Extraordinary Rendition

Brognola recognized Sokolov for what he was

The man was a player and a pawn. He armed the killers, but he also served them. And above him, shadowing his every move, were men and women who could take him off the board at any time. He lived because they found him useful for the advancement of their agendas.

The big Fed knew that removing Sokolov from circulation was a good thing. Putting him on public trial, revealing some of those he served might also benefit humanity. It wouldn’t stop the global arms trade or any of the slaughter that resulted from it, but it might slow the pace of killing. For a while.

If anyone could do the job, Mack Bolan was the man.

It is ironical that in an age when we have prided ourselves on the intelligent care and teaching of children we have at the same time put them at the mercy of new and most terrible weapons of destruction.

—Pearl S. Buck

1892–1973

What America Means to Me

Gods are born and die, but the atom endures.

—Alexander Chase

1926–

Perspectives

Forget the old line about meddling in God’s domain. This time terrorists are meddling in mine. And they’ll regret it.

—Mack Bolan

For Private First Class Ross A. McGinnis

1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry

God keep

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Kotlin Island, Gulf of Finland

Special Agent Robert Marx thought it was funny how things seemed to change but actually stayed the same. Staring across the dark, cold water of the gulf before him, he could see the bright lights of Saint Petersburg. Founded under its present name in 1703, the regal city had been renamed Petrograd in 1914, changed to Leningrad in 1924, then had become Saint Petersburg once more in 1991.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Take extraordinary rendition, for instance.

It was a fancy name for kidnapping, dreamed up by some Washington bureaucrat back in the eighties, a means of returning international fugitives to America for trial, even when they were sheltered by a hostile state. After 9/11 the phrase had morphed into a euphemism for shipping terrorist suspects off to friendly nations where “aggressive questioning” was commonplace.

Another euphemism. Why not call it torture?

Regardless, the pendulum had swung again, and the Justice Department was saving rendition for hard-case felons whose wealth and/or political connections placed them effectively beyond the law’s reach.

Scumbags like Gennady Sokolov.

For his sake, Special Agent Marx and seven other members of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team were standing in the icy early-morning darkness of Kotlin Island, twenty miles west of Saint Petersburg and a mile west of the Kronstadt seaport.

There were no hostages at risk this night. The mission was a basic find-and-snatch.

Extraordinary rendition.

Their target was a dacha built by Sokolov as a retreat from the daily grind of his murderous business. The team had helicoptered in from the mainland, and their chopper was waiting to take them back again, plus one. A charter jet was also standing by at Pulkovo II International Airport, eleven miles from downtown Saint Petersburg, with its flight plan to London on file.

From there, it was home to the States.

If they lived through the night.

Marx had handpicked his team, choosing only the best. He had two seasoned snipers, one packing a Remington M-40 A-1 .308 sniper rifle fitted with a Unertl target scope, and the other armed with a Barrett M-86 A-1 “light Fifty” in case they had to take out any armored cars. Chuck Osborne carried a Benelli M-4 Super 90 semiauto shotgun, for opening doors and flattening humans. Marx and the other four men on his team were armed with Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-6 submachine guns, with retractable stocks, integrated suppressor and 3-round-burst trigger groups. As sidearms, all HRT members carried the “Bureau Model” Springfield Armory TRP-PRO in .45 caliber.

Good to go.

They’d waited two hours for Sokolov and his men to fall asleep. Now it was time to make the grab and get the hell off Kotlin, before they ran out of luck.

The snipers were deployed, already covering the grand three-story house, as Marx led his team through the dark toward their selected entry point. It might not be an easy snatch, considering the target, but they’d trained on a scale model of the house, built back at Quantico specially for their mission.

They were as ready as they’d ever be.

Marx led the way, as usual. He was his own point man, never asking any other member of the HRT to do a job he personally shunned. Another thirty yards or so, and they’d have cover from the dacha’s seven-car garage while they prepared for entry.

Just a little farther, and—

The night vanished around them in a blaze of metal halide lamps. A deep metallic voice demanded their immediate surrender, first in Russian, then in English.

Marx reacted while the faceless drone was midway through his spiel, raising his SMG and firing at the nearest bank of lights. His team responded instantly, blazing away to either side. Their submachine guns whispered, while the big Benelli shotgun thundered. From a distance, Marx’s snipers opened up, but they were short on living targets.

Half the halide lamps were dark and smoking when the muzzle-flashes started winking all around the FBI strike team. Marx staggered as a bullet struck his body armor, bruising his chest underneath the Kevlar vest. He shifted targets, firing at live enemies instead of floodlights now, seeing the mission go to hell and praying that he could still get his team out intact.

But two of them were down already, Jurecki and Zvirbulis—their two Russian-speakers—sprawled on the driveway’s pavement, deathly still. Marx didn’t want to see the pools of crimson spreading underneath their supine forms, steaming from contact with the frigid air.

Marx felt his magazine run dry and dropped it, reaching for a fresh one. He’d withdrawn the new mag halfway from its pouch on his tactical vest when a slug punched through his armpit, slipping past the armor, tumbling through his rib cage and right lung.

The shock of impact dropped Marx to the pavement. Numb fingers lost their grip on his SMG, and he heard it clatter out of reach. Around him, twitching, jerking, he could see the other members of his team dropping like shattered mannequins.

Maybe the snipers could escape in time and reach the waiting chopper. If they weren’t cut off on their retreat and—

Marx blinked as a shadow fell between him and the halide lamps that hadn’t been shot out. It took the last of his remaining strength to turn and face the weapon leveled at him.

“Goodbye, American,” the gunman said.

CHAPTER ONE

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.