скачать книгу бесплатно
“Almost done,” she told him.
“Take your time,” he called back through the door. “Our flight takes off at seven-thirty.”
She turned the shower off and said, “You’ve booked a plane?”
“It’s set,” he answered. “All we have to do is check in with their booking agent at the terminal.”
There was silence from Anuchin then, except for sounds of rustling fabric. Bolan guessed a towel, then clothing she had taken from a closet in the safehouse. Feeling like a voyeur, he retreated to the living room.
She joined him moments later, dressed in slacks, a blouse and sweater, with a towel around her head. There was a certain stiffness to her movements, which was no surprise after the ordeal she’d been through.
Still, she declared, “That’s better.”
“You can rest awhile before we go,” Bolan said. “Longer, on the flight.”
“They must have asked you questions.”
“Just my name, and whether I could pay,” Bolan replied.
“Your name. Which is…?”
They hadn’t got around to formal introductions yet. “Matt Cooper,” Bolan said. “And yours, I know.”
“Of course, you must. You’re CIA?” she asked.
“A cousin, several times removed.”
“You realize the airport will be watched,” she said.
“I know it’s possible.”
“Call it a certainty. They’ve caught me once already there,” she stated. “You have no reinforcements?”
“No,” he said. “Just me.”
“I fear it’s hopeless, then,” she told him.
“That’s the spirit.”
Anuchin sat and began to dry her short hair with the towel.
“There are two ways to reach or leave Yakutsk,” she said. “If not by air, then over the Kolyma Highway, which begins at Nizhny Bestyakh, on the east bank of the Lena. We can only reach Nizhny Bestyakh by ferry, which my enemies will also watch.”
“Let’s try the charter first,” Bolan replied, “before we count it out.”
“Of course,” she said. “But you must be prepared to fail.”
“If that’s the way you feel,” he said, “you should have thought about it at the start, before you put your own neck and your partner’s on the chopping block.”
That obviously stung her, but she took it, nodding.
“You’re correct. We were a pair of fools.”
“It’s never foolish when you try to do the right thing,” Bolan said. “Sometimes it has a price, but that’s the way things work.”
“A great price, yes?” Anuchin said. “First, Sergey’s life. Now yours and mine.”
“We’re not dead yet,” Bolan reminded her. “A little confidence could help you stay alive. But if you’re giving up, why don’t you tell me now. I don’t need any deadweight on my shoulders while I’m running.”
“Confidence, of course,” she said. “And weapons, yes?”
“I’ve got a fair stash from the warehouse,” Bolan said.
She tried a smile and said, “Let’s see them, then.”
* * *
NIKOLAY MILESCU SIPPED a cup of bitter coffee he had purchased at a kiosk in the international arrivals and departures terminal, watching the travelers who scurried past him, hoping for a glimpse of a familiar face—the person he’d been sent to capture, or to kill, if all else failed.
Milescu had a photo on his cell phone of the woman he was hunting. She wasn’t the type he favored, though he wouldn’t kick her out of bed. Too bad for her, she’d never get to know him in that way and learn how he could please a woman.
All the future held in store for her was pain.
The problem: she was hard to hold.
In fact, the woman had been picked up once already, at that very airport, but she had been liberated by a man or men who left the snatch team dead. Milescu’s boss said one man was responsible, but why take chances? So he’d sent four other guns along, put Milescu in charge and promised them a fat reward if they secured the fugitives.
Alive or dead.
Milescu personally didn’t think it likely that the woman would return to catch another flight, after she had been kidnapped from the terminal the previous night, but people frequently did stupid things. He would remain alert and stay in contact with his soldiers, placed strategically around the airport.
With that in mind, he palmed his Motorola phone, the Tundra model that combined normal calling and web access with push-to-talk service, effectively making the cell phone a small walkie-talkie. Keying the button to contact all four men at once, he commanded, “Report in by number.”
“Number two,” Vasily Ryumin answered. “Nothing yet in the domestic terminal.”
“Three here,” Naum Izvolsky said. “Baggage claim is clear.”
“Number four,” Viktor Gramotkin replied. “Nothing but peasants in the parking lot.”
Milescu waited to hear from Gennady Stolypin, stationed on the roof to watch the charter hangars through binoculars. When half a minute passed with no response, he keyed the phone again.
“Waiting for check-in, Number Five.”
“Hold on,” Stolypin answered him belatedly, ignoring all decorum. “I have someone just arriving… Can’t see who it is yet.”
“Where?” Milescu asked. “Which hangar?”
“Private Jets,” Stolypin answered. “Wait a second, while I… It’s a GAZ four-door. Can’t say what model from this distance. There, it’s stopped. The driver’s getting out…a man. And now, a woman. Let me check the photo. Yes! It’s her! I can take them down from here!”
Stolypin had a VSK-94 sniper’s rifle with him on the roof, the silenced model, semiautomatic, with a 20-round box magazine of 9 mm SPP rounds.
“No!” Milescu snapped over his walkie-talkie, up and moving toward the nearest exit. “Do not fire! You know the order.”
“Yes,” Stolypin answered back. “Alive or dead.”
“With higher pay if she’s alive. Just watch and wait, until we get there.” To the others then, in case they weren’t in motion yet, he said, “All hands to Private Jets, south of the terminal!”
His men confirmed with clicking signals, staying off the air. They would be closing on the target, moving swiftly but without a frantic sprint to draw attention from the terminal’s police officers.
Milescu reckoned he should thank the woman, if he got the chance. Her desperate stupidity had saved him from a long day sitting at the airport, wasting time while someone else hogged all the glory.
Now, his task was simple—neutralize the woman’s escort, one way or another, and collect her for the boss. Take both alive, if possible.
