Target Acquisition

Behind Encizo, Hawkins entered the room and peeled off to the left to take cover, followed closely by Manning and then Calvin James. Each member of the unit looked down at the dead Iraqi, his spilling blood clearly visible.

“We take the stairs,” McCarter said in a low voice. “There’s no way to clear a building this size with our manpower so it’s hey-diddle-diddle, right-up-the-middle till we reach the roof, then over and in. Stay with silenced weapons for as long as we can.”

The ex-SAS trooper swept up his Browning Hi-Power and advanced through the doorway as the rest of Phoenix Force fell into line behind him in an impromptu entry file. Hawkins took up the final position with his silenced Mk 11, replacing Gary Manning as rear security.

Weapons up, Phoenix Force continued infiltrating Baghdad.

RAFAEL ENCIZO opened his hand.

Greasy hair slid through his loosened fingers as he plucked the blade of his Cold Steel Tanto from the Iraqi militia member’s neck. Blood gushed down the front of the man’s chest in a hot, slick rush, and the gunman gurgled wetly in his throat.

Standing beside Encizo Calvin James snatched the man’s rifle up as it started to fall. The eyepieces of the two commandos’ night optics shone a dull, nonreflective green as they watched the man fall to his knees. Encizo lifted his foot and used the thick tread of his combat boot to push the dying Iraqi over.

The final Shiite soldier on the building roof struck the tarpaper and gravel as the last beats of his pounding heart pushed a gallon of blood out across the ground. As James set the scoped SVD sniper rifle down, Encizo knelt and cleaned his blade off on the man’s jeans before sliding it home in its belt sheath.

Seeing the sentry down, McCarter led the rest of the team out of the stairwell and onto the roof. Phoenix Force crouched next to a 60 mm mortar position beside the parapet and overlooked the cluster of buildings in the Baghdad slum. Below them, in the shadow of the militia sentry building, a large flat-roofed home stretched out behind an adobe-style wall. Armed guards walked openly or stood sentinel at doorways. In the courtyard near the front gate a Dzik-3 with Iraqi police markings stood, engine idling.

Hawkins took up a knee and began using the night scope on his Mk 11 to scan nearby buildings for additional security forces. As David McCarter took up his field radio Manning knelt behind him and began to loosen the nineteen-pound grappling gun from the Briton’s rucksack.

“Super Stud to Egghead,” McCarter said.

“That’s so very funny,” Akira Tokaido replied, voice droll.

“You have eyes on us?”

“Copy that,” Tokaido confirmed.

At the moment the Predator drone launched by Jack Grimaldi from the Coalition-controlled Iraqi airport floated at such an altitude that it was invisible to either Phoenix Force or, more importantly, to the Iraqi Special Groups HQ below. Despite that, the powerful optics in the nose of the UAV readily revealed the heat-signature silhouettes of Phoenix to Akira Tokaido in his remote cockpit as they crouched on the Baghdad rooftop.

It was a little known fact that most of the larger drone aircraft seeing action in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Iraq, were piloted by operators at McCarren Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As soon as Kurtzman and Price had seen the remote pilot setup used by both the Air Force and the CIA they had gone to Brognola with a request for the Farm to field the same capabilities using the Stony Man cyberteam as operators.

Both Kurtzman and Carmen Delahunt had proved skilled and agile remote pilots, but it had been the good Professor Huntington Wethers who’d proved the most adept at maneuvering the UAV drones and he had consistently outflown the other two in training.

But Akira Tokaido, child prodigy of the videogame age, had taken the professor to school. The Japanese-American joystick jockey had exhibited a genius touch for the operations, and Kurtzman had put the youngest member of the team as primary drone pilot for the Farm.

Now Tokaido sat in the remote cockpit unit, or RCU, and controlled a MQ-1c Warrior from twenty-five thousand feet above Baghdad. He had four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and a sensory/optics package in the nose transplanted from the U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk, known as the Hughes Integrated Surveillance And Reconnaissance—HISAR—sensor system.

From a maximum ceiling of twenty-nine thousand feet, Tokaido could read the license plate of a speeding car. And then put a Hellfire missile in the tailpipe.

