got me.”
“Hey!” Gotron took in McCarter’s desert camouflage fatigues, body armor and the scarf wrapped around his head. The warlord gazed appreciatively at the Barrett M-468 weapon system draped casually across McCarter’s shoulder. The 6.8-caliber rifle looked like an M-16 on steroids. A SUSAT optical sight had been mounted on the receiver and a 40 mm M-203 grenade launcher hung beneath the barrel. Eight inches of United States Marine Corps OKC 3S bayonet hung conspicuously from the muzzle. The Goat stabbed a gleefully accusing finger at McCarter. “British SAS! Who Dares Wins!”
“Well…” McCarter shrugged. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” Khan leaned back in his saddle and scratched his goatee with the muzzle of a Russian A-91 compact assault rifle. “You lost?” He pointed south. “Afghanistan and NATO forces are eight hundred kilometers that way.”
His horsemen, who spoke English, smiled unpleasantly.
“No.” McCarter shook his head. “Not lost.”
Khan cocked an eyebrow. “You are on a mission.”
“As a matter of fact I am.”
“Ah! Goddamn!” Khan leaned forward with almost childlike-curiosity. “A secret mission?”
“No, no secret.” McCarter lifted his chin toward the baggage. “I’d just like to know what those mules are carrying.”
Gotron Khan smiled to reveal a mouth that could only be described as dental armageddon. “Cucumbers!”
The horsemen laughed coarsely.
“Yeah, bloody great big ones.” McCarter laughed. “Or so I hear.”
The laughter of Khan’s men became rougher and their eyes went hard. Manning spoke in McCarter’s earpiece. “All units in position.”
“The biggest!” Khan grinned.
“And where’re you off to with your great big cucumbers, then?” McCarter shrugged innocently. “If I might ask.”
“Mecca!” Khan roared. “We are on Haj!”
Khan’s men laughed uproariously.
The leader of Phoenix Force smiled. Gotron Khan and his forty horsemen smiled back. It was all very congenial.
“I’d fancy a look,” McCarter suggested.
The Goat sighed. “I fancy you give me your rifle now.”
“I think I’ll hold on to it.” McCarter replied smiling. “But, tell you what, mate. Why don’t you and the lads drop yours.”
Gotron Khan stopped smiling. The muzzles of two dozen weapons pointed at McCarter in open hostility. The Briton spoke quietly into his mike. “Show of force, lads.”
Horsemen shouted in alarm as Phoenix Force rose up out of the rocks. Khan craned around in the saddle and looked at Hawkins blocking the narrow path behind and James, Encizo and Manning in the rocks above.
“Well, English. You and your…four men?” Khan shook his head sadly. “Four men, have us surrounded, goddamn.”
“Goddamn bloody right we do.” McCarter nodded. “Now I’m going to count to five, and you and your men had better be dismounted and disarmed.”
Khan stared incredulously.
“One,” McCarter announced.
“Crazy Eng—”
There was no “Two.” Phoenix Force cut loose.
Each man save McCarter held a South African 40 mm Milkor revolving grenade launcher. They hammered off three quick rounds into the horsemen. The grenades broke apart into multiple bomblets as they hit the ground, skipping and hissing beneath the horses’ hooves. Khan’s horsemen struggled to control their rearing mounts. McCarter fired his M-203 into the ground directly in front of Khan and stepped back behind his boulder as his grenade flipped apart. He stripped off his fringed scarf and prudently pulled his gas mask over his face.
Automatic weaponsfire erupted all along the mountain path, but Phoenix Force had already dropped back behind cover. McCarter jacked a rubber baton round into his M-203 as he stepped out from behind his boulder.
Yellow marking smoke flooded the gorge in thick clouds. In the saffron haze the rocky landscape looked like the surface of Venus. Had McCarter not been wearing a gas mask he would have found the atmosphere almost as hostile. Beneath the burning smell of the smoke element for a split second he might have detected the more subtle odor of pepper and apple blossoms as CN/DM gas mixture blossomed unseen in the yellow fog.
McCarter put Gotron Khan in his sights.
The Goat leaned forward and threw up on his horse’s head.
CN/DM mixture was known colloquially as “Super Tear Gas.” It had all the tearing and burning effect of military-strength CN with the fun and frolic of vomit gas. It temporarily blinded and burned the eyes and throat, and at the same time sent the gastrointestinal track and the colon into spasm.
Horses were happily immune to the effect.
They weren’t immune to being regurgitated on by their riders, and they were instantly aware that their masters were no longer in control of them or themselves. Horsemen spilled to the ground as they were bucked spewing from their mounts. Phoenix Force had risen from cover. The 40 mm Milkors thudded in their hands as they emptied their remaining three chambers into the ambush.
CN/DM was rated as a nonlethal riot control agent, but it was toxic in high enough concentrations, and a man who was choking and vomiting at the same time could drown as he swallowed his lunch into his lungs.
A few of Khan’s men who were still mounted fired their guns blindly into the hillside. The sound of gunfire was enough for their horses to renew their bucking and send their riders to the ground. Gotron Khan remained in the saddle. He’d lost his rifle but his razor-sharp Cossack sword rasped from its sheath. He put spurs to his horse and charged, weeping and drooling to stab at McCarter where he stood.
McCarter triggered the M-203 and the grenade launcher thumped. The solid rubber baton round was the size of a shotglass and hit Khan in the chest at 85 meters per second. Remarkably the warlord remained in the saddle. He drunkenly raised his saber for the killing blow. Froth flew from the horse’s mouth as it raced to trample McCarter.
The Briton stepped to starboard to avoid the saber and cracked the extruded aluminum butt of his carbine across the horse’s muzzle. The stallion screamed as it sailed past shaking its head and bucking its hindquarters five feet in the air. Khan catapulted out of the saddle, flying, arms outstretched, until gravity brought him to the ground in a pinwheel of limbs.
McCarter put a knee in the warlord’s back and hog-tied him with plastic riot-cuffs. “The Goat is secure. T.J.?”
Hawkins held up the lead rope to the string of mules. “I have the packages.”
The Phoenix Force leader nodded. “Calvin, give me a head count and sitrep.”
Khan’s
