Oceans of Fire

by Don Pendleton

  McCarter winced as the stitches in his arm pulled, but he clambered up the two-story pipe like a spider. He peered over the eaves but the roof was deserted. He smiled at the glow of light coming up out of the skylight. McCarter crept to the skylight and peered down.

  Pietor “Kopeck” Shulin sat in a leather chair in his boxer shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, drinking vodka and watching a gigantic flat-screen television. A voluptuous redhead wearing one of his T-shirts and not much else sprawled on the couch reading a magazine. “Target acquired. Move in.”

  “We have a video camera watching the front door,” Encizo responded.

  “Take the building. Fast approach.”

  The Cuban nodded to Hawkins, who drew a Mark 23 silenced SOCOM pistol from his thigh holster. The .45 was loaded with ultraheavy .300 grain steel-jacketed subsonic flat-headed bullets whose main purpose in life was to smash locks quietly. Hawkins stepped to the front of the steel double door of the warehouse and put a bullet into the camera and two more into the door latch and each of the hinges. He stepped forward and put his boot in the middle of the two doors and smashed them inward on their sagging hinges. The three men entered the cavernous interior of the warehouse. There was very little inside save a Porsche Boxster, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a Jeep Cherokee whose oversize wheels jacked it up nearly six feet in the air.

  Calvin James scanned the interior. “Phoenix One, we’re in. Any response upstairs?”

  McCarter crouched over the skylight. Below him Kopeck poured himself another shot of vodka. The assassin seemed oblivious to the invasion. “Target hasn’t moved a muscle—wait.”

  Kopeck stood out of his chair and stared blearily at something out of McCarter’s view. He picked up his remote, clicked it several times and stared in shock at what he saw.

  McCarter nodded. “Entry team, you are made.”

  “Advise,” Encizo asked.

  McCarter was affixing a rope to his harness and a ventilator housing. “Phoenix Four, any movement?”

  “Nothing’s moving out here,” Manning responded.

  The Briton tested his rope. He slung his HK and drew his pistol. “Entry team, you are go.”

  Inside the warehouse a freight elevator and a flight of wooden stairs led to the second level. Encizo motioned Hawkins to take the elevator while he and James moved to the stairs. At the top of the landing a gleaming steel security door barred their way. “Phoenix One, what’s happening?”

  “The bugger’s loading his shotgun.” McCarter scowled down the skylight as Kopeck jacked shells into the breech of a sawed-off double barrel. The woman was hiding behind the couch. “Hit the door, but don’t go in. Let him fire both barrels.”

  “Affirmative, Phoenix One.” Encizo nodded, and James blew away the lock. The Cuban put his foot to the door and it smashed off its hinges. He and James pressed themselves to either side of the landing as a shotgun roared from inside and a woman screamed. Encizo snarled in Russian. “Police!”

  Kopeck answered with his second barrel.

  “Phoenix One inserting.” McCarter took a hop out into space and rammed both feet through the skylight. The woman screamed like a banshee. Kopeck looked up and screamed, as well. McCarter came down in a shower of glass. He pumped the break on his harness and punched both boots into Kopeck’s chest. The Russian flew back and bounced against the couch as the woman continued to scream. Encizo and James charged into the room.

  Kopeck shouted in Russian, “Sasha! Raisa! Attack!”

  A pair of one-hundred-pound mastiffs bounded into the room. Muscle rippled across their barrel-shaped bodies beneath their short golden fur. Their faces were black masks of rage as they bared their fangs. Encizo and James drew their pepper-gas canisters and fired. Twin high-pressure cones of mist hit the attack animals head-on. The mastiffs shrieked as their eyes and olfactory organs were instantly overcome. Their claws scrabbled on the hardwood as they lost their equilibrium and spun out. They rolled to the floor yipping and pawing frantically at their muzzles.

  The chubby redhead came out from behind the couch with a broom and advanced on McCarter as if he were a piñata. He drew his own pepper-gas canister and pointed it at her face. The redhead paled and dropped the broom. McCarter jerked his head and she sat on the couch.

  Kopeck sat on the floor, cradling a left arm that hung ugly from a broken clavicle.

  McCarter unhooked from his rope. He scooped up Kopeck’s shotgun and closed the breech on two fresh loads. “Phoenix Four?”

