Bolan considered exploding the grenades remotely

He dismissed the thought immediately. Too risky to civilians. Risking the lives of noncombatants was not acceptable.

Mack Bolan was in the business of conserving life, and killed only when necessitated by factors of duty or self-defense. He didn’t believe the ends always justified the means, and he refused to do anything to put more blood on his hands.

When it came to the rules of engagement, Bolan had never believed it was right to salve his conscience with some “greater good” theory that civilian casualties were the natural collateral damage of warfare. Bolan valued human life much more than that.

Bolan fought for those who were unable to fight for themselves.

Hard Passage
Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jon Guenther for his contribution to this work.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into thin air.

—John Quincy Adams

(1767–1848)

There are those who say what I do takes courage. The thing is, fighting alone takes skill. Courage is a willingness to persevere—to never give up fighting for what’s right even when the odds are stacked against you.

—Mack Bolan

To the men and women in the American armed forces

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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-SIX

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“I’m freezing, Leo!” Sergei Cherenko said.

Leonid Rostov looked at his friend with dismay and tried not to let Cherenko see him shiver. A biting, icy wind—usual for February in St. Petersburg—cut straight through the meager lining of his coat and chilled him to the bone. Rostov watched the snow swirl around them, his hands tucked inside his coat, his fingers numb. They had been standing in place for more than two hours, eyes glued to the nondescript building where men and women were meeting to decide the fates of Rostov and Cherenko.

“Why can’t we just go in there?” Cherenko demanded.

Rostov removed his hands from inside his coat long enough to blow into them, and said, “Because it would be the fastest way to getting our throats cut.”

Cherenko’s cheeks reddened more. “But they could not possibly know we are here!”

“Shush!” Rostov scolded him. “Keep your voice down, Sergei. Do you want to die where you stand?”

What Cherenko took for paranoia, Rostov knew to be prudence. Recent violence had increased against those who betrayed the Sevooborot Molodjozhny—also known as the SMJ—and Rostov didn’t feel like becoming another of their statistics. Many had attributed the violent outbreaks against foreign immigrants—particularly those of Arabic heritage—to the works of the Sevooborot. In truth, the youthful revolutionaries couldn’t have cared less about the immigration problems in Russia. The fascists and social purists were responsible for most of that carnage, and their activities were confined to cities where large populations of foreign exchange students attended college, Moscow being one example.

Rostov and Cherenko had been members in good standing with the Sevooborot until two weeks earlier. Rostov had no trouble with the violence perpetrated by his comrades, even that against locals, but he didn’t believe it was wise to involve outsiders in the great undertaking Sevooborot was about to embark on. When he made his opinion known to other members they betrayed him to the leadership, and before long he received an ultimatum to immediately and unequivocally renounce his claims or suffer penalties. Rostov refused and they forced him out, along with Cherenko. Cherenko, who had never done any wrong, became a sacrificial lamb solely because of his friendship and history with Rostov. The warning had come unbidden from a few men inside the group sympathetic to Rostov and Cherenko. The pair had been awakened in the dead of night, then rushed sleepy-eyed through the cold and crunching snow to a waiting automobile.

Two weeks passed and the safehouse where Rostov and Cherenko had been staying was compromised. With the help of his girlfriend’s connections in her job with a local government office in St. Petersburg, Rostov and Cherenko managed to contact the American government with a plea for asylum and immunity in trade for information about a plot against the United States.

Now they stood directly across the street from the small hotel where Peace Corps volunteers met. Among the group was a pair of undercover agents with forged documents that would get Rostov and Cherenko out of Russia and into the United States. Neither man really had a plan for what he would do after that, but for the moment the most important thing was to make contact without detection by their former colleagues. The Sevooborot had eyes and ears everywhere.

Rostov settled on the best course of action and with a self-assuring nod took two steps in the snow before he felt Cherenko’s hand fall on his shoulder. Rostov turned to look at his friend and saw Cherenko’s eyes weren’t focused on him but rather on something up the road. Through the grayish light of dusk and the white tendrils of snow he made out the gloomy whitewash of fast approaching headlights.

Rostov stepped into the shadows of the building and grabbed his friend’s hand, pulling the man down with him as he crouched. For at least an hour the street had been relatively deserted, people staying off the roads due to the inclement weather. Most citizens knew when to stay indoors, which left one of two possibilities: one, the occupants were outsiders; two, they were counting on the fact most people had the good sense to stay off the streets. Something in Rostov’s psyche told him the latter scenario seemed more likely. A minute later his suspicions were confirmed when the vehicle stopped at the curb in front of the hotel and four men in black leather jackets with machine pistols spilled from it.

The men looked in all directions, a bit wildly, and Rostov caught himself holding his breath. Fortunately, the gunners didn’t see the two men crouched in the shadows of the tobacco shop across from the hotel. Rostov and Cherenko watched with a mixture of fascination and horror as the men turned, barged through the revolving door of the hotel and faded from view. For a time, they heard nothing but the sounds of the violent storm and the muffled idle of the waiting car’s engine.

And then an idea crept into Rostov’s mind.

AGENT LYLE CARRON OF THE Central Intelligence Agency’s counterespionage unit watched the Peace Corps volunteers with feigned interest. He had only marginal curiosity in the activities of the people arrayed along the rows of tables in the hotel conference room, and he cared even less about their itinerary over the next few days. The thing that concerned Carron most as he checked his watch were the two young men who had missed their deadline.

Carron gazed at his counterpart across the room. The Company had just given the young, fresh-faced accountant from Langley his first assignment here for no other reason than his fluency in Russian. Big deal. Carron was fluent in Russian, too, seeing as how he’d operated with fair regularity in this country ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And while he admired the youthful exuberance of his fair-haired companion, what he really wished was that they had sent another veteran with him on this mission. Now he had to babysit three kids instead of just Rostov and Cherenko.

George Balford didn’t meet Carron’s gaze—he didn’t even notice Carron had looked in his direction—because he had his nose in the pamphlets and materials passed out by the chair of this workshop session. Carron thought about yanking the kid for a little sidebar in the restroom, but he didn’t want to risk the rendezvous with their two contacts. Carron had found it difficult to fit into the role of a Peace Corps volunteer. Obviously, he was older than the rest of them and a couple had remarked on that oddity. One young woman sitting next to him on the bus ride from the airport to the hotel had asked a lot of questions, so Carron had to make small talk and still keep his answers general enough that she wouldn’t spot him for the fraud he was.

Carron mused at her potential reaction had he broken down and said, “Listen, lady, I’m not part of the Peace Corps! I’m a covert agent for the CIA here in Russia to meet members of the Sevooborot who plan to break a terrorist plot against the U.S. wide open! Okay? You happy now?”

The thought of her stunned silence brought a smile to Carron’s face, but he shook himself back to reality and looked at his watch again. Balls. Where the crap were those two Russians? If Carron had to sit through another mundane workshop he might have to shoot himself with the pistol he’d found stashed securely inside his hotel room. This entire mission stunk anyway to Carron. What would a couple of young hoods inside the SMJ know about a plot by the Jemaah al-Islamiyah to supply arms and fuel the Youths Revolution in Russia? Why any of that would have an impact on the United States remained a mystery to Carron. Not that he cared all that much. His job was simply to see the pair safely out of the country, and that’s exactly what he planned to do.

The sound of people clapping thundered abruptly in Carron’s ears, and he realized they had drawn the session to a close. Good, he could hit the head and relieve himself before the next one started in ten minutes. Carron got to his feet, indicated his destination with a gesture to Balford—the young guy simply nodded an acknowledgment—and then hurried for the restrooms down the hall just outside the conference room.

Most of the volunteers rushed the podium to get some face time with the presenter, so Carron pretty much had the bathroom to himself. It wasn’t all that great, but it was clean and functional with a guy waiting inside to do everything from shine shoes and buff fingernails to spray him with the most horrendous smelling colognes on the market. Carron did his business, washed his hands and made for a quick exit. As he stepped from the restroom, he noticed four men in leather jackets enter the front door and rush the conference room. At the same moment, he spotted the wicked glint of light on the gunmetal of the weapons they held.

Carron reached beneath his coat and withdrew his .45-caliber pistol, but he traveled only three steps before screams and shouts from the conference room echoed into the hallway. The CIA agent picked up the pace, weapon held directly in front of him in a two-handed grip, but he was still some distance from the closed door of the conference room when he heard shouts followed by gunfire. First came the single report of a pistol immediately followed by short bursts from several submachine guns. Carron didn’t have to think about what it meant. Balford had probably died in that short-lived cacophony of violence.

He reached the door and crouched to consider his options. Not that Carron really had any. This wasn’t happening as he had planned. At least now he had some explanation for why Rostov and Cherenko were late. They were either dead—fallen at the hands of the SMJ—or they had expected this and were hiding in fear of their lives. In any case, Carron had bigger problems. There was no doubt in his mind that these aggressors were part of the SMJ, but he wondered how they’d known about the rendezvous. Was there a leak inside the Company or had it come from those connections made by Leonid Rostov’s girlfriend? Maybe the whole thing had been a hoax from the beginning, a way to get moles inside America. That didn’t make sense, either, that the SMJ would go to that kind of trouble for such a transparent charade.

No, this had to be something else. Something bigger. And as Carron waited in the hallway, his heart thudding against his chest, he couldn’t help but wonder just how deep, and how far up, it actually went.

LEONID ROSTOV CRAWLED agonizingly through eight inches of snow and slush toward the idling sedan. He realized how futile his plan would be if another car decided to come down the street. They wouldn’t be able to see him through the thickening snowfall, and in all likelihood would run over him. Rostov tried to ignore such morose thoughts and focused on the task at hand. He could almost feel Cherenko’s eyes on him as he crawled across the street.

When he reached the sedan, Rostov rose to one knee and tried the passenger door handle. It gave under his hand. Smiling with satisfaction, Rostov reached beneath his coat and drew the 9 mm Makarov pistol that was holstered beneath his arm. He then jerked the handle upward and yanked back on the door. He jumped in and stuck his pistol’s muzzle within an inch of the face of the surprised driver. In the heartbeat before the brief flash of the shot, Rostov recognized the young man as Josef Brish, a low-ranking member of the Sevooborot. Brish’s head exploded under the impact of the 9 mm slug that punched through the side of his forehead and blew his brains out.

