Red Phoenix by Larry Bond Read Free Book Online Page A

their nightsticks.
    The demonstrators closed to within fifty yards, then forty, thirty, twenty. Bricks and bottles started clattering off the riot troopers’ raised shields. McLaren snarled. What the hell were they waiting for?
    Now. A grenade launcher on one of the armored cars coughed. Others followed suit, and McLaren saw a white mist of tear gas billowing above the crowd, drifting downwind south along the street. He waited for the water cannon to open up. But the damned idiots had parked them too far back. The armored cars were rolling forward, but it was too late. The protestors were too close.
    They smashed into the front ranks of the riot police—shoving barricades aside, wrenching at plastic shields or kicking under them, and still screaming, “Tokchae Tado!” The police fought back, clubbing students with their nightsticks and slamming shields into their faces. McLaren saw demonstrators going down with blood streaming from cut foreheads or broken noses. It wasn’t enough.
    The barricades were down, and the police line was beginning to give. There were Combat Police on the ground now, lying curled up as demonstrators kicked them savagely. Others were being pulled into the crowd or shoved sprawling back into their ranks. The students sensed victory, and more and more of them fought their way forward through the press to get at the police. McLaren saw an officer stagger back, his face smashed by a thrown brick. The stupid bastard hadn’t had his visor down.
    McLaren stepped out of the doorway. It was just about time to go. When the police broke and ran, it was going to be every uniform for itself.
    But he stopped. The rear ranks of the Combat Police had unslung their rifles and were stepping forward—bringing them up and aiming over the crowd. And there was that damned lieutenant, getting ready to drop his hand to signal a volley like he was on some parade ground.
    Then it happened. McLaren couldn’t see what caused it—a thrown rock or bottle, an accidental elbow in the side, or just plain gutless stupidity—but somebody’s M16 went off on full automatic, spraying twenty high-velocity rounds into the struggling crowd of protestors and Combat Policemen.
    Everything seemed to slide into slow motion for a moment. Bodies werethrown everywhere inside the deadly arc described by the assault rifle’s bullets. A spectacled student’s face exploded as a round caught him in the right eye. A Combat Policeman fell to his knees and then onto his face—a widening, red stain welling from the bullet holes in his back. A pretty girl stared in horror at the place where her hand had been. Others staggered back or fell over to lie crumpled on the pavement.
    Then things snapped back into focus. The people in the front of the crowd were screaming and trying to run—trying to force their way away from the carnage around them. But the thousands of protestors pouring north along Sejong Street couldn’t see or hear what had happened ahead, and they kept pressing forward—shoving the screaming men and women in front ahead of them.
    Oh, shit, McLaren thought. That did it. The other young policemen had been staring in shock at the bloody tangle of bodies at their feet. But now, as the mob surged closer, they panicked. First one, and then the rest, started firing into the crowd at point-blank range.
    Dozens of protestors were cut down in a matter of seconds—smashed to the pavement in a hail of automatic weapons fire. As they fell in writhing, blood-soaked heaps, the crowd finally began breaking, with hundreds, then thousands, of people screaming, turning, and trying to run.
    But the Combat Police were now completely out of control. They began moving forward, still firing. And McLaren could see some of them fumbling for new magazines. Goddamnit, some of those bastards were even reloading!
    Without thinking about it he left the doorway and started to run toward them. Maybe he could kick some sense into those frigging morons. But it