  “Still clear,” Manning replied.

  “Phoenix Three, come on in.” The elevator shaft rattled as Hawkins ascended. “One, Two, clear the rest of the floor.”

  Encizo and James swept the interior. The top floor was simply an open space with designated bedroom, kitchen and dining-entertainment areas. The only part that was enclosed was the bathroom. James kicked the door to the commode. “Clear.”

  McCarter shoved the sawed-off shotgun under his belt. “Phoenix Flight, this is Phoenix One requesting extraction.”

  Grimaldi’s voice came over the hammering of rotors. “ETA two minutes, Phoenix One.”

  McCarter turned his attention to Kopeck. “You and I need to talk. Who hired you to kill Aidar Zhol?”

  Kopeck glared. “You not police.”

  “No, Sunshine.” McCarter agreed, “I’m not.”

  “You not even Russian.” Kopeck’s brow furrowed through his pain. “What I do to you?”

  McCarter reached into his pocket and pulled out two silver kopecks. Shulin flinched as the leader of Phoenix Force flipped them into his face. He turned his arm over to show Kopeck where his pulled stitches were bleeding through his raid suit. “I owe you, Kopeck. Twenty, plus interest.”

  Kopeck blinked in confusion.

  McCarter’s eyes narrowed. He had expected fear or bluster or denial.

  Kopeck was staring at McCarter as if he were trying to place him. “Who you?”

  McCarter closed his eyes in self-disgust. “Bloody hell.”

  “You’re right.” Encizo nodded. “It’s a trap, but Kopek didn’t set it.”

  “No, he’s the bait and doesn’t even know it.” McCarter snarled into his mike. “Phoenix Flight! We need extraction ASAP!”

  “ETA ninety seconds!”

  Manning’s voice roared over the radio. “Choppers in the sky! Inbound across the river! They are—Missiles away! Get down!”

  Kopeck screamed as McCarter grabbed him up and hurled him bodily into the stairwell. Encizo grabbed the girl and Phoenix Force threw themselves after him. Hawkins hit the emergency stop on the elevator.

  James scooped up a ring of keys, crashed through the wooden grate guarding the elevator shaft, and plummeted to the top of the car.

  Four Spandrel-guided antitank missiles hit the warehouse simultaneously. The first warhead was a long-rod penetrator that punched through the thin metal walls of the warehouse as if they didn’t exist. After the millisecond it took to breech the corrugated iron barrier, the tank-defeating secondary warheads detonated. Superheated gas and fire expanded across the second floor. The secondary shrapnel effect that ripped through everything like buzz saws was almost unnoticeable in the inferno.

  McCarter dragged Kopeck down the stairs.

  The thunder of rotors rattled the walls and windows of the warehouse.

  “Two choppers!” Manning advised. “One team is repelling into the upstairs! Six men! Second chopper is fast-roping a team to the ground outside. I make it a full squad! They are deploying outside the front door and the loading dock!”

  McCarter holstered his pistol and unslung his subgun. “Phoenix Four, keep them busy at the front door.”

  “Affirmative, Phoenix One.” Manning sighted through his Longbow rifle. It was chambered in .338 Lapua, a round that had been designed from the ground up as the ultimate tool for a sniper. The 250-grain, full-metal-jacketed, boattail locked-base bullet was designed to arrive at the 1000-meter mark with enough energy to penetrate five laye
rs of military body armor and still make the kill. The Lapua’s range was one mile, and in the right conditions and with the right man behind the rifle, it could come very close to the 2000-meter mark.

  Manning lay prone in the trees peering through his laser range-finding, 3x10 variable night-vision sniper scope and made the range to be eighty meters. He watched the six-man team warily approach the sagging front door. They were dressed from head to toe in black, night-vision goggles made them look like invaders from Mars, and they bristled with weapons. Manning picked out the leader as he sent his men toward the doorway with hand signals. He was also the man whispering into his throat mike.

  The big Canadian put his crosshairs between the man’s shoulder blades and fired.

  The Longbow hammered back against Manning’s shoulder as he flicked the bolt to chamber a fresh round. Downrange the .338 Lapua round hit the assault team leader at 3000 feet per second and dumped two and a half tons of energy into him. The armored figure lurched forward like he’d been kicked by a horse and slammed into the side of the warehouse before falling motionless to the ground.

