Power Grab. Don Pendleton

few people who had not responded to the fire alarm began to flee from the cafeteria. The speaker at the podium and the political operatives with him looked around in dismay. Some of them fled and some of them didn’t; the ones who remained looked confused or frozen.

      It was time to go, before they met more resistance.

      “Go, go, go, go,” McCarter urged. The team backed away, leaving the stunned speaker still at his podium. “Do we have anyone else?”

      “No one that I can see,” Encizo reported. There were calls of assent from the other team members.

      “Let’s fade, lads,” McCarter said. “Ghaem?”

      “Meet me at the rear entrance, please,” Ahmadi reported. “I have secured alternate transportation.” The foghorn sirens of Iranian Internal Security were closing in. Ahmadi could hear them better than he could, McCarter was certain.

      He stepped over one of the corpses—and it grabbed him. The terrorist was not yet dead, and he was determined to take someone with him. McCarter went down and suddenly found himself wrestling for possession of his Browning with a man possessed. The strength of adrenaline, fear and imminent death made the man’s hands iron as he clawed at the Briton.

      “Keep going!” McCarter yelled. He slammed a palm heel up under his adversary’s chin. “Don’t wait for me! Go!”

      The sirens were more insistent now; they sounded as if they were immediately outside. This was what Mc Carter had feared: doing their jobs only to end up handing themselves to the Iranian security forces. To be prisoners under those circumstances would be a fate worse than death. The Farm would have to disavow knowledge of them, and the Iranians, realizing they had high-value military personnel from the United States, would never let them go. They would probably use their captives for whatever propaganda value they could get, first torturing each member of Phoenix Force to break them.

      Everyone could be broken. Many times McCarter and the men of Phoenix had found themselves in the clutches of determined enemies, and at times those experiences had been decidedly unpleasant. They had remained strong through them, but he had no illusions. The members of Phoenix Force were human, not super-men, and they could be broken by persistent torture as could virtually anyone else. It could take years of privation and steady mistreatment…or it could take hours of brutal, maiming torture, depending on the methods used.