Unified Action

First he killed the drivers, then he allowed himself the luxury of picking out a diversity of targets, even killing a struggling terrorist for no other reason than to spare the burning man an agonizing death. Once he saw a terrified and panicked gray-bearded elder desperately attempting to work the buttons on his sat phone. Hawkins used the 4-power magnification of his PSO-1 telescopic sight to put a single 7.62 mm round from his Dragunov SVD through the man’s thick, low forehead.

Blood rushed like a river from a cracked dam as the man crumpled and fell away, his satellite phone dropping to the ground from lifeless fingers.

“On ropes!” McCarter shouted.

Both Encizo and James fired their second volley and Phoenix Force prepared to launch its final assault on the convoy.

CHAPTER FIVE

Dominican Republic

The cabdriver was skilled and as interested in avoiding trouble as Able Team. He circumnavigated the trouble spots and police checkpoints throughout the city until he was able to drop them off within blocks of their objective.

Moving quickly down narrow alleys and across vacant lots, Lyons led the team by as surreptitious a route as possible under the circumstances. The U.S. government safehouse was a single-bedroom walkup in an older building set above a fruit warehouse.

The locals watched them with open curiosity, and Lyons noticed the prolific presence of machetes immediately.

“Blending in is going to be a problem,” Schwarz noted, voice dry.

“You think?” Blancanales replied, equally sarcastic.

“Could be one of the problems our missing agent had,” Lyons pointed out.

“Only in the tourist-heavy areas would he have been able to blend in,” Schwarz agreed. “Screw it, we ain’t gonna be invisible so we might as well get inside and gear up.”

“True,” Lyons said. “I was tired of all this sneaking around anyway.”

Blancanales rolled his eyes in humor as the team crossed the busy street and approached the outside staircase leading to the safehouse.

Lyons’s apprehension grew as he moved closer to the building. If elements within the Dominican government were responsible for the agent’s disappearance, then they would have the resources to keep the location under surveillance.

Seeming to read his mind as they crossed the cracked sidewalk, Blancanales spoke up. “According to the Farm, this place isn’t believed to be compromised.”

“Virginia is a long way from here,” Lyons replied evenly, his eyes searching the rooftops.

From a few blocks over there was a sudden burst of weapons fire, and in response the crowd loitering on the street grew animated.

“Fuck it,” Schwarz said. “A police patrol could come by at any minute. We need to get out of sight for a while.”

“Let’s go.” Lyons turned his head and spit. “Just to be safe, Pol,” he said, “why don’t you hang at the bottom of the stair while we check the place out—watch our six, see if anything shakes loose.”

“You got it, amigo,” Blancanales said.

The former Green Beret peeled off from his friends and wandered down toward the end of a foul-smelling alley toward where an ancient Chevy flatbed delivery truck was parked next to a row of overflowing garbage cans.

Lyons walked forward. The staircase was an ancient, weathered structure obviously decades old. It ran up a story then doubled back under a covered flight of steps, where it ended at an awning-overhung porch. The door set there was dark. From inside the alley the sounds of the street, of automobiles, conversations and blaring radios was muted and sounded farther away by some trick of acoustics.

Lyons moved up the staircase slowly, making little noise. Taking his lead, Schwarz followed his example. Below them Blancanales glanced up, established their position, then scanned the area for signs of trouble.

At the door Lyons paused and looked down. He frowned at what he saw and ran a finger over the door latch, noting the scratches obvious on the faceplate. His proximity sense clanged like a submarine klaxon.

He turned his head on a neck as muscled as a professional boxer’s and put one big, thick finger to his lips in warning. Schwarz nodded once, hand poised on the railing. With his other he alerted Blancanales that something was amiss.

Carl Lyons reached out slowly and pushed against the unlatched door. It swung open to reveal a short, dark entranceway. The light of the setting Caribbean sun pushed a cluster of shadows backward. From farther within the apartment the Able Team operatives heard the slight sound of movement. Lyons closed his right hand into a massive rock-hard fist and stepped softly forward.

Schwarz slid slowly forward behind Lyons, turning sideways into a loose karate stance. Moving quietly, the two men penetrated the apartment safehouse. Schwarz saw a modestly furnished but modern space. It boasted a flat-screen television on a far wall next to a window, curtains drawn, which faced the street outside. The TV was the center piece of a loose half circle of furniture including a couch and chairs next to a pedestrian dining set.

