Atomic Fracture. Don Pendleton

      Slowly, McCarter adjusted the red-dot scope on the top of the LAR’s Picatinny rail. Ali’s presence had not resulted in action by the sniper so the Phoenix Force leader waited no longer. Suddenly and without further ado, he swung his rifle barrel up and toward the mountain 642 yards away. He could see only the blurry outline of the would-be sniper’s head, shoulders and whatever rifle he held in his hands. Sighting in on the middle of the dark figure, he squeezed the trigger and felt the Hunter jump slightly in his hands.

      Through the scope, McCarter saw the sniper’s head explode like a watermelon dropped from a ten-story building.

      But a second later an explosion of a different type took place.

      As if from out of nowhere, men bearing a variety of assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns and handguns suddenly shot up fifty feet farther down the line of brush and wrecked vehicles. And, unlike McCarter, they had no reason to hesitate.

      The first dozen rounds or so seemed to come at exactly the same time, sounding like one gigantic explosion.

      “Down!” McCarter yelled. It was an unnecessary order. The men of Phoenix Force and Ali had all dropped into the grass behind vehicles of their own accord.

      McCarter felt his elbows sink into the damp earth just behind what had once been a Radestani army jeep. He’d had no time for an actual head count of the enemy, but a quick skim caused him to estimate roughly two dozen.

      Those were the adversaries he could see. There could be more—many more, in fact—that had simply been a little slower rising and showing themselves.

      In any case, Phoenix Force and their companion were outnumbered. Greatly.

      But that was hardly a new situation for the men from Stony Man Farm.

      John “Cowboy” Kissinger had performed his weapon-smithing magic on the Rock River LAR-15 and given it the capacity to shoot semiauto, 3-round burst or fully automatic fire. McCarter switched the selector to the latter mode as he rose briefly and held the trigger back, spraying the men farther down the roadway with a hailstorm of 5.56 mm rounds. It was not the wild firing act of panic or frustration to which less-seasoned warriors might have resorted. McCarter simply wanted to open the show with a bang. Or, more precisely, with a lot of bangs. And to make sure the enemy knew they were in for a fight.

      Two of them died learning that fact as the Hunter’s barrel swept across the mass of men.

      McCarter ducked into the weeds, his shoulder against the rear of a jeep as return fire flew over his head. Around him he could hear the roar of the other men’s rifles as they, too, maintained their assault on the enemy. For a brief moment his mind traveled back to the firing range at the Farm where the men of Phoenix Force had tested and evaluated dozens of rifles and add-on combinations before choosing what they liked best. All of the test weapons had been variants of the AR-15 that had been made by different companies and tailored to fit specific needs, likes and dislikes. Each had its own subtle—and sometimes not-so-subtle—differences from the others.

      A short lull came to the firefight, and McCarter recalled each of his team’s favorite rifle. Manning had liked the Bushmaster. Encizo had stuck with his tried-and-true Colt. James had fallen in love with the titanium Nemo—a rifle that cost one hundred thousand dollars on the open market and was worth every penny. And Hawkins had cast his vote for a Spike’s Tactical.

      But McCarter had known they would be on their own, and Murphy’s Law always applied: things would go wrong. Equipment, no matter how well made, sometimes broke down and carrying spare parts for five different weapons was out of the question. So he had chosen the LAR-15 for all of them. And none of the Phoenix Force warriors had objected very much. After all, they knew that it was a case of men fighting men—not specific weapons fighting other weapons. And the men of Phoenix Force were more than capable with any rifle placed in their hands.

      So now the coyote-hide-camo rifles began throwing massive amounts of jacketed hollowpoints down the road toward the men who had sprung the sudden attack.

      But were they hitting anyone? McCarter wondered. And if they were, were they killing government soldiers or People’s Secular Opposition Forces rebels?

      There was only one way to find out. Keep fighting. And do your best to stay alive. And in the end, it really made little difference. While there was an attempt being made to train and unite the scattered PSOF factions, at the moment some of them were every bit as much the enemy as the Radestani regulars. Each faction had its own selfish agenda. And if any of them actually took over the government, they would immediately begin a campaign of genocide directed at the other factions.

      McCarter had seen similar situations in other parts of the world. And he knew they could not allow that to happen here.

      Rising again, the Phoenix Force leader aimed his new weapon over the jeep and peered above the scope. Phoenix Force’s war in Radestan was, and promised to continue being, an extremely confusing situation. But then all wars were confusing, McCarter reminded himself. And as he fired at the attackers, one man near the front finally gave away their identity by screaming out, “Allahu Akbar!” McCarter was slightly surprised but hardly shocked. The men attacking them were not government soldiers. But they weren’t one of the rebel factions, either. The men trying to kill the warriors of Phoenix Force and Abdul Ali were part of the al Qaeda terrorist faction Phoenix Force had been warned was waiting in the wings, preparing to take over the country as soon as the regulars and rebels had killed each other off.

      McCarter cut loose with a 3-round burst from the Hunter, secure now that he was shooting at a faction of “bad guys” in this strange three-way war. Yes, all wars were confusing. This one just happened to be more so.

      It was totally, one hundred percent, completely screwed up.

      The Phoenix Force leader fired again and a trio of rounds ripped into the chest of the man who had yelled. A terrorist wearing a brown cloth safari-style hat took all three of the Phoenix Force leader’s rounds in the face, all but eliminating his head. For a second, the hat seemed to hover above the neck in midair. Then it fell straight down to land on the man’s shoulders before the body slumped out of sight and into the tall grass.

      Around him, in the grass and behind the trashed vehicles, McCarter could hear the return fire from the rest of his team and Abdul Ali. Phoenix Force’s RRA LAR-15 Hunter rounds were easy enough to distinguish from the AK-47 explosions from both Ali and the al Qaeda shooters opposing them.

      McCarter fired another burst, then dropped to his knee again behind the abandoned jeep. Following the time-proven strategy that you never showed yourself to the enemy more than once in the same place, he knee-walked his way to the right bumper. Leaning his face around the edge, he kept the rest of his body behind the vehicle and extended the LAR-15 at arm’s length. His body still completely covered, he risked only his hands and arms as he used his thumb on the trigger, firing a long full-auto burst blindly in the general direction of the enemy.

      McCarter jerked his arms and the rifle back out of sight, immediately edging his face around the jeep’s bumper. His blind assault had done the job he’d wanted it to do, causing the enemy combatants to shrink back into hiding long enough for him to make a quick survey of the situation.

      One man, however, had not been intimidated by the full-auto blast. He had dark skin and wore a bright red shirt that looked as if the sleeves had been chopped off at the shoulders with a machete. McCarter switched the selector on his LAR-15 to 3-round burst and squeezed the trigger again, this time with his eyes fixed on the center of the man’s chest.

      Black holes appeared in the red cloth of his shirt as the man danced like a marionette on the end of the strings of a mad puppeteer. As he fell to the ground, another attacker—this one wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt—caught more rounds from one of the other Phoenix Force men. The AK-47 in the man’s hands flew up into the air as one of the hollowpoints apparently hit a nerve, causing his arm to rise. Red blotches appeared on the white shirt—two in the chest and one in the shoulder—as he joined his red-clad comrade in death.

      Blood seeping from the bullet wounds in