Orbital Velocity

“Not by much,” McCarter said. He typed a quick question to send to the Farm. “Riots in Moscow?”

“Confirmed,” Delahunt answered. “Moscow police overwhelmed.”

McCarter and Manning looked to the sky. If London was going to be the site of flash mob violence, there was the possibility that the city on the Thames would receive a hammering from the same weapon that had scarred the Russian capital. The Briton typed in another question. “We expecting rain?”

“Wish we could tell,” Delahunt answered.

McCarter grit his teeth. “So while we’re looking at these berks, someone could be targeting my city?”

“Berks?” Manning asked.

“Berkshire Hunts,” McCarter explained. It was more rhyming slang, and Manning shook his head as he figured out the curse that his term stood in for.

“It’s unlikely that our opposition could stage a second orbital weapon launch, nor probable that they would assault this city without a declaration of intent,” Manning said. “According to the news, Moscow broadcast sources received a threat a few hours before the attack.”

“And Carmen would have told us if there was something for London,” McCarter said. He texted again. “No warnings?”

“None. Yet,” was the response.

McCarter’s brow wrinkled in concern. “Get C, R and T.J. on deck.”

“Already done.”

McCarter pocketed his phone. They were already on Haymarket Road, and in the distance, even in the morning daylight, he could see the bright, glowing signs of the Piccadilly Circus. McCarter could tell that they were on Haymarket due to the presence of four rearing horses off to one side. They were carved in black marble, and were beautifully polished. This statue, nestled in a semicurved corner over a small fountain, was one of McCarter’s favorite pieces of art in London, a visage of natural beauty and power. Its fame would always be in the shadow of Eros at the center of Piccadilly Circus, the massive cherub that was poised on one foot, aiming its bow at some distant lover’s heart, surrounded by the blazing neon of Piccadilly’s shops. McCarter squinted and he could barely make out the tall form in the distance over the heads of the massing hooligans.

The throng they trailed had swelled even further in size. Four more groups had hooked up to form a mob of potential rioters that seemed like an army. Throughout the crowd, he and Manning took note of dozens of glass bottles held up like torches of liberty. A more ominous sight along the edges of the crowd were the black handles of knives poking out of waistbands here and there. A couple of men carried gym bags, signaling that they were devotees of the Manchester Blacks. McCarter was too aware that those satchels could easily conceal firearms, as he and Phoenix Force had managed to disguise their arsenal that way in the past.

“I see four men with those bags on this end of the throng,” Manning stated.

“Who knows how many are mixed in with that lot,” McCarter grumbled. “I’ll need a distraction.”

Manning nodded, knowing that McCarter would need to ambush one of the bag carriers to see what he had hidden in a nylon sack. The Briton slipped closer to a hooligan he’d picked since he was the rearmost of the group. This particular soccer thug looked sober and too well groomed to be in with this lot, despite the fact that he wore team colors.

It was a simple prisoner snatch, something he had done in both service to Britain and to the Sensitive Operations Group. Off to the side, a sudden crackle of a dozen firecrackers popping drew all eyes. That was Manning’s distraction, utilizing a small portion of explosives that the demolitions genius always kept on his person. McCarter slipped his forearm around the bagman’s throat and brought up his free fist, driving the bottom edge of it hard against his target’s ear. The hooligan was paralyzed with agony as his eardrum was ruptured by the boxing of his ear, and luckily the man’s nerves were frozen, maintaining the death grip on the nylon web straps of his bag. McCarter swiftly backed into a small nook between shopfronts, sliding down the narrow entryway.

The prisoner struggled to speak, but McCarter cut him off with a sharp blow that landed just above his navel, driving the wind from his lungs. He was unable to cry out for assistance in the dark and narrow walkway down which McCarter and his captive had disappeared. The thug reached up with one hand, fingers hooked like claws, but the Briton grabbed his wrist and burst his knuckles on the brick wall. McCarter was more concerned with what his opponent’s other hand was doing, and he yanked on the hooligan’s collar, pulling him off balance.

The man’s hand rose, a snub-nosed revolver locked in it, but it was pointed toward the alley, not at the Phoenix Force commander. With a hard chop, McCarter jarred the thug’s neck with enough force that he dropped the weapon, his knees buckling.

“Not nice. Don’t you know they have laws against that shit here?” McCarter asked, yanking the hooligan’s wrists down to the small of his back. He slipped a plastic cable tie out of his pocket and bound his prisoner’s hands behind his back.

“Fuck off, Nancy,” the goon snarled.

McCarter whacked him again, this time in the temple, sending him into unconsciousness. With the bagman out cold, he was able to look inside the nylon gym bag. He saw dozens of canisters that he recognized as grenades, their pin-laden tops ominously looking back at him. A shadow fell across the entryway opening and McCarter turned to see who it was. Manning was there, keeping watch.

McCarter pulled out one canister and saw that it was chemical smoke. There were three different kinds of hand-thrown bombs inside, none of them purely explosive, but there were plenty of tear gas and stun grenades on hand to sow terror in Piccadilly Circus.

“Four that we saw, maybe three more groups,” McCarter mused.

“Whatever the amount, there are plenty of grenades to start a wild riot,” Manning replied.

McCarter grimaced. He could hear sirens in the distance. The Metropolitan police were on their way, alerted to action by Stony Man Farm. He didn’t know if that would be enough, however. He hoisted the confiscated bag, holding it out to Manning. “Forget about the shotgun rounds. We’ll need this.”

