James tackled the terrified girl to the floor to get her out of the line of fire, trying to keep her covered with his body. He grunted as a bullet hit his back, the NATO body armor under his fatigues deflecting the slug with a sharp whine. Screaming hysterically, the girl began pummeling the Stony Man operative with her soft fists.
“Delta Force, ma’am,” James grunted as he took another bullet in the back. “You want to shut the fuck up and let us rescue you?”
Instantly she stopped struggling and looked into his face, tears of hope welling in her eyes. He could see that she had been badly beaten, her nose broken, and there were teeth missing, fresh blood smeared on her cheek and shoulder.
“Kill them,” she begged with a sob in her voice. “Please kill them all.”
“That’s the plan,” James replied, pulling out his Beretta and firing directly into the groin of a man coming their way loading a shotgun. Dropping the weapon, the slaver shrieked and tried to get away. James shot the man in the back, then again in the spine as the bleeding gunner started to slide limply down the wall.
A few moments later it was over and Phoenix Force quickly reloaded their weapons before going into the next room. Rising stiffly, James hauled the girl back to the entrance, hustling her away to safety. The first part of the mission was done. Now came the hard part—burning out this nest of vipers.
Kicking open the door, McCarter found a short corridor lined with curtained alcoves. It reminded him of a brothel he had raided once in Hong Kong. The implications were horribly clear, and he shoved the stubby barrel of the machine gun into the first sex room, seeking a target. A naked girl was strapped to small bed, a naked man trying to get a handgun free from the tangle of his clothing draped over a chair. McCarter stitched the slaver from groin to face, then departed while reloading. They’d come back later for the prisoners. This wasn’t over yet by a long shot. The element of surprise was gone, and the Sardinians would start fighting back for real at any second. Every tick of the clock was a mark against the Stony Man commandos. This had to be a blitz.
Standing in a doorway, Hawkins was holding back a curtain and firing his MP-5 in short bursts, the spent brass arching away to bounce off the wooden jamb. Men screamed from within the alcove, followed by silence.
Going to the next curtain, Encizo paused and the fabric started to jump from the outgoing lead. He waited until the firing stopped, then swept in low, catching the bare-chested slaver as he dropped a spent clip from his Skorpion machine pistol. The little Cuban stroked the trigger and sent a wreath of 180-grain, steel-jacketed vengeance into the slaver.
Cringing behind a chair, a middle-aged woman stared at the act with a growing expression of delight. As the Sardinian fell, she leaped forward to pull a knife from his belt and attacked the riddled corpse in mindless fury.
Finishing another alcove, McCarter paused at the sight of his reflection moving in a wall mirror. Acting on a hunch, he fired into the glass, and a man fell out holding an AP grenade. As it rolled into sight, McCarter saw the ring was still attached. That had been too close! The NATO body armor they wore was good, but it didn’t make a man invulnerable to head shots or concussion damage. Warily, the Briton checked inside the closet for any more hardmen and found a flight of stairs leading deeper into the earth. Patting his chest, the Stony Man commando found that he was out of stun grenades. Returning to the room, he grabbed the AP grenade from the floor and tossed it down the stairs. As the lethal sphere bounced men shouted in fear and there came the sound of running boots.
Jumping down the short flight, McCarter landed in a crouch and saw a rough-hewn tunnel filled with men holding guns. Dodging to the left, the Phoenix Force leader opened fire with the MP-5, mowing them down. A few of the slavers fired back, the rounds ricocheting off the rock walls. When the clip was empty, McCarter pulled his 9 mm Browning Hi-Power and waded into the dying bodies, finishing off anybody who wasn’t obviously dead.
Clearing out the last alcove, Manning reloaded his MP-5 just as a fat man rushed around a corner blasting away with an M-16. Coolly, Manning took out the fellow with a burst in the chest, then moved past the falling body to sneak a peek around the corner.
About a dozen men were opening plastic crates. A couple Sardinians were donning NBC suits, and the rest buckling on harnesses for XM-214 electric miniguns. Just one of those weapons could chew the Stony Man team into hamburger, and if the hardmen released VX gas into the prehistoric warren, everybody would die, including the girls still trapped in the cages.
“They’ve got VX and miniguns,” Manning subvocalized into his throat mike, arming his last stun grenade. He couldn’t risk rupturing the nerve-gas canisters.
Staying low, Encizo joined Manning just as a roaring hellstorm of lead blasted out of the room as the miniguns chewed a deep gap into the corner and wall, throwing off an explosion of splinters. In unison, the two Stony Man commandos tossed their stun grenades around the corner, then quickly retreated.
As the grenades flashed into a triple flare, the slavers walked through the blinding light, firing their weapons everywhere, the spinning barrels of the miniguns vomiting high-velocity lead.
Crossing the streams, the Sardinian criminals chewed twin paths of destruction along the hallway and into the alcoves. Most of the curtains had been torn down, and they could see inside with no trouble. Still hacking at the corpse, the middle-aged woman was torn to bits.
Marching over the bodies of their fallen comrades, the two gunners proceeded into the studio, searching for the enemy, assuming it to be the Italian army again. But they could hardly believe the fools ever found their base, much less got this far inside. But the studio was also empty. Easing his grip on the firing handle, one of the Sardinians asked a muttered question. But the other man merely shrugged, uncertain of what to do next.
In the destroyed hallway, two of the bodies lying under the torn curtains raised into kneeling positions, and the Stony Man commandos cut loose with their MP-5 machine guns at point-blank range. The Sardinians flew backward from the concentrated barrage, their miniguns briefly firing to hammer at the stone ceiling before going as silent as the dead slavers.
Walking forward, Hawkins administrated a shot directly into the face of each Sardinian, just to make sure. Then Encizo pulled the power cords from the miniguns, rendering them inoperable.
“Okay, let’s finish this,” Manning said, slinging his machine gun. Pulling a Desert Eagle from a holster on his hip, the man clicked off the safety. His KGB Special didn’t have anywhere near enough stopping power for this next part.
Slinging their machine guns, Hawkins and Encizo prepared their own handguns as they walked down the hallway, past the alcoves. There was a fast flurry of gunfire, then three slow deliberate shots.
Appearing in the smashed mirror, David McCarter carefully studied the war zone outside the alcove before emerging with his MP-5 in one hand and a thick book tucked under the other arm.
As he moved followed, the members of his team came around the corner.
“All clear?” McCarter asked.
The soldiers nodded.
“Well, I found the sales ledger,” McCarter announced, tapping the fat volume with the hot barrel of the machine gun.
“Great,” Hawkins muttered, working out a jam from his MP-5. “Then let’s get out of this shithole.” Saving the girls had been the mission priority, but this was the prize. The names and address in the book would send dozens of men and women to the gas chamber. Or whatever method of execution their assorted countries used to
