An illusion? Possibly. But at the moment, he would take whatever he could get.
After he rallied the Special Services team, Major Golos next should have alerted his superior, Colonel Avel Dontov, but he did not phone the colonel. There was too much to explain—why Voloshyn had called Golos directly from his home, instead of using the police’s public emergency number, how he knew Golos, and all that flowed from that—for Golos to get sidetracked at the moment. Dontov might have wished to come along and take command, which opened up another can of writhing worms. He was corrupt, of course, but lacked the personal relationship with Voloshyn that marked Golos as Voloshyn’s main contact on the force.
A blessing and a curse that had turned out to be. Golos lived for the money, but tonight, he realized, it just might get him killed.
Vozdvyzhenka, Kiev
BOLAN AND SUSHKO made it to street level, crawling to the rooftop access door, then racing down the building’s service stairs, mindful of traps along the way. Four of Britnev’s men had occupied the same building, seeking a straight shot toward Voloshyn’s home downrange, and they had noted that the rocket that had bowled their comrades over had come from the rooftop overhead. As Bolan reached the second floor, one of them shouted at him from the hallway to his left and cut loose with some model of Kalashnikov.
Bolan dropped prone, hoping Sushko would do the same, framing the shooter in his AK-12’s di-optic sight. He fired a 3-round burst and put the gunman down, just as three more charged out of rooms facing the street.
Behind him, Sushko fired a ringing shotgun blast that caught a second gunner in the chest and flipped him through a flailing backward somersault, blood misting in the air as he went down. While Sushko pumped his weapon’s slide-action, Bolan was firing on the other two hardmen, more short bursts spinning them and dropping them together on the hallway carpeting.
The Executioner waited a moment, to find out if any other shooters would be popping out, then rose and joined Sushko as they continued down the stairs. On the ground floor, they turned back toward the rear of the house and exited that way, into a side street lined with empty vehicles left by the troops storming Voloshyn’s place. Picking an alley to his left, Bolan began to work his cautious way back to the street that had become a killing ground.
Off in the distance, toward downtown, Bolan heard sirens bing-bong-binging in response to some emergency. It could be anything, but as the number and the volume of those sirens rose, closing on his location, Bolan didn’t need a crystal ball to guess where they were headed.
“Shall we go?” Sushko asked.
“Not yet,” Bolan answered.
“But the police...”
“I want to see how they respond.”
“And if they target us?”
“With all that going on?” A nod from Bolan toward the raging battle made his point.
“But still...”
“Here’s what you do,” Bolan replied. “Stay here and watch. I need to find a way across the street.”
“And if you don’t come back?”
He tossed Sushko his spare key for the ZAZ Vida and said, “Use your best judgment. If it looks too tight, take off.”
15
After the blast that killed a number of his men, Bogdan Britnev hung back and waited for the second wave to charge. When it advanced, he cautiously emerged from hiding in the doorway of a neighbor’s long-abandoned home and made his way across the pavement, past his bullet-riddled limousine.
Samuil Skorokhod still lay where the rifle slug had found him, burning through his guts, but he’d stopped moving. The pond of crimson that he sat in looked like gallons spilled onto the street. His eyes, locked open, staring skyward, had already taken on a dusty look by light from the surrounding street lamps.
Britnev moved on, closing up the distance to his men as they entered Pavlo Voloshyn’s house over the smoking ruins of his stout front door. They stepped in blood and offal as they cleared the threshold, none taking account of it as they all focused on the inner darkness, waiting to be ambushed by Voloshyn’s home defenders. Britnev still had no idea how many were concealed in there, but he was going to find out.
He only hoped his soldiers and the Right Front paramilitaries found out first.
His OTs-12 rifle only weighed six pounds, with its loaded magazine included, but it seemed to drag on Britnev’s arms as he approached Voloshyn’s doorstep, dodging globs of flesh and organs in his hand-made Salvatore Ferragamo ornamented loafers. The combined stench of explosives and human remains gagged him, but he kept down his late lunch with a determined effort.
