Rebel Force

Whoever had taken out Garabend had been a player; but not official Russian. Bolan picked up the phone. It was sticky with the dead man’s blood. Bolan powered the device off and placed it in a pocket of his nightsuit. The phone provided a clue, in and of itself. The high-tech devices made doing business in the modern age much, much easier, especially from remote or uncivilized areas, but they were a liability as well.

Worldwide, terrorists had learned a lesson a decade earlier, in the spring of 1996, from the death of Dzokhar Dudayev. The Chechen leader had known he needed to limit the time he spent using the satellite phone given to him by his Islamic allies in Turkey. The survivor of two Russian assassination attempts had been wary of Moscow’s ability to home in on his communication signal and thus his location.

But on the evening of April 21, Dudayev, baited by Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s offer of peace talks, called an adviser in Moscow to discuss the impending negotiations.

Dudayev stayed on the phone too long.

American spy satellites, trained on Iraq and Kuwait, were quickly turned north to the Caucasus Mountains and Chechnya, according to media reports by a former communications specialist with the U.S. National Security Agency—NSA—The satellites pinpointed the Chechen leader’s location to within feet of his satellite phone signal, and the coordinates were sent to a Russian fighter jet.

Dudayev was killed by two laser-guided air-to-surface missiles while still holding the phone that had pinpointed his location.

Had Garabend made the same mistake? Only instead of missiles, had a call he made triggered a hit squad or some lone, hyper-skilled, assassin? Whatever the case, Bolan had enough to go on for the moment. Once Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman and his team got hold of the information in the communication device, they would have plenty of clues for further operations.

Bolan stepped around the desk and moved through the open door into the outer office chamber. The bodies of the dead Armenian’s bodyguards still lay sprawled around in haphazard disarray. After years of experience, Bolan had a critical, almost gifted, eye for crime-scene forensics. He was able to recreate the events of even the most horrific battle by the position of corpses, spent shell casings and blood spatter. In this case, rushed for time, he was unable to conclude whether this butcher’s work had been done by a coordinated team or a single, talented professional.

Bolan moved carefully through the room. He held his AKS at the ready as he approached the door. His feeling of disquiet had not subsided. He couldn’t place his unease, and that made it all the more bothersome. He stalked forward, pausing at the door leading out into the hall.

He stopped, sensed nothing, moved forward.

All hell broke loose.

3

When he stepped through the door and entered the hall, Bolan felt as if he had moved into a field of static electricity. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck lifted straight up as cold squirts of adrenaline surged into his body. The night fighter reacted instantly, without conscious thought. He dropped to one knee and leaned back in the doorway, sweeping the barrel of his AKS up and triggering a blast.

The unmistakable pneumatic cough of a sound-suppressed weapon firing full-automatic assaulted Bolan’s ears across the short distance. Shell casings clattered onto the linoleum floor, mixing with the sound of a weapon bolt leveraging back and forth rapidly. Bolan felt the angry whine of bullets fill the space where his head and chest had been only a heartbeat before.

The Executioner targeted diagonally across and down the office hall, firing his Russian assault rifle with practiced, instinctive ease. He let the recoil of the carbine shuttering in his strong grip carry him back through the doorway behind him in a tight roll. From his belly Bolan thrust the muzzle around the doorjamb and arced the weapon back and forth as he laid down quick, suppressive blasts.

The 5.45 mm rounds were deafening in the confined space and his ears rang painfully from the noise. Bolan reached up and jerked his night-vision goggles down so that they dangled from the rubber strap around his neck. He heard the bullets from his assailant’s answering burst smack into the plasterboard of the outer wall with smacks that rang louder than the muzzle-braked weapon’s own firing cycle.

From the impacts, Bolan determined the shooter was using a submachine gun and not an assault rifle, though he was hard-pressed to identify caliber with the suppressor in use. Bolan scrambled backward and rested his rifle barrel across the still-warm corpse of a dead bodyguard. If there was more than one assassin out there, and he were determined to get him, the person would either fire and maneuver to breach the room door, or possibly use grenades to clear him out.

