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The dam of stunned figures wasn’t holding angry rioters back as well as it had before, but Manning was aware of the impermanence of a stun grenade’s effects on crowds. With a surge, the big Canadian whipped one muscular arm out and clotheslined it across the throat of a charging hooligan. The London gang member’s feet kicked out from under him and he toppled backward into his compatriots. Manning knew that his only hope was to exploit the number of bodies pitted against him. He was not facing a unified group, moving in perfect synchronicity, despite the singular mind the mob possessed. As such, he was able to trip up one attacker with one of his fellow rioters, limbs entangling each other as one hand was clueless about what the other was doing.
Even so, Manning realized that he could only maintain this frenetic pace for so long. He kept his body in tip-top condition, maintaining a level of endurance that could carry him across deserts or up the highest mountainsides. Combat, however, sapped that kind of energy far faster than simple cross-country traveling. Manning was directing his muscles with precision and speed, as well as exploiting their phenomenal strength. Such fine manipulation required more intensive use of endurance, and he knew that he didn’t have the kind of power to hold out against the entirety of this roiling throng.
If Manning’s seemingly bottomless reserves were beginning to run dry, he wondered how his partner was faring as the hooligan horde surged forward.
FISTS AND FEET FLEW, trying to track the SAS-trained brawler, but they struck McCarter’s prisoner, not the man himself. In the meantime, McCarter lashed out with his long, powerful legs, kicking rioters in the knees or groin. The low blows weren’t pretty and were far from fair, but they were the swiftest and least harmful means of knocking down ruffians without causing undue death.
The maneuvers reminded McCarter of his favorite American slapstick comedians, who often repeated a gag where they ensnarled themselves against an enemy and utilized the momentum of that foe to spin them around, whirling out of harm’s way while their opponents ended up battling each other. The weight of the man McCarter had hooked himself to was providing sufficient energy for McCarter to spear snap-kicks into abdomens and get enough height to break more than a few jaws. The SAS veteran was tempted to lose himself in the brawl, but his sense of responsibility kept him from full surrender. He pulled his punches and kicks, knowing that he didn’t require that much force to hold his enemies at bay.
Somewhere in the course of the initial melee, the rest of the crowd that had been halted by the stun grenades had recovered their senses. They started to move in, surrounding both Manning and McCarter, a wall of bodies separating the Phoenix pros. McCarter released his fulcrum, putting plenty of muscle into a hip toss so that when he struck his compatriots, a dozen bodies tumbled together.
Dozens of hands clawed at McCarter as he back-pedaled. There were too many of them, and he didn’t have the sheer muscle required to hurl rioters against each other. Fortunately, McCarter had a bag of heavy grenades, and he swung them hard. Their mass added to the strength of his swing, and the hard metal canisters for the smoke and tear gas dispensers proved to be unyielding as they struck hands, wrists, arms and shoulders.
Several of the hooligans stopped short, clutching shattered limbs. The rioting thugs didn’t have much time to comfort their injured body parts as others behind them shoved them to the ground to be trampled underfoot by the surging tide of madness. McCarter whipped the bag of grenades around again and again, feeling the impact of his improvised mace against their bodies, scattering them in a wide arc. Each slashing stroke of the flailing nylon bag was testing the strength of the synthetic fabric, however. His weapon wasn’t going to last forever, and the football hooligans had spread out, encircling the Phoenix Force commander.
McCarter grimaced, realizing that he was going to have to try something drastic. He hauled the bag back to his chest, reached into its zipper and came away with three or four pins. The roughhousing throng paused as they saw the cotter rings fall away from his fingers, and McCarter lobbed the satchel into the waiting arms of one of the rioters. Before the grenades could detonate, McCarter equalized the pressure in his ears with a loud roar that further worked at slowing the madness-inflicted mob.
Sympathetic detonations accompanied the lone stun grenade’s explosion, extreme pressure knocking loose safety mechanisms to extend the shattering blast, even as powerful jets of smoke and tear gas erupted from the bag of doom. Hooligans wailed as chemical smoke and concentrated capsicum solution blasted dozens of faces. McCarter was used to working in the clouds created by the smoker canisters, and he had also built up an immunity to the sinus-inflaming effects of the pepper extract. Even so, McCarter’s eyes and nose were running freely. He had been almost at ground zero of the detonations, but the number of rioters had worked in his favor. The press of their bodies absorbed the concussion of the flash-bangs, as well as diluting the tear gas and smoke he would have taken full force otherwise. McCarter fired off quick rabbit punches, tagging sides and abdominal muscles, knocking air from the hooligans’ lungs, forcing them to breathe in deep gulps of atmosphere that was no longer good for them. The cottony cloud that enveloped McCarter and his crowd of opponents provided a shield that limited the advance of dozens who could no longer find him.
