Читать книгу Extraordinary Rendition - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

Moscow, Russia

Mack Bolan had the Beatles in his head, Paul and John singing “Back in the USSR” as his Aeroflot Airbus A330-200 circled in a holding pattern over Domodedovo International Airport.

But it wasn’t the USSR anymore. Now, it was the Russian Federation, totally divorced from all the cold-war crimes of communism, prosperous and overflowing with democracy for all.

Sure thing.

And if you bought that, there were time-share contracts on the Brooklyn Bridge that ought to make your eyes light up, big-time.

This wasn’t Bolan’s first visit to Russia, but familiarity didn’t relieve the tightening he felt inside, as if someone had found the winding stem to his internal clock and given it a sudden twist. Nerves wouldn’t show on Bolan’s face or in his mannerisms, but they registered their agitation in his gut and in his head.

Russia had always been the big, bad Bear when he was growing up, serving his country as a Green Beret, and moving on from there to wage a one-man war against the Mafia. Moscow, the Kremlin and the KGB—under its varied names—had lurked behind a number of the plots Bolan had privately unraveled, and had spawned a fair percentage of the threats he’d faced after his government created Stony Man Farm and its off-the-books response to terrorism.

Then, as if by magic, virtually overnight, that “evil empire” had been neutralized. Governments fell, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union shattered like crockery dropped on concrete.

Threat neutralized?

Hardly.

In some ways, from the global export of its vicious Mafiya to home-grown civil wars, continued spying and subversion, and free-floating swarms of ex-government agents peddling the tools of Armageddon, Mother Russia was more dangerous than ever.

And Bolan was going in to face the Bear unarmed.

Well, not the whole Bear, if his mission briefing had been accurate. More like a litter of rabid cubs, protecting a rogue wolverine.

Bolan broke that train. His enemies this time—like every other time—were men, not animals.

No other animal on Earth would kill thousands for profit. Or for pleasure.

The pilot’s disembodied voice informed him that their flight was cleared for landing. Finally.

Domodedovo was one of three airports serving Moscow, the others being Sheremetyevo International and Vnukovo International. Among them, the three handled forty-odd-million passengers per year. It should be relatively easy, in that crush, for one pseudo-Canadian to pass unnoticed on his way.

Should be.

Bolan had flown from Montreal to London with a Canadian passport in the name of Matthew Cooper. He was carrying sufficient ID to support that cover, including an Ontario driver’s license, Social Insurance card and functional platinum plastic. He also came prepared with Canadian currency.

So far, so good.

But Bolan wasn’t on the ground yet, hadn’t met his contact from the Federal Protective Service—FSB—Russia’s equivalent of the FBI.

So, what had changed?

Russian relations with America, perhaps. Depending on the day and hour when you turned on CNN to find out which world leaders were at odds with whom, and why. This week, it seemed, the Russians needed help and weren’t afraid to say so.

More or less.

But as for what Bolan would find waiting in Moscow, he would simply have to wait and see.

And not much longer now.

With an ungainly thump and snarl, the Airbus A330-200 touched down.

The Executioner was on the ground in Moscow, one more time.

YURI BAZHOV DISLIKED airports. He didn’t care for travel, generally, and he hated flying, but the main reason for his dislike of airports was their fetish for security. They teemed with uniforms and guns that he could see, while other police were undoubtedly lurking in plainclothes or hiding in back rooms and watching the concourse with closed-circuit cameras.

Bazhov stopped short of spitting on the floor, which would have drawn attention to himself. The last thing he needed, standing with a GSh-18 automatic pistol tucked under his belt at the small of his back, was for some cop or militiaman to stop and frisk him on vague suspicion.

The job had to be important, he supposed, although it didn’t sound like much. Taras Morozov didn’t send a six-man team out to the airport every day, with orders to collect a stranger flying in from Canada.

Not greet him, mind you. Just collect him.

Bazhov had to smile at that, though cautiously. Smiling for no good reason could draw notice, just the same as spitting on the floor. Most anything out of the ordinary could spell trouble, if you thought about it long enough.

Collect the stranger, he’d been told. Taras had given him a name and flight number, then placed him in charge of the collection team. Which was an honor in itself.

Collect could mean a hundred different things, but Taras had added one crucial proviso. Bazhov had to deliver the stranger alive. Not necessarily undamaged, but breathing and able to speak.

More specifically, to answer questions.

