Читать книгу: «Doom Prophecy»
McCARTER RIPPED A BURST INTO HIS ATTACKER’S CHEST
The machete-wielding killer spread his arms wide, the wind knocked from his lungs before he could cry out, further raising the alarm.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Briton saw Hawkins leap out behind another predator, clubbing him with the buttstock of his P-90. The marauder collapsed without a sound, and Hawkins crawled on top of the stunned man, grabbing riot cuffs from his pocket.
The crack of a handgun split the night and McCarter and Manning separated, drawing the Phoenix Force leader’s attention back to the front of him. Manning’s FN spoke, coughing out suppressed rounds that chopped into the handgunner, ending his assault.
McCarter stumbled over a tree root, and looked up to see a machete-wielding murderer let out an enraged scream as he came down on the Briton, blade gleaming in the starlight, thirsty for blood.
Other titles in this series:
#17 VORTEX
#18 STINGER
#19 NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE
#20 TERMS OF SURVIVAL
#21 SATAN’S THRUST
#22 SUNFLASH
#23 THE PERISHING GAME
#24 BIRD OF PREY
#25 SKYLANCE
#26 FLASHBACK
#27 ASIAN STORM
#28 BLOOD STAR
#29 EYE OF THE RUBY
#30 VIRTUAL PERIL
#31 NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR
#32 LAW OF LAST RESORT
#33 PUNITIVE MEASURES
#34 REPRISAL
#35 MESSAGE TO AMERICA
#36 STRANGLEHOLD
#37 TRIPLE STRIKE
#38 ENEMY WITHIN
#39 BREACH OF TRUST
#40 BETRAYAL
#41 SILENT INVADER
#42 EDGE OF NIGHT
#43 ZERO HOUR
#44 THIRST FOR POWER
#45 STAR VENTURE
#46 HOSTILE INSTINCT
#47 COMMAND FORCE
#48 CONFLICT IMPERATIVE
#49 DRAGON FIRE
#50 JUDGMENT IN BLOOD
#51 DOOMSDAY DIRECTIVE
#52 TACTICAL RESPONSE
#53 COUNTDOWN TO TERROR
#54 VECTOR THREE
#55 EXTREME MEASURES
#56 STATE OF AGGRESSION
#57 SKY KILLERS
#58 CONDITION HOSTILE
#59 PRELUDE TO WAR
#60 DEFENSIVE ACTION
#61 ROGUE STATE
#62 DEEP RAMPAGE
#63 FREEDOM WATCH
#64 ROOTS OF TERROR
#65 THE THIRD PROTOCOL
#66 AXIS OF CONFLICT
#67 ECHOES OF WAR
#68 OUTBREAK
#69 DAY OF DECISION
#70 RAMROD INTERCEPT
#71 TERMS OF CONTROL
#72 ROLLING THUNDER
#73 COLD OBJECTIVE
#74 THE CHAMELEON FACTOR
#75 SILENT ARSENAL
#76 GATHERING STORM
#77 FULL BLAST
#78 MAELSTROM
#79 PROMISE TO DEFEND
#80 DOOMSDAY CONQUEST
#81 SKY HAMMER
#82 VANISHING POINT
Doom Prophecy
STONY MAN®
AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Don Pendleton
Ka55andra is the proper spelling for the character’s name. It is a habit for people in cyberspace to protect both their anonymity and individuality by adopting unique spellings of their names, often by replacing letters with numbers or symbols such as @, $, # and &. All references to Cassandra starting with “K” are properly spelled, as are the spellings of the mythological prophetess’s name.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
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
PROLOGUE
The bridge was quiet and dark, in sharp contrast to the glittering San Francisco skyline to the south, reflecting off the Pacific Ocean like an orgy of fireflies. Cara Duong wasn’t afraid of the dark, or what lurked in it, not with the reassuring weight of the Colt 1911 in the waistband of her skirt. Her trench coat was drawn tightly around her as the chill breeze cut over the railroad trestle.
The smell of the ocean was strong, but another scent dominated her memories. It was the scent of fresh blood, still vivid after decades. The unmistakable image of her mother’s bare white ribs sticking through her blood-spattered chest stabbed into Cara Duong’s gut and twisted like a murderer’s knife. She had been only nine years old, but already she’d known pain and loss.
When she was only five, her father and teenage brother were slain during the 1968 Tet Offensive, killed in pitched battle against the American forces who sought to crush the Vietnamese dreams of independence and freedom from western oppression. Her mother told her constantly about the wretched whites and blacks who violated their country, who raped women and children and burned villages, deforesting jungles, turning paddies to poisoned muck with the corpses of their slain countrymen.
Cara Duong hated Americans as a child, but that was because she had a good teacher. Her mother was as much a warrior as her father was. Mama Duong was ageless, able to look as old or young as she wanted to with only a little change of clothing and makeup. She snuck into the cities when she could, slaying American soldiers on leave who looked for a little “brown nookie.”
Even today, the term filled her mouth with the acid taste of hateful bile. Duong trembled with rage, more than from the coolness of the northern California night.
Her mother had taught her well, how to hate, how to despise. At age eight, Duong learned to shoot her first gun, a captured Colt 1911 just like the one she stuffed down into her skirt. It was locked and cocked, meaning that the hammer was all the way back, ready to fire, but the safety was on, keeping it from going off accidentally. Her mother was good with guns, but even better with knives.
But all the skill in the world didn’t make a difference. Not with a dozen armed soldiers stalking through their village at night, hunting for insurgents. Mama Duong roused her fellow fighters to make a defense, laying a trap for the hunters.
Cara Duong didn’t know if it was an itchy trigger finger, a frightened reflex, or plain impatience that fired the first shot, spoiling the ambush. All she knew was that when the first bullet exploded, the Americans returned fire.
No. They returned more than fire. They returned the full unleashed wrath of hell. Grenades detonated and ripped huts asunder. Antitank rockets plowed through homes and reduced them to fluttering pieces of burning paper, everyone inside slaughtered and vaporized by the unholy fury of their blasts. Heavy machine guns ripped through the night, grunting like a herd of giant pigs, except these war pigs stampeded and churned human beings asunder.
Mama Duong brought up her AK-47 and blasted three of the Americans before they could react. She kept her head and raced with her daughter around the back of the unit of soldiers. A single man spun and fired back, blazing away with a grenade launcher that threw Cara’s limp form to the ground, her flesh charred by the heat of the explosion. Her mother avoided most of the blast, and she opened fire on the man with the grenade launcher.
