detonated shy of the hole, but its casualty radius was wide enough to kill half the emerging soldiers outright and pound the others with frag shards, voiding any chance they might help ramp the odds still further against Phoenix Force.
The grenade blast was still resonating through the valley when it was joined by another, this one care of a 40-mm high-explosive round launched from McCarter’s M-203 into a supply truck several Hezbollah gunmen had taken cover behind. The initial blast ruptured the gas tank, further disintegrating the vehicle. There were screams of agony as shrapnel sprayed the surrounding enemy. As the maimed terrorists fell to the smoke-shrouded earth, James and Encizo ventured clear of the water tank and advanced, raking the camp with their carbines. Behind them, Junior Hale had apparently stopped his bleeding enough to crawl up the rocks and add to the onslaught with bursts from McCarter’s M-16.
The tide of the battle quickly shifted in Phoenix Force’s favor. The covert ops fanned out, whittling down the enemy as they sought to encircle the camp and block off escape routes. When no further combatants emerged from the tunnels, McCarter and the others assumed that Hawkins had made good use of the Gopher Snake and kept Hezbollah from replenishing its forces aboveground.
As the surviving terrorists saw their ranks dwindle, the fight began to go out of them. Several men threw down their weapons and dropped to their knees, placing their hands on their heads in a gesture of surrender. A few others fired wildly in midflight, racing away from the smoldering carcass of the bombed truck, only to be cut down. Two recruits scrambled into one of the parked Jeeps in hopes of escaping out onto the main road, but another frag grenade, this one heaved by Encizo, rolled beneath the chassis and its concussive blast flipped the vehicle into the air, throwing the men clear before landing upside down in the dirt. Stunned, the recruits cried out for mercy and straggled to their knees, joining those who’d already given up the fight.
Three others made a valiant last stand near one of the far sentry towers, forcing James and Encizo to flatten themselves on the turf to avoid rounds from their AK-47s. McCarter and Hale responded by shifting aim and targeting the gunners. Within seconds the men were down, having fired the last shots that would be heard from the enemy.
Once he sensed the skirmish was over, McCarter warily stepped clear of the rocks he’d taken cover behind, his eyes on the carnage.
“Canvass the area for flare-ups,” he shouted to James and Encizo.
McCarter’s colleagues rose to their feet and began to cautiously make their way through the camp, motioning for the surviving Hezbollah warriors to group together near the veiled helicopter. The beleaguered recruits complied, some of them sobbing, others crying out in pain. McCarter, meanwhile, backtracked to the boulders where he’d left Hale. The CIA agent was slumped across the rocks, M-16 at his side. The Phoenix Force leader climbed up to him. Hale had lost his makeshift compresses and his initial wounds bled heavily onto the rocks. He’d taken two more slugs, as well, one to the shoulder, the other a clear killshot to the head. McCarter fingered the man’s wrist for a pulse, already knowing he wouldn’t find one.
“Damn it,” McCarter murmured.
There was nothing to be done for Hale. McCarter grimly braced himself, then hoisted the dead man off the rocks and slung him over his shoulder. He could feel Hale’s blood drenching him as he slowly hauled the body back to the camp. James and Encizo had finished rounding up the prisoners. There were ten of them. As McCarter went to join them near the helicopter, he detected movement through the smoke near where James’s grenade had earlier cratered the hardpan. A half-clad Hezbollah soldier was rising up from the tunnels, hands clasped to his head. Even as the man was stepping out onto the level ground, another recruit followed behind him, then yet another. Soon a total of seven young men had appeared, all unarmed, all hacking and blinking away tears from the gas that had left them defenseless. Finally Hawkins brought up the rear, still wearing his gas mask, still clutching his KRISS Super V subgun.
“Nice work, Teej,” McCarter told him, dropping to one knee so that he could ease Hale’s body to the ground.
“Thank the Gopher Snake,” Hawkins replied. “Little sucker worked like a charm.”
McCarter was bathed in sweat and blood. He rose slowly, his legs aching from the exertion of toting the corpse.
“What’s the situation down there?” he asked.
“There’s still a few men in the tunnels,” Hawkins reported. “Five dead, probably that many out cold, at least for now. Combs has ’em covered, but I’d best get back before they come to.”
McCarter nodded. “Did you spot anything besides barracks?”
“About what you’d expect,” Hawkins reported. “Command post, weapons cache, storage area. Plenty to search through.”
“Combs has his camera, so go ahead and let him take a few shots, but don’t spend any more time down there than you have to.”
“You want him to call for our chopper?”
“Hold off for now,” McCarter said, glancing at the net-shrouded Huey. “If we can get this sucker going, we won’t have to wait around.”
Hawkins nodded, leaving his prisoners in Encizo’s care and venturing back underground. McCarter turned to James as he approached the helicopter. “Help me get the net off.”
“Gonna hotwire it?” James asked as he grabbed one edge of the thick netting slung over the Huey’s rotors. He worked with one hand, keeping his M-16 trained on the prisoners with the other. McCarter was doing the same.
“If that’s what it takes,” the Briton said. “We’ll have room for Hale and a couple prisoners. Hopefully some of them speak English and will horsetrade info for some leniency.”
“What about the rest of them?” James asked.
“If it were us, they’d probably just gun us down and be done with it,” McCarter guessed. “Can’t see doing it, though. We’ll just leave ’em.”
James stared at the prisoners. They were all young, some in their teens. They looked back at him, some still fearful while others had turned sullen, their eyes filled with hate. It sickened James to think that these men would no doubt quickly regroup with others and resume their training, possibly even more determined than ever to turn themselves into killing machines for the Hezbollah cause. But he knew McCarter was right; they couldn’t in good conscience just massacre the whole lot of them. To do so would be to drag Phoenix Force down to the enemy’s level. It was bad enough that the Stony Man commandos had to regularly navigate their way through moral gray areas to carry out their assignments; if they were to succumb completely to the dark side, they would have betrayed not only their country, but also themselves. Still, the matter didn’t sit well with James.
“Gotta say,” he finally murmured, “giving them a free pass sucks, big time.”
“Tell me about it,” McCarter said. “Sometimes war is more than just hell.”
CHAPTER TEN
Leystra Hot Springs, California
Leystra Hot Springs was a once prominent New Age retreat located eighty miles east of Los Angeles in the heart of a heavily wooded forest blackened by the 2007 fires that had turned Southern California into hell on Earth. The twenty-one-acre retreat had fallen on hard times even before the fire, and when flames had ravaged most of the outbuildings and neighboring establishments, the facility’s
