The dark color of his slacks, sweater and jacket blended into the half-light of the parkway. He saw three men advancing warily toward the wrecked vehicle from the direction of the rocket launcher's report. The trio advanced with their rifles held forward in firing position, eyes staring at the wreck from behind their rifles.
Shouts and activity filled the air from deeper in the park. A ragged, formless, full-tilt charge of paramilitary cops was closing in now that the action appeared to be over.
The headlights of the two BTR-40s lanced through the night, racing in his direction.
He saw a GAZ patrol car bringing up the rear from the high ground across from the war memorial. The head honcho, he figured, coming in from the point where the attack had been launched.
From the direction taken by Katrina.
Bolan's senses flared with white-hot rage as he tracked up Big Thunder.
The approaching three should have waited for the main force, but they obviously expected to find nothing but death around the remains of the Rolls, nothing but promotions and decorations in their eyes.
They found death, all right.
Bolan triggered three hammering headeaters from the AutoMag.
Three heads burst into spraying brains and bone chips as the Soviet killers tumbled over one another, their bodies twitching in death spasms as Bolan darted away from the car toward the street directly beyond the park.
He reached a line of tall trees that stood like sentinels along the perimeter. Beyond these the man in black with the drawn AutoMag found a wide sidewalk, deserted at this hour, stretching in either direction along an empty street of characterless office buildings.
The activity within the confines of the park had drawn no curious or frightened observers, the way such a firefight might have in a free nation. During business hours this neighborhood would be crowded with employees, but it was a no-man's-land now at 4:15 in the morning, those few souls around only burrowing in deeper from sight or involvement at the sounds of gunfire and explosions.
Bolan hotfooted across the street beyond the line of trees.
The blackness of sky could not be glimpsed above the glow of streetlights, but the brittle cool and claustrophobic feel of snow about to fall had intensified. Threatening clouds hung above the Moscow night. They were as dark as the emptiness Bolan felt inside when he thought of the dead woman he had been forced to leave behind in the Rolls.
He swung up his AutoMag in straight-armed target acquisition as four or five of the enemy broke through the treeline on foot in pursuit across the street. The Executioner pulled off three blasting reports from the stainless-steel mini-cannon in his fist.
Bolan felt uneasy firing on uniformed officers of the law. He had sworn at the start of his one-man "outlaw" operations, in the U.S. and around the world, that he would never fire on law officers, even though he was the most wanted man in the world.
The law was sometimes misguided in Bolan's opinion.
That did not make them enemies.
The police were, in fact, soldiers of the same side, and Bolan had vowed from the outset that he would surrender before he took a cop's life.
This was different. Damn different.
These were the enforcers of the Soviet slave state. These cops were damn well the enemy.
And Zara was dead.
Three Moscow cops across the street caught flesh-shredding projectiles, the headbusters dropping the unlucky ones right into the path of their rushing companions.
Everyone alive scuttled for cover behind the treeline.
Bolan heard the two armored patrol car engines revving, the BTR-40s also unseen for a moment, hurtling toward the park's arched entrance from within.
He dodged sideways, slamming another fresh clip into the AutoMag.
He scurried along the dark face of an office building toward a street corner several hundred paces to his right.
Muzzle flashes winked in the darkness as men commenced firing from under cover across the street.
Bullets chewed randomly at the building where Bolan had fired from, but the nightfighter had already distanced himself well away from that spot, closing in on the street corner.
A compact, a Volvo with headlights off, suddenly sped into view almost at the same instant Bolan first heard its engine sounds through the waves of gunfire and the richochet of bullets behind him.
He froze, swinging the AutoMag on the Volvo.
The car shrieked into a 180-degree turn before the enemy firing from across the street even knew what was going on or had time to pull their fire into this new direction.
The car braked to a stop at the curb a few meters away from Bolan, the driver obviously having spotted him.
He stayed his finger on the trigger, sensing this was not a threat.
More like salvation.
The cops across the street ceased firing.
Bolan spotted a few brave ones sticking their heads out, looking in the Volvo's direction.
The first of the BTR-40s popped its nose through the parkway entrance. The armored patrol car stopped as did the one behind it. In the fleeting seconds it would take the drivers to decide which way to turn into the street in pursuit, a woman's voice from inside the Volvo called to him with muted urgency.
"Get in. Hurry!"
Bolan had no choice.
He darted from the shadowy face of the building, hurrying toward the left-hand side of the car.
'Thanks for the lift." He tugged open the door. "Slide over, please," he requested of the driver before he got a look at her.
The woman sitting behind the steering wheel obeyed.
Bolan clambered in, his nostrils picking up a faint hint of perfume that somehow reminded him of Zara.
He popped the clutch, getting away from the corner down a side street, losing sight of the activity at the park entrance. But not before he caught a glimpse of the first of the armored patrol cars grinding into gear, speeding onto the main thoroughfare in their direction.
Bolan piloted the Volvo down the street past the first intersection they came to. He was running without headlights, too busy planning his next action to take time for a look at the woman beside him.
