One of them hit the ground immediately, stitched from shoulder to waist. The Russian used the cars as cover and moved around so that he could see the prone mercenary. A second tap eliminated any threat that remained.
The other mercenary who had spilled from the back had disappeared. The Russian cursed and moved toward the rear of the truck, ducking below the vehicle behind to give himself cover.
A second man came into view. He was close to the side of the truck, moving stealthily up to take down Bolan, who had pulled open the cab door to complete his task. One of the mercenaries was dead; the other was mortally wounded. Bolan had pulled out the dead man and was leaning across to haul out the semiconscious mercenary and clear space behind the wheel. For a moment, that left him exposed and unable to respond as the man creeping up on him leveled his SMG.
“Cooper!” Dostoyevsky yelled, his warning drowned by the tap on his SMG that stitched the mercenary along his spine. As the man dropped, Bolan came into view, his Uzi leveled at the empty space.
“You owe me one.” The Russian grinned. He looked up as a chopper swooped overhead. “I’ll collect later. Let’s go.”
Bolan clambered into the cab of his truck, punching out the remainder of the windshield as he fired up the stalled engine. The Russian ran past him and pulled the first truck out into a gap in the traffic jam. The big American followed him, pulling his smartphone from its secure place and hitting a speed-dial number.
“Bear, I need the U.S. Embassy to play ball and quick. This is way out of control.”
“Striker, the ambassador has complained to the Department of State, and Hal is talking to them now. He’s a dickwad, and we’ve got a real problem.”
Bolan cursed to himself, then gritted out, “Keep at it, Bear. I’ve got half the Russian army on my back, and we need some shelter.”
“Striker, leave this with me. I’ll talk to Hal, and maybe I’ve got an idea. I’ll be as quick as possible—you need to buy me some time.”
“Bear, I’ll try, but the numbers are falling....”
* * *
“THEY’VE TAKEN OUT another four men and have two of these vehicles now,” the Russian president said, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice. “If I had men like them, instead of the cretins I have...” He shook his head sadly, then yelled over the noise of the chopper, “I want men to intercept them. Use as many as necessary, and mark off points where we can divert them. I want to take those trucks without damage. Isolate them and take them down.” He cast a glance over his shoulder at the security chief.
The security chief quailed under his leader’s glare, wincing as the man added, “You think you can do that without screwing up again?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bolan kept tight on the tail of the Russian as he negotiated his way through the dense Moscow traffic. It moved fast when it could or else came to a dead stop when obstructions occurred. In the richer sections of the new city—where there were numerous apartment buildings and upmarket department stores—much of that was due to the lack of parking spaces and the narrow streets.
Drivers would halt suddenly, waiting for a car to vacate one of the precious spaces, and then take it, ignoring the chaos caused in their wake. It made trying to keep moving and evade whatever might be on your tail a daunting task.
Fortunately Dostoyevsky was used to that kind of traffic—even though he had repeatedly remarked, usually between curses, that it had gotten a whole lot worse in the years he had been gone—and so now on occasion mounted the sidewalks, scattering pedestrians who yelled curses at the Russian and then Bolan who followed suit.
Normally the soldier would be averse to the kind of attention this type of driving would bring on him when trying to escape but figured that it was far too late now for that kind of worry. If nothing else, the Russian military and police forces on their tail would be practicing exactly the same kind of action. At least this way they kept moving and stayed one jump ahead.
Or did they? Despite the chaos they had caused, it seemed odd that they had not encountered any head-on resistance.
“Cooper, I can’t just keep driving. We need to head somewhere,” the Russian said over the cell phone link.
“We can’t rely on the embassy,” Bolan replied. “We need to head out to open ground—if nothing else, I might be able to get Jack to pick us up.”
“And get shot down by the military’s flyboys?” the Russian queried.
“Without causing a major international incident?” Bolan replied.
“Cooper, you think my president would care? How could the U.S. government explain it? He would have nothing to worry about.”
Bolan did not answer. He knew that any liability would be denied and that he would be yet another faceless soldier of fortune to the world. Grimaldi’s flying might just about be the only thing to get them out. “It’s our only chance right now,” he snapped. “Let’s do it.”
The Russian responded by cutting across three lanes of traffic headed in different directions, and headed for the first ring. Right now they had landed themselves in the center of the city by the Kremlin. The problem was how to get out without being stopped.
As they drove, Bolan considered what he knew of the traffic system in Moscow and what its layout meant to their chances of escape. They had been lucky that their last round of combat had been far quicker and easier than he had feared. They had been able to take the enemy by surprise at a point when they had emerged from a firefight and had not been expecting an ambush.
That had bought Bolan and Dostoyevsky some time and enabled them to outrun the military they had been certain were on their tail. The chopper that had swooped over them had been proof of that. Looking up when he had the chance, he could see that it was still shadowing them, keeping them under observation from a distance. If it wasn’t marshaling forces that were chasing them, then what was its purpose?
