Moscow Massacre

by Don Pendleton

  She could not stem her worry for him. She would give anything to know what had happened to that special fighting man after Kulik had knocked her unconscious in the park.

  The cell door creaked inward on rusty hinges.

  If Kulik touches me, I shall kill him, even if I have to tear his jugular open with my bare teeth, her mind screamed.

  Two uniformed guards shouldered their hefty bulk inside the cell, grabbing her by each arm. They moved robotlike as before, dead-eyed, emotionless automatons, slaves of a slave state, she thought bitterly.

  They led her from the cell.

  They only stopped once, in a stairwell, to roughly press her face into the wall as another prisoner was guided down the stairs past them to his or her own cell.

  Katrina heard pitiable whimpering but could not tell if it was man or woman, boy or girl, being escorted by other guards.

  Her guards resumed dragging her up the stairs.

  How can people be made to treat one another this way, she wondered, riding hard on her self-control to keep tears of frustration from her eyes. These guards, these young men, have mothers, childhoods... Fear makes them behave like this. And she well knew this same fear would make them deaf to any entreaties to their humanity. She moaned and realized she was half delirious from all she had been through.

  Her guards halted at a door midway down the thirdfloor corridor. They opened the door, pitching Katrina bodily inside with force enough to send her to the floor, then slammed the door behind her and left.

  Katrina landed on her hands and knees, bracing herself to look up through errant skeins of her hair at what, who, waited for her in this room.

  She saw Kulik, and fear spasmed through her.

  The hulking police sergeant stood in a position of supreme dominance, arms folded across his barrel chest, shiny black boots spread, squarely planted.

  He stared down at her with a sneer of hate mingled with lust, the glare of fluorescent overheads reflecting from the patina of sweat beaded across his crew-cut head.

  And yet Katrina sensed that this mountainous animal was dominant over her, but not over the other man in the room who sat cross-legged on the straight-backed chair in the center of the room, the one piece of furniture.

  This man smoked a cigarette almost idly, though she saw clearly enough the interest that sparked in his eyes when she was tossed into the room.

  She recognized him, too.

  He was the one who had been in command in Sokolniki Park; the one who had ordered Kulik to strike her unconscious.

  She rose slowly to her feet and stood, or tried to, facing them.

  "I am Captain Anatoli Zuyenko of the Moscow Police," the seated man told her in clipped tones.

  The gleam of his stare as his eyes traveled up and down the length of her body reminded her of Kulik. She shuddered, not in fear this time, but in revulsion, the hate she felt for these subhumans scorching every other emotion in her.

  "What will you do to me now, Captain?" she asked, reborn steel in her voice. "I will tell you nothing. I will make you kill me. I don't know how I could live after being touched by feces like him." She jerked her head to indicate Kulik.

  Zuyenko stood, smiling, a small smile that told Katrina he enjoyed her insolence. "We shall see, my dear." He motioned to the chair. "Kulik," he whispered.

  Katrina started to back away but not quickly enough. Kulik grasped her upper arm to throw her into the vacated chair, retaining hold of her arm in a viselike grip. He swung his free hand around in a brutal backhanded slap. The inside of Katrina's head seemed to explode, the blow toppling her from the chair to her knees. Kulik did not release her. He laughed harshly, twisting her arm, causing her to scream out sharply once, then she bit her lip to stem the scream and felt blood trickle down her chin.

  Kulik yanked her up roughly, righting her in the chair. Then he released her. Her head drooped forward, her chin resting on her chest. She saw droplets of blood from her split lip drip onto the pale green pajamalike prison uniform they had made her wear.

  Her mind raced. No! I will not be defeated. She made herself look away from Kulik, who towered beside and slightly behind her, to Zuyenko, who stood facing her.

  Both men chuckled at her humiliation.

  "You see, my dear," Zuyenko purred almost pleasantly. "There is much we can still do to you."

