Don Pendleton - Extermination

He heard the stomp of boots even as he paused to feed the Ithaca the last five rounds in its sidesaddle, racking a shell into the breech before topping off the magazine. Normally, shotguns were carried with empty chambers, but this was the middle of a combat situation, so running around without a fully loaded weapon was beyond foolhardy.

Weapon full and ready to roar, Lyons dropped to the midpoint of the flight of stairs between the second and third floors. His two-hundred-plus pounds of muscle and extra equipment came down on the landing like the hammer of an angry storm god, surprising the group of security guards who were coming up from below. That sudden start gave Lyons all the opportunity he needed to cut through the men, working the slide of the Ithaca as fast as he could pull the trigger.

The leader of the group, the black man he’d spoken to, was bowled backward, his body armor absorbing the first charge of buckshot, turning him into an avalanche of muscle and sinew that crashed down on the gunners behind him. The rest of Lyons’s 12-gauge thunder tracked higher under recoil, his brawny arms providing more than enough strength to resist the kick of the stubby weapon.

Faces and shoulders disappeared in clouds of bone-splinter-filled crimson mist, bodies tumbling out of Lyons’s way as he continued down toward the second story. Lebron Devlin croaked as Lyons passed him, one hand clawing empty air.

“You bastard,” Devlin gurgled.

Lyons dropped the empty Stakeout on Devlin’s chest in a show of dismissal. He had no time to chat. The door guard had suffered broken ribs from taking a burst at the range of only a few inches, so there was little way he could put up any more of a fight.

The way to the first floor was clear, though booms thundered from above as the gunners higher up opened fire in an attempt to catch up with the escaping Able Team commander. Lyons twisted and fired skyward to dissuade pursuit. There were screams as legs were peppered with .36-caliber pellets.

With a kick, he was in the lobby, stuffing new shells into the tube magazine of his remaining shotgun. He strode confidently toward the small security cage that Devlin had worked in. A single blast from the Ithaca opened the locked door, and Lyons was able to locate his Combat PDA lying in the middle of the desk. He checked to make certain that it hadn’t been opened.

Schwarz was brilliant yet paranoid. He’d set up the small multipurpose communicators to melt down if someone tried to access the electronics within. Since there was no burned puddle of smoldering desk, things were all right.

Lyons had no qualms about entering a den of heavily armed smugglers, but even he didn’t intend to anger Schwarz by leaving one of his prized creations behind in enemy hands.

He noticed that he’d gotten a message while he’d been dealing with Scalia.

Strike in Indiana. We’re wheels up in thirty without you, the text read.

Lyons opened a link to his partners as he dumped his empty shotgun, exiting the smugglers’ office. “Able One reporting in.”

“There you are,” Schwarz said. “I didn’t see one bit of the Chicago skyline disappear, so I thought you were taking a nap.”

Lyons knew that his friend’s levity was concealing concern for his safety. “Tell Mott to hold up until I get there. I’ve got trouble brewing in Idaho now.”

“At least four of the bombs landed in a little armpit of a town called Albion,” Schwarz told him. “We’re heading there to see what’s up.”

“Never heard of the place,” Lyons answered, sliding behind the wheel of his rental car.

“Never will again,” Schwarz returned. “Everyone in town was killed, including several sheriff’s deputies.”

Lyons glared at the offices. Now that he was back in his car, he had access to an M-4 with an underbarrel grenade launcher. If anyone dared to poke his face out the front door, he’d lay into the mobsters with high-explosive death.

Sadly, the smugglers were too smart to tempt fate. They’d hunkered down, knowing that to pursue Lyons would be suicide.

“Play now, pay later,” Lyons snarled as a grim promise, driving off to the airport to meet with the rest of his team.

In his younger days, David McCarter, the current leader of Phoenix Force, had earned the reputation of a hard-driving badass. He always seemed to be in a constant state of pent-up, impulsive action, easily growing bored, even with training exercises. He’d lived on the edge, primed and ready for battle. Back then, waiting for the start of conflict was something that ate at the young warrior’s nerves.

These days, though, as commander of Phoenix Force, McCarter learned what had been missing. He’d lived his entire life seeking challenges that could match his phenomenal skills, taking to the cockpit of any new aircraft he could to master its maneuvers, testing out various martial arts to find their strengths in relation to others. He devoured books continually, starting out in military history but spreading out to political philosophy and analysis of current events. Far from a thug, he realized that the untamed fires within his gut were a strength that sought a task worthy of him.

Being the brains of Phoenix Force was that task, and the times when his impatience would get the better of him had disappeared as he applied his experience to plotting actions and reactions even before the first shot was fired.

So when the Syrians attacked, just as McCarter had anticipated, he was not only ready, but had also prepared Phoenix Force to deal with the sudden arrival. Experience had taught the Briton that there was little that could be done when a member of a country’s covert-operations community came to harm or capture. He remembered avenging the deaths of colleagues, and he recalled when a Phoenix ally, Karl Hahn, was kidnapped by a terrorist group and the team went rogue to bring him home alive. The Syrians had lost men to Bezoar, and even if Damascus had sent orders for the hit team’s comrades to pull back, anger and loss of friends were powerful spurs.

There was no way they were going to let this insult to their fellowship pass.

McCarter also knew that sometimes anger made men sloppy. From their approach to the front doors, ignoring even the obviously armed Hawkins strolling down the street, McCarter knew that they were focused on the job of bringing hell to Bezoar and his crew of fellow murderers. He keyed his hands-free radio to toss out the orders.

“Go time. T.J., even the odds should Bezoar’s people or the Syrians seem to be winning. Keep out of the way, though. You’re not packed for a proper dustup,” McCarter ordered. “Gary…”

“Eyes in the sky, backing T.J. and monitoring you,” Manning answered.

“Rafe, Cal, it’s on,” McCarter said. “T.J., remember, nothing gets past you to the public.”

“On it,” Hawkins answered.

Amid the chatter of automatic weapons, the men of Phoenix Force took flight.

THE SYRIANS HAD blown in, loaded for bear, especially if that bear wore tank armor and carried a grenade launcher, Hawkins mused as he found cover in a doorway, drawing the sleek Belgian P-90 machine pistol from under his jacket. Three SUVs screeched to a halt, windows open and assault rifles hammering at the windows of Bezoar’s Parisian safehouse. The twisting, narrow street in front of the house was clogged by the big vehicles’ presence. They opened fire on the windows of the storefront that Bezoar had set up as a diner so ram-shackle that even the prostitutes didn’t want a piece of it. The roar of big engines in the predawn had sent the women scrambling, their street instincts telling them that the trucks had either belonged to police or an organized hit crew.