There was silence for a long moment. Bolan’s head raced through strategies and options. If the assassin’s intent had been escape, then why had he bothered to stay behind or try to take Bolan out? If the unknown assailant was armed for a quiet kill, then that would indicate he was probably not carrying ordnance much heavier than the silenced submachine gun being used.

The main thing, Bolan’s experience told him, was getting momentum back into his possession. He quickly stripped an extra rifle from a dead bodyguard and hooked the sling over his shoulder. Conscious of how vulnerable he was, Bolan crawled back toward the door. He maneuvered the barrel of his AKS through the entrance and triggered an exploratory blast, conducting a recon by fire. Precious seconds ticked away.

Almost immediately, Bolan’s aggressive burst was answered with a tightly controlled one. Bullets tore into the wooden door frame and broke up the floor in front of his weapon. Bolan ducked back. He had what he needed. He had found a way to exploit his heavier armament.

The gunman had taken position across and two doors down the hall from the room where Bolan was trapped. From that location the gunmen controlled the fields of fire up and down the hall, preventing Bolan from leaving the office without exposing himself to withering, short-range fire.

Again, Bolan triggered a long, ragged blast. He tore apart the door of the office directly opposite him, then ran his larger caliber rounds down the hall to pour a flurry of lead through the sniper’s door. Tracer fire lit up the hallway with surrealistic strips of light like laser blasts in some low-budget science-fiction movie. Bolan could smell his own sweat and the hot oil of his AKS-74. The heavy dust hanging in the air, kicked up by the automatic weapon fire, choked him.

Bolan ducked back around as the gunman triggered an answering burst. Bolan heard the smaller caliber rounds strike the wall outside his door, saw how they failed to penetrate the building materials. It confirmed his suspicions that he was facing no more than a 9 mm caliber in the killer’s weapon.

Bolan snarled, gathering himself, and thrust his weapon out the office door a final time. He triggered the AKS and the assault rifle bucked in his hands. Bolan sprinted out through the doorway hard behind his covering fire. His rounds fell like sledgehammers around the door to the room of his ambusher. Hot gases warmed his wrists as the bolt of his weapon snapped open and shut, open and shut, as he carried his burst out to improbable length even as he raced forward.

Two steps from the office door directly opposite Garabend’s death room, Bolan’s magazine ran dry and the bolt locked open. Without hesitation, he flung down the empty weapon and dived forward. The big man’s hard shoulder struck the door. Already riddled with 5.45 mm bullets, the flimsy construction was no match for Bolan’s heavy frame and he burst through it into the room.

The Executioner went down with his forward momentum, landing on the shoulder he had used as a battering ram and somersaulting over it smoothly. He came up on one knee and swung his second AKS carbine off his shoulder, leveling it at the wall separating his position from the gunman’s. Bolan triggered his weapon from the waist, raking it back and forth in a tight, low Z-pattern. The battlefield rounds chewed through plywood, drywall and insulation with ease, bursting out the other side with terminal velocity.

Still firing, Bolan smoothly uncoiled out of his combat crouch, keeping the arc of his weapon angled downward to better catch an enemy likely pinned against the floor. His intentions were merciless. Momentum, and an attacker’s aggression, were with Bolan now, on him like a fugue. Coming to his feet, he shifted the AKS pistol grip from his right to his left hand. His magazine came up dry as he shifted his weight back toward the shattered door to the room.

The handle of Bolan’s Glock 17 filled the palm of his free hand as he fired the last rounds through the looted AKS. He was moving, lethally graceful, back out the door to the room, his feet engaged through a complicated series of steps. Out in the hall, smoke from weapons fire and dust billowed in the already gloomy hall.

Bolan stepped out long and lunged forward, sinking to one knee as he came to the edge of his ambusher’s door. He made no attempt to slow his momentum but instead let it carry him down to the floor. He breached the edge of the enemy door, letting the barrel of the Glock 17 pistol lead the way. He caught the image of a dark-clad form sprawled out on the floor of the room.

