Extermination. Don Pendleton

target would stay down because the pistol hadn’t fallen from nerveless fingers. The less-lethal shotgun proved quite deadly as James put another rubber baton round into the defender’s face, blood squirting from his eye sockets.

      McCarter had no time to comment on the gruesome demise as he was dealing with the fourth enemy soldier, lashing this one under his arm to make him drop his firearm. Instead of bringing the ASP around to administer a coup de grâce, the Briton jammed the heel of his palm under his opponent’s chin, whipping his head back violently. The last of the defenders in this doorway were littering the walkway, their battered forms providing grim testimony to the efficiency of Phoenix Force.

      McCarter let the baton drop to the floor, swinging his P-90 back into his grasp.

      Lifeless bodies were strewed around the room, only one man still sitting upright. His white shirt was a bloody mess, and while at first blush he would have resembled Bezoar, a mouth full of mangled and busted false teeth yawned from the gaping gash of his lips. Bezoar’s file read that he had perfect teeth and no dental work done to improve them.

      This guy was a fake, and he was holding on to an unmistakable D-shaped object.

      A dead man’s switch equipped with a trigger that its wielder held down. Upon death and the relaxation of his fingers, whatever charge it was connected to would detonate.

      The bloody, cap-filled smile broadened with the sight of McCarter and James. “And so…Paris dies.”

      A second later he was a corpse, head flopping forward, the dead man’s switch tumbling to the cold tile floor….