likely they know about our little excursion here and they want us to stop. Apparently, official trips into Lüderitz have to be authorized.”
“Funny how that slipped Matombo’s mind.”
“He started apologizing as soon as he saw the bird,” Manning said in a quieter tone. “I don’t think it was purposeful.”
“Tell that to them?”
Before the Canadian could reply, the ground ahead of the lead vehicle churned with dust and the pattern that emerged could only have been produced by automatic weapons fire. Then the road erupted in a red-orange blast and left a crater three feet deep in its wake.
Encizo leaned on the brake pedal.
“Go off-road!” McCarter ordered. “Don’t stop.”
Encizo nodded and tromped the accelerator even as McCarter shouted at Manning to have James do the same. Both vehicles barely had all four wheels on the soft, sandy ground when heavy sparks followed by black smoke poured from the chopper hovering just above them. The whirlybird began to spin—lazily at first and then with increasing frenzy—before the pilot finally lost control and had to set it down. Hard. The smoke and dust left in its wake made it impossible to see in the mirrors of their SUV.
“There’s some cover,” Hawkins said as he gestured toward a rocky outcropping.
Encizo nodded and whipped the wheel to put the SUV in that direction while he expertly controlled the vehicle as it fishtailed in the loose sand of the Namibian wilderness. McCarter signaled Manning, who indicated they saw it, as well, and were right on their tail. Within a half minute they had reached the cover of the large rocks, although not without the cost of a few bullet holes in the frames of their SUVs.
As they bailed from the vehicle into the chill desert air, they could hear the reports of autofire, detect the whine of ricochets or the buzz of rounds burning the air just above their heads.
“Boy, oh boy,” James said as they converged on the cover of the rocks. “We have walked right smack-dab into a stinger’s nest.”
“What is happening?” Matombo demanded, fear evident in his voice. “Who are these men?”
“They aren’t friendly, whoever they are,” McCarter stated. He exchanged glances with the faces of his teammates. “Options.”
“I got us some heavy thunder, boss,” Hawkins said, patting the M-203 grenade launcher mounted beneath his M-16 A-2.
Manning hefted the M-60 E-4 heavy-barreled machine gun. “And I can bring some.”
“Good,” McCarter said. “That should give us the covering fire we need.”
“Need for what?” Matombo asked.
“To crash their bloody party,” the Phoenix Force leader replied with a wicked grin.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Let me off here!” Lyons ordered.
Blancanales pumped the brakes and Lyons went EVA with the vehicle still moving at better than twenty miles per hour. The Able Team leader didn’t lose stride as he touched the pavement and rushed the front doors of the broken-down factory. The terrorist gunners, firing from positions on the upper floor, tried to cut him down but they didn’t have fields of fire that close to the building. Lyons made it through the rickety doorway unscathed and into the cold, dusty interior.
His breath was visible by the only light in the factory, shafts of sunbeams streaming through cracks and holes in the darkened windows. The shadows nearly obscured a pair of terrorist gunmen save for the light reflecting off their machine pistols. Lyons swung his M-16 A-3 into acquisition and triggered it from the hip. The weapon chattered a 3-round burst that took the first terrorist in the guts before it flipped him onto his back. Lyons had the second gunman targeted before the body of the first hit the stripped concrete floor. Lyons’s rounds struck the terrorist even as the man fired his own weapon and sent bullets into the ground. The man dropped to his knees as blood poured from his chest wounds. The light faded from his eyes before he toppled face-first to the concrete.
Lyons tracked a 360-degree arc with the muzzle of the M-16 A-3 before rushing to a metal stairwell. The fact the enemy had only left a defense of two men on the lower level bothered the warrior enough to pause and consider that he might be walking into a trap. Then again, what did it matter? They had to stay on mission and make sure the terrorists didn’t get away from them, irrespective of the risks. Springing the trap would accomplish the same thing as planning a stealth assault.
Lyons shot up the steps and made it about three-quarters of the way to the second floor before another pair of terrorists emerged from the darkness above. The men hadn’t seen Lyons and he hadn’t seen them, so they nearly collided save for the Able Team warrior’s reflexes. Too close to engage with the business end of his assault rifle, Lyons spun the weapon so the butt came up and caught the terrorist to his right under the chin. He followed through and a crack echoed along the stairwell as the impact flipped the man over the metal railing. The shout of surprise died in the man’s throat when he landed head-first on the concrete.
The other terrorist realized the proximity made any use of his rifle useless and he whipped out a combat knife. He leaped toward Lyons, knife blade pointed down and away from his body. Years of Shotokan training screamed at Lyons and he reacted by stepping inside the entry point of attack that would put the knife wielder’s blade as far from its intended target as possible. As he leaped aside, Lyons delivered an elbow to the side of the terrorist’s jaw while simultaneously checking the nerve in the forearm with the butt of his rifle. He followed with a hammer fist to the man that crushed his nose against his face. The swiftness and efficiency of the attack bought Lyons the time he needed to follow up with a disarm maneuver.
The knife clattered from numb fingers.
Lyons really went to work. He swung the rifle into the terrorist’s solar plexus, and the air rushed from the man in a whoosh. Lyons followed with a stomp kick to the knee that crushed tissue and ripped tendons. The terrorist emitted a howl of anguish as he folded on himself, and Lyons finished his attack with another kick that smashed the man’s head between the sole of Lyons’s boot and the wall of the factory. The terrorist’s body tumbled down the stairs.
Lyons turned and continued up the stairwell, undaunted in his mission to eradicate every last one of the IUA terrorists.
BLANCANALES AND SCHWARZ were pinned down.
The van provided their only saving grace, as venturing from the shelter of the vehicle would have meant the end for the pair of Able Team commandos. Bullets zinged off the pavement or slammed into the roof. There were no windows on the side of the van facing the terrorist assault line inside the second floor of the warehouse, so the specialized Kevlar body of the van easily repelled the firestorm without compromising structural integrity.
“It would seem they’re not going to make this easy on us,” Blancanales announced.
“No, it sure doesn’t,” Schwarz agreed.
“I wish to hell Ironman would have given one of us time to go with him.”
Schwarz decided the moment had come to even the odds, and in way of response to his comrade he grunted as he flipped a switch on the control panel inside the specially equipped van. A small