Bazhov wondered if he would be privileged to witness that interrogation. Certainly, he wouldn’t be in charge of it. The family had specialists for such occasions, legendary in their way. Kokorinov was probably the best—or worst—a cold man with no concept of remorse or mercy. Bashkirtseva favored power tools, but could be flexible. Nikulin was a savage, plain and simple.

Any one of them could teach Bazhov a thing or two, perhaps speed his advancement up through the ranks. Though, come to think of it, his choice to head up the collection team was quite a vote of confidence.

He needed to be certain that he didn’t fuck it up.

Bazhov squinted at the monitor, watching its list of flight arrivals and departures scroll across the screen. He suspected that he would need glasses soon, a damned embarrassment and scandal at his tender age of thirty-five, but he would put off the indignity as long as possible. The first person who made fun of him was dead.

According to the monitor, the flight from Montreal had landed more or less on time, a minor miracle for Domodedovo International. Bazhov couldn’t approach the gate where passengers deplaned—another security precaution—and he didn’t know whether his target had checked luggage in the belly of the plane. To cover every possibility, he had two men on standby at the baggage carousels, two more positioned where he could observe them from his present station, and his driver, on call, driving incessant loops around the terminal.

If anything went wrong with the collection, it wouldn’t be Yuri Bazhov’s fault.

But he would pay the price, regardless.

Such was life.

Bazhov saw passengers emerging from the corridor that served the various arrival gates, plodding along with the enthusiasm of dumb cattle entering an abattoir. A few cracked smiles on recognizing relatives or lovers who had come to greet them. Most kept their faces deadpan, as if it would cost them extra to reveal a trace of human feeling.

Bazhov felt his pulse kick up a notch when he picked out his target. He hadn’t been shown a photograph, but the description fit, albeit vaguely. More than anything, it was the target’s bearing that betrayed him.

Yuri Bazhov recognized a killer when he saw one.

After all, he owned a mirror, didn’t he?

SPOTTING A TAIL on foreign turf, particularly in a crowded public place that welcomed strangers by the thousand every hour, could be difficult, to say the least. In airports, where small hordes of people gathered, scanning faces of the new arrivals to pick out their loved ones, partners, rivals, even people they have never met but have been paid to greet, curious staring was routine. The rule, not the exception.

Bolan was on alert before he cleared the jetway fastened to the bulkhead of the Aeroflot Airbus. He had a likeness of his contact memorized, but there was always a chance of some last-minute substitution. People got sick or got dead. They got sidetracked and shuffled around on some bureaucrat’s whim. Whole operations got scuttled without any warning to agents at risk on the ground.

Bolan followed the flow of humanity past more arrival gates, following the multilingual signs directing passengers to immigration and passport control, to customs, baggage claim and ground transportation. His only baggage was a carry-on, and he was expecting a ride at the end of his hike through the concourse, but there was no mistaking the rest.

Bolan showed his passport to an immigration officer whose cropped hair, military uniform and plain face conspired to disguise her sex. She held the passport up beside his face, her eyes flicking back and forth between the photo and its living counterpart, then asked him the obligatory questions. Bolan answered truthfully that he didn’t intend to spend more than a week on Russian soil, and that he had no fixed address in mind.

“So, traveling?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

Frowning, the agent stamped his passport with a vehemence the task scarcely deserved, and passed him on to customs. There, a portly officer with triple chins pawed through the contents of his carry-on, presumably in search of contraband.

“No other bags?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Bolan replied.

“And if you need more clothes?”

“American Express.”

Apparently disgruntled at his failure to discover some incriminating bit of evidence, the agent scowled at Bolan’s passport stamp, then nodded him along to clear the station.

Thirty feet ahead of Bolan stood a wall of frosted glass, preventing those who gathered on the other side from seeing what went on at customs. Bits of faces showed each time the exit door opened and closed, but Bolan didn’t think his contact would be pushing up to head the line.

He cleared the doorway, with a hefty woman and her two unruly children close behind him. Bolan let them take the lead, converging on a thin, small-headed man whose pale face registered despair at the sight of them.

The joys of coming home.

Bolan was looking for his contact when he saw the skinhead on his left, leaning against a wall there, staring hard at Bolan’s face until their eyes met. Caught, be broke contact and made a show of checking out the other passengers, while muttering some comment to the collar of his leather jacket.

Glancing to his right, Bolan picked out another front man of the not-so-welcoming committee, nodding in response to something no one else could hear, hand raised to press an earpiece home.

Clumsy.

But in his present situation, Bolan thought, how good did his opponents really need to be?