Rostov turned and waved for Cherenko to join him, then opened the driver’s door and shoved Brish’s corpse from the cab. By the time his friend joined him, Rostov was nearly out of breath from the exertion.

“Are you okay?” Cherenko asked with mild concern.

Rostov nodded, although he continued fighting to catch his breath. He’d been experiencing shortness of breath and dizziness for the past few weeks. Rostov had smoked for a number of years as a teenager but had since given it up. Their recent exile had prevented Rostov from seeing a doctor. Well, he could get the care he needed once they were safely in America. If they ever got to America.

“Shut the door,” Rostov finally managed to say as his wheezing abated. “We must go now.”

He put the sedan into low gear and pulled from the curb slowly to avoid skidding. They couldn’t afford to dig themselves into a rut and end up going nowhere fast. Once they had traveled a few blocks, the two men began to feel better although they didn’t speak. They were watching every side road, every mirror, for any and every potential threat.

After a time Cherenko said, “I think we have gotten away with it.”

Rostov looked in his rearview mirror and replied, “You may be right. But we cannot assume anything.”

“How did they know, Leo?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Rostov’s thick eyebrows pinched together in concentration. “The fingers of the Revolution run deep, though. You should know this by now. We are not safe as long as we remain in Russia.”

“Should we call Kisa?”

“No!” Rostov barked at the mention of his lover’s name. When he saw Cherenko wince, he patted his arm and said more quietly, “That would put her in too much danger. They are probably monitoring her calls, in which case she may already be in trouble.”

“Do you think that’s how they knew?” Cherenko ventured.

“It’s possible.”

“So what do we do now?”

“All that we can do, my friend. We wait.”

CHAPTER ONE

St. Petersburg, Russia

Mack Bolan gazed out his hotel-room window and saw four armed men exit a sedan in front of the building. He immediately moved from the window to the nearby table, where he shrugged into the nylon shoulder holster that bore his Beretta 93-R. Then he donned a cream-colored sports jacket to hide the weapon.

As Bolan left the room and headed for a set of back stairs that provided the fastest unobstructed route to the first floor, he thought back on Hal Brognola’s briefing.

“HER NAME IS Kisa Naryshkin,” said Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations group, America’s ultra-covert antiterrorist organization based at Stony Man Farm in Virginia. “And according to our intelligence, she’s the only link we have to Leonid Rostov and Sergei Cherenko.

“While this one falls totally under the jurisdiction of the CIA, we would feel a whole lot better with you there to act as backup, Striker,” Brognola had told him.

“You’re worried this might go hard,” Bolan replied.

Brognola nodded. “Yeah. The guy they have there to oversee the transfer is Lyle Carron, and he’s got a lot of years with the Company. He’s one of their top agents on the Russian desk, as I understand it. George Balford’s another story, though. The guy’s only three months out of Langley, background in accounting.”

Bolan frowned. “When is the CIA going to learn that bean counters aren’t exactly the best choice for these types of operations? A sensitive case like this requires a certain expertise.”

“That was our assessment, as well,” said Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller. “That’s why we felt it was best to call you in on this one. Rostov and Cherenko claim to have information critical to uncovering some type of terrorist attack against the United States by the Jemaah al-Islamiyah. Apparently the Sevooborot Molodjozhny, also known as both the Youth Revolution and the SMJ, has made some type of handshake agreement with them, where the JI will provide the SMJ arms and training.”

“For what?” Bolan asked.

“That’s what we don’t know,” Brognola replied. “All Rostov and Cherenko can tell us right now is that this has something to do with a plot against America.”

“Sounds thin,” Bolan said. “If the JI’s planning a terrorist attack against us, I don’t see any logical connection to a militant youth organization inside Russia.”

“Maybe not, but the President thinks it’s vital we keep our thumb on this one until the transfer’s complete. That’s where you come in.”

Under other circumstances Mack Bolan might have passed, but something in his gut told him this went deep enough that he needed to get closer. And as he had no love for either militant Russian youths or Islamic terrorists—especially since both groups were quite outspoken of their hatred for America and her people—the Executioner decided to accept the mission and see what came of it.

THE EXECUTIONER PUSHED through the door at the first-floor landing that opened onto a hallway running along the east-side front of the hotel. He got his first view of the scene unfolding ahead. The doors were closed, shooting and screams had ensued, and a lone armed man had crouched at the door leading into the conference room, apparently unsure of what to do next. Bolan catfooted up the hall and entered through the double doors of an adjoining conference room. In the early hours of that morning, he’d paced the empty halls and accessed each conference room—mapping the approximate square footage and other important details of this wing—and then returned to his room where he sketched the layout. From his recon, Bolan had made some tactical decisions and picked the lock of the door leading to the room adjoining the one where the CIA agents would be waiting to rendezvous with Rostov and Cherenko. It was at that point Bolan had detached the divider separating the two conference rooms and left it slightly ajar to facilitate an alternate entrance and access if it became necessary.

Unfortunately it had.

Bolan let the door close behind him with a barely audible click. He waited long enough for his eyes to adjust to the light that emanated from the adjoining conference room, then made his way to the divider. Sidling up to the break in the divider, he took in the site with a practiced eye. The four men had moved the hostages to the back wall and lined them up single file on their knees with their hands on top of their heads. Good. That would keep the innocents out of his line of fire.

He then noticed the bloodied body of a young, fresh-faced man, a pistol lying just out of reach. It was George Balford. He recognized the face from the dossier provided by Stony Man. The poor kid hadn’t even known what hit him, probably, and if he had, he certainly hadn’t expected such a short career. So that meant Carron was out of the room when the gunmen had entered.

Bolan moved the divider slightly as the gunmen paced up and down the line, shouting at their hostages in a mix of Russian and English. He sighted on the closest gunman first, took a deep breath, let out half and then squeezed the trigger. The Beretta coughed discreetly as the 9 mm subsonic bullet crossed the expanse in a millisecond and punched through the target’s throat. The SMG clattered on the floor as the gunner raised his hands to his throat, then staggered.

The Executioner already had the second man in his sights before the body of the first hit the ground, and he squeezed off another shot. The round punched into the gunner’s breastbone and continued into his lung. The impact drove the man backward into his partner, who was apparently reacting to the falling body of the first man. While the third man tried to disentangle himself from his falling partner, the fourth gunman realized something was wrong and reacted, furiously scanning the area, fanning his weapon left and right.

The sound of a door flying open briefly drew everyone’s attention from the carnage. Bolan’s eyes flicked toward the front in time to see Carron burst through the doorway. The fourth man at the far end now had a visible target and swung his SMG into target acquisition, but he was too late. The .45-caliber pistol in Carron’s grip boomed twice. Both rounds landed on target, punching through the man’s stomach. Bolan gritted his teeth against the possibility one of them might continue through and strike a hostage, but his fears were never realized.

Bolan reacquired a sight picture on the remaining gunner as the man triggered a burst in Carron’s direction that sent the CIA agent diving for cover. The weapon skewed upward and delivered a flurry of rounds harmlessly into the corkboard ceiling as the Executioner pumped two slugs through the man’s skull. The bullets split his head clean open and dumped him to the floor.

In a snap decision, Bolan backed from the divider and raced across the room. He opened the door, peered into the hallway and then made for the steps when he verified it was empty. As the Executioner pushed through the door and climbed the stairwell he considered the situation at hand. The St. Petersburg police would undoubtedly swarm the building in the next ten minutes, which didn’t give him much time. He couldn’t remain in his room—they would conduct a door-to-door search, to be sure, and that meant a lot of uncomfortable questions. He would have to exit by the first-floor window of the rear stairwell. He could stow the pistol in a locker of one of the nearby train stations, so if they cordoned the area he wouldn’t get caught with a weapon.

Bolan went quickly through his room, left the clothes hanging in the closet and the bag of toiletries on the sink, and removed only his forged identification and passport and heavy overcoat. He made his exit through the rear stairwell window unobserved, donned the overcoat once outside, then headed to a nearby pay-phone. He dialed the hotel, asked if he had any messages, then hung up immediately. That would probably provide a fairly decent alibi if he was questioned by police at any later point. Bolan then headed for the train station where he could dump his armament.

Then it would become a waiting game. He would need to touch base with Stony Man at some point to see if he could get a line on Carron. There was no point in keeping his cover. He would need some backup in his search for the two missing contacts, and Carron seemed the most sensible one to provide that given he was out to accomplish the same end as Bolan. Things were shaping up just as they always seemed to for the Executioner.

Yeah. Business as usual.

EVEN WITH THEIR ADVANCED computer systems, it took Stony Man more than four hours to track down Lyle Carron. By the time Bolan found him in a small coffee shop on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, the massive clock on a nearby church had nearly struck 10:00 p.m. and another three inches of snow had fallen. Bolan shook the snow from his overcoat as he came through the door. He nodded at the barista, ordered a coffee in Russian and then moved over to Carron’s table.

“Mind if I sit down?” Bolan asked quietly.

Carron’s eyes focused on Bolan’s with surprise, then the company guy gestured to a seat in front of him. Bolan sat but the two men said nothing until the barista arrived with a carafe of hot coffee and then departed. Wisps of steam danced off the coffee as Bolan poured a cup for himself and then refilled Carron’s. The Company man looked bothered, his face gaunt and drawn, and Bolan had been in the business long enough to know what was eating at him.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Bolan said. “Balford, I mean.”

Carron looked Bolan in the eyes, something few men seemed able to do without looking away just as quickly. While the CIA agent didn’t say anything, Bolan could tell Carron was sizing him up. Many other men had looked into those same twin points of ice blue and shrunk under the stare. Carron seemed to take little more than a passing interest, obviously trying to decide whether he could trust Bolan.

“How did you find me?” When Bolan frowned, Carron waved it away and added quickly, “Never mind. Dumb question.” He took a sip of coffee and said, “You’re not Company.”

It wasn’t a question and Bolan shook his head. He extended his hand and said, “Name’s Cooper. Or Matt, if you prefer.”

“NSA?”

