Neutron Force. Don Pendleton

man went pale and froze motionless.

      Shaking his head, Lyons pressed a finger to his lips for silence, while Blancanales and Schwarz aimed their assault rifles.

      “I surrender!” Troy cried, raising both hands, casting a deluge of packets upon the Stony Man commandos. “Don’t shoot me!”

      Muffled curses came from the fifth floor, and all of the arming lights on the cheap detonators strapped to the fuel canisters started blinking.

      Furiously, Lyons charged up the stairs and fired. The Atchisson ripped off a short burst, and Troy stumbled backward from the barrage of 12-gauge stun bags.

      “Freeze! This is the FBI!” Blancanales shouted, adding a long rip from the M-16 assault rifle into the ceiling. With any luck, the hardmen would simply surrender.

      “Fuck you, cops!” George yelled, and a pair of black metallic globes sailed over the railing to hit the fourth-floor landing and bounce away.

      “Grenades!” Lyons roared, diving aside, his teammates only a heartbeat behind.

      The team was still airborne when the charges cut loose, filling the landing with thundering flame. Still kneeling with his arms raised in surrender, Troy was blown apart by the double explosion.

      As they hit the floor, there came a sharp patter of antipersonnel shrapnel smacking into the doors and walls. In a bathroom, a plastic fuel canister ruptured, the pink fluid gushing out to spread along the wooden floor, heading dangerously close to the burning ruin of the smashed landing.

      Charging into the bathroom, Schwarz tackled the canister, shoving it into the bathtub. Heading into a bedroom, Blancanales ripped the arming wires off a firebomb and went in search of another.

      Rising up from behind the fire, Lyons dropped the drum of stun bags and slapped in a drum of fléchettes just as Jeff jumped down the stairs to land heavily on the splintery wood. Grinning fiendishly, the Boston muscle swept the entire fourth floor with an AK-47 assault rifle, the 7.62 mm rounds slamming into pictures, bookcases and the still bodies of the former occupants.

      Ducking behind a wingback chair, Lyons fired a short burst from the Atchisson, the hellstorm of steel slivers tearing Jeff apart, arms and legs going in different directions.

      Bracing against the recoil, Schwarz fired a 40 mm round up the stairs. The charge detonated against the ceiling, spraying down a hellstorm of plaster and wooden splinters. Somebody screamed, the noise becoming a demented howl as Mike staggered into view. His upper body was riddled with holes, red blood pumping out in a ghastly spray from the ruptured arteries.

      Mouthing obscenities, he sprayed his twin Ingram MAC-10 machine pistols, the 9 mm Parabellum rounds hammering down the stairs in crisscrossing streams of glowing tracers and hot lead. From the bedroom, Blancanales peppered the banister, the 5.56 mm rounds chewing a path of destruction along the polished wood. Still shooting, Jeff retreated to the fifth floor. But just as he disappeared, George appeared and fired a line of tracers rounds directly into the pooled gasoline, dripping over the landing. With a whoosh, it ignited and wild flames raced along the floor going straight into the bathroom and up the wallpaper. Standing in the bathtub, Schwarz turned on the shower and angled the spray onto the walls, but the water did little to hinder the lashing orange conflagration.

      “You men up there, get the hell out!” Blancanales shouted, slapping in a fresh clip. “The house is on fire!”

      “Lead the way, cop!” George retorted from somewhere above. “I’m not going back to Wadpoole! I’d rather die here with you!”

      Lyons shot his friend a hard look and Blancanales frowned from the doorway of the bedroom. It sounded crazy, but many men who had spent decades in jail swore death before returning to the rigid discipline of government cellblocks.

      “We need those files,” Lyons ordered, touching his throat mike. He burped a short burst up the stairs. “Think we can cut a deal?”

      “No way,” Blancanales replied, cracking the breech of the grenade launcher. He dumped the 40 mm stun bag and thumbed in an AP round. “We have to take them out.”

      Another grenade bounced down the ruined stairs and disappeared below. A moment later there came a muffled whomp and then a welling aura of hellish light. Lyons cursed. The grenade had ignited the canisters of fuel! The ground floor, maybe even the second, was on fire, and soon the flames would reach the other canisters. They only had a few minutes before the entire building was an inferno. With us trapped on the top level, he thought.

      Turning the Atchisson upward, Lyons emptied the entire drum of 12-gauge fléchettes directly into the ceiling. The fusillade chewed open a gaping hole, and Blancanales and Schwarz instantly triggered 40 mm rounds. Once more, the shells exploded on the next ceiling, and men screamed.

      Charging for the stairs, Lyons swept the room at waist level, blowing apart office furniture, computers, blackboards and both of the stumbling hardmen. But as they fell, a skinny blond man hit a radio detonator clipped to his bloody belt.

      “Not going back…” George said, then went still.

      A split second later, a muffled series of blasts erupted in the lower levels of the house, and the closet across the office was brightly illuminated from within, the door blowing off as the expanding fireball of the hidden incendiary charge cut loose. The only desk was coated with a sheet of flame, the DOD security documents vanishing into ash from the volcanic heat.

      Rushing to a file cabinet, Lyons yanked the top drawer open, then quickly backed away as a secondary charge set the gasoline-soaked folders ablaze. In grudging admiration, Lyons was forced to admit that was exactly how he would have done it. They were amateurs, but not fools.

      Ramming the stock of his M-16 into a computer, Blancanales smashed the machine into pieces. Using a knife, Schwarz pried loose the hard drive and shoved it into a pocket.

      Flames licked out of the stairwell, and the crackling fire raced along the ceiling and walls, the updraft from the hole in the floor feeding the growing blaze.

      “Let’s go!” Lyons shouted as a thick cloud of pungent smoke rose up the stairwell. House on fire, files rigged, the book case empty of any technical journals, there was no place left to search in the scant time remaining. Besides, every soldier knew the danger of fighting in civilian homes. The carpeting often gave off toxic smoke that could kill a person.

      However, Lyons had barely taken a step when his nose caught a sharp aroma. It was actually rather pleasant, and the man felt oddly good, almost drunk, his heart beating wildly.

      “Don’t breathe!” Blancanales cried, exhaling as hard as possible and slapping a hand across his nose and mouth.

      With sleepy movements, the Stony Man commandos stumbled away from the hundred melted bags of crystal meth sizzling on the charred floorboards. The fumes were making them feel woozy, almost light-headed. A strange lethargy stole the strength from their bodies, their weapons suddenly feeling as if each weighed a million tons….

      Fighting off the weakness through sheer force of will, Lyons aimed the Atchisson carefully, and triggered a long sustained burst at the flaming stairs until the smoky wood was torn into wreckage. It dropped away with a strident crash, and the heat in the office decreased slightly.

      “Okay, that bought us a few minutes,” Lyons said, coughing raggedly. He fumbled to reload the autoshotgun with clumsy fingers. “But we have to leave fast—or die.”

      More dull explosions sounded from below, the rising smoke becoming thicker, the floor growing hotter beneath their civilian shoes.

      Snarling in rage, Blancanales fired from the hip, blowing out the rear windows. Rushing to the sill, he drank in the fresh air and momentarily his head cleared.

      Firing to the left, then the right, a coughing Schwarz took out both side windows. The thick smoke thinned immediately, but the roaring fire noticeably increased.

      Shuffling to the left window, Lyons saw only a gazebo on the ground five stories away.

      Firing