Her shots had no effect. The man spun under the impact of a bullet through his upper arm, but he still held up his Colt Commando and blasted with his other hand.
Cara, her back and shoulders burning, saw the face of the soldier who killed her mother, his features illuminated by the blazing fireball of the muzzle of his short-barreled assault rifle.
That face was burned into her memory, the searing image forever tied to the state of her mother’s body, ripped apart and ruined by a hose of 5.56 mm slugs chopping into defenseless flesh. Unconsciousness claimed Cara moments after her mother flopped to the ground, her last thought being of a vow to kill the American who took away the last of her family.
Headlights flashed at the other end of the trestle. Cara tensed, her eyes narrowing with concentration.
He was coming.
Cara Duong never thought she’d ever see the man again, but to have not known Lieutenant Governor Riddley Mott, the crusading politician who took California by storm, she’d need to have had her head buried in the ground like an ostrich. Riddley Mott, Vietnam veteran, war hero, Purple Heart recipient.
Her mother’s murderer.
The living symbol of the American forces who slaughtered her father and older brother.
The man who destroyed the huts of the village of Troui, laying waste to her home, the home of her childhood friends.
The medical men who treated her upon awakening said that she was one of eight survivors from the battle of Troui. It was a complete slaughter, with the Vietnamese fighters being killed to a man, the cross fire laying waste to entire families. Tears came to Cara’s eyes, but something darker came into her life, wrapping around the base of her heart, coiling black bloodlust, a desire for vengeance that roosted in her breast like a cancer.
Now she had her chance. She was in spitting distance. Riddley Mott, the crusading politician, war hero, golden son of the California senatorial race, was no saint. With her computer skills, she’d managed to trace his bank account records, and found interesting sources of contributions, both public and private. Very few of them were a matter of record, and more than one of his contributors was listed under FBI surveillance.
But the FBI didn’t know that these corruptors had their fingers in Mott’s pocket. They knew that money was being laundered somewhere, but only Duong had been able to track the cash through the loops of offshore bank accounts until they finally found their way into the lieutenant governor’s pocket. The information would have made Duong rich enough in its own right, but the Vietnamese woman didn’t need cash. She could skim millions with a press of the button, not even breaking a sweat writing the code necessary for such a heist.
No. She wanted blood.
She imagined Mott, clutching his bloody guts, his stomach sporting one to five big fat .45-inch holes, coughing up gouts of syrupy red, eyes wide with horror and agony. The thought brought a warmth to her that dissipated the cold in her bones.
Mott walked toward her from the other side of the trestle. The headlights of his car backlit him and his shadow stretched crazily forward. Cara’s moon-shaped face glistened lightly in the reflection when Mott’s shadow didn’t block the light, but she doubted he’d remember her.
Not the way she remembered him, even with gray starting to replace the black in his hair, wrinkles deepening his craggy, handsome face.
Come get your payback, you son of a bitch, Duong thought. Through the vent pocket in her trench coat, she felt the wooden grips of her Colt .45. They were rough, the checkering clinging to her hand. She enjoyed the feel of the big handgun. Its handle was just small enough for her to get a good trigger reach, and yet the weapon was as powerful as anything on the market.
Mott stopped, twenty feet away from her.
“Good evening, Lieutenant Governor,” she said.
“Some gook,” Mott muttered. “So you’re the one threatening to tell the FBI about my friends?”
“Not just some gook, Riddley.”
“I survived four years in Vietnam taking on all comers. You’re supposed to impress me?” Mott asked.
“I’m not here to impress you, Riddley.”
“My friends call me Riddley, bitch.”
“Then, by all means, Lieutenant Governor, don’t count me among your friends, you murdering bastard.”
“Murder?” Mott asked. He was clearly surprised.
“Remember the village of Troui?” Duong asked. The muzzle of the .45 slipped out of her waistband.
Mott frowned.
“Remember a woman, a woman with a nine-year-old child, attacking you?” she asked.
“That wasn’t murder. It was self-defense. She tried to kill me first,” Mott said. He didn’t sound in the least bit guilty.
Too bad, Duong thought. Your punishment is coming.
“Listen, just turn around and go back home before you end up regretting this,” Mott suggested.
Duong pulled out the Colt, flicking off the safety in a single fluid motion. “I actually think you’re going to regret this, asshole.”
Mott looked at the gun, but his face didn’t show anything more than momentary surprise. He took a half step away from her, holding up his hands.
“Now come on. Don’t you think that’s a little too big for you?” Mott taunted.
The muzzle didn’t waver a single degree. She aimed at his stomach, anticipating the gut shots that would fold Mott like bloody laundry, making him vomit his life as his internal organs were reduced to soup by the fat .45-caliber hollowpoint rounds she loaded especially for the purpose of prolonging his agony.
“It’s too big for a rat bastard like you. But hey, you’ll die faster this way,” Duong said.
The sound of footsteps behind her reached her ears too late. Black shapes lunged out of the darkness, a blow knocking her gun hand up. The Colt erupted into the night sky, its muzzle-flash lighting the darkness. Strong fingers wrapped around her slender arms, yanking her off balance. The .45 was pulled from her grasp and thrown to Mott.
“Silly bitch,” Mott said. “You think I wouldn’t come here without some kind of backup?”
Duong thrashed, trying to pull free as Mott held the pistol loosely in his hand. The bodyguards held on to her tightly, not giving up an inch of slack. Her dark eyes stared back in defiance at her mother’s murderer.
The barrel whipped across her face, its front sight slicing into the flesh of her jaw. The metal carved a four-inch furrow in her smooth, once unlined face, throwing her head back. Her eyes crossed.
“Hold this gook down, guys,” Mott said, stuffing the pistol into his jacket pocket. “I always enjoyed having a piece of brown tail.”
Duong’s eyes blurred as her trench coat was torn open, rough hands ripping at her skirt as she kicked and struggled.
HITTING THE WATER was a shock. She felt her shoulder dislocate as she struck from seventy feet up. Her entire body had already been abused and violated. Somehow, through the whole ordeal, she’d stayed conscious, her brain rousing back to life as she was finally dragged, half naked, to the edge of the trestle that overlooked the swollen river below.
On the way down, she took a deep breath and knew that even as she tried, the impact with the water would knock it from her lungs. If she hit wrong, in a spot that wasn’t deep enough, she’d be dashed against the river floor, broken apart.
Instead, hitting the water only popped her shoulder free from its socket and left her breathless. The next few moments were a nightmare swirl of turgid waves, inky darkness and body-numbing pain, but somehow she found the strength to breach the surface of the river, gulping down fresh lungfuls of air.
