the toggle switch, activating the hydraulic ramp. Within seconds the team was gone into the central Asian night.
The five black figures were invisible against the dark backdrop of the night sky. Unit commander David McCarter, himself a jumpmaster from the elite British Special Air Service, kept a close eye on the plunging members of his team.
Using his altimeter as a guide, McCarter gave the signal to disengage from supplemental oxygen. The air that high above the black-and-gray checkerboard of the landscape was chill as the commandos breathed it in.
At the predetermined altitude McCarter gave the signal and the loose circle of paratroopers broke away, turning into corkscrew spiral led by the British soldier. The black silk parachute of combat diver Rafael Encizo billowed up and popped open to begin the deployment sequence.
The four other members of Phoenix dropped past the paragliding Cuban-American and in quick succession ex–Navy SEAL Calvin James, then Canadian special forces veteran Gary Manning pulled their ripcords. McCarter and T. J. Hawkins dropped below the rest before the Texan and former Delta Force operator deployed his own parachute.
McCarter turned in his free fall and yanked his own ripcord. His chute unfurled and snapped open, jerking him up short. Arrayed behind and above him the team continued its descent in a long, staggered but symmetrical line.
McCarter led the paragliding procession using his wrist-mounted GPS unit to guide the team down to a narrow plateau on a ridge of low, sparsely wooded hills set above a road.
He used his time under the canopy to do a last-minute reconnaissance of the area as he dropped. Off to the northeast he was able to clearly distinguish a long line of headlights coming from the northwest. He felt a certain grim satisfaction as he realized his prey was heading directly toward the guns of his team.
He flared the chute as he touched down, then absorbed the impact up through the soles of his old Russian army boots. McCarter, like the rest of Phoenix Force, was dressed in a motley collection of drab, local civilian garb and Soviet-era Russian army uniform items. Their weapons were Russian, their faces covered in beards, and their equipment from explosives to communications and medical items were common black market items available in the arms bazaars of Armenian criminal syndicates.
Moving quickly, McCarter turned and began collecting his chute, rolling it into a tight ball as the rest of his men landed around him. Hawkins quickly unzipped an SVD sniper rifle from its cushioned carryall and powered up the illumination optics on the night scope.
As the other three members began to cache the drop gear, Hawkins went to the edge of the windswept gravel landing zone to pull security while McCarter worked his scrambled communications uplink.
“Phoenix Actual to Stony Farm,” he barked.
“Go for Stony,” Price replied immediately.
“We’re on the ground and initiating movement to target,” McCarter informed the woman.
“Good copy,” Price acknowledged. “We have eyes on,” she assured the field commander.
Above their heads the Stony Man’s own Keyhole satellite had spun into geosynchronous orbit and the NASA cameras began focusing tightly on the broken terrain with a lens capability so powerful it could read the license plate of a speeding vehicle at night. The ghostly white figures of Phoenix Force appeared on Price’s heads-up display back in the Virginia command and control center.
On the stark, exposed finger of the central Asian topography McCarter turned as his team cached the last of their jump gear and began to assemble and ready their primary weapons. Besides Hawkins and his SVD sniper rifle, the massive, thickly muscled frame of Gary Manning was adorned with a 7.62 mm RPK machine gun. The short fire-plug profile of Rafael Encizo came up behind the Canadian, a Type 50 submachine gun his hands. The compact weapon was a prolific Chinese knock-off of the Soviet-era PPSh-41 SMG, and Encizo used it to supplement the RPG-7 launcher he carried along with a sling of HE rockets.
Calvin James was the second half of Phoenix Force’s rocket team. He was also armed with an RPG-7 and Type 50. For his part David McCarter would be using a cut-down AKS-74 outfitted with a black market M-203 40 mm grenade launcher.
“We’re ready to roll,” Manning informed McCarter.
McCarter nodded, then spoke into his uplink. “How we looking out there, Hawk?”
“All clear on the approach route,” he answered.
“Copy. Bound forward one hundred yards into overwatch and will move into position.”
“Hawk out.”
“Let’s go,” McCarter ordered.
The four-man assault squad fell into a loose Ranger file with McCarter leading and Manning with his machine gun bringing up the rear. For McCarter the movement to target held a surreal quality. The stark, denuded geography seemed like a moonscape through the filtering lens of their commercial night-vision goggles. Each footfall sent puffs of pale dust billowing up, and there was the constant companion of high-altitude wind.
Around them the bare tops of hills rising from a lightly wooded river valley sat like a twisting barrier to the grasslands just beyond, stretching all the way toward the Chinese border.
Moving quickly, the team linked up with Hawkins and moved into position above a narrow switchback in an ancient dirt road carved out decades ago through the low mountains. McCarter called a halt and the team took three minutes to drink water from their canteens.
Once again Hawkins with his telescopic lens was dispatched to the periphery of the formation to provide security as the other four members of Phoenix Force prepped the assault site. Wooden-handled Soviet entrenching tools quickly hacked narrow holes into the side of the earth. Belay pinions were shoved in and buried, forming dead man hangs that allowed the team to deploy their rappel ropes.
“I’ve got the scout vehicle at the bottom of the canyon,” Hawkins said, breaking radio silence.
McCarter narrowed his eyes and turned his ear into the chill bite of the wind. On the air he could clearly make out the throaty growls of heavy engines climbing a steep grade in low gear. “Copy,” he told Hawkins. Turning back toward his teammates, he gave terse directions. “We have initial eyes on. Snap into ropes and ready weapons.”
Without comment all four commandos snapped their ropes into the D-ring carabiners of their rappel harnesses. Once locked into their drop rigs, Calvin James and Rafael Encizo quickly laid out several warheads and primed their RPGs. Beside them Gary Manning methodically dropped down the folding legs on his machine gun’s bipod and settled into position on the flank of the hit squad, poised to pour 7.62 mm rounds down the steep incline and onto the road below.
There was a harsh metallic click as he racked the bolt and chambered the first round on his belt. “Terrorist surprise package hot,” he declared in a soft self-satisfied voice.
McCarter grunted in response and slid home a high-explosive 40 mm grenade into his M-203 launcher. Once he was locked and loaded he pulled his Combat Personal Data Assistant out from a Cordura and Kevlar pouch. The CPDA had a commercial housing that on initial inspection hid the electronic upgrades provided by Stony Man’s technical section.
McCarter turned his head away from the bite of the omnipresent and icy breeze, bringing his finger up to key his mic. “Stony, you have eyes over target?”
“Affirmative,”
