Cold Snap. Don Pendleton

the Fairbairn-Sykes. But rather than the weak-handled original, Hawkins went with the Emerson Knives’ version of the fabled Ranger fighting blade. Made from one whole piece of steel, the eleven-inch-long fighting tool was slim, flat, ideal for keeping hidden, yet swift into action. A 650-pound test para-cord made up the handle, providing a sure grip and, in a pinch, a length of cord that could hold Hawkins’s weight, plus that of and two other men. Double edged, with a point swelling then narrowing to a waspish waist, the F-S blade provided plenty of cutting edge for only six and a half inches of finely honed steel, and a spine tough enough to hammer through an automobile door.

      The Karambit was curved like the letter J. The inner arc of the blade was serrated and sharpened all the way to the deadly, piercing tip at the end of its hook. As a tool, it reaped rice. As a knife, it adorned the personal battle kits of warriors as far spread as Thailand and the southern Philippines

      Gary Manning, Hawkins’s Phoenix Force partner, had traveled the world in the course of his various business ventures and had fleetingly even been to Southeast Asia as part of an “armed observer” mission in the Golden Triangle for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Manning’s Japanese language and custom familiarity had been vastly enhanced by his close friendship with the late Keio Ohara.

      Manning, on the experience of both Ohara and fellow Phoenix Force member Rafael Encizo, had chosen a traditional Japanese blade. Two in fact. The first was a full-length, six-inch Cold Steel Tanto knife. With a chisel point and a rigid, thick spine the Tanto had served Encizo in countless knife battles with unfailing reliability, strength and dexterity. A smaller version was on a nylon strap around Manning’s muscular, bull-like neck. Built with a two-inch blade, it looked as if the knife had been punched in the nose and had swollen to three times its normal thickness, but its edges were every sharp. As a backup fighter, it was sturdy yet unobtrusive, giving the burly Canadian more than enough deadly punch if necessary.

      The two men, relatively secure with at least their fighting knives, still knew the best weapons in their arsenals were their alertness and the knowledge gained through dozens of ambushes and years of accumulated experience in the dark, dangerous back alleys of the globe. Right now, both men cautiously made their way through a literal alley in Tokyo, far from the neon-splashed streets that made the city synonymous with ultramodern and high technology. Here, just a few yards from automobiles run on lithium batteries and storefronts packed with the latest in electronics, streetlights came in the form of rare rice-paper lanterns lit from within by candles and security relied upon the alert nose and ears of a guard dog.

      As assuredly as the two warriors of Phoenix Force were currently operating without benefit of firepower, history showed that the presence of assault rifles and shotguns would not be tamped by Japanese law. Tokyo was a city where air-soft replicas of the latest in front-line rifles was commonplace to the point where professional teams formed to engage in mass simulated gun battles. Hawkins and Manning simply knew they didn’t want to risk an engagement with an already edgy and on-alert Tokyo law-enforcement community. They could not risk the attention that guns would bring, not when they were here in a wholly unofficial status to meet with a NOC—a non-official cover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.

      Whoever was working the angles of ruining the Japanese international image and national economy had made certain to work within operational security parameters that precluded any form of electronic communication. The NOC, however, had raised a report about RUMINT—intelligence gathered by rumor, in the parlance of normal, non-spy folks. It was a slim lead, one that had only been spotted through the tireless perusal of Huntington Wethers. A former cybernetics professor at UCLA, Wethers was now one of the computer wizards back at the Farm. He was nothing if not meticulous in looking for every possible thread of information, especially those that frayed and fell by the wayside of official investigation.

      In Phoenix Force’s line of work, they knew that sometimes rumors were true. The five members of this world-spanning team had become urban legends in their own right, often identified as either members of a CIA black operations group or a special SWAT team under the aegis of INTERPOL, both of which were far from the truth. It was the blurry line between official backing that allowed the Farm’s commandos to board U.S. military aircraft bound for war or to be assigned to federal law-enforcement task forces and “unsanctioned” operations that kept their hands from being tied as they did not fear the diplomatic fallout from bringing down corrupt “allies” or rogues from within the United States government. Stony Man Farm had been developed specifically to avoid the entanglements of agency jurisdictional pride or the public face of international allegiances with those to whom human rights violations or the support of criminal or terrorist enterprises was not a point of concern.

      Phoenix Force and Able Team were highly agile, quickly deployable teams that answered to the law of their own consciences. While special interest groups turned congressional debate over resolving issues into an endless circle of inane logic and politically advantageous rhetoric, the Farm’s cybernetic apparatus could burn through the internet, seeking out the true trails of evidence leading to the guilty. Able Team or Phoenix Force, or often both, would then be dispatched to properly solve the problem.

      Those solutions usually ended with cold-hearted, greedy or fanatical murderers torn asunder by precision gunfire, all while minimizing the risk to noncombatants and bystanders as befitting a Stony Man commando. It was far more than a matter of pride that none of the Stony Man operatives had ever intentionally harmed an innocent person in the course of a mission. Be it combat or grim laser-precise direct action, the only ones who died were those who had innocent blood on their hands.

      “Something feels wrong,” Manning murmured under his breath. Fortunately the hands-free communicator built into his nearly invisible earpiece allowed him to be heard loudly and clearly by Hawkins.

      The Texan himself was also aware of a feeling of dread, of a potential for doom that hung in the air. He’d picked up a familiar scent wafting through the night air as he and the Canadian had made their way toward the small house owned by the NOC. “You catch a whiff of that?”

      Manning, in the dim light of a distant rice-paper lamp, frowned deeply, his features darkening in the lengthened shadows. “Dead body.”

      Hawkins scanned the small cube home of their contact and noticed that one of the windows was cracked open only slightly. He moved closer to the sill and took a deep sniff. It was with a queasy certainty that he could tell the exact length of time the corpse had been moldering inside the house just by the faint odor leaking through a window left ajar. “Seven hours.”

      Manning nodded agreement with Hawkins’s assessment. The brawny man went to the door and, deftly drawing the Tanto from its sheath, hammered the chiseled point into the doorjamb just off to the side of the door handle and lock combination. Against wood and brass, and focused by the sturdy knife, Manning was more than adequate to open the locked door with the sound of a sharp crack in the space of only a moment.

      Hawkins had his knife out, the Karambit held with his trigger finger through the loop, the wicked talon of the blade sticking out from the bottom of his fist. The grip was rock-solid, making it nearly impossible to pry from his grasp. He also produced a powerful LED Surefire pocket-size flashlight. He was to take point and would only activate the switch when he absolutely needed to illuminate a target.

      Neither Hawkins nor Manning had anticipated the need for night-vision goggles, so the less they used their flashlights, the better their natural senses would allow them to maneuver in the darkness. Less utilization of flashlights would also lower their profile.

      Like it or not, if the Tokyo police showed up to a house with a corpse inside, Hawkins and Manning had both illegally broken into the dwelling. Suspicion over the death would fall on them.

      Manning clicked his tongue and Hawkins glanced back at his partner. The Canadian had had the foresight to bring along latex gloves to minimize the chances of leaving behind fingerprints or DNA. Hawkins pocketed the knife and sheathed the Karambit swiftly to free up his hands for donning the gloves, then quickly rearmed and readied the light to scan the shadows if necessary.

      “Won’t have much time,” Manning mused softly. “The door cracking open will have been heard by someone.”