She had survived the fall, even though she was being swept away from the bridge in a crazy tumble. Mott threw her over, in the hope that the fall would kill her. A bullet in her would leave too much evidence should she be washed ashore after a few days.
But she was alive, and she kicked, dragging herself with her good arm toward the shore.
She needed to make the shore, to survive.
Riddley Mott wasn’t getting away with murder tonight.
Cara Duong still lived to kill again.
CHAPTER ONE
COMMAND:> RUN RADIO FREQJAM.EXE BAND 438.79
COMMAND:> RUN VOICEMOD.EXE SAMPLE 11418
COMMAND:> BEGIN XMIT
The radio crackled to life with a staccato burst of static that made the members of Special Forces Unit Knight Seven jump to attention. “Rook’s Nest to Knight Seven. Respond.”
Captain Jacob Kensington took the radio. “Knight Seven reporting. What’s the problem?”
The jungle zipped past the windows of the MH-60K Pave Hawk as it cut through the night skies twenty feet above the Kenyan countryside. The Pave Hawk was designed for low-level flying, with advanced avionics and terrain avoidance/terrain following multimode radar. The pilot could fly in pitch black without fear of encountering obstacles that could tear off the rotors. There was still some light that reflected off a gibbous moon; however, the Pave Hawk crew wouldn’t take chances. The ship’s gunner was strapped into his harness, hands wrapped around the .50-caliber machine gun, scanning the night.
But all the technology in the world, redundant electronics and hydraulics, still didn’t bring reassurance to Captain Kensington. Not with the sudden call.
“The problem is that the target is moving,” Rook’s Nest’s voice responded.
“What?” Kensington asked. He kicked himself for being so blatantly obvious, Rook’s Nest would provide an explanation to him immediately. Shock had taken him off guard. What in the hell was the Shining Warrior Path doing moving their training base at this time of night?
Unless…
“The Predator UAV drone has picked up a convoy of trucks moving out,” Rook’s Nest explained.
“Dammit,” Kensington cursed under his breath. The rest of Knight Seven, listening in over their own headsets, tensed up. They looked at him for confirmation.
“We think they must have noticed the Predator on its overflight while there was still light,” Rook’s Nest answered. “They’ve been packing up and moving out.”
“All right, team,” Kensington advised. “Change of plan. We have to take out that convoy.”
“It’s your option, Knight Seven. The Copperheads we had tagged for the warmup can be redirected, but you have to be on the ground to laze the target,” Rook’s Nest pointed out.
“Thanks,” Kensington replied. He grit his teeth in frustration. The team had no ambush site plotted out, and in the time it took for a flight of Copperhead missiles to reach the convoy, the trucks would be able to drive away unless Knight’s Seven slowed them. That meant two minutes of fighting.
The original plan was to have Knight’s Seven land and use its laser designators to bring down a storm of warheads to obliterate the camp, and once the enemy forces were decimated, the Special Forces team would move in, mopping up. They were to kill anyone who was left, butcher’s work, but the Shining Warrior Path was a group of hardened murderers, aligned with the remnants of the Taliban. They had been responsible for dozens of car bombings throughout Pakistan, and had killed more than forty people and injuring hundreds. If slaughtering the terrorists seemed cold-blooded, then Kensington had only to remember the photographs he’d seen of the carnage wrought by the Shining Warrior Path.
It was payback time.
He glanced at the pilot’s monitor, seeing the Predator’s video feed showing a line of trucks moving through the forest. The GPS readings gave the pilot a good path.
“All right. Swing around front,” Kensington said, checking his own map of the area. “We’ll use the hairpin that’s heading into the canyon.”
“Gotcha,” the pilot answered.
“Rook’s Nest, do you have that?” Kensington asked.
“Right. The ambush will happen at the hairpin road leading into the canyon,” Ka55andra answered, her voice masked by a modulator to sound exactly like Rook’s Nest. “Plotting the flight path now.”
Ka55andra smiled as she looked at her transmitting equipment. She was forwarding the information to the Shining Warrior Path as she spoke. It was she who took control of the Predator UAV drone, and she who was feeding computer-generated imagery through the monitor, giving Knight Seven and their Pave Hawk false information.
She was glad that she anticipated the best spot for Knight Seven to land and attempt to engage the convoy. Her brother, Wilson Sere, had taught her well; military tactics were as second nature to her as the complex coding of high-powered computer programs.
As she watched on the Predator’s true video feed, the Pave Hawk swerved off course from the main Shining Warrior Path camp, soaring toward the canyon. She directed the drone, piloting the remote-control spy in the sky after the helicopter. The Pave Hawk had slowed considerably, allowing the 150-mile-per-hour unmanned aerial vehicle to do more than keep pace. Putting on a burst of speed, she targeted the American helicopter.
The Predator was unarmed, but in effect, it was a slow-flying, guided missile. One that was big and heavy enough to do a lot of damage to a helicopter just by crashing into it. Ka55andra smirked as the distance between the two craft shortened.
Algul’s men wouldn’t need to use their RPG rockets to bring down the aircraft. There was a good chance, too, that they would be able to capture some of the American soldiers alive.
Algul was exactly the wrong kind of person that American soldiers wanted to be in the hands of. He liked to promote the rumor that he was one of the avenging dead. Even his name was Arabic for the blood-drinking nightmares that stalked the night, a Pan-Arabian version of the vampire. Prisoners who fell into his hands were bled dry into goblets, their vital fluids occasionally drunk in an orgy of madness.
Ka55andra wanted that on live, streaming video, presented to the world.
American soldiers, slain by her very own pet ghoul, would be an excellent calling card, a chilling message to be sent back to the leaders of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Predator transmitted its final images, the Pave Hawk looming in the view of the monitor. The door gunner screamed, sending out a blast of .50-caliber shells, but it was too little, too late. The Predator’s video image jerked violently and turned to static.
Knight Seven was screaming over the radio.
The helicopter was fatally hit, but somehow the pilot was directing the wounded aircraft to a landing.
It didn’t matter.
Algul was waiting.
MONSTERS DID EXIST, and as Captain Kensington struggled to push open the crumpled door of the helicopter, he saw them rise from the African jungle, blood-streaked, horror-faced monstrosities that moved with unnatural quickness. Wild eyes rimmed with red focused on him and his team, and he brought up his Barrett M-486. The Barrett was an M-4 rifle that had been chambered for the new Special Forces 6.8 mm Special Purpose Cartridge as an improvement over the smaller 5.56 mm NATO round. Grabbing the rail-mounted forward grip to stabilize it, he flicked the rifle to full-auto and fired through the gap between the door and frame of the downed aircraft, spitting a stream of SPC rounds. The heavy bullets smashed into a trio of the charging shadows.
