High Assault. Don Pendleton

Gary Manning was coolly using a stylus to work the touch pad on his diagnostic server.

      “How we coming, mate?” McCarter asked.

      “More time,” Manning replied.

      “We kind of have company.”

      “Look, I’ve got to uplink this substation to the coalition power grid, then trace the connection to our neighborhood before I can shut out the lights. I need more time.”

      “Right.” McCarter turned to the rest of his men. “Encizo, get into position next to Hawkins. If T.J. decides he needs to take a shot I want you to bring the noise.”

      “Copy.” Encizo nodded. The Cuban lifted the MM-1 grenade launcher and slid in next to the prone Texan.

      McCarter lifted his left hand and pointed at Calvin James. “We’re advancing the plan by ten minutes,” he said. “I want you to open the sewer entrance right now and hold the position until we can get Manning through this sabotage gig.”

      “They’re rolling this way.” Encizo spoke up for Hawkins. “Moving slow, but it seems obvious they’re spooked and looking for something, not just patrolling.”

      McCarter turned back to the massive Canadian. “Gary?”

      “Need time.”

      “Right, then.” He twisted around. “Hold the line,” McCarter whispered to Encizo, who leaned over and relayed the information to Hawkins. The Phoenix leader turned toward James and nodded once.

      The former SEAL rose into a crouch and glided into the narrow space between the relay station Manning was working on and the cinder-block wall that encircled the work area. McCarter heard the whisper of cloth and leather on the concrete, then James was over the top of the far wall and gone into the night.

      James hit the ground on the other side of the wall, his boots making a crunch on the loose gravel as he landed. He was in a small access alley running behind a line of empty buildings. At one end of the lane a worn and deteriorated industrial wharf jutted out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway. In the distance, the lights of a garbage scow moved slowly away, gulls circling it, their night cries sharp against the low rumble of its engine.

      James swung around to look the other way. He let the SPAS-15 dangle from his strap and pulled a silenced Beretta 92-SB from a holster on his thigh. Down at the end of the alley opposite the pier ran a larger secondary road, intersecting with the alley where a commercial gas station had once stood. The fuel pumps had been blown clean off their moorings at some point in the war and the building was a soot-covered and burned-out hulk.

      Moving carefully, pistol up, James jogged up the alley toward the burned-out service station where a manhole cover was set in the ground. He covered the backs of the building fronting the alley, but all he saw were empty windows, dark doorways and tight, twisted openings leading inward between the structures like tunnels.

      Coming up to the manhole cover, James quickly went to one knee and holstered his Beretta to pull a thick-bladed diver’s knife from a sheath on his combat boot. A diving knife was, by design, intended to be a pry bar and was built with full tangs and reinforced steel.

      Working quickly, James slid the knife into the lip of the manhole cover and pried it up. Instantly a foul miasma wafted up from the opening, causing him to yank his head back in sudden disgust.

      As he turned his face to the side, nose wrinkled against the stench, a Mahdi army militia member stared out at him from a weed-choked causeway between two deserted maintenance sheds made out of corrugated tin and aluminum siding. The man had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips with a blue, cheap plastic lighter held up with his free hand cupped around the flickering flame.

      Slung over his shoulder was an AKM.

      James popped up out of his crouch like a jack-in-the-box. The Iraqi’s eyes grew wide and his mouth sagged open in surprise. James pushed his feet hard into broken ground, springing forward. The militia gunman’s cigarette tumbled from his lips and the flame on the lighter winked out as it dropped from his hand.

      James crossed the road in a flat sprint, knife up and ready, face twisted into a snarl of rage. The plastic lighter hit the ground at the Iraqi’s feet and bounced next to the forgotten cigarette. The man scrambled for the assault rifle slung on his shoulder, fingers fumbling in his fear.

      The man tore the strap off his shoulder and swung the Kalashnikov down into his hands, fingers hunting for the trigger as he tried to bring the AKM barrel around. James swung his right hand down and knocked the weapon back into the man’s own chest, blocking him like a defensive back on the line of scrimmage.

      The man’s fetid breath rushed out in a gasp, his spittle spraying James in the face. The dive knife arced up and plunged into the Iraqi’s torso just below the sternum, slicing through the membrane of the solar plexus. The man collapsed inward around the thrust and James tore the knife free, blood gushing out to splash into the dust at their feet, making a sticky mud instantly.

      James stepped backward to give himself room, then brought the knife back up in a murderous underhand slash. The triangular point of the blade caught the mortally wounded Iraqi militia gunman in his throat just below the bobbing knot of his Adam’s apple.

      James felt the blade slice through flesh and cartilage. Hot blood gushed out over his fist and the man croaked and his bowels opened up as a spasm rocked his body. James stepped in and shoved hard, pushing the corpse off the end of his knife and letting the man drop like a sack of loose meat.

      He whirled and ran back out into street, slipping the blood-smeared knife blade under the web belt of his H-harness suspender. He drew his silenced Beretta and put a finger to his headset mike.

      “Let’s move this up,” he said without preamble. “I just had company at the secondary insertion point. There are bound to be more—he can’t have been alone.”

      “Copy,” McCarter confirmed. “Get cover—we have issues here, as well.”

      “Roger, out,” James said.

      He dropped to his knee and curled his finger tip under the manhole cover. He jerked upward and threw it clear. Once that was done he rose and quickly unholstered and transferred the Beretta to his left hand while taking up the pistol grip of his SPAS-15 in his right. He backed up quickly to the garbage-filled causeway where he had left the body of the Mahdi army sentry.

      In the distance he heard the sudden sharp crack as T. J. Hawkins opened up with his sniper rifle. A second later Rafael Encizo let go with his grenade launcher and Calvin James realized hell had found Phoenix Force one more time.