The Volvo came upon an alley to the right.
Bolan braked, turning.
The car fishtailed crazily but stopped a couple of meters inside the alley without scraping either side against the walls.
It was not a dead end, Bolan was relieved to see.
He kept his foot on the gas pedal, ready to dump the Volvo into gear and bolt if necessary.
A few seconds later the patrol cars raced by on the side street Bolan had just turned off, wailing sirens echoing loudly between the deserted canyons of the sleeping city.
The GAZ patrol car Bolan had spotted earlier in the park brought up the rear, whizzing by after the armored cars.
Bolan still had not paused to glance at the woman who had aided him.
She remained in shadow.
He turned now for a look at her after the police cars flew by the alley without noticing the Volvo.
No other vehicles had joined the chase, at least along this route.
The force in the park would most likely be fanning out on a block-by-block search of the neighborhood. It would not be long before their spreading net came to this alley, but the park was two blocks away.
Bolan had a couple moments to spare. Time enough for a look at this feminine good Samaritan.
It was a night for surprises.
Some good, some bad.
And every damn one of them meaning nothing but trouble, including this one.
Especially this one, thought Bolan when he got a look and identified the breathtaking blonde in a tan trench coat who sat in silence beside him.
"Hello, Tanya," he said.
The hint of a smile, no more, played at the corners of glistening lips, and her eyes danced, glinting at what she must have read in his face.
"Hello, Mack," Tanya Yesilov said. "Welcome to
Moscow."
They drove to her apartment on Groholski Street.
Bolan's pursuers had been successfully evaded.
Her apartment was typical of those Bolan had visited during his previous trips to Moscow. An apartment is a luxury even to the upwardly mobile young professionals of the Party, but a skillful hand coupled with an interior decorator's instinct had worked wonders with Tanya's drab, cramped quarters: modern art sketches adorned the walls, the appointments lending the two-room flat a comfortable, lived-in ambience.
The kitchen table is the hub of social life in the Soviet Union. Hosts and guest do not lounge about on living room furniture when they visit or talk business at home, but at a kitchen table, cleared away except for shot glasses and the ever-present bottle of vodka. Bolan did not want a drink and neither did Tanya, her table having been cleared for the attaché case that Bolan had been given by Niktov.
He divided his attention equally between a careful inspection of the case and its contents and of the blonde seated across the table. The Executioner had previously encountered Tanya Yesilov in Iran, of all places, when he had penetrated Teheran to wipe out the corrupt powers who ruled that pitiable hell on earth. This breathtaking blonde had proven to be every bit the enigma at the close of that bloody mission as she had been when she and Bolan had first met under enemy fire. She was an enigma as only a beautiful woman can be, and as a double agent needs to be in the perilous world of espionage.
In fact, Bolan had never learned this blonde's real name. When they had met, she had claimed to be a lower-echelon KGB operative, though he suspected now that the echelon was not so "low" after all, but even that was not real. Tanya — that was the name she went by and the name by which Bolan thought of her — was in reality a double agent: a mole planted by the CIA deep within the Russian government years ago.
He had learned a few things about her during that hard and heavy hit in Iran. Tanya's father was American, her mother Russian. They had met and fallen in love in West Germany. Tanya's mother had died during childbirth, and the father had brought Tanya back to America as an infant.
Years later, when she had been a student at Harvard, the CIA had approached and asked her if she would consider returning to the USSR. They wanted her to pose as a disillusioned young woman, hoping the KGB would recruit her, which they did.
By this time her father had died, and Tanya had told Bolan she had gone along with the ruse, hoping it would satisfy a rootless feeling she had had, a time when something inside told her the world, and things in it that meant something, were passing her by.
Tanya had found meaning in the dangerous world of clandestine operations, though much of her duty, until she had encountered Bolan, that is, had been humdrum routine.
That had changed with a vengeance in Iran.
Bolan had wondered several times, during the months since, what had become of her. He had been able to ascertain through his Stony Man Farm connections that Tanya had told him the truth about her past with the CIA, but everything else, including the lady's real name, was buried beneath need-to-know security.
And now here he sat in Tanya Yesilov's apartment.
And none of the needling uncertainty, the feeling that something was wrong he had first felt in Sokolniki Park, would go away.
And this bothered Bolan because he did not know why.
It was more than what had happened to poor Zara or the uncertainty of Katrina Mozzhechkov's fate. It was a feeling Bolan always got when he undertook these espionage missions.
He viewed himself as a soldier. He did not think of himself as a spy. He had, however, accepted the fact that, in the course of the one-man crusade he had undertaken, he would on occasion need to act as a spy, and a damn good one, in order to reach that point where his soldier capabilities could be brought into action with maximum results.
Bolan had learned, developed and mastered the art of espionage with the same dedication he had applied in mastering the skills of modern warfare. The world of espionage is a jungle as real and fraught with peril as the jungles of southeast Asia. Instinct, ability and luck determine who lives and who dies and when.
