Extreme Arsenal

“THE DRONES ARE INVISIBLE TO RADAR.”

The Able Team leader’s jaw set firmly as he scanned the shadowy terrain ahead. “If they had stealth robot tanks, then they could build a stealth helicopter.”

A red light buzzed on the control console. “We’re hot! Target radar lock!” the pilot announced as he wrenched the chopper hard right.

Strapped in, Lyons felt the jerk like a dog on the end of a leash. Out of the darkness, he saw a flaming halo growing in intensity and following the helicopter’s thrashing movements.

He knew exactly what the flaming halo was—the rocket exhaust of an antiaircraft missile, the lethal shaft of its warhead forming the black void in the center of a hellfire ring.

Death shrieked at the men of Able Team on a jet of flame.

Other titles in this series:

#21 SATAN’S THRUST

#22 SUNFLASH

#23 THE PERISHING GAME

#24 BIRD OF PREY

#25 SKYLANCE

#26 FLASHBACK

#27 ASIAN STORM

#28 BLOOD STAR

#29 EYE OF THE RUBY

#30 VIRTUAL PERIL

#31 NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR

#32 LAW OF LAST RESORT

#33 PUNITIVE MEASURES

#34 REPRISAL

#35 MESSAGE TO AMERICA

#36 STRANGLEHOLD

#37 TRIPLE STRIKE

#38 ENEMY WITHIN

#39 BREACH OF TRUST

#40 BETRAYAL

#41 SILENT INVADER

#42 EDGE OF NIGHT

#43 ZERO HOUR

#44 THIRST FOR POWER

#45 STAR VENTURE

#46 HOSTILE INSTINCT

#47 COMMAND FORCE

#48 CONFLICT IMPERATIVE

#49 DRAGON FIRE

#50 JUDGMENT IN BLOOD

#51 DOOMSDAY DIRECTIVE

#52 TACTICAL RESPONSE

#53 COUNTDOWN TO TERROR

#54 VECTOR THREE

#55 EXTREME MEASURES

#56 STATE OF AGGRESSION

#57 SKY KILLERS

#58 CONDITION HOSTILE

#59 PRELUDE TO WAR

#60 DEFENSIVE ACTION

#61 ROGUE STATE

#62 DEEP RAMPAGE

#63 FREEDOM WATCH

#64 ROOTS OF TERROR

#65 THE THIRD PROTOCOL

#66 AXIS OF CONFLICT

#67 ECHOES OF WAR

#68 OUTBREAK

#69 DAY OF DECISION

#70 RAMROD INTERCEPT

#71 TERMS OF CONTROL

#72 ROLLING THUNDER

#73 COLD OBJECTIVE

#74 THE CHAMELEON FACTOR

#75 SILENT ARSENAL

#76 GATHERING STORM

#77 FULL BLAST

#78 MAELSTROM

#79 PROMISE TO DEFEND

#80 DOOMSDAY CONQUEST

#81 SKY HAMMER

#82 VANISHING POINT

#83 DOOM PROPHECY

#84 SENSOR SWEEP

#85 HELL DAWN

#86 OCEANS OF FIRE

Extreme Arsenal

STONY MAN ®

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Don Pendleton

To Sam, for teaching our troops in Iraq and saving lives in Thailand after the tsunami. Some people might believe that God sends disasters to destroy the world, but He doesn’t. He sends good men and heroes like you. Come home safely, my friend.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona

Dane Whitman watched the MidKnight Mark II armored combat drone roll across the Yuma proving grounds. He glanced over at General Stephen Rogers and smiled.

“How’s she holding up?” Whitman asked.

“Still quiet on the seismic detectors,” Rogers said as he looked at the monitor. He swiveled the flat screen so that Whitman could look at it. The general hovered the cursor over the infrared sensors. “Even its heat signature is nearly invisible. Good work.”

“Stealth and armored combat never worked that well, hand in hand, but this is a revolutionary new design,” Whitman replied. “With the MidKnight, we can hit the enemy with impunity. Don’t want to risk a Marine platoon on foot? Send in a small squadron of MidKnights.”

Rogers pursed his lips. “What about regular tanks?”

“That’s the joy of this. The MidKnights are slave drones. One operator can handle and coordinate two of them. The range on the remotes are fairly limited, so our operators will need to be close. What better place than wrapped in the Chobam armor of an M-1A tank?” Whitman asked.

Rogers nodded. “But what about the tanks themselves?”