Once inside, some of his men fanned out to clear the ground-floor rooms, while others stormed the stairs. Shooting began almost at once, up on the first floor—called the second by Americans—where some of Voloshyn’s men had grouped to make their stand against the enemy. Bullets ripped into walls and ceiling, raining plaster dust, and Britnev saw one of his men—or was he from the Right Front?—tumbling backward down the staircase like a dummy made of cloth or straw, shot through the chest and abdomen.
Against his better judgment, Britnev moved in closer to the stairs. He listened to the firefight raging overhead, considered whether he should turn and run, but let his courage win out in the end. With halting steps, he started up the stairs, clutching his rifle tight enough to make his knuckles ache.
When the grenade came out of nowhere, bouncing toward him, Britnev spent a wasted second gaping at it, then turned on his heel, prepared to leap over the banister and out of range before it blew. In fact, he was too late, had barely braced his free hand on the rail when the grenade exploded, lancing him with shrapnel from behind. The shock wave pushed him over, sent him tumbling through the smoky air and plummeting face forward toward the hardwood floor, where everything went black.
* * *
IN SEMIDARKNESS, SEVERAL of the street lamps shot out now, Mack Bolan slipped along the sidewalk for a block, then crossed over to reach Voloshyn’s side, apparently unseen by either the attackers or defenders. Singsong sirens were within a quarter mile or less by now and gaining fast, as the police swooped down to shoot, arrest, or perhaps defend whomever they found living at the scene.
Once he had crossed the body-littered street, Bolan ducked down another alley and came around behind Voloshyn’s mini-palace from the rear. Its tall back door was locked, but in the din of combat no one on the premises was likely to hear one more shot, so Bolan took the door’s lock off and bulled his way inside.
The house was cool, its air conditioner still functioning, but gun smoke now pervaded its ground floor and had to be seeping toward the upper levels, winding up the stairs. Above him, on the second floor, he heard defenders battling the invaders, but had no idea which side was winning, though he guessed the housemen had to be outnumbered and outgunned.
Or were they?
Even as his thought took form, the echo of a hand grenade’s explosion sounded from the general direction of Voloshyn’s foyer, maybe on the staircase. Screams followed, and by the time he had a visual on that part of the house, more men were down, some of them writhing, others lying deathly still.
One of the latter faced Bolan, dead eyes staring from atop a broken neck. He recognized Bogdan Britnev and mentally crossed one of the top names off his target list.
And was Voloshyn still alive?
If so, he had to be somewhere upstairs, amid the firefight as it waxed and waned.
The wise course, Bolan thought, would be to exit as he’d entered, unseen by his enemies, and get the hell away from there with Sushko. On the other hand, if he decamped without proof that Voloshyn had gone down, his mission would be incomplete, and waiting for a bulletin from the police, perhaps delayed for days, was not the same.
He needed eyes on the mobster’s corpse to satisfy himself. If that required a greater risk for Bo
lan, then so be it.
What else did he live for, after all?
* * *
PAVLO VOLOSHYN FIRED a short burst from his Bizon submachine gun toward the doorway of his private study, where he had retreated as the raiders burst into his home. Beyond the door, somebody screamed. No way of telling if the slugs had found a mortal spot or only caused a flesh wound. Either way, his adversaries knew he was prepared to fight, and they would have to think before approaching him directly.
But if they were carrying grenades...
Voloshyn shrugged that off. So far as he could tell, only his men had used grenades in the fight. Someone outside did have a rocket launcher, as he’d seen when it destroyed his front door, but that blast had killed his adversaries and he still had no idea who was behind it, since his men had not been armed with RPGs.
Another mystery, and at the moment, he was only worried about one: whether he would survive the next few minutes.