  "Then do it, and damn your soul to hell! I will tell you nothing!"

  "Oh, I think you shall, Citizen Mozzhechkov. You see, I have been granted full authority to conduct this interrogation for the KGB. They, I, want to know what you were doing in Sokolniki Park this morning."

  She forced herself to calm her mind, to think rationally. This is but the lowest echelon, she reminded herself. They know nothing about Mack Bolan or they would already be asking about him. Their superiors know of the Executioner's presence in Moscow, but not these oafs. If they had captured or killed Bolan in the park after she was apprehended, these sadists would know about it; the body would have been identified.

  Her heart soared, and for a moment she forgot the pain, the humiliation, even the hate.

  Mack is alive!

  The Executioner had no way of knowing where she was. There was no chance of him arriving here before these ghouls did more to her, but the idea that he had made it safely out of Sokolniki Park gave her strength.

  Katrina did not know why the big American had come to Moscow, why her group had been asked and sacrificed so much to help, but it had to be important, a vital matter.

  She had seen Bolan in action in Afghanistan.

  Her enemies, these slave masters who ruled from the Kremlin, were marked men, she knew, even if she would not live to see it.

  "I will tell you nothing," she repeated to Zuyenko in a voice of quiet iron. "Do what you will."

  10

  The Executioner was togged for a hard-night hit. He was stripped down to the combat blacksuit he had worn beneath his regular clothes since his penetration of Russia had begun.

  The combat suit, designed to his specifications, was skintight and covered thermal underwear.

  The .44 AutoMag was nestled in its holster against a muscled right thigh, gunfighter style. The Beretta 93-R resided in its speed rig beneath his left arm near a sheathed combat knife.

  The head weapon for this hit was a compact, silenced Uzi submachine gun, part of the contents of the attaché case supplied by Niktov. The Uzi hung by its shoulder strap, held close to Bolan's side.

  Canvas pouches encircled his waist, loaded with extra ammo and grenades, also supplied by Niktov. A wire garrote and a lightweight array of hard-punch munitions completed his gear, none of it cumbersome.

  The falling snow had not abated by the time he parked Tanya's Volvo on a street half a block from Lefortovo Prison. Moscow is nothing if not an efficient city. He had passed a dozen or more snowplow crews out in force even at this predawn hour, and by the time he had approached the vicinity of the prison the streets had been cleared of fallen snow, the traffic light enough so that the only delays he had encountered were occasional stoplights.

  He left the car parked near an alley that connected with one of the streets leading to the intersection at the southwest corner of the stone walls of the prison. He positioned himself at the end of the alley, taking in what he could of the sprawling institution.

  Lefortovo Prison looked impenetrable. Twenty-foot-high concrete walls, at least six feet thick, surrounded the prison. The walls were topped with curled strands of concertina wire and, Bolan guessed from his previous run-ins with such fortifications, the tops of those walls would be embedded with razor-sharp shards of glass.

  Blockhouses sat on each corner where the walls met, visible from his position, and though he could see only the two nearest ones through the snow, he was willing to bet more such blockhouses would be perched on the opposite corners of the walls.

  The eddying snow gathered intensity, making long-distance vision come and go despite the high-voltage lights mounted at in
tervals along the prison perimeter, especially around the iron gates built into an entrance, not the main one, near the southwest corner.

  There would be plenty of firepower in each of those blockhouses, to say nothing of the gatehouse he glimpsed at the southwest entrance.

  Normally on a wintertime night hit like this, he would have worn the white model of his combat outfit, but he had traveled light for this mission and, under the circumstances, he knew the blacksuit would be sufficient, perhaps preferable once he got inside.

  The snow was his friend, not only because the falling white stuff would erase his footprints as soon as he made them, but also because the snow and the frigid air would stack some more odds in his favor. Those in the blockhouses would most likely be unable to see him down here any more than he could see them, and the outside guards would have their collars wrapped around them to shield them from the elements. This would make things easier for him, too.