“The hypersonic vibrational dampeners are modular designs,” Whitman explained. “They can be installed in M-1As with ease.”

Rogers frowned. “So why use the drones?”

“To increase our armored ability. Instead of sending out large squadrons of tanks, we have two armored vehicles and four drones able to do the work of a squadron, with more firepower and superior coordination,” Whitman said. “And with less risk of someone with a cheap, shoulder-mounted rocket launcher taking out a tank crew.”

Rogers looked dubiously at the monitor.

Suddenly one of the MidKnights exploded. Chunks of armor plating and flames erupted as if from a metallic volcano.

“What in the hell?” Rogers demanded. He stood in the control booth, eyes locked on the field below. Another of the MidKnights detonated in an orange blossom of flame and debris.

“Sir!” Lieutenant Aaron Blake spoke up. “There’s something else out on the field!”

“Impossible!” Rogers bellowed. “This testing ground is protected on all sides. There are no access roads…”

The control tower shook.

Whitman held on to his chair, but Rogers and Blake were tossed to the floor. He glanced down to see a spiked disk pass near the bonfire of one of his drones. A long, thick tail rose from the thing’s back. Its bulbous tip spit out another flash of fire. He watched the low, armored intruder’s head spit twin lines of flame that smashed the tent with the MidKnight operators to shreds.

The millionaire inventor held his breath as more of those attackers became visible, their tails alive with jets of fire. Rockets speared out of the sides of the blunt tail tip and destroyed a hangar building.

“How in the blazes did they get here?” Rogers asked.

“Ankylosaurs,” Whitman whispered. “They look like Ankylosaurs.”

“What?” the general shouted.

“Ancient armored dinosaurs…” Whitman said. His eyes widened as one of the disk-shaped drones pivoted and opened fire on the base of the control tower with their heavy machine guns.

“Pull off of the field!” Rogers shouted into the mike. “Get out of the line of fire!”

Whitman looked at the monitor. In its infrared lens, the bodies of Yuma defenders flared hotly as they were pierced by lances of automatic weapons fire. Several had already fallen, turning from yellowish white to cool blue. Except for the flaming muzzles and rocket shell launchers, the Ankylosaurs were all but invisible to infrared and radar. He clicked through various detectors. The intruders were stealthier than his own designs. While the MidKnights and the Ankylosaurs were both invisible to radar, the black, spiked monstrosities had a null heat profile except when their weapons fired.

Glass shattered in the control room and Blake’s torso exploded as 25 mm shells ripped through him. Whitman recoiled, soaked with hot, fresh gore. Slimy gobs of pulped flesh dropped to the floor as he shifted position. Rogers stared in pained shock, for a moment at the head of the lifeless officer, and it took a moment for Whitman to focus on the fact that all the general held was a head attached to the grimy taillike spinal cord, ribs sticking up like insect legs where they’d been shattered.

“Get out of here now,” Rogers said resolutely. “This tower’s no protection against those things.”

Whitman hit the eject button on the DVD recorder drive.

“Come on, man!” Rogers shouted.

“The sensors have information on the attackers. We can use it!” Whitman replied.

“Think about your designs another—”

“No! To learn who is attac—” Whitman began. Something hot burned below his back and he suddenly felt very tired. The glimmering disk in his hand seemed too heavy to hold up and he flopped facedown on the floor.

“Whitman!” Rogers shouted. “Oh, God…”

Whitman didn’t know what the man in the green suit was talking about. His mind drifted. “Ankylosaurs…”

“Don’t talk,” Rogers said. He gripped Whitman’s lapels and pulled him along toward the steps.

Whitman was glassy-eyed in shock, his brain not registering properly. His breathing was difficult. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a pair of legs, half a pair of them actually, blown off just above the knees. One was flopped on its side, but the other leaned against a counter, as if it were still standing.

“Hey…” the weapons designer muttered as he was dragged over the top step.

“Save your strength, Dane. It’ll be okay,” Rogers whispered. “It’ll be okay…”

Whitman looked drunkenly up at the man. He thought he should know this nice person’s name, but it escaped him. All he could think of was the dinosaurs, the Ankylosaurs. He smiled.

He loved dinosaurs. He always liked to read books and watch movies about them…and when he went to the museum…

His eyes blinked lazily.

“Dane, hold on dammit,” Rogers gritted.

“I like the museum…” Whitman whispered, his head resting on the cold stone step. He closed his eyes, imagining an era when leviathans roamed the Earth.

Death took the genius as he smiled dreamily.

