framework just inside a greenbelt of thick, thorn-tipped bramble that infested the otherwise infertile, red-soiled hillside and helped to create a natural, if incomplete, barrier around the facility. Yusra Wahin, a rail-thin twenty-year-old Hezbollah recruit who’d just completed his third week of training, was posted on the upper platform, armed with a Kalashnikov AK-47 manufactured two years before he was born. High-powered field binoculars were slung around his neck, and clipped to the belt holding up his baggy camo pants was a black-market Motorola HT1000 two-way radio. Wahin was halfway through his shift, battling monotony and an urge to drop to the planks and catch some much-needed sleep. Sentry duty, after all, had come on the heels of a day already filled with calisthenics, training exercises and indoctrination seminars.
From his vantage point, Wahin could also see two other observation posts rising up from the bramble’s edge on the far side of the camp. Sentries were posted there, as well, and the guard suspected they were combating the same ennui that weighed on him. He could see smoke trailing upward from one of the silhouetted figures and immediately felt a craving for a cigarette. He fought off the urge, however. Smoking was supposedly forbidden by sentries, and Wahin lacked the impunity of his older counterpart. He would have to wait until dawn, when he was relieved from his post, to indulge himself.
Wahin had completed his twelfth tiresome lap around the railed confines of the platform when he detected movement up in the mountains to his left. He first suspected it was one of the countless wild goats that periodically roamed up from the valley, but a closer look revealed that the figure was moving on two legs, clutching something difficult to mistake for anything but a long-barreled firearm. Wahin immediately stopped his pacing and grabbed his binoculars, the better to confirm his growing fear.
It was an armed intruder, and he wasn’t alone. As Wahin panned with the binoculars, he spotted several more men clearing the ridgeline and fanning out as they began to charge downhill toward the camp.
The sentry anxiously lowered the binoculars and grabbed his two-way radio. He’d raised the device to his lips and was about to relay the alarm when he was struck in the chest by what felt like a white-hot firebrand. The blow threw him off balance and he dropped the walkie-talkie as he veered backward, an intense pain radiating from where he’d been hit. By the time it occurred to him that he’d just been shot, Wahin had careened against the railing behind him. The thin wood splintered under his weight and the recruit instinctively flung his arms outward, clawing at the air as he toppled from the tower. When he struck the half-empty water tank below him, Yusra Wahin’s neck snapped, sending him to his Maker.
W HEN THE GUARD LANDED on the water tank, a dull, gonglike peal echoed across the mountainside. Rafael Encizo scowled as he lowered the high-powered M-110 he’d used to bring the man down.
“So much for the element of surprise,” he muttered to Calvin James. “If this peashooter didn’t get anyone’s attention, that sure as hell did!”
“Not much we can do about it but get a move on,” James said, shifting his grip on three of the hastily gathered parachutes with which Phoenix Force and their CIA counterparts had touched down on the ridgeline. McCarter had already hauled the other three chutes halfway down the mountainside and, with the help of CIA Agent Hale, was pitching them over the nearest row of bramble standing between them and the camp. Hawkins was off to the left, moving at a slower pace, the TCD-100 tucked close to his chest. With him was Roger Combs, the other Company operative.
Encizo nodded tersely and followed close behind as James loped downhill to the right of McCarter and Hale. By the time they’d reached another long-running patch of bramble, sentries posted atop the far towers had spotted them. Volleys of rounds thumped into the dirt around them as they ducked low behind the thorn bush.
“Here, give me a quick hand,” James said, unraveling the parachutes in the dirt. The nylon fabric was thin, but when the canopies were folded and placed on top of one another, sandwiching the suspension lines, they would provide a layer thick enough to partially blunt the stabbing force of the bramble thorns. The two Stony Man commandos, following McCarter and Hale’s lead, draped the parachutes over the coarse shrubbery, then quickly steeled themselves and bounded over. James grunted as he felt several thorns poke through the makeshift barrier as well as his pant legs, drawing blood along his right thigh. Encizo cursed as he took a few barbs of his own. Within seconds they’d cleared the obstacle and were forced to dive in separate directions to avoid the next volley of rifle fire from the sentry towers.
“One down, two to go,” James confirmed, ignoring the blood that had begun to seep through his pants. He waited out another few rounds from the enemy, then crawled back to the parachutes and quickly gathered them up. Encizo, meanwhile, brought his semiautomatic back into play, taking sight through the M-110’s 30 mm KAC scope and triggering a return shot. Far off across the camp, the sentry in the northeast tower slumped to his platform.
“I was talking about the bramble, but that’s okay,” James drawled, stuffing the parachutes under his arm. He glanced down at a thin rivulet of blood trailing from his combat boots into the rust-colored dirt.
“Look on the bright side,” Encizo told him, grinning savagely. “Leave a trail like that and we won’t have any trouble finding our way back.”
M C C ARTER AND H ALE HAD MADE it over their first hurdle, but when they tried to retrieve the parachutes that had shielded them from the briar, the canopies wouldn’t give.
“They must be stuck on a branch,” the CIA agent said after giving the chutes another sharp tug.
McCarter, who was trading shots with the lone remaining sentry, called out to Hale without taking his eyes off his target. “Leave ’em, then,” he said. “We’ll have to try to make an end run around the bushes.”
Hale let go of the parachutes and grabbed his M-16/M-203 combo rifle. He fingered the carbine’s trigger and was unleashing a volley at the distant guard tower when a return round from the sentry clipped him in the ribs.
“Son of a bitch!” he swore, grimacing as he dropped to one knee.
McCarter looked around and spotted a boulder heap twenty yards to his left. He fired a quick autoburst at the sentry, then rushed to Hale’s side, pulling him up to his feet.
“C’mon, mate.”
McCarter helped the wounded agent straggle along the briar line to the rock formation. Once they reached it, the Briton eased Hale to the ground. Bullets sang off the boulders above their heads as McCarter tore open the other man’s shirt to get a better look at the wound.
“Went clean through. How’s your breathing?”
Hale winced as he dragged in air and let it out slowly, then spit into his hand, checking for blood. “Missed the lung, at any rate.”
“You’ll need to hang back and staunch the blood flow.” McCarter set down his M-16 long enough to pull off his shirt and tear off one of the sleeves. “These won’t be exactly sterilized, but they’ll have to do.”
Once he’d torn the sleeve in two, the Phoenix Force Leader handed the makeshift compresses to Hale, who was now reclining against one of the larger boulders. The CIA agent needed both hands to press the cloth against the entry and exit wounds. Blood quickly seeped through, reddening his fingers.
“Go on,” he told McCarter. “If I’m still kicking when the dust settles, I’m Type O and’ll probably be down a few pints.”
McCarter nodded, putting on his now-sleeveless camo shirt. “We’ll take care of you,” he assured Hale, “and when it’s over I’ll buy you a couple pints of Guinness, too.”
“Deal.”
“Mind if we swap popguns?” McCarter asked, reaching for the CIA agent’s combo. “The grenade launcher might come in handy.”
“Be my guest.”
McCarter handed the other man his M-16, then cast his shirt aside and clutched Hale’s over-under. He scrambled halfway up the boulder heap and was forced to duck when sniper fire