Extraordinary Rendition. Don Pendleton
gone. More recently, he had enjoyed cautious collaboration with the FSB. Bolan could think of no reason for them to plot his death, much less kill eight G-men to bait the trap.
Anzhela Pilkin could have shot him at the airport terminal, or simply missed their date and left disposal to the thugs who were pursuing them. The whole rescue charade was pointless, if she and her masters wanted Bolan dead.
What if they simply wanted him?
Interrogation was another possibility, but once again, Bolan collided with the brick wall of impracticality. To dress the stage, go through the diplomatic motions, lay the trail—it only clicked if someone in the FSB knew Bolan’s true identity. Or, at the very least, the role he played for Stony Man.
And that, he told himself, was next door to impossible.
So, wait and see, he thought.
And from the chase car’s progress overhauling them, he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
“WHERE ARE THEY going?” Yuri Bazhov asked no one, thinking aloud.
“Can’t say,” Bek responded from the driver’s seat.
“Just drive!”
Bazhov hit speed-dial on his cell phone, waiting through four anxious rings before he got an answer.
“Who’s that?” Pavel Malevich demanded.
“Idiot! Who do you think it is?” Bazhov snapped.
“Yuri! Where are you?”
“Heading north on Chertanovskaya Street. Looks like she’s taking us downtown.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Depends on who she is,” Bazhov replied. “Catch up with us, soon as you can. We need to cut her off.”
He broke the link, muttering curses to himself.
This was what came from working in the dark, when everything was need-to-know and no one told him shit. He couldn’t second-guess the bitch who’d plucked their pigeon from the snare, because he didn’t know who she was or why she’d intervened. Bazhov had no idea why he’d been sent to snatch a stranger from the airport, with instructions that the mark had to be alive upon delivery.
It could be anything. A rival syndicate invading local turf. Perhaps a businessman who’d balked at paying tribute to the Family and now required an object lesson in security. It might be something personal for Taras or the man on top, Leonid Bezmel.
Yuri Bazhov hated puzzles, riddles, anything that taxed his brain unnecessarily. He understood connect-the-dots and liked to skip ahead whenever possible, surprise his adversaries and destroy them with brute force.
He couldn’t do that in the present case, because his hands were tied. His orders barred disposing of this Matthew Cooper, while the woman was a wild card, trouble from the first time he’d laid eyes on her. Bazhov could kill the woman.
But he’d have to catch her first.
And if she had some destination fixed in mind as she was fleeing, what did that mean to Bazhov, his men and his plan? Was she leading them onto another gang’s patch? If she was mixed up with the law, somehow, it could be even worse.
Bazhov would ask her, if he had the chance.
Before he put a bullet in her brain.
Somewhere behind him, Malevich and Surikov were racing to catch up and join the chase. Two cars might box the woman’s vehicle. Better than one, in any case. With one, all he could do was ram her, sideswipe her, or try to shoot her off the road.
And if Bazhov should kill his sacred target in the process, it would be his ass. He couldn’t blame his men for the mistake, when he gave them their orders.
“Osip!” he barked. “Can you catch her, or not?”
“I can!”
“You’re sure it isn’t too much trouble?”
“No, Yuri!”
“All right, then. Will you do it, for Christ’s sake?”
Bek’s cheeks flushed crimson at the insult, but he offered no response. Instead, he let the BMW do his talking for him, surging forward as he found more power somehow, somewhere underneath its hood.
Clutching his pistol in a fierce, white-knuckled grip, Bazhov prepared himself for battle.
“ALMOST THERE,” Anzhela Pilkin told her silent passenger.
“The park there, on the left?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
Despite its grim-faced reputation, Moscow was a “green” city. It boasted ninety-six parks and eighteen public gardens, comprising 174 square miles of green zones and thirty-nine square miles of forest. Each citizen of Moscow was blessed with 290 square feet of parkland, versus nine in New York, seven in London and six in Paris. Thousands enjoyed the parks each day.
But few by night.
Pilkin counted on the fear of crime that kept most of her fellow Muscovites away from dark, secluded places after nightfall. There was risk enough of being mugged, robbed, raped, or shot by accident in daylight, without tempting Fate.
She found the side street she was looking for and swung her VAZ sportster off Chertanovskaya Street, leaving the main flow of traffic behind. She lost the rest turning in to the park, killing her lights at once and watching for the chase car in her rearview mirror.
Was there any chance that her pursuers would be fooled and drive past?
No. There they were, making the left-hand turn, and then the right.
“So much for losing them,” she said. “We’ll have to fight the bastards.”
“Ready when you are,” he replied.
Pilkin sped along a narrow drive that ran halfway around the park, dead-ending in a parking lot located at the north end of a man-made lake. Arriving in the lot, she put the VAZ through a squealing one-eighty, then killed its engine.
“I’d rather meet them on foot,” she told Bolan.
“Sounds good,” he replied, and was out of his door in a flash.
They ran into darkness, away from her car, which she knew the pursuers would make their first target. Pilkin hoped it wouldn’t be destroyed. She was dreading the paperwork required to explain any damage to state property. There’d be enough just for the shooting, without car repairs on top of it.
She thumbed off her pistol’s safety, crouching next to Bolan in the shadow of a hedge, watching the headlights of the enemy’s vehicle sweep across the parking lot and focus on her VAZ.
“Now!” she told Bolan, squeezing off three rounds in rapid fire, aimed at the driver’s deeply tinted window.
Pilkin heard glass smash as she fired, then Bolan’s borrowed pistol barked in unison with hers. The chase car’s driver hit his brakes, then switched to the accelerator in a heartbeat, revving past her VAZ, on toward the lake.
Go in! Go in, she urged them silently.
But it stopped just short of splashdown, and the engine died.
YURI BAZHOV FLINCHED from the first crash of gunfire, cursing as something wet and warm spattered the left side of his face. Bek was gagging, choking in the driver’s seat, still clinging to the steering wheel as dark blood spurted from his neck, streaking the windshield and dashboard.
The BMW jerked, then powered forward as Bek slumped in his seat, his right foot jammed on the accelerator. Bazhov saw that they were headed for the lake, and he envisioned sinking with the car into its strangling depths.
He cursed the dead or dying man beside him, who was once a friend of sorts. When a hard slap had no effect on Bek, Bazhov bent to grab