GENERAL ROGERS FELT for a pulse and found none. His lips pulled back tightly, and he looked down at the mirrored disk the man died to retrieve.

“To learn who attacked,” was what he’d said before the 25 mm cannon shell had blasted his upper thighs into a messy spray of vaporized flesh and bone.

Rogers took the disk and slipped it under his jacket. “Okay, Dane. I’ll make sure the right people get this.” The general took off down the stairs, reaching under his jacket and drawing out the SIG-Sauer M-11 pistol from its concealed holster. The little handgun wouldn’t do much against an armored juggernaut, but it was something that gave him some confidence. He wasn’t completely helpless.

As he reached the base of the tower, he glanced at a gaping hole in the wall. Two soldiers were strewed in the rubble on the steps, and Rogers knelt to check on them. Both were dead.

Numbing anger washed over him. These soldiers were under his command, and they had given their life in a rush to his side. His jaw set, he shook off his shock. He needed to contact the rest of his men and insure their safety. He looked down and spotted a field radio.

He plucked it from the corpse’s belt and heard the sounds of the Yuma Security Task Force as its members tried to coordinate a defense against the attacking robots.

“This is General Rogers. All security forces fall back! Those things are too powerful to stop!” he ordered. “Fall back to shelter and do not engage!”

Rogers sensed danger and threw himself to the base of the steps. The impact jarred the old soldier’s bones, but the drop saved his life as machine guns and cannon fire tore at the steps he’d just occupied. He looked at the radio and stunned realization hit.

The attackers drones had homed in on his transmission. He lurched to his feet and raced for the door. He pressed down the lock transmit button and called into the unit, “Cease radio communication! They’re targeting anything that transmits!”

Gunfire chopped at Rogers’s heels and he tossed the communicator away from him as he continued his mad dash across the field. The deadly line of autofire that hounded him swung away and ripped apart the ground where the radio bounced. The shock wave of a grenade detonation buffeted the general’s back, but Rogers continued to rush toward a stone bunker. The Ankylosaurs, as Whitman called them, paused, seemingly confused.

Rogers smiled. His last message had gotten through. The drones had nothing to target. One of the machines suddenly whirled toward him.

Radio targeting wasn’t their only means of detection, Rogers realized and he threw himself into a ditch instants before heavy-caliber machine gun fire slashed the ground he’d just vacated. The general flopped facedown in the mud and curled tightly to the bottom of the runoff ditch.

The rumble of the Ankylosaur’s approach thundered in his ears and he looked up at the looming robot. A blunt, bearlike head adorned with two 25 mm cannon barrels and belts for the weapons swiveled along the ditch. Multifaceted lenses swept across Rogers and he held his breath. Those lenses had to have been infrared sensors. The thing would spot him…

The Ankylosaur pivoted, as if continuing to search for him. Chilled and drenched, Rogers felt his teeth begin to chatter and he clenched his jaw shut. The cold mud caked him and obscured him from IR detection. Only the momentary snap of chattering teeth had drawn the murderous robot’s attention.

Sonar or vibrational sensors, Rogers realized. His ears throbbed with the hum and chatter of low-frequency sonics buzzing through the air. Just like Whitman’s design for the MidKnights. The ULF sonics provided an obscuring cloud of null-sound that counteracted both a vehicle’s audible signature and the vibrations it released as it moved. That’s how it had sneaked up on the testing grounds unseen. But from where had it come?

There was no time to answer that question.

Rogers stayed deathly still, counting his heartbeats, wondering whether the next pump would be his last. The two barrels leveled at him, like the murderous black-eyed sockets of the Grim Reaper himself. The general had served his country his entire life, and fought to make sure his men would be safe. At least he knew he’d give up that life having given his soldiers the chance to be safe.

A thunderbolt struck the head of the machine and hot, flaming wreckage sprayed all over Rogers. He recoiled from the sudden wave of burning splinters, but when he looked up, he saw that he was unharmed. He patted his jacket and felt the DVD, still intact, nothing had burned or marred his jacket where he’d secreted it.

“General!” a voice shouted. The Ankylosaur opened fire, and Rogers rushed along the ditch away from the autofire. He looked back to see the tail boom of the wounded battle robot swivel toward his troops.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Rogers leveled the muddy M-11 pistol at the raised launcher. He opened fire, burning off the entire 13-round magazine and the hot 9 mm ball round in the pipe. The tail boom sparked as the high-impulse bullets struck home, then flashed brilliantly.