“How will we track where these came from?” Manning asked.

“Bugger that,” McCarter grumbled. “You’ve got hundreds of hooligans ready to go crazy amid thousands of innocents.”

Manning held out his backpack and McCarter gave him half a dozen flash-bangs. “We could just start the violence early if we throw these around.”

“Or we could throw them off their timing—and pull their attention our way,” McCarter answered.

Manning nodded. It was a standard bit of strategy on the part of the action-oriented Phoenix Force leader. If there was the potential for mayhem, McCarter chose to make himself a target to pull trouble away from those he’d sworn to protect. “I’ll give us some room.”

McCarter saw the brawny Canadian draw his Colt Python. The powerful revolver would make plenty of noise, being heard more clearly than any mere 9 mm pistol with its Magnum level loads. There was one thing that the Phoenix pair could count on—the reactions of everyday people to gunfire. They wouldn’t be certain how the crowd of hooligans would react, but luckily the shoppers had thinned out at the sight of a mob of rowdy drunks.

“Let fly,” McCarter said, and Manning aimed at a facade of a building, triggering three rapid, bellowing shots at the brick. The Magnum’s hollowpoints were easily stopped by the stone and mortar, preventing dangerous ricochets or rounds cutting through a wall to harm a second-floor resident.

People scattered, running away from the heart of Piccadilly Circus while the throng clogging Haymarket whirled at the sudden burst of new violence. The Python was far more authoritative than the firecrackers Manning had dropped. The rioters glared at the two men who stood defiantly in the middle of the road.

Manning and McCarter were both the same height, six foot one, but Manning was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested while McCarter was leaner.

“Who do you berks think you are?” one of the bagmen grunted. He had noticed McCarter’s bag full of tricks.

“The Peace Corps,” McCarter replied.

“Why don’t we promote you berks from corps to corpses?” the spokesman said. He turned to his mates. “Fuck ’em up!”

The wall of thugs surged, taking one step forward, but McCarter and Manning had been cooking their flash-bangs from the moment the loudmouthed bagman snarled his response to McCarter. The Phoenix pros hurled their flash-bangs in underhanded tosses, both canister grenades rolling between the crowd’s feet.

Detonating, the distraction devices unleashed twin stunning pulses through the crowd of drunken thugs. The unified surge that they had attempted transformed into a snarl of limbs as dozens folded over with painful deafness. Those who were farther back in the riot crowd tripped over those who had been halted by the blasts. McCarter and Manning had produced a dam of humanity against the flood tide of rage that would have overwhelmed them, but the grenades were only the beginning of what they needed.

The bagman had pulled a pistol from his waistband. McCarter, a British Olympic pistol champion, saw him start his quick draw and hauled out his Browning Hi-Power, triggering a quick shot faster than the gunman. The hooligan jerked violently as the bridge of his nose exploded with a precision-placed shot straight to the brain.

Not being a dedicated handgunner like his British friend, Manning whipped out his shotgun and fired the .12-gauge ferret rounds into the knees of three rioting hooligans. The tear gas shells weren’t designed to be fired directly at someone, but with the numbers they were facing, Manning erred on the side of injury rather than shooting someone in the chest.

Legs knocked out from under them, the thugs tumbled, providing a break that their allies, unhindered by flash-grenade deafness, had trouble passing. The tumble of stunned bodies created by the explosions snarled their path. It was a brief reprieve, and both Manning and McCarter were facing down a dozen angry hooligans whom they weren’t willing to gun down in cold blood.

Conversely, the surging rioters were out for Phoenix Force blood and outnumbered the merciful warriors six to one.

CHAPTER TWO

Normally, Gary Manning did not rely on melee weapons when it came to close-quarters combat. He preferred to utilize his great strength and skill to deal with opponents, but now he was faced with a less than optimal situation. The London roughneck charging at him had a brain-smashing weapon locked in his fist.

Manning quickly reversed the pistol-grip pump in his big hands and brought the weapon up to bat aside the whistling steel of a ball-peen hammer targeting his skull. Metal struck metal with a loud clang and a spark, and the Canadian knew that although his weapon would not be reliable anymore, it had saved him from a traumatic head injury. He knotted his left hand into a ham-size fist and brought it up hard under the chin of the hammer-wielding rioter. The uppercut literally lifted Manning’s target off his feet and hurled him against another soccer hooligan behind him.

Manning didn’t have time to celebrate his victory. Instead he whirled and jammed his shoulder against the chest of a third rioter, getting inside of the arc of the young man’s scything knife. The shoulder block turned the blade-wielding hooligan into a plow, which allowed the powerful Canadian to run over four of the surging rioters. He reached up and snared the improvised battering ram by his football jersey and whipped him around as a living club, bowling over more of the rowdy maniacs.

Manning glanced quickly to one side and saw that McCarter had trapped one of his foes in an armlock and was utilizing the hooligan as a fulcrum and a shield. The big Canadian returned his attention to the combat at hand in time to hear his captive howl from the stab of a sharpened strip of metal into his shoulder. Manning hurled his charge aside, away from where he’d encounter more rioter weapons, and snapped down a judo chop on the forearm that held the bloody shank. Bones cracked under the assault, and the ruffian stumbled backward.