Promise To Defend

Blancanales popped open his eyes in time to see his opponent drawing a bead on him with the AK-47. Snap-aiming, he fired the Uzi. The swarm of 9 mm slugs speared through the man’s lower stomach, shoving him back as the bullets devastated his internal organs.

Ears still ringing with gunfire, Blancanales nevertheless sensed motion to his left. He spun and caught another shooter, this one armed with a sawed-off shotgun, popping up from behind a chair. Blancanales stroked the Uzi’s trigger as he swept the SMG in a figure-eight pattern that lanced through the overturned furniture and drilled into the man’s center mass. In a last act of resistance, the man triggered his shotgun, the weapon unleashing a thunderous blast that tore into the ceiling.

Getting cautiously to his feet, Blancanales traded the Uzi for his Beretta. The thrumming of the helicopter sounded from outside. The aircraft’s noise combined with their distance from the street made it impossible to tell whether the police, sirens blaring, were descending upon the building. But he knew it was only a matter of time before the local cops hit the scene. Scanning the room, he took in the battlefield littered with corpses, shattered glass and shredded plaster. He couldn’t help but mutter an oath under his breath.

Lots of carnage and no information.

From behind a couch, he heard a grunt that unmistakably belonged to Lyons.

At the same time he also noticed that Schwarz was nowhere in sight, and a cold sensation traveled down his spine. Where the hell was he?

“C’mon, lady, give me a break here,” Lyons said.

First things first.

The Beretta leading the way, he rounded the couch and found Lyons tussling with a woman. She was dressed in black jeans, fashionable boots and a cranberry-colored, long-sleeved shirt. He couldn’t see her face, but her glossy black hair had spilled over the floor. From her profile, he could tell she was Asian. She also was giving Lyons a pretty fair tussle. Lyons had straddled the woman at the waist. He held her wrists in his big hands, but the woman continued to struggle.

“Get your hands off me, you bastard,” she yelled. Blancanales recognized the voice in an instant, felt his heart skip a beat. Shit! What was she doing here?

“Relax, lady,” Lyons was saying. “You jumped me, remember?”

Shaking off his surprise, he closed in on the pair, each step intensifying the squeezing sensation on his heart. In an instant he recognized the woman from her brown eyes and full, coral-colored lips, to the fiery temper that seemed to emanate from every pore.

It was Donna Ling, a woman from his distant past. And they had a history.

WITH GRAVITY TUGGING at his feet and the punishing wind of the rotor blades smacking into him, Schwarz knew he had only one chance for survival.

He raised the Uzi and fired the weapon at Hakim, dragging it across the man’s exposed knees. Hakim’s eyes widened in shock and the pistol fell from his fingers as 9 mm slugs tore through flesh and bone. He stumbled forward. At the same moment the pilot gave the chopper a hard jerk, an apparent attempt to knock Schwarz from the landing gear. The sudden motion caused Hakim to pitch out the door, his face instantly morphing from shock to fear as he went forward.

Schwarz looked down, saw the distance between himself and the roof. He guessed a good twenty feet already separated him.

Hell.

Letting go of the landing gear, he watched as the rooftop rushed up to meet him.

THE PRESENCE of someone approaching from behind had caused Lyons, his face red with anger and exertion, to glance over his shoulder. When he saw Blancanales, he rolled his eyes, but his teammate barely noticed. In the same instant, Blancanales’s gaze intersected with Ling’s and they stared at each other. He watched as the anger and fear fueling her struggle drained away to be quickly replaced by shock, the same emotion roiling inside him.

“Let her go, Carl,” Blancanales said.

“What?” Lyons shouted. “Are you crazy?”

The woman stopped struggling, whipped her head toward Blancanales. “Pol?” Ling said.

“I can explain,” Blancanales said to Lyons.

“This ought to be good,” Lyons fired back.

More gunfire crackled outside, followed by the sickening thud of something heavy hitting the roof. Almost immediately, the chopper’s whine grew louder and the sound of the aircraft’s engine more distant.

Gadgets!

Blancanales was sprinting for the door. Lyons was on his feet and following, the Colt Python gripped in his right hand.

