hooligan’s collar, pulling him off balance.

The man’s hand rose, a snub-nosed revolver locked in it, but it was pointed toward the alley, not at the Phoenix Force commander. With a hard chop, McCarter jarred the thug’s neck with enough force that he dropped the weapon, his knees buckling.

“Not nice. Don’t you know they have laws against that shit here?” McCarter asked, yanking the hooligan’s wrists down to the small of his back. He slipped a plastic cable tie out of his pocket and bound his prisoner’s hands behind his back.

“Fuck off, Nancy,” the goon snarled.

McCarter whacked him again, this time in the temple, sending him into unconsciousness. With the bagman out cold, he was able to look inside the nylon gym bag. He saw dozens of canisters that he recognized as grenades, their pin-laden tops ominously looking back at him. A shadow fell across the entryway opening and McCarter turned to see who it was. Manning was there, keeping watch.

McCarter pulled out one canister and saw that it was chemical smoke. There were three different kinds of hand-thrown bombs inside, none of them purely explosive, but there were plenty of tear gas and stun grenades on hand to sow terror in Piccadilly Circus.

“Four that we saw, maybe three more groups,” McCarter mused.

“Whatever the amount, there are plenty of grenades to start a wild riot,” Manning replied.

McCarter grimaced. He could hear sirens in the distance. The Metropolitan police were on their way, alerted to action by Stony Man Farm. He didn’t know if that would be enough, however. He hoisted the confiscated bag, holding it out to Manning. “Forget about the shotgun rounds. We’ll need this.”

“How will we track where these came from?” Manning asked.

“Bugger that,” McCarter grumbled. “You’ve got hundreds of hooligans ready to go crazy amid thousands of innocents.”

Manning held out his backpack and McCarter gave him half a dozen flash-bangs. “We could just start the violence early if we throw these around.”

“Or we could throw them off their timing—and pull their attention our way,” McCarter answered.

Manning nodded. It was a standard bit of strategy on the part of the action-oriented Phoenix Force leader. If there was the potential for mayhem, McCarter chose to make himself a target to pull trouble away from those he’d sworn to protect. “I’ll give us some room.”

McCarter saw the brawny Canadian draw his Colt Python. The powerful revolver would make plenty of noise, being heard more clearly than any mere 9 mm pistol with its Magnum level loads. There was one thing that the Phoenix pair could count on—the reactions of everyday people to gunfire. They wouldn’t be certain how the crowd of hooligans would react, but luckily the shoppers had thinned out at the sight of a mob of rowdy drunks.

“Let fly,” McCarter said, and Manning aimed at a facade of a building, triggering three rapid, bellowing shots at the brick. The Magnum’s hollowpoints were easily stopped by the stone and mortar, preventing dangerous ricochets or rounds cutting through a wall to harm a second-floor resident.

People scattered, running away from the heart of Piccadilly Circus while the throng clogging Haymarket whirled at the sudden burst of new violence. The Python was far more authoritative than the firecrackers Manning had dropped. The rioters glared at the two men who stood defiantly in the middle of the road.

Manning and McCarter were both the same height, six foot one, but Manning was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested while McCarter was leaner.

“Who do you berks think you are?” one of the bagmen grunted. He had noticed McCarter’s bag full of tricks.

“The Peace Corps,” McCarter replied.

“Why don’t we promote you berks from corps to corpses?” the spokesman said. He turned to his mates. “Fuck ’em up!”

The wall of thugs surged, taking one step forward, but McCarter and Manning had been cooking their flash-bangs from the moment the loudmouthed bagman snarled his response to McCarter. The Phoenix pros hurled their flash-bangs in underhanded tosses, both canister grenades rolling between the crowd’s feet.

Detonating, the distraction devices unleashed twin stunning pulses through the crowd of drunken thugs. The unified surge that they had attempted transformed into a snarl of limbs as dozens folded over with painful deafness. Those who were farther back in the riot crowd tripped over those who had been halted by the blasts. McCarter and Manning had produced a dam of humanity against the flood tide of rage that would have overwhelmed them, but the grenades were only the beginning of what they needed.

