Sky Sentinels. Don Pendleton

McCarter himself, being an Englishman rather than American, had once headed up a team of British Special Air Service commandos.

      He was proud of his past. But David McCarter was even more proud of his present. Every single man under his command was a leader, and could take the steering wheel at any time. McCarter considered commanding such men a privilege and an honor.

      Adel Spengha was the last to rise to his feet. While he remained as silent as the warriors, it was obvious that he was hardly in the same peak physical condition as the men of Phoenix Force. It was primarily for his sake that McCarter had called for the rest period in the first place.

      The Desert Rat wobbled slightly as he walked over to McCarter, and the Phoenix Force leader saw the fatigue in the man’s eyes. “I would suggest,” Spengha said, “that we soon pick out a place to bivouac for the night.” His dark brown eyes rose toward the snowy peaks ahead. “If we keep going, we will have to spend the night near the top and it will be freezing.”

      McCarter assessed the suggestion. “You’re right,” he said. He glanced at his watch again. “We’ll hit it hard for another hour, then find a place to settle in for the night. Trying to cross the top would be a death sentence. We’re going to be walking on ledges covered in ice as it is, and there’s no sense in trying it at night.”

      The Rat’s eyes looked relieved.

      McCarter was about to announce his decision to the rest of the team when sudden gunfire broke the peacefulness of the mountain. He watched what sounded like a submachine-gun round strike the Rat’s bulky robe, then yelled, “Take cover!”

      The men of Phoenix Force dropped back down on the plateau, squirming in tightly behind the boulders that surrounded the area.

      McCarter had unconsciously reached out and taken the Rat down with him. Now, as they crawled to the cover of the rocks, he said, “Were you hit?”

      The Rat shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Just my robe.”

      The gunfire had continued. But it stopped as the targets disappeared. “Anybody hit?” McCarter called.

      He got four negative replies from his men.

      David McCarter turned his attention back to the steep trail. The gunfire had come from somewhere farther up the mountain. Which meant the enemy had the higher ground.

      Never a good thing.

      As silence returned to the plateau, the Phoenix Force leader looked back at the Rat again. “Any idea who we’re facing?” he asked.

      “My guess would be brigands,” Spengha said. “Iranian soldiers would have come down the trail en masse. And the Kurds are farther to the south. At least I think they are.”

      “How old is that bit of intel, mate?” McCarter asked.

      “Two days,” the Rat said.

      McCarter’s teeth tightened as he blew air out between them. Two days was like an eternity when it came to war. More than enough time for the entire picture to change. The Kurds might have moved north during that time. And he wasn’t so sure about the Iranian regulars, either. Iran’s red-scarfed Revolutionary Guard—the troops Lyons and his men were now facing back in the States—actually outnumbered the country’s regular army both in size and influence.

      So he wasn’t nearly as sure that they weren’t facing legitimate Iranian soldiers as the Rat seemed to be.

      McCarter had been wearing a black floppy boonie hat during the climb. But now he yanked it from his head. Draping it over the barrel of his M-16, he slowly poked the hat up over the boulder.

      Almost as soon as it became visible from behind cover, a shot rang out. The hat twirled on the rifle barrel before he pulled the rifle back down beside him. “Well,” he said more to himself than to the Rat, “whoever they are, they’re still there.”

      The Rat nodded his head vigorously. “We must go back,” he said. “We will get killed if we try to continue.”

      “We’re not going back,” the Phoenix Force leader said. “We’re going into Iran, we’re going to find the hostages, we’re going to get them out safely and we’re going to find out if that little wanker of a president really does have nuclear weapons.” He looked the Rat in the eyes. “Now, you stay here.”

      Without waiting for any sort of reply, David McCarter dived away from the boulder and rolled across the plateau toward where Calvin James had taken cover behind another large boulder. He threw a wild 3-round burst toward the enemy as he rolled, and felt the heat of return rounds sizzle past his body as he moved.

      But a moment later he was safely ensconced behind the same rock as James.

      The gunfire continued for a moment, then settled down again.

      “Cal,” McCarter said as he rose to a sitting position next to James, “I believe we have a job for a man of just your talents.”

      The well-trimmed mustache on the black Phoenix Force commando’s face spread wide into a smile.

      He already had the twelve-inch blade of his double-edged Crossada out of its Kydex sheath.

      C ALVIN T HOMAS J AMES had grown up on Chicago’s South Side where knife fighting was more important than any subject or sport offered by the school system. It was a matter of survival. You either got good or died trying.

      And while he had plenty of scars to remind him of past altercations, Calvin James was still alive.

      Slowly, the Phoenix Force warrior descended back down the rocks, staying out of sight below the plateau where the other men were still lurking. He knew he had to stay invisible if he was to be successful on this private mission McCarter had just handed him.

      James was counting on the enemy staying focused on the plateau. He just needed to move far enough to the side that he could navigate his way up the mountain until he located and identified them.

      Finally, when his instincts told him he was low enough to be out of sight, James moved to the left side of the mountain pass, then slowly began to scale the side of the mountain. His eyes stayed one step ahead of his body, always searching for the next hand- and foothold, be it a crevice in the rocky mass or the stub of a tree lacking enough water to grow to its full potential. Every so often, he came to a ledge wide enough to stand on, and he used such places as rest stops, keeping a close look at the chronograph on his wrist and forcing himself to wait a full two minutes before moving on.

      It was a true test of strength, skill and patience but soon he had drawn even with the small plateau from which he’d started. Here and there, he could see an arm or leg among the rocks, and knew they belonged to one of his Phoenix Force brothers. But they weren’t moving. And there still had been no gunfire since he’d left.

      James moved on, the muscles in his shoulders and arms beginning to pump now as blood rushed into them and his legs. When he came to another ledge wide enough for a breather, James looked back down to see that the rest of the men of Phoenix Force and the Rat were completely out of sight. He had begun timing the rest stop when a pebble rolled down the side of the mountain and bounced off his head before falling on.

      James looked up to see the boots and pant legs of a man ten feet above him and perhaps a yard to his right. Above the pants, the man wore a brightly striped robe that was cinched at the waist by a gun belt.

      James froze in place.

      The enemy was using the same strategy that he was. The only difference was that their recon man was coming down the side of the mountain instead of going up.

      James watched closely as the man descended toward the same small ledge upon which he was standing. Luckily, the head above the robe was looking over his right shoulder as he made his way down, and appeared totally oblivious to the fact that James was even there.

      So the Phoenix Force knife expert slowly withdrew the Crossada from its Kydex sheath, hoping the inevitable swooshing sound it made would not