Cold Snap. Don Pendleton

had come to know the Phoenix Force veteran.

      Even as Hawkins thought of the difference between how police and criminals would enter a house with a broken door, he replaced the small Karambit in its sheath, drawing the pocket flashlight, thumb over the cap switch. The tiny light would prove useful, not only in the prevention of mistaking Moone’s CIA contact with a murderer, but also blinding them in the darkness if they truly were here with murderous intent.

      The first figure lurched into view and Hawkins hit the switch, blasting him in the face with 320 lumens of brilliance. The painful blue blaze made Hawkins’s target throw his hands up to shield his eyes and, in a moment, Hawkins could discern the brief flash of Korean features as the man backpedaled. Hawkins could also make out the gleaming silver finish of a Desert Eagle in the intruder’s hand. Normally this would have been all the justification any member of Phoenix Force would need to use their weapon to kill the armed opponent, except for two things.

      T. J. Hawkins was a member of Phoenix Force, and had been chosen not just for his willingness and ability to kick ass, but also his quick wits and swift decision-making. While Hawkins had allies who regularly used the Desert Eagle magnum autoloader—Mack Bolan and Gary Manning chief among them—he had yet to see a five-foot-one Korean woman pick such a large and unwieldy weapon as her primary weapon. Hawkins held off on utilizing the Ranger knife, instead using the flat of the blade as leverage to hook the woman’s gun wrist and tug powerfully.

      Her grip on the pistol broke, and instead of the clunk of heavy, high-quality steel impacting the wood flooring, it was something lighter. Hawkins also realized that the gun in the woman’s hand was not cocked. The Desert Eagle was a single-action design, with a slide-mounted safety. Carrying the gun with the hammer down was no way to use it, not without clumsily thumbing back the hammer to make it fire.

      The woman had been given an air-soft replica of the pistol, likely in an effort to get her shot to death. Hawkins killed the flashlight, then swept the girl behind him. The last thing Hawkins wanted to do was to bring harm to an innocent bystander. Even as the woman dropped to the floor, the Texan was aware that she’d discovered the dead body.

      “Veronica!”

      The figure behind her was five-foot-six, judging by the size of his shadow, and there were yet two more in the group, both about the same height as the man in the lead. Hawkins had about five inches on all of them, and from the looming shadow behind them, Manning was about to be on hand immediately.

      There was a grunting curse and Hawkins could only make it out to be an Oriental dialect. It didn’t matter what the source of the epithet was; he saw the unmistakable motions of someone raising a pistol to shoot. Hawkins clicked his flashlight on and in an instant this man, armed with what looked like a SIG-Sauer P-228, winced and half turned away from the brilliant glare of the light. The man must have had his finger on the trigger as the crack of a 9 mm round added an extra bit of flash to the darkened room.

      This bastard was armed and intended to kill. With a flick of his wrist, Hawkins lunged. The broad point of his dagger hit the man just off center of his nose. The crackle of face bones and the sudden surge of paralysis striking the gunman informed the Texan his aim was true. Six inches of steel embedded into the killer’s brain. Unfortunately the blow was so powerful it lodged the knife there, ripping it from Hawkins’s grasp.

      Behind the dying man, Manning grabbed one of the other two in a head-scissoring arm lock. The smaller Asian gurgled, sputtering, attracting the attention of the center man, who suddenly realized he was not beset on both sides by relative giants.

      Hawkins didn’t go for the Karambit on its thong around his neck. There was a good chance these killers might have good intel on what was going on, on why it had been so vital to murder an American English teacher. Rather, he punched forward with the end of his flashlight. The Surefire model that Hawkins carried had a crown around its lens, a high-impact aluminum ring that not only could be used for protecting the lens of the flash, but also could be used as an impact weapon. The crown design, with semicircular scallops taken out of the perimeter, had been designed to snag skin rather than slip off, as well as to increase the force of the punch.

      Hawkins slammed it at the corner of the man’s jaw, spiking into the juncture of nerves and blood vessels running through the neck to feed the man’s brain. With a single blow, the Texan laid him out.

      In the meantime Manning had taken his opponent in a sleeper hold. Deprived of fresh blood and oxygen to the brain, his man had also passed out.

      It was all over and done, but time was no longer on Phoenix Force’s side. The first of the men had fired a gunshot. If the bursting of Veronica Moone’s front door hadn’t inspired this neighborhood to call the police, that act of violence would.

      “My knife is stuck in his face,” Hawkins told Manning. The Phoenix veteran nodded and applied his strength and leverage to the task of retrieving the weapon as the Texan turned to the Korean girl.

      “Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.

      “It’s okay,” Hawkins replied with a soothing drawl. “I don’t want to see you hurt, either. Are you all right?”

      “They killed Ronnie,” the woman said. She was numbed.

      Hawkins rested an arm around her shoulders. “We need to go. Can you come with us?”

      She nodded.

      “You speak Korean?” Hawkins asked. It wasn’t a foolish question. There was a population of Koreans who lived in Japan as a minority, but some of them might not have kept true with their ethnic origins. Back in Texas, Hawkins had met enough Hispanics who denied their cultural heritage, preferring to live within the flow of Texan ethnicity. They were third-and fourth-generation Americans.

      “Yes,” she answered. “They gave me a gun...”

      “I know,” Hawkins said, helping her to her feet.

      “Hey,” Manning whispered. Hawkins turned and found his knife being handed to him, handle first, the blade wiped clean. “Their car is outside.”

      “Enough room for us?” Hawkins asked, sheathing his knife.

      “Just four,” Manning responded.

      “Take her. I’ll catch up on foot,” Hawkins replied. He turned to the Korean girl. “Follow this man. We both want to protect you.”

      She looked doubtful at first, but when Manning threw one of the goons over his left shoulder, then picked up the other unconscious man as if he were a duffel bag, she nodded.

      “Don’t dawdle,” Manning suggested to his younger partner.

      Hawkins shrugged. “Just enough to throw them off your trail.”

      Manning nodded, knowing what his friend intended.

      With that, Manning and the girl were out the front door. They piled into a minivan, emphasis on “miniature.”

      All need for stealth past, Hawkins turned on the lights and examined the small home, now the worse for a second corpse. He couldn’t help but think that he’d failed Veronica Moone, but was also aware the young woman would have secured information somewhere. He mentally went over all the trade craft he’d learned and developed since becoming an operative for Stony Man Farm. The CIA NOC would have had to secure what notes she’d assembled in a place that would not be obvious, even to trained intelligence agents, but could be accessed quickly in the event of an emergency or a swift exit.

      When the Koreans came to kill her, one of her first thoughts would have been about the information she’d stored away. He examined the room once again and then looked at the dead woman’s posture on the floor. She’d been dragged into the kitchen by the garrote that had crushed her windpipe. One of her shoes was in the living room, on a small rug. Hawkins thought that maybe she’d hidden her info somewhere in the relatively Spartan living area, but immediately dismissed that. She had been moving away from the kitchenette. Hawkins turned and scanned the shelves.

      Two bags of rice caught his attention. One was open,