Shadow War

Manning stood closest to the guards, and he ducked out of Encizo’s arm, twisting at the waist. His right fist snapped out like a whip popping in a knife hand blow that struck the guard in the Adam’s apple while his left hand reached for the auto-injector positioned behind his back.

The bodyguard staggered, his hands flying up to protect his face in a boxer’s cover-up motion. Pulling the auto-injector free, Manning used his momentum to dip his massive shoulder and drive hard into the man’s body like linemen stopping a defensive back cold on the scrimmage line. The giant gasped as air was driven from his lungs and Manning’s shoulder hammered into his solar plexus. The man stumbled backward.

Instantly, Manning was on him, placing his leading forearm across the man’s neck and pinning him against the hotel wall. The man’s eyes grew wide with surprise, then quickly narrowed in effort as the bodyguard leader began to fight back. However, the pain from Manning’s initial neck blow had frightened and slowed the bodyguard’s reflexes so that his hook into the burly Phoenix Force warrior’s ribs was glancing and ineffective.

Manning brought up the auto-injector and shoved it roughly into the giant’s thick neck. The gun cycled and the sedative slammed into the man’s system. Manning wasn’t sure he’d hit the artery he was aiming for, but the muscles of the neck were extremely vascular. The bodyguard’s heart was now pumping wildly.

The man looked stunned, then panicked as he felt the air-jet of liquid medicine invade his body. He struggled to sit up, badly out of position, and Manning rammed an overhand elbow strike into his unprotected face, driving him into the floor.

James attacked simultaneously with Manning. He leaped forward and threw his right forearm hard into the throat of the bodyguard with a French Foreign Legion tattoo on his neck while his right leg simultaneously hooked behind the man’s ankle. As the bodyguard tumbled back against the wall, James fisted the auto-injector and thrust it forward.

He was aiming for the neck as Manning had, but the ex-Legionnaire twisted at the last moment so that the muzzle of the auto-injector struck him in the corner of his face, back toward the ear where the mandible hinge joint attached to the skull.

The man gaped in surprise, then almost instantly lost control of his jaw. The muscles of his face went slack even as James pulled back. He saw the bodyguard’s hand come up, slap ineffectually at the lapel of his blazer even as he finished sliding down the wall to the carpet in front of al-Shalaan’s door. James spun, auto-injector in one hand while he reached for his silenced pistol in case events were unfolding in a dangerous way.

He saw Encizo hammering a much taller man with huge, looping hooks, his knuckles smashing into the sides of the man’s face with rapacious energy. The bottle of liquor had bounced as it had been dropped and rolled away, spilling alcohol on the expensive carpet. Encizo stepped forward and grabbed the stunned man’s suit jacket by the lapels and shoved them down to his elbows, effectively pinning them to his sides in a hockey maneuver.

Encizo ripped his auto-injector free as the fingers of his other hand wrapped tightly into the close-knit curls of his target’s hair. He jerked once, swiveling from the hips, and the screaming man took a nosedive into the puddle of liquor soaking into the carpet.

The little Cuban dropped in a knee-led pile driver that slammed into the man’s back between his shoulder blades, pinning him to the floor. The auto-injector made contact with the easy target of the man’s pulsing carotid artery and he activated the device.

Encizo kept his weight pressing down on the prone bodyguard, crushing him into the carpet until the surgical anesthesia took effect. He felt the man’s struggles suddenly turn sluggish and then stop. The huge body in his grip went noodle-limp.

Hawkins had known from the beginning that when Phoenix Force unleashed its close-quarters ambush that of all the men in the phalanx, he would have the farthest distance to cover to initiate his attack. It was a distance of only two or three yards. But with an alert and possibly well-trained enemy, that scant distance would give his target a valuable couple of seconds of reaction time that the other bodyguards wouldn’t have.

If the man was competent, then Hawkins knew he could find himself in a stand-up fight instead of a surreptitious attack. When McCarter had set up the action plan, Hawkins had kept his face impassive as he listened to his assignment. Inside he had felt a sense of pride as he realized he had been given the position David McCarter would have taken for himself had his driving skills not been so imperative to the second phase of the operation.

As James drifted out around Manning’s broad form, signaling the start of assault, Hawkins sprang into action. He stepped forward from under Encizo’s arm and toward his man.

The bodyguard’s eyes grew wide in surprise, identically to those of his leader. Hawkins crossed the two endless steps between them as the rest of Phoenix Force clashed with the team of bodyguards. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realized he might not make it. He went up on the toes of his left foot as he pulled his right knee back and up, almost to the level of his chin. His momentum carried him forward, and his leg lashed out as the black plastic alloy of the bodyguard’s Glock 19 was pulled clear of shoulder leather.

The heel of Hawkins’s low-cut boot slammed into the bodyguard’s sternum, and Hawkins felt the jar of the impact shock travel up his leg like the vibration of a tuning fork. He heard the bodyguard grunt as he continued moving forward, driving his foot down from the impact zone.

