Shadow War. Don Pendleton

paneling on the walls of the long hotel hallway was of heavy wood, the pictures original eighteenth-century European cityscapes: Paris in autumn, London in the rain, Venice in the spring, Berlin at night. The carpet was thick, a burgundy laced with golden threaded patterns that matched the subdued wallpaper above the black walnut wainscoting. The resort was a beautiful, five-star hotel. In a detached way Gary Manning began to feel sorry for the grand old structure.

      Phoenix Force had a tendency to wreak havoc.

      As they approached the knot of the powerfully built, James rattled off a room number, addressing the bodyguards. “Where is it?” he demanded.

      The dark giant, seemingly the senior guard, shook his head. “You’re not even on the right floor,” he snapped.

      Encizo made a horrible retching sound and let a long line of saliva dribble out of his mouth and onto the carpet at the bodyguard’s feet. “He’s going to throw up!” James suddenly cried. Instinctively the four bodyguards stepped back, crowding them against the door.

      Phoenix Force uncoiled. Gone was the comfortable banter. Gone was the easygoing camaraderie and tough-guy ball busting. No one was smiling. No one was laughing. The machine that was Phoenix Force had been initiated.

      Manning stood closest to the guards, and he ducked out of Encizo’s arm, twisting at the waist. His right fist snapped out like a whip popping in a knife hand blow that struck the guard in the Adam’s apple while his left hand reached for the auto-injector positioned behind his back.

      The bodyguard staggered, his hands flying up to protect his face in a boxer’s cover-up motion. Pulling the auto-injector free, Manning used his momentum to dip his massive shoulder and drive hard into the man’s body like linemen stopping a defensive back cold on the scrimmage line. The giant gasped as air was driven from his lungs and Manning’s shoulder hammered into his solar plexus. The man stumbled backward.

      Instantly, Manning was on him, placing his leading forearm across the man’s neck and pinning him against the hotel wall. The man’s eyes grew wide with surprise, then quickly narrowed in effort as the bodyguard leader began to fight back. However, the pain from Manning’s initial neck blow had frightened and slowed the bodyguard’s reflexes so that his hook into the burly Phoenix Force warrior’s ribs was glancing and ineffective.

      Manning brought up the auto-injector and shoved it roughly into the giant’s thick neck. The gun cycled and the sedative slammed into the man’s system. Manning wasn’t sure he’d hit the artery he was aiming for, but the muscles of the neck were extremely vascular. The bodyguard’s heart was now pumping wildly.

      The man looked stunned, then panicked as he felt the air-jet of liquid medicine invade his body. He struggled to sit up, badly out of position, and Manning rammed an overhand elbow strike into his unprotected face, driving him into the floor.

      James attacked simultaneously with Manning. He leaped forward and threw his right forearm hard into the throat of the bodyguard with a French Foreign Legion tattoo on his neck while his right leg simultaneously hooked behind the man’s ankle. As the bodyguard tumbled back against the wall, James fisted the auto-injector and thrust it forward.

      He was aiming for the neck as Manning had, but the ex-Legionnaire twisted at the last moment so that the muzzle of the auto-injector struck him in the corner of his face, back toward the ear where the mandible hinge joint attached to the skull.

      The man gaped in surprise, then almost instantly lost control of his jaw. The muscles of his face went slack even as James pulled back. He saw the bodyguard’s hand come up, slap ineffectually at the lapel of his blazer even as he finished sliding down the wall to the carpet in front of al-Shalaan’s door. James spun, auto-injector in one hand while he reached for his silenced pistol in case events were unfolding in a dangerous way.

      He saw Encizo hammering a much taller man with huge, looping hooks, his knuckles smashing into the sides of the man’s face with rapacious energy. The bottle of liquor had bounced as it had been dropped and rolled away, spilling alcohol on the expensive carpet. Encizo stepped forward and grabbed the stunned man’s suit jacket by the lapels and shoved them down to his elbows, effectively pinning them to his sides in a hockey maneuver.

      Encizo ripped his auto-injector free as the fingers of his other hand wrapped tightly into the close-knit curls of his target’s hair. He jerked once, swiveling from the hips, and the screaming man took a nosedive into the puddle of liquor soaking into the carpet.

      The little Cuban dropped in a knee-led pile driver that slammed into the man’s back between his shoulder blades, pinning him to the floor. The auto-injector made contact with the easy target of the man’s pulsing carotid artery and he activated the device.

      Encizo kept his weight pressing down on the prone bodyguard, crushing him into the carpet until the surgical anesthesia took effect. He felt the man’s struggles suddenly turn sluggish and then stop. The huge body in his grip went noodle-limp.

      Hawkins had known from the beginning that when Phoenix Force unleashed its close-quarters ambush that of all the men in the phalanx, he would have the farthest distance to cover to initiate his attack. It was a distance of only two or three yards. But with an alert and possibly well-trained enemy, that scant distance would give his target a valuable couple of seconds of reaction time that the other bodyguards wouldn’t have.

      If the man was competent, then Hawkins knew he could find himself in a stand-up fight instead of a surreptitious attack. When McCarter had set up the action plan, Hawkins had kept his face impassive as he listened to his assignment. Inside he had felt a sense of pride as he realized he had been given the position David McCarter would have taken for himself had his driving skills not been so imperative to the second phase of the operation.

      As James drifted out around Manning’s broad form, signaling the start of assault, Hawkins sprang into action. He stepped forward from under Encizo’s arm and toward his man.

      The bodyguard’s eyes grew wide in surprise, identically to those of his leader. Hawkins crossed the two endless steps between them as the rest of Phoenix Force clashed with the team of bodyguards. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realized he might not make it. He went up on the toes of his left foot as he pulled his right knee back and up, almost to the level of his chin. His momentum carried him forward, and his leg lashed out as the black plastic alloy of the bodyguard’s Glock 19 was pulled clear of shoulder leather.

      The heel of Hawkins’s low-cut boot slammed into the bodyguard’s sternum, and Hawkins felt the jar of the impact shock travel up his leg like the vibration of a tuning fork. He heard the bodyguard grunt as he continued moving forward, driving his foot down from the impact zone.

      Hawkins had missed his specific target of the forearm attached to the hand holding the Glock pistol. He had made a mistake. As his right foot drove through the kick attack and landed on the carpet, the Phoenix Force commando was already following through on his first strike. He clamped his hand around the wrist holding the pistol as he whipped his right elbow around in an overhead crescent strike.

      The point of his elbow smashed into the man’s face just below his eye and the bodyguard’s head snapped back into the wall, but the man didn’t go out. Hawkins dug inside himself and brought forth the aggression and anger and will that had served him for so long in such life-and-death struggles.

      The bodyguard jerked his arm back, trying to clear the pistol for a shot. Hawkins squeezed hard, stymieing the movement the way an NBA guard stuffs a dunk attempt. The muzzle of the gun dug into the bodyguard’s stomach, keeping the man from pulling the trigger.

      The man grunted, then forced his hand up, and Hawkins had to face the bitter truth that the man was stronger than he was. Millimeter by millimeter the gun began to move. Hawkins snarled then, and cold, greasy shots of adrenaline splashed into his knotted stomach.

      Goose bumps rose on his flesh as fear-energy coursed through his system. In the blink of an eye he felt energized, supercharged.