Cold War Reprise

Barbara had the right idea. Sticking around her apartment would only make her a sitting duck. If the men sent to kill her could find her while she was hunting for a dress on the black market, then they could easily be able to make a move on her in her own home. She tucked her purse tight under her arm and was ready to leave through the front door of her apartment. She heard the floorboards creak on the other side.

Since she wasn’t expecting visitors, she pivoted, scooped up her overnight bag and rushed for her window. A shadow fell across the fire escape and she put on the brakes, reaching for her Makarov. She looked toward the kitchen and saw that the light through the window in that room remained unbroken. Of course there wasn’t a fire escape at that point on the ledge, but Laserka hustled into the kitchen, drawing the sliding door shut behind her.

As it closed, she heard the front door rattle violently under a ferocious kick. She moved to the kitchen window. The front door shook again. When she heard the window just off of the fire escape rise, she opened the kitchen window at the same time. From the front, she heard the apartment door crack on the third kick. She saw the back of a man pulling through the fire-escape window as she slid out onto the ledge.

Laserka’s overnight bag was small and light, thankfully. If she’d been burdened with heavier luggage, balancing on the slender lip of cinder block would have been impossible. She let it hang on its shoulder strap, freeing her hands to grab the railing on the fire escape. She swung her legs down to the next landing, lowering herself to stand on the rail. Popping in front of the window that the second intruder had just gone through would have just been asking for a fight. She braced on the wall, then stepped onto the landing with a minimum of rattling metal.

“Where the hell is she?” she heard one man grunt.

She paused. “Oleg, is there anyone on the street?”

“The kitchen!” another voice swore. Whoever these men were, they had coordination, but no inkling of operational communications security. Laserka padded down the fire-escape steps, putting layers of grating between herself and her apartment. Laserka’s legs ached from the tension between speed and stealth on the metal steps. Still, she reached the bottom, apparently without being noticed. She clambered down the ladder, then cut away from the street, aware that Oleg and his friends might be watching her from above.

She walked four blocks before she walked down into the subway. By the time her hunters finished clearing her apartment and surmised that she was in the wind, she was stepping onto a train car, heading for the hotel to await “Special Agent Matt Cooper.”

Then, she’d start her own hunt, turning the tables on her tormentors.

CHAPTER SIX

Mack Bolan was dressed to impress underneath his trench coat and wide-brimmed hat. Underneath the loose overcoat, he was snug in his skintight blacksuit and battle harness. The high-tech polymers of the uniform conformed to Bolan’s musculature, a blend of fibers that provided the Executioner protection from burns in the middle of fires and offered a modicum of defense against small arms. Its composition also enabled it to protect him from the elements, insulating him from all but the most chilling cold and blazing heat. Aside from accentuating his phenomenal physique, the snugness of the uniform prevented him from snagging on anything in battle. His holsters for the Beretta 93R and the Desert Eagle hung on his battle harness openly, allowing him swift access to both handguns, while slit pockets and belt pouches bulged with compact munitions, impact weapons and other tools of his warrior trade. He’d blackened his face with greasepaint, affecting a terrifying war mask that was shaded by the wide brim of his hat. A war bag concealing a pair of Uzi submachine guns dangled from his gloved hand.

The Russian club was a compact urban fortress with small windows and heavy doors. Guards stood on duty at the front, and they were alert for potential threats. The organasatya gangsters were on edge now that the man known to some as “the American” was stalking them in London. Bolan had given them a bloody nose in this city on an earlier visit, so he was not an unknown quantity. He was as fresh in the memory of the few survivors of that encounter as a tidal wave or monsoon.

Bolan was here to tie up a loose end, and the remaining assassins were his last link to the old confederation that was willing to commit murders in two world capitals and attack the London Metropolitan police headquarters with blatant terror. Though he had transformed himself into a dark specter of vengeance, his plan was to cow their resistance through intimidation. Too many leads up the ladder had been lost over the past day due to unrestrained violence. Fear was going to be his primary weapon now.

Half a minute’s work with a lock-pick gun gained him entry through a side door.

Bolan passed the maître d’s podium and walked into the restaurant proper. Dozens of sets of eyes turned to look at him, frozen in the shock of his presence.

Nobody seemed quite certain what to make of the Executioner, although they all kept their hands well away from their weapons. Hopefully, Bolan would be able to keep his Scotland Yard ally from cleaning up another huge mess. That all depended on how hard Bolan could ride the wave of intimidation he’d been surfing for the past few minutes.

Bolan reached into the gym bag, pulling out the empty Uzis by their barrels. “Yanos Shinkov. Would you explain where these weapons came from?”

The dozens of faces turned, almost in unison, toward a man sitting in a booth, stirring tea in a glass mug with a silver spoon. Shinkov tapped his spoon on the glass, knocking moisture from it, then he set the utensil down. He was a blunt-faced man with a mane of black hair that flared up from a widow’s peak like a fountain of dark silk that stopped below his collar. The Russian mobster sighed, then held out his hand. “Take a seat, American. We can discuss this with civilized tongues.”

Bolan strode through the restaurant, then dumped the Uzis in the middle of Shinkov’s table. He took a seat across from the mobster. “Civilization is not something I trust in, Shinkov.”

“Please, calm yourself. We are still hurting from the last time you visited vengeance upon us.”

Bolan looked around. “Over twenty gunmen shows you have some fight left in you. And the Uzis I took from your men—”

“No,” Shinkov replied, cutting him off quickly. “Those were not my men. Those who would work for us have no love for any person claiming authority back in Moscow.”

Bolan frowned, keeping his glare cold. Shinkov was sweating and he took a quick sip of tea, as if to wash a lump stuck in his throat. “Are you not the leader of London’s organasatya? ”

“That I am, but the mafiya is not a tool of the Kremlin,” Shinkov explained.

Bolan looked around the room. “Then why do half the faces I see in here belong to veterans of KGB operations in Great Britain?”

Shinkov cleared his throat. “These were men who had nothing after glasnost, the great peace accords between enemies separated by the iron curtain. They had no home to return to, so they needed someone to give their lives order and structure.”

Bolan nodded. “And you needed more bullies to terrify the immigrants.”

Shinkov winced at the accusation. “When Rastolev came here, he threatened us. He promised that he would drop the sky on us.”

“What did Rastolev want from you to have peace?”

“Guns. You are right, those are my weapons,” Shinkov said, sounding genuinely ashamed. “He also wanted protection and a safehouse.”

“For fifteen men,” Bolan said.

Shinkov’s eyes widened at the estimation of Rastolev’s forces. “Yes.”

“So there are four left,” Bolan said.

“Including Rastolev,” Shinkov replied.

Bolan ran through his mental roster of cold-war era enemy operatives. Rastolev was the code name for a young, up-and-coming hard case who had allegedly been killed in action during the final, painful days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. There had been rumors of his presence in various operations in the Commonwealth of Independent States, but unlike the Executioner, the rumors of Rastolev’s existence were relegated to the same veracity as sightings of dinosaurs in the Congo. “Rastolev’s supposed to be dead.”

“The same could be said of you, American,” Shinkov replied. “It’s just that we are so familiar with your footprints, especially since they are still fresh on our necks.”

“I would be flattered, but I didn’t come here to have my ego massaged,” Bolan growled.

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