Hawkins had missed his specific target of the forearm attached to the hand holding the Glock pistol. He had made a mistake. As his right foot drove through the kick attack and landed on the carpet, the Phoenix Force commando was already following through on his first strike. He clamped his hand around the wrist holding the pistol as he whipped his right elbow around in an overhead crescent strike.

The point of his elbow smashed into the man’s face just below his eye and the bodyguard’s head snapped back into the wall, but the man didn’t go out. Hawkins dug inside himself and brought forth the aggression and anger and will that had served him for so long in such life-and-death struggles.

The bodyguard jerked his arm back, trying to clear the pistol for a shot. Hawkins squeezed hard, stymieing the movement the way an NBA guard stuffs a dunk attempt. The muzzle of the gun dug into the bodyguard’s stomach, keeping the man from pulling the trigger.

The man grunted, then forced his hand up, and Hawkins had to face the bitter truth that the man was stronger than he was. Millimeter by millimeter the gun began to move. Hawkins snarled then, and cold, greasy shots of adrenaline splashed into his knotted stomach.

Goose bumps rose on his flesh as fear-energy coursed through his system. In the blink of an eye he felt energized, supercharged.

His fingers crushed the man’s wrist. His elbow began to rise and fall with jackhammer rhythm, each impact of the sharp bone sending shock waves through the bodyguard’s head to rap his brain against the side of his skull. Hawkins’s strikes tore flesh open across the man’s forehead near the temples and blood gushed in sudden torrents.

The man went limp and the pistol fell from slack fingers. Hawkins rose, pulled his auto-injector free and shot it into the unconscious man’s neck.

He turned and saw the rest of Phoenix Force looking at him.

“What?” he asked, catching his breath.

“Nothing,” Manning said with a shrug. “If you’re through playing with your food, do you think we could continue?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Next time I’m not going to give you a fancy toy if you’re not going to use it right,” James said.

“Fuck ’em,” Hawkins replied. “They work for scum. They’re lucky the powers that be didn’t want corpses on friendly soil.”

“Let’s roll,” Manning said.

CHAPTER FIVE

From his overwatch position Gadgets Schwarz saw Rosario Blancanales fall. He saw the incongruous figure of a schoolgirl stumble back, a bloody knife in her fist. He shifted the shortened muzzle of his Steyr AUG A3 toward the female as she stabbed Blancanales a second time.

The aiming reticle of his 1.5X power telescope filled with the young woman’s figure as she swept her knife up. She staggered in his sight as he attempted to put a 5.56 mm Teflon-coated round through the left side of her rib cage.

But the close-quarters battle exploded into a frenzy of activity as one of the Zetas gunslingers recovered his composure on Carl Lyons’s flank and stepped into Schwarz’s line of fire. The man raised a Browning Hi-Power pistol and triggered a round into the Able Team leader’s back that was soaked up by his Kevlar body armor.

Lyons staggered under the impact as Schwarz put the man down. The Able Team leader triggered his assault shotgun, and suddenly the warehouse echoed with the sound of the full automatic 12-gauge weapon.

Bodies spun and were flung like rag dolls from the impact of .440 stainless-steel fléchettes that ripped through flesh and shredded internal organs. Blood and brain and bits of bone struck the corrugated walls of the old warehouse, and the metal structure rang as rounds punched through it.

Then there was silence.

From his position at the window Schwarz shifted his Steyr AUG, scanning the area. Nothing moved. He snapped the barrel to a different vector and found all still.

Carl Lyons stood at the point of the unit’s triangle formation, his smoking shotgun pointed downward, his ears ringing from the booming of his own weapon.

For a second he couldn’t understand Schwarz’s frantic shouting, then his hearing returned well enough for him to make out what his teammate was hollering. Lyons spun, searching the floor for Blancanales.

He saw the unconscious Latino sprawled out, one hand still clutching his weapon, the other resting on an ugly mess of a wound leaking blood across his lap. Schwarz burst through the door and began checking Zetas bodies as Lyons made his way through the carnage toward his downed friend.

Blancanales’s breathing was shallow and forced, his color obviously bad, even in the uncertain light. Blancanales himself often served as Able Team’s field medic, so it was from his kit that Carl Lyons stripped the first-aid equipment.

He set down his shotgun and brought a soft, OD green plastic package to his teeth and ripped it open. He moved Blancanales’s hand to the side and spilled the contents of the packet on his open wound. Instantly the coagulation powder went to work, clotting the blood around the puncture wounds.

Since Blancanales’s breathing was uncompromised, if laborious, and there was no other obvious wound, Lyons dedicated his attention to that injury first. Behind him Schwarz kept his weapon in one hand and used his other to call in the team’s helicopter.

“Help us,” moaned one of the hanging prisoners.

“Shut up,” Lyons snapped.

He finished securing a second pressure dressing over Blancanales’s wound. The Latino’s eyes fluttered open, glazed with pain, and Lyons could see the man struggle toward coherency through the force of sheer willpower.

“We good?” Blancanales asked.

“Yeah,” Lyons answered softly. “Jack’s coming. We’ll have you medevaced in no time. I hear the chopper now.”