Roads in Moscow. Bolan recalled that they tended to run in straight lines and concentric circles, radiating out from the center. Dostoyevsky was negotiating the straight lines and the grid that they formed wherever possible, to avoid getting trapped on a ring, but it was not as simple as they could have wished.
The Bulvarnoye Koltso was the first ring, which they were now circling. It formed a horseshoe shape around the Bielo Gorod, in the sixteenth-century White Town area, and came to an abrupt halt at the Yauza River. It was the farthest into the city that they could go, and it was imperative that they get beyond that and onto the Sadovoye Koltso, the Garden Ring, which formed the boundary of an old version of the city, long since overrun.
The Third Ring, which they had already used, was much more recent, being only a decade old. It had been built to alleviate the congestion of the newly rich city, and as they had found earlier, it was already failing in that task.
Despite its relative newness, it was one of the most-used roads in Moscow, which was why a Fourth Ring was already under construction. They could have done with it being ready now, but as it was, they still would have had to jump across it and use the concentric road system to reach the MKAD—the acronym coming from the Russian equivalent of the Moscow Automotive Ring Road, built in the 1950s, which still defined the outer limits of the city. Beyond, the spread of the city was unplanned, but even there the road systems followed a concentric pattern.
It made them easy to follow, but in the same way it made it simple for anyone to follow them and intercept. That was what Bolan was beginning to expect. The only way out that he could see was to head for the open land on the outside of the MKAD, and get Grimaldi to swoop in and pick them up. Dragonslayer had the firepower to go head-to-head with another armed chopper. Missiles would be a different matter. They would be at the mercy of ground-to-air, but at least there would still be a chance.
To do that, they had to get past the rings. The question Bolan ask
ed himself was, would the Russians give them that leeway?
* * *
THE RUSSIAN LEADER took his chopper higher, leaving the two trucks carving up traffic and leaving a trail of mayhem in the inner section of the city. It seemed to him that the Americans—he spared himself a wry smile as he thought of the strenuous denial he had received from the State Department in Washington that morning—were trying to keep moving while they worked out what they could do.
He knew the ambassador and knew what a moral coward the man was. That man would do anything to avoid getting involved. The Russian leader was amused as he recalled the stammering explanation given to him of why a chopper had landed on the embassy grounds and how he could see the fear in the ambassador’s eyes. He knew that there was no way that the ambassador would allow them back into his embassy when he knew he was being watched. That left them few options.
“Are the roadblocks in place?” he yelled.
“Yes, sir,” the security chief shouted in return, over the noise of the rotors.
“Good. Let us go and wait for them.” He pulled back, and the chopper veered off toward the edge of the city.
Below him, the three internal rings and MKAD were marked and delineated by armored vehicles and police patrol cars that now sat ominously at points that would lead the two trucks into a path which would take them only to one place: a deserted airstrip that had been built and then abandoned some thirty years before in the Naro-Fominsky Districts.
This group of rural settlements had been absorbed into the administrative and suburban spread of Moscow. There, isolated from any interference and prying eyes, and with a large open space in which to maneuver and take down an enemy, the Russian president planned to personally lead the attack that would finish off these intruders.
Of course he argued with himself, perhaps leniency was an option. After all, had they not saved Moscow from the threat posed by Freedom Right and also saved his own men the trouble of taking down three other terrorist groups? Battles in which, frankly, his own forces had been found wanting?
The latter thought hardened him. He could not admit to the weakness that this admission engendered. He would recover the weapons, and these intruders would die.
It would be interesting to see what response the U.S. State Department would have to that.
* * *
DOSTOYEVSKY CURSED LOUDLY as he made another abrupt turn and headed away from the exit off the Sadovoye Koltso. He had tried to get them off this ring and onto the straight roads that would take them out past the third ring for the last two exits, and on each he had turned at the last moment, deterred by the sight of the military waiting patiently.
“Cooper, I don’t think they want us to get out of the city,” he said over the cell phone link. “You’d better come up with another plan.”
“Let me speak to my contact,” the soldier replied. “We have to keep moving for now.”
“The gas won’t last forever,” the Russian reminded him before Bolan put him on hold and hit the speed-dial digit for Stony Man.
“Bear, you’d better have good news,” Bolan said.
“Maybe,” Kurtzman replied. “Forget our people. That ambassador is a damned disgrace. Jack is standing by, but I won’t send him in without cover of some kind—”
“Well, if our people won’t back us up, then where the hell can we get that?” Bolan asked tersely.
“I’m working on it, but in the meantime, I can tell you what’s going down your end.”
“We’re being herded, I know that much.”
“And how,” the computer wizard agreed. “There are roadblocks on every exit on each ring and at junctions on the grids between. You’re being funneled out to a region called Naro-Fominsky, a rural area. There’s an old airfield there, and the CCTV running out of the city is showing a lot of military activity out that way.”
