To Moscow.
To Strakhov.
Strakhov slipped the pistol into the underarm shoulder holster rig that he had not worn in years, feeling renewed and ready.
Welcome to your execution, Mack Bolan.
He reached for another slice of lemon.
All that remained now, he knew, was the waiting.
Waiting for the kill.
3
Bolan and his female companion appropriated an early model Fiat from the well-lighted parking lot of an eight-story apartment building in the suburbs of the city. They had abandoned the army half-ton on a residential street nearby.
Bolan picked the lock of the Fiat and hot-wired the car while Katrina stood watch nearby. No one saw them, or at least no one tried to stop them, despite the bright illumination of the blacktopped parking area. It was an hour of the morning when everyone in the apartment building and those in the surrounding residences would be sleeping soundly.
Bolan slid in behind the steering wheel and eased the Fiat out of the parking lot, turning on the headlights only when the car was half a block away from the parking lot. He held their speed below the legal limit, carefully obeying all traffic regulations.
Except for the occasional truck hauling fresh produce in from the communal farms to the markets, and several cruising police vehicles that seemed to pay no attention to the Fiat, the area was devoid of traffic at this hour.
Bolan tracked deeper into the sprawling, sleepy metropolis.
Moscow consists of several concentric circles, each new one having been added as the city expanded over the years. The innermost ring is the area around the Kremlin, an architectural hodgepodge of utilitarian office buildings, stately historical sights dating before the Revolution and modern shops and eateries.
The second ring is a garden boulevard, lined with prerevolutionary palaces and apartment buildings. The third ring is another mixture of the old and new and is the major truck route in and out of the city.
The final ring, where Bolan and Katrina had left the truck and acquired the Fiat, is the present perimeter of the city, clogged with new suburbs and high-rise apartment houses.
Bolan's destination was an address in the north end of Moscow in a district near the truck route, the area where much of Moscow's nightlife, and its dark side, can be found.
Moscow, the political, cultural and economic center of Russia, is a depressingly colorless city, lacking even the familiar distractions most westerners, especially Americans, would take for granted, and yet within the confines of its superficial one-dimensionality this large metropolis is a study in contrasts every bit as dramatic as those of the nation itself.
The USSR is the largest unbroken political unit in the world, occupying more than one-seventh of the land surface of the globe.
Bolan knew something of Russian history: an unprecedented epic of endurance, resilience, hardiness and human suffering of almost ungraspable magnitude and scope spanning the centuries.
Half in Europe and half in Asia, Russia's history has been shaped by this basic geographic fact, beginning with the nomads and wandering warriors who inhabited the area as early as the eighth century B.C.
Tradition has it that the Viking Rurik thrust into Russia in 862 a.d. to found the first Russian dynasty in Novgorod.
Ivan the Terrible was the first Muscovite czar in the fifteenth century. Brutally smashing the power of rival princes and landowners with an unheard of cruelty, he also murdered his own son.
World War I brought about the end of czarist rule and the humble beginnings of a future world power. Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on March 15, 1917. He and his family were slaughtered by revolutionists sixteen months later.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established as a federation in 1922.
At 8.65 million square miles, Russia is every bit the much fabled "enigma wrapped in a mystery'' it has always been, possibly more so today than ever before, comprised as it is of 257 million people who are divided into 150 nationalities speaking over sixty-seven different languages.
It is a land varying from the Arctic regions in the north to the subtropics in a small part of the south.
A large country, yes.
A large people of large hearts and souls who lived large, Bolan knew. It is said a Russian may break down in emotional tears over a sad poem one moment and minutes later become a savage warrior slaying his enemies on the spot.
A brave, basically decent people, no one could ever doubt the courage of the Russians and their sacrifice in fighting off the Nazi invaders during World War II, or in their fierce subsequent fighting to ensure an allied victory across Europe.
Bolan had no quarrel with the Russian people.
Unfortunately, though, he knew that in far too many democracies and dictatorships, in history as now, it often seemed that the wrong ones — those who embodied all of a society's negativity and none of its promise for a better world — grabbed the power. These were the savages who had grasped the reins of power even while the Revolution in Russia was in progress, and who repressed a great people under the heel of domination to this day.
The enemy.
Those to whom power itself was a drug to be used only to perpetrate oppression and exclusivity, with no intention of sharing it with the people they ruled.
These were the ones resisted by the small, fragmented, largely ineffectual dissident underground within Russia.
These were the ones — the slave masters, the cannibals, the savages — whom the majority of Russians submitted to with only their unending patience and stoicism to reaffirm their strength and humanity.
These were the ones Bolan had come to kill, bringing his war to this sprawling prison camp that was mother Russia.
To this city on the Moskva River.
Except for the occasional directions Katrina gave to the man behind the Fiat's steering wheel, neither of them spoke for a long time.
Bolan felt comfortable with the quiet between them.
Since accepting this mission from Brognola back in the States, his only option was to play this one on the heartbeat, all the way from the start to whatever bloody conclusion resulted.