The Able Team warriors burst through the door. Blancanales swept his gaze over the rooftop. He saw a man, Hakim, writhing on the ground, his pant legs stained dark with blood, his flesh rent by bullets. Schwarz stepped into view, his Beretta held in front of him, muzzle aimed at Hakim as he closed in on the Arab. He was shouting for the man to stay down.

The thrumming of the chopper’s engine grew louder. Peering up, he saw the craft circling and coming back for another pass, its side door pulled open. A hardman cut loose with a burst from the AK-47. The volley of rounds slammed into Hakim, causing him to convulse wildly. A half-dozen geysers of blood erupted from his torso.

Schwarz dropped into a crouch and fired upward. A trio of bullets sailed through the aircraft’s door, driving the man inside. The chopper grabbed altitude almost immediately and left.

“Damn!” Lyons yelled.

Able Team converged at Hakim’s body. Schwarz already had moved to the terrorist’s side and was examining him for a pulse. He looked up at the two men and shook his head.

“Need a séance to interrogate this guy,” he said.

“Wonderful,” Lyons commented. “I guess we’re back at square one.”

Blancanales looked over at Ling. “Maybe not.”

CHAPTER SIX

James heard someone approaching from behind. Propelled by instinct, he thrust himself forward, the movement sparing him the full impact of a buttstroke to the head delivered by his attacker. A glancing blow, however, caught the back of his skull, rattling his teeth and rocking his world. Staggering forward, he went to his knees, twisted at the waist and raised his crossbow.

He caught a brief impression of his opponent—a lanky man, head and face wrapped in a black scarf, dressed in jeans, T-shirt and athletic shoes. James fired the crossbow. The bolt plunged into the man’s shoulder, causing him to drop his assault rifle.

James followed up by lashing out with a blurring kick that caught the side of the man’s knee, snapping it, causing him to teeter. The Phoenix Force commando surged up from the ground and dropped on the guy like a stone, his weight driving the air from the man’s lungs. Fisting his combat knife, he pressed its keen edge against the man’s throat and, with a deep stroke of the blade, killed the man.

Wiping the steel clean on his opponent’s shirt, James dragged the corpse into a nearby stand of bushes. He recovered his crossbow, reloaded it and continued through the embassy grounds, immersing himself in the shadows.

A cough followed by the scratch of a lighter’s wheel sent a cold sensation plummeting through his belly. He halted and dropped back into a crouch. He saw an orange flicker several yards away, illuminating a terrorist’s face as he lit a cigarette.

The rank amateur move surprised James. Terrorists were by no means a match for well-trained commandos, but their training and weapons had become increasingly sophisticated over the years. To see one of these men break such a basic rule caused James to feel suspicious. Was the man just undisciplined, or was he trying to call attention to himself? A distraction, perhaps? Regardless, James would assume the worst.

Encizo’s voice sounded in James’s earpiece. “Two down, Cal. Your status?”

He had enough distance that his quarry never would hear a whisper. He cast a glance around and began to reply. Before he could, he caught another shadow closing in from his right.

Encizo’s voice, still cool, crackled again in his earpiece. “Cal? Cal?”

Powerful leg muscles coiling and uncoiling, James thrust himself forward. A glance right revealed a man closing in on him, weapon held at hip level, spitting flame and lead. The volley of shots sliced the air just above James.

Still in midair, he fired the hastily aimed crossbow. He was rewarded with a one-in-a-million shot, planting the bolt into his attacker’s right eye socket. Dropping his weapon, the man covered his face with both hands and cried out in pain. Stopping in midstride he pitched backward, his foot twitching as he plummeted into death.

James’s superbly conditioned body hit the ground. He launched into a roll and let the crossbow slip from his grasp. The man with the lighter began unloading a small grease gun in James’s direction. The bullets struck the ground, shredding grass and kicking up bits of dirt. Still rolling, the warrior plucked his sound-suppressed Beretta from a thigh holster and squeezed off three shots. The first two went wild, missing the terrorist, but coming close enough to foul his aim. The third round made a neat hole in the man’s shoulder before exploding from his back. The man stumbled backward, his injured shoulder unable to raise the rifle. The Beretta coughed twice more. Parabellum slugs drilled into the man’s sternum, chewing through his heart and spine before dropping him in a boneless heap.

“Cal?”

James keyed his headset. “Go, Rafe.”