And deliver them to a fate worse than death.
Private Jets Charter Service
“I DON’T SEE ANYONE,” Tatyana said. “Do you?”
“Not yet,” Bolan replied.
Which proved precisely nothing. They could be under surveillance from a distance, and he wouldn’t know it until bullets from a sniper’s rifle dropped them on the tarmac, dead or dying by the time the echo of the shots arrived. The Executioner had done that sort of work himself, times beyond counting, and he knew the risks involved.
But sitting in the sedan, outside the hangar, wouldn’t keep them safe.
“Sit tight a minute,” Bolan said, and stepped out of the car. He left the key in the ignition for her, just in case, but saw no adversaries as he scanned the runway. No one lurking in the hangar’s shadow. No vehicles close enough to box them in.
The problem now: they had to discard their weapons prior to boarding, or they’d run afoul of customs when they got to Tokyo. Japanese law forbade private possession of firearms, except for strictly regulated sporting shotguns and air rifles, with maximum penalties of ten years in prison and a fine of one million yen per offense.
Bolan nodded, alert as Anuchin stepped out of the car. The hangar stood no more than thirty feet away, their Hawker 800 already rolled out and prepared for departure. In profile, it was nearly eight feet shorter than the Learjet 60 Bolan had arrived on, but its wingspan ten feet greater.
Eighteen minutes to boarding, by Bolan’s watch, if they got through the sign-in procedure on time. And from there—
Bolan knew a curse in Russian when he heard one. He followed Anuchin’s gaze and saw two men approaching at a run from the direction of the airport terminal. As he watched, a third man cleared the exit, laboring to catch the other two.
So much for signing in.
“Come on!” he snapped, turning back toward the car. When he was halfway there, a sharp crack on the pavement marked a near-miss from a distant rifle, somewhere high and well beyond the runners.
Bolan dropped into the driver’s seat and gunned the sedan’s engine. Anuchin was a second later, and she had to slam her door as he was wheeling out of there, tires screeching on concrete. The choice was fight or flight, and Bolan picked the option that would maximize their chances of survival with a long-range shooter in the mix.
He fled.
The runners weren’t in range to use whatever weapons they were packing as he roared away from them. The rifleman had no such handicap, however, and his second shot glanced off the roof of their vehicle with a resounding bang!
Still no sound from the piece itself, and since the sedan couldn’t aspire to supersonic speed, that meant the rifle had a sound suppressor. Its shots wouldn’t alert police inside the terminal unless he took a hit and crashed the car.
In which case, Bolan figured, they were dead.
Anuchin had retrieved one of the weapons liberated from her captors, a compact PP-19 Bizon submachine gun, but it wouldn’t do her any good unless he stopped the car, or someone tried to cut them off before they cleared the airport’s ring of access roads.
Which, in the circumstances, was entirely possible.
A last shot from the sniper struck their trunk before Bolan swung left around a cargo terminal, putting its bulk between the shooter and himself. Another moment put them on the highway leading back to Yakutsk, with no evident pursuit.
At least, not yet.
“So, we’re not flying out,” Anuchin said.
“Not today,” Bolan agreed.
“And we cannot hide in Yakutsk.”
“I wouldn’t like the odds,” he said.
She slumped. “In that case, there is nothing left except the Road of Bones.”
CHAPTER FOUR
First thing, they ditched the sedan their enemies had seen, however briefly, at the airport. Its replacement was a four-door Lada Priora, stolen from the Kruzhalo shopping center along with a spare set of license plates to complete the short-term disguise. That done, when they were relatively safe, Anuchin briefed Bolan on what lay ahead once they crossed the Lena River.
“They will be watching the ferry,” she cautioned. “They know that we have no way out now, except overland, which means the Kolyma Highway.”
“I don’t fancy a swim with the gear,” Bolan told her.
“No, that can’t be done. It’s too far and too cold, even this time of year. We’ll require a small charter to take us across. Leave the car in Yakutsk and make other arrangements in Nizhny Bestyakh.”
“What kind of arrangements?” Bolan asked.
“Something rugged, for the road ahead,” Anuchin said. “If we had a Lada Niva we could try it, but I think a motorcycle is more suitable. Also much easier to find on such short notice. You can ride on two wheels?”
“Not a problem,” Bolan said. “But what’s this thing about a road of bones?”
“Officially,” she said, “it’s the M56 Kolyma Highway, linking Yakutsk and Nizhny Bestyakh to Magadan on the Sea of Okhotsk. The distance is something over two thousand kilometers, close to thirteen hundred miles by your reckoning. Those who live along the highway call it Trassa—the Route. They need no other name, since it is literally the only road in the district.”
“Where do the bones come in?” Bolan asked.
“Stalin ordered construction of the highway in 1932, using inmates from the Sevvostlag, the Northeastern Corrective Labor Camps. Work continued using gulag labor until 1953, when the highway reached Magadan—a labor camp itself, in those days—and Stalin, at last, had the decency to die. We call the highway Road of Bones for those who died while building it and were buried beneath or beside it. How many? Who knows?”
“So, it’s a straight shot on this road from Nizhny Bestyakh to Magadan?” Bolan asked.
“Hardly straight,” Anuchin replied. “There are rivers to cross, with or without bridges, and parts of the so-called highway are crumbling away. Between us and Magadan there are two villages, Tomtor and Oymyakon. Both claim to be the coldest place on Earth, in winter. This time of year, they’re simply…chilly.”
“So, aside from special wheels, we’ll need new clothes,” Bolan observed.
“And camping gear, if we can carry it.”
“One bike or two?” Bolan asked.