“Let’s just say I’m not on any page in the book,” Bolan said with a wan smile.

“The other shooter at the hotel. You?”

Bolan nodded. “Sorry I didn’t stick around, but I had to beat feet for the same reasons you did.”

“I’d like to know who sent you,” Carron said matter-of-factly. “And why.”

“And I’ll be happy to tell you,” Bolan said. “But first I have a question for you. What do you think may have happened Rostov and Cherenko?”

Carron shrugged and let out a sigh. “I figure they made someone who was onto them, maybe they had a tail. They would have known it was too risky to make the rendezvous or lead their friends from the SMJ to the hotel. Probably took them on a wild-goose chase. Either that or the SMJ caught up to them before they could meet us, tortured them for the time and place, then sent some boys to take care of me and George.”

“What about the car? You didn’t try to follow it?”

“What car?”

“The one that deposited the four hardcases outside the front door.”

Carron shook his head and frowned. “There wasn’t any car there. I used the front for my own exit, and only thing I saw was a corpse. Figured that was your handiwork, too.”

“No dice,” Bolan replied.

The Executioner felt a knot settle in his stomach. Somebody had obviously ambushed the driver, left his carcass on the sidewalk and taken the car. All of that had probably happened during Bolan’s trip to the first floor and the subsequent gun battle. He hadn’t even thought about that; he figured the driver would either get spooked after a certain amount of time elapsed and split, or the cops would pen him in and nab him when they arrived.

“The fact someone smoked the driver and got away means they were waiting for them,” Bolan finally said. “Either that or they saw an opportunity and decided to exploit it.”

“Yeah,” Carron replied. “And I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out who did it.”

“I sat watch on that street for more than an hour,” Bolan said. “And I never saw Rostov or Cherenko. Never saw anybody.”

“Not your fault. The weather was shit and you couldn’t have figured the SMJ would try making a play with me and Balford covering all bets. Besides, you weren’t there as the primary.”

Bolan reacted to that.

The CIA man smiled. “Don’t look so surprised. The Company has some sources, too.”

“So you knew they sent me?”

“Well, not you specifically, but I figured they’d send someone,” Carron replied. “Let’s face it. It would’ve been stupid for the upper echelon in Wonderland to put all of their eggs in one basket. I think that’s what got me incensed more than anything. They put out George and me as sacrificial lambs, almost like they were expecting us to blow it. Okay, I’m thick-skinned and I can take it, but George was barely out of college. Just a kid, Cooper.”

Carron lit a cigarette and poured them more coffee, then said, “I get it, though. And I understand them sending you as backup. The information Rostov and Cherenko have is obviously too important to trust without some type of failsafe operation in place. For what it’s worth, pal, I’m still glad you were there to cover my six.”

“Fact of the matter is, we both lost this one,” Bolan said.

“Maybe just the battle,” Carron replied with a wink. “War’s not over yet. Just what do these two know that’s so important? Any idea?”

Bolan weighed his one of two possible responses. He liked Carron, genuinely trusted him, but he couldn’t be sure how much he should let on he knew. Of course, Carron would have had a general idea anyway, although maybe not privy to all the details Stony Man had given Bolan. Still, the Executioner would need all the allies he could get if he were to find Rostov and Cherenko and get them out of the country. Carron had all of their documents, and he also knew the Russian sector pretty well if the information contained in his dossier was any indication. Besides, he’d lost his partner to this mission already and Bolan doubted he’d be able to keep that guy at any distance. Bolan had succeeded on missions like this partly because he knew when it was appropriate to take a lone-wolf stance versus when to accept an offer of help.

“I can give you a lot more details,” Bolan said. “But before I do, you should know I expect we’ll be working together from this point forward. And since we’re now in backup plan mode, and I’m the backup, I call the shots. You read me?”

“I read you,” Carron said, leaning forward on his elbows. “We follow your lead.”

“So we agree. Now, Rostov and Cherenko’s introduction to our people came by way of a woman named Kisa Naryshkin. Apparently she’s Rostov’s girlfriend or fiancée, something like that.”

“You’re thinking we should reach out to her.”

Bolan shrugged. “That’s a possibility if we don’t turn up any solid leads on Rostov and Cherenko, but I worry about compromising her cover. In fact, what happened at the hotel may indicate she’s already been compromised.”

“So how do you propose we find them?”

“I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet they’re our mysterious carjackers,” Bolan replied. He gestured at the window and continued, “We can also assume they won’t get far in this weather.”

“Agreed.” Carron took a last, deep drag from his cigarette, then stubbed it in the ashtray. “Where do you want to start looking?”

“Well, this is your neighborhood,” Bolan said. “If you were a pair of ex-militant youths in a stolen vehicle, where would you hide?”

Carron scratched his chin and stared at the ceiling in thought for a time. Finally he replied, “It’s not where they’re hiding that’s important. That could be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I’d suggest we find the ones who are after them. And for that, I know exactly where to look.”

CHAPTER TWO

A cool morning wind gusted across the veranda of Anatoly Satyev’s retreat home in a private community outside Reno. Satyev’s mansion was one of several secreted within the Sierra Vista on more than seven hundred acres sprawled around a central golf course and private resort. Only the richest and most influential people lived there.

Once a high-ranking military power broker inside the Soviet Union before its dissolution, the tide of change had forced Satyev to flee his country. He’d barely escaped with his life, and it had taken a number of years to secure his holdings and move his liquid assets safely out of the now-defunct commerce system. The cash from his investments had proved more than adequate to satiate his eclectic if not rather lavish tastes and within a few years he’d establish a sound reputation within the American business community.

With his personal and professional reputation now reestablished in a new land, Satyev set upon a course for reinstating the Communist Party in his homeland while profiting from the socialist fanaticism of those who considered themselves pure revolutionaries.

This morning, though, Satyev had awakened to a new sensation, one he’d not experienced for more than a decade: dread. And he was going to make sure that the man who arrived soon heard about it. That man was Jurg Kovlun, a former Spetsnaz commando and head of Satyev’s personal security force during his tenure with the Party. Kovlun showed up shortly after Satyev finished his breakfast in front of an open-pit fire that his servants had lit to keep off the morning chill.

“Good morning, sir,” Kovlun said.

Satyev waved him into a seat across from him at the table. He reached into the pocket of his robe and opened a silver case. “Cigarette?”

Kovlun nodded and gingerly removed one. Satyev took one for himself, which he affixed to a long cigarette holder, gestured for a light, and then once they were both comfortable and smoking he dismissed the house servant who had attended them.

“I’m not happy, Jurg,” Satyev said. “What is going on with this operation?”

“I’m sorry, Comrade Colonel, but I’m afraid I do not understand.”

Satyev pulled the long stem of the holder from his mouth, exhaling slowly through his nose as he repeated “You don’t understand” several times. “I see. Well, let me ask it another way. Why the fuck are two members of the Sevooborot running around the Mother Country shooting off their mouths about our agreement with the Jemaah al-Islamiyah? Hmm? And more importantly, why the fuck are they breathing? Hmm? Can you explain that, Comrade?”

“Ah, yes I have just recently heard of this.”

“Why have you just recently heard of it?” Satyev demanded.

“Well, I—”

“Never mind,” Satyev cut in, raising a hand. “I’m sure I don’t want to know why your men aren’t keeping you properly informed. That is not my problem to work out. Rather, it is yours. And you will work it out, Jurg, or I’m going to become very angry with you, and I’m sure you do not want that.”

“No, sir,” Kovlun replied quickly and he took a few short, successive puffs from his cigarette.

“Take care of this, and I mean soon. Otherwise, I’ll have to find someone else to handle this little problem. Understood?”

A few quicker, more nervous puffs. “Perfectly.”

“Fine. Now, tell me about the rest of the operation and how it’s proceeding.”

“We’ve secured the weapons we were promised, and the training is almost complete. I expect the first operation to begin tomorrow night.”

“Where will it begin?”

“It starts in Seattle. By the timeline you’ve given us, we’ll then move operations slowly down the West Coast until we reach Los Angeles. Then we will begin to expand toward the east. We expect everything to be completed within the year, just as you originally planned it.”

“Good, good,” Satyev said with a nod. “I cannot be any more satisfied with this news. What of our personnel issues?”

“We’re still having a bit of trouble getting some of the JI’s men into the country. None of our personnel have had a problem, but with the crackdowns it’s more difficult to get Muslim males through customs without them being subjected to some scrutiny.”

“Maybe I can do something about that,” Satyev replied. “Maybe we need to change the cover stories. Perhaps we can convince the American government they are mostly students, refugees of the recent violence against foreign immigration into Russia.”

“That might speed things up considerably, sir,” Kovlun agreed.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Satyev made a show of looking at his watch. “In the meantime, you have a plane to catch. I want you in place in Seattle well before the operations begin. You are to personally oversee every phase of it.”

“Of course, Comrade Colonel.” Kovlun jumped to his feet, nodded at Satyev in respect and then headed for the patio doors.

“And, Kovlun?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t forget to take care of that little problem we discussed. Rostov and Cherenko can never testify. Never. Do whatever you have to, but make sure those two are dead before the sun sets.”

“Consider it done, sir,” Kovlun replied.

WHEN KISA NARYSHKIN MET Leonid Rostov, she never expected he would be part of the Sevooborot; she definitely never expected to fall in love with him.

In some ways, their relationship had been doomed from the beginning. When she first discovered he was a member of one of the most violent youth gangs in all of Russia, she felt betrayed and incensed that he could deceive her about his business dealings. She remembered the encounter that night in her parents’ home where she was house-sitting while they were away on vacation. She recalled how they argued, how she screamed “I hate you” over and over again, and demanded that he decide between her or his murderous cohorts. That was when he’d broken down and professed his love for her, and they sat in the middle of the living-room floor, crying and holding each other. That was the same night they made love for the first time, when she had fully and completely given herself to him.

And that was the night she agreed to help him get out.

“But only if you help Sergei, too.”

Naryshkin’s contacts in the Russian government had proved the saving grace for her love and his friend. It hadn’t taken much to convince certain people that Rostov had information of considerable value to the United States. A whisper in the ears of a few select people working at the municipal records building. Someone had to have told the right people because less than a week passed before Naryshkin received a plain, unmarked envelope on her desk. Inside were instructions for the meeting.