McCarter pumped a knee into the gut of one ruffian who tried to fight on despite his blindness. That foe collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. Another man took a karate chop to the shoulder, the pain of a broken clavicle taking the fight out of him. The Briton had bought himself time with the use of the grenades, but smoke and tear gas dissipated, and the stunning force released by the high-pressure flash-bangs would fade, allowing enemies to recover their senses.
Suddenly, McCarter stumbled, pushed back by two of the rioters. He would have fallen on his ass had it not been for the presence of a pair of curved plasticine shields. McCarter glanced back, and hands reached in the gap between the two riot cops, tugging the ex-SAS man behind a wall of lawmen who pushed forward with rubberized clubs and their clear plastic but nigh invulnerable shields. The police were wearing gas masks to protect them from the choking clouds that had been unleashed by the Phoenix Force pros, so they went in with all of their senses working. The phalanx of officers also had the benefit of trained coordination. Each man covered himself and the man to his right, and they moved in step.
While the mob had a wild might, it was unfocused and undisciplined. They crashed helplessly against the wall of authority that pushed forward. In the meantime, McCarter found himself helped up by two cops who followed behind the living barrier that descended upon the riot. McCarter was relieved to see the Flying Squad’s efficiency in herding the hooligans.
“You all right?” one of the bobbies asked.
“I’ve been better, but not by much,” McCarter replied with a wink.
“Dispatch told us to keep an eye out for you and your partner,” the other metropolitan policeman said. “They told us that the two of you would be holding the line as if you were a two-man riot squad.”
“Where’s my chum?” McCarter asked. He scanned around and breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the unmistakable bulk of Gary Manning among the policemen following the riot-squad phalanx.
“I hope that’s him,” the first cop said. “When the shield men passed him, he’d wound two of the rioters up in those hulking arms of his.”
“Yeah, that’s him,” McCarter confirmed. “How is the suppression going?”
“Well, thanks to the two of you hammering this end of Haymarket Road, we were able to divert the fire hose trucks that would have been here to other approaches,” the second lawman explained. “A good rinsing is taking the piss out of these drunken louts.”
“Looks like you’ve got them all well and kettled up,” McCarter said.
“You sound like you know a little of what the Met likes to do,” the first police constable noted.
McCarter shrugged. “I’ve been around the Met and worked alongside the Sweeney a few times in a professional capacity.”
The other PC sized the Phoenix Force leader up. It had been a while since McCarter had worn the short, close-shorn haircut of a professional military man, his hair naturally feathered and flowing down over his ears. Still, even through the layers of his windbreaker and shirt, it was easy for the lawman to notice that McCarter was fit and muscular in the way that a professional soldier would be, lean with very little bulk to get in his way. “Professional but unofficial?”
McCarter nodded curtly, indicating that further discussion along those lines was no longer open.
“Who are you and the barrel-chested bloke?” the first constable asked.
McCarter sighed. “Friends. Concerned friends. That’s all I can say.”
“Well, you’re a right geezer in my book,” the second constable said. “Anyone who can take on that many hooligans with only a few bruises…”
McCarter wondered what the lawman was talking about, but then he noticed that he was starting to feel stings along his face and arms. He’d been so wrapped up in battling the riot, he hadn’t noticed where glancing impacts had connected with him. Had he been less quick and skillful, he would have suffered broken bones and muscle tears from the melee.
“You still with us, friend?” the first bobby asked.
“Yeah,” McCarter replied. “Just taking inventory on all my bits and pieces.”
The two officers studiously ignored the sight of McCarter’s holstered pistol and the shotgun that hung through the tatters of his windbreaker, but their nonchalance only lasted so long.
“Would you want us to take those for you?” the first lawman asked.
“I’m keeping my Browning,” McCarter said. “But you can take the riot gun.”
The two officers looked at each other, then thought about the orders, the description they’d been given. They also looked at the stunned and battered dozens left in the wake of the riot police, men who had been knocked down mostly by the efforts of the man with the Browning and his partner. If McCarter was a threat to the peace they’d sworn to protect, he could easily have gunned down countless more of the soccer hooligans as opposed to leaving them alive but hurting. They could trust the Phoenix Force commander with his sidearm.
“Thank you for your assistance,” the second of the officers said. He took McCarter’s hand and shook it.
The “concerned friend” waved Manning over, and the pair disappeared down Haymarket Road. They had to contact Stony Man Farm.
MCCARTER AND MANNING lurched through the door of their hotel room, running on fumes from the energy they’d exerted in dealing with the Piccadilly riot. Manning secured the door while McCarter turned on the television, flicking it to the news. As it hadn’t taken them more than a few minutes to get back from Haymarket Road, the news media was still in the dark about what was going on, putting up rumors as true information.
