Oceans Of Fire

“And where’re you off to with your great big cucumbers, then?” McCarter shrugged innocently. “If I might ask.”

“Mecca!” Khan roared. “We are on Haj!”

Khan’s men laughed uproariously.

The leader of Phoenix Force smiled. Gotron Khan and his forty horsemen smiled back. It was all very congenial.

“I’d fancy a look,” McCarter suggested.

The Goat sighed. “I fancy you give me your rifle now.”

“I think I’ll hold on to it.” McCarter replied smiling. “But, tell you what, mate. Why don’t you and the lads drop yours.”

Gotron Khan stopped smiling. The muzzles of two dozen weapons pointed at McCarter in open hostility. The Briton spoke quietly into his mike. “Show of force, lads.”

Horsemen shouted in alarm as Phoenix Force rose up out of the rocks. Khan craned around in the saddle and looked at Hawkins blocking the narrow path behind and James, Encizo and Manning in the rocks above.

“Well, English. You and your…four men?” Khan shook his head sadly. “Four men, have us surrounded, goddamn.”

“Goddamn bloody right we do.” McCarter nodded. “Now I’m going to count to five, and you and your men had better be dismounted and disarmed.”

Khan stared incredulously.

“One,” McCarter announced.

“Crazy Eng—”

There was no “Two.” Phoenix Force cut loose.

Each man save McCarter held a South African 40 mm Milkor revolving grenade launcher. They hammered off three quick rounds into the horsemen. The grenades broke apart into multiple bomblets as they hit the ground, skipping and hissing beneath the horses’ hooves. Khan’s horsemen struggled to control their rearing mounts. McCarter fired his M-203 into the ground directly in front of Khan and stepped back behind his boulder as his grenade flipped apart. He stripped off his fringed scarf and prudently pulled his gas mask over his face.

Automatic weaponsfire erupted all along the mountain path, but Phoenix Force had already dropped back behind cover. McCarter jacked a rubber baton round into his M-203 as he stepped out from behind his boulder.

Yellow marking smoke flooded the gorge in thick clouds. In the saffron haze the rocky landscape looked like the surface of Venus. Had McCarter not been wearing a gas mask he would have found the atmosphere almost as hostile. Beneath the burning smell of the smoke element for a split second he might have detected the more subtle odor of pepper and apple blossoms as CN/DM gas mixture blossomed unseen in the yellow fog.

McCarter put Gotron Khan in his sights.

The Goat leaned forward and threw up on his horse’s head.

CN/DM mixture was known colloquially as “Super Tear Gas.” It had all the tearing and burning effect of military-strength CN with the fun and frolic of vomit gas. It temporarily blinded and burned the eyes and throat, and at the same time sent the gastrointestinal track and the colon into spasm.

Horses were happily immune to the effect.

They weren’t immune to being regurgitated on by their riders, and they were instantly aware that their masters were no longer in control of them or themselves. Horsemen spilled to the ground as they were bucked spewing from their mounts. Phoenix Force had risen from cover. The 40 mm Milkors thudded in their hands as they emptied their remaining three chambers into the ambush.

CN/DM was rated as a nonlethal riot control agent, but it was toxic in high enough concentrations, and a man who was choking and vomiting at the same time could drown as he swallowed his lunch into his lungs.

A few of Khan’s men who were still mounted fired their guns blindly into the hillside. The sound of gunfire was enough for their horses to renew their bucking and send their riders to the ground. Gotron Khan remained in the saddle. He’d lost his rifle but his razor-sharp Cossack sword rasped from its sheath. He put spurs to his horse and charged, weeping and drooling to stab at McCarter where he stood.

McCarter triggered the M-203 and the grenade launcher thumped. The solid rubber baton round was the size of a shotglass and hit Khan in the chest at 85 meters per second. Remarkably the warlord remained in the saddle. He drunkenly raised his saber for the killing blow. Froth flew from the horse’s mouth as it raced to trample McCarter.

The Briton stepped to starboard to avoid the saber and cracked the extruded aluminum butt of his carbine across the horse’s muzzle. The stallion screamed as it sailed past shaking its head and bucking its hindquarters five feet in the air. Khan catapulted out of the saddle, flying, arms outstretched, until gravity brought him to the ground in a pinwheel of limbs.

McCarter put a knee in the warlord’s back and hog-tied him with plastic riot-cuffs. “The Goat is secure. T.J.?”

Hawkins held up the lead rope to the string of mules. “I have the packages.”

The Phoenix Force leader nodded. “Calvin, give me a head count and sitrep.”

Khan’s men were down in retching agony. Phoenix Force strode among them in their gasmasks and did a quick search. They kicked away weapons and buttstroked anyone who tried to rise with their Barrett rifles.

James was kneeling beside one of the prostrate horsemen. “All forty accounted for.”

“Situation?”

“We hit them with twenty grenades. That’s a high concentration. This one here had an allergic reaction to the gas and was going into anaphylactic shock. I hit him with epinephrine and he’s stabilized.” The ex-SEAL medic gazed upward. The clouds of yellow marking smoke were breaking up. “But the wind is around fifteen knots and we’re getting rapid dispersal. Their bodies should detoxify the agent in thirty minutes, but they’re going to be messed up with nausea, shortness of breath, physical weakness and possible mental depression for the next twenty-four hours. They won’t be following us anytime soon. I’m willing to leave them as is.”

“Aces.” McCarter slung Khan over his shoulder. “Gary, what have we got?”

Manning was over by the mules. The big Canadian had unwrapped one of the carpets and was staring at the contents. “The Goat wasn’t lying. He’s got great big cucumbers all right.”

McCarter approached and heaved Khan over a spare mule. Manning was the demolition expert of the team, but the Briton knew what he was staring at. The gray-green metal casing was roughly the size of a suitcase. Manning had flipped open a small control panel in one corner and he was examining the small bank of knobs and numeric dials.

Gotron Khan was transporting Russian nuclear demolition charges.

“You have a make and model?”

“It’s hard to make out with these goggles on.” Manning scanned the serial numbers along the side. “But this is definitely Soviet-era stuff. By the construction I’d say they were manufactured in the 1980s. They’re dial-a-yield, anywhere from one to ten kilotons depending on the job.”

“Right, let’s wrap this up. Gather your weapons and grab your rucks. I want to be out of here in five minutes and at the primary extraction site in an hour.” McCarter pulled his wandering-frequency satellite phone and deployed the chunky L-shaped black antenna. “Jack, we require extraction. We’ll be at the primary extraction sight in sixty minutes.”

Stony Man’s ace pilot was stationed at the NATO coalition base in Kholm, Afghanistan. “I’ll be there in forty-five.”

“Roger that.” McCarter hit a button on his phone. “Stony Base, this is Phoenix One. Over.”

“Phoenix One, this is Stony Base.” Mission controller Barbara Price was eight thousand miles away in the Stony Man War Room in Virginia, but her voice was as clear as a bell. “What is your mission status?”

“All four packages retrieved, and we have the Goat. We’re moving to primary extraction site. Extraction estimate one hour.”

There was a long pause on the other side of the line. “Please repeat, Phoenix One. Did you say four packages?”

David McCarter’s stomach went cold. He knew it had been too easy. “Affirmative, Base. Four packages. One special guest.”

Several moments passed before Barbara Price spoke again. “Phoenix One, we have a problem.”

CHAPTER TWO

Oval Office, Washington, D.C.