LITMIR.BIZ

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his eyes off Zhol. “Clay…”

      Forbes’s voice went cold. “Mr. Zhol…”

      Zhol ignored Forbes as he and James continued their staring contest. “Will your friends negotiate for your release?” He smiled slightly as he answered his own question. “No, but they will pretend to, to buy time and set us up for another ambush. Mr. Forbes, take his weapon. Sharkov, radio the helicopter. Tell them to come into the city. We are extracting from the square in Pamir Park, but first, tell them to shoot down the enemy helicopter.”

      Sharkov began to shout in his radio.

      Zhol still hadn’t blinked. “Mr. Forbes, take Mr. James’s weapon.” He spoke to Sharkov’s man in the back. “Levchenko, if Mr. Forbes does not take Mr. James’s weapon, shoot him in the head.”

      Levchenko pointed his rifle at the back of Forbes’s gleaming skull.

      Forbes’s weapon was pointed at the driver. “I’ll blow Gurza’s head off. This car will crash, and we all go down.”

      “Mr. Forbes, you know I respect you, but right now our priority is extraction. We can settle this situation later.” Zhol’s eyes and the muzzle of his pistol stayed trained on Calvin James. “But I am not going to ask you again. Take his weapon.”

      Forbes grimaced. “Cal, give me the goddamn gun. I got your back. Once we’re out of here I’ll straighten this shit out.”

      James shrugged. “Fuck it.”

      The compact assault rifle clattered to the floorboards. Everyone except Zhol sighed with palpable relief. Zhol’s one concession was that he uncocked his revolver. “Good.”

      “I got your back, Cal.” Forbes leaned down and picked up the rifle. “We’ll straighten this shit out. I promise you.”

      Zhol jerked the muzzle of his pistol at James’s waist. “The pistol, if you please.”

      Everyone’s attention was on James. Even the driver had been keeping his attention on the rearview mirror, flicking his gaze back and forth between James and Forbes and the assault rifle aimed at his head.

      They hadn’t seen what the Phoenix Force warrior saw over Zhol’s shoulder. James lifted his chin. “What’s that?”

      Everyone in the armored car looked out the passenger-side windows.

      “Shit!” Forbes roared.

      Calvin James braced himself as Gurza desperately cranked the wheel.

      The last thing anyone saw before the world ended was Rafael Encizo grinning out of the roll cage of the Tarantula 4x4. The off-road vehicle T-boned the Land Cruiser broadside at fifty miles per hour. The armored SUV whipped into a violent 360-degree spin. Gurza lost control of the vehicle and rolled it. The world tumbled end-over-end as metal buckled, tearing and screaming into ruin. Sharkov and his man in the back weren’t strapped in, and one of them bounced into the passenger area and landed on top of James and Forbes. The Phoenix Force commando grunted as the big man crushed him and was instantly flipped away as the Toyota rolled again. James tried to brace himself, but a ten-kiloton nuclear demolition charge bounced squarely into his face. He saw stars and tumbled with everyone else like the contents of an armored cocktail shaker. The Land Cruiser hit something and bounced. Everyone and everything collapsed to the roof as the SUV came to a rest on its back like a turned-over turtle.

      The world was still spinning and James viewed it upside down and through a very long and dark tunnel. His mouth was full of blood and he couldn’t clear his head. Battle instincts took over. He clawed for the door handle and shoved. The armored door was heavy, but James pushed it open with a groan. He reached back and his hand closed around pack straps. He crawled out of the Land Cruiser dragging the nuke onto the pavement with him.

      It was early morning, but people were leaning out of windows and gathering on the street, shouting. James pushed himself to his hands and knees to retrieve the other device.

      He threw up instead.

      A large hand clamped down on his shoulder. “C’mon, Cal.” Forbes heaved the man to his feet. The other nuke was already strapped to his back “Gurza’s neck is broke. Suck it up. Help me with Zhol and Sharkov. We gotta steal a car and go.” He turned back to the stricken SUV.

      “Clay.”

      Forbes turned to find James’s pistol pointed at his forehead.

      “Don’t move.”

      Forbes’s eyebrows dropped dangerously as he stared down the barrel of the .45. “You Judas bastard.”

      “Calvin!” Manning and McCarter were shouting his name from somewhere along the street. “Calvin!”

      Ten yards down the street the Tarantula lay on its side. Hawkins hung in his harness. Encizo was climbing out of the roll cage shakily.

      “Judas bastard,” Forbes repeated.

      James didn’t bother to respond. He saw three Clay Forbeses in front of him. He kept his front sight on the one in the middle.

      Zhol’s door was crumpled, but remarkably his power window whined upward. The Tajik gangster wormed his way out onto the street. His face was a mask of blood. James kept his pistol on Forbes. He stepped to his left and slammed his boot into the side of Zhol’s jaw. Zhol’s eyes rolled back in his head as he rolled belly-up with the blow.

      “Forbes. Shrug out of that nuke.”

      Encizo limped forward with his SIG-Sauer P-226 leveled. “And lose the piece. Real slow.”

      Out of the corner of his eye James noticed Sharkov lying in the back of the Toyota. He was speaking rapidly into his radio.

      McCarter and Manning pounded down the street, shouting at the top of their lungs. “Calvin! Get out of there!”

      Grimaldi suddenly veered his helicopter off.

      An aluminum cloud came hammering out of the sky. The Russian Halo was the second largest helicopter on Earth, and the giant machine roared over the rooftops. It was a dedicated transport, but the Russians never designed a helicopter without some kind of armament option. The DShK-38 heavy machine gun mounted in the Halo’s nose ripped a line of smoking holes through the tail boom of Grimaldi’s little Hermit helicopter. The Halo came on and dipped its nose.

      Tracers screamed down, ripping asphalt in a line that ran straight at Calvin James, who hurled himself aside. He was sprayed by chunks of road as the line of the death passed him by. He rolled back up into a gunfight.

      “Hey, Cal!” Forbes’s gleaming Magnum revolver boomed in his hand. James staggered as a .357 hollowpoint round hit his armor at the top of his sternum. He felt the supersonic crack like a knife through his eardrum as a second bullet passed inches from his ear. James’s .45 thudded in his hand as he returned fire. Forbes jerked as the heavy slugs hit him and sat him down hard against the Land Cruiser.

      Encizo dived for his life out of the line of the Halo’s fire.

      McCarter was spraying his rifle up into the air. “Calvin!”

      The giant Halo’s rotors beat the air like thunder and whipped the air between the city buildings into a hurricane. The mighty machine spun on its axis to bring its gun to bear on James again. The Phoenix Force pro took six running steps onto the sidewalk and hurled himself through the window of a tea shop.

      Shattered glass fell in a cascade around him.

      Armageddon erupted as the Halo opened up and fired its heavy machine gun into the shop at six hundred rounds a minute. The brick walls of the building were no cover but they took James out of sight. He rolled back directly against the wall to try and get under the helicopter’s angle of fire. Glass, brick and mortar rained down as a thousand rounds of armor-piercing ammunition tore the tea shop apart.

      James popped up as the fusillade suddenly ended. He ignored his cuts as he leaped back out. Manning was in the middle of the street with the big

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