Читать книгу High Assault - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

Basra, Iraq

Phoenix Force became as ghosts.

They crossed the broken rubble of the abandoned parking lot until they could squat in the lee of a burned-out warehouse. T. J. Hawkins, who had perfected his long-range shooting as a member of the U.S. Army’s premier hostage-rescue unit, scanned their back trail through his night scope. The other four members of the team clicked their AN/PVS-14 monocular night-vision devices over their nonshooting eyes.

McCarter waited patiently in the concealed position for his natural night vision to acclimate as much as possible before moving out. A stray dog, ribs prominent under a mangy hide, strayed close at one point but skittered off in fear after catching the scent of gun oil.

The group maintained strict noise discipline as they waited to see if they had been observed or compromised during the short scramble to their staging area. After a tense ten minutes McCarter signaled a generic all clear and rose into a crouch. He touched James on the shoulder and sent the former Navy SEAL across the parking lot toward a break in a battered old chain-link fence next to a pockmarked cinder-block wall.

James crossed the open area in a low, tight crouch, running hard. He slid into place and snapped up the SPAS-15 to provide cover. Once he was satisfied, he turned back to McCarter and gave the former SAS commando a single nod.

McCarter reached out and touched Encizo on the shoulder. The Cuban sprinted for the far side of the lot, his dense, heavily muscled frame handling the weight of the Hawk MM-1 easily. He slid into position behind James and swept the squat, cannon-muzzled grenade launcher into security overwatch.

McCarter leaned over and whispered into Hawkins’s ear. “You go after me.”

Hawkins nodded and flipped down the hinged lens covers on the NXS 15X scope of his Mk 11 Enhanced Battle Rifle. He took up the EBR in both hands and slid up to the edge of the wall while Gary Manning took his place on rear security, using the cut-down M-60 machine gun to maintain rear security.

McCarter checked once with Encizo, then slid the fire-selector switch on his M-4 to burst mode. There was a fléchette pack antipersonnel round loaded up in the tube of his M-203 grenade launcher, and he had attached an M-9 bayonet just after entering his forward staging area. He got a second clear signal from Encizo and immediately sprang forward.

He covered the distance fast, feet pounding on the busted concrete with staccato rhythm, then quickly slid into position behind Encizo. The muzzle of his weapon came up and tracked left to right, clearing sectors including rooftops with mechanical proficiency.

Satisfied, he turned and caught Calvin James’s eye. He made a subtle pointing gesture with his left hand and the ex-SEAL turned the corner and scurried between the break in the fence next to the cinder-block wall. As soon as he was gone McCarter slapped Encizo on the shoulder and former anti-Castro militant followed James through the opening.

McCarter scurried up to take his post next to the breach and then gave Hawkins the all-clear signal. The man raced across the opening with his weapon up and disappeared behind the bullet-riddled wall.

McCarter waited a moment, giving Hawkins a chance to take a good position beyond the wall, then waved Gary Manning over. Trusting McCarter to cover him, the Canadian special operations soldier took up his machine gun and crossed the danger area.

Once Manning was past, McCarter scrambled backward through the opening, remaining orientated toward the open parking lot the team had just crossed, carbine up and ready.

On the other side of the breach he found the unit in a tight defensive circle. A single-story outbuilding lay inside a concrete enclosure. A metal placard in red and white showed the universal sign for electrical danger above black Arabic script. McCarter looked at Hawkins, who immediately moved to lie down and take up a position in the breach.

Gary Manning set his machine gun down and quickly pulled open the Velcro flap of a pouch on his web belt. He pulled an electrician’s diagnostic kit from the container while Rafael Encizo pulled a pair of compact bolt cutters from the compact field pack on his back.

“Right, mate,” McCarter whispered, “don’t electrocute yourself, then.”

Manning didn’t look up as he quickly assembled his gear. “Do I tell you how to act like a complete jackass?”

