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The Russian looked confused. “Sorry, please?” he said.
“The crew,” Bolan said. “Are they FSB? FSO? Mafiya?”
Fedchenko shrugged and said, “It could be anyone.”
“Where can I drop you?” Bolan asked as they climbed into the sedan, Bolan behind the steering wheel.
Fedchenko named an all-night coffee shop along the route marked on his map, and Bolan reached it seven minutes later, thanked the man and then continued on his way alone.
The next potential ambush site would be the warehouse. Bolan hadn’t smelled a setup yet, but caution kept him breathing. He had known Yuri Fedchenko less than half an hour, hadn’t met the men behind him who had dealt with Brognola, and trust could only stretch so far.
There’d been a time when Bolan and Brognola both had faith in Langley, but a brutal act of treachery had changed all that. Today, the big Fed kept the Company at arm’s length when he could and triple-checked their information prior to putting agents in the field, if time allowed.
This night, there was no time to spare. No room for judgment by committee. It was either take the job and run with it, or leave a brave agent to die.
Some people Bolan knew would probably have let her go without a second thought. Why help a Russian agent, even if her information might jail felons in the States and drag some of her homeland’s dirty laundry into daylight? Russia and the U.S. had been rivals for the best part of a century, with only slight improvement under glasnost, perestroika and the rest of it. One less Russki was good, no matter how you sliced it.
Bolan disagreed.
He honored courage, sacrifice and good intentions—though it was a fact they often paved the road to hell. If he could save Tatyana Anuchin’s life and put her on a witness stand back home to land some spies and mobsters in a prison cell, Bolan felt bound to try.
But recognizing sacrifice didn’t mean that he planned to offer up himself as one. Bolan had never been a kamikaze warrior prone to suicide. He weighed the odds on every move he made, once battle had been joined, and if some of those moves seemed suicidal to the uninitiated, that was an illusion. He was thinking all the time, six moves ahead.
He did his best, anticipating what an enemy might do in any given situation, but he couldn’t know exactly what would happen. Not until he pulled a trigger and sent death streaking downrange. At that point, Bolan knew that flesh and blood had to yield to firepower.
His own included, sure.
And if he failed, that was the end of it. There’d be no time for Brognola to find another operative, get him in the air to Yakutsk before Anuchin broke or simply died under interrogation. It was now or never, all or nothing.
He drove along the waterfront, the Lena River on his right and flowing northward toward the Arctic Ocean. On its far side lay the Lena Highway, accessed during spring and summer via ferry, or across the frozen river’s ice in winter.
When Bolan spied the address he was seeking, he immediately checked for lookouts on the street and snipers on the rooftops. Finding none, he sketched the outline of a plan and drove once more around the block to verify his first impression of the target.
All that now remained was for the Executioner to act.
He would postpone consideration of the future until he had Anuchin safely in his hands.
CHAPTER THREE
Yakutsk
Bolan drove aimlessly, letting the woman calm down. She was hurting, of course. He’d seen the marks of torture on her flesh before she dressed, and while they all looked superficial, he knew he couldn’t judge her pain threshold or personal resilience on such short acquaintance.
“You’re safe now,” he told her.
“Safe?” She made a little hissing sound that could have been sarcastic laughter filtered through exhaustion. “What is safe?”
“We’re getting out of here,” he said.
“You think so?”
“That’s the plan.”
After a silent interval, she said, “I told them nothing. It was close, though. If the dry ice had arrived…”
Bolan recalled the first goon he had met, the plastic cooler leaking smoky vapor as he dropped.
“You showed them how strong you are,” Bolan said.
“Then why do I feel weak?”
“You’re losing the adrenaline rush.”
In fact, it didn’t matter if she’d cracked or not, as long as she survived and followed through on testifying when the time came. The opposition had to have a fair idea of what Anuchin and her partner had uncovered, and the use to which it would be put. The torture was to verify her knowledge, prior to silencing the final witness and securing—as they hoped—a free pass on impending charges.
“I am cold, as well.”
“That’s shock,” he said. “You need to rest. Stay warm. I wish we had a place where you could shower, maybe get some better clothes.”
“There is a place,” she told him, sounding groggy. “Keep on this way, then turn north on Ordzhonikidze Street.”
“You’ll stay awake and help me spot the sign?” he asked, not teasing her.
“I’ll try. If not, you’ll see a large Pervaya Pomosch pharmacy located on the northwest corner of the intersection. Let it be your guide.”
“And after that?”
“I’ll be awake, don’t worry. I have too much pain for sleep.”
He let that pass, knowing from personal experience that a commiserative stranger couldn’t help. Instead, he asked, “Is this a safehouse that we’re going to?”
“I hope so,” she replied, forcing the vestige of a smile.
“It isn’t FSB?” he asked.
“Private,” she informed him. “Rented with Sergey so we could meet, collect our evidence, discuss what we had learned without an ear in every corner.”
Bolan wondered if there had been more between the partners than idealism and a scheme for cleaning up the agency they served. Maybe the safehouse doubled as a love nest when they felt the need.
And if it had, so what?
If Anuchin and the late Dollezhal were hoping for a long-term cleanup of the FSB—much less the Russian Federation—Bolan pegged them as naive. Assuming they could bring down the top men, clean house beyond the normal game of hanging scapegoats out to dry, what then? Had either one of them imagined that they would be welcomed back as heroes to resume their duties for a grateful state?
Fat chance.
