Citadel Of Fear

James and Hawkins fired their rifles empty and knelt out in the open, counting on their comrades. “Reloading!”

McCarter and Encizo advanced, firing. “Coming through! Flank the road!”

McCarter and Encizo reached the bumper of the first truck and gave covering fire as Hawkins ran across the road.

Manning shouted over the com, “Watch out! Second truck!”

Rubber screamed as tires spun against the slick road surface.

“He’s ramming!”

McCarter leaped back. Encizo was a second too late. The middle truck rear-ended the lead and moved it six feet. Encizo was at the end of the chain and the bumper sent him flying. “Fish!” The truck tilted as its rear axle snapped. The Cuban did a spectacular reverse somersault across the pavement and collapsed prone by the side of the road. “Fish!”

James burst out of the trees. He grabbed Encizo by his straps and hauled him back. Tracers flew between the tree trunks in angry streaks. James jerked three times and fell. Gears ground as the middle truck went in reverse to position itself for a second ramming attack. “Cal! Fish!”

Calvin James’s voice was ragged over the line. “We can fight!”

“Covering fire!” McCarter vaulted up the steel bumper and onto the hood of the truck. He emptied his rifle on full-auto as he went over the top and leaped to the tilted truck bed. The second truck’s tires screamed and bit in. The truck lurched forward to ram. McCarter tossed his empty rifle and swung into the gunner’s seat. He kicked the traversing pedals and brought up the muzzles of the twin cannons.

The truck driver stared into the twin 23 mms and stood on his brakes; the truck started to hydroplane. McCarter snarled and squeezed the trigger. The bastard should have stayed on course. The cannons came to life and ripped the truck apart from stem to stern. The truck was instantly reduced to burning wreckage, but the wreckage had the good taste to swerve and slam into a tree by the side of the road. This conveniently left the third truck wide-open.

McCarter gave truck number three both barrels. The truck broke apart like a beer can. McCarter traversed and scoured the underbrush on both sides of the road. He eased his finger off the trigger. The misty road was eerily lit in orange by the burning trucks. The road was littered with bodies. For McCarter the loudest sound was the ticking of his red-hot cannon barrels and the misting rain sizzling off them. The Phoenix Force leader spoke quietly into the com. “Sound off.”

Phoenix Force came back in the affirmative. James and Encizo sounded worse for wear.

“Hold positions,” McCarter bellowed like a boss. He used a choice phrase in Russian he had picked up in his travels. “Surrender or die!”

Two men hesitantly rose from the wet, their hands raised. On the other side of the road a rifle clattered out onto the wet pavement. A large, bald man came out with a pronounced limp.

McCarter kept his hands on his cannons’ firing grips. He jerked his head at the road and the three men went to their knees. “Fish, you all right?”

“I got my wind, my ribs and my lungs knocked out of me. It’ll be a miracle if nothing isn’t broken.”

“Cal?”

“I got it about one-sixteenth as bad as Fish. I took three to the chest, but my armor held.”

“Hawk, Fish, sweep the area. Gummer, hold position and keep an eye on the road. Cal, on me with our friends.”

Phoenix moved.

Cal came forward and admired the cannons. “Well played, team leader. Well played.”

“Thanks. Check our pals, would you?”

James strode up upon the prisoners. The three kneeling men regarded the large black man with mixed fear and hostility. “Anyone speak English?” he asked. Three sullen glares was the only response. James clicked the Polish-issue bayonet onto his rifle. “You boys sure?”

The big, bald, wounded man spoke. “I speak.”

“Good, that’s real good.” James shot him a winning smile. “Russian, huh?” The man’s shoulders sagged. His leg was clearly paining him. James continued to smile and continued to keep the brutal-looking man kneeling in place. “What’s your name?”

The man seemed to search for strength.

“For the next forty-eight hours you’re mine. So, what would you like me to call you?”

The man closed his eyes. “Nikita.”

“Okay, Nick. Can I call you Nick? Good.” James took a big, deep breath of the misty, salty, dank Gdansk dawn. He sighed happily. “So, how are you enjoying Poland?”

Nick’s accent was very thick. “I hate fuckin’ place.”

“Rather be back in Kaliningrad, would you?”

Nick sighed fatalistically. “Never should have left Orsk.”

“Orsk?” James grinned. “I killed a whole bunch of guys in Orsk once.”

Nick didn’t bat an eye. “I believe.”

James looked at the other two. One was tall and skinny and one was tall and fat; they looked related. “Do those two speak English?”

Nick glanced at the men. They glared back. “No.”

“Who are they?”

“Hammerhead scum.”

Hammerhead was Russian slang for low-level mafiya enforcers and, to James’s eye, they fit the bill. As had their distinct nonmilitary behavior during the entire battle. James suspected if he stripped them, the two men would be covered in Russian prison tattoos. He regarded Nick shrewdly. He had an inkling Nick wouldn’t be. “If they’re hammerhead scum, I think that makes you podryadchik.”

Nick flinched.

Cal knew he’d hit pay dirt. Podryadchik was Russian for someone who was paid to do something for someone else. It was their word for contractor. Nick was former Russian military, probably special forces of one stripe or another, and was likely in private security, and now, it seemed, private wet work.

“What were you before you got saddled with these mafiya wing-nuts? Alfa-Tsenter? Moran group? RSB?”

James studied the man’s reactions and compared them to everything he had revealed in the past sixty seconds. James started reading him like a book. “Nah, you’re a good Russian boy. You love your homeland. And that’s where you do your best work. I bet you were Viking Group.”

Nick twitched again. James knew from past experience that Viking Group specialized in private security within Russia.

“You didn’t like this job from the get-go. You knew going into Poland was a mistake. But the money was real good, wasn’t it?”

“Screw you,” Nick responded. But he didn’t seem to have much heart in it.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Nick mumbled something in Russian that sounded very fatalistic.

“You know something, Nick. I like you.”