“Not once,” McCarter admitted, but the corner of his mouth crept upward.

“Then perhaps you can let me do my job wisecrack free?”

“Not a chance, mate,” McCarter replied with complete seriousness. “Your ego’s already too well developed for my liking.”

Manning stopped what he was doing and looked at the Briton. “My ego?”

“Hey, now,” McCarter protested, “if you’re still mad about that little waitress in Barcelona—”

“Perhaps later would be a better time for this discussion?” James cut in, voice as dry as the Iraqi air.

Manning looked up and nodded toward Encizo. “Ready.”

Encizo quickly used the bolt cutters to snap the locking arm of the rusted old padlock connecting the panel access doors. The muscles on his forearms jumped out in stark relief like cables running down to thick wrists. The lock popped free with a sharp crack and dropped to the ground at his feet. Encizo picked up his MM-1 and scooted quickly back.

James helped him put away the bolt cutters as Manning replaced Encizo in front of the access panel. He reached up and pulled the metal hatches apart to reveal a wall of exposed wires, relay switches and conduit housings.

From behind them, T. J. Hawkins suddenly hissed a low warning.

McCarter instantly moved to his side and sidled down low to present a minimal profile as he eased around the corner. Beside him the former Army Ranger lay his finger in the gentle curve of his trigger, taking up the slack. Out on the parking lot a dry wind pushed dead weeds and loose trash around. The area was an island of dark between two illuminated areas of population so the headlights of the approaching vehicles were easily visible.

Hawkins lay the scope on the convoy, quickly working the dampener on his scope’s light amplifier to compensate for the illumination of the vehicle’s high beams. The images of the Iraqi police squad in three Dzik-3 armored personnel carriers filled the crosshair of his reticule. M-2 .50 caliber machine guns were mounted on the roofs.

“Who the fuck are those guys?” McCarter demanded. “That wanker Anjali’s boys? This isn’t part of the plan.”

Hawkins carefully zeroed in his scope and scanned the crew as they parked their vehicles in a wedge formation facing the abandoned warehouse Phoenix Force had used to shield their initial movements after disembarking from the first wheeled APC minutes earlier.

“They’re police for sure,” Hawkins answered. His voice was grim. “But to a man they’re wearing green insignia shoulder epaulets.” He removed his eye from the sniper scope and looked over at the former SAS commando. “David, they’re Shia militia. Muqtada al-Sadr’s boys.”

“Bloody hell!” McCarter swore.

Caracas, Venezuela

“GODDAMN IT to hell!” Lyons swore. “We’re in country ten fucking minutes and we’ve got Chavez’s head spook nosing up our asses.”

His big hand slammed the steering wheel of the rental SUV, a black Ford Excursion. His eyes darted up to the rearview mirror, scanning the flow of traffic behind them for any obvious tails or suspicious patterns. Caracas was a teeming, modern city of three million people and the streets were packed with automobiles, motorcycles, service trucks and pedestrians. Around them, skyscrapers of steel and glass rose in prototypical urban canyons. They would have to be sharp if they were going to spot a surveillance team in that kind of environment.

“At least the Farm was able to get us the information quickly,” Schwarz pointed out as he slipped his PDA into a pocket. “It’d be much worse if we weren’t aware el douche was hot on our ass.”

“Having Venezuelan internal security meeting us right there at the airport is a bad, bad sign,” Blancanales said. He sat in the back using a PDA of his own to download a software upgrade created by Schwarz into the vehicle’s GPS system. “Something got SNAFUed right from the beginning.”

“We can’t roll on the VEVAK agent till we get to the safehouse,” Lyons said. “But we can’t lead a team of Chavez’s secret police right to a U.S. safehouse, either. Freakin’ fine mess.”

“I guess we have to identify the shadow unit, then outdrive them.” Schwarz shrugged. “I mean, the CIA does everything the CIA can do. The Farm does what the CIA can’t.”