The 9 mm pistol coughed in a double tap, catching the downed figure in the shoulder and head. Blood splashed up and the figure’s skull mushroomed out, snapping rudely to the side on a slack neck. A chunk of cottage-cheeselike material splattered out and struck a section of bullet riddled wall.

Bolan popped up, returned to his feet. He moved into the room, weapon poised, ready to react to even the slightest motion or perceived movement. After the frenzied action and brutal cacophony of the gun battle, the sudden return of silence and still felt deafening, almost oppressive. Approaching the dead man, Bolan narrowed his eyes, trying to quickly take in details. Muzzle-flash had ruined his night vision.

Frustrated, Bolan dragged his NVGs back into position and turned on the infrared penlight. The room returned to view in the familiar monochromatic greenish tint. Bolan looked over at the dead gunman’s weapon. From the unique silhouette he recognized the subgun as a PP-19 Bizon. Built on a shortened AKS-74 receiver, it had the signature cylindrical high-capacity magazine attached under the fore grip and the AKS folding buttstock. The weapon was usually associated with Russian federal police or army troops, but international arms merchants had been turning up with them more and more as the Russian economy went through its series of shortfalls.

Bolan rolled the man over. Any hopes for identification were gone. The man’s face held all the structural integrity of mush. Bolan could easily see the man’s thick, tangled beard, however. One of Garabend’s bodyguards who had survived the attack?

Bolan knew he didn’t have a lot of time. In a city locked down under martial law, the sound of the assault rifle he had been forced to use would draw unwanted attention very quickly. Bolan patted the dead man down. He found a leather wallet filled with Russian bank notes but devoid of identification.

The soldier pulled a thin, flat-faced digital camera from one of the carriers on his harness. He clicked off the IR light and settled his goggles on his forehead. He turned the camera on and opened the lens protector. Without preamble he grabbed the doughy-fleshed hand of the dead man by his index finger. Cradling the camera securely in his palm, Bolan rolled the man’s finger across the lens facing of the camera as carefully as any police desk sergeant at a big city precinct house.

Bolan held up the camera, letting the dead killer’s hand drop unceremoniously. It struck the bare floor with a dull clap. Bolan pointed the camera at a blank stretch of wall unmarred by his penetrating gunfire. He closed his eyes against the flash and snapped a picture. Later, he would download the snapshot and send it back to Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, for analysis. If the shooter was a bodyguard, that was fine. If he was something else, then Bolan needed to know.

He stood and put the camera away. He grabbed his Glock. It was time to go. Past time.

4

Bolan’s forward operating station in Grozny was an old CIA operations safehouse left over from the Chechen conflicts. Maintained as part of a Global Deployment Readiness Plan by the Operations Division, the residence was little used but constantly prepped. It provided stripped down, untraceable tools for Western intelligence operatives who found themselves working outside of normal geographical station mandates.

Working outside of normal geographical station mandates was something Mack Bolan knew all about.

Upon returning to the house Bolan immediately downloaded the picture of the dead assassin’s fingerprint and e-mailed it through an encrypted, anonymous server along with a brief sitrep, to a Stony Man capable site. Aaron Kurtzman would access all federal and international databanks in an effort to find a match.

Bolan drank a beer and made himself a sandwich from the pickings in the refrigerator. He surveyed his surroundings from every window in the place, looked in closets and behind closed doors until he felt like he knew the layout of the place well enough to navigate it in the dark, under fire if need be. He’d made the decision to delay his extraction until Hal Brognola and the Stony Man team could reconfigure operational alternatives based on the changed situation.

Jack Grimaldi was poised to infiltrate Grozny from a merchant ship anchored in the Caspian. The ship was run under a triple sponsor program combining Naval Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA. All offices were coordinated by the post 9/11 Director of National Intelligence office. Task Force 280, as it was coded, provided civilian-use cover of ocean-based assets for government operations. Brognola had managed to insert the veteran Stony Man pilot into the group with a minimum of fuss.

Bolan paced, calm, but filled with a pent-up energy left over from his confrontation with the assassin. Across the room, where he had left it on the table while fixing himself something to eat, his sat phone began to buzz.

