Target Acquisition. Don Pendleton

Encizo suddenly cursed. “The stairs we came up hugged that wall—there’s like a fifteen-foot gap here!”

      Around them in the building Phoenix could hear people stirring, calling out in panic and milling in confusion. The building was rife with extremist foot soldiers. McCarter instantly went on alert, his weapon up.

      “Gary,” he ordered, “check the staircase down the hall.”

      “I’m on it,” Manning answered, moving out. He ran down the hall, bent low to avoid the thickest part of the smoke, and kicked open a door at the opposite end of the corridor. “It’s good!”

      “You heard him,” Calvin James barked. “Let’s move, people.”

      McCarter spun and covered the hall as his men ran down the passage and entered the stairwell. “Go!” he snapped. “I’ve got security!”

      The other four members of Phoenix rushed through the doorway just as the first of the enemy combatants exploded into the hall. The man, bearded and dressed only in pants with a automatic pistol in his fist, shouted an angry warning and lifted his weapon.

      McCarter killed him but there was a chorus of answering shouts. A volley of fire erupted outside the hall, initiating a storm of lead that tore into the corridor. More glass from the few unbroken windows shattered, falling inward, and the wood paneling was shredded. After his initial burst McCarter threw himself to the floor, directing his momentum over a shoulder, and rolled clear of the hall, keeping below the hail of gunfire.

      McCarter spotted a big man armed with a black machine pistol appear from the door of a room directly across the hall from the suicide bomber. The giant shouted an order and peeled back from the doorway. A second man ran forward, Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his shoulder and across his back.

      McCarter swore. The man went to one knee and leveled an RPG-7 at the end of the hall. Rising, McCarter turned and sprinted. The 84 mm warhead could penetrate twelve inches of steel armor; it would blow through even a reinforced door with ease. McCarter scrambled across the floor and leaped up into the air.

      McCarter struck the floor and slid across as a fireball blew through the door where he had been and rolled into the already devastated room like a freight train. Shrapnel and jagged chunks of wood lanced through the air.

      McCarter’s ears still rang from the explosive concussion and his face bled from a dozen minor lacerations, but his hand was steady on the trigger as Pakistani gunmen rushed through the front door.

       CHAPTER THREE

      The first shooter breached the door, AKM assault rifle up and at the ready. McCarter put him down with a burst from his submachine gun. The combatant hit the burning floor like a bag of wet cement. The man running in behind him looked down as the point man hit the floor. He looked back up, searching for a target, and McCarter blew off the left side of his face.

      The third man in the line tripped over the second man’s falling corpse. McCarter used a burst to scythe the man to the ground and then put a single shot into the top of his skull. Through the swirling smoke and angry screams McCarter saw a black metal canister arc into the room.

      McCarter recognized the threat instantly as an RG-42 antipersonnel hand grenade. He popped up off his belly onto his hands and knees as the grenade hit the floor inside the hall and bounced toward him. Leaving the AKS where it lay, McCarter dived forward, scooping up the bouncing hand grenade, and wrapping his hands around the black cylinder.

      He hit the floor hard from his short hop, absorbing the impact with his elbows. He rolled over onto one shoulder and thrust out his arm, sending the grenade shooting away from him. It cleared the corpses in the entranceway and bounced up and out the hall doorway on the far side. McCarter heard a sudden outburst of curses and buried his head in his arms.

      The grenade detonated and another cloud of smoke billowed in through the doorway on the heels of the concussive force.

      McCarter came to his feet, scooping up the AKS submachine gun. He shuffled backward and crouched next to the wall, heading for the door to the staircase down to the street level. McCarter caught a flash of movement and spun toward the blown-out doors of two apartments across from their original target.

      “David!” Encizo’s voice blared in McCarter’s earbud. “We’re coming, brother!”

      “Negative!” McCarter shouted.

      He saw two men in khaki jackets rush up to the shattered windows, AKM rifles clutched in their hands. McCarter dropped to one knee beside the wall and brought up the AKS. He beat the men to the trigger and his submachine gun spit flame. It recoiled sharply in his hands and shell casings arced out to spill across the floor.

      “The stair is too narrow. I’m coming to you!”

      McCarter put two rounds into the face of the first man. Bloody holes the size of dimes appeared, slapping the man’s head back. Blood sprayed in a mist behind his head and he slumped to the ground, his weapon clattering at his feet.

      McCarter shifted smoothly, like ball bearings in a sling swivel, toward the second gunman. They fired simultaneously. The muzzle-flash of the man’s weapon burst into a flaming star pattern. The sound of the heavier assault rifle firing was thunderous compared to the more subdued sound of McCarter’s 9 mm subgun.

      The 7.62 mm caliber rounds tore into the molding of the wall just to McCarter’s right. The rounds punched through the building material, tearing fist-size chunks from the wall and door frame, spilling white plumes of chalky plaster dust into the air.

      McCarter’s burst hit the man in a tight pattern. The bullets drilled into the receiver of the AKM, tearing it from the stunned gunner’s hands. Two more rounds punched into his chest three inches above the first, staggering him backward.

      McCarter came to his feet, the AKS held up and ready. He triggered two rounds into the stunned gunman and took him down, blowing out the back of his neck. McCarter danced to the side and, still facing the front of the hall, held the AKS up and ready in one hand. He stepped back into stairway door.

      A gunman came around the corner of one of the rooms, Kalashnikov firing. McCarter put a burst into his knee and thigh, knocking the screaming man to the floor. He put a double tap through the top of his head. Brain matter and bits of skull splattered outward.

      McCarter moved in a shuffle back toward the stair, realizing that what had been billed as a safehouse by intelligence had actually been more along the lines of a barracks—a significant and unsubtle difference. He took fire from the open door and swiveled to meet the threat as another pair of gunmen rounded the corner from the front hall. McCarter threw himself belly down, his legs trailing out behind him down the stairs, angling his body so he was out of sight from the shooters in the hall.

      McCarter swept his submachine gun in a wide loose arc, spraying bullets at the gunman firing through the shattered hall. One of the men’s weapons suddenly swung up toward the ceiling and McCarter caught a glimpse of him staggering backward into the dark though he never saw his own rounds impact.

      He lay on the stairs, only his arms and shoulders emerging from the door to the stairwell. He rotated up onto his right shoulder to get an angle of fire on the entranceway. He saw one of the terrorist gunmen rushing forward and shot the man’s ankles, bringing him to the floor. McCarter fired another burst into the prone man, finishing him off, only to have his bolt lock open as his magazine ran dry.

      McCarter let the AKS dangle across his chest as a second terrorist leaped over the body of the first and charged forward. The skeletal folding stock of his AKS-74U pressed tight into his shoulder and he fired the weapon as he bounded forward.

      McCarter put his hands against the floor and snapped up, clearing the edge of the doorway. Bullets tore into the floor where his head had just been. He twisted on the stair and jumped downward. He landed at the bottom, his legs bending to absorb the impact, just as he had been taught during paratrooper training. He took the recoil, felt it surge up through his heels, and rolled off to the side. He turned in the