High Assault

“Right.” McCarter turned to the rest of his men. “Encizo, get into position next to Hawkins. If T.J. decides he needs to take a shot I want you to bring the noise.”

“Copy.” Encizo nodded. The Cuban lifted the MM-1 grenade launcher and slid in next to the prone Texan.

McCarter lifted his left hand and pointed at Calvin James. “We’re advancing the plan by ten minutes,” he said. “I want you to open the sewer entrance right now and hold the position until we can get Manning through this sabotage gig.”

“They’re rolling this way.” Encizo spoke up for Hawkins. “Moving slow, but it seems obvious they’re spooked and looking for something, not just patrolling.”

McCarter turned back to the massive Canadian. “Gary?”

“Need time.”

“Right, then.” He twisted around. “Hold the line,” McCarter whispered to Encizo, who leaned over and relayed the information to Hawkins. The Phoenix leader turned toward James and nodded once.

The former SEAL rose into a crouch and glided into the narrow space between the relay station Manning was working on and the cinder-block wall that encircled the work area. McCarter heard the whisper of cloth and leather on the concrete, then James was over the top of the far wall and gone into the night.

James hit the ground on the other side of the wall, his boots making a crunch on the loose gravel as he landed. He was in a small access alley running behind a line of empty buildings. At one end of the lane a worn and deteriorated industrial wharf jutted out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway. In the distance, the lights of a garbage scow moved slowly away, gulls circling it, their night cries sharp against the low rumble of its engine.

James swung around to look the other way. He let the SPAS-15 dangle from his strap and pulled a silenced Beretta 92-SB from a holster on his thigh. Down at the end of the alley opposite the pier ran a larger secondary road, intersecting with the alley where a commercial gas station had once stood. The fuel pumps had been blown clean off their moorings at some point in the war and the building was a soot-covered and burned-out hulk.

Moving carefully, pistol up, James jogged up the alley toward the burned-out service station where a manhole cover was set in the ground. He covered the backs of the building fronting the alley, but all he saw were empty windows, dark doorways and tight, twisted openings leading inward between the structures like tunnels.

Coming up to the manhole cover, James quickly went to one knee and holstered his Beretta to pull a thick-bladed diver’s knife from a sheath on his combat boot. A diving knife was, by design, intended to be a pry bar and was built with full tangs and reinforced steel.

Working quickly, James slid the knife into the lip of the manhole cover and pried it up. Instantly a foul miasma wafted up from the opening, causing him to yank his head back in sudden disgust.

As he turned his face to the side, nose wrinkled against the stench, a Mahdi army militia member stared out at him from a weed-choked causeway between two deserted maintenance sheds made out of corrugated tin and aluminum siding. The man had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips with a blue, cheap plastic lighter held up with his free hand cupped around the flickering flame.

Slung over his shoulder was an AKM.

James popped up out of his crouch like a jack-in-the-box. The Iraqi’s eyes grew wide and his mouth sagged open in surprise. James pushed his feet hard into broken ground, springing forward. The militia gunman’s cigarette tumbled from his lips and the flame on the lighter winked out as it dropped from his hand.

James crossed the road in a flat sprint, knife up and ready, face twisted into a snarl of rage. The plastic lighter hit the ground at the Iraqi’s feet and bounced next to the forgotten cigarette. The man scrambled for the assault rifle slung on his shoulder, fingers fumbling in his fear.

The man tore the strap off his shoulder and swung the Kalashnikov down into his hands, fingers hunting for the trigger as he tried to bring the AKM barrel around. James swung his right hand down and knocked the weapon back into the man’s own chest, blocking him like a defensive back on the line of scrimmage.

The man’s fetid breath rushed out in a gasp, his spittle spraying James in the face. The dive knife arced up and plunged into the Iraqi’s torso just below the sternum, slicing through the membrane of the solar plexus. The man collapsed inward around the thrust and James tore the knife free, blood gushing out to splash into the dust at their feet, making a sticky mud instantly.

James stepped backward to give himself room, then brought the knife back up in a murderous underhand slash. The triangular point of the blade caught the mortally wounded Iraqi militia gunman in his throat just below the bobbing knot of his Adam’s apple.

James felt the blade slice through flesh and cartilage. Hot blood gushed out over his fist and the man croaked and his bowels opened up as a spasm rocked his body. James stepped in and shoved hard, pushing the corpse off the end of his knife and letting the man drop like a sack of loose meat.

He whirled and ran back out into street, slipping the blood-smeared knife blade under the web belt of his H-harness suspender. He drew his silenced Beretta and put a finger to his headset mike.

“Let’s move this up,” he said without preamble. “I just had company at the secondary insertion point. There are bound to be more—he can’t have been alone.”

“Copy,” McCarter confirmed. “Get cover—we have issues here, as well.”

“Roger, out,” James said.

He dropped to his knee and curled his finger tip under the manhole cover. He jerked upward and threw it clear. Once that was done he rose and quickly unholstered and transferred the Beretta to his left hand while taking up the pistol grip of his SPAS-15 in his right. He backed up quickly to the garbage-filled causeway where he had left the body of the Mahdi army sentry.

In the distance he heard the sudden sharp crack as T. J. Hawkins opened up with his sniper rifle. A second later Rafael Encizo let go with his grenade launcher and Calvin James realized hell had found Phoenix Force one more time.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Caracas, Venezuela

Carl Lyons cut the Excursion hard to the right and shot across two lanes of traffic, threading between cars and trucks. The tires on the big SUV screeched in protest and the vehicle body leaned hard, threatening to roll at the sudden extreme angles.

