a solid leg into a tight curl. He exploded outward in a heel-driven front snap kick that burst the already damaged door inward.
Rafael Encizo shot through the opening and peeled left, AKS-74U up and tracking as Calvin James peeled off to the right. As McCarter, followed by Hawkins and Manning, sprinted into the room Encizo killed a man armed with a Skorpion submachine gun. Men started cursing.
“Phoenix! Phoenix suicide bomber—” Lyons’s voice was loud and frantic in Phoenix Force’s earbud.
The warning came too late to stop the assault force’s forward momentum. McCarter swung around, searching for the threat. He saw Ziad Jarrah throw himself through the air, leaping away from a terrified teenager strapped down with a tan vest festooned with blocks of Semtex and bundles of wires.
“Bomb!” McCarter screamed.
Bullets burned across the room as the situation descended into a slow-motion montage. Manning struck Calvin James with a brutal shoulder block, knocking the ex-SEAL back into McCarter and toward the door.
Skorpion-wielding men in business suits spun and began trying to track targets. McCarter was driven backward as his eyes found the bomber’s. The kid’s gaze had glazed over, his mouth hanging slack. From out of his peripheral vision the Phoenix Force leader saw the other members of his team crowding in as he fell through the door.
Over their shoulders he saw the teenager squeeze his hand into a desperate fist, thumb hunting for the ignition. We’re not going to make it, he thought.
Outside the building a wave of fire suddenly erupted into the night, filling the optic of both Lyons and Blancanales.
“Phoenix! Phoenix!” Lyons shouted into his throat mike.
There was no answer.
Black smoke roiled up into the air as orange flames licked at the inside of the building. Lyons popped up, breaking down the SVD sniper rifle with quick motions. He quickly slung the carryall over his shoulder and stepped to the edge of the building, where he snapped his rappel rope into the D-ring carabiners of his slide harness.
He went over the edge and dropped six stories to the street. Lights were coming on in buildings up and down the street. Lyons came out and saw Blancanales already on the ground and sprinting for the van where Hermann Schwarz was at the wheel.
Suddenly, David McCarter’s voice was audible. “Be advised,” McCarter growled. “We are up and we are bloody leaving.”
The relief in Barbara Price’s voice was obvious even over the sat link. “Good copy, Phoenix.”
Sliding into the van’s passenger seat, Lyons turned toward Schwarz as Blancanales jumped into the back. “Let’s make sure all five of our birdies make it into their rig and then make a rapid strategic advance to the rear.”
“Are we calling this a success?” Schwarz asked.
“Close enough for government work,” Lyons replied.
INSIDE THE BUILDING Phoenix Force picked themselves up off the floor in the hallway. Their ears rang from the sharp crack of the explosion, and dark smoke obscured the interior ceiling above their heads.
“Let’s go, people,” McCarter said.
Hawkins looked around. The door to the target apartment had been blown off by the suicide vest blast and he could see that the outside wall on that side of the building had been blown outward, leaving a sagging ceiling and a gaping hole exposing empty space out over the street below. Fire burned in lively pockets.
“Jesus,” Encizo suddenly cursed. “The stairs we came up hugged that wall—there’s like a fifteen-foot gap here!”
Around them in the building Phoenix could hear people stirring, calling out in panic and milling in confusion. The building was rife with extremist foot soldiers. McCarter instantly went on alert, his weapon up.
“Gary,” he ordered, “check the staircase down the hall.”
“I’m on it,” Manning answered, moving out. He ran down the hall, bent low to avoid the thickest part of the smoke, and kicked open a door at the opposite end of the corridor. “It’s good!”
“You heard him,” Calvin James barked. “Let’s move, people.”
McCarter spun and covered the hall as his men ran down the passage and entered the stairwell. “Go!” he snapped. “I’ve got security!”
The other four members of Phoenix rushed through the doorway just as the first of the enemy combatants exploded into the hall. The man, bearded and dressed only in pants with a automatic pistol in his fist, shouted an angry warning and lifted his weapon.
McCarter killed him but there was a chorus of answering shouts. A volley of fire erupted outside the hall, initiating a storm of lead that tore into the corridor. More glass from the few unbroken windows shattered, falling inward, and the wood paneling was shredded. After his initial burst McCarter threw himself to the floor, directing his momentum over a shoulder, and rolled clear of the hall, keeping below the hail of gunfire.
McCarter spotted a big man armed with a black machine pistol appear from the door of a room directly across the hall from the suicide bomber. The giant shouted an order and peeled back from the doorway. A second man ran forward, Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his shoulder and across his back.
McCarter swore. The man went to one knee and leveled an RPG-7 at the end of the hall. Rising, McCarter turned and sprinted. The 84 mm warhead could penetrate twelve inches of steel armor; it would blow through even a reinforced door with ease. McCarter scrambled across the floor and leaped up into the air.
McCarter struck the floor and slid across as a fireball blew through the door where he had been and rolled into the already devastated room like a freight train. Shrapnel and jagged chunks of wood lanced through the air.
McCarter’s ears still rang from the explosive concussion and his face bled from a dozen minor lacerations, but his hand was steady on the trigger as Pakistani gunmen rushed through the front door.
CHAPTER THREE
The first shooter breached the door, AKM assault rifle up and at the ready. McCarter put him down with a burst from his submachine gun. The combatant hit the burning floor like a bag of wet cement. The man running in behind him looked down as the point man hit the floor. He looked back up, searching for a target, and McCarter blew off the left side of his face.
The third man in the line tripped over the second man’s falling corpse. McCarter used a burst to scythe the man to the ground and then put a single shot into the top of his skull. Through the swirling smoke and angry screams McCarter saw a black metal canister arc into the room.
McCarter recognized the threat instantly as an RG-42 antipersonnel hand grenade. He popped up off his belly onto his hands and knees as the grenade hit the floor inside the hall and bounced toward him. Leaving the AKS where it lay, McCarter dived forward, scooping up the bouncing hand grenade, and wrapping his hands around the black cylinder.
He hit the floor hard from his short hop, absorbing the impact with his elbows. He rolled over onto one shoulder and thrust out his arm, sending the grenade shooting away from him. It cleared the corpses in the entranceway and bounced up
