CHAPTER ONE

      England

      The London fog rolled in on cue as David McCarter took to the streets with his friend Pat. They walked arm in arm, McCarter his usual brisk, ground-eating stride slowed to accommodate the blond woman’s pace. She walked with her temple rested against his shoulder.

      They’d just left the cinema after watching a controversial film and were engaged in light banter concerning the plot.

      Something moved in his peripheral vision as he turned to press his point and he stopped. His combat instincts cried out that trouble was brewing.

      Pat felt McCarter’s muscles tighten, as rigid as those on a marble statue. “What’s wrong?”

      A black-clad figure, wielding a submachine gun, darted across the street to climb a small privacy wall around a home. McCarter pushed Pat into the shadows of a house’s entranceway and shielded her with his back.

      “There’s some drama happening,” the Phoenix Force leader whispered softly. Drama, in the slang of the SAS, involved guns and imminent violence. “Stay out of sight, no matter what.”

      Pat’s lips pulled tightly into a thin, bloodless line. “You don’t have your mates with you.”

      McCarter reached under his jacket and slid out a tiny Charter Arms .38-caliber revolver and pressed it into her hand. “Don’t do anything stupid. If anyone with a gun pops into view, let him have the full load.”

      Pat nodded nervously. He gave her hand a quick squeeze and turned toward the house. He was in mid-draw of his favored Browning Hi-Power when he spotted two more mysterious figures dart into view. One pivoted and dropped to a knee to aim at McCarter, who lunged out of the path of a line of silenced autofire. The SAS veteran’s handgun was out by the time he struck the cobblestone road, its luminous front sight a fuzzy green ball. The glowing dot interrupted the torso of the gunman. He fired two quick shots and rolled frantically so as not to provide a stationary target for the other gunner.

      The black-clad wraith that he’d hit twisted to punch another burst of silenced bullets into the road. McCarter leaped behind the fender of a Mini Cooper, its chassis rattling as slugs struck home.

      “Dammit.” The enemy gunman grunted. “He’s behind cover!”

      “Who the…” the other assassin whispered as he stepped onto the sidewalk. McCarter swiveled and took aim at the second attacker’s knee. He tapped off another shot and was rewarded by his target toppling off balance. The victory was brief, though. A salvo of suppressed gunfire rattled against the bumper of the Mini Cooper in response to the Phoenix Force leader’s attack. “That hurt, you miserable…”

      McCarter popped up and fired over the roof of the vehicle. This time he pumped out three shots. Sparks flew as bullets exploded against his enemy’s helmet. The gunman staggered backward, then shook the cobwebs out of his head. The Briton ducked back behind the body of the car as the Mini Cooper’s windows detonated under a hail of automatic weapons fire.

      As chunks of broken glass rained down on the Phoenix Force leader, he bit back a growl of frustration. The three head shots would have brought down anyone. Even one bullet would have slipped into the gap between the helmet and the goggles of an armored opponent. But the sparks that exploded showed McCarter that even his custom of loading one hollowpoint and one NATO ball round wasn’t enough to penetrate whatever they were wearing. The mix of expanding and deep penetrating ammunition was the Briton’s insurance against opponents who wore body armor. At this range, the NATO ball round should have cracked through even a Kevlar helmet.

      The two hardmen were betrayed by their shadows as they approached. They assumed that they had the Phoenix Force commander boxed in, and that was their mistake. As long as he had breath in his lungs and his heart still beat, he wouldn’t give up. He glanced back and saw Pat huddled in the doorway. If the gunmen got any closer, they’d be able to see her, and the tiny Charter Arms .38 would be even more impotent against their protective armor.

      McCarter exploded into action. He charged the gunman in the street and fired directly at the assassin’s face. The armored attacker froze at the sight of the Englishman’s sudden attack, and was blinded by the point-blank muzzle-flashes and 9 mm rounds smashing into his armored faceplate. The gunman let out an inarticulate yell that gave McCarter all the opportunity he needed. He threw his empty handgun aside and grabbed his enemy’s submachine gun. With a savage twist, he pried the weapon to one side and slipped behind his black-clad opponent’s body. The other gunman tracked him and opened fire on instinct.

      McCarter’s human shield jerked as slugs punched into him. He hauled the armored assassin’s arm around to grab the killer’s weapon. The black-clad body slumped and turned into deadweight as the Briton clawed the subgun out of its grasp. With a kick, the Phoenix Force commander threw himself to the ground and out of the path of another burst of fire.

      For a moment McCarter thought that the weapon in his grasp was a mini-Uzi. It had the same feel, but when he triggered it, the bullets that erupted tore through the Mini-Cooper’s door as if it were made of tissue paper. The surviving gunman jerked as the slowed slugs hit him. He charged around the back of the vehicle.

      The sound of a revolver split the air and sparks erupted on the gunman’s body. Pat had seen the killer and she followed McCarter’s advice. It was enough to distract the murderer and he twisted to pump a burst into the doorway, but McCarter cut him off and emptied the machine pistol’s magazine into the armored attacker.

      This time, the gunman folded over and dropped to the ground, dead. McCarter discarded his empty magazine and frisked the corpse for spare ammo. He looked up to see Pat’s pale face, eyes wide with fear. He winked at her. “Chin up, love.”

      She nodded.

      He checked the top round in the machine pistol and saw that it was a bottle-nosed bullet. It took a moment for him to figure out what the cartridge was, when he remembered the Saab Bofors Dynamics CBJ MS personal defense weapon. Based on the mini-Uzi, it could be modified to fire 6.5 mm armor-piercing bullets from a bottle-necked 9 mm case. The extra powder charge behind the narrow slug allowed it to pierce Kevlar and ceramic trauma plating with all the authority of a rifle round. He charged up the Bofors and headed for the low wall when he noticed another of the armored gunners crawl into view.

      “What the…” the assassin demanded, then saw the lean-faced Briton, armed with the deadly machine pistol. He dropped out of sight before McCarter could trigger the weapon, so the Phoenix Force warrior leaped to the top of the low wall and went prone. He aimed his machine pistol into the darkness, then lined up on the glint of a streetlight on the curved dome of the dark assassin’s helmet.

      McCarter didn’t give his enemy a chance. He cut loose with a salvo of high-powered slugs that chopped into the armored helmet. Chunks of bullet-resistant material flew, smashed to splinters by the Bofors slugs.

      He dropped to the lawn and raced toward the house. Through the window, he spotted an armored gunman line up his shot on a cowering woman.

      “Not on my watch, mate.” McCarter growled as he triggered the Bofors CBJ. Glass shattered and the assassin jerked violently. He still stood, which told the Briton that it would take a close-range salvo, without the interference of even a pane of glass, to neutralize the enemy. He charged the window and dived through even as the would-be assassin recovered.

      McCarter felt the heat of the gunner’s burst cut closely over him. He triggered the Bofors one last time and stitched his adversary from crotch to throat. The woman screamed as the armored man’s corpse smashed violently against the china cabinet. The ex-SAS commando crossed to