His commandos struggled as hot brass rained down on them. They tried to get up, to gather their own weapons.
The first three attackers were swatted down in Kensington’s initial burst, but moments later other bodies slammed into the hull of the Pave Hawk. He whirled, but the barrel snagged in the grip of one blood-caked, snarling madman. Wrenching with all his strength, the Special Forces captain tried to pull free, to regain control of his gun.
It was like fighting a gigantic octopus. Other hands gripped the barrel of his rifle, fingers clawing at his sleeve and snagging it. The ripstop material resisted Kensington’s efforts to pull free, and he found himself being dragged through the gap.
The captain’s mind flashed back to the zombie movies he’d watched in his youth, remembering the horror of being torn from a place of safety and security, being hauled into the merciless grip of a horde of snarling, bloodthirsty things. He kicked frantically at the doorjamb, his team clawing at his back, trying to keep hold of him as he was being hauled through the dented doorway.
“No! Let me go!” The M-486 was empty. He’d burned off the whole magazine in a mad attempt to drive off the marauders, but with each corpse fallen away, another implacable man-thing lunged into place, fingers tearing at his battle uniform and flesh like talons. Icy fear filled his bowels as two of his men wrapped their arms around his legs, pulling with all their might as he was almost out of the helicopter now. His uniform blouse was torn out of its web belt. His backpack and load-bearing vest were peeled from his skin, and the chill of the night could be felt on his naked skin where the dozens of hands weren’t clutching him.
Kensington twisted his head. He bit into one marauder’s forearm and hot blood gushed over his lips, the skin bitter and tasting of clay and earth. He spit the foul concoction out of his mouth and felt his scalp yanked, his nonregulation-length hair knotted with clutching fingers. His lungs squeezed out a wail of horror. He was being dragged to his death.
A thumb gouged his eye. Fingers slipped into his mouth and yanked him by his upper teeth. He kicked and struggled, but his arms and legs were too firmly held. His spine creaked under the sheer pressure put on it by the tug of war. Gunfire exploded over the eerie silence.
That was the greatest of horrors. There were not even shouts of anger, no mocking taunts. Just quiet, voiceless violence. Like something out of the zombie movies, but there wasn’t even a soundtrack of moans or eerie music. Except for the rattle of M-4s, there was numbing silence, just the clutching of hands, the clawing of fingers, the tearing of skin and cloth and hair from its roots. And his own terrified screams for mercy and help.
To Kensington, that was the worst of all. As a commander, he led by example. That was why he struggled to his feet first, that was why he volunteered to be first through the door on countless terrorist-hunting missions. He didn’t want his men to face any dangers he wouldn’t. But now he was caught in his ultimate nightmare, out of control.
When darkness descended upon him, he almost welcomed what he knew to be his death.
THE HORROR WASN’T OVER. Captain Jacob Kensington opened his eyes. He was in front of a white drape, lit up by klieg lights. He squinted past the glare and could see men with video and still cameras. Flash elements flared and made him blink and wince. When he looked at the ground, he could see the forest floor. Trees were visible on the other side of the lights now that his eyes had adjusted. He was still in the jungle.
To his horror he found he was tied to a giant wooden X, his men around him. Six lay on the ground, their bodies ravaged and torn, their skin ripped out in chunks, eyeless sockets staring into the sky above them. He prayed that they were dead long before they were mutilated. He didn’t want to think of the possibility that the wounds on his dead boys were from bite marks, that they had been partially eaten alive.
Kensington saw a man wearing fragments of skull wired together into a mask on his face, two long animal fangs bolted into the cheeks, framing a wide, swarthy mouth. The man wasn’t African, though his skin was browned, heavily tanned. Clear blue eyes stared out of the eye sockets of the skull. They looked him over, making his skin crawl.
“I am Algul,” the man said. His cape fluttered on his shoulders. For a moment Kensington thought it was made of leather of various colors, patch worked together with coarse twine, but on closer examination, he saw tattoos on each of the bits of flesh. He recognized the unit insignias of dozens of military units from around Africa and the Middle East, each tattoo centered and perfectly visible.
Cold dread filled Kensington’s gut as he realized that the madman calling himself Algul was wearing the skin of dozens of soldiers, claiming their tattoos for his multicolored cloak.
The skull-masked killer smirked at Kensington’s fear and brandished a wicked, bone-handled knife. He stepped to the half-naked Special Forces captain and walked behind him. Kensington tried to turn his head, to follow the man, but instants later the skin over his shoulder blade burned.
“What a lovely skin tag you wear, Captain,” Algul whispered seductively into his ear. “It will look wonderful on me, do you think?”
“Get fuck—!” Kensington gasped, pain choking off his words. Blood poured down his back now. Algul stepped in front of him, licking the back of the patch of skin, and the Special Forces captain couldn’t restrain a shudder of cold fear and revulsion.
“Delicious,” Algul said with a grin, his teeth stained with blood.
Kensington tried to swallow, but his throat was too tight, too dry. His heart hammered in his chest. “The U.S. government will not negotiate for our freedom. We will not give in to terrorist demands!”
Algul quirked an eyebrow and handed Kensington’s skin to one of his followers. “Terrorist demands? You silly, silly fool.”
The bone-handled knife rose to the captain’s throat. “First, I am not a terrorist. I am the spiritual leader of my people, the warriors of the night who seek freedom from the oppression of those who seek to shine their light upon us.”
The edge slit Kensington’s skin, a slow trickle of blood crawling down his chest.
“Second, I do not have demands. Indeed, I wish for more of your compatriots to throw their lives away in coming after me. I am Algul, the demon blood-drinking prince of darkness. And I thirst greedily.”
The knife bit deeper. One of Algul’s followers pressed a goblet into his master’s hand, and the madman brought the rim up to catch the sudden splash. The cut was wicked, bleeding profusely, but it hadn’t severed a major artery. Kensington knew he’d bleed to death from this wound, but unfortunately, it would be a slow, arduous process. He struggled against his bonds, spitting and cursing, but Algul held his cup steady as it filled.
Then the madman stepped back and raised the goblet to the cameramen. “This is the blood of the enemy, which I give to you, my followers!”
Kensington watched in horror as Algul decanted the blood into his mouth, streaks of crimson rolling down his chin, pouring onto his chest. The American’s heart hammered and he struggled, trying to rip free, but his strength poured out of him, down his own torso in the torrent of life that pumped from his wound.
