LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

      “Copy,” McCarter acknowledged. He turned toward Encizo and James. “Let’s start at the lead vehicle and work our way down.”

      From above them Manning’s machine gun had fallen silent. Hawkins’s sniper rifle barked once, then was still.

      At every vehicle they found dead terrorists and burning corpses. The ambush had been unleashed with brutal efficiency, leaving no survivors after the initial assault. Satisfied, McCarter informed Stony Man, then called his overwatch element down to the road.

      “We’re ready for phase bravo,” he said simply. A burning truck at his back cast his sharp features in a slightly diabolical light. “Form up and let’s roll.”

      Immediately, Phoenix Force formed a loose Ranger file, each soldier putting twenty yards between themselves. Calvin James, in the lead, took a GPS reading, noted the time and then set out up the center of the road at a fast clip.

      For the next phase of the operation Phoenix Force would conduct an overland march for movement to target. To keep cover of darkness, they would have to maintain a tight pace. Their margin of error had been whittled down to a very slender gap.

      In the hands of the IMU terrorists was an American contractor tasked with controlling Predator drones in the border region.

      With terrorist reinforcements stopped while still en route, Phoenix Force was now prepared to make the overland hike to the location and free the American contractor who was being held hostage.

      James set a rugged pace, leading the men straight up the road until they had crested the rise and started down the other side. Using a pace count perfected over long years of patrol and special reconnaissance missions he led them three miles before reorientating himself and cutting cross-country.

      Following James’s navigation, while McCarter doubled checked the GPS landmarks, Phoenix Force cut across the rugged terrain. As they dropped in altitude from the high mountain pass, sparse vegetation gave way to temperate forest. Saw grass and chokeberry bushes became interspersed with stands of thick dogwood and copses of coniferous trees, providing good cover for their movements as they drew closer to their target.

      Finally, James called a halt at the team’s predetermined rally point. The group huddled close together in the lee of a stand of tamarack pines. Below them an adobe-style walled compound was set on a stretch of valley floor in the middle of a small village. The road they had followed for part of their insertion after the ambush cut in from the west and ran directly through the hamlet. This late at night the only lights showing came from the compound. Overhead a low-pressure front had rolled in and stacked up like dirty cotton candy against the mountains.

      Hawkins adjusted the ambient light levels on the passive receiver of his sniper scope, bringing the compound into a starker relief. Beside him Gary Manning had swapped out his night-vision goggles for IR binoculars, allowing him greater ocular clarity of the target site.

      “I got three sentries,” the Canadian muttered softly.

      “That’s my count,” Hawkins confirmed. “Two at the east-facing driveway gate and one walking the wall to the rear of the compound.”

      McCarter keyed his com set. “You still have eyes or has the pressure front cut us off?”

      “Be advised,” Price replied immediately, “cloud cover has obscured our imagery.”

      “Understood.” McCarter clicked off. “Any sign of the hostage?”

      “Negative,” Hawkins said.

      “If the intel is spot-on, then he’s down in the basement,” Manning added, still scanning the scene with his IR binoculars.

      “Shaking thing to bet a life

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