McCarter could see the news cameras focused on one arm of the riot for a moment. He could see himself and Manning amid chemical smoke and tear gas battling against a throng. Luckily, the quality of the camera images was too grainy and jumpy to be of any use in identifying them, and by then, Stony Man Farm would have grabbed extant copies of the video footage from where the files had been stored across the internet and doctored them to make any attempts at clarifying their features totally impossible.
Price and Brognola, back at the Farm, would be gnashing their teeth that McCarter and Manning may have exposed their identities on international television.
Manning picked up the phone as McCarter continued to scan the channels, looking for more information on the riots. If he was going to risk the privacy of the Sensitive Operations Group, he might as well know the extent of the damage.
“Barb wants to talk to you, David,” Manning said, holding out his cell to McCarter.
“Tell her it’s not my fault,” McCarter replied, checking the television.
“It’s not that,” Manning corrected him. “Besides, the Farm’s running its own scans of local news.”
McCarter looked over his shoulder, then held out his hand to accept the cell phone. “What did I do now?”
“Aside from risk exposing Phoenix Force’s existence?” Barbara Price asked. Stony Man Farm’s mission controller sounded only mockingly reproachful, which eased McCarter’s nerves somewhat. The Briton was a man of action, but he dreaded paperwork and he also hated the subterfuge necessary to keep him on the front lines, battling against the forces of evil. He was a doer, not a politician who needed to massage the egos of law enforcement agencies or foreign governments.
“Any time Phoenix Force and a riot are in the same city, you know we’ll bump into each other, even if we’re outnumbered,” McCarter answered.
“Luckily this time you bumped hard enough to stop the riot’s spread in one direction,” Price told him. “We have to keep you on station in London for a little while, but Cal and the others won’t be coming to assist you. We need to spread out in order to deal effectively with the nature of this threat. You might also have to go elsewhere in Europe.”
“The other states in the G8 have been threatened, most likely,” McCarter responded.
“Exactly, which is why we can’t keep Phoenix Force as one contiguous unit. If it’s any consolation, Lyons and his men are splitting up, as well,” Price confirmed.
“Things are getting bloody serious if that’s the case,” McCarter muttered. “More riots?”
“We think that the riots and the orbital bombardment attacks are tied in,” Price said. “The Russian soccer gangs went wild in full force. We’re fairly certain that they’ve also been backed by the neo-Nazi movement in Moscow.”
“Neo-Nazis,” Manning muttered, listening in as the phone was set on speaker mode. “Now that there’s been an influx of other people from the Middle East and other countries, the Russians are putting aside the bad memories of the battle of St. Petersburg and embracing racial purity.”
“It doesn’t hurt that the Russian economy is in the shitter,” McCarter added. “White, young and jobless people tend to congregate and cast hairy eyeballs at the nonwhites who are taking jobs that the whites would normally turn their noses up at. It happened a lot in London with Jamaican, Indian and Pakistani immigrants. Bigots like picking at the edges of groups of disenchanted youth.”
“It just so happens that the Moscow neo-Nazi sympathizers are well-organized, and they have a lot to pick from on the streets,” Price said.
“Cal’s going to be bloody useless in that venue. Rafael, too,” McCarter pointed out.
“Cal’s not going to Moscow. We’ve activated an old friend or two to deal with Japan and China,” Price explained. “Hope you don’t mind if he’s hanging out with Mei.”
“No. You said or two…are we thinking of my favorite ninja?” McCarter asked.
“John’s going to be in action,” Price said. “Cal’s heading to Tokyo on a jet fighter right now.”
“And what about Lyons and the boys?” McCarter asked.
“Right now it’s all need-to-know. I’m just informing you of your teammates—”
“To keep my head straight, so I don’t worry over their problems,” McCarter finished. “Thanks, Barb.”
“Any potential information on where the kinetic darts came from?” Manning asked.
Price paused for a moment. “The only thing we can tell is that there was a scrambling signal that interrupted observation satellite feeds for forty-five minutes.”
“All of them?” Manning asked.
“We’re not certain for other governments, but looking at our own reconnaissance satellites, we’ve got most of an hour missing due to active jamming,” Price said. “From the tropic of Capricorn to the tropic of Cancer, it’s one big blind spot.”
“Equatorial satellites, meaning we’ve narrowed down the possible places where the enemy could have launched from,” Manning said.
“That’s still millions of square miles,” Price countered. “Who knows if it’s a land-based launch or someone utilizing a decommissioned submarine’s missile silos.”