Still, they had tried. And Anuchin might succeed to some extent, if he could get her out of Russia in one piece and safely back to the United States.
Huge if.
He saw the pharmacy, turned north and drove another quarter mile before the woman had him turn again, and yet again, running parallel to Ordzhonikidze Street through a residential neighborhood. Six houses down, she had him pull in on the left.
“I have a key to the garage, unless they took it,” Anuchin told him, rummaging around inside her bag. “No, here it is.”
Bolan accepted it, unlocked the small attached garage and raised its door. No gunmen waited in the glare of headlights. He walked back to the GAZ and nosed it inside. Anuchin got out, found a light switch and stood by waiting until he had closed the door, then turned it on.
“In case someone is watching,” she explained unnecessarily.
“I think they would have jumped us,” Bolan said.
“You’ll think I’m paranoid,” she suggested.
“After tonight? Not even close,” he promised.
Nodding almost thankfully, she turned and led the way into the house.
Moscow
“WHAT DO YOU mean, ‘all dead’?” Eugene Marshak demanded.
“Just what I say, sir,” Stephan Levshin replied. “All dead. Our men, that is.”
Marshak might have slapped Levshin if they hadn’t been separated by three thousand miles and six time zones. As it was, he clenched his teeth and said, “Major, if you cannot express yourself more clearly, I will find another officer who can. Now, would you care to try again?”
“Yes, sir,” Levshin said stiffly. Wounded pride be damned. The man was growing arrogant. “Our escorts for the package have been killed, Colonel. Along with the examiner.”
“Better,” Marshak allowed, although the news was bad—nearly the worst it could have been. “And what about the package?”
“Gone, sir.”
So it was the very worst scenario.
“Can you explain this?” he asked.
“The mechanics of it only, sir,” his second in command replied. “At least one individual surprised them. The casings tell us he was armed with a Kalashnikov, one of the 5.45 millimeter models. Two of the escorts returned fire, with no apparent effect.”
“You think one man?” Marshak pressed him.
“Yes, sir. From the appearance of the scene.”
“I’ll have to tell our friend,” Marshak said.
“Yes, sir.”
No names, although the line was meant to be secure. Who really knew these days?
“I don’t suppose there’s any way to find out what they learned, if anything?”
“No, sir. Without the package…” Levshin left the obvious unspoken.
“No.” Marshak released a weary breath. “You must retrieve it, Major. At all costs. I will arrange for reinforcements as required.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I don’t believe the package has left the area. There’s been little time, and it may have been damaged.”
“Ah.”
Some hope, at least, if the interrogator’s ministrations made it difficult for Tatyana Anuchin to travel. Still, she’d managed to escape, aided by whom? At least one killer and a wild card in the game, unknown to Marshak. If the man—or men—were good enough to sneak up on the capture team and take them down, could he—or they—smuggle the woman out of Yakutsk?
Out of Russia?
That was unacceptable. Unthinkable.
“You understand how bad it is for all of us, unless we put it right,” Marshak reminded Levshin.
“Absolutely, sir. Our friend’s men failed you. I will not.”
“See that you don’t,” Marshak replied, and cut the link.
Six dead in Yakutsk now, counting the traitor Dollezhal. Digging so many graves in permafrost was tiresome, but there had to be room enough for half a dozen bodies in the Lena, surely. Failing that, Stephan could drop them down a mine shaft.
Out of sight, and who would give a damn?
Grigory Rybakov, of course. Four of the dead were his men, out on loan to help the FSB and cover his own ass at the same time. To plug the leak before it drowned them all.
And how bad would it be if Sergeant Anuchin escaped?
Russia’s constitution banned extradition of citizens to stand trial abroad, but in rare cases trial on foreign charges might proceed in Russian courts, with “necessary foreign experts” participating in the prosecution. That wouldn’t save Rybakov’s men in the States or in Europe, of course, but Marshak cared little for them.
He was concerned about himself, the damage to his reputation, his career—and yes, to his accumulated fortune—if the bitch who had betrayed him wasn’t found and silenced. He could deal with an internal inquiry, assisted by superiors who had as much or more to lose than Marshak did.
But if the case went public, he was lost.
A colonel made a nice fat sacrifice for others higher up the chain of rank. A general, perhaps, or someone in the prime minister’s cabinet. Maybe the prime minister himself?
Before any of his superiors went down, they would be pleased to let him take the fall, resign in shame, perhaps receive a token prison term. There’d be a pension of some sort when he was finally paroled, of course…unless he had an accident in jail, or even prior to trial. Such things weren’t unknown in Russia.
They were commonplace, in fact.
The answer was to find Anuchin and destroy her, with the man or men who cared enough to rescue her. And those who had employed them, if he had the opportunity.
And it had to be accomplished soon.
* * *
WHILE ANUCHIN showered, Bolan used his cell phone for a call to Yakutsk Airport. The Russian agent had gone through the telephone directory with him and had compiled a short list of three charter airlines operating from the local airport.
Bolan passed on Yakutskiye Avialinii, which Anuchin described as an official airport subsidiary, and tried his luck with the second company in line. Private Jets Charter Service had an English-language website and an operator who agreed that they could fly two passengers to Tokyo aboard a Dassault Falcon 50 or a Hawker 800 on three hours’ notice for nine thousand dollars U.S.
The soldier put the nonrefundable deposit on his Visa card, and drifted to the bathroom, knocking hard enough for her to hear him in the shower.
