Don Pendleton - Citadel Of Fear

It wasn’t a bad plan and McCarter had considered it. However, in his opinion, Phoenix Force had already frittered away a day crossing the Baltic and hanging out in Sweden. He had to admit the food and rest had been welcome and that as an asset Nikita Propenko got more interesting by the minute. “Or I could destroy the black box right now, let our opponents know we found it and force the bloody sons of bitches to act before they lose us.”

“There is that,” Kurtzman conceded.

McCarter decided. “Hawk, gut it.”

Hawkins unbolted the little yellow box from the UAV fuselage. He held it up and almost dropped it as it made a single, plaintive, electronic peep. “Bear?”

Kurtzman sighed. The cat was out of the bag. “If I had to guess, someone, somewhere, is now aware that the flight recorder has been removed from the UAV body.”

“Then the jig is up and an attack is imminent.” McCarter took the flight recorder and slid it across the table to Propenko. “Here, this is your first job. Take this and—”

The bottom of Propenko’s scarred fist slammed down on the flight recorder like a hammer. Bits of thick, weather-sealed plastic armor flew in all directions.

McCarter nodded. “And do something like that.”

Propenko scooped up the little black box’s innards and made a fist around them. Little bits of technology cracked and popped. The Russian rose, went to the sink, turned on the tap and flicked on the garbage disposal. Propenko dropped the shattered remnants down the drain and the flight recorder of Drone 1 met its final mastication. McCarter noted that not only had the Russian’s English gotten better but his leg seemed to be bothering him a lot less.

Everyone froze as the lights suddenly went out and the garbage disposal spun to a grinding, snapping halt. For a moment the only sound was the tap water trickling. The lights of the neighbors on the surrounding hillsides and the lights of Kalmar below didn’t flicker a single watt. Someone had cut the safe house’s power. Propenko turned the tap off.

“Gear up,” McCarter ordered. “We’re about to get hit.”

Phoenix Force’s armament might have been archaic but they still had their mission night-vision gear, armor and com equipment.

Jack Grimaldi’s voice shouted across the link. “Two choppers just flew by! Low and fast and inbound on your position. They have door gunners and they are not Swedish Coastal Patrol!”

Encizo spoke from his lookout point in the loft. “I see them. Coming in hot.”

McCarter spoke into the com. “Jack, get airborne.”

Grimaldi was on the beach. He had flown Phoenix

Force in illegally below Swedish air control radar and was three klicks south. He was about to rise and announce himself to Swedish airspace. “ETA five!”

McCarter nodded to himself. Phoenix Force was going to have to take the shot. He highly suspected the enemy ground teams were already on top of them. “Well, lads, they didn’t sick the local bobbies on us, so it looks like they’re spoiling for a fight. Let’s knock one down! Backyard! Everyone except you, Fish. I think they’ll sweep the main level.”

“What if they sweep the loft?”

“Then you’re screwed, mate!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”

“All right. Backyard! Behind the chimney! Brick and mortar are our best friends! Watch your leads. They’ll be flying over the house and nap of the earth up the mountainside. We might get a good shot. Go for the second bird!”

Phoenix flowed out the back door. The safe house’s backyard was little more than a carved-out flat space with a brick barbecue attached to the chimney and a hot tub and a sauna. Beyond that the mountain ran almost straight up. The sound of rotors beat against the hillside. Multiple machine guns ripped into life and echoed over Kalmar. Bullets tore through the little mountain house, shattering glass and ripping wood. McCarter smiled as the rotors beat overhead. The enemy wasn’t hovering and firing. Someone had told them what had happened in Gdansk. They were making fast gun runs.

The two choppers swung up the mountainside in echelon bare meters above the treetops of the near-vertical forest.

Grimaldi’s voice came over the link. “These boys aren’t bad.”

“Screw ’em,” Hawkins snapped.

“Rear target!” McCarter bellowed over the overwhelming rotor noise overhead. “Fire!”

Six stone-cold soldiers opened up. The two choppers were little more than thundering shadows save that they were commercial copters and their running lights flying straight up the mountain and barely overhead made for perfect target frames.

The chopper flying wing position took three hundred and fifty 9 mm rounds up his ass in the space of three seconds. The helicopter slewed and made a stuttering whirp-whirp-whirp noise as broken engine parts and severed hydraulic lines failed. The lead chopper summitted and disappeared into Sweden.

“Up yours, dude,” Hawkins swore. He and the rest of the team slammed in fresh 50-round magazines.

The stricken copter nosed up to apex in the starlight. It suddenly auto-rotated and nosed downward. Sparks and smoke belched out of it and the helicopter began wildly swinging down the mountainside, still barely above the tree line and suicidally straight at the safe house.

Hawkins reassessed. “Aw, damn…”

Behind them Phoenix Force heard glass and wood breaking as the enemy team hit the house.

Fire exploded out of the kamikaze helicopter as it came on like doomsday.

McCarter roared. “Forward! Forward! Forward! Hug trees!”

Phoenix Force ran forward. Olympic synchronized swimmers would have admired how they vaulted the hot tub and the tiny, motorized-current lap pool. As a unit they each found a beautiful pine tree, ran just past it and then fell against it.

The burning helicopter plowed into the back of the safe house. Rotors snapped, fuel tanks ruptured, the house’s natural gas tank detonated and the world went orange. McCarter had ordered his teammates to hug trees. They were mostly cringing as heat washed up the mountainside and black smoke followed in billowing waves. James had taken cover behind the sauna but the sauna was now on fire. Encizo burst from the house and was vaguely smoking as he ran out and hurled himself into the stationary lap pool.

McCarter watched the tail rotor of the enemy chopper slowly turn as heat rose through it. The chopper’s blackened tail boom tilted through the roof of the burning house where the chimney used to be. The house was burning out of control. McCarter spoke into his link. “Jack, do we have movement?”

“You have ashes settling,” Grimaldi returned. “Flawless victory.”

“Phoenix, sound off!”

Everyone complied from behind their smoldering tree. Encizo rose from the lap pool and shot a thumbs-up.

McCarter surveyed his team. “Where’s Nick?”

James and Manning snapped up their K guns to watch their flanks.

Propenko limped out of the burning safe house, the enemy UAV’s fuselage halves clamped beneath his arm trailing scorched wires and guts. “I am figuring you are still wanting this.”

“You bet, bubba!” Hawkins said.

McCarter was duly impressed but stayed on mission. “Jack?”

“Lead chopper is gone. I wanted a piece of him but he has headed straight north into the Swedish hinterland. You want me to pursue or do you want extraction?”

There was very little way Phoenix Force could wander down the mountain after a gunfight, ghost helicopter crash and a flaming cabin. McCarter could already hear police and emergency vehicle sirens down in Kalmar proper.

“Jack? We need extraction now.”

“Where to? Swedish police channels are blowing up, much less Swedish air traffic control. My range is severely limited. Norway? Denmark? Pick a Baltic republic. They are all about incursions!”