Orbital Velocity. Don Pendleton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ There was one thing that the Phoenix pair could count on—the reactions of everyday people to gunfire. They wouldn’t be certain how the crowd of hooligans would react, but luckily the shoppers had thinned out at the sight of a mob of rowdy drunks.

      “Let fly,” McCarter said, and Manning aimed at a facade of a building, triggering three rapid, bellowing shots at the brick. The Magnum’s hollowpoints were easily stopped by the stone and mortar, preventing dangerous ricochets or rounds cutting through a wall to harm a second-floor resident.

      People scattered, running away from the heart of Piccadilly Circus while the throng clogging Haymarket whirled at the sudden burst of new violence. The Python was far more authoritative than the firecrackers Manning had dropped. The rioters glared at the two men who stood defiantly in the middle of the road.

      Manning and McCarter were both the same height, six foot one, but Manning was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested while McCarter was leaner.

      “Who do you berks think you are?” one of the bagmen grunted. He had noticed McCarter’s bag full of tricks.

      “The Peace Corps,” McCarter replied.

      “Why don’t we promote you berks from corps to corpses?” the spokesman said. He turned to his mates. “Fuck ’em up!”

      The wall of thugs surged, taking one step forward, but McCarter and Manning had been cooking their flash-bangs from the moment the loudmouthed bagman snarled his response to McCarter. The Phoenix pros hurled their flash-bangs in underhanded tosses, both canister grenades rolling between the crowd’s feet.

      Detonating, the distraction devices unleashed twin stunning pulses through the crowd of drunken thugs. The unified surge that they had attempted transformed into a snarl of limbs as dozens folded over with painful deafness. Those who were farther back in the riot crowd tripped over those who had been halted by the blasts. McCarter and Manning had produced a dam of humanity against the flood tide of rage that would have overwhelmed them, but the grenades were only the beginning of what they needed.

      The bagman had pulled a pistol from his waistband. McCarter, a British Olympic pistol champion, saw him start his quick draw and hauled out his Browning Hi-Power, triggering a quick shot faster than the gunman. The hooligan jerked violently as the bridge of his nose exploded with a precision-placed shot straight to the brain.

      Not being a dedicated handgunner like his British friend, Manning whipped out his shotgun and fired the .12-gauge ferret rounds into the knees of three rioting hooligans. The tear gas shells weren’t designed to be fired directly at someone, but with the numbers they were facing, Manning erred on the side of injury rather than shooting someone in the chest.

      Legs knocked out from under them, the thugs tumbled, providing a break that their allies, unhindered by flash-grenade deafness, had trouble passing. The tumble of stunned bodies created by the explosions snarled their path. It was a brief reprieve, and both Manning and McCarter were facing down a dozen angry hooligans whom they weren’t willing to gun down in cold blood.

      Conversely, the surging rioters were out for Phoenix Force blood and outnumbered the merciful warriors six to one.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Normally, Gary Manning did not rely on melee weapons when it came to close-quarters combat. He preferred to utilize his great strength and skill to deal with opponents, but now he was faced with a less than optimal situation. The London roughneck charging at him had a brain-smashing weapon locked in his fist.

      Manning quickly reversed the pistol-grip pump in his big hands and brought the weapon up to bat aside the whistling steel of a ball-peen hammer targeting his skull. Metal struck metal with a loud clang and a spark, and the Canadian knew that although his weapon would not be reliable anymore, it had saved him from a traumatic head injury. He knotted his left hand into a ham-size fist and brought it up hard under the chin of the hammer-wielding rioter. The uppercut literally lifted Manning’s target off his feet and hurled him against another soccer hooligan behind him.

      Manning didn’t have time to celebrate his victory. Instead he whirled and jammed his shoulder against the chest of a third rioter, getting inside of the arc of the young man’s scything knife. The shoulder block turned the blade-wielding hooligan into a plow, which allowed the powerful Canadian to run over four of the surging rioters. He reached up and snared the improvised battering ram by his football jersey and whipped him around as a living club, bowling over more of the rowdy maniacs.

      Manning glanced quickly to one side and saw that McCarter had trapped one of his foes in an armlock and was utilizing the hooligan as a fulcrum and a shield. The big Canadian returned his attention to the combat at hand in time to hear his captive howl from the stab of a sharpened strip of metal into his shoulder. Manning hurled his charge aside, away from where he’d encounter more rioter weapons, and snapped down a judo chop on the forearm that held the bloody shank. Bones cracked under the assault, and the ruffian stumbled backward.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