Bolan crossed the room quickly and picked it up. He instantly recognized the gruff voice of Hal Brognola on the other end of the encrypted line. The soldier walked over and looked out the window at the quiet residential street from behind the window blinds. He turned his back on the scene and stepped farther into the old house.

“Striker?” Brognola asked.

“Go ahead,” Bolan answered.

“You safe? Things quiet?”

“For now. What do you have?”

“I’ve got a whole bunch of questions and not too many answers,” the big Fed said.

“You manage to get an ID off that print I sent you?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure did. We have a situation. The DNI has reacted to the intelligence and asked me to intervene in the matter.”

“What problem would this be?”

“The print you got off the shooter came back to one Andre Nicolov, former GRU commando.”

“Okay, so he was with the Main Intelligence Directorate. Lots of ex-military types run for-profit ops these days,” Bolan said.

“Problem is, this guy is known to be the chief operator for a player known as Sable, also ex-GRU, ex-SVR and now a freelance information broker. Sable has been the source of a CIA counterintelligence operation in Grozny. A consortium of ex-Soviet physicists and various research scientists of Chechen ethnicity opened a think tank group called the Caucasus Data Institute. The SVR, among others, was hot to get their hands on what they were cooking up. The CIA approached them undercover as a private firm about security in an effort to get our fingers into the pie.”

“How does Sable fit into this?”

“She ran a surveillance and procurement operation against the institute. By all accounts, the most successful one. She was always one step ahead of Grozny Station.”

“She?” Bolan said. “Go on.”

“Last year a field officer named Sanders was put on the case. He began making some headway, running stringers, planting misinformation, that sort of thing. Apparently, about two weeks ago, Sable went to Sanders and stated she wanted to explore life in the Federal Witness Protection Program. As a millionaire.”

Bolan let a low, appreciative whistle. “Audacious. Her intel that good?”

“Langley thought so. Only there was a problem.”

“What’s new?”

“Exactly. Sanders went around his chain of command at Grozny Station to alert the agency to the deal. He used an open channel, not the secure lines at the covert house. Immediately after making the call he disappeared and is still missing.”

“What do they want me to do?” Bolan asked.

“Sanders had set procedures for irregular contacts. Since you’re on the ground, we want you to try to meet with Sanders. Failing that, follow up on anything you can shake loose.”

“Should be a piece of cake,” Bolan said dryly.

“I know, Striker,” Brognola answered. “But there’s an operative out there who may be in trouble and a treasure trove of information that could be damaging to the U.S. if it falls into the wrong hands.”

“Sable?”

“Sable,” Brognola agreed. “We think she has Garabend’s laptop now.”

“I’m a shooter, not a spy. You know that, Hal.”

“This is Chechnya, Striker, you can’t be anything but a shooter and expect to make headway.”

“All right, tell me everything I need to know.”

5

Bolan entered The Berliner casino.

The place was full, but not crowded, and he heard the spinning of roulette wheels and the dissonance of slot machines over the more general noise of the crowd.

Bolan gazed across the crowd. He kept his thoughts as unfocused and bland as the neutral expression on his face. He wasn’t looking for anything specific, he was simply soaking in details, waiting to see if his inner radar picked up any blips. He surveyed the casino from payout cage to bar, then from security desk to the table games.

The guards Bolan saw looked hard. It was easy to come by veteran killers in Chechnya, though the real hard cases drifted into the heavily ex-military Russian syndicates. He saw a fat man with two blondes—each supporting improbably large breast implants—on each of his arms. He saw a nervous-looking Asian man puffing away on a cigarette as the dealer turned over cards and took his chips. A broad-shouldered guy with a crew cut leaned against an elegantly decorated pillar fiddling with a gold bracelet.

The Berliner casino was a strange mix, influenced by the youth club in the basement of the property as well as the gaming floor. Wealthy clients mixed with the partygoers, young and old. The place was neither a dive nor too high end. There was a fair mix of Westerners in the crowd. Bolan nodded to himself. It was a good establishment to go unnoticed in, and he understood why Sanders had chosen it as a drop point and meet place.