“Or the FBI,” Blancanales agreed. He caught Schwarz’s eye in the rearview mirror and winked. “Or the LAPD,” he added, voice casual.

Lyons, an ex-LAPD detective, stiffened in response to the inclusion. “Finest police force in the world. You can go to hell. Only reason I left is because SOG has a better dental plan.”

“No, no. This is true,” Schwarz said. “Absolutely. In fact, if you were to do an unbiased comparison of the three organizations I would say it’s obvious the LAPD comes out on top.” His voice was completely deadpan as he continued. “This is a no bullshit story, heard it right from the big Fed, Hal, himself. The LAPD, the FBI and the CIA were all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decided to give them a test. He released a rabbit into a forest and each of them had to try and catch it.

“The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they concluded that rabbits do not exist.

“Then the FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.

“The LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling, ‘Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!’”

“Ten will get you one that bear had done something,” Lyons fired back as his two teammates laughed.

Instantly, Hermann Schwarz stopped laughing. “Pol, does that qualify as an actual joke from the Ironman?”

“Close enough, as far as I’m concerned,” Blancanales replied in a sober voice, sounding slightly bewildered.

“Screw you both,” Lyons replied. He then promptly ran a red light. “Got the bastards! Green current-year Impala, looks like three of them in the rig.”

Blancanales turned and quickly looked over his shoulder. “I got ’em. Looks like three in the vehicle,” he repeated. There was a sudden blare of horns, squealing brakes and a chorus of angry shouts around them in the intersection. “They just ran the red, too,” Blancanales added.

“We’re on now,” Schwarz said. “Of course if we actively loose these ass clowns then they’ll know we’re up to something and we’ll have to go completely black instead of trying to maintain cover.”

“Good,” Lyons muttered, and pushed the accelerator to the floor. “I was getting goddamn tired of all the bullshit sneaking around we’ve been doing.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ve been real below the radar.” Schwarz smirked. Then he put his seat belt on.

Basra, Iraq

DAVID MCCARTER scooted quickly backward, leaving T. J. Hawkins in his low-profile overwatch position. Once away from the opening he turned to check on the rest of the team’s progress. Gary Manning was coolly using a stylus to work the touch pad on his diagnostic server.

“How we coming, mate?” McCarter asked.

“More time,” Manning replied.

“We kind of have company.”

“Look, I’ve got to uplink this substation to the coalition power grid, then trace the connection to our neighborhood before I can shut out the lights. I need more time.”

“Right.” McCarter turned to the rest of his men. “Encizo, get into position next to Hawkins. If T.J. decides he needs to take a shot I want you to bring the noise.”

“Copy.” Encizo nodded. The Cuban lifted the MM-1 grenade launcher and slid in next to the prone Texan.

McCarter lifted his left hand and pointed at Calvin James. “We’re advancing the plan by ten minutes,” he said. “I want you to open the sewer entrance right now and hold the position until we can get Manning through this sabotage gig.”

“They’re rolling this way.” Encizo spoke up for Hawkins. “Moving slow, but it seems obvious they’re spooked and looking for something, not just patrolling.”

McCarter turned back to the massive Canadian. “Gary?”

“Need time.”

“Right, then.” He twisted around. “Hold the line,” McCarter whispered to Encizo, who leaned over and relayed the information to Hawkins. The Phoenix leader turned toward James and nodded once.

The former SEAL rose into a crouch and glided into the narrow space between the relay station Manning was working on and the cinder-block wall that encircled the work area. McCarter heard the whisper of cloth and leather on the concrete, then James was over the top of the far wall and gone into the night.

James hit the ground on the other side of the wall, his boots making a crunch on the loose gravel as he landed. He was in a small access alley running behind a line of empty buildings. At one end of the lane a worn and deteriorated industrial wharf jutted out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway. In the distance, the lights of a garbage scow moved slowly away, gulls circling it, their night cries sharp against the low rumble of its engine.

