Target Acquisition

Ears ringing, McCarter made for the door to the building down the short entrance hall. He came up to it, AKS held at the ready. The door hung open, broken. From outside he heard gunfire as the Phoenix Force commandos engaged targets firing from the windows above them. A figure darted past the open door and McCarter gunned him down as Hawkins backed toward the running vehicle, directing rounds at targets above him.

A terrorist jumped into the hall and flopped down onto his belly, throwing a bipod-mounted RPK 7.62 mm machine gun down in front of him. McCarter jerked back outside the doorway as the machine gunner opened up with the weapon, sending a virtual firestorm in McCarter’s direction.

McCarter’s heart pounded as he moved, beating wildly in his chest. His perception of time seemed to slow as adrenaline speeded up his senses to preternatural levels of awareness. His mind clicked through options like a supercomputer running algorithms. His head swiveled like a gun turret, the muzzle of his weapon tracking in perfect synchronicity.

He saw no movement other than his team down the alley. Inside the hallway he saw woodchips fly off in great, ragged splinters from the withering machine-gun fire. He heard the staccato beat of the weapon discharging. He sensed something and twisted toward the staircase. A khaki-clad man with a beard rushed off the stairs.

McCarter had the drop on him and gunned him down. The AKS bucked hard in the big Briton’s hands and he stitched a line of slugs across the Pakistani gunman’s chest. Geysers of blood erupted from the man’s torso and throat as the kinetic energy from McCarter’s rounds drove him backward. The man’s heel caught on the outflung arm of his compatriot and he tumbled over, dead before he struck the ground.

McCarter scrambled back out the door. He saw a flash from the stairs and felt the air split as rounds blew by his face. He fired wildly behind him for cover as he rolled up and across the alley. He swung back around and covered the staircase and the side door, prepared to send a volley in either direction. His finger tensed on the smooth metal curve of the trigger.

There was a lull in the firing for a moment and McCarter heard Manning screaming instructions. Cold anger burned deep inside of the Phoenix Force leader. A haze of smoke hung in the hall and the stench of cordite was an opiate to McCarter’s hyperstimulated senses. A burst of fire broke out from behind him.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” James shouted.

McCarter stood, weapon up, and made to turn toward the vehicle. A final, crazed jihadist burst out the door as more weapons fire burned down from above. The Briton’s 5-round burst tore out the man’s throat as the van pulled up next to him. Hawkins leaped in the back and spun, spraying covering fire.

McCarter turned, pumped his legs and dived in the back. He landed hard on the vehicle floor and heard the sound of squealing rubber over the din of weapons fire. He tried to get to a knee but Manning jerked the wheel hard as they took the corner and he was thrown into James.

“Are we calling this a win?” the ex-SEAL asked, voice dry.

“Let’s call it a push,” McCarter replied.

Burj Dubai Tower, Dubai

United Arabic emirates

THE EMIR LOVED the old ways.

He loved having sixteen wives, riding his Arabian stallions through the desert, drinking tiny cups of strong black coffee in the company of wise men, smoking his tobacco from a hookah. Despite this love of all things archaic, the emir was a pragmatist. He knew his ability to enjoy those wives and high-blooded horses came from the seemingly endless supply of oil, the petroleum sold to the infidel in volumes so staggering it was impossible to imagine it ending.

So the emir wore his traditional dress as he stood staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows in a penthouse suite of the Burj Dubai, the tallest man-made structure in the world and a wonder of modern engineering. It was a luxurious building he’d arrived at via jet-helicopter from his home city of Riyadh.

Among all its other wonders, Dubai also offered the finest in Filipina child prostitutes.

The emir turned away from the massive bed where the silent, hollow-eyed girl sat motionless, curled up on herself. He felt exhilarated and when he stared out the tinted windows into the uniquely blue waters of the Persian Gulf he felt like a master of the very universe.

From behind him he heard a discreet throat clearing and recognized the voice of his majordomo immediately.

“Yes, Abdulla,” the emir said without turning. “Take her away, pay her purveyor and tell him I wish three more for this evening after our meeting with survey committee of the Bank of Kuwait and the Exxon-Mobil geologists.”