Algul turned to Kensington, and smiled, his mouth a crimson mask. “You may feast now, my friends.”
Suddenly, red-clay-caked bodies blocked the glare of the klieg lights, bloodshot eyes staring at him, their mouths agape and slack.
Kensington swore he wouldn’t scream in horror, but when they lunged at him, his howls streaked through the darkness as if on the hooves of a nightmare.
AMANDA CASH CHUCKLED into the phone as she listened to Carmen Delahunt on the other end of the line.
“I’ll be there in a couple days for the Expo,” Delahunt said. “Maybe then we can get together and you can update me on your hunt for Ka55andra.”
Cash looked at the calendar. The San Francisco Law Enforcement Technology Exposition was scheduled for that Friday and “white-hat” hackers like her team would be attending. “White hats,” as they called themselves, were computer experts who used their skills for the sake of preventing cybercrime. Some, like her friend Carmen, worked for the government, even though Delahunt never really let on exactly where in the government she worked. Amanda herself, and her team, freelanced their work.
Delahunt had tapped Cash and her crew for assistance in tracking down a notorious cybercriminal who called herself Ka55andra. Identified only by her call sign, she proclaimed to be a prophetess of a new age, seeking to tear down the stone walls of the government and to destroy the Department of Homeland Security. So far, the cyberwitch had proved herself to be a formidable force, sending military units and agents into death traps for numerous terrorists and criminals. Ka55andra’s reign of terror had been responsible for the deaths of three hundred lawmen, soldiers and intelligence operatives around the globe, and she showed no signs of abatement.
That was why Delahunt had started using the resources of Cash’s crew, HedSpayce, for gathering information on Ka55andra. For Cash, it was no major problem. Her crew had enough ability, and what they couldn’t get on their own, they asked for around the bulletin boards across the Net, as discreetly as possible.
Having Ka55andra, someone who had ties to international terrorists and assassins, finding out they were on her trail would have been hazardous to HedSpayce’s health.
“I’ll look forward to seeing you, Carmen,” Cash said. “We haven’t gotten together in a couple years.”
“Yeah. Unfortunately, in the work I’m in, business is too good,” Delahunt answered, sounding sullen, defeated.
Cash figured that her friend worked for something akin to the CIA or the Department of Homeland Security, and she felt a pang of sympathy. If work was keeping her busy, that meant that she was keeping her finger on the pulse of tragedies and horrors across the globe. Trying to maintain a watch on that either turned you callous or slowly bled your spirit one atrocity at a time.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Carm.”
“It’s okay. Anything you have, just send it to my BBS. I’ll have my department look it over, too,” Delahunt answered. “I just wish we could budget you more money.”
“No problem, Carm. Though, maybe a little tax break come April…”
Delahunt chuckled on the other side. “We’ll see what we can do, Mandy.”
“Thanks,” Cash answered, not quite certain whether Delahunt was joking or not.
The door of the warehouse loft offices was rapped, and Cash sighed. “I’ll have to talk to you later. Sounds like we’re getting a new delivery.”
“All right. Take care, okay?”
“Sure,” Cash replied, and she turned off the phone and tucked it into her pocket.
She opened the door and looked up to see one of the largest human beings she’d ever seen. He looked down on her but remained silent. A voice from below caught her attention, and she looked at a squat little man holding a clipboard.
“Is this HedSpayce?” the dwarf asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Cash answered. She looked past the dwarf and the giant, seeing a lanky, long-haired man with a handlebar mustache standing in the hall. He looked as if he were made out of toothpicks, he was so skinny. His eyes were black, and creepy. They had dollies, loaded with stacks of boxes of paper, diskettes and other office supplies. These weren’t their usual deliverymen, even though they wore the right uniforms and their boxes were stamped with the right return labels.
She just didn’t know. The mammoth delivery man looked too mean, too cruel, to be anything other than a professional wrestler, or worse, a serial killer. The giant somehow managed to squeeze his wide shoulders through the doorjamb and rolled his dolly toward the center of the office.
“Where do we drop this off?” the little one asked. Cash looked down at him as he pushed his cart in.
“Oh, the supply room is this way,” she said as he handed her the clipboard.
The clipboard was one of those digital delivery invoices, with a stylus to sign your name on a pressure-sensitive LED screen. HedSpayce’s office address was displayed on another little screen at the top of the brown unit. She signed her name and started to hand the clipboard back to the dwarf when something snaked around her throat.
It was an arm, the wiry thin limb of the creepy, long-haired delivery man. Suddenly, that toothpick-thin body was a lot stronger than she thought, corded muscles squeezing her throat and picking her up off the ground. Her feet kicked and she tried to let out a choked scream.
Nothing got past that strong, muscular forearm.
Henley, a handsome young black kid, rose, shouting at the man strangling her. The giant turned swiftly and wrapped his massive hands around Henley’s head and yanked him off his feet, snapping his body around and hurling him through a bank of cubicles. As the young hacker’s body crashed through the offices, screams of confusion filled the air.
Cash struggled, her fingers trying to dig into the forearm of the killer strangling her, but the cords of his muscles were too tight. It was like squeezing steel. His other arm snaked around and he aimed a long-barreled handgun at another of her friends, a pretty young woman named Claudia, and peppered her white blouse with bloody splotches. Claudia’s corpse dropped to the floor, and the HedSpayce executive forced a screech past her constricted larynx. She reached out to claw at his gun hand, but his arm was too long for her to grab the pistol.
The snakelike gunman twisted and put more shots into the head of Hideo, another of her co-workers, as he ran to her rescue. Tears burned in her eyes as she watched another of her friends collapse into a lifeless heap at her feet. Cash couldn’t speak, and her lungs strained for a fresh breath of air.
Everyone else was running now, but the giant ripped apart two boxes and pulled out two big, barrellike weapons. Thundering booms filled the room, and cubicle walls suddenly sprouted softball-size holes. More hackers and office workers tried to scramble for safety, but the giant’s weapons smashed the same massive channels through their chests and heads.
It was a massacre.
The dwarf had gotten another weapon out of a box. It looked like a water bottle with handles, a belt trailing from the side of it. However, it spit flames from the muzzle that sliced through the office. Computers burst apart in sprays of sparks and chips. Cash’s co-workers also burst open as the high-velocity slugs hammered into them.
