“And what’s that?” James asked.
McCarter grinned wickedly. “You’ll bloody well know it when you hear it. Go.”
The pair moved off and McCarter tugged Manning’s shoulder to indicate he should stick close to Kumar. “Give us ten seconds, then follow on our position. Make sure you keep your fields of fire away from Hawk and Cal.”
Manning nodded.
McCarter turned and moved back to Encizo’s side. He reached to his belt and held up one of the M-69 fragmentation grenades that had been procured for his team by Kumar’s contacts in Uganda. “We’ll go in using the Old Fifty-One. You ready?”
Encizo nodded his understanding of McCarter’s plan. The technique dated back to the Korean War, a reference to when Korean forces attacked U.N. command positions that were manned by numerically superior forces. Because the Koreans wanted to ensure success, they attacked the positions using gongs and cymbals so as to disorient the enemy. McCarter planned the same thing, only using something more conventional and spectacular.
They set off and traveled about the distance Encizo estimated before they saw the first evidence of the firefight in the form of muzzle-flashes. From what McCarter could observe, it looked like a small skirmish. It was still too dark to determine what lay ahead, friend or foe, but McCarter wasn’t planning to lob the grenade into the center of the fray with reckless abandon. His solution would prove more elegant.
McCarter waved his fist to indicate Manning and Kumar should hold position where they were at—about fifteen yards to the rear—before he yanked the pin and tossed the grenade toward the east, far outside the perimeter of the fire zone. Three seconds ticked off before the hand bomb exploded.
And with that, Phoenix Force moved in to engage the enemy—whoever it might be.
CHAPTER SIX
David McCarter had been right: as soon as Hawkins and James heard the grenade explode, they weren’t in any doubt the show had opened.
“Sounds like an Old Fifty-One,” Hawkins whispered as he put the MP-5 he carried into battery.
James did the same with his M-16 A-3 carbine and replied, “Tally ho.”
The pair stepped from the jungle brush behind which they were concealed and met the first enemy gunners head-on. James wondered a moment how they could tell the bad guys from Kumar’s people but then he remembered that the LRA generally wore uniforms since they considered themselves an organized military force, while the SPLA dressed in whatever rags they could acquire. The green dungaree-style fatigues worn by the four men they encountered, coupled with the nasty silhouettes of Kalashnikov variants, served as positive identification.
The LRA fighters were surprised and while they responded with incredible speed, it couldn’t match the battle-tested skills of the Phoenix Force veterans. James leveled his M-16 A-3 and triggered a short burst that lifted the nearest target off his feet and dumped him into the wet grass with a sloppy thump. The 5.56 mm rounds from James’s weapon ripped holes in the man’s chest. The second gunner tried to swing the muzzle of his weapon to bear, but James had angled away from his original position and triggered a burst on the run. These also found their mark, stitching a bloody pattern across the man’s midsection. His eyes widened with shock and he triggered an ineffective burst of his own reflexively before staggering forward and dropping his now useless weapon. James finished with a second volley that blew off the top of the terrorist’s head.
T. J. Hawkins dispatched his first opponent with the sweep of a muzzle in corkscrew fashion. The 9 mm rounds weren’t as high-velocity as those from James’s weapon but they were no less effective. The slugs drilled through the man’s body and dumped him face-first in the wet muck of the jungle floor. The remaining LRA terrorist managed to get a short burst off before Hawkins cut him down with a fusillade that left a near-perfect vertical pattern from crotch to throat. The man produced a gargled scream as blood erupted from his mouth, the 9 mm buzzers rupturing his lungs.
The men of Phoenix Force swung their weapons in every direction but no further threats appeared, and they finally relaxed a moment to catch their breaths from the encounter.
One lucky round had hit Hawkins in the forearm, taking a small chunk of flesh with it. Hawkins didn’t immediately notice. It wasn’t until James pointed it out that the area began to burn like a dog bite. Calvin James, who doubled as the team medic, immediately whipped a medi-pouch from the small supply bag he carried, ripped the top away with his teeth and slapped it on the wound.
“Ouch! Shit, Cal, take it easy there,” Hawkins snapped.
“Don’t be a sissy,” James said as he wrapped the pouch with the attached elastic bandage and tied it off with a hasty knot.
“I thought you medical people were supposed to have some compassion.”
“Compassion won’t keep you from bleeding out.”
“Dandy of you to point that out,” Hawkins replied drolly.
THE REVERBERATIONS from the explosion had barely subsided when McCarter and Encizo burst through the underbrush and engaged the enemy.
The first LRA fighter, identifiable by the fatigues and gold epaulettes, was still preoccupied with the spectacular light show in the distance. That hesitation cost him his life as he detected Encizo’s approach much too late to respond effectively. The Cuban leveled his MP-5 sub-gun and triggered a short controlled burst that ripped through the man’s guts and spun him into a tree. He smacked the trunk head-on and fell stiffly onto his back.
McCarter took the next two with a weapon he’d not utilized in some years, an Ingram M-10 machine pistol. While no longer as popular as it had once been, the Ingram suited McCarter in a close-quarters situation due to its accuracy at shorter ranges and its stopping power. The weapon stuttered, McCarter holding it tight and low as it spit death at a rate of nearly 1200 rounds per minute. Of course, McCarter didn’t need nearly that many since the .45 ACP slugs, one of the two native calibers for the M-10, proved more than effective.
The first LRA terrorist caught a 4-round burst dead-center, the slugs blowing golf-ball-size holes out his back. The second took two rounds to the pelvis, which left smashed bone and cartilage in their wake. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, the scream cut short by two more rounds that entered below his jaw at an angle and blew off the top of his skull, generating a grisly spray of blood and gray matter.
McCarter and Encizo pressed forward even before the last body hit the ground. A couple of rounds buzzed over their heads but it sounded as if most of the fighting had abated. The warriors pushed through more brush and entered a clearing where they spotted eight men, three of them on the ground motionless and a fourth cradled in the arms of another. Blood dribbled from the man’s mouth, visible only because another man had a flashlight on him.
The remaining men gathered around the pair turned toward McCarter and Encizo, raising their weapons in preparation to engage. McCarter heard a shout a heartbeat before something brushed past his arm. He looked to see Kumar throw himself in front of the Phoenix Force warriors and raise his hands.
“Wait! It is me. I have brought the Americans!”
The men waited a moment longer and then lowered their weapons. Kumar nodded at McCarter and then rushed to the man who knelt with the wounded one cradled in his arms. A brief conversation took place between them and each clamped the shoulder of the other. The man between them, blood continuing to ooze from the corners of his mouth, coughed and smiled at Kumar. Slowly, then, the light started to leave his eyes and less than thirty seconds later his body slumped in the arms of his comrade with a finality McCarter had seen too many times.
Gary Manning sidled alongside McCarter at about the same time as James and Hawkins appeared from the brush on the opposite side.
“What’s going on?”