“Sir…” Abdulla hesitated.

“Yes? What is it?” the emir snapped.

“It’s about your son…Ziad?”

The emir turned, regarded the slightly built man who, despite appearances, was irreplaceable in running his holdings. “Ziad? He is here? I thought he was spreading the jihad in Islamabad among those barbarians and American foot-lickers, the Pakis.”

Abdulla turned toward the child and clapped his hands fast three times before making a hissing sound. The child rolled out of bed and scurried toward the door to the suite. Bruises lined her skinny thighs in vivid relief.

“What? What is it?”

“It’s about your son,” Abdulla said.

Just like that the emir knew. Forty-five minutes later he began to use his billions of dollars in oil money to fund his vengeance against the largest consumer of that product: the United States of America.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sadr City, Baghdad

The Blackhawks came thumping over the horizon.

Baghdad lay spread out below them, the sprawling slum of Sadr City emerging from the amorphous squalor. The Shiite stronghold was block after block of slammed-together buildings, jigsaw structures, twisting alleys stacked on asymmetrical courtyards and narrow, crowded streets.

In the northern district of the massive Sadr City slum the U.S. military had run into a problem as the beleaguered country lurched toward stability. The Sixth Infantry Division remained engaged in house-to-house combat with splinter-element insurgents of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iranian-backed Mahdi army. The ground forces had established a perimeter encircling the combat zone along with elements of the Iraqi National Army.

Fighting remained fierce in the face of the ratification of certain documents of nationalism by the Iraqi government, but five years of preparation had turned the urban terrain into a labyrinthine fortress extending from the tops of buildings to the sewers and basements below street level. An army of well-armed zealots manned the battlements.

At the center of the combat perched Abu Hafiza, al Qaeda torture master, cell leader and consultant strategist behind the Madrid, Spain, bombings. Hafiza waited, entrenched and surrounded by a hard-core bodyguard unit willing to die for jihad and the liberation of the Shiite people.

For obvious political reasons the U.S. had opted for a surgical strike rather than the use of massive force. Going into the snake pit to get Abu Hafiza was a suicide mission.

At the request of Brigadier General Kubrick, relayed through Brognola, Phoenix Force had deployed to Iraq.

American forces were arrayed around the landing strip, guns orientated outward, enforcing the security perimeter as the Blackhawk helicopters settled into position. Immediately a colonel, the division executive officer, moved forward into the brunt of the rotor wash to greet the arrivals.

The cargo door on the Blackhawk slid open under the spinning blades and five figures emerged from the helicopter transport. Dressed in black fatigues with faces covered by balaclava hoods, the men moved easily under a burden of upgraded body armor and unorthodox weaponry, the colonel noted.

The first man to reach the American officer stuck out his hand and shook with a hard, dry clench. When he spoke, a British accent was evident.

“You here to get us up to speed?” David McCarter asked.

The colonel nodded. “Have your men follow me,” he said.

With the rest of Phoenix Force following, McCarter fell into step with the colonel. “Has the situation changed at all?” he asked.

“Just as we left,” the colonel replied. “The Iraqi National Army moved into Sadr City to quell violent demonstrations. They ran into heavy resistance and our reinforcement brigade was called in. We rolled forward and discovered Abu Hafiza has prepped this slum the way Hezbollah did southern Lebanon for the Israelis back in 2007. It’s just a mess. But we’ve beaten them back to their final redoubt.” The colonel indicated a Stryker vehicle with its ramp down. “But it’s a hell of a redoubt,” he added as they climbed into the APC. “We can either bring in the bunker busters or throw away hundreds of men in a frontal assault. Neither of which is going to look too goddamn good on twenty-four-hour cable news feed.”

“Or you can call us,” T. J. Hawkins noted dryly.

“Yes.” The colonel nodded. “Whoever the hell ‘you’ happen to be.”

“We do like our little mysteries,” Calvin James acknowledged from behind his balaclava.

“You somehow manage to pull the rabbit out of this hat and I’ll call you mommy if that’s what you want.”

“That won’t be necessary,” McCarter assured the man as the Stryker ramp buttoned up and they rolled deeper into the city. “Just don’t call us late for dinner.”