The general’s stomach dropped as he realized that the robot tank had launched one of its rockets, but the fireball was too bright to be the flare of the miniature missile’s engine. The Earth shook and the tail boom separated from the attacker robot. The explosion flattened the general and knocked the empty pistol from his hand.

He had to have hit the machine rocket as it entered the launch tube; a one in a million shot that had saved the lives of his men.

More antitank missiles and the deep-throated thumps of heavy-caliber antimatériel rifles filled the air.

A young man raced into the ditch, a smoking missile tube in his hands.

“Sir…” Corporal Vance Astrovik called as he swung a rifle off his back. “Sir, are you okay?”

Rogers nodded. “I ordered you men to clear the field.”

“We wouldn’t leave you behind,” Astrovik stated. He saw that the general was soaked with cold muddy water, and bent down to scoop up a helmet full of cold goop. The soldier poured it over his own head and face, then crawled to the edge of the ditch.

“Don’t speak. They have some sort of audio detectors, as well,” Rogers whispered as he crawled to the corporal’s side.

“Fall back, sir. I’ll cover your retreat,” Astrovik told him.

Rogers knelt to pick up his muddy SIG, then shook out the excess gunk. He slammed home a spare magazine and watched the machines. “Sorry, son. I lead from the front.”

Astrovik managed a weak smile.

“Look out!” he suddenly blurted. The young corporal knocked Rogers down to the bottom of the ditch as a crescendo of fire and thunder filled the air.

Rogers glanced up to see the damaged Ankylosaur being hammered by the other units into a mangled pulp of unidentifiable metal. Rockets and explosive cannon rounds left a scorched hulk behind. The robots weren’t going to leave much for the Yuma experts to look over after their raid.

Rogers and Astrovik slid from the bottom of the ditch and watched the squat little drones whirl and roll frantically into the distance, disappearing through the scrub. One of the armored machines trailed smoke from a fire, but the general’s men wouldn’t be able to track it.

Looking around, General Stephen Rogers saw that the test base had been all but flattened. Every vehicle was now a twisted mass of crushed metal and rubber. Some blazed from explosive shells that lit the fuel in their ruptured tanks, but there was nothing on wheels that would allow them to chase down the retreating armored assault drones. Rogers cursed under his breath.

A bugle clarion split the air and Astrovik turned on his radio.

“Our spotters lost the drone toward the old mine pass,” Astrovik quickly told Rogers. “They’re retreating.”

Rogers nodded and took the radio. “Can we get air support?”

“General Rogers?” It was Gunnery Sergeant Pym. “I have Lieutenant Van Dyne calling in. U.S.A.F. states they’ll have medevac helicopters here in twenty minutes, but defensive air cover is only thirty seconds away.”

“Good man,” Rogers said.

A heartbeat later, fighter jets roared through the sky overhead. He couldn’t see what they were against the night sky, but as soon as they passed, he could tell by their single cones of exhaust that they were F-16s of some form. He hoped that they had air-to-ground weaponry.

One F-16 cut loose with its 20 mm cannons; the air ripped with the shredding rattle of high-velocity explosive shells. Both jets suddenly swerved as spears of flame lanced into the sky toward them. The drones’ rockets sailed into the night, missing their intended targets, but giving the attackers time to escape even further.

“General, we’ve lost the intruders,” Van Dyne broke in. “They’re invisible to FLIR and radar…The Air Force can’t pick them up on sensors or visually.”

Rogers breathed out a harsh sigh.

“I want a team to follow those things’ heading, Lieutenant,” Rogers ordered. “Call in a mountain operations Ranger team and have them set up with antitank weaponry.”

“It’ll be a few hours, sir,” Van Dyne answered. Despite the carnage, her voice was calm and focused.

Rogers looked in the direction where the Ankylosaurs escaped. The old mine pass was a dead end. Those drones were as good as caught.

But something nibbled at the back of the general’s mind.

He doubted that their assailants were going to be found. Not for a long time.

Rogers thumbed the DVD from his jacket.

Those nightmare robots would be seen again. And from what he’d seen so far this night, they had proved to be an irresistible force for destruction.

“God help us,” Rogers prayed softly as the F-16s orbited the burning base.

CHAPTER ONE

England

The London fog rolled in on cue as David McCarter took to the streets with his friend Pat. They walked arm in arm, McCarter his usual brisk, ground-eating stride slowed to accommodate the blond woman’s pace. She walked with her temple rested against his shoulder.

They’d just left the cinema after watching a controversial film and were engaged in light banter concerning the plot.

