Don Pendleton - Extreme Arsenal

He turned to let them see that he was unarmed. One officer rushed over to frisk him.

“You’ve got empty holsters on your hip and ankle,” the policeman said.

“I lost my Browning in the street, and my companion has an empty revolver,” McCarter replied. “I gave it to her to protect herself.”

The policeman fished out his wallet. “You have permits for the handguns, and to carry them concealed. You must be pretty important.”

“I’m supposed to be armed. There’s an unarmed woman in the sitting room. She speaks Spanish, and she’s very frightened. She’s the niece of the home owner,” McCarter explained.

“Does she speak English?” the other officer asked.

“No. I tried,” McCarter replied.

“Do you speak Spanish?” the officer who frisked him asked.

McCarter nodded. “Not fluently, but I can get by when I’m not under pressure.”

“Could you help, then, sir?” the policeman asked. “You can lower your hands now.”

McCarter relaxed. “Sure. No problem. Bring my friend in?”

The policeman nodded and spoke into his radio. It was going to be a long night, and McCarter didn’t want Pat stuck out in the cold dampness alone.

MCCARTER SCREWED HIS KNUCKLE against his eye socket, fighting off the need for sleep. The sun burned in the window, shining on him like God’s flashlight. He glanced toward the sofa where Pat slept fitfully, curled tight with her shoulders drawn against a chill that was deeper than her bones.

“Thank you for your patience, Mr. King,” Inspector Byers said. “You’ll be in the London area for a while?”

McCarter nodded.

Stony Man Farm had enough pull with the British government to arrange for the Phoenix Force leader to leave the city should he be called away on an emergency mission.

“All right,” Byers said, reluctance coloring his words. “You’re free to go. Just keep in touch.”

McCarter shook the detective’s hand. “Much obliged, mate.”

He walked over to Pat and touched her shoulder. Her pale eyes flickered open immediately.

“What now?” she asked.

“I’m taking you home, love,” McCarter answered. He helped her to her feet and laced his arm with hers. Together they walked slowly to the front door and left the crime scene. A police car was out front, waiting to take them wherever they wished.

They remained quiet on the drive back to her flat. It wasn’t difficult to fake exhaustion. McCarter could feel the passage of blood cells through his cheeks like the rumble of underground trains. Pat leaned against his shoulder, a warm reassurance that she was all right. His empty holsters felt all wrong, though. The police had, understandably, confiscated the side arms for evidence in the shooting. Byers was thorough, and McCarter bit back his discomfort at being disarmed. Even his spare magazines and strip of .38-caliber cartridges to reload the Charter Arms had been taken away.

Hal Brognola would move heaven and earth to make sure those weapons were retrieved from the evidence locker and replaced with sanitized replicas. The originals bore too many of the Briton’s fingerprints and their serial numbers would be traced to David King, his cover persona. All records of the investigation would eventually be purged of any mention of the Phoenix Force commander, the levels of secrecy that Stony Man Farm operated under restored to protect their phantom war against those who thought themselves above the law.

McCarter’s mouth was pressed into a tight, brooding frown. Six trained commandos with high-powered weapons and bulletproof armor and helmets hadn’t been sent to eliminate any old man living in obscurity in London. The bastards he’d fought were too good.

It would have been easier if he hadn’t gotten involved, but McCarter hadn’t become one of the most experienced warriors in the world because he didn’t care. When people needed help, he acted, the consequences of doing the right thing be damned.

They left the squad car when it stopped at her apartment building, and McCarter saw Pat safely to her door. Minutes later he was in a taxicab and back in his room at a nearby hotel.

He went to his luggage, opened a bag and pulled out a spare pistol rug. McCarter unzipped it and revealed a Glock G-34 in 9 mm Parabellum and a smaller Glock 26 in the same caliber. He held up the blocky pistol. The members of Phoenix Force were evaluating the handguns, and as the leader of the team, he had reluctantly accepted the pistol to wring out at a couple of ranges with his fellow SAS men. Calvin James and Rafael Encizo had been the first to fall in love with the Austrian-built handgun and managed to recruit Gary Manning and T.J. Hawkins to their side. The fact that the two men had been able to shoot the gun under water, and had done so in combat, only endeared it further to the experienced divers. The grip, though a little more square, was similar in feel to his Browning. In 9 mm, the G-34 had a 4-shot greater capacity to his beloved Browning, with only a shade more height and thickness to compromise its concealment. Since he usually dressed in oversize, often rumpled clothing, that was no problem.

“The times, they are a changin’,” McCarter murmured as he checked to make sure the chamber was loaded. Assured that the Glock was hot, he holstered the gun. The New York 1 trigger, in Glock nonclementure, meant that it was a trigger-cocking only action, only needing a smooth, 7-pound pull of the trigger to fire off a shot. At first he was iffy about the lack of a thumb safety, but the New York trigger’s pull was enough to stave off a discharge and the pull of the Safe-Action trigger was as slick and complementary to precision shooting as the single-action trigger of his favored Browning. Plus, the members of the SAS that McCarter had been catching up with had been sold on the Glock family of handguns. The British elite troopers were very excited by the light, safe pull of the new series of pistols. As a bonus, the G-34, while being concealable, had a rail on the dust cover that allowed the men of Phoenix Force to attach laser-aiming modules or various flashlights for low-light combat.

He stuffed the Glock into his waistband. He loaded the little Glock, as well, and deposited it back in the pistol rug.

He zipped it up and carried it to the nightstand. The cell phone looked like a metallic dead rat, a reminder that, for all intents and purposes, his vacation was now over.

Though on a busman’s holiday, McCarter was also in London to reinforce some old contacts in the SAS and MI-6, and he’d decided to spend some time with Pat. He plucked the cell from its resting spot in his suitcase and pressed the speed dial, reaching the Farm’s secure number.

Barbara Price, as usual burning the midnight oil, took his call after Stony Man’s computers pronounced his signal clear of prying ears. “David?”

“Hi, Barb. I came across a situation in England,” McCarter explained.

“I know. David King showed up on Scotland Yard’s background check,” Price stated.

“That’s why you’re awake—to chew me out, eh?” the Phoenix Force commander asked.

“You know, it’s usually Striker or Carl who can’t take a decent vacation without getting into a war,” Price responded.

“I felt left out,” McCarter quipped. He then broke into an account of the men he’d encountered and the murder of the old Hispanic man.

“We’ve been running a check on the victim. Interpol’s firewall is giving Aaron’s team a headache,” Price said. “The name we entered activated their cyber-security and clamped things down tightly.”

“Bloody inconvenient of them,” McCarter snapped.

Price sighed. “It’s for the best. The firewall is under their witness protection protocols. It should be too tough to crack.”