Hard Passage

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?”