Bolan walked over to the bar. He watched pretty girls in revealing dresses or the sexy cocktail waitresses as a cover for his perpetual surveillance. He ordered a beer in a pint glass, left the bartender a tip and took his beer to the casino cage where he changed some cash into chips with the help of a brunette in a low cut uniform and too much eye shadow.

The soldier shook his chips loosely in his hand and strolled toward the roulette table. He knew roulette was a sucker’s bet, but he’d do it the way Sanders wanted.

As Bolan approached the table, he idly second-guessed himself, wondering if his decision to come unarmed was wise. He was still operating under his journalist cover and a weapons charge by overzealous police troops could unravel the whole operation at this point.

Bolan eased up to the table and made eye contact with the croupier before putting the equivalent of a twenty-five-dollar token on Black 8.

Barbara Price had informed him of the Agency’s covert station house location in the Grozny downtown where he could make contact and get equipment as he needed. Bolan had chosen to bypass ordinary channels, at least initially.

Sanders had made his call from an emergency drop cutout phone and not from the Grozny to Moscow station line. There had been no explanation for this irregularity, and Bolan had chosen to follow Sanders’s lead in avoiding usual channels. Bolan’s paranoia was omnidirectional and hard earned.

The croupier called Red 23 the winner and took Bolan’s money. The soldier slid another chip onto Black 8 to replace the one he’d lost. The big-shouldered guy with the crew cut wandered over to watch the wheel. The fat man said something, and the two blondes barked laughter like trained seals. The wheel spun and the white ball jumped and bounced its way across the device. After a moment the ball settled into one of the slots and the croupier called Red 11 the winner.

Bolan had to admit the casino protocol was a wise set up despite the seeming cinematic feel of the practice. Someone could remain anonymous in the crowd, surveying the environment. The contact would make no discernible moves that threatened exposure if he was under surveillance. Either party could simply walk from the scene without commotion if something seemed askew.

The Executioner eyed his watch, then slid another chip onto Black 8. He almost wanted to place another bet, just to make things interesting, but he was afraid the diversity could potentially throw off his contact. Sanders didn’t know him by sight, so any variation from the established contact routine would be stupid. The Asian man, eyes glassy, left the blackjack dealer and stumbled up to the table as Bolan lost again. Two security guards in ill-fitting jackets watched, seemingly bored. They were joined by a third after a moment.

Bolan put his chip down on Black 8 again. The guy with the crew cut ordered a drink from a passing cocktail waitress. The Asian man changed Russian rubles into chips at the table and lit another cigarette. One of the blondes had moved behind the fat man and was whispering into his ear while she pressed her breasts against his back. The other woman leaned in beside him, hand in his lap under the table as he played.

“Red 4,” the dealer said.

Bolan put his chip on Black 8, once more.

“Final time,” he said in passable Russian.

There was a tense moment when the Asian man began throwing chips across the board, but he didn’t play Black 8 and Bolan relaxed as the croupier called an end to bets.

This was it, Bolan reflected. The time for the meet in the prescribed manner was past. Sanders hadn’t shown. It was official. Grozny was a problem.

Bolan watched the roulette ball bounce around the revolving wheel. As he watched it hit Green 00, nothing obvious had changed, but he smelled danger.

Throwing a chip down for the croupier, Bolan rose.

It seemed he could feel the weight of the sniper’s crosshairs on his exposed back, even though he knew that was ridiculous. Sanders hadn’t shown, but that didn’t necessarily mean the meet location had been compromised.

Bolan was sure Sanders was in trouble. He was sitting on a top-level asset itching to defect. He had avoided his station command, used asymmetrical communications and had missed a last chance emergency meet. Bolan frowned as he walked. Something wasn’t right.

He walked outside and flipped open his regular cell phone. He hit a number on his speed dial while hailing a taxi driver in a battered old Volvo. When the connection was made, he spoke briefly into the phone.

“Black 8 was a bust, stage two.”

Bolan hung up the phone, his cell line was open, and he’d relied upon brevity and obtuse langue for security. Such a protocol was better than getting caught in the open with a military satellite phone. Bolan climbed into the taxi.