War Tides. Don Pendleton

attention away from Encizo and Hawkins, who left McCarter’s side as soon as Manning triggered the first salvo.

      McCarter watched the two beat feet across the uneven and treacherous floor of this Namibian desert hellhole. At the moment, the Phoenix Force leader wished to be anywhere but here. He concentrated his thoughts and put all his energies into raising the muzzle of his Fabrique Nationale FAL battle rifle and triggering short bursts on sure targets in support of Manning’s efforts. The plan they put together was almost too simple. Encizo and Hawkins would try to gain a flanking position on the enemy and take them out with ordnance from Hawkins’s M-203 when they had a clear field of fire.

      McCarter had ordered Calvin James to take one of the vehicles and escort Dr. Justus Matombo in the opposite direction from their position, not to stop until they hit Lüderitz and could notify the Namibian militia. At first, they had thought they were up against the militia, which served as the country’s national guard, but that seemed unlikely now. Matombo swore the military would never have fired on civilian vehicles—and especially not those with government markings—without ample warning. McCarter tended to believe that from his own experiences, even in a country that had experienced as much strife as Namibia. That left terrorists. Whether they were IUA didn’t matter at that point—staying alive was what counted right now.

      McCarter made that point loud and clear as two enemy gunmen fell under his marksmanship. Years in the British SAS and training as a pistol champion had made McCarter a sharpshooter with few equals. The first terrorist he hit took a double-tap to the chest that flipped the man onto his back. The second gunman caught a slug that took out his knee and tripped him up so he landed hands and knees on the ground, sparing him the next shot. McCarter didn’t miss a second time and he finished the terrorist with a burst to the left flank.

      McCarter paused to assess the results of Manning’s handiwork, who was no more a stranger to small arms than him. The M-60 E-4 sported a swivel bipod that operated smoothly and featured built-in recoil dampeners that prevented slippage even on smooth surfaces. The heavy weapon boomed a ceaseless, ear-busting tune as Manning swept the firing zone with steady side-to-side motions. The 7.62 x 49 mm NATO rounds pummeled the enemy gunners who were angling for any cover they could find, without much avail. Phoenix Force had claimed the only real protection among these rocks, and the area around the road where the chopper had put down was sparse, affording their adversaries little protection from Manning’s onslaught.

      McCarter watched another moment and then took up position and continued firing.

      T. J. HAWKINS and Rafael Encizo didn’t waste any time picking their way across the uneven terrain to gain a flanking position.

      Not that their enemies weren’t mindful of that fact, as several of them charged the Phoenix Force pair while they were still on the move. Whether an accidental rendezvous or simply dumb luck on the part of the terrorists, Encizo didn’t wait to ponder the point. The Cuban raised his Heckler & Koch MP-5 subgun and triggered a 3-round burst that struck the first man in the upper chest and sent him reeling as the weapon he’d been toting flew from lifeless fingers.

      The second terrorist didn’t fare any better as Hawkins fired his M-16 A-3 from the hip. A pair of 5.56 mm zingers punched through the target’s face and blew out most of the back of his skull. The gunner’s body stiffened a moment, the arms and legs making herky-jerky movements, and then he toppled to ground and left a cloud of dust in his wake.

      The last of the trio realized the odds were no longer in his favor and smartly decided to find cover. Unfortunately for him, the thought came a moment too late. Encizo caught the man with a well-aimed trio of shots to the midsection. The bullets perforated the stomach and one lung. A crimson geyser erupted from the terrorist’s mouth. He stopped in his tracks a moment, dropped his weapon and then slowly collapsed in a heap.

      Encizo shook his head. “That was close.”

      “As a razor,” Hawkins added with a nod.

      The pair continued toward their destination and in less than a minute they had come around on the enemy’s right flank. Hawkins went prone behind the base of a large tree while Encizo took up a firing position between two branches that would allow him to cover his friend from most any angle. As some of the chopper smoke cleared, Hawkins could see the terrorists were completely preoccupied with McCarter and Manning, and he and Encizo had reached their position undetected. Time to act before their luck changed for the worse.

      Hawkins flipped up the leaf sight on the M-203 and quickly figured his range. They couldn’t have been more than half a football field from where the terrorists were cloistered together behind a couple of small boulders about ten yards apart. Hawkins sighted down the rails at his target and squeezed the trigger. The 40 mm HE grenade arced silently across the sky and landed dead-on. The explosion blew apart several of the closest men and disoriented the remaining terrorists.

      Hawkins immediately loaded a second grenade, this one a red smoker, and let fly just forward of their position. As soon as it went, he and Encizo were up and moving. Hawkins loaded a third grenade on the run as Encizo sprayed the area ahead with repeated bursts from the MP-5. A couple of the terrorists tried to use the smoke to retreat from McCarter and Manning, completely oblivious to the fact they were trapped between the Phoenix Force warriors. In whatever direction they ventured, Phoenix Force had them covered and they wasted no time taking advantage of that fact.

      Encizo dropped two terrorists with the subgun he triggered from the hip, holding low and steady on the run. The Cuban had honed his skills on hell-grounds around the globe, and the first terrorist fell with blood spurting from his side where twin 9 mm rounds had punctured his heart. Encizo’s shots caught the second man through the breastbone with enough force to flip him off his feet. Hawkins and Encizo were careful to keep some distance from the wall of red smoke because they could still hear the steady chop-chop-chop of Manning’s M-60.

      It wouldn’t do to get caught up in the Canadian’s fire zone.

      Not that it made any difference because a few more seconds elapsed before the machine gun fell silent and the echoes of small-arms fire utterly died away.

      The Phoenix warriors converged and met at the center of the battle zone, which for all intents and purposes had become little more than a graveyard. Broken and bleeding bodies were strewed across the rocky desert floor. The odors of spilled blood and spent cordite, the smells of war, pelted their nostrils like the little bits of sand and gravel from a sudden swirl of dust devils around their fatigues.

      “Well,” McCarter said, waving at a cluster of gnats buzzing around his nose as he inspected the devastation. “I’d say that’s the bloody lot of them.”

      Encizo looked at the carnage and then toward the sky, which had completely reddened. “We’ve got maybe another twenty minutes of daylight before it’s totally dark. What time is it?”

      Hawkins glanced at his field watch. “It’s going on 2100 hours.”

      “We should do a quick recon on that chopper,” Manning suggested.

      “You think it’s safe?” Hawkins said.

      McCarter shrugged. “Guess we won’t find that out until we take a look-see.”

      The warriors agreed on their approach and moved toward the chopper in a sweep-and-cover maneuver they had practiced hundreds of times before. Much of the smoke had dissipated and they could see the crumpled shape of the chopper clearly as they approached. When they were close enough, Hawkins could make out the emblem of the Namibian flag on the side, a red stripe running diagonally from the left bottom corner, bordered by white with a green triangle in the lower right and blue triangle in the upper left. Within the blue field was the image of a sun.

      Encizo checked a pulse at the neck of the pilot, who sat motionless in the cockpit, and then shook his head at McCarter.

      Manning made a quick inspection of the chopper, and after a time said, “Sikorsky CH-53G. I remember these babies when I trained with the GSG-9. Probably surplus purchased from the German Bundeswehr after the Cold War ended.”

      “That pilot,”