Bolan completed his inspection of the attaché case and its contents. He looked up from the laminated, forged identification card, which he placed back inside the case with everything else.
His knowledge of written Russian did not match his mastery of the spoken language, but the Cyrillic script on the card posed no problem for him to translate. He assumed the snapshot in the upper right-hand corner of the card — a gaunt, hard-looking, humorless Russian countenance — would be the way he would look after applying the latex face mask crumpled up in the case, as Niktov had said.
Bolan snapped the clasps of the case shut and asked Tanya, "How did you get to that street corner right on time, and why?"
"You don't sound very appreciative, darling."
"Save the darling. And the evasions."
"Very well, but it is good to see you again, Mack."
They had taken enemy fire together in Iran and now Moscow. Bolan had liked something about her. A lot. She had about her an inbred toughness of spirit and, yeah, she was one hell of a beautiful woman.
"Very well," she sighed. "No evasions. I guess that's second nature in my line of work."
"Give, Tanya."
"I had the park under surveillance. Did Niktov not tell you about me?"
"Niktov is dead."
Her eyes lost some of their toughness, dropping from his gaze.
"I suspected as much when I heard the gunfire. That can only mean they know about us, that it is over before we begin."
"No, it isn't. Niktov seemed to think it was his enemies he had to fear, not ours. That park was crawling with Moscow police, not KGB. If I'm any judge of cops, what happened tonight was a police setup to get Niktov. We got caught in the middle."
"Let us hope you're right." She looked back across the table at him with rekindled spirit. "I am the one Niktov was to send you to after he gave you what is in that attaché case."
"Why couldn't you have gotten me the mask and the id yourself?"
"It would have been extremely dangerous, even working from the inside. I am not a ranking agent in the KGB, remember. Little more than clerical help, really, and the Company man we are to move into place does not even know what we are up to."
"Does this agent know you work for the CIA?"
"No, and it has been most difficult. You see, he is my lover. His name is Anton. Anton Petrovsky. That is his cover name, I should say. He is a major in the Thirteenth Section, an assistant to Major General Strakhov."
"Now we're getting warm. It's Strakhov I came to Moscow to get."
"It is why I suggested... using you," Tanya said, nodding. "It was my idea to bring you here to do this thing. Anton is due here at any minute. You had better slip into that mask. My mission for the Company is to monitor his progress. It was not easy, believe me, convincing several of my superiors in the CIA that the Executioner's services would be invaluable in such a delicate operation as this."
"Let's hear what you and your pals came up with." Bolan nodded to the attaché case, recalling the name on the id card with the photograph that matched the latex life mask. "Who is Sergei Fedorin?"
"There is no such person until you put on the mask. Niktov's connections were very good. What do you know about the Sixteenth Directorate?"
"About what anyone else knows," Bolan grunted. "Practically nothing. Its existence hasn't even been verified. Its purpose is unknown."
"The Sixteenth Directorate is the KGB's gestapo," Tanya said. "Even your friend, Hal Brognola, has not been advised of this. Even the President of the United States is not cognizant of what the Sixteenth Directorate does."
"If moving Petrovsky into place is the mission objective," growled Bolan, "I don't blame you for sitting on it. Who is Fedorin supposed to be?"
"One of the most powerful men in the KGB," she told him solemnly. "More feared perhaps than even the all-p
owerful of the Central Committee. Agent Fedorin is one of the Sixteenth Directorate's termination specialists, as they are called, believe it or not. He is part of a self-governing unit, operating freely, its very existence unknown to most within the KGB itself.
"The Sixteenth has full jurisdiction to investigate and deal with any area of KGB operations they deem worthy of their attention. It is rumored they are authorized to terminate even section heads if such action can be defended by the Central Committee. Greb Strakhov is about to be investigated... and terminated. You were briefed on Group Nord?"
"I was. Andropov put it together in the mid-seventies. It's made up of the chiefs of all the KGB operational divisions. They meet once a month to coordinate operations."
"Such a meeting is scheduled for this morning at 0800 hours at the Balashika complex," Tanya said. "Strakhov will be there. And so will Agent Sergei Fedorin. I will get you in."
Balashika.
Bolan knew about that complex from his own intel.
It was a top secret KGB site, fifteen kilometers east of Moscow, off Gofkovskoye Shousse, operated under authority of the most sinister division of the First Chief Directorate, Department 8, the KGB unit responsible for sabotage, abduction and assassination, designed to shatter the western alliance and weaken the U.S.
A training school in one area of the Balashika grounds provided instruction in terrorism to students imported directly from Third World countries.
The complex was heavily fortified and defended. Bolan had to agree, after a moment's reflection, that Tanya's plan would get him in.
Not only would he have Strakhov under his sights, but he would also have the perfect opportunity to take out the head of each and every KGB section, which would toss that organization into a tailspin that its present setup might never recover from. After Bolan had made this headshed hit for the CIA, it would be open season on the scum, and any other western intelligence agency could take a bite out of the KGB if it wanted to.
April could rest easy then.
"There's something that needs doing first," he told Tanya.
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