Oceans Of Fire

“Damn it.” Price watched the three-car caravan wend its way south through the early morning traffic. “They’ll just drive their SUVs inside the chopper and take off.”

“It’s worse than that.” Kurtzman stared into middle distance as he began to crunch all the angles. “Jack’s right. Zhol owns construction companies, so he probably has access to a fleet of helicopters. He knows he’s been hit already. He’ll be taking every precaution. If Zhol hasn’t factored in possible satellite surveillance, Forbes has. They’ll have multiple helicopters.”

“A shell game.” Price watched the satellite feed as Rafael Encizo and T. J. Hawkins pulled into traffic in a Russian Tarantula off-road vehicle marked with a broad circle of infrared luminescent paint on the hood. “And we can’t be sure which vehicle the nukes are in, or if they’ve been split up.”

“That’s right,” Kurtzman said. “We’re playing nuclear poker with a Navy SEAL. The best of the best.”

“Base, this is Phoenix Two,” Encizo reported. “We have the caravan in sight. Paralleling.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix Two,” Price said. “Bear?”

“We can’t afford to let these guys get out of the city, or even into a park or city square wide enough to land a helicopter.” Kurtzman nodded and hit his comm switch. “Phoenix One, this is Bear. Take them down. Take them down now.”

“AFFIRMATIVE, BASE.” McCarter was a hundred yards behind the convoy. He wore infrared goggles beneath the visor of his helmet and he could see the white light shining off the back of the middle car. “Phoenix Flight, what is your ETA?”

“I have you in sight, Phoenix One.”

“Phoenix Two?”

“We’re parallel on Western Avenue, Phoenix One,” Encizo replied.

“All units, I’m assuming the middle car has the VIPs and the packages. I want to avoid directly attacking it if possible. We take out the guard vehicles first then try to force the main target to stop. With luck, Calvin can work some magic from the inside. Phoenix Two and Three, come from behind. Phoenix Flight, drop Phoenix Four to plug any holes.”

All units came back “Affirmative.”

McCarter slid a Farm-modified RKJ-3M grenade from his jacket and pulled the pin. “Phoenix One, beginning attack run.” The Dakar 650 snarled and spit blue smoke as the Englishman gunned the engine. McCarter’s visor beaded with mist as he shot forward through traffic like an arrow.

The RKG-3M antitank grenade was a forty-year-old design, though still a clever one. The operator threw the grenade above the tank. A small parachute deployed from the handle so that the warhead deployed nosedown against the tank’s thin upper armor. It had been used effectively in the 1973 Arab Israeli War, but its main drawback then and now was that the operator had to run up and throw the grenade at the tank. Tanks and armored vehicles generally bristled with cannons and machine guns, and their crews tended to take a very dim view of anyone running toward them with cylindrical metal objects in their hands. Antitank grenades were considered at best a last-ditch defense if not open suicide. In the twenty-first century there were few modern tanks or APCs against which the RKG-3M would still be effective even if the operator could survive to get close enough.

An unsuspecting Toyota Land Cruiser in misty morning traffic was another kettle of fish.

McCarter flew past the rear and middle cars of the convoy. He lifted his thumb and the cotter lever pinged away in his wake. He whipped in front of the lead vehicle, took a moment to match its speed and tossed the grenade back over his shoulder.

Tires screamed on the wet asphalt as the lead driver stood on his brakes. McCarter had counted on that. The grenade bounced off the windshield and landed nosedown on the hood of the vehicle.

The magnetic ring that had been welded around the edge of the cylinder-shaped grenade clacked onto the metal hood, and the parachute collapsed around the throwing handle as the grenade locked in place.

McCarter had five seconds of fuse time to get out of the ten-meter secondary fragmentation radius. The BMW Dakar screamed into the red line as the grenade detonated behind it. The copper forcing cone inside the grenade shaped the detonating 567 grams of TNT and RDX high explosive into a highly condensed jet of superheated gas and fire.

The fire shot out the wheel wells like a rocket in takeoff, and the SUV lifted off its front tires. German engineering was nothing if not efficient. The designers at Asbeck knew they couldn’t make an SUV that could withstand shaped-charge attacks, but they had worked to minimize the damage and injury to passengers. The armored box around the engine channeled the blast up and down, and kept grenade and engine fragments from ripping through the passenger compartment. Halon fire-suppression units blasted out the burning oil and fuel, and hissed against the molten metal.

The stricken SUV slammed down on the molten remains of its run-flat tires.

McCarter whipped his motorcycle around in a screaming 180-degree halt. His 10 mm Parker-Hale Personal Defensive Weapon ripped free of the Velcro holding it in its shoulder holster. He snapped the folding stock into position and shouldered the weapon as all four doors of the armored Land Cruiser flung open at once.

The red dot of McCarter’s reflex sight was a glowing white blob through his infrared goggles. The white blob coincided with the forehead of the driver, and McCarter squeezed the PDW’s trigger. Three 10 mm armor-piercing slugs opened the smuggler’s skull to the sky in a spray of brain and bone. McCarter raised his sights slightly as the driver collapsed and gunned for the man coming out of the driver’s side passenger door. The Briton’s first burst clipped the killer’s shoulder and spun him, the second took him in the side of the face and rippled his head into ruins.

McCarter stood and shot. The men who leaped out of the passenger doors died even as they tried to level their automatic weapons. “Lead vehicle down! Hostiles down! Phoenix Two, attack—!”