The bagman had pulled a pistol from his waistband. McCarter, a British Olympic pistol champion, saw him start his quick draw and hauled out his Browning Hi-Power, triggering a quick shot faster than the gunman. The hooligan jerked violently as the bridge of his nose exploded with a precision-placed shot straight to the brain.

Not being a dedicated handgunner like his British friend, Manning whipped out his shotgun and fired the .12-gauge ferret rounds into the knees of three rioting hooligans. The tear gas shells weren’t designed to be fired directly at someone, but with the numbers they were facing, Manning erred on the side of injury rather than shooting someone in the chest.

Legs knocked out from under them, the thugs tumbled, providing a break that their allies, unhindered by flash-grenade deafness, had trouble passing. The tumble of stunned bodies created by the explosions snarled their path. It was a brief reprieve, and both Manning and McCarter were facing down a dozen angry hooligans whom they weren’t willing to gun down in cold blood.

Conversely, the surging rioters were out for Phoenix Force blood and outnumbered the merciful warriors six to one.

CHAPTER TWO

Normally, Gary Manning did not rely on melee weapons when it came to close-quarters combat. He preferred to utilize his great strength and skill to deal with opponents, but now he was faced with a less than optimal situation. The London roughneck charging at him had a brain-smashing weapon locked in his fist.

Manning quickly reversed the pistol-grip pump in his big hands and brought the weapon up to bat aside the whistling steel of a ball-peen hammer targeting his skull. Metal struck metal with a loud clang and a spark, and the Canadian knew that although his weapon would not be reliable anymore, it had saved him from a traumatic head injury. He knotted his left hand into a ham-size fist and brought it up hard under the chin of the hammer-wielding rioter. The uppercut literally lifted Manning’s target off his feet and hurled him against another soccer hooligan behind him.

Manning didn’t have time to celebrate his victory. Instead he whirled and jammed his shoulder against the chest of a third rioter, getting inside of the arc of the young man’s scything knife. The shoulder block turned the blade-wielding hooligan into a plow, which allowed the powerful Canadian to run over four of the surging rioters. He reached up and snared the improvised battering ram by his football jersey and whipped him around as a living club, bowling over more of the rowdy maniacs.

Manning glanced quickly to one side and saw that McCarter had trapped one of his foes in an armlock and was utilizing the hooligan as a fulcrum and a shield. The big Canadian returned his attention to the combat at hand in time to hear his captive howl from the stab of a sharpened strip of metal into his shoulder. Manning hurled his charge aside, away from where he’d encounter more rioter weapons, and snapped down a judo chop on the forearm that held the bloody shank. Bones cracked under the assault, and the ruffian stumbled backward.

The dam of stunned figures wasn’t holding angry rioters back as well as it had before, but Manning was aware of the impermanence of a stun grenade’s effects on crowds. With a surge, the big Canadian whipped one muscular arm out and clotheslined it across the throat of a charging hooligan. The London gang member’s feet kicked out from under him and he toppled backward into his compatriots. Manning knew that his only hope was to exploit the number of bodies pitted against him. He was not facing a unified group, moving in perfect synchronicity, despite the singular mind the mob possessed. As such, he was able to trip up one attacker with one of his fellow rioters, limbs entangling each other as one hand was clueless about what the other was doing.

Even so, Manning realized that he could only maintain this frenetic pace for so long. He kept his body in tip-top condition, maintaining a level of endurance that could carry him across deserts or up the highest mountainsides. Combat, however, sapped that kind of energy far faster than simple cross-country traveling. Manning was directing his muscles with precision and speed, as well as exploiting their phenomenal strength. Such fine manipulation required more intensive use of endurance, and he knew that he didn’t have the kind of power to hold out against the entirety of this roiling throng.

If Manning’s seemingly bottomless reserves were beginning to run dry, he wondered how his partner was faring as the hooligan horde surged forward.

FISTS AND FEET FLEW, trying to track the SAS-trained brawler, but they struck McCarter’s prisoner, not the man himself. In the meantime, McCarter lashed out with his long, powerful legs, kicking rioters in the knees or groin. The low blows weren’t pretty and were far from fair, but they were the swiftest and least harmful means of knocking down ruffians without causing undue death.

