Extraordinary Rendition

The general’s face was bland, with full cheeks, gray eyes under snowy brows, and a flat, Slavic nose. He had led troops in Afghanistan, commanded Russian forces in the Chechen wars, and had reportedly given the order for Spetznaz to gas Moscow’s House of Culture theater in October 2002, after Chechen separatists seized the building with nine hundred hostages. The gas and subsequent Spetznaz assault had killed the forty-two terrorists and at least 129 hostages, injuring an estimated seven hundred others.

The last face up on Bolan’s screen belonged to his contact, Lieutenant Anzhela Pilkin of the FSB. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d worked with a Russian agent, when Washington’s interests overlapped Moscow’s, and while none had betrayed him so far, Bolan always felt as if he was waiting for the other boot to drop.

The lieutenant was thirty years old, auburn-haired, with a grim sort of beauty that might be less rigid in person. Five-seven and 130 pounds, well versed in martial arts and skilled with standard Russian firearms, bilingual in Russian and English. According to Brognola’s dossier, she’d joined the FSB five years earlier, after a stint with the military. She’d been promoted to sergeant in that post, after killing a Ukrainian gangster during a drug raid, and had polished off two more sent by the first thug’s boss to punish her. The boss, one Mikola Hunczak, had made the next attempt himself and currently resided in Moscow’s Mitinskoe Cemetery.

Overall, not bad.

Bolan assumed Lieutenant Pilkin would cooperate with him as ordered by her FSB superiors. But going in, he had no fix on what her orders might entail. When working with Russians—or with anyone outside the normal crew at Stony Man, for that matter—he always kept his guard up, conscious of the fact that while he went about his business, others might be marching in pursuit of separate agendas.

Why, for instance, would the FSB collaborate in Sokolov’s extraction, when the government refused to simply extradite him? Was there something to be gained, some face to save, by ordering covert removal? Who was in the know concerning Bolan’s mission? Who on the official side might still oppose him?

Colonel General Kozlov could supply an army on short notice to protect his business partner, if he wasn’t ordered to stand down. Smart money said that Sokolov would also have his share of allies in the Russian Mafiya, who might resent him being snatched and packed off to the States.

And, as the FBI had learned the hard way, Sokolov had to have his own hardforce of mercenaries, paid to keep him safe and sound in Moscow, or his dacha near Saint Petersburg.

Against those odds—and the military, whose officers would do their best to cage or kill him, if and when they were aware of Bolan’s presence in their homeland—he would pit his own skills and the still-untested talents of his FSB contact.

Two against how many? Dozens? Hundreds?

Situation normal for the Executioner.

He prepped the files and tapped a button on the laptop’s keyboard to erase Brognola’s disk. When that was done, he’d break it into half a dozen pieces, just in case. There was no point in taking chances yet, even before he caught his flight across the polar cap to Moscow.

There’d be time enough to risk his life tomorrow.

Every day beyond that would be icing on the cake.

CHAPTER THREE

Domodedovo International Airport, the present

Bolan slid into the sports car’s shotgun seat. Sudden acceleration slammed his door and pushed him backward, made him miss his seat belt on the first try. Bolan’s side mirror revealed his shadows spilling from the terminal, one of them speaking into a cell phone as the sportster sped away.

“I hope we’re cleared for takeoff,” he remarked.

“We are supposed to use the passwords,” his auburn-haired savior reminded him.

“Think we can skip it?”

“Under the circumstances,” she replied, “I believe that we can. I am Lieutenant Pilkin, FSB.”

“Matt Cooper,” he replied, without alluding to a rank or government affiliation. Likewise, Bolan didn’t mention that he recognized her face from photographs on file.

In these days of cell phone cameras and surveillance equipment, Bolan couldn’t be certain that there were no photographs of him.

“I thought we’d have more time,” she said.

“For what?”

“Before they broke your cover.”

“And ‘they’ would be…?”

Pilkin shrugged, a good thing, Bolan thought, in the clingy turtleneck she wore. “Who knows? The man you’re looking for has many friends. Whether they like him or he buys them, it is all the same.”

“That’s we,” he said, correcting her.

“Excuse me?”

“Not the man I’m looking for. The man we’re looking for.”

“Of course. Exactly.”

