LITMIR.BIZ

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a cigar.”

      Hawkins beamed. “Yeah, but why is it Russia? I mean, shouldn’t it be part of Poland or one of the Balticstans?”

      Rafael Encizo snorted. “Did he just say Balticstan?”

      “That piece of property has gone back and forth more than a few times historically,” Calvin James explained. “But the last time it traded hands? The Soviets took it from the Nazis, in World War II, and they didn’t give it back. To anybody.”

      Hawkins nodded sagely. “They have a habit of that.”

      “That they do. It’s the Russian Federation’s only western seaport that doesn’t freeze over in winter. They aren’t going to give it back to anyone anytime soon.”

      Hawkins looked to their leader. “So what are we doing here again?

      McCarter watched the trucks approach down the one-lane road through the misty marsh forest. They were a dozen klicks outside the Polish city of Elbag. The land was flat, dank, forested with twisted trees right out of a horror movie and mostly undeveloped. The Kaliningrad oblast was indeed Russia’s westernmost outpost, and had a massive military presence. Not unsurprisingly, the oblast also had a massive Russian organized crime presence, and served as a launch point for Russian mafiya endeavors into Western Europe.

      This stretch of coast was a well-known smugglers’ route. McCarter knew that big money was paid on both sides of the border to keep the salty, dark, cold and windswept stretch of wetlands clear of Polish state police and customs.

      Phoenix Force had rather neatly stopped a terrorist attack a week ago in Prague. McCarter had been rather pleased with himself and his team. However, Stony Man Farm had picked up some very strange and seemingly related chatter within hours of the strike. Strange enough that Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, the Farm’s cybernetics genius, had used the dreaded word anomalous.

      The Farm had tracked the weapons through the black market web and their path had led to the Gdansk smuggling route and Kaliningrad. All signs pointed to something going on tonight.

      McCarter scowled into the misting rain. Phoenix Force had once again been reduced to sticking their necks out and seeing who tried to chop their heads off. It was the Englishman’s least favorite method of investigation.

      “With any luck we’re tying up loose ends, Hawk,” McCarter replied.

      “I got a feeling we’re just getting started.”

      McCarter nodded wearily into the wind. “And you’re not alone in that, are you, old son?”

      “He called me old son.”

      “You know? One day you are going to go one right proper Charlie too far.”

      “What the hell does that mean?”

      James answered. “It means, young blood, that one day, you are going to be all full of piss and vinegar, and say ‘you love it when I talk all black and stuff’ to me, and our fearless leader shall sit back and laugh at what happens to you.”

      Hawkins looked back and forth as every senior Phoenix Force member save Manning grinned at him in the gloom. “That’s not right. That’s wrong. I’d never say something like that.”

      Phoenix Force, including Manning over the com link, spoke as a unit. “Yes, you would.”

      “That’s just wrong—”

      Manning interrupted him with, “One mile, within range of my rifle, waiting on green light.”

      “Roger that, Gummer,” McCarter replied. “Wait on my signal unless you get sudden inspiration.”

      “Copy that.”

      Encizo flipped up the sight on his grenade launcher. “Three trucks, how do you want to play it?”

      “Well, I suppose I could step down there, step out in front and ask for an inspection.”

      The Cuban grunted in amusement. “You don’t speak Russian or Polish.”

      “But I do know a lorryful of Russian swearwords, and the word stop. Then it would be up to you lot and we all play it by ear.”

      James gave the Phoenix Force leader a bemused look. “Wow.”

      “You’ve got a better plan, then?”

      “No, not all.” James grinned. “I’m all in.”

      Manning’s voice dropped low over the link. “Guys?”

      The convoy had stopped at approximately three hundred meters.

      Hawkins stared at the three idling trucks. “Now why do you think they did that?”

      McCarter’s brows bunched. “Don’t say it…”

      Encizo said it. “I got a bad feeling.”

      “They know we’re here,” James confirmed.

      Manning’s voice grew concerned across the link. “Does anyone else hear that?”

      McCarter strained his senses over the sound of the idling trucks in the distance.

      Hawkins’s head snapped up. “Aw, hell.”

      McCarter heard it. It was low and sounded off in the fog, which told him that it was actually high. It sounded like a distant gardener’s Weed-Eater whirring from on high. Hawkins raised his weapon skyward. “It’s an RC helicopter”

      “And it has a bloody infrared camera,” McCarter snarled. “And it bloody well has us! Fish?”

      Encizo opened the action on the Pallad grenade launcher slaved beneath the barrel of his rifle. He took out the fragmentation grenade and slid in a fléchette round. “Hey, Hawk.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Go out in that clearing behind us. Do a little duck tolling. Maybe entice that eye in the sky to come down and take a closer look at you.”

      “Oh, for…” Hawkins popped to his feet and ran at a crouch into the clearing.

      Encizo shouldered his weapon. “Cal, a little light on the subject, if you please.”

      Calvin James clicked an illumination-round rifle grenade over his muzzle. “Say when.”

      The other members of Phoenix Force watched as Hawkins squelched across the wet glade one way and then came back the other. He suddenly crouched and ran to his left.

      “Would you describe those as furtive movements?” James asked.

      Manning spoke across the link. “I’d describe it as—”

      “Now!” Encizo shouted and estimated the shot. “Nine o’clock!”

      James snapped up his rifle and fired. The rifle bucked and the illumination round burst skyward. The low clouds, fog and predawn murk lit up and the small remote-controlled helicopter found itself starkly illuminated at five hundred feet. It appeared to be a fairly standard quad-copter with four rotors. It hovered in place for a moment like a deer in the headlights. James suspected the nonmilitary-grade night-vision camera’s lens had temporarily solarized.

      The spy-copter was blind.

      Like a cockroach when the kitchen lights came on, it suddenly tried to scuttle away. In this case by accelerating straight upward.

      Encizo raised his weapon and fired. The 40 mm Pallad belched pale yellow smoke and sent fifty steel darts screaming skyward in an expanding swarm. The RC chopper tilted crazily as fléchettes speared into its plastic fuselage and tore apart its starboard rotors.

      McCarter grunted in appreciation. “Nice shot, Fish.”

      The little unmanned aircraft suddenly dipped with only its portside rotors to support it and spun violently toward the earth like a falling maple seed on meth.

      “Hawk,”

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