She arrived two minutes early at the gift shop of a massive building, a new construction at the edge of Alexander Park, known as the Palace of the People. A work of the St. Petersburg Committee of Temperance, the building included an opera house and massive dining area, and the gift shop stuffed with souvenirs and trinkets of every kind acted as a type of guardian near the entrance. The back of that shop served as the meeting place.

The man who met with Kisa Naryshkin didn’t offer his name or agency, and she decided it better not to ask about such things, but when the conversation got under way she had no doubts this man could help her beloved Leo.

“I’ve been led to understand,” said the distinguished-looking man with gray eyes, salt-and-pepper hair and a British accent, “that you know a man who holds a high-ranking position inside the SMJ.”

Naryshkin nodded, the stray dark hairs of her head dancing in the golden morning rays that shone through the skylight. “It is my boyfriend, actually, Leonid Rostov. He is a member of the Sevooborot. I do not know his ranking inside of it. And his friend,” she added quickly as an afterthought. “The deal is for his friend, as well. Sergei Cherenko.”

The man smiled not unpleasantly. “You must understand, Miss Naryshkin, that there isn’t necessarily any deal on the table right now. My friends must be able to verify the validity of the information before the benefactors in question would be willing to make any arrangements.”

“Leo said you might say that,” she replied, just as she’d rehearsed with him two days earlier. She reached into her small handbag and removed a thick envelope, which she slid across the table at the man. “That contains the dates and details of certain crimes committed by the Sevooborot but never solved by local police or Interpol. These are details never released. There are also the names of the perpetrators, where they can be found and the location of evidence that should be sufficient to prosecute them.”

The man didn’t make a move for the envelope, something that surprised her. She had never practiced that part with Leo, and she wasn’t sure how to respond if the conversation took a turn in a direction that wasn’t part of the script.

For a long time, the man said nothing. He just looked at her and smiled. Finally he said, “I’m sure there’s some validity to the contents of this envelope.”

“There is, I can assure, sir. Check it out.”

“Oh, you can be sure we’ll validate the information. You have no need to worry about that. But to arrange for the safe passage of these two young men out of Russia without the SMJ finding out about it will be much more complex. You see, Miss Naryshkin, the SMJ has a growing number of connections and supporters within St. Petersburg. That support has extended to places like Moscow and Vladivostok.”

“Why should good and influential people wish to support a gang of hoodlums like the Sevooborot?”

“It would take me too long to explain the politics of your question,” the man replied. “And this is neither the time nor place for such a discussion.”

“You think me too naive or meager of intellect to understand it,” Naryshkin replied with a haughty raise of her chin.

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t have to. I could see it in your expression and condescending manner.” She tapped a long fingernail on the table and let a moment of silence lapse before asking, “Do you know who my father is, sir?”

“Of course.”

“Then you know I am an educated woman,” she replied. “And you must also know that I have quite a number of influences inside the Russian government.”

“I never said I doubted you, madam,” the man replied. He sat back in his chair, folded his arms and crossed his legs. “I’m simply trying to avoid any measure of antagonism by entertaining a conversation that can undoubtedly end in nothing but an argument, one that should serve no purpose as it pertains to Rostov and Cherenko.”

“So there’s something about all of this you don’t wish to tell me,” Naryshkin concluded.

The smile again. “That would be correct.”

That’s how it began and everything seemed to move at a blinding pace after that. Within a few days she received a second envelope, this one in her mail slot, with another envelope inside of it stamped with the letters “LR” in block letters. When Naryshkin delivered it to Leo and asked him about its contents, he declined to talk to her further about it. She could understand his concern, his desire to protect her, and at the time she’d had the meeting with a man she assumed to be some type of British agent, she hadn’t even considered what would become of them if Leo left the country.

“I don’t know yet,” he told her. “But I promise you that I will find a way for us to be together. No matter how long it takes me. I promise you. I love you.”

More than a month had passed since their last meeting and she had neither heard from nor seen him. For all she knew, he’d already left the country along with the Cherenko. One of her closest girlfriends, Sonya Vdovin, happened to be part of the Sevooborot scene, partying at a lot of the same clubs as its members. But Naryshkin had decided not to publicly condemn her friend, rather she kept her mouth shut and pumped the young woman for any information she could get.

“No, I haven’t seen Leo around,” Vdovin would say. “I haven’t seen Sergei, either. Which is really too bad because he’s quite…how do I say it, adept in bed.” And then a mischievous smile would play at her lips. “Yes, that’s a good word.”

So Naryshkin lay alone in bed each night, wondering and worrying, finally drifting off to sleep in the wee hours of the morning after waiting for him to call. Eventually she started to give up and she hated herself for thinking that way. Leo had made her a promise and whatever else he might have done or not done, she loved him and she knew him well enough to know that he was a man of his word. And then one night, this night, the phone rang.

She answered it breathlessly. “Hello?”

“Hello, my sweet.”

“Oh, Le—”

“Don’t use names!” he snapped.

Naryshkin swallowed her voice along with a big chunk of disappointment. She yearned to see him, to talk to him, to touch him at that very moment but she didn’t dare. Finally she asked, “How are you?”

“I am okay.”

“Are you…” She hesitated, not sure how to ask the question, but then she didn’t have to worry about it.

“No, I am not,” he said. His voice cracked when he added, “Something went wrong, dearest. Something went horribly wrong. Good people are now likely dead.”

Before she could conjure a reply he moved away from the phone, a fit of coughing and wheezing having overtaken him. That cough and shortness of breath had grown progressively worse. Naryshkin had feigned an allergy to get a doctor friend of her father’s to prescribe an inhaler of powerful medicine. Medical care in Russia still wasn’t adequate to meet the needs of many people. She had provided the last inhaler to him more than a month ago, so she knew he had to have exhausted his supply of medicine by now.

“You do not sound good,” she said. “Hello?”

It was Sergei Cherenko’s voice that came on the line. “Hello.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s not doing well. I’m worried about him. I am also worried for myself.”

“Where are you? Let me come get you.”

“No,” Sergei replied. “He would never forgive me if I put you in any sort of danger. In fact, I would never forgive myself.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“It is not silliness, it’s practicality! This has become a very dangerous game for us, and I’m not sure how much longer we are going to be able to play it. We need your help but the only way we’ll accept it is if you immediately get in touch with your contacts. Let them know things didn’t happen like they should have. Tell them ‘The meet did not happen. We are going to the alternate plan.’ Do you have that?”

“Yes, I have it. But—”

“I must go now.”

“No, wait! Let me speak to him.”

“He is still having trouble. He cannot speak right now.”

“Okay,” she said, doing her best to be brave and hide the disappointment in her voice. “You take care of him. And yourself.”

But Naryshkin then realized she was talking to dead air—Sergei had hung up the phone. She slowly replaced the receiver in the latch hook of the phone pedestal and considered this news. What had happened? It should have been so easy and yet here they were, calling her, still inside Russia—maybe still even in St. Petersburg—with the mother of all storms outside. She knew what Sergei’s comments had meant. The meeting hadn’t taken place and they were now going to their alternate plan, one that involved traveling to Murmansk where they would seek passage aboard a trawler or small cargo carrier.

The woman started to pick up the phone and then thought better of it. Leo hadn’t wanted her to use any names, which meant he believed someone might be tapping her phone. In fact, members of the Sevooborot might even have her under surveillance, although she’d been mindful to keep her eyes open for any observers since her last night with Leo. Not that she hadn’t worn her emotions on her sleeve. Both of her parents had repeatedly inquired as to what was bothering her ever since their return, but she simply laughed it off and concocted excuses about how hard she’d been working, how stressful her job was and so forth. Her father offered to intervene but she expressly forbade him, warning that she was an adult now and that he’d taught her to stand upon her own two feet. That was usually enough to end the conversation.

This time, though, she knew it would become dangerous to do this alone. After sitting on the edge of her bed, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip, Naryshkin made a decision and rose to dress. It was time to face this situation with all the courage and veracity she’d been taught, and to reach out for help to the only two people left in the world she trusted. There had never been anything her father and mother couldn’t overcome in the past. Yes. Her father had once been an influential man in the government. He had many connections. And he would help her, especially when she professed her undying love for Leo. After all, her father was a hopeless romantic who could refuse his family nothing.

Yes. She would go to them immediately, wake them from their beds if she had to.

But Naryshkin was so focused on her mission, she failed to notice the two men who observed her leave her two-story flat, get into her car and begin the long, arduous drive to her father’s house.

CHAPTER THREE

“I have to hand it to you, Carron,” Mack Bolan said. “I might never have thought of this.”

Carron chuckled and replied, “Yeah. I figure if you want to catch the mouse but don’t know where he’s hiding, then your next best option’s to sit on the cat.”

In this case, they were sitting on an entire den of cats. One of the things Carron had learned during the past few years working the Russian sector were the hangouts of every SMJ cell in St. Petersburg. This wouldn’t have necessarily been difficult information to come by given Stony Man’s significant reach into the intelligence community, but it certainly would have taken time. It was this fact that made Bolan glad he decided to enlist Carron’s help.

The snow stopped falling while they were in the café and the pair managed to get a taxi ride to the train station where Bolan had stored his weaponry. Another stop at a CIA safehouse allowed Carron time to check with his superiors and gave Bolan the opportunity to bring Stony Man up to date on the mission status. A second cab ride had brought them to a club, one that served alcohol and catered to the underage crowd.

It disgusted Bolan that such establishments were permitted to exist, although he knew the problem wasn’t isolated to St. Petersburg.

“We can’t save them all,” Carron had responded when Bolan voiced his concern.

“We can if we do it a few kids at a time,” had been Bolan’s reply.

The two men watched the entrance for about twenty minutes before Bolan checked his watch. “Almost 2330.”

“Sounds like it’s about time to crash the party.”

“My thought exactly,” Bolan said. “You’re fluent in Russian. How about I back your play this time around?”

“No problem.”

