Don Pendleton: Oceans Of Fire

Hawk slammed a fresh mag into his SIG and gunned the engine of his Ural. “What about Zhol!”

“Forget him!” McCarter ordered. “Let Moscow police take him! We have a contact! Take the van!”

Hawkins shot into traffic. Manning had already crossed the square and was weaving between cars in pursuit. The van wasn’t hard to spot. It had ripped away the shreds of its tires and was showering sparks off the back bumper and out of both wheel wells.

Traffic parted around it like it had the plague.

The driver of the van leaned out of his window. The small blue-steel shape of a Makarov pistol began popping off rounds at Manning in rapid fire. Manning’s .40-caliber weapon filled his hand and boomed back. The driver jerked back inside as his side mirror exploded inches from his abdomen.

Sirens began wailing in the distance.

McCarter’s voice came across the radio. “We have to wrap this up fast. It’s broad daylight and we don’t have a hunting license.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix One.” Manning pointed as Hawkins pulled up into the wingman position. “Front tires! I’ll take the passenger side!”

“Affirmative!” Hawkins split off into the left lane as Manning went right. The former Ranger pulled in a few yards back from the driver’s door and extended his pistol. The Swiss pistol barked three times and the van slumped into a left-leaning tilt. The driver nearly lost control as he overcorrected the wheel.

Manning raised his .40 to take the van’s last leg from underneath it.

The driver violently spun his wheel to the right. Manning went full-throttle and leaped his bike up onto the sidewalk to avoid being crushed. Civilians screamed and dived out of the way as the big Canadian roared down the pavement. Manning jammed on his brakes to avoid running over an immense woman walking her dog. The woman stood screaming in place and the little dog jumped and barked between her legs. Between the cars parked on the curb and the storefronts girding the narrow sidewalk there was nowhere to go but through the woman and her dog.

Manning yanked his bike to the right, popped a wheelie and went through the display window of a flower shop instead.

His front tire erupted through the window; his rear tire hit the brick beneath it. The rear end of the bike bucked Manning off like a mechanical mule as it flipped nosedown through the display case. He flew through space in a cloud of sunflowers, daisies, marigolds and broken vases.

He came to a violent halt as he flew headfirst through double glass doors of the cold case. Manning smashed the shelving holding the displays and bounced off the solid wall behind them, then collapsed with the upper half of his body in the refrigerated case and his legs sprawled out on the floor. He lay stunned for a moment with sprays of roses and shattered arrangements heaped upon him like accolades upon the body of a fallen hero.

Manning pushed himself out of the case and fell back on the sea of broken glass covering the floor. His helmet and riding leathers had prevented him from being sliced to pieces. He waited for the telltale nausea that signaled broken bones.

“Phoenix Four!” McCarter yelled across the radio. “Phoenix Four!”

“Phoenix Four…down.” Manning groaned. “I need extraction.”

“Sit tight! We’re on our way! Phoenix Five! What is your status?”

Hawkins had continued to follow the van. After trying to crush Manning it had gone one more block and come to a halt behind a parked truck in a space marked off by orange traffic cones.

“Target has stopped. No movement.” Hawkins dismounted but his muzzle never left the vehicle. He ripped off his helmet and shouted in Russian, “Police!” He waved his hand violently and the few bystanders on the side street scattered. He stared at the parked truck and cones framing the van in the parking spot.

“I don’t like it,” Hawkins said as his instincts spoke to him. “I think this is their final destination—Shit!”

He dived over the hood of a parked sedan as a grenade spiraled out of the shattered back window of the van and bounced near him and his bike. The grenade detonated with a whip-cracking yellow flash and shrapnel rattled against Hawkins’s cover like hail. He rose over the hood of the sedan and emptied his pistol into the van, firing low to catch anyone hugging the floorboards. He reloaded and ran to the passenger window. Hawkins snaked his pistol inside and emptied eight rounds into the interior before ripping the door open.

James brought the surveillance van to a screeching halt at the top of the street and Encizo and McCarter leaped out. Hawkins glared at the interior of the bullet-riddled van. A trapdoor had been cut in the floor. In the street beneath a gaping circular hole emptied into blackness below. The heavy iron disk of the manhole cover lay in the back of the van. McCarter ran up beside Hawkins while Encizo stayed back to cover. “What have you got?”

“They’ve extracted into the sewer sys—” Hawkins jumped back as something metallic rattled against concrete below. He grabbed McCarter’s jacket and yanked him back with him. “Fire in the hole!”

Streamers of winking yellow fireflies fountained up out of the manhole borne on a geyser of superheated smoke. McCarter and Hawkins sprinted down the street as the smoke blasted out of the broken windows, sending its streamers of molten phosphorous in all directions. Seconds later the van’s gas tank caught and van went up like a metal balloon.

McCarter watched the van burn out of control. Besides Zhol’s body back in Kremlin Square there wasn’t going to be much in the way of forensic evidence. The Briton felt his temper begin to boil. It wasn’t that the mission had gone FUBAR. That was part of the game.

What galled him was that he and Phoenix Force had gotten played.

Payback was owed.

“We’re out of here.”

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