Something moved in his peripheral vision as he turned to press his point and he stopped. His combat instincts cried out that trouble was brewing.

Pat felt McCarter’s muscles tighten, as rigid as those on a marble statue. “What’s wrong?”

A black-clad figure, wielding a submachine gun, darted across the street to climb a small privacy wall around a home. McCarter pushed Pat into the shadows of a house’s entranceway and shielded her with his back.

“There’s some drama happening,” the Phoenix Force leader whispered softly. Drama, in the slang of the SAS, involved guns and imminent violence. “Stay out of sight, no matter what.”

Pat’s lips pulled tightly into a thin, bloodless line. “You don’t have your mates with you.”

McCarter reached under his jacket and slid out a tiny Charter Arms .38-caliber revolver and pressed it into her hand. “Don’t do anything stupid. If anyone with a gun pops into view, let him have the full load.”

Pat nodded nervously. He gave her hand a quick squeeze and turned toward the house. He was in mid-draw of his favored Browning Hi-Power when he spotted two more mysterious figures dart into view. One pivoted and dropped to a knee to aim at McCarter, who lunged out of the path of a line of silenced autofire. The SAS veteran’s handgun was out by the time he struck the cobblestone road, its luminous front sight a fuzzy green ball. The glowing dot interrupted the torso of the gunman. He fired two quick shots and rolled frantically so as not to provide a stationary target for the other gunner.

The black-clad wraith that he’d hit twisted to punch another burst of silenced bullets into the road. McCarter leaped behind the fender of a Mini Cooper, its chassis rattling as slugs struck home.

“Dammit.” The enemy gunman grunted. “He’s behind cover!”

“Who the…” the other assassin whispered as he stepped onto the sidewalk. McCarter swiveled and took aim at the second attacker’s knee. He tapped off another shot and was rewarded by his target toppling off balance. The victory was brief, though. A salvo of suppressed gunfire rattled against the bumper of the Mini Cooper in response to the Phoenix Force leader’s attack. “That hurt, you miserable…”

McCarter popped up and fired over the roof of the vehicle. This time he pumped out three shots. Sparks flew as bullets exploded against his enemy’s helmet. The gunman staggered backward, then shook the cobwebs out of his head. The Briton ducked back behind the body of the car as the Mini Cooper’s windows detonated under a hail of automatic weapons fire.

As chunks of broken glass rained down on the Phoenix Force leader, he bit back a growl of frustration. The three head shots would have brought down anyone. Even one bullet would have slipped into the gap between the helmet and the goggles of an armored opponent. But the sparks that exploded showed McCarter that even his custom of loading one hollowpoint and one NATO ball round wasn’t enough to penetrate whatever they were wearing. The mix of expanding and deep penetrating ammunition was the Briton’s insurance against opponents who wore body armor. At this range, the NATO ball round should have cracked through even a Kevlar helmet.

The two hardmen were betrayed by their shadows as they approached. They assumed that they had the Phoenix Force commander boxed in, and that was their mistake. As long as he had breath in his lungs and his heart still beat, he wouldn’t give up. He glanced back and saw Pat huddled in the doorway. If the gunmen got any closer, they’d be able to see her, and the tiny Charter Arms .38 would be even more impotent against their protective armor.

McCarter exploded into action. He charged the gunman in the street and fired directly at the assassin’s face. The armored attacker froze at the sight of the Englishman’s sudden attack, and was blinded by the point-blank muzzle-flashes and 9 mm rounds smashing into his armored faceplate. The gunman let out an inarticulate yell that gave McCarter all the opportunity he needed. He threw his empty handgun aside and grabbed his enemy’s submachine gun. With a savage twist, he pried the weapon to one side and slipped behind his black-clad opponent’s body. The other gunman tracked him and opened fire on instinct.

McCarter’s human shield jerked as slugs punched into him. He hauled the armored assassin’s arm around to grab the killer’s weapon. The black-clad body slumped and turned into deadweight as the Briton clawed the subgun out of its grasp. With a kick, the Phoenix Force commander threw himself to the ground and out of the path of another burst of fire.

For a moment McCarter thought that the weapon in his grasp was a mini-Uzi. It had the same feel, but when he triggered it, the bullets that erupted tore through the Mini-Cooper’s door as if it were made of tissue paper. The surviving gunman jerked as the slowed slugs hit him. He charged around the back of the vehicle.