  Of course, in a case like this easy was a relative term, Bolan realized grimly, but he had another ally — the predawn hour, the best possible time for an action such as the one he was about to undertake. After a night, or at least several hours of guard duty, the average sentry's boredom and tiredness begin to work on him, and it would work better for Bolan's purpose with a setup like this. The guards and sentries of Lefortovo were not defending a military position; they would hardly be on guard against anyone trying to break in.

  Bolan didn't kid himself that this would be a walk in the park. He estimated dawn to be less than twenty minutes away. The eastern horizon would have already been smudged with the gray of false dawn if not for the veils of blowing snow, but once the sun rose Bolan knew the snow would only intensify the light.

  He also knew that a penetration of Lefortovo by force was out of the question. Even with the hour and the elements on his side, he could hardly take on the prison's entire security firepower from the outside. He might well have to bust out that way, but as for breaking inside those walls, the best way could only be a soft probe.

  The watcher in snowy shadows discerned the rumble of a heavy vehicle approaching through the city streets an instant before headlight beams swung into the street along the wall. A truck grumbled toward him in the direction of the entrance at the other end of the block, the truck making slow progress in the snow.

  Bolan crouched back farther into the alley so that the headlights would not pick him out for the prison sentries. He made out the details of the truck as it came closer, the driver downshifting in preparation for stopping at the southwest gate.

  A nonmilitary vehicle — a refrigerated delivery truck probably, Bolan reasoned, as it approached the mouth of the alley to deliver food for the guards and administrators of Lefortovo.

  There would be no meat or vegetables for the inmates. In the Soviet gulag, it's gruel for breakfast, gruel for lunch and gruel for dinner. This would be a regular, scheduled delivery, and for that reason the guards would be lax in searching it.

  Bolan prepared to pounce.

  The truck rumbled past the alley, the driver holding the speed down to no more than ten miles per hour as the truck drew closer to the entrance.

  He made his move just after the high cab of the truck passed his position, darting out from the alley with a leap that latched him onto the back of the truck like a spider to a wall. He scrambled, using the back sliding door handle of the truck for support and grip, then lowered himself to the underside of the truck.

  The street adjacent to the prison remained otherwise deserted, since there were no storefronts along here for security reasons, but also because Muscovites probably shunned prison walls that represented all the fear their leaders used to make them toe the line.

  No one saw him.

  The driver commenced braking as the truck approached the heavy iron gate. The slow pace meant Bolan was in no danger of bodily injury. The blowing snow shielded him from the guards' view, even if they had been interested in looking under a truck they probably saw at this time every other morning or so.

  The snow, kicked up by the truck's rear tires, glued itself to the undercarriage. Bolan's bare fingers grew numb as he pressed his belly up flush against the truck, his grip starting to loosen, his palms slipping on the ice formed along every available handhold.

  The truck braked to a complete stop.

  Bolan, coated now with a thin dusting of snow kicked up by the tires, released one hand at a time, holding on as well as he could with his other, yanking himself up for a better grip, doing the same with his other hand, gaining a better hold.

  He paid close attention to what he could see and hear from his perch beneath the truck. A sentry came out of the gatehouse and glanced routinely at the orders authorizing the delivery truck's access to the grounds.

  "Damn snow," the driver grumbled. "I thought we'd seen the last of it until fall."

  The sentry snorted. The rustle of paper told Bolan the guard was handing the orders back to the man in the cab.

  "If it's bad, it will happen," the sentry philosophized. "All right, move on through. And tell the cook to save some for us."

  The sentry stepped back from the truck and made a hand signal to two men in the guardhouse just inside the gate.

  Weapon barrels poked out through slots in the bulletproof window of the guardhouse, but from his angle Bolan could see the sentries inside were not behind those rifles. He had correctly gauged their response to the truck's arrival. The sentries were barely interested in the truck.