The Phoenix Force leader swung his weapon back to the driver’s door and exchanged fire with a fifth man who popped out spraying lead from a compact assault rifle. Sparks sprayed as McCarter’s weapon mangled in his hands and his head snapped back like he’d taken a punch from a heavyweight. The Russian shooter fell with a crushed skull.

“Phoenix One!” Grimaldi shouted across the radio.

The PDW had taken two hits, and its action was dented and held open in a permanent jam. It fell from McCarter’s nerveless fingers as he toppled back across his bike.

The Briton tasted blood in the back of his throat. He ripped his helmet free and drew his Browning Hi-Power pistol. The world spun as he tried to sit up, and he fell back again. The front of his motorcycle helmet had an inch-deep crater blasted in the forehead. The copper base of a bullet gleamed from the middle of the hole. Only the ballistic ceramic insert had saved his life from the armor-piercing round.

“Move!” Grimaldi roared.

McCarter rolled to his feet as the other two SUVs pulled around the smoldering lead vehicle. Their tires screamed on the wet asphalt as they caught sight of him and swerved inward. The rest of the caravan was swerving to crush McCarter beneath its wheels.

The Briton began to empty his Browning Hi-Power into the windshield of the left-hand vehicle. His pistol stood no chance of piercing the armored glass, but the bullets did spall and create spiderwebs of cracking in the upper glass layer. McCarter ran for the curb and his opponent swerved to take him. He leaped, arms outstretched, for the top of a parked ZIL sedan. His hands closed around the luggage rack as he heaved himself onto the roof. Metal screamed as the Land Cruiser sideswiped the ZIL. McCarter’s foot went numb as the SUV’s passenger window clipped his boot heel in passing and he was flung from his perch. He hit the sidewalk with bone-jarring force and rolled. He got to his feet and emptied the last four rounds of his pistol into the back of the second armored SUV in parting.

The driver spitefully ran over McCarter’s Dakar, crushing one of the motorcycle’s wheels and crumpling the front fork.

The Briton snarled in anger and limped back to the vehicle he had disabled. He took a compact assault rifle and a bandolier of ammo from one of the fallen gunmen as he roared into his mike, “Phoenix Flight! Cut them off!”

“Phoenix Flight in position!” Grimaldi replied. “Deploying Phoenix Four!”

Rotors beat the air as the pilot dropped his helicopter like a stone three blocks up the street. The little Russian Mi-34 Hermit was a civil aircraft Phoenix Force had acquired locally. Grimaldi held the Hermit a hundred feet over the intersection. Gary Manning fast-roped out of the cabin, falling toward oncoming traffic like a spider. Horns blared and brakes shrieked as Manning’s boots hit pavement and traffic parted like the Red Sea around the heavily armed man. Manning spun his weapon on its sling as his two targets screamed through the intersection one block down.

“Phoenix Four in position. Targets acquired.” The big Canadian shouldered his Barrett M-82 A-2 rifle. It was a huge rifle, more than five and a half feet long and weighing twenty-seven pounds. It used the same action as the Barrett “Light Fifty” heavy sniper rifle, but had been redesigned in bullpup configuration. Most of the weapon’s massive action was situated in the back of the gun rather than the middle, and passed over the operator’s shoulder.

McCarter dropped to one knee, holding the big Barrett over his shoulder like a rocket launcher. The two armored SUVs came on. One pulled ahead as Manning peered through the 3x infrared sight. He saw the halo of light eclipsed as the lead Land Cruiser pulled directly in front as a shield.

“This is Phoenix Four. I’m taking out lead vehicle.” Manning put his crosshairs on the grille of the oncoming SUV. The .50-caliber round had been designed in the latter days of WWI with the specification of being able to attack observation balloons, aircraft and the tanks of the day. It had defeated such targets with grotesque ease, and a hundred years later it was still the most powerful round that one man could reasonably operate in a weapon.

The Canadian master rifleman squeezed the trigger.

The huge .50-caliber round shot forth a four-foot blast of flame from the muzzle and Manning grimaced as the rubber recoil pad behind the magazine kicked him like a mule. Steam blasted out of the lead vehicle’s grille as the .50-caliber armor-piercing round punched through the armored box surrounding the engine. Manning yanked his muzzle down and fired again. The engine shrieked and clanked as the engine block cracked and the vehicle lost power.

Manning put his third shot through the driver’s side of the windshield.

The armored windshield cratered around the .50-caliber hole and the interior went red in a spray of arterial blood. The SUV fishtailed out of control as the dead driver collapsed against the wheel. The vehicle veered onto the wrong side of the road and rammed into a parked bread truck at forty miles per hour. The side of the panel van folded around the front of the armored car.

The bumper of the last SUV was aimed straight at Manning and appeared to have no intention of stopping. Shooting into the last vehicle wasn’t the preferred action. Calvin James was inside, along with two, ten-kiloton nuclear demolition charges. Sending armor-piercing bullets sailing through the car body or shaped charges sheeting the interior with superheated gas and molten metal was a last option.

The driver had no such reservations.

He accelerated straight for Manning where he knelt in the middle of the intersection. Manning dropped the big Barrett on its sling and clicked the brake on his repelling harness. “Phoenix Four requesting immediate extraction!”

“Extracting!” Grimaldi said.

The radial engine in the helicopter overhead roared into emergency war power. Manning’s harness cinched against him as the helicopter’s rotors hammered the sky and clawed for altitude. The Land Cruiser bore down on him like a juggernaut. Manning’s feet left the ground as the helicopter pounded straight up into the sky like an elevator.

The vehicle tore past less than a yard beneath Manning’s boots. “Phoenix Flight, Phoenix Four redeploying!”

“Affirmative, Phoenix Four!”