Читать книгу: «Hard Passage», страница 3

“I already said I wasn’t going to hurt you, so there’s no more reason to fight me.”

Tears glistened as they pooled in her lower eyelids. Bolan felt her body shudder against his own and realized she wasn’t wearing a jacket. He slowly let his hand off her mouth, released his hold and quickly shrugged out of his coat. He held it out and she stepped off the wall to allow him enough room to drape it around her shoulders. He still wore the sport jacket beneath the overcoat so the Beretta remained concealed in shoulder leather.

“Come on,” he said more quietly. “Let’s go someplace we can talk.”

THE SOMEPLACE TURNED OUT to be a cozy bistro-style restaurant a mile from the club.

The waiter took their orders for coffee, bread and a soup appetizer. Vdovin had kept the overcoat draped across her shoulders when they entered the place so as not to call much attention to the skimpy blouse and short skirt she wore beneath it. She looked older than her twenty years, so her appearance on Bolan’s arm didn’t seem out of place with the other patrons, most of whom looked to be from high society. The place was also crowded, which surprised Bolan until Vdovin explained, according to the waiter, that a late opera had just ended.

“Your English is good,” Bolan said. “With barely any trace of an accent.”

Vdovin smiled briefly. “I was born in Russia but spent a number of years in Australia.”

“That explains the strange inflections.”

“My parents were not popular people. I was too young to remember, but they were forced from the country during the revolution. I only returned a few years ago.”

“And got in with the best crowd right off,” Bolan quipped.

“You’ve no right to judge me for that,” she countered.

“You’re right. Sorry. But I’m sure you know by now I’m not out to hurt you. All I want to know is where I can find Rostov and Cherenko.”

She snorted. “Of course. You and half of the people I know in the Sevooborot. But I don’t know where they are. And even if I did, I would not betray my friends.”

“I thought Rostov and Cherenko were your friends.”

Vdovin signaled for the cigarette girl who came over and extended a tray arrayed with a variety of smokes. Vdovin selected one, waited for the cigarette to be lit and then looked expectantly at Bolan. The Executioner shook his head at the cigarette girl as he handed her a generous tip and she sashayed from the table. Bolan looked around them but nobody seemed to notice them.

“You were saying?” he prompted.

“I have nothing to do with Leo and Sergei, either for or against. I only knew them for a short time, and I broke all contact with them once I had learned they betrayed the Sevooborot. My only connection with them is my friendship with Kisa.”

“Kisa…Kisa Naryshkin?”

Vdovin seemed to let her guard down some. “You know Kisa?”

“Not personally,” Bolan said with a shake of his head. “But I know she’s Rostov’s girlfriend, and I know she could be in serious danger from people inside the SMJ.”

“She is in no danger from the Sevooborot.”

“Want to bet?” Bolan countered. “I think there’s something you don’t understand here. Those people you like to hang out with aren’t in this just for the sake of Mother Russia. Don’t get that in your head for a second. They’re driven by two things, power and money, and they’re willing to steal or kill or whatever else they have to do to accomplish their ends.”

“I do not believe you,” she said. “I know these people. They are my friends.”

“Time to find some new friends, Sonya.” Bolan leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “You act like this is some kind of country club you belong to. I have intelligence that these supposed friends of yours are in bed with members of the Jemaah al-Islamiyah. Are you familiar with that group?”

Vdovin shook her head.

“Well, let me give you a clue. The JI is one of the most influential terrorist organizations in Southeast Asia. They’re responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent people.”

Vdovin took a long drag off her cigarette, sat back and folded one arm across her body defensively, holding the cigarette high in her opposing hand. “I do not believe you.”

“Whether you believe me or not isn’t important,” Bolan said. “And it doesn’t change the fact the JI is active in places like Afghanistan, the Philippines and Indonesia, to make no mention of the campaigns they sponsor in a half dozen other countries.”

“My friends fight against those people. They stop them from coming into our country and stealing jobs and murdering our people.”

Bolan’s smile was frosty, at best. “I think you’re confused, Sonya. The SMJ has made some kind of deal with the JI. Now I don’t know what it’s for, but Rostov and Cherenko know. That’s why your friends in the SMJ want them dead.”

“Leo betrayed the code of silence,” Vdovin insisted. “Anything that was done to him or is done to him is because of that. And in the course of betraying the Sevooborot, he brought down Sergei, as well.”

“I’m not part of these people. Why did they try to kill me?”

“Because you came to kill them.”

Bolan shook his head. “No dice. We came looking for you, not them. The man you were with tonight. Who was he?”

“I have told you before, I will not betray my friends.”

“What about Kisa?” Bolan said. “You said she was your friend.”

“And so she is.”

“Who do you think arranged to get Rostov and Cherenko out of the country?” Bolan replied. “You don’t think your precious revolutionaries won’t try to kill her once they find out?”

“They will probably do nothing,” she said. “She is not even part of the Sevooborot.”

“Really,” Bolan said. “Then I guess it would surprise you to know they’ve had her under surveillance for some time now.”

“How do you know this?”