“This isn’t a Formula One car, Carl,” Schwarz said, voice cool. “It will roll.”

“It won’t roll,” Lyons answered flatly.

He snapped the wheel back hard in the other direction, cutting off a VW wagon then a red Audi. He crossed over the center divide, bouncing the wheels up and throwing the men around inside the cab.

“We’re going to roll!” Blancanales shouted from the back.

“We’re not going to roll,” Lyons denied.

The Excursion bounced free and Lyons shot down the center of the busy St. Martin Grande roadway. Horns blared and a garish red-and-yellow tourist bus swerved out of the way. Lyons cut between it and a green Honda hybrid running close enough to scratch the paint on the Excursion.

He saw a side street and turned sharply, leaving a trail of rubber behind them on the pavement over a yard long. He got the nose of the big SUV orientated correctly and floored the accelerator. He surged forward as more cars slammed on their brakes around him, but then he felt the back end shake loose and begin to drift.

“We’re going to roll,” Schwarz repeated.

Lyons didn’t bother to answer, but instead turned into the skid and eased off the gas for a moment. He cut the wheel back and just missed running up onto a crowded sidewalk before bringing the heavy vehicle back into line and shooting ahead.

He cut around a late-model four-door sedan and then back in front of it. He quickly looked in his rearview mirror but was forced to keep his eyes on the crowded road in front of him.

“Still there?” he demanded.

“Yep,” Blancanales answered from the backseat.

“It’s going to be damn hard to outmaneuver them in this behemoth,” Schwarz said. “And if we keep this up for too long without losing them, we’ll have uniformed officers on our ass and it’s right back to playing patty cake with customs officer Hernandez and his jolly crew.”

“We’re not going to roll,” Lyons said preemptively.

The ex-LAPD detective slammed on the emergency brakes, locking up his rear wheels, and spun the big SUV around in a half circle. The blunt nose of the Excursion pointed toward an alley. An ancient flatbed truck blocked half the narrow passage. In the back a lanky teenager handed boxes of ripe tomatoes down to a portly middle-aged man in a shopkeeper’s apron.

The SUV rocked on its suspension, leaning so hard toward the driver that the tires left the ground along the passenger side for several inches. The vehicle slammed back down and then the tires squealed as they grabbed traction on the asphalt.

The Excursion’s big-block engine screamed as it lurched forward, barreling directly for the delivery truck. The shopkeeper turned and gaped in surprise and the teenager on the flatbed dropped a box of tomatoes and leaped clear. The Excursion shot past them and there was sharp, metallic pop as the driver’s side-view mirror was ripped clean off the car door.

Lyons risked a glance back and saw the green pursuit car charge into the alley. He swore violently, then asked, “Can we take them out?”

“Our rules of engagement are pretty liberal,” Schwarz said, his voice tinged with dry sarcasm.

“Are we sure we want to?” Blancanales asked. “They’re just a surveillance team.”

“They’re agents of a secret police unit designed to keep an aggressive totalitarian despot like Chavez in power. This country is about thirty-six hours away, at any one time, of going the Night of the Long Knives route. Hell, how many journalists and political dissidents has Chavez’s Gestapo already jailed, tortured and killed?” Lyons argued.

“True enough,” Blancanales said. “But until we get to the cache point we don’t have weapons.”

“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Lyons said.

“Oh, God, no,” Schwarz muttered.

Basra, Iraq

HAWKINS SETTLED his head down and eased into a tight cheek weld with the buttstock of his weapon. His finger rested firmly on the trigger, eliminating any slack from the pull. Poised for the kill, he used the scope to evaluate the hunter-killer team sweeping toward his position.

Two men stayed behind in each of the Dzik-3 APCs—the driver and a machine gunner using the roof-mounted M-2 .50-caliber machine gun. A dismount squad consisting of a three-man fire team from each vehicle patrolled the area in methodical motions of cover and movement. The unit commander, an obese and belligerent-looking soldier in a felt green beret, walked along beside the center Dzik-3 with a sat phone in one hand and a U.S. Army Beretta in the other, controlling the search grids of the foot soldiers.

Target number one was the officer, Hawkins decided. Targets two, three and four would be the exposed machine gunners. Encizo could use the AP rounds in his Hawk grenade launcher to attack the three fire teams. With surprise and aggressive use of tactical firepower their ambush could decimate the platoon. He just wasn’t sure if they could handle any reinforcements.

“Coming closer. Moving careful and being thorough,” he warned in a tense whisper.

He heard Encizo hurriedly pass the information along to David McCarter. There was a murmured reply, and then the Cuban whispered the Briton’s instructions into Hawkins’s ear.

“They start crossing the parking lot between the last warehouse and our position then go ahead and take ’em. If we can get to insertion point two, we’ll be good either way, but we have to be sure we can hold them off long enough for Manning to finish the electrical job.”

“Understood,” Hawkins replied.

Encizo gave McCarter a thumbs-up. The Phoenix leader nodded, then turned back toward the big Canadian. Manning nodded without looking up.

“I’m in the schematic pathway,” he said. “There’s enough juice in these coils to do what we need, but I have to passive link the nodes one at a time to connect with the coalition power grid. It has to be done in order or the transformers will reject the current or overload.”

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