Target Acquisition

THE BLAST from a helicopter missile had knocked a hole in the street. The explosion ripped up the asphalt and punched a hole in the ground deep enough to reveal the sewer line. Workers had managed to clear enough rubble out of the crater to keep the sewage stream flowing, but there had not been enough security or money for complete repairs. A line of rubble like a gravel-covered hillside led up out of the sewer to the street.

While the rest of Phoenix Force crouched in the shadows, Calvin James eased his way up the uncertain slope to reconnoiter the area. He crawled carefully, using his elbows and knees with his weapon cradled in the crook of his arms. As tense as the situation was, there was a large part of him that was grateful to escape the stinking claustrophobia of the pit. Just blocks over, combined Iraqi and American forces hammered the Shiite positions to provide cover and distraction for the inserting special operators.

James eased his way to the lip of the blast crater and carefully raised his head over the edge. The Sadr City neighborhood appeared deserted at the late hour. Tenement buildings rose up above street level shops, the structures book-ending right up against each other. Rusted iron fire escapes adorned the fronts of the old buildings. Brightly colored laundry hung from windows and clotheslines. The roofs were a forest of old-fashioned wire antennae. The street was lined with battered old cars, some of them up on concrete blocks and obviously unusable. Across the street feral dogs rooted through an overflowing garbage bin.

Carefully, James extended his weapon and scanned the neighborhood street through his scope. He detected no movement, saw no faces in windows and doorways, no figures silhouetted on the fire escapes and rooftops. He looked down to the end of the street and saw nothing stirring, then turned and checked the other direction with the same result.

Satisfied, he looked down. He gave a short low whistle and instantly McCarter appeared at the foot of the rubble incline.

“All clear. Come have a look,” James whispered.

McCarter nodded once in reply and re-slung his M-4 carbine before scrambling quickly up the rubble. He slid into place next to Hawkins and carefully scanned the street, as well.

“There,” he said. “That building.” He indicated a burned-out six-story apartment complex with a thrust of his sharp chin. “That’s the building. That’ll give us the entry point into the compound.”

“Sounds good,” McCarter agreed. “We’ll run this exactly like we did our insertion in the Basra operation a while ago.”

“Only without the sewer crawl.”

“Which is nice.”

Eighteen months before the building had been assaulted by an Iraqi National Army unit with American Special Forces advisers after intelligence had revealed it served as an armory and bomb-making factory for the local Shiite militias.

“I haven’t noticed any sentries yet,” James said. His gaze remained suctioned to the sniper scope as he scanned the building.

“They’re there,” McCarter said. “That’s the back door to the militia complex.”

“Heads up,” James suddenly hissed.

Instantly, McCarter attempted to identify the threat. Up the street a Toyota pickup turned onto the avenue and began cruising toward their position. The back of the vehicle held a squad of gunmen and there were three men in the vehicle cab.

McCarter and James froze, nestling themselves in among the broken masonry of the bomb crater. Advancing slowly, the vehicle cruised up the street. Moving carefully, McCarter eased his head down below the lip of the crater and transferred his carbine into a more accessible position.

Beside him James seemed to evaporate, blending into the background as the pickup inched its way down the street. The former Navy SEAL commando watched the enemy patrol with eyes narrowed, his finger held lightly on the trigger of his weapon.

The vehicle rolled closer and now both Phoenix Force members could hear the murmur of voices in casual conversation. James watched as a pockmarked Iraqi in the back took a final drag of his cigarette and then flicked it away.

The still smoking butt arced up and landed next to the prone Phoenix Force sniper with a small shower of sparks that stung his exposed face. The cigarette bounced and rolled down the incline to come to rest against McCarter’s leg.

A gunman in the back of the vehicle said something and the others laughed as the pickup cruised past the two hidden men headed toward the fighting. Playing a hunch, James risked moving to scan the burned-out building across the street with his scope. His gamble paid off as a man armed with a SVD Soviet-era Dragunov sniper rifle appeared briefly in a third-story window to acknowledge the patrol rolling past his position.

James grinned. The pickup reached the end of the street and disappeared around a corner. “Got you, asshole,” he whispered. “I got a security element on the third floor,” he told McCarter.

