Target Acquisition

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.