More bullets struck the car, cracking its rear window, drumming against the trunk and left-rear fender. Perov and Radko shouted from the backseat, angling to return fire, finding no immediate targets.
“Get out!” Bazhov ordered. Feeling absurd, he added, “And remember! Do not kill the man!”
Bazhov nearly dropped his cell phone, stumbling from the car, while Perov and Radko unlimbered their guns. He speed-dialed Pavel Malevich, and this time got an answer on the second ring.
“What’s happening?” Malevich asked.
Bazhov raised his phone and let the man hear staccato gunfire.
“That’s what’s happening, idiot! Do you hear it? Osip’s dead, and where in hell are you?”
“On Chertanovskaya Street. You said—”
“Look for a park,” Bazhov said, interrupting him. “I don’t know what they call it. On your left, somewhere. It has a lake. Listen for gunfire. Move your ass!”
A bullet struck the car within a foot of Bazhov’s head and ricocheted into the darkness with a sound that nearly made him wet himself. He had been under fire before, of course, and more than once. But this, somehow, felt different.
It felt like his last moments of life.
In which case, what did he have to lose?
Morozov could hardly punish him if he was dead. There was no pain beyond the final moment of oblivion…unless the priests were right about hellfire.
Bazhov could only face one peril at a time, on one plane of existence. If the fires of hell were waiting for him, by God, let them wait.
Edging around the BMW’s right-rear fender, Bazhov risked a peek in search of targets. He saw muzzle-flashes, moving closer, and heard more rounds strike the car.
Thankfully, the BMW had been stolen. It was no great loss, nothing for Morozov to be angry about, he thought. Letting the stranger from the airport slip away, however, was another story altogether.
Bazhov saw his targets now—a man and woman, racing through the night, advancing as if totally devoid of fear. They used the shadows as a cloak, but still came on to meet their enemies.
Bazhov admired that, in his way, but admiration wouldn’t interfere with duty. Aiming at the woman, he fired two quick shots, then ducked back under cover as a bullet struck the BMW’s taillight inches from his face.
FOUR SHOTS GONE, and Bolan wasn’t sure that he’d hit anyone. He’d definitely hit the BMW, and it wasn’t armored, but that didn’t mean he’d scored on any of its occupants.
Time to get serious.
Pilkin dodged two hasty shots from someone crouching at the Beemer’s rear, and Bolan drove the shooter under cover with a round that blew out the right-hand taillight. Almost simultaneously, two guys popped up to fire across the sedan’s sleek hood.
One had a pistol, the other one some kind of stubby submachine gun. Possibly a Bizon, with its 64-round magazine, or the smaller PP-2000. As he hit the dirt and rolled, his ears told Bolan that the stuttergun was no Kalashnikov. It was 9 mm, tops, but no less deadly for its caliber.
He came up firing, two quick rounds to make the shooters duck, then rushed them. It was the only option available, since Bolan couldn’t linger where he was, and a retreat would only let them shoot him in the back.
Off to his right somewhere, he heard Pilkin firing on the run, another pistol answering. Bolan could only fight one battle at a time, and left her to it, with a silent supplication to the Universe.
The shooters he was looking for had made a critical mistake, both emptying their magazines together. It was easy, in the heat of battle, to forget coordination with the troops around you, but there was no “little” error on the firing line. One slip could get you killed.
Like now.
Instead of wasting precious time and energy to run around the front end of the Beemer, Bolan launched himself across its hood, sliding to meet his enemies. He had a flash impression of their faces, gaping at him, then their guns were coming up, ready or not, to meet his charge.
Chaos took over then, with Bolan rapid-firing at the startled faces, blowing them apart at point-blank range where it was strictly personal. The Russians died as Bolan guessed they had to have lived, with brutish violence. They jerked, danced, stumbled, fell together in a twitching heap.
The slide on Bolan’s pistol locked open on an empty chamber. He dropped it, claimed the nearest dead man’s SMG—it was a Bizon, after all—and snugged its unique cylindrical magazine into place.
In front of him, with his back turned, a final shooter blazed away at Pilkin, somewhere beyond the BMW. Bolan shot him in the back without the High Noon drama of asking him to turn around and make it “fair.”
In Bolan’s world, the fair fights were those that he won. No holds barred. There were some lines he wouldn’t cross, but none of them applied to adult predators in battle.
“Clear!” he called to Pilkin, and gave her time to chill before he rose from cover.
She approached him, frowning.
“You got all of them yourself,” she said.
“I wouldn’t claim the driver.”
“What are you, exactly, Mr. Cooper?”
“Just a public servant, like yourself.”
“I don’t think so,” Pilkin replied.
“I think we should be leaving, if your car’s all right.”
“It’s fine.”
“And before we throw any more parties,” he added, “I’ve got some shopping to do.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Kotlin Island
Gennady Sokolov sipped black-cherry vodka from a crystal glass, letting it linger on his tongue before he swallowed and felt the welcome heat begin to spread throughout his body. He hadn’t decided, yet, if it would be his last drink of the old day or his first of the new one.
That, he reckoned, would depend upon the news from Moscow.
Sokolov wasn’t a patient man by nature. He had learned patience as other men learned carpentry, mechanics or book-keeping—through determination and practice. Much of his time with Spetznaz had been spent waiting or getting ready for some crisis that might never come to pass. Later, when he was serving with the KGB, the typical pace had been slower still. Espionage by committee. Murder by decree, with orders handed down through bureaucratic buffer layers until the deed was executed in New York, Bangkok, Madrid or Rome.
The patience he’d acquired while serving Russia’s government had been of great value to Sokolov once he went private. Those who came to him for weapons always wanted them today—or yesterday, as the Americans were fond of saying—but negotiation of a price and terms for the delivery took time. Oddly, it seemed to Sokolov that those who wished to kill their enemies most urgently were also those who dithered over dimes.
This night he needed patience on his own account, waiting for word that would relieve him of a burden that was tainting every aspect of his life. The Americans were breathing down his neck, determined that he should be extradited in defiance of his homeland’s sacred law.
Whatever happened to their passion for democracy?
So far, they hadn’t laid a glove on Sokolov, though he resented the restrictions on his foreign travel. Documents weren’t a problem, under any name he chose, and Sokolov was self-taught in the art of personal disguise, but covert travel meant that he couldn’t enjoy the luxury to which he