The two men stepped from the shelter of the awning and hurried carefully across the slippery street. Vehicles had been arriving infrequently to deposit their occupants outside the front door of the club. At the moment, the sidewalk was empty and they didn’t see anyone hanging around nearby. The weather and the weeknight hour seemed to have kept the majority of people indoors, leaving only the more young and daring crowd to venture into the nightlife. Carron had told Bolan that in the summer this part of town was typically packed with pedestrians and all the shops were open.

The pair reached the door and Bolan opened it to admit Carron first. They crossed a very dark and narrow vestibule, and beyond that was another entryway, this one a dark, heavy curtain, through which the briefest flash of lights and the steady thump of electronic dance music encompassed them. Carron pushed the curtain aside and was immediately detained by a huge, bald man. Bolan didn’t understand the full exchange but he caught the gist of the conversation.

“Hold it,” the bouncer said. “This is a private party.”

“I was invited,” Carron replied.

“I don’t think you were,” the door guy said, and he jabbed a finger into Carron’s shoulder.

In the blink of an eye the man’s finger disappeared from sight, enfolded by Carron’s left hand. The bouncer’s knees bent some in a show of submission as Carron bent the finger backward to the breaking point. A second man, a bit smaller than the door guy, stepped forward to intervene, but Bolan intercepted him with the barrel of his Beretta 93-R in the guy’s ribs. He held the weapon in such a way nobody inside the club could see it.

Bolan favored the man with a cold smile. “We’re not here for trouble, so don’t start any.”

“What do you want?” the man asked in English.

“We’re looking for two guys, names of Rostov and Cherenko,” Bolan replied. “We have it on good advice they may hang out here.”

The man’s face paled. “They are not here.”

Carron then said something to the bouncer in Russian. The man winced with the increased pressure applied to his finger and then jerked his thumb toward the back of the club. Through the smoky haze and the flashing lights Carron and Bolan could make out an older man surrounded by at least half a dozen beautiful women. Carron fired off a couple more questions, then released his hold on the bouncer. The bouncer’s eyes were filled with hatred but he made no attempt to detain them from entering the club.

Carron leaned close to Bolan’s ear to be heard over the incessant beat of the music. “He says we should talk to the blond woman over there. Her name’s Sonya Vdovin. She’s like part of the SMJ’s entourage, or something.”

“I didn’t know militant youth gangs had groupies,” the Executioner remarked.

Carron shrugged. “I guess.”

Bolan took point now with Carron watching his back. They advanced on the raised booth adjacent to the dance floor, approaching it from two directions. The man seated at the center of the booth wore a silk jacket in L.A. Lakers purple, and sunglasses. As many glittering, gaudy rings adorned his fingers as the number of women strewed sensuously across the massive booth surrounding his table. Bolan searched his mental files for a name to put to that smug face but came up empty. Apparently this one liked to keep a low profile. Bolan could only assume he was part of SMJ’s top echelon, and young as he might be, that still made him one of the enemy.

Among the man’s little harem were mostly dark browns and auburns, with one blond seated two spots to the man’s left. Sonya Vdovin.

A brief conversation took place in Russian between Carron and the pimp look-alike before total chaos erupted in the club. Bolan spotted the flash of strobes on metal in his peripheral vision and turned in time to see a pair of young men on approach, machine pistols held too close to their bodies to be effective in that space. Bolan reacted automatically, whipping the Beretta 93-R from shoulder leather. He drew a split-second bead on the first gunner and squeezed the trigger. The Beretta’s report couldn’t even be heard above the music but that made the shot no less effective. The 9 mm Parabellum round pounded into the man’s breastbone and pitched him into a table occupied by a man and woman a couple of booths down. The second gunman skidded to a halt and brought his SMG to bear, but Bolan already had him tagged. The Executioner fired a double-tap this time that drilled the first slug into his opponent’s chest and the second through his upper lip. The proximity of the shot flipped the guy off his feet and dumped him over the railing lining the walkway. His body smacked the dance floor and the people below began to scream and shrink away from the corpse.

Bolan stepped back and nearly lost his footing on some steps as the man in the Lakers jacket suddenly upended the table and produced a machine pistol. The soldier managed to keep his feet but in that brief moment he could only shout a warning at Carron. The Company man had drawn his pistol in the moment during Bolan’s initial encounter, but his focus had been on the battle and he forgot to cover his flank from the table man. Even as Bolan raised the Beretta and sighted on the hood, the rattle of the Uzi submachine gun resounded above the shouting and scrambling of the club’s patrons. A flurry of red splotches peppered the front of Carron’s shirt as he triggered his own weapon reflexively and sent a .45-caliber bullet into the kneecap of a woman seated next to the SMJ gunner. The force of the blasts from the SMJ gunner then drove him into an empty table. Carron crashed to the floor amid splinters of wood, torn polyester and glass from a broken candle holder.

The Executioner triggered four successive shots, but he knew he was too late. He drove the distraction from his mind as the SMJ gang member’s body slammed into the wall and tumbled off the seat, coming to a rest on the floor amid booze, food and blood.

The women had already made themselves scarce in the melee, and Bolan had to search long and hard before he spotted the flash of blond hair that signaled Sonya Vdovin. Bolan went after her as she disappeared through a back exit of the club. He nearly reached the doorway when the hulking bouncer blocked his way. Bolan never lost momentum as he left his feet and closed the gap with a perfectly executed flying kick to the bouncer’s stomach. The kick drove the man back with enough force to break down the door of the rear exit. Bolan landed catlike on his feet and jumped over the bouncer’s body now sprawled unconscious across the splintered door.

The Executioner pushed through a metal door that opened onto a back alley and looked both ways but saw nothing. He was about to turn back but then looked down and noticed a pair of tracks in the snow that could only have been made by high heels. He followed them with his eyes as they crossed the alley and then stopped at a garbage container. Bolan glanced upward just as he heard a clang from above and saw Vdovin making her way up a fire escape. Bolan thought about following, then realized she couldn’t go anywhere from there except back down the stairs of the building—assuming she could access the roof door—or down the fire escape on the opposite side.

Bolan could easily cover either one without a whole lot of effort.

The Executioner raced to the front of the building next to the club, then headed into the alleyway on the far side where he stepped into the shadows of the structure beyond it. His position allowed him to watch both the alley and the front of the building. Several minutes elapsed before Bolan heard the first wail of police sirens. If Vdovin didn’t make her play soon, he would have to leave to avoid the cops and that would put him back to square one—he couldn’t afford to give up his only lead.

As predicted, the faint clang of high heels on metal reverberated in the cold, thin air and Bolan followed Sonya Vdovin’s shadowy progress as she descended the fire escape. He moved deeper into the alley, finding concealment behind a large cardboard box, and considered drawing his Beretta. He thought better of it. If he wanted information, he needed Vdovin on his side and he figured sticking a gun her face wouldn’t be a good start to their relationship. Then again, he couldn’t be entirely sure where her loyalties lay—she did hang out with one of the worst criminal elements in the city, after all, and he doubted she behaved like an angel while in their company.

Bolan made his move as soon as Vdovin’s feet touched the ground. He stepped from the shadows as she walked past him and drew up on her left flank. He wrapped a hand tightly around her elbow and steered her onto the sidewalk. Her eyes grew big and she started to open her mouth to scream when Bolan clamped his left hand over it.

“Quiet,” he commanded. “I’m not going to hurt you. I need your help.”

She tried to kick at him with her spiked heels, but Bolan moved out of the line of attack. He swung her body into the wall, not hard enough to hurt her but with adequate force to get the message across he wasn’t fooling around. Hand still over her mouth, Bolan leaned close.

“I already said I wasn’t going to hurt you, so there’s no more reason to fight me.”

Tears glistened as they pooled in her lower eyelids. Bolan felt her body shudder against his own and realized she wasn’t wearing a jacket. He slowly let his hand off her mouth, released his hold and quickly shrugged out of his coat. He held it out and she stepped off the wall to allow him enough room to drape it around her shoulders. He still wore the sport jacket beneath the overcoat so the Beretta remained concealed in shoulder leather.

“Come on,” he said more quietly. “Let’s go someplace we can talk.”

THE SOMEPLACE TURNED OUT to be a cozy bistro-style restaurant a mile from the club.

The waiter took their orders for coffee, bread and a soup appetizer. Vdovin had kept the overcoat draped across her shoulders when they entered the place so as not to call much attention to the skimpy blouse and short skirt she wore beneath it. She looked older than her twenty years, so her appearance on Bolan’s arm didn’t seem out of place with the other patrons, most of whom looked to be from high society. The place was also crowded, which surprised Bolan until Vdovin explained, according to the waiter, that a late opera had just ended.

“Your English is good,” Bolan said. “With barely any trace of an accent.”

Vdovin smiled briefly. “I was born in Russia but spent a number of years in Australia.”

“That explains the strange inflections.”

“My parents were not popular people. I was too young to remember, but they were forced from the country during the revolution. I only returned a few years ago.”

“And got in with the best crowd right off,” Bolan quipped.

“You’ve no right to judge me for that,” she countered.

“You’re right. Sorry. But I’m sure you know by now I’m not out to hurt you. All I want to know is where I can find Rostov and Cherenko.”

She snorted. “Of course. You and half of the people I know in the Sevooborot. But I don’t know where they are. And even if I did, I would not betray my friends.”

“I thought Rostov and Cherenko were your friends.”

Vdovin signaled for the cigarette girl who came over and extended a tray arrayed with a variety of smokes. Vdovin selected one, waited for the cigarette to be lit and then looked expectantly at Bolan. The Executioner shook his head at the cigarette girl as he handed her a generous tip and she sashayed from the table. Bolan looked around them but nobody seemed to notice them.

“You were saying?” he prompted.

“I have nothing to do with Leo and Sergei, either for or against. I only knew them for a short time, and I broke all contact with them once I had learned they betrayed the Sevooborot. My only connection with them is my friendship with Kisa.”

“Kisa…Kisa Naryshkin?”

Vdovin seemed to let her guard down some. “You know Kisa?”

“Not personally,” Bolan said with a shake of his head. “But I know she’s Rostov’s girlfriend, and I know she could be in serious danger from people inside the SMJ.”

“She is in no danger from the Sevooborot.”