“They picked me up first thing, out of the gate,” he said. “It’s doubtful they have photos, but a name cross-checked against the airline’s manifest would do it, if they got a nod from customs or passport control.”

“Such things are possible. The man we seek—”

“Can we just use his name?” Bolan asked, interrupting.

“Certainly.” A note of irritation was in her voice, tugging the corner of her mouth down on the side Bolan could see. “Gennady Sokolov is, as you know, a smuggler. It would not be unexpected for him to have contacts at our major airports.”

“You could sweat the officers who passed me through and find out if they’re dirty. Crack one of them, and you’ll find out who he’s dealing with.”

“And if they’re innocent?”

“No harm done,” Bolan said. “I’ll send word back to triple-check whoever knew about my travel plans on our side. One way or another, something had to leak.”

“And I’m afraid that it’s still leaking,” Pilkin replied.

Another glance at Bolan’s mirror showed him headlights following their car. That wasn’t any kind of shocking revelation at a busy airport, but the vehicle in question was performing risky moves to keep Pilkin’s car in sight and close the gap between them.

“That was quick,” he said.

“They must have had a driver waiting.”

“Too bad they’re so organized.”

“Too bad for them,” she said, and flashed a wicked little smile before she shifted, then floored the gas pedal, giving Bolan another taste of Newton’s third law of motion in action.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the plan?” Bolan inquired.

“Evade them, if we can. If not…eliminate them.”

“I’d be more help on the last bit if I wasn’t naked.”

“What?” Pilkin shot a sidelong glance at Bolan, making sure.

“Unarmed,” he said. “Airline security, you know?”

“Of course,” she answered. “Try the glove box.”

Bolan opened it and found what he presumed to be her backup duty gun, an MP-443 Grach semiauto pistol, also known as the Yarygin PYa for its inventor. The Grach was a double-action piece with polymer grips, chambered for 9 mm Parabellum rounds and packing ten or eighteen in detachable box magazines. Its resemblance to the more famous Glock ended with a partially exposed hammer and an external ambidextrous safety.

Bolan pulled the magazine, relieved to find that it was one of the high-capacity staggered-box models. A nineteenth cartridge nestled in the firing chamber.

He was good to go.

“GET AFTER THEM!” Yuri Bazhov snapped.

“On it,” Osip Bek replied, before he whipped their BMW sedan around a slower car and stamped on the accelerator.

“Who’s the woman?” Danil Perov asked from the backseat.

“How should I know?” Bazhov replied. “Someone sent to pick him up.”

“We nearly had him,” Vasily Radko said.

“We still have him,” Bazhov answered, as he drew his pistol, eased off its safety and held it ready in his lap.

He’d left two men behind to fetch the second car and follow up as best they could. Evgeny Surikov and Pavel Malevich together in the UAZ-469 SUV. They’d have to get directions via cell phone and would likely miss the action, but at least Bazhov had backup if he needed it.

Against two people?

How could they match Bazhov and the four men riding with him now?

As if reading his thoughts, Radko chimed in from the back, saying, “He won’t be armed. You can’t take anything on planes these days. They even catch the plastic knives.”

“Suppose the woman brought him guns?” Bazhov replied. “You didn’t think of that?”

He saw Radko grimace in the rearview mirror.

“Are we still required to take the target back alive?”

“Our orders haven’t changed,” Bazhov reminded all of them. “Whoever kills this guy has to deal with Taras on his own.”

Radko muttered something, but he kept his voice low-pitched, allowing Bazhov to pretend he hadn’t heard. The fear of Taras Morozov would curb his temper to a point, but if their quarry started shooting at them, or seemed likely to escape, what could they do?

Go back to Taras empty-handed, with excuses?

How would that improve their situation?

“What’s that she’s driving?” Bazhov asked his wheelman.

“It’s the VAZ 2112,” Bek answered, staying focused on the traffic that surrounded them. “Zero to sixty-two in twelve seconds. One hundred fifteen miles per hour at the top end. Doing fifty, she will need 120 feet to stop.”

Bek knew cars.

“Don’t run them off the road, then, eh?” Bazhov instructed. “I’m not handing Taras a bucket of strawberry jam.”

“I won’t ram them,” Bek said. “But I can’t promise you that the woman knows how to drive.”