“Does he interfere with movement?” McCarter scooped loose dirt over the burning cigarette, extinguishing it.

“He’s back in the shadow now. I might have a shot with IR,” Hawkins explained. “But he’s definitely doing overwatch on this street.”

“He the only one?”

“Only one I saw,” James said. “But he could have a spotter or radio guy sitting next to him who’ll sound the alarm if I put the sniper down.”

“What’s our other option?”

“I guess send the team across and hope he doesn’t notice until we can be sure of how many we’re dealing with.”

“The clock is ticking,” McCarter pointed out.

“Then I say let me take him.”

“Encizo and I will cross the street and try to secure the ground floor before the rest of you come over.”

“It’s your call,” James said simply. He clicked over the amplifier apparatus on his night scope and scanned the windows. A red silhouette appeared in the gloom of the third-story window. “I got him. No other figures present themselves from this angle.”

“That’ll have to do,” McCarter said.

James held down on his target as McCarter called Encizo up and the two men slowly climbed into position. Encizo had left his Hawk MM-1 behind with Hawkins and held his silenced H&K MP-7 at the ready. McCarter slid his M-4/M-203 around to hang from his back and had pulled his own sound-suppressed weapon, the Browning Hi-Power, from its holster.

James settled snugly into his position as Phoenix Force gathered around him. His finger took up the slack on the curve of his trigger and he settled the fiber-optic crosshairs on the silhouette in the window.

The Mk 11 sniper rifle discharged smoothly, the muzzle lifting slightly with the recoil and pushing back into the hollow of James’s shoulder. The report was muted in the hot desert air and the subsonic round cut across the space and tore through the open window.

In his scope James saw the figure’s head jerk like a boxer taking an inside uppercut. There was an instant of red smear in his sight as blood splashed, then the enemy sniper spun in a half circle and fell over.

“Go,” James said.

McCarter was instantly up and sprinting. Behind him Encizo scrambled over the edge of the hole and raced after him. Both men crossed the street in a dead run, weapons up and ready as James began shifting his weapon back and forth in tight vectors to cover the building front.

McCarter crossed the open street and spun to throw his back into the wall beside the front door of the building. Half a second later Encizo repeated the motion, his MP-7 pointed down the street.

McCarter checked once before proceeding through the gaping doorway. He charged into the room, turning left and trying to move along the wall. Encizo came in and peeled right, coming to one knee and checking the room with his muzzle leading the way. Both men scanned the darkened chamber through their low-light goggles.

The front doors to the building had been blown out during the Iraqi raid and the room saturated with grenades and automatic-weapons fire. The two Phoenix warriors found themselves in a small lobby with a cracked and collapsed desk, a line of busted and dented mailboxes, a pitted and pocked elevator and two fire-scarred doorways. One of the interior doors had been blown off its hinges, revealing a staircase leading upward. The second sagged in place, as perforated as a cheese grater.

McCarter carefully moved forward and checked both doorways before turning and giving Encizo the thumbs-up signal. The combat swimmer turned and went to the doorway so that James could see him. He lifted a finger and spoke into his throat mike.

“Come across,” he said. “We’ll clear upward.”

“Acknowledged,” James replied.

Encizo turned back into the room just as he heard footsteps on the staircase. Booted feet pounded the wooden steps as someone jogged downward making no effort to conceal his movement. Encizo blinked and McCarter disappeared, moving smoothly to rematerialize next to the stairway access, back to the wall and sound-suppressed Browning pistol up.

Wearing a headscarf and American Army chocolate-chip-pattern camouflage uniform, a Shiite militia member with an AKM came out of the stairway and strolled casually into the room. On one knee Encizo centered his machine pistol on the irregular.

Oblivious to the shadows in the room, the man started walking across the floor toward the street. McCarter straightened his arm out. The Browning was a bulky silhouette in his hand, the cylinder of the suppressor a blunt oval in the gloom.

There was a whispered thwat-thwat and the front of the Iraqi’s forehead came away in jigsaw chunks. The man dropped straight down to his knees, then tumbled forward onto his face with a wet sound.

Encizo kept the muzzle of his machine pistol trained on the doorway in case the man wasn’t alone, but there was no sign of motion from the staircase as McCarter shifted his aim and cleared the second door.