“Want to bet?” Bolan countered. “I think there’s something you don’t understand here. Those people you like to hang out with aren’t in this just for the sake of Mother Russia. Don’t get that in your head for a second. They’re driven by two things, power and money, and they’re willing to steal or kill or whatever else they have to do to accomplish their ends.”

“I do not believe you,” she said. “I know these people. They are my friends.”

“Time to find some new friends, Sonya.” Bolan leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “You act like this is some kind of country club you belong to. I have intelligence that these supposed friends of yours are in bed with members of the Jemaah al-Islamiyah. Are you familiar with that group?”

Vdovin shook her head.

“Well, let me give you a clue. The JI is one of the most influential terrorist organizations in Southeast Asia. They’re responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent people.”

Vdovin took a long drag off her cigarette, sat back and folded one arm across her body defensively, holding the cigarette high in her opposing hand. “I do not believe you.”

“Whether you believe me or not isn’t important,” Bolan said. “And it doesn’t change the fact the JI is active in places like Afghanistan, the Philippines and Indonesia, to make no mention of the campaigns they sponsor in a half dozen other countries.”

“My friends fight against those people. They stop them from coming into our country and stealing jobs and murdering our people.”

Bolan’s smile was frosty, at best. “I think you’re confused, Sonya. The SMJ has made some kind of deal with the JI. Now I don’t know what it’s for, but Rostov and Cherenko know. That’s why your friends in the SMJ want them dead.”

“Leo betrayed the code of silence,” Vdovin insisted. “Anything that was done to him or is done to him is because of that. And in the course of betraying the Sevooborot, he brought down Sergei, as well.”

“I’m not part of these people. Why did they try to kill me?”

“Because you came to kill them.”

Bolan shook his head. “No dice. We came looking for you, not them. The man you were with tonight. Who was he?”

“I have told you before, I will not betray my friends.”

“What about Kisa?” Bolan said. “You said she was your friend.”

“And so she is.”

“Who do you think arranged to get Rostov and Cherenko out of the country?” Bolan replied. “You don’t think your precious revolutionaries won’t try to kill her once they find out?”

“They will probably do nothing,” she said. “She is not even part of the Sevooborot.”

“Really,” Bolan said. “Then I guess it would surprise you to know they’ve had her under surveillance for some time now.”

“How do you know this?”

The Executioner decided to go for broke and play his only trump card. “The same way I knew how to find you. Listen, Sonya, you don’t have to believe anything I say. But two good men have already died at the hands of your friends, and I’m here to make sure nobody else falls. Now I can do that with or without your help, but in any case you need to wise up and see what’s going on around you.”

“I have already told you that I don’t know where to find Leo and Sergei.”

“But Kisa confided in you,” he said.

“Yes.”

“If she were in trouble, where would she go for help? Would she come to you?”

At first, Vdovin didn’t answer—she just sat and stared—and Bolan wondered if she had finally decided to shut down and not answer any questions. Slowly, he realized that she was thinking about what he’d said. Something had dawned on her, some small bit of their discussion had taken hold, and she was now beginning to see Bolan had told her the truth.

Finally, Vdovin shook her head. “No. There is only one person she would go to for help. Her father.”

Bolan nodded grimly and replied, “Tell me where to find him.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Kisa Naryshkin’s parents greeted her warmly but tiredly when she arrived at their home.

After summoning a house servant to put on a pot of tea, they adjourned to the parlor where Kisa’s father lit a fire. She watched him work with the same fascination she always held for him, and her mother watched her with same amusement she always had when Kisa watched her father. Tolenka Valdimirovich Naryshkin had served with the GRU, the main intelligence arm of the General Staff, Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Tolenka’s distinguished career began in 1962 where he served as adjutant to a low-level officer in the supply distribution logistics arena. The GRU promoted him quickly through the ranks and he worked with both Soviet signal intelligence and field reconnaissance before being transferred to the Division of Human Intelligence. On several occasions during the eighties and nineties, a number of foreign intelligence services had approached Tolenka Naryshkin with offers to perform counterespionage activities against his own country, but according to Kisa’s mother he refused every offer and reported it immediately to his superiors. This was something Kisa had learned very early in her life about her father: no matter how much it might benefit him, monetarily or otherwise, he would not betray his friends or his country.

Another thing that separated Tolenka from other men in his position was his sense of justice. Kisa had grown up—an only child as complications during her birth had left her mother sterile—hearing her father say regularly that he believed in the general goodness of most people. While many considered this naïveté, an odd trait for a military intelligence officer, Tolenka preferred to call it “natural humanistic optimism” and refused to offer any explanation or defense for his beliefs. What many failed to understand, although his daughter knew this simply by watching her father’s interactions with others, was that Tolenka Naryshkin had a way of bringing out the very best in people. This had made him both a successful intelligence gatherer and administrator in the GRU.

The traits of steadfastness, truth and fairness that Kisa had come to know about her father made it all the more difficult to tell him what she was about to tell him. Certainly he would view her actions as unethical, maybe even as betrayal. All she could do was to hope he would understand. That didn’t make it any easier when he sat next to her on the sofa and watched her intently with his gray eyes.

Tolenka smiled. “I wondered when you would come to us with whatever’s been troubling you these past two months. I have to admit I didn’t expect a visit at such a late hour.”

Kisa smiled and shrugged, lowering her eyes and looking briefly at her mother for support.

“What I have to say is difficult, Father,” she began.

“You know you can tell me anything.”

“I do,” she said, and quickly added, “and I know you love me.”

“What’s troubling you, Kisa?” her mother prompted.

“Please, don’t interrupt me again or this will become too difficult,” she said. “I have done something of which I am ashamed. But it has gone very wrong, Father, and I don’t know what to do. So I am coming to you to admit of my indiscretions and ask you to help me.”

Tolenka’s eyes narrowed slightly for only a moment, then he nodded.

“About five weeks ago, I used contacts inside my office to arrange defection of two men to the United States.” Kisa’s mother took a sharp, inward breath and looked at Tolenka, who didn’t react. “One of these men was Leonid Rostov, the man I’d been dating. You met him once. You remember?”

Tolenka nodded.

Kisa took a deep breath and plodded on. “He had a friend, Sergei Cherenko, who I also helped get out of the country because both of their lives were endangered by the same people.”

“Who, dear?” her mother asked.

Kisa fixed her mother with a level gaze. “Leo and Sergei were members of the Sevooborot.”

Now it was Tolenka Naryshkin’s turn to react. He stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his smoking jacket, marched to the fire and stared with a steely expression at the growing flames. Kisa could tell he’d become angered by her mention of the revolutionary organization. Her father considered them traitors to the country, murderers and dissenters who refused to let the revolution die. Things had improved vastly in Russia over the past nine years, particularly in their part of the country. People no longer had to fear being yanked out of their bed by the secret police in the dead of morning for their political affiliations, or fret over the possible repercussions when a volume of family members suddenly went missing. While things weren’t perfect, not by far, they were much improved.

Tolenka said quietly, “Go on, Kisa. Tell me everything.”

And that’s exactly what Kisa Naryshkin did. She laid it out for her parents, every last detail, stealing regular glances at her father to see how he reacted to certain parts of her tale. She felt horrible having betrayed him like she did, but she could not have stood by and done nothing—risked the possibility of her true love being murdered—as long as she had the connections and resources to give Leo and Sergei a fighting chance.

When she completed her story, she began to cry softly and her mother moved over to the sofa and wrapped comforting arms around her. “You poor child. You’ve taken all this grown-up responsibility upon yourself.”

Tolenka Naryshkin said nothing for a very long time; he just stared into the fire while his daughter cried. Finally he turned and sat in his wingback chair and fixed his daughter with a sympathetic expression.

“When you told us of this, my first thought was to my career and how this might have affected me. But since I retired last year, this is of null effect. What hurts my heart more than anything is that you did not come to me with this in the beginning. However, you are my daughter and there is very little I would not do for you or your mother. In fact, there is almost nothing I wouldn’t do.”

Kisa’s eyes rested on him.

Tolenka sighed. “You really love this man, do you?”

She nodded.

“And what about him? He feels the same way?”

Kisa nodded again. “He was going to send for me once he was safely out of the country and he’d told the Americans about the terrorist plot. And I will go to him.”

Tolenka smiled and reached out a hand to her. “Then tell me how Father can help.”

Kisa emitted a soppy giggle and then rushed to her father’s arms. He hugged her and they held the embrace for nearly a minute. When Kisa had regained some control of her emotional outburst she sat on the table and told her mother and father of the phone call and the alternate plan for Leo and Sergei to catch a boat from Murmansk. Her father considered this information carefully, sat a minute in thoughtful contemplation then rose and crossed to the telephone.

“I will reach out to my contacts in Murmansk,” he said. “I’m sure I can get them safely aboard a—”

The window of the parlor suddenly erupted and a gust of cold air whished at the flames of the fire, causing them to flicker and rise with the additional air flow. Kisa screamed as a man clad in black boots and camouflage pants entered. A black ski mask covered his face but all three of the Naryshkin family members understood the intent from the automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. Another dressed just like him followed afterward.

Tolenka Naryshkin looked quickly around, rushed to the fireplace and grabbed the wrought-iron poker from the tool stand. He rushed the first man and swung the poker, catching the intruder with a glancing blow that bounced off his shoulder and subsequently grazed the masked man’s head. The guy recoiled from the attack, a bit surprised at the resistance. Tolenka’s mother hauled her daughter to her feet by an arm and ordered her to run before pushing her in the direction of the door. Kisa got as far as the door before stopping to look back. Her father was now embroiled in a vicious, hand-to-hand struggle with the second combatant while the first tried to scramble to his feet and help his comrade. The man never made it that far as Kisa’s mother leaped onto the man’s back and began to beat her fists on his shoulders. At one point, she clawed at his face and ripped part of the mask away, taking blood and flesh along with it. The man howled in pain and in one vicious show of strength he threw Kisa’s mother off his back.

Kisa watched in horror as her mother landed hard on the ground and smacked her head against a wall-mounted radiator. Blood gushed from the wound and a sickening crack resounded through the air. Kisa started screaming at the man and he started to raise the machine pistol but her father—who had somehow gotten into the precarious position of having one arm pinned behind his back and the other wrapped around his own throat—kicked furiously at the weapon. The muzzle tracked upward just as the gunner squeezed the trigger and plaster rained down from where a volley of bullets chewed into the wall and ceiling above her head.

