the windshield of the left-hand vehicle. His pistol stood no chance of piercing the armored glass, but the bullets did spall and create spiderwebs of cracking in the upper glass layer. McCarter ran for the curb and his opponent swerved to take him. He leaped, arms outstretched, for the top of a parked ZIL sedan. His hands closed around the luggage rack as he heaved himself onto the roof. Metal screamed as the Land Cruiser sideswiped the ZIL. McCarter’s foot went numb as the SUV’s passenger window clipped his boot heel in passing and he was flung from his perch. He hit the sidewalk with bone-jarring force and rolled. He got to his feet and emptied the last four rounds of his pistol into the back of the second armored SUV in parting.
The driver spitefully ran over McCarter’s Dakar, crushing one of the motorcycle’s wheels and crumpling the front fork.
The Briton snarled in anger and limped back to the vehicle he had disabled. He took a compact assault rifle and a bandolier of ammo from one of the fallen gunmen as he roared into his mike, “Phoenix Flight! Cut them off!”
“Phoenix Flight in position!” Grimaldi replied. “Deploying Phoenix Four!”
Rotors beat the air as the pilot dropped his helicopter like a stone three blocks up the street. The little Russian Mi-34 Hermit was a civil aircraft Phoenix Force had acquired locally. Grimaldi held the Hermit a hundred feet over the intersection. Gary Manning fast-roped out of the cabin, falling toward oncoming traffic like a spider. Horns blared and brakes shrieked as Manning’s boots hit pavement and traffic parted like the Red Sea around the heavily armed man. Manning spun his weapon on its sling as his two targets screamed through the intersection one block down.
“Phoenix Four in position. Targets acquired.” The big Canadian shouldered his Barrett M-82 A-2 rifle. It was a huge rifle, more than five and a half feet long and weighing twenty-seven pounds. It used the same action as the Barrett “Light Fifty” heavy sniper rifle, but had been redesigned in bullpup configuration. Most of the weapon’s massive action was situated in the back of the gun rather than the middle, and passed over the operator’s shoulder.
McCarter dropped to one knee, holding the big Barrett over his shoulder like a rocket launcher. The two armored SUVs came on. One pulled ahead as Manning peered through the 3x infrared sight. He saw the halo of light eclipsed as the lead Land Cruiser pulled directly in front as a shield.
“This is Phoenix Four. I’m taking out lead vehicle.” Manning put his crosshairs on the grille of the oncoming SUV. The .50-caliber round had been designed in the latter days of WWI with the specification of being able to attack observation balloons, aircraft and the tanks of the day. It had defeated such targets with grotesque ease, and a hundred years later it was still the most powerful round that one man could reasonably operate in a weapon.
The Canadian master rifleman squeezed the trigger.
The huge .50-caliber round shot forth a four-foot blast of flame from the muzzle and Manning grimaced as the rubber recoil pad behind the magazine kicked him like a mule. Steam blasted out of the lead vehicle’s grille as the .50-caliber armor-piercing round punched through the armored box surrounding the engine. Manning yanked his muzzle down and fired again. The engine shrieked and clanked as the engine block cracked and the vehicle lost power.
Manning put his third shot through the driver’s side of the windshield.
The armored windshield cratered around the .50-caliber hole and the interior went red in a spray of arterial blood. The SUV fishtailed out of control as the dead driver collapsed against the wheel. The vehicle veered onto the wrong side of the road and rammed into a parked bread truck at forty miles per hour. The side of the panel van folded around the front of the armored car.
The bumper of the last SUV was aimed straight at Manning and appeared to have no intention of stopping. Shooting into the last vehicle wasn’t the preferred action. Calvin James was inside, along with two, ten-kiloton nuclear demolition charges. Sending armor-piercing bullets sailing through the car body or shaped charges sheeting the interior with superheated gas and molten metal was a last option.
The driver had no such reservations.
He accelerated straight for Manning where he knelt in the middle of the intersection. Manning dropped the big Barrett on its sling and clicked the brake on his repelling harness. “Phoenix Four requesting immediate extraction!”
“Extracting!” Grimaldi said.
The radial engine in the helicopter overhead roared into emergency war power. Manning’s harness cinched against him as the helicopter’s rotors hammered the sky and clawed for altitude. The Land Cruiser bore down on him like a juggernaut. Manning’s feet left the ground as the helicopter pounded straight up into the sky like an elevator.
The vehicle tore past less than a yard beneath Manning’s boots. “Phoenix Flight, Phoenix Four redeploying!”
“Affirmative, Phoenix Four!”
Manning released the brake and repelled to the ground, releasing the rope from his harness. “Phoenix Four deployed and clear!”
“Roger, Phoenix Four.” Grimaldi took his helicopter back above the rooftops and resumed the chase.
The doors of the crashed Land Cruiser flew open.
The big Barrett was too unwieldy for a close-range fire-fight. Manning shrugged out of the sling and drew his pistol. The Para-Ordinance P16-40 barked in his hands as he began double-tapping the enemy. The range was twenty-five yards and the big Canadian could see the bulge of body armor beneath their jackets. At that distance he could reliably put every shot into a dinner plate in rapid fire. His first double-tap shot away one hardguy’s jaw, and his second neatly put out another man’s eye and brain as he went for head shots.
Manning moved toward cover as men deployed from the opposite side of the Land Cruiser. He dived behind a white Sputnik 4×4 sedan and rolled up, slamming his pistol across the hood. The .40-caliber weapon barked twice, cracking the skull of one of the Russian hardmen behind the SUV. Manning dropped low as the other two men opened up, their compact assault rifles spewing flame like buzz saws in their hands.
“Shit!” The Phoenix Force commando flinched as bullets zinged straight through the car he was using for cover. He jammed himself as low as possible between the curb and the tires. The Sputnik shuddered above him as it was riddled by automatic fire. The bullets zipped through and blasted on into the hairdresser’s shop behind him. A bullet plucked at the shoulder of his jacket and sparks flashed inches over his eyes as the car body tore like cheesecloth. “Phoenix Four requesting immediate backup!”
“Phoenix Four, this is Phoenix One, I’m on your twelve!”
A man screamed as McCarter opened up from behind. Manning leaped to his feet as the remaining Russian dived over the hood of the Land Cruiser to avoid McCarter. Manning whipped up his pistol. His first two rounds hit the killer in the chest, standing him up and pushing him back against the vehicle’s fender. The Russian raised his rifle even as he took hits.
His forehead geysered jellied brain as McCarter’s bullet transversed his skull from behind. Manning holstered his pistol and sprinted forward, confiscating the dead man’s rifle and his bandolier of spare magazines.
McCarter came up at the run. “Phoenix Flight, sitrep!”
“We have third vehicle directly beneath us,” Grimaldi reported.
“Phoenix Two, what’s your position?”
“Parallel