“I THINK HE SPOTTED us!” Yuri Bazhov stated.

“So, he has eyes,” Evgeny Surikov replied, his voice a tinny sneer through Bazhov’s earpiece. “What’s the difference?”

Seething with anger yet afraid to make a spectacle in public, Bazhov hissed at the small microphone concealed on his lapel. “What do you think, idiot? That we should take him here, in front of everyone?”

“Why not?” Danil Perov chimed in.

Turning away from customs, Bazhov fell in step a dozen yards behind his target. “I don’t want the damned militia coming down on us,” he said into the microphone. “Whoever wants to be arrested, do it somewhere else. You can explain to Taras personally, if you don’t like following his orders.”

That silenced the bellyachers for now. Bazhov followed his man, still unsure where the stranger would lead him. The target carried a bag, but might have other luggage awaiting attention downstairs. Who flew to Moscow with a single bag, even if he was only staying for the night?

Who was this man? Why did he matter to the Family?

Nobody tells me anything, Bazhov thought, frowning to himself.

All right, the bosses didn’t owe him any explanation, but he should be told enough to let him do his job effectively and safely. What if this one was some kind of kung fu expert, for example? What if he was carrying a deadly virus in his blood or sputum? Bazhov and his men could wind up beaten to a pulp, infected with some damned thing that would kill them slowly.

Before it came to that, he’d use the GSh-18 and damn the consequences. But it was a last resort, and if he had to kill the stranger, Bazhov might consider saving one round for himself.

The target didn’t turn to see if anyone was following his path along the concourse. He played it cool, but Bazhov was convinced that he’d been spotted, maybe Surikov, as well. That made the job more difficult, but not impossible, by any means.

With odds of six to one, how could they lose him?

They took the escalator down toward the baggage claim and ground transportation area, and the other services designed to hasten new arrivals from the airport. Bazhov couldn’t help scowling as his target reached the bottom and turned left, away from the long bank of luggage carousels.

“No bags,” he told the microphone. “Repeat! No bags. Vasily, Pavel, come rejoin us.”

“On my way,” Vasily Radko answered.

“Coming,” Pavel Malevich replied.

Apparently, their target meant to hire a car. He had no less than half a dozen agencies to choose from, but he might have reservations with a car already standing by. In either case, they had to intercept him, before he vanished into city traffic.

Domodedovo International stood twenty-two miles from downtown Moscow. Call it a half-hour’s drive if nobody was speeding, drawing attention from traffic police. In the worst-case scenario, Bazhov could stop the mark’s car in transit, stage an accident if need be and lift him before the militia arrived.

Better to take him at the airport, though, perhaps in the garage where the hired cars were kept shiny-clean, with their dents and scratches inventoried for insurance purposes. There would be fewer witnesses, none likely to step forward and defend a stranger in the face of guns.

“Close in,” Bazhov commanded. “We will take him when he goes to fetch his car.”

ANZHELA PILKIN SMELLED the trap before she saw it closing on the stranger she had come to meet. She seemed to have a sixth sense for such things—so much so, if the truth be told, that fellow agents of the FSB sometimes referred to her as wed’ma.

Witch.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t a witch, only an FSB lieutenant who couldn’t work magic on a whim. She couldn’t twirl a wand and make the thugs who had staked out her contact disappear.

But in a pinch, she could draw her Yarygin PYa pistol and make them die.

Lieutenant Pilkin hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Her mission was covert, and her superiors would frown on gunplay at the airport. It was something they expected from Chicago, New York City—anywhere but Moscow, in the midst of a top-secret operation. Public killing that involved police would spoil the play.

And it would do no good for her career.

She watched the procession pass by, concealed behind a tourist information kiosk, shifting her position to prevent herself from being seen. It was impossible to say if the American now traveling as Matthew Cooper had discovered he was being followed. And while Pilkin hoped so—hoped that he wasn’t oblivious to such an obvious approach—she also dreaded what might happen if he tried to ditch the trackers on his own.

Pilkin visualized a free-for-all, fists flying, maybe weapons drawn, and what would happen next? When the militia came, what could she do?

Follow her contact to his holding cell, perhaps, and try to talk him out of custody? She might be able to pull rank on the militia, but to what end? Exposure of the man would automatically abort their mission, and she knew that her superiors likely wouldn’t permit a second effort.

So, whatever she attempted, it would have to be unauthorized and hidden from the brass at FSB headquarters.

She was on her own.

