Oceans Of Fire

Downrange, the .338 Lapua round hit the assault team leader at 3000 feet per second. The armored figure lurched forward like he’d been kicked by a horse and slammed into the side of the warehouse before falling motionless to the ground. The gunner beside him spun just in time to take Manning’s second shot in the chest. He staggered backward, tripping over his fallen companion.

The big Canadian rolled away and began to crawl to his next sniping position, as the enemy started to sweep the trees with automatic rifle fire.

Rotors whipped the treetops as someone sought him from above. Green tracers streaked down in vertical lines of smoking light as the door gunners did recon by fire.

“Phoenix One, I’m pinned down! If you’re going to do something, you’ve got to do it fast!”

Other titles in this series:

#20 TERMS OF SURVIVAL

#21 SATAN’S THRUST

#22 SUNFLASH

#23 THE PERISHING GAME

#24 BIRD OF PREY

#25 SKYLANCE

#26 FLASHBACK

#27 ASIAN STORM

#28 BLOOD STAR

#29 EYE OF THE RUBY

#30 VIRTUAL PERIL

#31 NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR

#32 LAW OF LAST RESORT

#33 PUNITIVE MEASURES

#34 REPRISAL

#35 MESSAGE TO AMERICA

#36 STRANGLEHOLD

#37 TRIPLE STRIKE

#38 ENEMY WITHIN

#39 BREACH OF TRUST

#40 BETRAYAL

#41 SILENT INVADER

#42 EDGE OF NIGHT

#43 ZERO HOUR

#44 THIRST FOR POWER

#45 STAR VENTURE

#46 HOSTILE INSTINCT

#47 COMMAND FORCE

#48 CONFLICT IMPERATIVE

#49 DRAGON FIRE

#50 JUDGMENT IN BLOOD

#51 DOOMSDAY DIRECTIVE

#52 TACTICAL RESPONSE

#53 COUNTDOWN TO TERROR

#54 VECTOR THREE

#55 EXTREME MEASURES

#56 STATE OF AGGRESSION

#57 SKY KILLERS

#58 CONDITION HOSTILE

#59 PRELUDE TO WAR

#60 DEFENSIVE ACTION

#61 ROGUE STATE

#62 DEEP RAMPAGE

#63 FREEDOM WATCH

#64 ROOTS OF TERROR

#65 THE THIRD PROTOCOL

#66 AXIS OF CONFLICT

#67 ECHOES OF WAR

#68 OUTBREAK

#69 DAY OF DECISION

#70 RAMROD INTERCEPT

#71 TERMS OF CONTROL

#72 ROLLING THUNDER

#73 COLD OBJECTIVE

#74 THE CHAMELEON FACTOR

#75 SILENT ARSENAL

#76 GATHERING STORM

#77 FULL BLAST

#78 MAELSTROM

#79 PROMISE TO DEFEND

#80 DOOMSDAY CONQUEST

#81 SKY HAMMER

#82 VANISHING POINT

#83 DOOM PROPHECY

#84 SENSOR SWEEP

#85 HELL DAWN

Oceans of Fire

STONY MAN®

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Don Pendleton

To U.S. Special Forces

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

Tajikstan

“There’s the bugger now.” David McCarter scanned through his laser range-finder binoculars. His target led the front of a column of horsemen that wound its way through the mountain pass on ponies bred on the steppes of Asia. The shaggy little horses almost looked like overgrown dogs and the stirrups of their riders threatened to brush the ground.

“I make it an even forty.” Gary Manning lay prone in the rocks beside McCarter and peered at their objective through the 3×10 variable-power optical sight of his .300 Magnum Dakota Longbow tactical rifle. “Man, is he ugly.”

Gotron “The Goat” Khan was a little man with a head like a bowling ball and a body shaped like a pear. The sloping shelf of his brow, his wide, flattened nose and the sparse beard tufting his chin made him look like his nickname. The fact that he had a complexion that looked as if he had taken a fragmentation grenade to the face didn’t help.

“He put the ‘ugh’ in ugly,” Calvin James agreed over the com link.

The ex-Navy SEAL was right, but despite first impressions, Gotron Khan was the most feared man in the Zeravshan Mountains. He was a modern-day warlord with his own fief, a kingdom built on the profits of smuggling guns, opium and slaves, and he ruled with an iron fist. He carried a WWII Soviet-issue Cossack saber in his sash, which was the symbol of his rule. The law of Khan was simple. Minor offences required the removal of a hand; felonies called for a beheading. Khan liked to dispense justice personally whenever possible. His men were heavily armed with black market Russian military equipment of every description, from submachine guns to squad automatic weapons.

It was the suspected black market Russian military equipment wrapped in carpets on the pack mules that held the interest of Phoenix Force’s leader. McCarter thumbed his throat mike. “I want the Goat, and what he’s packing on those mules. Options?”

“Well, I make it a full platoon of light cavalry.” Manning kept his crosshairs on Khan. “We can beat ’em easy, but securing them is another matter. When we start shooting, they can scatter and fast.”

T.J. Hawkins chimed in from farther down the side of the gorge. He was the youngest member of the team but spoke with the hard-won experience of a Delta Force commando. “The next village is ten klicks east. We’re ninety-nine percent certain that’s where they’re going. We can wait until nightfall, insert soft and make it a snatch rather than assault.”