The police were was coming. He could hear the sirens growing close now. They would have to battle through his enemies outside, and if they wound up jailing some of his men for carrying illegal weapons, he would fight that battle later, in a court of law. None of it would matter if he died before the officers arrived to rescue him, and if his lackey Golos failed him...
What? Voloshyn could not dupe himself into believing he would be alive to wreak vengeance against the major unless he was rescued from the ruins of his home.
The millionaire’s ghost town would be a true ghost town after this night, with all the lives snuffed out by violence. In some countries, he knew, that kind of thing would doom a neighborhood. Americans and Brits often dismantled the homes of their worst killers, leaving barren ground behind or building parks to pacify survivors, but Ukrainians—while still deeply religious in some quarters—did not cling to such outdated superstitions. Murder was not exorcised by bulldozing a house or an apartment complex, by renaming streets and trying to pretend nothing had happened, after all.
If ghosts existed, they would stay regardless.
Voloshyn, for his part, was moving out—if he survived.
Outside his den, he heard slithering sounds, as if someone was crawling toward the partly open door. He crouched behind his desk and waited, staring at the portal without blinking, and was ready with his Bizon when a cautious head appeared at ankle height, peering into the room.
This time he did not miss. The short burst from his SMG shattered the stranger’s skull, spraying the hallway with his blood and brains. Behind the dead man, someone gasped, retreating from Voloshyn’s line of fire.
Below him, in the street, the mobster heard squad cars screeching to a halt.
Salvation was approaching. All he had to do was wait.
* * *
MAJOR GOLOS STEPPED out of his cruiser, careful to let other officers precede him in the urban combat zone. No matter where he looked, bodies were scattered in the street, and he could see the marks of an explosion on Voloshyn’s stoop, concrete blackened and blasted, more men torn apart, blood painted on the wall.
He had seen nothing like it before, and wished he could crawl back inside the squad car, simply tell his driver to reverse and get the hell away from there before the various combatants turned their guns on him. Instead, he watched and waited while his men engaged the battlers still outside Voloshyn’s house, exchanging fire with them, disabling some and taking hits on their own side.
The men from Special Services were dressed and armed like soldiers: camouflage fatigues and flak vests, helmets with dark visors, combat boots and automatic weapons, pistols tied down low in quick-draw holsters on their thighs. They were highly trained and blooded in conflict with terrorists, dissenters, barricaded lunatics—but none of them had faced this kind of concentrated violence before, either, as far as Golos knew.
First time for all of us, he thought, and grimaced sourly.
As his commandos ringed Voloshyn’s residence, advancing steadily despite their casualties, Golos began to creep along behind them, moving from one cruiser to the next and using them as cover for himself. His AKMS submachine gun was a burden, but it still made him feel slightly safer while advancing in a crouch, stooped low and waddling forward like an old man who had lost his walker.
Take your time, he told himself. Commanders don’t rush in and lead the charge.
No fear of that in his case. He was terrified, each new step forward threatening to be his last. Golos feared that paralysis might grip him any second and humiliate him in the eyes of his subordinates, assuming that it did not kill him first. The only antidote to terror was advancing into danger, putting on a show—albeit fraudulent—of joining in the fight.
And when he wrote his report to his superiors, he’d be the hero of the day.
A medal might be waiting for him if he told the tale convincingly enough and no one contradicted him.
As if they’d dare.
So far, he had not fired a shot and meant to keep it that way for the moment. Once he was inside the house, secured by his advance troops, there would be time enough for posturing, asserting his command over the men who did the real fighting. But until then...
“Major!”
The voice called out from somewhere to his left. Turning, Golos picked out a lone man standing in an alley and beckoning to him. Why did the stranger look familiar?
Maksym Sushko! Golos had been staring at his service photograph a short time earlier, before the riot call.
Cautiously, clinging to his SMG, he turned and scurried toward the man whom Pavlo Voloshyn had commanded him to find.