  At the outside guard's signal, someone activated a mechanism that made a heavy-duty iron grille gate slide back into the wall. The truck began to move through the entrance, and Bolan held on to the truck's underside with rapidly numbing fingers. The gate made a whirring sound and a clang that echoed as the vehicle rolled through a slanting, enclosed entranceway just inside the gate.

  Bolan retained his position as the driver geared down to negotiate a slope into what Bolan discerned to be a courtyard. He lowered his head slightly, holding fast to the icy underside of the vehicle.

  As the truck angled to the right, he made out the towering, featureless stone faces of the buildings inside Lefortovo. He paid special attention to what he could see of the building in the southwest corner, the building where Tanya had told him he would find Katrina.

  The prison compound was constructed around a square, and there appeared to be any number of small alleyways and shadowed areas where the high intensity lights did not reach and the blowing snow would obstruct the guards' vision from much of the courtyard.

  The truck rumbled past Building D where Katrina was held.

  Bolan clearly saw enough at this range to note one significant difference between Building D and the other cellblocks and administrative buildings: there was an extra heavy concentration of sentries around the building where Tanya had told him two sadists named Zuyenko and Kulik would be interrogating his friend.

  Besides six uniformed prison guards at each of the building's three entrances, there was a BTR-40 armored car, like the one the Moscow cops had used in the park, complete with 7.62 mm SGMG submachine gun in the turret, parked dead center in front of Building D.

  The delivery truck passed so close to the armored car that Bolan caught a few words of exchange among three soldiers manning the BTR-40, the conversation concerning the timeless soldier's lament of duty in inclement weather.

  The truck wheeled on past another of the buildings, finally drawing to a halt in front of the third building in from the gate.

  Bolan clearly noted that, while he could discern the very presence of guards and a smattering of Russian soldiers, even some civilian and plainclothes office workers just showing up for work, none of the other buildings he could see boasted anything near the security measures around Building D.

  The truck driver cut the engine and lights. Bolan heard him debark from the cab. The driver strode through the falling snow toward the front entrance of the building. Bolan did not hear the man shut the truck cab's doo
r, which told Bolan he would be back within seconds. This would be the mess hall for prison personnel, the driver heading inside so that the cook or whoever was in charge could send out a detail to unload the truck, most likely while the driver stayed warm in the cab.

  Bolan dropped from the underside of the truck, pushing out from beneath the vehicle the instant he touched ground, quickly and noiselessly traversing the twenty meters separating the truck from the next building, the one between the mess hall and Building D.

  He darted along the length of the walkway, barely noticing the nippy bite of wind-lashed snow wrapping the exposed skin of his face and hands in its prickly embrace. He reached the far end of the paved path just as he heard men's voices and the shuffling of unenthusiastic feet.

  The front door of the building opened, and a moment later he heard the delivery truck backing into the opposite end of the areaway. He dodged around the corner to the rear of the next building in line before anyone noticed movement other than snow flurries.

  The men began unloading the truck back there, and Bolan knew he had nothing to be concerned about from that direction. He crouched for a moment at the base of the building, unlooping the specially designed climbing rope from its notch on his belt, another gift from Niktov.

  He estimated forty meters or so from the rear of these buildings to the prison wall that loomed up out of sight into the shroud of falling and blowing snow. It reminded him of the side of a sheer cliff disappearing into clouds.

  There would be guards patrolling a walkway up there just inside the wall, but if he couldn't see them they probably couldn't see him either, and anyway, he reasoned, he had no choice in what he was about to do.

  He couldn't assault Building D head-on. He had to find Katrina before the fireworks began. If he didn't, he would risk not reaching her at all, or he might find her dead. He had to get inside that building covertly, if at all possible. Then he could go to work.

  He moved down the length of the middle building, then darted across another areaway, unspotted by the sentries at the side entrance midway down. He paused at the base of the blind side of Building D, which had no entranceway or ground-floor windows, and so there were no sentries posted there.