  The man beside him spun just in time to take Manning’s second shot in the chest. He staggered backward and tripped over his fallen companion. Manning rolled away and began belly-crawling to his second shooting position as the men began to sweep the trees with automatic rifle fire.

  Rotors whipped the treetops as someone came seeking him from above. “Shit!”

  Green tracers streaked down in vertical lines of smoking light as the door gunners in one of the choppers did reconnaissance by fire through the small copse of trees. “Phoenix One, I’m pinned down! If you’re going to do something, do it fast!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Jack, I need you.”

  “I can see that, Phoenix One.” Grimaldi tore along the Yauza River behind the stick of a civilian model Mi-8 Hip helicopter. The bad guys had gotten a piece of his little Hermit helicopter over the streets of Dushanbe and Mrs. Grimaldi’s boy wasn’t going to get caught flatfooted by the same shitheels twice. The U.S. had assets in Moscow, and his Hip was an on-loan CIA special. Pontoons were mounted on either side of the fuselage and each oblong flotation device concealed a sterile PKT 7.62 coaxial machine gun that had once belonged to the Serbian side of the former Yugoslavian Republic.

  A civilian Hip helicopter much like Grimaldi’s own was orbiting the warehouse. A second aircraft hovered over the copse of trees where Manning had been doing his sniping. A door gunner hung out of each side of the cabin on chicken straps and they were pounding the holy hell out Manning’s position.

  “Phoenix Four, what is your situation?”

  “Little help!” Manning snarled.

  “Sit tight, Phoenix Four.”

  Neither of the enemy aircraft had radar and neither saw Grimaldi come swooping down out of the sky like a bird of prey. The Stony Man pilot flipped up the simple, concealed cross-hair sight out of his instrument board and aimed the nose of his chopper at the aircraft offending Manning. He hit his trigger and twin lines of tracers burned into the enemy broadside at 700 rounds per minute.

  The door guns fell silent as the gunners jerked and shuddered and fell limp in their straps. Grimaldi swept the cabin. He kicked his collective pedal and his helicopter rotated to train his twin guns on the unarmored cockpit. The enemy chopper tilted crazily and suddenly began spinning in violent 360s on its axis. Grimaldi held his trigger down as the aircraft spun itself through his sights stem to stern.

  The enemy craft yawed and spewed smoke from the engine compartment and began autorotating toward the ground as the dead pilot relinquished control and the besieged engines lost power.

  “Phoenix Four, this is Phoenix Flight, suggest you get out of the trees ASAP.”

  “Affirmative!” Manning burst from the trees at a dead sprint. Behind him the stricken Hip hit the trees. Its rotors snapped off and flew through the air like giant scythes as the fuselage crashed down through the canopy and broke its back as it hit the ground.

  Bullets rattled against Grimaldi’s windscreen as he took ground fire but the short .22-caliber assault rifles of the enemy didn’t have the power to penetrate the Hip’s crash-resistant cockpit glass. Grimaldi dipped his nose and returned fire. His machine guns stitched the ground in twin tracks of geysering turf as he swept the team in front of the warehouse. Two of the six men fell as the rest scattered.

  Grimaldi banked hard as the second enemy aircraft turned its attention on him. His engines roared as he red-lined into emergency war power to climb above the enemy and get above the elevation of the door guns.

  “Phoenix One, this is Phoenix Flight! One aircraft down and engaging second! Four hostiles still active outside! West side of warehouse! More on the river side! Make your move!”

  “Roger that, Phoenix Flight!” McCarter responded. “We are extracting!”

  THE PORSCHE SCREAMED like a leopard as McCarter revved the 24-valve, 228 horsepower engine. “T.J.! Send them a Christmas present!”

  Hawkins spun the timer on the satchel charge for ten seconds and slid the sack into the elevator. He released the emergency stop button and the wooden gate rattled closed. “Fire in the hole!”

  “Get in!”

  Hawkins vaulted the Porsche’s passenger door and slid down into the seat.

  Encizo and James exchanged bursts up and down the stairs with the entry team lurking in the landing doorway.

  “Break contact!” McCarter ordered.