“She’s doing all right, so far,” Bazhov said. “Be damned sure you don’t lose her.”

“No problem,” Bek answered, and put on more speed.

“You be ready,” Bazhov said, half-turned toward his men in the rear. “When we stop them, be careful. The woman can die. Not the man.”

“Not to worry,” Perov said.

“We’re ready,” Radko stated.

Bazhov heard them cocking their weapons behind him and hoped neither one of them blew out his brains by mistake. They were pros, yes, but accidents happened.

If he had to die this night, Bazhov could only hope it would be like a man, and not some poor bastard slaughtered by mistake.

BOLAN COULDN’T READ the street signs written in Cyrillic, but he knew that they were heading north, toward central Moscow. That meant crowds, more traffic, innocent bystanders.

And police.

“You have someplace in mind to ditch them, I suppose?” he asked.

“I’m working on it,” Pilkin replied. “I did not come expecting you to have a tail.

“There is a park off Chertanovskaya Street,” she said. “They have a lake there. Little innocent civilian traffic after dark, because of crime.”

“Just muggers and what have you?” Bolan asked.

“No one likely to trouble us, as long as you have that.” She nodded toward the pistol in his hand. “Unless you’re dead, of course.”

“Won’t matter then.”

“So, we agree,” she said. “Five minutes more, if all goes well.”

And if it didn’t, Bolan knew the drill from prior experience. They’d stand and fight as necessary, if and when they had no other choice.

He shied away from small talk, letting Pilkin drive the car, and concentrated on their tail. Still just one vehicle, as far as he could tell, gaining by fits and starts. Headlights behind it showed him three heads, maybe four.

Assume the worst, and you won’t be surprised.

The worst would be more cars, more guns closing in. With a single chase car there were options. A crash could disable the hunters inside without shooting, and even if guns were required, killing three or four men would be quicker, easier, than taking out eight or a dozen.

Bolan didn’t mind the wet work, but it grated on his nerves that he’d been burned even before he set foot in the country. He considered that a past trip to Russia, or his past collaboration with the FSB, might have some kind of boomerang effect this day, but none of it made sense.

The enemies he’d faced when Moscow was the global capital of communism were no more than faded memories, long dead and gone. More recently, he had enjoyed cautious collaboration with the FSB. Bolan could think of no reason for them to plot his death, much less kill eight G-men to bait the trap.

Anzhela Pilkin could have shot him at the airport terminal, or simply missed their date and left disposal to the thugs who were pursuing them. The whole rescue charade was pointless, if she and her masters wanted Bolan dead.

What if they simply wanted him?

Interrogation was another possibility, but once again, Bolan collided with the brick wall of impracticality. To dress the stage, go through the diplomatic motions, lay the trail—it only clicked if someone in the FSB knew Bolan’s true identity. Or, at the very least, the role he played for Stony Man.

And that, he told himself, was next door to impossible.

So, wait and see, he thought.

And from the chase car’s progress overhauling them, he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

“WHERE ARE THEY going?” Yuri Bazhov asked no one, thinking aloud.

“Can’t say,” Bek responded from the driver’s seat.

“Just drive!”

Bazhov hit speed-dial on his cell phone, waiting through four anxious rings before he got an answer.

“Who’s that?” Pavel Malevich demanded.

“Idiot! Who do you think it is?” Bazhov snapped.

“Yuri! Where are you?”

“Heading north on Chertanovskaya Street. Looks like she’s taking us downtown.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Depends on who she is,” Bazhov replied. “Catch up with us, soon as you can. We need to cut her off.”

He broke the link, muttering curses to himself.

This was what came from working in the dark, when everything was need-to-know and no one told him shit. He couldn’t second-guess the bitch who’d plucked their pigeon from the snare, because he didn’t know who she was or why she’d intervened. Bazhov had no idea why he’d been sent to snatch a stranger from the airport, with instructions that the mark had to be alive upon delivery.

It could be anything. A rival syndicate invading local turf. Perhaps a businessman who’d balked at paying tribute to the Family and now required an object lesson in security. It might be something personal for Taras or the man on top, Leonid Bezmel.

Yuri Bazhov hated puzzles, riddles, anything that taxed his brain unnecessarily. He understood connect-the-dots and liked to skip ahead whenever possible, surprise his adversaries and destroy them with brute force.