He always operated with plenty of room to swing, for he knew that in the heat of combat, no matter how well laid out the strategy, there always came that flashpoint when instinct alone marked the cutting edge between death and survival. And at such a moment improvisation, coupled with intuition and capability, became the deciding factors on how Fate's dice rolled, giving one no time for error or second guesses. You lived or you died.
So he did not mind the fact that a careful strategy had not been devised for him to follow, as had happened on more than one occasion when he had officially worked such missions for his government.
Bolan trusted Katrina Mozzhechkov, but that was all.
He had nothing but his own capabilities, instincts and the audacity of the mission itself to see him through.
Katrina broke into his thoughts. "Turn left into this alley," she directed. "We are almost there."
"Will that end your part?" Bolan asked.
He tugged the steering wheel, slacking speed slightly, and nosed the Fiat into the designated alleyway. Illumination from streetlights filtered in at the far end of the alley. This was not a dead end.
Nonetheless, he took his right hand off the wheel, reached cross-body beneath his left shoulder and withdrew the silenced Beretta 93-R.
"I was instructed to accompany you for a while yet," Katrina told him. "Then the truly hard part for me begins. I must... report the deaths of Andrei and Vladimir to our cell leader. I think I may volunteer to tell their widows as well. It only seems right somehow, since I was present when... it happened. I know the wives of both of them, you see. They are my friends."
Bolan doused the Fiat's headlights. The car crawled along, guided by the spill of light at the far end of the alley.
The looming structures on either side of them formed a canyon in this warehous
e district.
Bolan's senses were on high alert. He trusted Katrina, yes, but the sleeping city could have been a million miles beyond the walls of the alley, so remote did this scene appear to him, and he was ready for anything.
"Perhaps," Katrina said softly, sensing also the dangers of the gloom enveloping the Fiat, "a mission that begins so badly can only become easier for you, and will end in success."
She held her Uzi up, fanning impenetrable shadows outside the Fiat as it inched along.
"That would be nice, but it never happens that way," Bolan grunted. "It's only going to get worse, Katrina. Where are you taking us?"
"Right here. Stop the car."
He did as she requested, killing the car's engine.
There was no sign or sound of anyone, anything, around them in the night-shrouded alley.
Katrina unlatched her door and got out.
Bolan did likewise, keeping in a crouch close to the car as he came around to join her.
A sudden rattling jerked them both in the direction of the sound, Bolan's Beretta and the woman's Uzi swinging toward it. They held their fire, and an instant later heard the faint, scampering noise of some small animal scuttling away from a dumpster overloaded with smelly garbage next to one of the warehouses.
Katrina moved to the opposite building.
Bolan headed in that direction with her.
The night carried a new, crisp chill, the night wind a biting nip Bolan had not felt in the open country, as if a new weather pattern were easing in.
Katrina located an almost invisible door in the murk of the wall of the building. She pulled the door outward with her left hand, not lowering her Uzi.
The door yawned on soundless, oiled hinges.
She and Bolan had both fallen back to either side of the doorway, their weapons aimed at the even deeper darkness within the gaping opening.
After a moment's pause, during which nothing happened, Katrina stepped forward, vanishing from Bolan's sight.
He stepped in after her, not wanting to follow, preferring to lead, yet understanding that this was her turf, for the moment willing to see where the lady was taking him.
She must have touched a lever or button in the darkness, because without warning a muted, mechanized hum commenced from somewhere below.
Bolan sensed the door to the alley easing shut after them, blotting out even the faint rays of the indirect lighting from the streetlights at either end of the alley, throwing the narrow space around Bolan and the woman into impenetrable murk.
He felt his finger itch around the Beretta's trigger. He did not like this one damn bit.
The whirring sound ceased, and a soft red light filled the space as two doors parted.
The sound had been an elevator coming up to meet them.
Katrina stepped into the elevator.
"We're almost there."
He stepped in to join her.
She slid the compact Uzi by its shoulder strap beneath her short leather jacket, nodding to the Beretta in Bolan's fist.
"And you had better holster that," she suggested with a small smile. "You are in for quite a surprise."
The elevator descended smoothly with the same whirring mechanical sound, then came to a stop.
Bolan decided to follow her suggestion. He holstered the Beretta, though both the 93-R and Big Thunder were only a speed-draw away.
The elevator doors parted.
And Bolan was surprised.
The doors opened onto a nightclub scene as raucous as any he had ever seen, stateside or anywhere else.
The subbasement of what had appeared to be a closed-up warehouse in an uninhabited part of the city actually housed a full-fledged American-style bar, packed wall to wall with noisy humanity.
The lighting was dim, and the closely packed tables were filled to capacity. Just as many after-hours Muscovites were crammed along the walls and the bar, which ran from one end of the long, low-ceilinged room to the other.
The soundproofing had to be state of the art, thought Bolan, to contain the cacophony of this crowd.
Somewhere beyond the swirling haze of Russian tobacco smoke a jukebox blared American rock and roll. The bar pulsed to the throbbing music and the constant din of raised voices.
Except for a cursory glance from some patrons and a pair of mean-looking dudes lounging against a nearby wall — heavies who could only be bouncers, Bolan knew — no one seemed to give him and Katrina a second look as they stepped from the elevator into the crowd, the elevator doors closing behind them.
