High Assault. Don Pendleton

going to roll,” Schwarz repeated.

      Lyons didn’t bother to answer, but instead turned into the skid and eased off the gas for a moment. He cut the wheel back and just missed running up onto a crowded sidewalk before bringing the heavy vehicle back into line and shooting ahead.

      He cut around a late-model four-door sedan and then back in front of it. He quickly looked in his rearview mirror but was forced to keep his eyes on the crowded road in front of him.

      “Still there?” he demanded.

      “Yep,” Blancanales answered from the backseat.

      “It’s going to be damn hard to outmaneuver them in this behemoth,” Schwarz said. “And if we keep this up for too long without losing them, we’ll have uniformed officers on our ass and it’s right back to playing patty cake with customs officer Hernandez and his jolly crew.”

      “We’re not going to roll,” Lyons said preemptively.

      The ex-LAPD detective slammed on the emergency brakes, locking up his rear wheels, and spun the big SUV around in a half circle. The blunt nose of the Excursion pointed toward an alley. An ancient flatbed truck blocked half the narrow passage. In the back a lanky teenager handed boxes of ripe tomatoes down to a portly middle-aged man in a shopkeeper’s apron.

      The SUV rocked on its suspension, leaning so hard toward the driver that the tires left the ground along the passenger side for several inches. The vehicle slammed back down and then the tires squealed as they grabbed traction on the asphalt.

      The Excursion’s big-block engine screamed as it lurched forward, barreling directly for the delivery truck. The shopkeeper turned and gaped in surprise and the teenager on the flatbed dropped a box of tomatoes and leaped clear. The Excursion shot past them and there was sharp, metallic pop as the driver’s side-view mirror was ripped clean off the car door.

      Lyons risked a glance back and saw the green pursuit car charge into the alley. He swore violently, then asked, “Can we take them out?”

      “Our rules of engagement are pretty liberal,” Schwarz said, his voice tinged with dry sarcasm.

      “Are we sure we want to?” Blancanales asked. “They’re just a surveillance team.”

      “They’re agents of a secret police unit designed to keep an aggressive totalitarian despot like Chavez in power. This country is about thirty-six hours away, at any one time, of going the Night of the Long Knives route. Hell, how many journalists and political dissidents has Chavez’s Gestapo already jailed, tortured and killed?” Lyons argued.

      “True enough,” Blancanales said. “But until we get to the cache point we don’t have weapons.”

      “Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Lyons said.

      “Oh, God, no,” Schwarz muttered.

      Basra, Iraq

      HAWKINS SETTLED his head down and eased into a tight cheek weld with the buttstock of his weapon. His finger rested firmly on the trigger, eliminating any slack from the pull. Poised for the kill, he used the scope to evaluate the hunter-killer team sweeping toward his position.

      Two men stayed behind in each of the Dzik-3 APCs—the driver and a machine gunner using the roof-mounted M-2 .50-caliber machine gun. A dismount squad consisting of a three-man fire team from each vehicle patrolled the area in methodical motions of cover and movement. The unit commander, an obese and belligerent-looking soldier in a felt green beret, walked along beside the center Dzik-3 with a sat phone in one hand and a U.S. Army Beretta in the other, controlling the search grids of the foot soldiers.

      Target number one was the officer, Hawkins decided. Targets two, three and four would be the exposed machine gunners. Encizo could use the AP rounds in his Hawk grenade launcher to attack the three fire teams. With surprise and aggressive use of tactical firepower their ambush could decimate the platoon. He just wasn’t sure if they could handle any reinforcements.

      “Coming closer. Moving careful and being thorough,” he warned in a tense whisper.

      He heard Encizo hurriedly pass the information along to David McCarter. There was a murmured reply, and then the Cuban whispered the Briton’s instructions into Hawkins’s ear.

      “They start crossing the parking lot between the last warehouse and our position then go ahead and take ’em. If we can get to insertion point two, we’ll be good either way, but we have to be sure we can hold them off long enough for Manning to finish the electrical job.”

      “Understood,” Hawkins replied.

      Encizo gave McCarter a thumbs-up. The Phoenix leader nodded, then turned back toward the big Canadian. Manning nodded without looking up.

      “I’m in the schematic pathway,” he said. “There’s enough juice in these coils to do what we need, but I have to passive link the nodes one at a time to connect with the coalition power grid. It has to be done in order or the transformers will reject the current or overload.”