“Kisa…run!”

She hesitated another moment and then burst out of the parlor and raced for the exit. She was halfway down the hallway when the front door shot inward, swinging violently against the back wall. The entryway framed a tall, muscular man dressed in skintight black from head to toe. He held a pistol in his right fist and various implements of war dangled from the harness he wore. A pair of icy blue eyes inset on hard, chiseled features locked on Kisa and brought her to a skidding halt.

“You okay?” he asked.

Kisa didn’t say anything for a moment, struck dumb by the awesome sight of the grim specter who entered her house and approached with a confident stride that could only have been forged out of a lifetime of hardships and violence. She seemed unable to form words, but she did manage to point toward the back room and mouth a cry for help.

The man nodded and rushed past her.

THE LAST THING Mack Bolan had expected to see on his arrival at the house of Kisa’s father was a band of SMJ thugs ring the property before two of them made a forced entry through a window.

The Executioner elected to penetrate the house via the front door, the one place his enemies had not thought of, which would permit him quick and ready access to most of the first floor yet facilitate a hit-and-get scenario if the situation called for it. As soon as the SMJ hoods crashed through the window, Bolan went EVA and approached the front door, drawing his Beretta 93-R on the move and adjusting the selector switch to 3-round bursts. One kick with his two-hundred-plus pounds behind it proved sufficient to the task. The door rocketed aside and Bolan’s eyes locked on those belonging to the frightened face of a young woman: Kisa Naryshkin.

“You okay?”

She seemed unable to find her voice, but the pointing and whimpering was enough information for Bolan to act on. The warrior moved swiftly past her and toward the room where the pair of SMJ hoods had made entry. He had nearly reached the doorway when one of the militant youths emerged with a machine pistol in his hands. Bolan raised the Beretta and squeezed the trigger, the triburst vaporizing the man’s skull. The almost headless corpse shot backward and exited through the massive floor-to ceiling window of the back hallway.

Bolan turned into the room in time to see the second SMJ terrorist whipping an older man with his SMG. The young hoodlum stopped and looked at Bolan in shock. The Executioner wiped the man’s surprised expression from his face with a 3-round burst to the chest. The impact flipped the man off his victim; his body slid across the polished, wooden floor and smacked to a halt against the back wall of the parlor. Bolan crossed to the victim. Blood seeped from a deep laceration across his cheek but otherwise he was breathing and thrashing about in semiconsciousness. He’d live. Bolan then noticed the woman and crouched next to her to check for a pulse at the neck: also alive. He rose as Kisa entered the room.

“You speak English?” he asked. When she nodded he said, “Call for help and stay locked in here until I return.”

Bolan closed the door behind him, then headed up the hallway. He reached a front room on the opposite side of the house in time to catch two more SMJ gunners, each coming through one of the two windows. The men appeared surprised to see Bolan waiting there, pistol drawn. They foolishly tried to bring their SMGs to bear, but the Executioner easily had the drop on them. His first burst sent one of the men back out the window with a trio of bullet holes to the chest. The second toppled inward, triggering a fusillade of rounds that gouged through a rug and into the wooden floor beneath it as Bolan’s second burst caught him at belly, sternum and chin.

Bolan switched out magazines as he wheeled and left the study. He entered a room on the other side of the hallway and crouched in a corner where he could cover the entire dining area. He heard a window break and watched a moment later as a small, elderly woman in a housecoat burst through the swing door of the kitchen and ran screaming toward an exit door at the far end of the dining room. Two SMJ youths followed through that door, machine pistols held at the ready.

Bolan steadied the Beretta 93-R in a two-handed grip and squeezed the trigger. The 9 mm Parabellum slugs struck the first unsuspecting gunman in the chest and slammed him against a china cabinet. The other gunner reacted with incredible speed and swept the entire area with a furious stream of sizzlers from his AKSU assault rifle, but he was well high of Bolan’s position in the shadows. Undaunted by the rounds buzzing over his head and slapping into the plaster walls, the Executioner took time to sight on the gun-toting hoodlum. He squeezed off a double-tap that drilled six rounds through the man’s chest, several puncturing a lung and his aorta. The AKSU flew from the enemy’s fingers and he staggered to his knees before toppling onto his side. His body twitched several times as he bled out.

And with that, Bolan accounted for the six men he’d observed surrounding the residence.

Satisfied he’d neutralized all aggressors, Bolan rose and returned to the parlor. He rapped his knuckles softly against the door and called Kisa by name. She opened it a moment later and admitted him. Her father now sat on the edge of the sofa at the head of the woman who they had placed there. The man held a bloody handkerchief to his face while keeping vigil on the woman, who Bolan had to assume was his wife.

“You’re out of danger now,” Bolan said.

The man nodded and then extended his free hand. “I don’t know who you are, sir, but we owe you our lives.”

Bolan shook the man’s hand and replied, “You’re welcome. But it’s best you forget it now.”

Kisa stepped forward and laid a hand on Bolan’s forearm. “Are you from America? Were you the one they sent to help my Leo?”

Bolan shook his head. “No, I was the backup plan. These men who attacked you are with the SMJ. They’ve already killed two American intelligence officers, and you might have been next if your friend, Sonya, hadn’t decided to tell me where you were.”

“I see,” Kisa replied.

“I don’t think you do. With the two men who were supposed to get Rostov and Cherenko out of the country dead, it’s now up to me to find them and finish the job. I’m on your side, but I’ll need your full cooperation.”

“And you shall have it,” the man replied.

“Father—” Kisa began, but the old man shook his head.

“No, Kisa, this man has saved my family.”

He looked at Bolan and said, “My name is Tolenka Naryshkin. I am Kisa’s father. I am recently retired from military intelligence.”

“The GRU,” Bolan said.

Tolenka nodded and continued, “I will not bother to ask your name, as I’m sure you would not be able to give me your real one. Under any other circumstance, I would report you immediately to the police. And while I am a soldier and statesman, I am also a family man and a patriot. And I recognize when another soldier is doing something for a greater cause.”

Tolenka held out his hand and, after staring at the man a moment, Bolan removed the Beretta from his holster and dropped it into Tolenka’s palm. “Now you should take Kisa and go. She will be able to tell you where to find these men.”

Bolan nodded and turned toward Kisa. “Will you help me?”

Kisa looked at her father who smiled at her, and then nodded at Bolan. As they departed, Tolenka said, “I trust that once you have found them, you will release my daughter back to me safely.”

Bolan stopped and turned to look at Tolenka. Although the guy had just had the hell beaten out of him and now stood guard over the brutalized body of his wife, he still seemed to hold his air of poise and dignity. A proud man, indeed; a man devoted to duty and honor; a man Mack Bolan understood.

With a short nod, Bolan replied, “You have my word.”

And with that, the Executioner sealed the understanding between them. Yeah, he would keep his promise.

Even if it cost him his life.

CHAPTER FIVE

It took them more than an hour meandering along some unkempt back streets to avoid roadblocks before they reached the airport in St. Petersburg. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been difficult, but the recent outbreak of violence had the local cops scrambling to choke roadways with random inspection teams. Bolan elected to ride shotgun and let Kisa Naryshkin take the wheel. He might have considered driving in other circumstances, but this was her territory and she knew it much better than he did.

He could also keep his eyes open for tails.

For most of the drive they didn’t speak to each other, and then when they did it was small-talk. Bolan couldn’t say he minded all that much. This was the first combat stretch he’d allowed himself since his encounter with the SMJ at the hotel more than nine hours before. That was okay, though, since the trip to Murmansk would take a few hours by plane—there would be plenty of time for chitchat.

Bolan had thought about using his cell phone to contact Stony Man but decided against it. He’d already phoned Jack Grimaldi and advised they would be leaving for Murmansk. The Stony Man pilot promised flight readiness by the time they arrived, and it wouldn’t be difficult to get flight clearance since they were flying within the country. All he’d have to do would be to file an amended flight plan. Business travel between the two cities by private jet wasn’t all that much out of the ordinary, although the time of morning might have set a few of the more curious types wondering. Still, Grimaldi had indicated to Bolan it wouldn’t be a problem.

When they arrived at the airport, they left Naryshkin’s car in a long-term parking garage and took a shuttle to the main terminal. They then passed through a checkpoint where neither of their documents got more than a cursory inspection. Bolan’s cover story as an American businessmen and Naryshkin posing as his interpreter seemed legitimate enough. Especially when the young woman showed her government credentials, which allowed her to travel unhindered through most of the country with considerable immunity from detainment. Bolan couldn’t help but wonder if the relatively few questions and disinterested scrutiny they experienced might not have been the result of a phone call or two being made by a certain former member of the GRU.

Whatever the case, they were airborne in no time and they settled in for their flight over coffee and a sandwich for Bolan, while Naryshkin consumed a hot cocoa and a pair of cheese Danishes with the voracity of someone who hadn’t eaten in a week. Bolan let her food settle some before turning their conversation to the topic at hand.

“You’re sure that Leo and Sergei will take a train to Murmansk?” he began.

Naryshkin nodded as she licked the remnants of her food from her fingers. “It is the plan we had discussed. And if you’re correct about the estimated time they left, it would make perfect sense. There was a train that left the Ladoga Station in St. Petersburg for Murmansk at 5:50 p.m.”

“What time does it arrive?”

“I cannot recall exactly, but we will be plenty ahead of them. About 10:00 p.m. tomorrow, I believe.”

Bolan whistled. “Yeah, that’s a long haul.”

“There is one stop in between,” she said, looking at her watch, “but I believe we are too late for that.”

“Where’s the stop?”

“A passenger station in Petrozavodsk.”

Bolan nodded as he looked at his own watch. It was just going on 0200 hours. “Didn’t they worry the SMJ would be covering the train stations?”

“The passenger trains, yes. But this is an express cargo carrier. I was able to arrange for those seats just for times like these. Those in the Sevooborot would not have ever thought to look at a cargo train, because there is very little room for other than crews to travel on them. We figured it was the safest way to go since the chances were pretty good they knew nothing of my involvement.”