  The Cuban and James pulled pins on a white phosphorous and a fragmentation grenade and lobbed them up on to the landing. Jagged bits of metal rattled the walls of the warehouse and smashed light fixtures. A second later the landing was enveloped in a hellstorm of burning white phosphorous and choking smoke.

  The freight elevator reached the second floor and twenty pounds of C-4 detonated in the already burning upstairs.

  McCarter whipped his hand in a circle. “We’re out of here!”

  Encizo punched the button for the dock doors. James threw a leg over the Harley and the hog roared to life. He gunned the motorcycle and thundered out the front door. The dock door rattled upward and the second he had clearance McCarter shoved the Porsche into gear and screamed forward.

  Six bad guys were waiting outside. Their AKSU carbines strobed into the warehouse on full-auto. The bad guys were expecting a breakout. They weren’t expecting David McCarter behind the wheel of a high-performance automobile. The Porsche howled forward. The Russian carbines fired very light bullets and had sacrificed vast amounts of velocity for the convenience of their short barrels. The bullets hit the hood of the Porsche and yawed as they penetrated to ricochet around in the front trunk of the mid-engine car. They failed to penetrate the sloped windshield all together. The Porsche Boxster did 0 to 60 in 5.7 seconds. At 2.5 McCarter hit the enemy point man at 47 miles per hour. The windshield buckled in its frame as the assassin bounced up the hood and flew over the back of the car.

  Hawkins spun in his seat spraying bursts from his submachine gun. Another assassin fell as five 10 mm rounds walked up his chest. McCarter yanked his parking brake and spun the Porsche into a shrieking bootlegger’s turn to acquire another target. The remaining four gunmen swiveled to track him.

  Encizo rumbled out of the warehouse behind the wheel of the monster 4x4. Kopeck and his woman were hog-tied in the back bed. The assassins wheeled to meet the new threat. The screams of the closest killer were lost as he went beneath the giant wheels of the Jeep. Hawkins fired over the cracked windshield of the Porsche as McCarter aimed his bumper at another assassin. The remaining four gunmen found themselves between a Porsche and a hard place.

  They broke and ran.

  One didn’t make it as he fell under a hail of 10 mm rounds from Hawkins’s gun. The Porsche lurched as McCarter ran over the human speed bump and chased the last three with Encizo thundering in from behind. The three killers ran for the river. They tossed aside their carbines and leaped straight off the loading dock and
into the river. McCarter brought the Porsche to a screaming halt. Hawkins leaped out and raced to the dock, burning the rest of his magazine into the water. McCarter jogged to his side. “What have you got?”

  Hawkins slapped in a fresh magazine and racked his bolt on a fresh round. “They aren’t coming up.”

  “You get all three?”

  “I doubt I got any of them.”

  McCarter looked back at the warehouse. The building was burning out of control and he recognized the stench of burning flesh. Between the white phosphorous and the C-4, he doubted any of the enemy entry team was still alive. He thumbed his throat mike. “Phoenix Two, status.”

  James came rumbling around the side of the warehouse on his hog. Manning sat behind him with his sniper rifle slung and a pistol in each hand. James cut his engine. “Six KIAs in front. Jack got two, Gary got three, and I caught up with one trying to extract onto the street.”

  McCarter scanned the shot, mangled and run-over bodies around the loading area. They just weren’t going to get many prisoners today. But they had Kopeck, and that had been the primary objective. McCarter looked up at Grimaldi’s helicopter as it swooped back onto the scene. “Phoenix Flight, what is your status?”

  “Enemy aircraft broke contact. Came back to give ground support and extraction rather than give chase.”

  “Good call,” McCarter acknowledged. “Get us out of here.”

  Grimaldi dropped the Hip to the ground outside the warehouse and Phoenix Force embarked with their prisoners. The pilot took the chopper out over the Yauza and hit a button on his console. The explosive bolts holding his pontoons fired and his two machine guns dropped to the river below. There was nothing seaworthy about the pontoons. In fact they had been designed for just such disposal. They hit the river and swiftly sank beneath the dark waters.

  McCarter looked south and saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles as Moscow fire and police responded. The leader of Phoenix Force turned to Kopeck. The hired killer flinched under McCarter’s gaze.