The Executioner decided to go for broke and play his only trump card. “The same way I knew how to find you. Listen, Sonya, you don’t have to believe anything I say. But two good men have already died at the hands of your friends, and I’m here to make sure nobody else falls. Now I can do that with or without your help, but in any case you need to wise up and see what’s going on around you.”

“I have already told you that I don’t know where to find Leo and Sergei.”

“But Kisa confided in you,” he said.

“Yes.”

“If she were in trouble, where would she go for help? Would she come to you?”

At first, Vdovin didn’t answer—she just sat and stared—and Bolan wondered if she had finally decided to shut down and not answer any questions. Slowly, he realized that she was thinking about what he’d said. Something had dawned on her, some small bit of their discussion had taken hold, and she was now beginning to see Bolan had told her the truth.

Finally, Vdovin shook her head. “No. There is only one person she would go to for help. Her father.”

Bolan nodded grimly and replied, “Tell me where to find him.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Kisa Naryshkin’s parents greeted her warmly but tiredly when she arrived at their home.

After summoning a house servant to put on a pot of tea, they adjourned to the parlor where Kisa’s father lit a fire. She watched him work with the same fascination she always held for him, and her mother watched her with same amusement she always had when Kisa watched her father. Tolenka Valdimirovich Naryshkin had served with the GRU, the main intelligence arm of the General Staff, Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Tolenka’s distinguished career began in 1962 where he served as adjutant to a low-level officer in the supply distribution logistics arena. The GRU promoted him quickly through the ranks and he worked with both Soviet signal intelligence and field reconnaissance before being transferred to the Division of Human Intelligence. On several occasions during the eighties and nineties, a number of foreign intelligence services had approached Tolenka Naryshkin with offers to perform counterespionage activities against his own country, but according to Kisa’s mother he refused every offer and reported it immediately to his superiors. This was something Kisa had learned very early in her life about her father: no matter how much it might benefit him, monetarily or otherwise, he would not betray his friends or his country.

Another thing that separated Tolenka from other men in his position was his sense of justice. Kisa had grown up—an only child as complications during her birth had left her mother sterile—hearing her father say regularly that he believed in the general goodness of most people. While many considered this naïveté, an odd trait for a military intelligence officer, Tolenka preferred to call it “natural humanistic optimism” and refused to offer any explanation or defense for his beliefs. What many failed to understand, although his daughter knew this simply by watching her father’s interactions with others, was that Tolenka Naryshkin had a way of bringing out the very best in people. This had made him both a successful intelligence gatherer and administrator in the GRU.

The traits of steadfastness, truth and fairness that Kisa had come to know about her father made it all the more difficult to tell him what she was about to tell him. Certainly he would view her actions as unethical, maybe even as betrayal. All she could do was to hope he would understand. That didn’t make it any easier when he sat next to her on the sofa and watched her intently with his gray eyes.

Tolenka smiled. “I wondered when you would come to us with whatever’s been troubling you these past two months. I have to admit I didn’t expect a visit at such a late hour.”

Kisa smiled and shrugged, lowering her eyes and looking briefly at her mother for support.

“What I have to say is difficult, Father,” she began.

“You know you can tell me anything.”

“I do,” she said, and quickly added, “and I know you love me.”

“What’s troubling you, Kisa?” her mother prompted.

“Please, don’t interrupt me again or this will become too difficult,” she said. “I have done something of which I am ashamed. But it has gone very wrong, Father, and I don’t know what to do. So I am coming to you to admit of my indiscretions and ask you to help me.”

Tolenka’s eyes narrowed slightly for only a moment, then he nodded.

“About five weeks ago, I used contacts inside my office to arrange defection of two men to the United States.” Kisa’s mother took a sharp, inward breath and looked at Tolenka, who didn’t react. “One of these men was Leonid Rostov, the man I’d been dating. You met him once. You remember?”

Tolenka nodded.

Kisa took a deep breath and plodded on. “He had a friend, Sergei Cherenko, who I also helped get out of the country because both of their lives were endangered by the same people.”

“Who, dear?” her mother asked.

Kisa fixed her mother with a level gaze. “Leo and Sergei were members of the Sevooborot.”

Now it was Tolenka Naryshkin’s turn to react. He stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his smoking jacket, marched to the fire and stared with a steely expression at the growing flames. Kisa could tell he’d become angered by her mention of the revolutionary organization. Her father considered them traitors to the country, murderers and dissenters who refused to let the revolution die. Things had improved vastly in Russia over the past nine years, particularly in their part of the country. People no longer had to fear being yanked out of their bed by the secret police in the dead of morning for their political affiliations, or fret over the possible repercussions when a volume of family members suddenly went missing. While things weren’t perfect, not by far, they were much improved.

Tolenka said quietly, “Go on, Kisa. Tell me everything.”

And that’s exactly what Kisa Naryshkin did. She laid it out for her parents, every last detail, stealing regular glances at her father to see how he reacted to certain parts of her tale. She felt horrible having betrayed him like she did, but she could not have stood by and done nothing—risked the possibility of her true love being murdered—as long as she had the connections and resources to give Leo and Sergei a fighting chance.

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.