“I have to admit I’m impressed.”

Naryshkin smiled and lowered her head, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “I wish I could say that I had not learned a trick or two from Father growing up, but then I would be lying.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed,” Bolan replied. “We’re all a product of our upbringing in one way or another. It’s what we choose to do with it that counts.”

“When we reach Murmansk, if we find them, you will let me see Leo?”

“I promise to do my best. But understand my first duty is to make sure you come through this alive. I gave my word to your father and I intend to keep it.”

The Russian expressed her disappointment. “I understand. No guarantees.”

“You should try to get some sleep,” Bolan counseled her. “You’re going to need it.”

She nodded and immediately inclined her seat and closed her eyes. Within ten minutes she was out like a light.

Unable to sleep, Bolan took the time to further study the files of Rostov and Cherenko. He’d already reviewed them twice in his hotel and knew they contained scant information. He had to admit that predicting their next move hadn’t been easy once the meet had gone to hell at the hotel. The other consideration was how the SMJ had beaten him at nearly every turn. There could have been a mole inside the Company, although Bolan figured it would have to be someone pretty high in the food chain, not to mention he doubted the SMJ had enough money to make it worth the risk.

That left Bolan considering the strong possibility that Rostov and Cherenko had been on the level when they cited a partnership between the SMJ and JI. Maybe a group of young revolutionaries didn’t have the resources to get inside the American intelligence community, but the JI certainly did, and they had proved it on more than one occasion. Bolan recalled the alliance the JI had formed with Japanese terrorists resulting in the theft of an entire U.S. aircraft with a top-secret, unmanned combat airplane aboard. Had it not been for the combined efforts of Able Team and Phoenix Force, they might have gotten away with it.

What Bolan still couldn’t piece together centered on how an alliance with the SMJ could benefit the Islamic terrorist group. That mystery probably couldn’t be solved until Rostov and Cherenko were safely in custody and on their way to the States. And until he found them, Bolan could do little more than run interference and hope this time around the information from Kisa Naryshkin would put him one step ahead of the competition.

The Executioner sensed his mission had barely begun.

JURG KOVLUN WALKED along the back lane of the underground shooting range and watched with satisfaction as the trainees grouped their shots on the paper targets with admirable precision. His training, coupled with the weapons provided by their contacts in the Jemaah al-Islamiyah, had produced the most excellent results. These were the results that the colonel should have been congratulating him for instead of criticizing him for the handling of two Russian punks who weren’t under his control to begin with.

Why couldn’t the SMJ police their own screw-ups? What did he look like, anyway? He was a professional soldier, a Spetsnaz veteran, not a nanny! There were moments when Kovlun wondered if it had ever been worth his time to join this crazy plan of the colonel’s. While he believed in Anatoly Satyev’s genius as a businessman, he’d never much trusted the man’s military tactics or strategic abilities. Fighting a war like this one took more than simple money-changing and cheap disinformation campaigns. Such a cause as theirs required sound battle plans and the ability to position men appropriately. For example, why conduct business with the JI in Russia on their terms? Why not do the business dealings on neutral ground? And why, especially, had they chosen to involve young revolutionaries? Weren’t seasoned professionals more appropriate for the tasks at hand?

Well, Kovlun couldn’t deny that the results had been greater than he expected. Of course, Satyev had permitted him a free hand in the training of these gang members, and it hadn’t taken much effort to bring the impressionable trainers in the Sevooborot around to his way of doing things. Through sheer discipline and the transfer of knowledge, Kovlun had turned more than forty SMJ recruits posing as American gang-bangers into a fighting force ready to do the colonel’s bidding.

They had also chosen this particular location for a very good reason. Portland, Oregon, would serve as a proving ground, of sorts, since the police department here sponsored a local FBI office that specialized in gang activity. These officers and special agents were better trained and equipped to combat gang violence than those in just about any other city in America, Los Angeles included; Kovlun knew that was saying a lot. If these young men could put down the police resistance here, they would be unstoppable anywhere else. The other thing they had going for this plan was a general denial by Americans that gang violence wasn’t a serious problem except in the largest cities. The flaw in that theory, aside from its mass acceptance, was that America had one of the worst gang problems in the world and, per capita, more gang-related murders, robberies and rapes than any other country. This wasn’t exactly a statistic the nation would accept easily, and by that fact alone Kovlun figured the colonel’s plan had a marginal chance at succeeding.

Kovlun finished his inspection and then ordered the range master to wrap it up before heading upstairs to the club. It lay dark and relatively empty, being only ten o’clock in the morning, but in twelve more hours it would be filled to capacity with teenagers and young adults, the perfect cover from which to launch their first major strike.

Kovlun nodded in greeting at his two lieutenants, Mikhail Pilkin and Aleksander Briansky. Pilkin had been in the Sevooborot since a very young man, actually a second-generation revolutionary of his father—one of the co-founding members of the organization and now a statistic in the files of the Moscow special police unit appointed to combat youth gangs. Briansky, a former native of the Ukraine, had fled his country and come to St. Petersburg for work, only to discover there was a lot more money to be made with his special affinity for guns. Briansky remained the chief armorer for the group, as well as a unit leader, and Pilkin oversaw most of the tactical operations based on Kovlun’s orders.

The two were hunkered over a map of Portland spread across the stage at the front of the club.

“What say you?” Briansky greeted Kovlun in traditional fashion.

Kovlun nodded and replied, “Their shooting. It is much improved.”

Pilkin was smoking a cigarette and in a cloud of exhaled smoke he replied, “Aleks performed a few modifications on the guns we received from the Arabs. They’re much tighter now.”

“We also took out the rattle in some of them,” Briansky added. “It wouldn’t do to have them making noise during the operation, Comrade.”

Kovlun furrowed his brown at hearing about the defect. “I agree. That was good thinking. I will have to speak with our supplier.”

“Would it not be better if we were to just shoot him between the eyes the next time he gives us crap weapons?” Pilkin asked.

“Save the hard-on for your many girlfriends, Mikhail,” Kovlun warned.

“Sorry, Comrade, but I don’t much trust the Arabs.”

“I don’t trust them, either, but for now we’re forced to work with them. I have assurances from my people that once we’ve accomplished this mission we will no longer have to deal with them.”

Briansky’s eyebrows rose. “Does that mean we will also be able to start choosing our own targets?”

“I choose our targets,” Kovlun countered. “Now and in the future. Not you, not anybody else. Got it?”

Briansky nodded.

Kovlun didn’t like having to slap them down—they had actually turned out to be fairly competent operatives despite their youth—but he’d learned as a leader that young men full of piss and iron who were anxious for a fight occasionally needed to have their reins jerked so they didn’t go off half-cocked and do something stupid.

“Have you heard the status on the little problem I brought to you earlier, Mikhail?”

Pilkin shook his head. “We’re still working on it. Which reminds me that we may have another problem with that.”

“I don’t want to hear of any more problems. I’ve already had my ass torn apart one time for this and I don’t want to bear any further criticism. Cherenko and Rostov are part of the Sevooborot, not part of this unit, and that means they shouldn’t be my problem. I thought I’d made that clear the first time.”

“You did, but this is a new development, and I have to tell you about it, especially when there’s a chance it could compromise our operations here.”

Kovlun’s hair stood on the back of his neck. “And what is that?”

“An American agent,” Pilkin replied. “Not the two men from the CIA. We managed to take care of them easily enough. This is another man, one we do not recognize and who doesn’t show up on file with any of our contacts inside the intelligence networks. Even the Brit who made the initial contact with Kisa Naryshkin can’t tell us who this man is.”

“So what?” Kovlun said. “I don’t see the problem. He’s one man.”

“Yes,” Briansky interjected. “But this ‘one man’ has already taken out more than two dozen of our best operatives. So he may be one man but he fights like an army! Unless, of course, the reports we’ve received are exaggerated.”

Pilkin continued, “Not to mention that he somehow found out about the idea you had to grab Kisa Naryshkin and hold her out as bait until Leo Rostov came calling for her. Now the American’s disappeared with her and we have no idea where they’ve gone.”

“What about her old man?” Kovlun demanded.

“He’s onto us, too. He’s got so many guns watching him now there’s no way we could get to him even if we wanted to. And he’s chosen to protect this American by claiming it was him who took out all of the men at the house.”

“Yeah, as if anyone would actually believe that,” Briansky added with a disgusted wheeze.

Kovlun had lit a cigarette and begun to pace the floor. “Oh, they’ll believe whatever General Tolenka Naryshkin tells them to believe, you can be sure of that. I’m not even confident my people can get their hooks into him. And if he’s covering for the American, your resources will never be able to track a man who doesn’t allegedly exist.”

“The cops are too busy cleaning up the mess of bodies this man has already left behind,” Briansky pointed out.

Not to mention that most of them are Sevooborot, Kovlun thought. Which meant they wouldn’t be looking too hard for the perpetrator, especially not when they heard stories about some lone, shadowy American who committed all these heinous acts. The St. Petersburg police didn’t have much cause to feel empathetic when a young revolutionary fell under violent means. They had certainly committed enough acts of violence against others, many of them low-ranking members of the Russian government. The Sevooborot couldn’t very well expect the full weight of justice to rush to their aid when the tables were turned. Kovlun understood that, and he’d never really been a fan of civilian revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government by force of arms. That was better left to those trained for that kind of activity.

Finally, Kovlun said, “I would agree this does present a bit of a problem. Very well. I’ll make some phone calls and see what I can find out about your mysterious American. In the meantime, the shooting drills are wrapping up and I want inspections on equipment and weapons to start immediately after lunch. Your units will depart for their respective targets at 2000 hours sharp. The men are free to engage in recreation on site once inspections are completed, but nobody leaves and no alcohol from now until we’ve returned. Any man caught sneaking a drink will be shot on sight. The same goes for drugs.”

“Yes, Comrade,” the men declared in unison.

Kovlun wheeled and headed for the club exit. He needed to head downtown, find a decent place to have a late breakfast. On his way, he would make those phone calls. Yes, he would find this American, if he even existed.

And then he would destroy him.

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