Pilkin watched the tall American bypass the sign directing him to the baggage claim and head off toward the bank of kiosks that dispensed hired cars. She knew he was expecting her to pick him up, which meant that his diversion was precisely that: a stall, either to locate her, throw off his enemies, or both.

Before the man she knew as Cooper cleared another thirty yards, Pilkin counted five men trailing him. They might have passed unnoticed in the flow of passengers, airport employees and assorted idlers, if she hadn’t been well trained and they had been more skillful.

Enemies came in all shapes, sizes and colors. Some were natural chameleons, while others stood out for their bearing, brutish looks, or quirks that give away their secrets. These five shared a common arrogance most often seen in the associates of the Russian Mafiya—and all of them were talking to themselves in turn, revealing to an educated watcher that they kept in touch by means of tiny two-way radios.

And they were armed. The bulges visible beneath some of their jackets told Pilkin that, and she assumed the ones whose weapons weren’t evident had simply dressed themselves more carefully. They passed a few militia officers along the way, but were ignored.

So much for tight airport security.

Anzhela Pilkin had a choice to make.

She could keep following her contact and his shadows, wait until they made a move and try to intervene, or she could leave the terminal and fetch her car. Be ready when he needed her.

The second course of action took some faith.

She had to trust that the mobsters were smart enough to bide their time and seek a place with fewer witnesses before they made a move. And she had to trust her contact to remain alive for several minutes on his own, away from Pilkin’s observant eyes.

She made her choice, broke off pursuit and started walking swiftly—nearly running—to the closest exit from the airport terminal.

WITH NO SIGN of his contact, Bolan had a choice to make. His basic options were to wait inside the airport terminal or leave it, but both choices had their built-in risks.

Waiting meant somehow dealing with the watchers who were trailing him. He’d counted three, but couldn’t tip his hand by dawdling along and sneaking peeks for any others who had joined them. Three was bad enough, with Bolan presently unarmed. A confrontation in the terminal would draw police, and that would be the end of his mission, whether he survived or not.

Leaving the terminal posed different risks. He could obtain a rental car with no great difficulty, but his shadows would most likely make their move when he went to collect it in some nearby parking lot or garage. Bolan assumed that some of them, at least, were armed. Whether their orders were to kill him on the spot or bring him out alive, when he resisted, one or more of them might snap.

And if he managed to survive that showdown, even take their weapons for himself, then what? He’d be adrift in Moscow, with its thirteen million people and no way of reaching his contact.

Who might or might not even be alive.

Bolan couldn’t approach the U.S. Embassy, since he was traveling as a Canadian. It wouldn’t help to reach the CIA’s station chief, since the Company had been frozen out of his mission. He had contacts, but only for potential “cleanup” jobs. Forget the Canadian consulate, too. Even if they agreed to send him “home,” his mission would have failed.

On the flip side, he couldn’t drop by FSB headquarters in Lubyanka Square and spill his story to a desk sergeant, either. The Russian side was worried about leaks of their own, keeping a tight lid on the operation. It was strictly need-to-know, or so he’d been informed, although the men now stalking him were living evidence that someone had to have spilled the beans.

The good news was that if he managed to clear the airport alive, he knew enough about his target to reach the man’s last known address. Bolan supposed that he could arm himself in Moscow, with an estimated 170,000 illegal guns in circulation, but what of it?

His mission didn’t call for an assassination. He’d been sent to find, extract and deliver one man to a team that would put him on ice and presumably ship him off somewhere for trial.

That end of it was not Bolan’s concern. But he’d been told, with heavy emphasis, that Washington required this guy alive. His showcase trial, apparently, was more important than the man himself or any of his crimes.

A message to the predators: no matter where you hide, you are within our reach.

As if they’d care and somehow magically reform.

Unless Bolan could bag his man and summon the extraction unit, none of that was happening.

He made his choice, passed by the car-rental kiosks and kept going, toward the nearest exit from the terminal. He would choose his ground, confront his enemies and see what happened next.

Outside, the sun was going down. The late afternoon was warm and humid, making Bolan’s shirt stick to his skin. Across six lanes of airport traffic, opposite his exit door, stood a tall parking garage. Hired cars were picked up and returned on the ground floor. The rest, Bolan supposed, was rented by the space to travelers or those on hand to meet them.

It would be as good a battleground as any.

He had one foot off the curb when a little gray sportster squealed to a stop in front of him, its right-front fender nearly grazing his shoe.

Behind the wheel, the face he had been watching for since his arrival snapped at him, “Get in, will you, while you still can!”