The woman’s struggles weakened. She mouthed a desperate plea, then remembered the cell phone in her pocket. Maybe if she hit 9-1-1…
Jacob “The Snake” Cannon lowered his modified CZ-75 as he felt Amanda Cash slump in his arms. “She’s gone.”
“Took your time about it,” Linn “Gremlin” Keller snarled, slipping his personally designed belt-fed Ripper XM-1 back into its box. Keller was a brilliant weapons designer and had produced a full-powered machine gun that he could fire without being knocked off balance by the recoil. “You just love having the girls struggle, don’t you?”
Cannon smirked. “I’m part snake, Gremlin. You know we like to feel the last wiggles of our prey.”
He licked Cash’s earlobe, then let her slip to the floor in a puddle of long red hair and tangled limbs. “Haggar!”
The gigantic David Lee “Mammoth” Haggar stopped clomping through the wreckage of the cubicles and looked back to his partners.
“You know, while you two are talking,” Haggar answered in a deep baritone, “there might be survivors dialing for the cops.”
The giant stopped and triggered one of his custom-designed Striker 12 shotgun pistols into the body of a downed office worker. Keller had shortened the barrels on the 12-shot, rotary drum shotguns specifically to give the titanic assassin a weapon that he felt comfortable with. An oversize trigger guard and grips for his big hands completed the fitting of tool to user.
“Right. Spread out,” Keller said. “We won’t have much time to make sure of a clean sweep, not after the racket we raised.”
“If the cops come, we’ll take care of them,” Cannon responded, his cruel mouth twisting into a hideous smile.
Keller sighed, threw Haggar a bandolier of shotgun shells, then began reloading his Ripper. Cannon chuckled. Even though Keller hated to kill more people than they were hired to, there was a glint of joy as the malevolent, miniature weapons designer fed a new belt into his crowd-killing device.
Sure enough, the San Francisco Police Department showed up as they reached the entrance of the office building.
Of course, Cannon thought later. He slipped into the back of their delivery van and looked at the burning police cars and slaughtered officers slumped in the street—they never stood a chance.
CHAPTER TWO
David McCarter had a strong stomach, but when the horde of bloodred monstrosities fell upon the captive Special Forces soldiers, the Briton had to look away and shake his head. In the SAS, he’d seen countless atrocities committed against captured soldiers and policemen, and as a member and leader of Phoenix Force, he’d been at ground zero to several more. Every time he saw them, revulsion steeled him to fight harder against the madmen who sought to turn the world into their charnel house.
At the other end of the War Room table, a massive fist smashed down hard. Carl “Ironman” Lyons, Able Team’s commander, had given in to his anger.
“That’s what you’ll be going up against, David,” Hal Brognola affirmed, ignoring Lyons’s outburst.
“Africa,” McCarter said. He looked at his mission plan. “Well, I’d like to at least have Calvin with me on this.”
Brognola glanced over to Calvin James. He was a tall, lanky black man, one of the first replacement members of Phoenix Force and their first American teammate. “I wish I could keep Phoenix Force together, but we don’t have enough manpower to keep the teams intact and handle what we think are the three hot spots in the AJAX hunt.”
McCarter sighed. “We can’t call Mack in on this?”
Brognola shook his head. “He’s gone hunting. He’ll be back when he can, but I want AJAX stopped immediately.”
McCarter sighed. “All right. Phoenix has split up before to take on missions. But once you find the gobs who’ve been snuffing those State Department boys…”
“We’ll be right on the first flight to the Sudan,” James answered.
McCarter winked at his longtime teammate. “Don’t make me have to bail you out, Cal.”
Rafael Encizo spoke up. “We’ve got Japan nailed down.” The stocky Cuban’s swarthy face split with a wide smile. He glanced over to James, who looked troubled. “You okay, amigo?”
“I just wish I could be in three places at once,” James said. “I hate leaving David in Africa without a brother to back him up. And Able Team’s going to San Francisco where a lot of cops were killed by the creeps who wiped out HedSpayce.”
McCarter frowned. When he first met Calvin James, he was a member of the San Francisco SWAT team. The ex-Navy SEAL had left behind the streets of Chicago where too many of his family had been lost to heroin and its abusers. Still, even after leaving the military, James wanted to do something to see that no one else suffered like his sister and mother. Putting on a badge was James’s first step in that crusade, but soon the ex-SEAL was called to join another war, taking the place of the fallen Keio Ohara. James still kept ties with the San Francisco police department, and helped vet blacksuits for Buck Greene from that department. McCarter had lost enough friends and partners to know how much James wanted to be part of the team that got even for the slaughter of his fellow lawmen.
“Cal, look at that ugly brute that just dented the table,” McCarter said. Rosario Blancanales and Hermann Schwarz, Lyons’s partners on Able Team, chuckled at the Briton’s description of their friend.
James looked at Lyons out of the corner of his eye. He made a face. “Do I have to?”
“Kin-A you have to.” Lyons grunted, slipping into caveman mode.
James looked over, and McCarter continued. “I know you want to do mean, nasty things to those cop killers and freaks who murdered twenty unarmed office workers. I know you’re dying to unleash every horror under the sun upon them. But, Calvin, you’re only human.”
Lyons snorted ferociously.
“That ugly bugger, he’s a bloody nightmare come to life. Do you honestly think there is a worse punishment on Earth than sending him after them?” McCarter asked.
“Well, since you put it that way,” James answered. “I know I sure wouldn’t want to see him as the last thing before I went to hell.”
McCarter gave his friend a clap on the shoulder. James would have gone to Japan and done his duty anyways. Still, it was good to relieve some of his tension and doubts.
“You done with the Mac and Lyons show?” Brognola asked, feeling a little impatient.
McCarter looked at Lyons and raised his eyebrows. The blond ex-cop nodded. “Thanks, Carl.”
“Anytime,” Lyons responded.
“Now that we’re done with that,” Brognola said, “any questions?”
Gary Manning, a broad, barrel-chested Canadian, raised his hand. “The Predator that knocked down the Pave Hawk that Kensington and his team were on. Has anyone been able to check to find out how it was tampered with?”
Brognola took a deep breath, chewing his cigar. “Unfortunately, the central processor unit was destroyed on impact with the Pave Hawk.”
“So we’re up a creek without a paddle on that,” T. J. Hawkins drawled. McCarter rubbed his chin as he looked at photographs of the wreckage.
“Why?” Hermann Schwarz asked, and looked across the table to Manning, Phoenix Force’s demolitions expert.
“Not only did the Pave Hawk veer off course after losing radio contact with their base, but the Predator that was assigned to watch their target followed them. You’d think that the drone’s crew would have picked up on any interference,” Manning responded.