Having seen the effects of the coordinated air strikes during training with the FBI’s hostage-rescue team at a gunnery range next to the Groom Lake facility known as the Ranch, David McCarter was more than happy to have the air support.

The ex-SAS leader of Phoenix Force touched his earbud and spoke into his throat mike. “You see the wheeled APC at the front gate?” he asked.

“Copy.”

“That goes. I want a nice big fireball to draw eyes away from us while we come in the back door.”

“That should obstruct the main entrance to the property,” Tokaido allowed, voice calm. “That changes the original exit strategy Barb briefed me on.”

“Acknowledged,” McCarter responded. “But the truth on the ground has changed. Adapt, improvise, overcome.”

“Your call, Phoenix,” Tokaido confirmed. “I’ll put the knock-knock anywhere you want.”

“Good copy, that. Put one in the armored car and shut down the gate. You get a good cluster of bad guys outside in the street use Hellfires two and three at your discretion. Just save number four for my word.”

“Understood.” Tokaido paused. “You realize that if you’re inside that structure when I let numbers two and three go you’ll be extremely danger close, correct?”

“Stony Bird,” McCarter said, “you just bring the heat. We’ll stay in the kitchen.”

“Understood. I’ll drop altitude and start the show.”

“Phoenix out.” McCarter turned toward the rest of the team. “You blokes caught all that, right?” Each man nodded in turn. “Good. Hawkins, you remain in position. Clean up the courtyard and stay on lookout for Hajji snipers outside the compound.”

Hawkins reached out and folded down the bipod on his Mk 11. “I’ll reach out and touch a few people on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America.” The Texan shrugged and grinned. “It’s just a customer service I provide. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

“Just try to stay awake up here, hotshot,” McCarter said. “I’ll put the zip-line on target. The rest of you get your Flying Fox attachments ready.”

“I’m going first,” Manning said. “You hit the mark with the grappling gun but we’ll use me to test the weight.”

“Negative, I’m point,” James said. “The plan calls for me to slide first.”

Manning shook his head. “That was before we got burned. Those assholes down there know we’re coming. We’ll only get the one line. I should go first.” He stopped and grinned. “Besides, Doc, if you fall, who’ll patch you up?”

McCarter lifted a hand. “He’s right, Cal. We’ll send Gary down first.”

The ex-SWAT sniper took up his SPAS-15. “Doesn’t seem right, a Canadian going before a SEAL, but I’ll make an exception this time.” He reached out a fist and he and the grinning Manning touched knuckles.

“Get set,” McCarter warned.

CHAPTER FIVE

McCarter lifted the launcher of the T-PLS pneumatic tactical line-throwing system to his shoulder. The device sported 120 feet of 7 mm Kevlar line and launched the spear grapnel with enough force to penetrate concrete. Despite himself McCarter paused for a moment to savor the situation.

He felt adrenaline pump through his system like a bullet train on greased wheels. He knew that he was not only among the most competent warriors on the face of the earth, but also he was their leader. He could sense them around him now, reacting not with fear but with the eagerness of dedicated professionals.

They had the brutal acumen of men about to face impossible odds and achieve success. McCarter smiled to himself in cold satisfaction as he recalled the motto of the SAS—Who Dares Wins.

As his men, other than Hawkins, slid on their protective masks, McCarter’s finger took up the slack in the grappling gun.

There was a harsh tunk sound as the weapon discharged, followed by the metallic whizzing of the line playing out. The sound of the impact six stories below was drowned out by the sound of Akira Tokaido’s Hellfire taking out the Dzik-3 APC. A ball of fire and oily black smoke rose up like an erupting volcano. The blazing hulk leaped into the air and dropped back down with a heavy metal crunch that cracked the cobblestone court.

“Now we’re on,” Encizo declared, and Phoenix sprang into action.

THE MEN SLOWLY CHEWED their food as they watched the body hanging from chains set into the wall. The imam had dared to speak out against the random violence that claimed the lives of Baghdad’s women and children, preaching in front of the prayer mats in the mosque that the Koran did not direct the slaughter of Muslim innocents in the name of Allah.

On his way to the market an Iraqi police car had stopped and two officers had thrown a sack over the imam’s head and pushed him into the vehicle. When his hood had been ripped off, the cleric found himself chained to the wall and in the hands of the very extremists he had railed against.