Beyond that space was a small kitchen, and running past the open service areas of the apartment was a hallway, leading, presumably to bedrooms and living spaces in the rear of the government residence.

Just behind a closed door down the hallway the sounds of movement were clearly audible now. Schwarz pulled his face into a frowning mask. Common sense suggested that if the intruder was Dominican police or intelligence, the perpetrator would not have inserted without backup.

Having discovered no one serving overwatch either outside the building or inside, all indications pointed toward some other unknown and likely criminal actor. Which raised a lot more questions than it answered, both Lyons and Schwarz realized. They also realized common sense dictated that their unseen adversaries would be equipped with firearms.

Walking heel-toe and rolling their weight forward to avoid making any noise, the two men tested the floor-boards for telltale squeaks before each step. From behind the closed door all movement suddenly ceased. Instantly the hyperprimed commandos froze, ears straining to catch any sound.

The figure came through the doorway like a hurricane touching shore. The door flew open, triggering immediate action from Lyons and Schwarz. Schwarz twisted and dived, rolling over one shoulder and out of the hall. He came to his feet like an acrobat and reached for one of the wooden dining-room chairs standing near at hand.

Reacting without thinking, Carl Lyons sprang forward and off to one side, desperately trying to create and exploit an angle in the tight kill box of the narrow apartment hallway.

The figure swung around the frame of the open door in a swift buttonhook maneuver. Lyons had an impression of a short dark figure with a slight build, hands wrapped around the butt of a black automatic pistol.

He struck the hardwood floor, spun over one shoulder and came up inside the interloper’s extended arm. He twisted at the waist as he rose and lashed out with his arm, striking the figure’s nearest elbow with a heel-of-the-palm strike.

The grunt was feminine, and Lyons was stunned to realize his assailant was female. His strike threw her arms to the side and the hands holding a Glock pistol struck the wall. He reacted instantly, striking downward with a knife-edge blow that hammered into the woman’s wrist and knocked the gun to the floor.

With surprising reflexes the perpetrator spun and slammed a knee into the ex–LAPD detective’s groin. He rolled one of his thighs inward to block the blow. Fingers raked at his eyes. He responded with a windmilling block followed by a straight punch like a power jab.

The woman threw herself backward, avoiding the blow easily. She catapulted into the bedroom she’d just emerged from. Lyons surged forward, following hard on her heels. She did a back handstand, then came down in a crouch. Her hands flew to where her pant leg met the top of her dark hiking boot.

Realizing she was grabbing for a holdout weapon, Lyons scrambled to close the difference. Even as he lunged he knew he wasn’t going to make it in time. The figure came out of her crouch with a silver Detonics .45-caliber automatic in her gloved hands.

Kyrgyzstan

ENEMY VEHICLES FLARED like bonfires in violent conflagrations. Gary Manning raked the milling al Qaeda combatants with his machine gun as Hawkins methodically executed every gunman who came into his crosshairs.

Having used RPGs to disable every vehicle in the convoy, both Calvin James and Rafael Encizo traded their rocket launchers for Soviet-era submachine guns. Moving quickly under the cover fire, David McCarter prepared to lead the assault element down the cliff face to overwhelm any resistance.

“Move! Move! Move!” McCarter barked.

As one, the three-man fire team surged forward over the lip of the incline. The deployed lines were flung out in front of them. They ran face-first in an Australian-style rappel down the steep incline, one hand running the guideline, the other firing their weapons from the hip using a sling over the shoulder of their firing hand to steady the muzzle.

The loose gravel gave way in miniature avalanches under their feet as they sprinted down, the incline ropes whizzing through the gloves on their hand. The light from burning vehicles cast wild shadows and threw pillars of heat up toward them. It felt as if they were running straight into the open mouth of hell.

A figure with an AKM assault rifle appeared out of the smoke. Encizo shifted his muzzle across his front and caught the man with a short burst in the torso, putting him down. Without missing a stride, the Cuban-American combat diver vaulted the body and came off his rope onto the road.

McCarter ran up beside him, his AKS nestled in his shoulder and spitting bullets with a staccato burst. Another bearded terrorist absorbed the burst and crumpled. James came off his rope and took up his sector of fire, providing security on the far flank.

“Be advised,” Barbara Price’s voice cut in. “We have too much ground smoke and ambient heat for orbital imagery. We have no eyes at the moment.”