* * *
MAKSYM SUSHKO WAS surprised at seeing Major Semyon Golos on the scene, when normally a captain would have been dispatched to lead the men of Special Services. His higher rank should have confined Golos to headquarters until the firefight was suppressed, when he would turn out in his uniform to meet the press. But since he was there, Sushko thought he’d seize the opportunity to warn Golos about Matt Cooper, tell the major just enough to keep his troops from killing Cooper, but without revealing any of the American’s secrets.
Not that Sushko himself had much in way of secrets to reveal.
He could link Cooper to a list of lethal crimes, thereby condemning him to life in prison, but he still had no idea who had sent Cooper to Ukraine or whom he’d be reporting to if he escaped. Cooper had said he would not kill police, but in the heat of battle, could he keep that pledge?
“Major,” he said, as Golos neared him. “I am glad to see you here.”
“Corporal,” Golos replied, “it has been difficult locating you.”
Feigning a measure of surprise, Sushko answered, “I didn’t know that you were trying, sir. If I may tell you—”
“Silence!” Golos snapped at him, raising his submachine gun and pointing it at Sushko’s chest. “I ask the questions here. You answer.”
“But—”
“One more word, except to answer me, and you’re a dead man.”
Sushko nodded his understanding, hanging in the shadows, his Bandayevsky dangling at his side, in his right hand.
“Now,” Golos said, “where is the damned American who you’ve been working with?”
Surprised, Sushko tried bluffing. “An American?”
“Don’t waste my time! I have my orders,” Golos told him. “Pavlo Voloshyn won’t be satisfied with double-talk.”
As if he had removed a blindfold, Sushko saw it all. Golos was on the mobster’s payroll, like so many other officers around Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine. Whether he was the highest placed of those corrupted, Sushko could not say, and he had no time to think about it at the moment.
“Major—”
“If you lie, you die. Fair warning, eh?” Golos was smiling as he spoke the words.
Without a choice, Sushko dr
opped to his knees and raised his shotgun, squeezed its trigger and dispatched a buckshot charge that smashed the major’s breastbone, blowing Golos backward from the alley’s mouth and out into the street.
* * *
MACK BOLAN CLIMBED Voloshyn’s service stairs, distinct and separate from those in front, and reached the second floor of Pavlo’s house without incident. Once there, he found a handful of attackers clustered near a partly open door, their heads together, plotting strategy. Another man, nearly headless, lay before them, leaking blood and brains into the carpet.
Bolan had already seen the cops outside and knew these men in normal street clothes weren’t with the regular police. He counted five men breathing and had no spare time to duel with them. Raising his AK-12, he sighted down the rifle’s barrel and fired off a full magazine from thirty feet or less, before they noticed him.
The five went down, stone dead if not quite cut to ribbons by his 5.45 mm rounds. Bolan reloaded as the last of them collapsed onto the floor, blood mingling with the nearly headless corpse’s offering. Jacking a round into the AK’s chamber, Bolan moved up to the door that stood ajar and called through it in English.
“Pavlo, it’s time to give it up.”
“Who’s that?” a ragged voice inquired.
“The bill collector. You’ve got tabs long overdue.”
“You sound American.”
“Got it in one,” Bolan admitted.
“You must know that I was not responsible for the atrocity in Washington.”
“Does it really matter? We’re running out of time.”
“You are,” Voloshyn answered back. “The officers outside are friends of mine.”
“I figured that.” As Bolan spoke, he palmed an F1 frag grenade, released its pin and lobbed the bomb through the gaping doorway, toward the room’s far wall.
If Voloshyn saw it coming, he did not react in time. The blast muffled his scream. There was a pattering like driving hail as shrapnel tore into the walls, then Bolan was inside the smoky den, moving to where the mobster was sprawled out on the floor beside his desk, facing the pockmarked ceiling. Once he’d kicked the Bizon out of reach, Bolan stood looking at the fallen mobster.
Terrorist Dispatch (Executioner) Page 16