James swung around to look the other way. He let the SPAS-15 dangle from his strap and pulled a silenced Beretta 92-SB from a holster on his thigh. Down at the end of the alley opposite the pier ran a larger secondary road, intersecting with the alley where a commercial gas station had once stood. The fuel pumps had been blown clean off their moorings at some point in the war and the building was a soot-covered and burned-out hulk.

Moving carefully, pistol up, James jogged up the alley toward the burned-out service station where a manhole cover was set in the ground. He covered the backs of the building fronting the alley, but all he saw were empty windows, dark doorways and tight, twisted openings leading inward between the structures like tunnels.

Coming up to the manhole cover, James quickly went to one knee and holstered his Beretta to pull a thick-bladed diver’s knife from a sheath on his combat boot. A diving knife was, by design, intended to be a pry bar and was built with full tangs and reinforced steel.

Working quickly, James slid the knife into the lip of the manhole cover and pried it up. Instantly a foul miasma wafted up from the opening, causing him to yank his head back in sudden disgust.

As he turned his face to the side, nose wrinkled against the stench, a Mahdi army militia member stared out at him from a weed-choked causeway between two deserted maintenance sheds made out of corrugated tin and aluminum siding. The man had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips with a blue, cheap plastic lighter held up with his free hand cupped around the flickering flame.

Slung over his shoulder was an AKM.

James popped up out of his crouch like a jack-in-the-box. The Iraqi’s eyes grew wide and his mouth sagged open in surprise. James pushed his feet hard into broken ground, springing forward. The militia gunman’s cigarette tumbled from his lips and the flame on the lighter winked out as it dropped from his hand.

James crossed the road in a flat sprint, knife up and ready, face twisted into a snarl of rage. The plastic lighter hit the ground at the Iraqi’s feet and bounced next to the forgotten cigarette. The man scrambled for the assault rifle slung on his shoulder, fingers fumbling in his fear.

The man tore the strap off his shoulder and swung the Kalashnikov down into his hands, fingers hunting for the trigger as he tried to bring the AKM barrel around. James swung his right hand down and knocked the weapon back into the man’s own chest, blocking him like a defensive back on the line of scrimmage.

The man’s fetid breath rushed out in a gasp, his spittle spraying James in the face. The dive knife arced up and plunged into the Iraqi’s torso just below the sternum, slicing through the membrane of the solar plexus. The man collapsed inward around the thrust and James tore the knife free, blood gushing out to splash into the dust at their feet, making a sticky mud instantly.

James stepped backward to give himself room, then brought the knife back up in a murderous underhand slash. The triangular point of the blade caught the mortally wounded Iraqi militia gunman in his throat just below the bobbing knot of his Adam’s apple.

James felt the blade slice through flesh and cartilage. Hot blood gushed out over his fist and the man croaked and his bowels opened up as a spasm rocked his body. James stepped in and shoved hard, pushing the corpse off the end of his knife and letting the man drop like a sack of loose meat.

He whirled and ran back out into street, slipping the blood-smeared knife blade under the web belt of his H-harness suspender. He drew his silenced Beretta and put a finger to his headset mike.

“Let’s move this up,” he said without preamble. “I just had company at the secondary insertion point. There are bound to be more—he can’t have been alone.”

“Copy,” McCarter confirmed. “Get cover—we have issues here, as well.”

“Roger, out,” James said.

He dropped to his knee and curled his finger tip under the manhole cover. He jerked upward and threw it clear. Once that was done he rose and quickly unholstered and transferred the Beretta to his left hand while taking up the pistol grip of his SPAS-15 in his right. He backed up quickly to the garbage-filled causeway where he had left the body of the Mahdi army sentry.

In the distance he heard the sudden sharp crack as T. J. Hawkins opened up with his sniper rifle. A second later Rafael Encizo let go with his grenade launcher and Calvin James realized hell had found Phoenix Force one more time.