The sound of a revolver split the air and sparks erupted on the gunman’s body. Pat had seen the killer and she followed McCarter’s advice. It was enough to distract the murderer and he twisted to pump a burst into the doorway, but McCarter cut him off and emptied the machine pistol’s magazine into the armored attacker.

This time, the gunman folded over and dropped to the ground, dead. McCarter discarded his empty magazine and frisked the corpse for spare ammo. He looked up to see Pat’s pale face, eyes wide with fear. He winked at her. “Chin up, love.”

She nodded.

He checked the top round in the machine pistol and saw that it was a bottle-nosed bullet. It took a moment for him to figure out what the cartridge was, when he remembered the Saab Bofors Dynamics CBJ MS personal defense weapon. Based on the mini-Uzi, it could be modified to fire 6.5 mm armor-piercing bullets from a bottle-necked 9 mm case. The extra powder charge behind the narrow slug allowed it to pierce Kevlar and ceramic trauma plating with all the authority of a rifle round. He charged up the Bofors and headed for the low wall when he noticed another of the armored gunners crawl into view.

“What the…” the assassin demanded, then saw the lean-faced Briton, armed with the deadly machine pistol. He dropped out of sight before McCarter could trigger the weapon, so the Phoenix Force warrior leaped to the top of the low wall and went prone. He aimed his machine pistol into the darkness, then lined up on the glint of a streetlight on the curved dome of the dark assassin’s helmet.

McCarter didn’t give his enemy a chance. He cut loose with a salvo of high-powered slugs that chopped into the armored helmet. Chunks of bullet-resistant material flew, smashed to splinters by the Bofors slugs.

He dropped to the lawn and raced toward the house. Through the window, he spotted an armored gunman line up his shot on a cowering woman.

“Not on my watch, mate.” McCarter growled as he triggered the Bofors CBJ. Glass shattered and the assassin jerked violently. He still stood, which told the Briton that it would take a close-range salvo, without the interference of even a pane of glass, to neutralize the enemy. He charged the window and dived through even as the would-be assassin recovered.

McCarter felt the heat of the gunner’s burst cut closely over him. He triggered the Bofors one last time and stitched his adversary from crotch to throat. The woman screamed as the armored man’s corpse smashed violently against the china cabinet. The ex-SAS commando crossed to her and saw that she was uninjured.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” he asked. She looked at him, her dark brown eyes pools of fright.

“Yo no…”

“Esta otros en la casa?” McCarter quickly corrected. He knew his accent and grammar were horrible, despite his practice with his teammate Rafael Encizo and Rosario Blancanales of Able Team, but he still got the point across.

“Mi tio,” she stammered. Her uncle. She pointed, knowing that gestures were easier to understand.

McCarter held his hand out, palm down. “Abajo.”

She nodded. She would stay down, and wisely crawled behind a sofa. The Phoenix Force leader turned and moved deeper into the house. Chances were, there were at least one or two more killers in the building. He dumped his depleted magazine and fed in a fresh one.

McCarter reached the bottom of the stairs, then ducked back as the floor erupted. A hail of gunfire chopped the floorboards to splinters and would have sliced him off below the knees. Crippled and mutilated, he would have been easy pickings for the assassins.

“Hurry up!” a voice shouted. McCarter spotted an apple resting in a bowl by the stairs. He reached for it, pulled the stem out and spit it. Then he hurled the phony grenade up the stairs. “Shit!”

The gunman lurched into view, flushed from the top of the stairs and into the Phoenix Force commando’s line of fire. McCarter ripped off a short burst that smashed the gunman’s arm to a useless pulp. He swiveled the muzzle and ripped the assassin across the knees. He was going to need answers, and since these guys spoke better English, he picked the one on the steps. The gunman and his weapon slid down the stairs. McCarter rushed to the fallen killer and punched a short burst at the man’s outstretched wrist. The black-clad hardman had nearly reached his weapon when the 6.5 mm Bofors rounds completely severed the limb.

“Stay put, mate,” McCarter said as he kicked the submachine gun farther down the hall as a precaution. “I want to chat with you in a bit.”

He charged up the stairs and saw the last of the armored assassins surge into the hallway. McCarter dropped to the floor instantly, a scythe of burning lead tearing the air where he’d stood moments before. He blasted the black-clad killer across the shins. The high-powered CBJ rounds splintered bone and pulped flesh in their passage, and dumped the murderer to the floor. McCarter rose to go after him, but dropped back down as the hit man wouldn’t give up. A Bofors bullet grazed the Phoenix Force leader’s shoulder after it punched through the top step.