“Or worse, converted a regular freighter to utilize such silos,” Manning added. “Some tanker ships have the room and the strength to fire Atlas rockets if they wanted.”
“No clue where the jamming signal could have originated?” McCarter asked.
“We’ve got our people on it. Whatever it was, it transferred from system to system easily,” Price said.
“An opposing force of hackers,” Manning surmised.
“We’re looking at that. The nature of the interference was such that we couldn’t tell if it was signal interruption or a viral computer program affecting satellite uplinks,” Price said. “Either way, the jamming hasn’t affected telecommunications.”
“No. Even though they could utilize local cell towers to keep in touch with their people, this Fist of Heaven group seems to want us to know the kind of horror happening in Moscow,” Manning said. “A sword of Damocles for the other seven member nations of the G8.”
“David, I just got a hit on the picture you took of the bag man you wrangled in that alley,” Price said.
“Something’s better than nothing,” McCarter replied. “What is it?”
“We’ve got his name, and he’s on Scotland Yard’s watchlist,” Price explained.
“Given that he’s on a watchlist, he’s probably in with a neo-Nazi group like Combat 18,” McCarter said. “Organizations like them see the soccer hooligan growth as a breeding ground for new recruits.”
“His name was Kent Hyle, and he’s part of the Jakkhammer Legacy,” Price provided.
“Jakkhammer Legacy,” McCarter replied, nodding sagely, his tone transmitting his understanding over the phone.
“What the hell is the Jakkhammer, and why are neo-Nazis holding it in high honor?” Price asked.
“Jakkhammer, in the ’70s, was a righteously brilliant punk band. When I was in a band, too young for signing up, I was a great fan of theirs,” McCarter replied. “Then around 1980, they became a part of the Rock against Communism movement, which just started a slippery slope.”
“Nothing wrong about being against communism,” Price noted.
McCarter shrugged. “I’ve seen communism’s failures, but the RAC was simply blowing smoke up arses. The RAC was formed to be a counter to the Anti-Nazi League’s Rock against Racism drive, because Jakkhammer was a pro-white power band.”
“All the little white boys were feeling edged out of their lowest rung on the social ladder by the addition of Indians and Jamaicans to the London population,” Manning added.
“Oh,” Price replied. “And much like American politics today, communism or socialism is a handy slur that can’t be used as the basis of slander by far-right extremists.”
“Bingo,” McCarter replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised if certain U.S. news network pundits weren’t punk fans back in the late ’70s.”
“Regardless, Jakkhammer Legacy has a reputation with the British police,” Price said.
“I know that,” McCarter said. “When the whole team was in London a while back on holiday, we ended up having to teach a few of their number a lesson about accosting blacks and Latinos.”
“Good times,” Manning said, showing a rare grin at the commission of physical violence against anyone. “Punching a Nazi makes anyone’s day a little better.”
Price chortled. “You’re going to have an excellent evening with the information we’ll give you two, then.”
McCarter flexed his fists, tendons popping, a cruel grin on his lips. “Give us an address, and we’ll ask a few hard questions.”
Manning opened the pair’s “special” suitcase and pulled out two pairs of brown leather gloves. The gloves were designed for law enforcement and military, with reinforcement and padding to protect the small bones of the human hand when utilized for punches against people’s heads and faces. He tossed a pair to McCarter. They would, of course, go with firearms to meet with members of the Jakkhammer Legacy, but going in guns blazing was a hard way to get information. On the other hand, it would take considerable damage to the lips and nose to leave an opponent unable to talk after being thrashed.
McCarter received the files from Stony Man Farm as he prepared to head out, the leather of his fighting gloves creaking as he fit them snugly over his hands. He couldn’t help feeling a slight bit of guilt over taking such glee in laying abuse on a violence-and-racism-prone group of disenfranchised young men, nor could he dismiss the irony that he was going to become to the hooligans what the hooligans were to honest, law-abiding people.
McCarter glanced at Manning. “Let’s go teach some lessons tonight, Gary.”
“Be Afraid 101?” Manning asked.
McCarter nodded. “Class is now in session.”
CHAPTER THREE
Los Angeles
Carl Lyons was a man who had been born to hunt monsters. It had been apparent when he worked the rough streets of Los Angeles, patrolling neighborhoods in dispute zones between rival gangs with a determination that had earned him the title of Ironman. Hal Brognola had seen it after Lyons’s chance encounter with Mack Bolan, the Executioner, and had guided the young cop to put his unwavering courage and sharp mind to work in Brognola’s organized crime task force, going undercover against the most murderous of gangs. Finally, Lyons had found a home in the Stony Man Farm–based Sensitive Operations Group, alongside Rosario Blancanales and Hermann Schwarz as the leader of Able Team.