Schwarz ran his index finger through his mustache and thought about it for a moment. “Well, Ka55andra, the leader of AJAX, appears to be a hacker. She could have overridden the Predator’s command codes.”
“From where?” Manning asked.
“With the right satellite hookups, anywhere on the planet,” Schwarz answered. “But she’d have to be a wizard to override its control systems.”
“She does claim to be a prophet,” Blancanales answered.
“A prophet of doom, just like the original Cassandra,” Hawkins stated.
“The original Cassandra?” Brognola asked.
“It’s in Homer’s Iliad, and various other myths,” Encizo cut in. “Cassandra was given the power of prophecy by Apollo because he had fallen in love with her. Unfortunately, she didn’t love him, so he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her prophecies. Since then, Cassandra’s name has come to take on the meaning of a prophet of doom.”
Blancanales shrugged. “Didn’t you read the Classics in school, Hal?”
Brognola’s nose wrinkled. “All right. I’ll have the cybercrew look up more about her. There might be something more to her background that might suggest a motive for our cyberwitch.”
Lyons shrugged. “Well, the warrior Ajax, during the sacking of Troy, attacked and raped Cassandra in the temple of Athena. Later, the goddess Athena smashed his ship with a thunderbolt to sink him. When that didn’t work and Ajax clung to a rock, Poseidon split the stone with his trident and drowned him.”
Brognola glared at Lyons out of one eye.
“Oh, come on. It was a movie just a couple of years ago,” Lyons answered.
Brognola grumbled and shook his head.
“So we might have a rape victim as the mastermind coordinating the assault on Homeland Security?” Blancanales asked. He looked like he’d taken a bitter bite at the thought.
“Not just a rape victim,” Schwarz answered. “She had her home destroyed by Ajax. Burned to the ground, the survivors scattered to the winds, her family slaughtered.”
“And she’s blaming the Department of Homeland Security?” Manning cut in.
“Someone high up, at least,” James said. “A director, a deputy director…”
“All of whom are powerful politicians who have enough power to sweep any scandal under the rug,” McCarter mused.
Hawkins scratched his chin with his thumb, his eyes focusing on the table. He glanced over to Encizo for a helpful suggestion.
“Well, Ajax was a warrior. We could narrow it down,” Encizo suggested. “Ex-soldiers who had been present at the destruction of a city or town.”
“Fairly young, too,” Schwarz added. “At least the past thirty-five years.”
“That means any conflict from Vietnam all the way through the first Gulf War,” Hawkins finally said. “Not counting soldiers who were forced to sit by and watch ethnic cleansing in places like Mogadishu or Bosnia.”
Brognola kept scribbling down notes as his two action teams threw out suggestions. While the Stony Man cybernetics team was among the best technical minds in the world, the eight commandos in front of him were far more than just mere gunmen. They were eight of the sharpest minds in the U.S.’s counterterrorism community, each of them having investigative and intelligence experience around the world. When they set their brilliant minds to work on the same project, there were few problems that they couldn’t solve.
“It might not be thinned down much,” Brognola said. “But you guys have given me a head start. I’ll run these ideas past Bear and the crew.”
“Chances are they’ve already picked up on Ka55andra’s symbolism,” Schwarz noted.
Brognola glanced over to the Able Team electronics genius. “And I suppose they’d know the Iliad.”
Schwarz shook his head. “You didn’t study that in school?”
Brognola rolled his eyes. “I got a D in literature.”
Schwarz shrugged. “And Cassandra was featured in a couple of Shakespearian plays…”
“All right!” Brognola snapped. He looked at his teams, then chuckled. “I bullshitted my way through the exam on that.”
The Able Team and Phoenix Force commandos laughed as they got up from the War Room table, their files committed to memory.
Lyons tossed Brognola a short salute. “That’s why you sit here dealing with the bureaucrats and getting ulcers, while the rest of us engage in stress-relieving exercise.”
“Politician” Blancanales raised an eyebrow. “Stress relieving, Ironman?”
“Forget it, Pol,” Schwarz chided. “Ironman’s in a world all his own.”
“Must be one hell of a planet,” McCarter noted as he lead his Phoenix Force partners out of the War Room.
FIFTEEN HOURS LATER David McCarter watched out the window as the transport jet seemed to lazily amble into a landing. He was stiff from sitting so long on the transatlantic flight, but at least he’d managed to catch a catnap. He glanced over at Manning and Hawkins who were gathering their duffel bags and equipment cases together.
McCarter took a moment to check his Browning Hi-Power in its holster. He sighed as he looked at the plastic magazine poking out of its butt; however, it was a concession he’d agreed to make. The other members of Phoenix Force had decided to carry Glock 34 Tactical pistols, at least for now. They convinced McCarter that the new, long-slide version of the ubiquitous Glock handguns were reliable and accurate enough for their needs. They wanted to have McCarter share in the upgrade to a lightweight autopistol with a 17-round magazine.
The SAS veteran, however, would never give up his beloved Browning Hi-Power. The gun was nearly a part of him. So the other members of Phoenix Force had convinced him to try the next best thing. Stony Man’s master armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, had taken a Browning Hi-Power and altered the magazine well to accept Glock magazines. The unit, like all of Kissinger’s creations, was extremely reliable. Also, the dust cover under the Browning’s long, sleek barrel had been modified—built up to accommodate a mounting rail for gun lights, exactly like the Glock 34s that the other members of the team were using. Minor changes, but the handle still felt the same and the gun was just as accurate. The addition of an Insight Technologies XM-6 tactical light and laser illuminator unit was something that McCarter wanted to add to an assault pistol anyway.
The Phoenix Force leader shrugged. He’d have to get used to the updates of his beloved old Browning. He still had the familiar feel and controls of the classic autoloader, but also benefitted from twenty-first-century handgun designs. In a business where “change or die” was a mandate, McCarter felt he could make a few compromises. Plus, having a reliable, 17-shot magazine for his handgun, as opposed to the old 13-round clips that had to be down by one to insure that they worked, was something that he could get used to.
The transport rolled to a halt on the tarmac and McCarter was the first one to the door, carrying his bags. The door slowly opened. Hydraulics released the airtight seal and he looked out along the airstrip, seeing the green-black strip of jungle just beyond the fence. The sun had just risen, but it was already getting hot. They stepped out of the air-conditioned cabin and onto the rollaway steps; he was struck by humid, muggy heat that clung to his skin.
“Best put on your hats, lads,” McCarter called back, adjusting his black, baseball-style cap. “It’s a scorcher!”