The maneuvers reminded McCarter of his favorite American slapstick comedians, who often repeated a gag where they ensnarled themselves against an enemy and utilized the momentum of that foe to spin them around, whirling out of harm’s way while their opponents ended up battling each other. The weight of the man McCarter had hooked himself to was providing sufficient energy for McCarter to spear snap-kicks into abdomens and get enough height to break more than a few jaws. The SAS veteran was tempted to lose himself in the brawl, but his sense of responsibility kept him from full surrender. He pulled his punches and kicks, knowing that he didn’t require that much force to hold his enemies at bay.

Somewhere in the course of the initial melee, the rest of the crowd that had been halted by the stun grenades had recovered their senses. They started to move in, surrounding both Manning and McCarter, a wall of bodies separating the Phoenix pros. McCarter released his fulcrum, putting plenty of muscle into a hip toss so that when he struck his compatriots, a dozen bodies tumbled together.

Dozens of hands clawed at McCarter as he back-pedaled. There were too many of them, and he didn’t have the sheer muscle required to hurl rioters against each other. Fortunately, McCarter had a bag of heavy grenades, and he swung them hard. Their mass added to the strength of his swing, and the hard metal canisters for the smoke and tear gas dispensers proved to be unyielding as they struck hands, wrists, arms and shoulders.

Several of the hooligans stopped short, clutching shattered limbs. The rioting thugs didn’t have much time to comfort their injured body parts as others behind them shoved them to the ground to be trampled underfoot by the surging tide of madness. McCarter whipped the bag of grenades around again and again, feeling the impact of his improvised mace against their bodies, scattering them in a wide arc. Each slashing stroke of the flailing nylon bag was testing the strength of the synthetic fabric, however. His weapon wasn’t going to last forever, and the football hooligans had spread out, encircling the Phoenix Force commander.

McCarter grimaced, realizing that he was going to have to try something drastic. He hauled the bag back to his chest, reached into its zipper and came away with three or four pins. The roughhousing throng paused as they saw the cotter rings fall away from his fingers, and McCarter lobbed the satchel into the waiting arms of one of the rioters. Before the grenades could detonate, McCarter equalized the pressure in his ears with a loud roar that further worked at slowing the madness-inflicted mob.

Sympathetic detonations accompanied the lone stun grenade’s explosion, extreme pressure knocking loose safety mechanisms to extend the shattering blast, even as powerful jets of smoke and tear gas erupted from the bag of doom. Hooligans wailed as chemical smoke and concentrated capsicum solution blasted dozens of faces. McCarter was used to working in the clouds created by the smoker canisters, and he had also built up an immunity to the sinus-inflaming effects of the pepper extract. Even so, McCarter’s eyes and nose were running freely. He had been almost at ground zero of the detonations, but the number of rioters had worked in his favor. The press of their bodies absorbed the concussion of the flash-bangs, as well as diluting the tear gas and smoke he would have taken full force otherwise. McCarter fired off quick rabbit punches, tagging sides and abdominal muscles, knocking air from the hooligans’ lungs, forcing them to breathe in deep gulps of atmosphere that was no longer good for them. The cottony cloud that enveloped McCarter and his crowd of opponents provided a shield that limited the advance of dozens who could no longer find him.

McCarter pumped a knee into the gut of one ruffian who tried to fight on despite his blindness. That foe collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. Another man took a karate chop to the shoulder, the pain of a broken clavicle taking the fight out of him. The Briton had bought himself time with the use of the grenades, but smoke and tear gas dissipated, and the stunning force released by the high-pressure flash-bangs would fade, allowing enemies to recover their senses.

Suddenly, McCarter stumbled, pushed back by two of the rioters. He would have fallen on his ass had it not been for the presence of a pair of curved plasticine shields. McCarter glanced back, and hands reached in the gap between the two riot cops, tugging the ex-SAS man behind a wall of lawmen who pushed forward with rubberized clubs and their clear plastic but nigh invulnerable shields. The police were wearing gas masks to protect them from the choking clouds that had been unleashed by the Phoenix Force pros, so they went in with all of their senses working. The phalanx of officers also had the benefit of trained coordination. Each man covered himself and the man to his right, and they moved in step.