“Sounds perfect for Jack, I guess, if we can blast our way through.”
“Negative, Striker. You haven’t seen how many of these bastards there are. They could take you out—”
“Yeah? Remember what we’re carrying, Bear. They’ve got to be careful or else they’re going to reduce Moscow to a heap of smoking rubble with a deadly breeze. They can’t fire on us at will.”
“Maybe, but they’ll give you no place to run, and they’ll have no reason not to shoot Jack out of the sky.”
“What else can we do?” Bolan murmured. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Take the first open exit—move along but not too quickly. Just give me some time to play with, Striker.”
“Okay, Bear, I’ll go with you on this. But we’re running on empty here.” He disconnected and got the link with his partner open. He quickly ran through what he had been told.
“At least they can’t blow us off the ring, I guess,” he said sardonically. “This will confuse them, especially when we play ball,” he added as he came to a turnoff that was unblocked. “Here we go....”
* * *
HAL BROGNOLA SAT opposite the Secretary of State and tried to hold his temper. He took a deep breath.
“With the greatest respect, I have to say that your attitude is not constructive. The ambassador in Moscow is doing nothing to assist—”
“You perhaps need to remember that officially your group does not exist. I had never heard of you before today, and the information about what you do was rather sketchy. I was informed that you deal directly with the President. I’m only involved because the President is in high-level talks and is unavailable to anyone for the rest of the day. He told me to deal with whatever problem you have.
“And I must say,” the secretary continued, “that your men have put the ambassador in a difficult position at a very sensitive time. We have several deals that we are—”
“Again, with respect, if we don’t get our hands on the hardware our men are carrying, or if the Russian president gets his hands on them, there might not be a situation where a deal can be struck.”
The secretary smiled in a manner so patronizing that the big Fed had trouble reining in his temper. “I think you overstate the case.”
Brognola thought of the number of times he had overseen such situations in the past and how close the world had come to war or annihilation if not for the intervention of his people. But this was not the time to argue; he took another tack.
“I never experienced this kind of intransigence from your predecessor,” he said softly. “She appreciated the work that we have to do and that sometimes you have to step outside the box.”
“Well, she’s not here, is she? You have to deal with me now, and this doesn’t happen on my watch. The ambassador is doing the right thing. I can do no more than trust his judgment and back him. There is an American way, and we must follow it.”
“Perhaps one day, Mr. Secretary, I can introduce you to an American who has done a hell of a lot for this country and might not entirely agree with you.”
“I very much doubt that. Good day.” The secretary turned to the papers on his desk, ignoring the man still seated before him.
Brognola bit back what came to mind, nodded briefly and left without a word. It was only when he was outside that he swore softly to himself and pulled out his cell phone. He hit a speed-dial key.
“Bear, it’s not good,” he said softly. “The secretary is backing the ambassador and hamstringing us. How are things?”
He listened while Kurtzman gave him a quick rundown. He listened intently. “Striker needs help, Bear, and we need cover to get Jack in there. I’ve taken the official and standard routes...”
“I hear you, Hal. I have an idea and a contact. But it’s not official, and you wouldn’t like it.”
“Would the secretary like it?” Brognola queried.
“He would hate it, Hal.”
Brogn
ola grinned. “Then do it, Bear. Just don’t tell me what it is.”
* * *
THE RUSSIAN LED BOLAN down a street that was much quieter than it should have been at that time of day. There was a flow of traffic along what was usually a main artery, but it was flowing easily with gaps between the vehicles.
“They’re keeping the numbers down, Cooper, trying to make it look like nothing is wrong but giving themselves a more open field. That is the Russian mind for you—cover all the possibilities and screw up on every level,” he said via the cell phone link.
“Maybe. I figure the roadblocks would just keep some drivers out anyway, but you could be right about them thinking we won’t catch on to what they’re doing.”
“It doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t, we’re just doing it anyway. Your boys had better come through with something before we reach open country, because I don’t give much for our chances.”
They took another turn, moving away from a roadblock and down a long freeway that took them onto the third ring. They traveled for ten minutes, passing two turnoffs where military vehicles lurked ominously.
Bolan felt confined and ill at ease. He was used to being proactive, but right now he was unable to take the initiative. The cargo the two trucks carried was too fragile to be caught in any kind of combat. Yet how else could they break free of the straitjacket that the Russians had imposed upon them?
His smartphone registered a call. He switched off the link to Dostoyevsky. “Speak to me, Bear. Make it good.”
“It is. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going down, but you’ll have to trust me and follow what happens.”
“You’re the man. I’m sure it’ll all make sense in the end.”
“Good. I’m tracking your progress on the Moscow CCTV systems, and my friends are doing the same. You need to head back toward the Bulvarnoye Koltso, Striker. We’re taking you to the heart of Moscow.”
* * *
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