in small, hushed voices. In several of the vehicles they passed, corpses still sat behind the steering wheels and in the shotgun and rear seats. Many were upright, their heads partially blown off by enemy gunfire. Those that still had eyes stared blankly into the distance, their souls long gone from their earthly housings. Other bodies were almost headless, while still more appeared to have been burned alive, their blackened arms clawing at the handles inside the vehicles in vain attempts to escape their fiery coffins.
The corpses in the vehicles, and the semi-burned vegetation growing up around them, gave the area an eerie, otherworldly ambience.
While the ground upon which they tread was flat, across the blacktop in the distance stood a high mountain range. Around McCarter’s neck hung a pair of binoculars, which the Phoenix Force leader lifted occasionally to scan those mountains and the terrain in front of them.
The group was roughly a mile from the city when a glint of sunlight flashed from the mountains. The reflected glow lasted only a split second. But McCarter had seen such flashes of light far too many times in the past to not immediately identify its origin.
The reflection had come from the front lens of a scope. A scope mounted atop a rifle held in the hands of a shooter too inexperienced to know that he should keep the scope covered until the last few seconds before firing.
Or a rifleman who did know his business. And actually was only seconds away from squeezing the trigger. The Phoenix Force leader called for an immediate halt. “Sniper,” he said in a quiet voice because sounds, he knew, traveled far in such terrain. Raising the binoculars again, he zeroed in on the spot where he’d seen the flash. The field glasses included an automatic range finger, and they measured the distance at 642 feet. Not a long shot by any means. Even for a slip-shod Radestan regular or a semitrained rebel.
Through the lenses, McCarter could just make out the outline of a man. The sniper’s hide had been set up behind a boulder at the foot of the mountain. It was crude but sufficient to disguise the man in the distance from all but the most highly trained eye.
As he watched the still figure, the Phoenix Force leader thanked God that he was one of those highly trained eyes.
Quickly swinging the binoculars away from the sniper, McCarter moved them downrange to make it appear as though he had not spotted the enemy. With the eyepieces still pressed to his forehead, he said, “Act busy with your equipment.” Then he quickly dropped the binoculars to the end of their strap. “I don’t want him to know I’ve spotted him.” Then, to no one in particular, he added, “Can you see him?”
Calvin James had pulled the twelve-inch blade of his Crossada fighting knife from the Concealex sheath he wore on his left hip. The Crossada was a spear-pointed blend of Bowie knife and Arkansas Toothpick, and one well-placed thrust could drop a man at close range faster than a 12-gauge slug through the middle of the chest. But as McCarter watched, James began pretending to cut away some of the brush in front of him. “I can see something up there,” the former Navy SEAL said in a hushed voice. “What do you want to do?”
McCarter had swung his Rock River LAR-15 Hunter from his shoulder and pretended to be checking the magazine. The weapon sported a unique anodized finish to the aluminum hand guard, upper and lower receivers, trigger guard and charging handle. Referred to as a WYL-Ehide camo finish, from a distance it appeared to be a bronze color. But looking at it closely, the Phoenix Force leader had to smile at its furlike appearance.
The special camouflage had been digitally adopted from an actual photo of a real coyote’s hide.
Designed originally for coyote hunting, McCarter knew the RRA LAR-15 and its 5.56 mm NATO rounds worked equally well when hunting men. And it was far more accurate than the common AR-15/M-16 rifles on the market.
Especially after John “Cowboy” Kissinger finished his own tune-up.
McCarter glanced over to where James was still cutting brush. “I want you to get ready,” he said, finally answering the knife fighter’s question. “I don’t know if he’s government or rebel. But he’s definitely got us in his sights and could start pulling the trigger on us anytime.” Extending the LAR-15’s six-position stock, he kept the barrel aimed at the ground as he pressed it into his shoulder. “I’m going to take him out. But I’ve got a feeling he’s not alone.”
“Affirmative,” James said, transferring the Crossada to his left hand and continuing to swing it at the tall grass. Casually, his right hand moved to the Beretta 92-SB 9 mm on his other hip.
McCarter watched as the others silently nodded their acknowledgment of the order.
“Do you want—?” Rafael Encizo started to say.
McCarter knew there was no time for manners. “Quiet,” he said bluntly.
Encizo was a professional, too. He immediately stopped speaking.
Abdul Ali was the only man not covered by an abat. He didn’t need one to blend in. Still wearing his khaki pants, woodland cammo BDU blouse and checkered kaffiyeh, he came hurrying up from McCarter’s rear. “If he is with the resistance,” said the man with the long gray-streaked beard, “he will recognize me.”
“And if he’s not on our side and he recognizes you?” McCarter said.
Ali shrugged. “It is a chance I must take,” he said.
It was one heck of a risk, McCarter knew. Every second that passed was another second during which the sniper might fire and kill one of them. But the Phoenix Force leader knew it was a risk they had to take. He waited another full second, using the time to take in a deep breath and let half of it out again.
This could not be a common countersniper shot, the Phoenix Force leader thought as he prepared to act. They were lucky that the man in the mountain had created such a bad hide to begin with, and even luckier that he hadn’t caught the Phoenix Force leader staring back at him through the binoculars. If he had, he’d have already fired at least once, then moved. And if he saw McCarter’s LAR-15 Hunter barrel aimed his way, it would tip him off just as readily.
Taking too much time after he’d aimed the rifle would definitely cause the sniper to change positions.
Slowly, McCarter adjusted the red-dot scope on the top of the LAR’s Picatinny rail. Ali’s presence had not resulted in action by the sniper so the Phoenix Force leader waited no longer. Suddenly and without further ado, he swung his rifle barrel up and toward the mountain 642 yards away. He could see only the blurry outline of the would-be sniper’s head, shoulders and whatever rifle he held in his hands. Sighting in on the middle of the dark figure, he squeezed the trigger and felt the Hunter jump slightly in his hands.
Through the scope, McCarter saw the sniper’s head explode like a watermelon dropped from a ten-story building.
But a second later an explosion of a different type took place.
As if from out of nowhere, men bearing a variety of assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns and handguns suddenly shot up fifty feet farther down the line of brush and wrecked vehicles. And, unlike McCarter, they had no reason to hesitate.
The first dozen rounds or so seemed to come at exactly the same time, sounding like one gigantic explosion.
“Down!” McCarter yelled. It was an unnecessary order. The men of Phoenix Force and Ali had all dropped into the grass behind vehicles of their own accord.
McCarter felt his elbows