Though he’d felt hotter sun in the deserts of Oman, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the jungle humidity was stifling. He couldn’t sweat fast enough to cool down, as the air was already saturated with moisture. But it was nothing new for the Phoenix Force commander and he bounded down to the tarmac to greet Colonel Jeff Stewart, who rose from his military-style jeep.
“Get in the jeep,” Stewart said without ceremony. Not a large man, he was lean and wiry, with dark eyes and a long nose.
McCarter didn’t take the comment as rudeness or impatience. He scanned the tree line again, then glanced back at Manning. The Canadian’s sharp eyes naturally sought out places where a stealthy rifleman could hide. As Phoenix Force’s usual sniper, Manning could anticipate where the enemy would most feel comfortable setting up a lethal, long-distance shot.
Manning continued to keep watch as Hawkins grabbed the Canadian’s gear and threw it in the back of the jeep. Once they were loaded up, the barrel-chested sniper came down the steps and slipped into the vehicle. The driver floored it and pulled away as the transport plane crawled along the tarmac toward its hangar.
“We’ve got company,” the burly, soft-spoken Canadian said.
“The plane’s moving and so are we,” Stewart stated.
“It’s not enough,” Manning answered. “Incoming!”
The asphalt behind them erupted in a fountain of flame, dust and stone chunks. McCarter whipped around and saw the telltale crater of an RPG rocket, a cottony cloud trailed from the impact zone, stretching back four hundred yards to the tree line.
Manning and Hawkins opened their rifle cases as McCarter pulled his updated Browning.
“Everyone else has to deal with lost luggage when they fly internationally,” the Briton snarled as automatic rifle fire crackled from the perimeter. “We get shot at in the bloody airport!”
“They’re out of range for your pistol, David,” Hawkins called out. He shouldered his M-486 rifle. Converted by John “Cowboy” Kissinger to the new Special Forces standard caliber 6.8 mm SPC round, the bigger, heavier bullet made the short-barreled rifle a precision killing machine, even at six hundred yards. With the Aimpoint scope mounted on the rifle, the Southern-born Phoenix Force shooter could easily pepper a target with a salvo of lead.
Hawkins swung his M-486 toward one set of targets. Two men were busily reloading an RPG rocket. Hawkins was about to trigger the rifle when one of the grenadiers suddenly jerked at the same time a crack sounded near the Southerner’s shoulder. He turned to see Manning adjust his aim and tag the second RPG man with a single shot from his Heckler & Koch MSG-90.
“Three more, eleven o’clock,” Manning whispered to Hawkins. He gave the American a wink and swung to engage more targets with his marksman’s rifle.
Hawkins picked up on the targets that his Canadian partner pointed out to him and ripped into them with a trio of short bursts. The 6.8 mm round performed as it was designed to. At 450 yards, the rifle slugs smashed into the marauders and nailed their corpses to the ground. Meanwhile, Manning calmly picked off single shots.
McCarter watched the proceedings as he pulled his own M-486 out of its carrying case. He fed it a fresh magazine and realized that most of the marauders were still five hundred yards out, and still closing with the airfield. Sentries reacted to the newcomers, but even so, the combined rifle work of Manning and Hawkins took away targets as they appeared.
The Phoenix Force leader shouldered his weapon and spotted that another group had penetrated the perimeter at ninety degrees to the main force. He judged, with the aid of his scope, that they were about 350 yards away. They had cut through a gully that was overseen by two guard towers. A quick glance confirmed for McCarter that the guards in the towers were dead, sniped from the ditch before they’d had a chance to react.
“They’re a diversionary force,” McCarter called as he swept a line of long-range slugs across the new attackers. Since they were now only a little over three hundred yards from the jeep, they were well within range for their AK-47s. “T.J.!”
“I’m on you, boss,” Hawkins snapped back.
Manning turned and gave them cover fire. Between the efforts of the Phoenix Force trio, the squad of marauders trying to rush the airstrip was caught in a triple salvo of Stony Man lead. Enemy rifle fire skipped and skidded across the tarmac, the attackers aiming too low, their weapons falling short of the jeep, at least until one bullet ricocheted into the wheelbase of the vehicle. Tire blown out, the driver struggled to keep the 4X4 from lurching, but McCarter, Manning and Hawkins were hurled from their positions.
McCarter slid out of the shotgun seat, centrifugal force tossing him around like a doll. He hit the tarmac and rolled instinctively, feeling the breeze of the jeep’s fender barely miss the small of his back. If he hadn’t gotten out of the way, his vertebrae would have been crushed and he’d be left, paralyzed on the airfield. His M-486 clattered out of his reach, bouncing several yards away.
Even the sturdy Manning had trouble staying seated, but he’d managed to hold on to his rifle.
McCarter looked up, sore from his impact on the concrete. He watched the marauding gunmen grow closer, rifles chattering. He started for his M-4 when a bullet bounced off the tarmac and whizzed too close to his thigh.
The enemy was getting their range, and the Phoenix Force leader was caught, unarmed.
CARL LYONS FLASHED his federal badge as he entered the former offices of HedSpayce, Inc., but even as he walked in from the street, the sight of white outlines where San Francisco police officers had fallen tore at his soul like a vulture at carrion. He was no stranger to murder scenes, and by far, he’d seen enough murdered policemen in his days as a cop and as the leader of Able Team. Seeing the first murdered cop was too much for Lyons. To him, cop killers were among the lowest of scum.
Inside the large warehouse loft office, evidence technicians and photographers were hard at work. Lyons frowned.
The description of the criminals, from the surviving officer who first responded to the scene, were unusual. One was a giant of a man, with a shock of red hair. Another was the exact opposite, a four-foot-tall dwarf carrying an odd little silver bottle-like weapon that sliced through squad car doors as if they were tissue paper. The third was a tall, scrawny, snakelike man who moved with boneless grace and speed, dodging and weaving out of the path of oncoming bullets while he cut loose with a pair of handguns.
The Able Team leader was a workaholic, constantly studying rap sheets and files on known terrorists, mercenaries and criminals. In his line of work, he had to know his enemy. The trio’s descriptions nagged at Lyons’s memory as he squatted, sticking a pen through the casing of a long, narrow bullet.
“We’re trying to figure out what kind of ammunition that is, sir,” a technician wearing white, paper coveralls said. “Do you have any idea?”
“It’s 5.7 mm X 27 mm,” Lyons answered as he examined at the casing.
“We thought it might be some kind of rifle round. What kind of gun uses that?” the tech asked.
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