He couldn’t do that in the present case, because his hands were tied. His orders barred disposing of this Matthew Cooper, while the woman was a wild card, trouble from the first time he’d laid eyes on her. Bazhov could kill the woman.

But he’d have to catch her first.

And if she had some destination fixed in mind as she was fleeing, what did that mean to Bazhov, his men and his plan? Was she leading them onto another gang’s patch? If she was mixed up with the law, somehow, it could be even worse.

Bazhov would ask her, if he had the chance.

Before he put a bullet in her brain.

Somewhere behind him, Malevich and Surikov were racing to catch up and join the chase. Two cars might box the woman’s vehicle. Better than one, in any case. With one, all he could do was ram her, sideswipe her, or try to shoot her off the road.

And if Bazhov should kill his sacred target in the process, it would be his ass. He couldn’t blame his men for the mistake, when he gave them their orders.

“Osip!” he barked. “Can you catch her, or not?”

“I can!”

“You’re sure it isn’t too much trouble?”

“No, Yuri!”

“All right, then. Will you do it, for Christ’s sake?”

Bek’s cheeks flushed crimson at the insult, but he offered no response. Instead, he let the BMW do his talking for him, surging forward as he found more power somehow, somewhere underneath its hood.

Clutching his pistol in a fierce, white-knuckled grip, Bazhov prepared himself for battle.

“ALMOST THERE,” Anzhela Pilkin told her silent passenger.

“The park there, on the left?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

Despite its grim-faced reputation, Moscow was a “green” city. It boasted ninety-six parks and eighteen public gardens, comprising 174 square miles of green zones and thirty-nine square miles of forest. Each citizen of Moscow was blessed with 290 square feet of parkland, versus nine in New York, seven in London and six in Paris. Thousands enjoyed the parks each day.

But few by night.

Pilkin counted on the fear of crime that kept most of her fellow Muscovites away from dark, secluded places after nightfall. There was risk enough of being mugged, robbed, raped, or shot by accident in daylight, without tempting Fate.

She found the side street she was looking for and swung her VAZ sportster off Chertanovskaya Street, leaving the main flow of traffic behind. She lost the rest turning in to the park, killing her lights at once and watching for the chase car in her rearview mirror.

Was there any chance that her pursuers would be fooled and drive past?

No. There they were, making the left-hand turn, and then the right.

“So much for losing them,” she said. “We’ll have to fight the bastards.”

“Ready when you are,” he replied.

Pilkin sped along a narrow drive that ran halfway around the park, dead-ending in a parking lot located at the north end of a man-made lake. Arriving in the lot, she put the VAZ through a squealing one-eighty, then killed its engine.

“I’d rather meet them on foot,” she told Bolan.

“Sounds good,” he replied, and was out of his door in a flash.

They ran into darkness, away from her car, which she knew the pursuers would make their first target. Pilkin hoped it wouldn’t be destroyed. She was dreading the paperwork required to explain any damage to state property. There’d be enough just for the shooting, without car repairs on top of it.

She thumbed off her pistol’s safety, crouching next to Bolan in the shadow of a hedge, watching the headlights of the enemy’s vehicle sweep across the parking lot and focus on her VAZ.

“Now!” she told Bolan, squeezing off three rounds in rapid fire, aimed at the driver’s deeply tinted window.

Pilkin heard glass smash as she fired, then Bolan’s borrowed pistol barked in unison with hers. The chase car’s driver hit his brakes, then switched to the accelerator in a heartbeat, revving past her VAZ, on toward the lake.

Go in! Go in, she urged them silently.

But it stopped just short of splashdown, and the engine died.

YURI BAZHOV FLINCHED from the first crash of gunfire, cursing as something wet and warm spattered the left side of his face. Bek was gagging, choking in the driver’s seat, still clinging to the steering wheel as dark blood spurted from his neck, streaking the windshield and dashboard.

The BMW jerked, then powered forward as Bek slumped in his seat, his right foot jammed on the accelerator. Bazhov saw that they were headed for the lake, and he envisioned sinking with the car into its strangling depths.

He cursed the dead or dying man beside him, who was once a friend of sorts. When a hard slap had no effect on Bek, Bazhov bent to grab his right leg, slammed his head against the steering wheel and cursed again, then wrenched Bek’s foot sideways and off the gas pedal.