Then the housemen and a few patrons who had noticed Bolan and Katrina went back to whatever they had been doing before these new "customers" had arrived.
Bolan knew he passed muster under the professional eyes of the bouncers only because of the special custom tailoring of his jacket, which had been designed for CIA agents in the field, supplied to Bolan courtesy of Hal Brognola.
The jacket was fashionable enough in a nondescript sort of way and could pass for European or American cut. It was designed to fit the wearer naturally and at the same time disguise the fact that beneath the jacket were one or two pieces of heavy artillery like Bolan's .44 AutoMag and the Beretta with the attached silencer.
He and Katrina eased farther into the crowded barroom.
The patrons around them seemed to have no interest in them at all or in anything else except the hundreds of animated conversations, arguments and seductions babbling all around through the din of music.
Bolan recognized a few of the more notorious denizens of the Moscow underworld, whom he had met during a penetration into the city a few years before, and from his general knowledge of the Moscow underworld updated periodically, courtesy of Bear Kurtzman and Stony Man Farm.
There was Quickfingers, boss of the pickpocket gangs that cruised Moscow's subway system for victims. Bolan also saw Yan the Fixer in animated discussion with three young men, the length of their hair marking them as dodgers of Russia's compulsory military conscription. Bolan knew that at age eighteen Russian males begin two to five years of active service, followed by permanent military reserve.
The occasional hooker stood out, single women gaudily overdressed by Russian standards, isolating prospective customers and closing in amid the rough-and-ready ambience of the coarse, jovial crowd, which paid no mind to the newly arrived man and woman politely elbowing their way toward the bar.
Bolan had taken the lead in front of Katrina in their slow progress through the crowd, but he was still watching her from the corner of his eye, waiting for her to cue the thing in for him.
She glanced around, obviously looking for someone in the smoky haze. The dim glow, provided by neon signs that hung on the walls advertising American and European beers and by soft lighting from behind the bar, did little to help her search.
This was a place where the patrons preferred what anonymity they could find.
The bouncers back at the elevator had also missed the Uzi that Katrina held at her side beneath her jacket. The heavies had kept their attention on the big man in the dark jacket, sweater and slacks.
Bolan sensed that Katrina was coiled tightly, ready to spring.
He started to lean down to speak to her, deciding to find out now what the next step was. He did not feel endangered or even out of place in this obvious den of thieves, but he did not intend to fly blind any longer.
He checked himself from speaking to her when he and Katrina together spotted the young woman standing at the end of the bar between two men.
She was in her mid-twenties, dark tresses framing her face and brushing her shoulders. As Bolan and Katrina approached the woman, he could discern the fine scattering of freckles across the pert nose and high cheekbones. Her complexion was a shade or two darker than the other patrons in the club.
She shared an easy, buddy-buddy camaraderie with the tough-looking men she was talking to, but her brusque manner could not conceal an earthy, sassy sexuality. The bulky dark sweater she wore with
jeans also did nothing to hide the shapely curves and full breasts.
Zara.
The Gypsy woman Bolan had encountered in his dealing with Niktov during a previous visit to Moscow.
Bolan had been attracted to the Romany beauty then.
Katrina headed directly toward the trio.
Bolan and Katrina reached Zara and the two men together.
Zara happened to glance sideways just as Bolan and the woman reached her. It was almost comical the way her expression changed when she saw Bolan. For a moment the lovely smile stopped in midchuckle at whatever one of the men was telling her. Her eyes stopped laughing, the smile changing as confusion registered, then Zara's beauty went expressionless.
The two men with her became aware of Bolan and, secondarily, of Katrina.
"You are Zara?" Katrina asked.
Zara turned to meet Bolan's eyes, the hint of mischief playing with the corners of lush, sensuous lips.
"Perhaps you should ask your friend," she said, still looking at Bolan.
Katrina registered some confusion of her own then. "You two know each other? This I was not told."
"I guess the ones who sent you didn't know," Bolan said.
Then, to the Gypsy lovely, "Hello, Zara."
Zara's open right palm blurred around to land a resounding slap across Bolan's left cheek before he could move to block it.
"That is for not saying goodbye," she said furiously in Russian.
Bolan touched his stinging cheek, unable to hold back the smile that creased his face.
"You always were too fast for me, lady."
"And this is because my heart soars to see you again," Zara finished.
She stood on tiptoe, clasping her fingers at the back of his neck, and delivered a smooth, not overly long, kiss, an intimate contact long enough for her fire to touch him, her tongue darting into his mouth, warm lips suctioning with all kinds of primitive need and promise.
Then she released him just as unexpectedly, turned and pounded the bartop.
"Vitali!" she shouted to the bartender, loud enough to cut through the din to halfway down the bar but still ladylike as hell, thought Bolan, "vodka for my friends!" She turned to Katrina, extending a hand, "And who might you be, my dear? Any friend or more of this brute is a sister to me. Or aren't names supposed to mean anything tonight?"
Moscow Massacre Page 5