The BMW slowed, stuttered and stalled. Peering across the hood, Bazhov could see that they had stopped with yards to spare before taking the final plunge.

More bullets struck the car, cracking its rear window, drumming against the trunk and left-rear fender. Perov and Radko shouted from the backseat, angling to return fire, finding no immediate targets.

“Get out!” Bazhov ordered. Feeling absurd, he added, “And remember! Do not kill the man!”

Bazhov nearly dropped his cell phone, stumbling from the car, while Perov and Radko unlimbered their guns. He speed-dialed Pavel Malevich, and this time got an answer on the second ring.

“What’s happening?” Malevich asked.

Bazhov raised his phone and let the man hear staccato gunfire.

“That’s what’s happening, idiot! Do you hear it? Osip’s dead, and where in hell are you?”

“On Chertanovskaya Street. You said—”

“Look for a park,” Bazhov said, interrupting him. “I don’t know what they call it. On your left, somewhere. It has a lake. Listen for gunfire. Move your ass!”

A bullet struck the car within a foot of Bazhov’s head and ricocheted into the darkness with a sound that nearly made him wet himself. He had been under fire before, of course, and more than once. But this, somehow, felt different.

It felt like his last moments of life.

In which case, what did he have to lose?

Morozov could hardly punish him if he was dead. There was no pain beyond the final moment of oblivion…unless the priests were right about hellfire.

Bazhov could only face one peril at a time, on one plane of existence. If the fires of hell were waiting for him, by God, let them wait.

Edging around the BMW’s right-rear fender, Bazhov risked a peek in search of targets. He saw muzzle-flashes, moving closer, and heard more rounds strike the car.

Thankfully, the BMW had been stolen. It was no great loss, nothing for Morozov to be angry about, he thought. Letting the stranger from the airport slip away, however, was another story altogether.

Bazhov saw his targets now—a man and woman, racing through the night, advancing as if totally devoid of fear. They used the shadows as a cloak, but still came on to meet their enemies.

Bazhov admired that, in his way, but admiration wouldn’t interfere with duty. Aiming at the woman, he fired two quick shots, then ducked back under cover as a bullet struck the BMW’s taillight inches from his face.

FOUR SHOTS GONE, and Bolan wasn’t sure that he’d hit anyone. He’d definitely hit the BMW, and it wasn’t armored, but that didn’t mean he’d scored on any of its occupants.

Time to get serious.

Pilkin dodged two hasty shots from someone crouching at the Beemer’s rear, and Bolan drove the shooter under cover with a round that blew out the right-hand taillight. Almost simultaneously, two guys popped up to fire across the sedan’s sleek hood.

One had a pistol, the other one some kind of stubby submachine gun. Possibly a Bizon, with its 64-round magazine, or the smaller PP-2000. As he hit the dirt and rolled, his ears told Bolan that the stuttergun was no Kalashnikov. It was 9 mm, tops, but no less deadly for its caliber.

He came up firing, two quick rounds to make the shooters duck, then rushed them. It was the only option available, since Bolan couldn’t linger where he was, and a retreat would only let them shoot him in the back.

Off to his right somewhere, he heard Pilkin firing on the run, another pistol answering. Bolan could only fight one battle at a time, and left her to it, with a silent supplication to the Universe.

The shooters he was looking for had made a critical mistake, both emptying their magazines together. It was easy, in the heat of battle, to forget coordination with the troops around you, but there was no “little” error on the firing line. One slip could get you killed.

Like now.

Instead of wasting precious time and energy to run around the front end of the Beemer, Bolan launched himself across its hood, sliding to meet his enemies. He had a flash impression of their faces, gaping at him, then their guns were coming up, ready or not, to meet his charge.

Chaos took over then, with Bolan rapid-firing at the startled faces, blowing them apart at point-blank range where it was strictly personal. The Russians died as Bolan guessed they had to have lived, with brutish violence. They jerked, danced, stumbled, fell together in a twitching heap.

The slide on Bolan’s pistol locked open on an empty chamber. He dropped it, claimed the nearest dead man’s SMG—it was a Bizon, after all—and snugged its unique cylindrical magazine into place.