Road Of Bones

CHAPTER THREE

Yakutsk

Bolan drove aimlessly, letting the woman calm down. She was hurting, of course. He’d seen the marks of torture on her flesh before she dressed, and while they all looked superficial, he knew he couldn’t judge her pain threshold or personal resilience on such short acquaintance.

“You’re safe now,” he told her.

“Safe?” She made a little hissing sound that could have been sarcastic laughter filtered through exhaustion. “What is safe?”

“We’re getting out of here,” he said.

“You think so?”

“That’s the plan.”

After a silent interval, she said, “I told them nothing. It was close, though. If the dry ice had arrived…”

Bolan recalled the first goon he had met, the plastic cooler leaking smoky vapor as he dropped.

“You showed them how strong you are,” Bolan said.

“Then why do I feel weak?”

“You’re losing the adrenaline rush.”

In fact, it didn’t matter if she’d cracked or not, as long as she survived and followed through on testifying when the time came. The opposition had to have a fair idea of what Anuchin and her partner had uncovered, and the use to which it would be put. The torture was to verify her knowledge, prior to silencing the final witness and securing—as they hoped—a free pass on impending charges.

“I am cold, as well.”

“That’s shock,” he said. “You need to rest. Stay warm. I wish we had a place where you could shower, maybe get some better clothes.”

“There is a place,” she told him, sounding groggy. “Keep on this way, then turn north on Ordzhonikidze Street.”

“You’ll stay awake and help me spot the sign?” he asked, not teasing her.

“I’ll try. If not, you’ll see a large Pervaya Pomosch pharmacy located on the northwest corner of the intersection. Let it be your guide.”

“And after that?”

“I’ll be awake, don’t worry. I have too much pain for sleep.”

He let that pass, knowing from personal experience that a commiserative stranger couldn’t help. Instead, he asked, “Is this a safehouse that we’re going to?”

“I hope so,” she replied, forcing the vestige of a smile.

“It isn’t FSB?” he asked.

“Private,” she informed him. “Rented with Sergey so we could meet, collect our evidence, discuss what we had learned without an ear in every corner.”

Bolan wondered if there had been more between the partners than idealism and a scheme for cleaning up the agency they served. Maybe the safehouse doubled as a love nest when they felt the need.

And if it had, so what?

If Anuchin and the late Dollezhal were hoping for a long-term cleanup of the FSB—much less the Russian Federation—Bolan pegged them as naive. Assuming they could bring down the top men, clean house beyond the normal game of hanging scapegoats out to dry, what then? Had either one of them imagined that they would be welcomed back as heroes to resume their duties for a grateful state?

Fat chance.

Still, they had tried. And Anuchin might succeed to some extent, if he could get her out of Russia in one piece and safely back to the United States.

Huge if.

He saw the pharmacy, turned north and drove another quarter mile before the woman had him turn again, and yet again, running parallel to Ordzhonikidze Street through a residential neighborhood. Six houses down, she had him pull in on the left.

“I have a key to the garage, unless they took it,” Anuchin told him, rummaging around inside her bag. “No, here it is.”

Bolan accepted it, unlocked the small attached garage and raised its door. No gunmen waited in the glare of headlights. He walked back to the GAZ and nosed it inside. Anuchin got out, found a light switch and stood by waiting until he had closed the door, then turned it on.

“In case someone is watching,” she explained unnecessarily.

“I think they would have jumped us,” Bolan said.

“You’ll think I’m paranoid,” she suggested.

“After tonight? Not even close,” he promised.

Nodding almost thankfully, she turned and led the way into the house.

Moscow

“WHAT DO YOU mean, ‘all dead’?” Eugene Marshak demanded.

“Just what I say, sir,” Stephan Levshin replied. “All dead. Our men, that is.”

Marshak might have slapped Levshin if they hadn’t been separated by three thousand miles and six time zones. As it was, he clenched his teeth and said, “Major, if you cannot express yourself more clearly, I will find another officer who can. Now, would you care to try again?”

“Yes, sir,” Levshin said stiffly. Wounded pride be damned. The man was growing arrogant. “Our escorts for the package have been killed, Colonel. Along with the examiner.”

“Better,” Marshak allowed, although the news was bad—nearly the worst it could have been. “And what about the package?”

“Gone, sir.”

So it was the very worst scenario.

“Can you explain this?” he asked.

“The mechanics of it only, sir,” his second in command replied. “At least one individual surprised them. The casings tell us he was armed with a Kalashnikov, one of the 5.45 millimeter models. Two of the escorts returned fire, with no apparent effect.”

“You think one man?” Marshak pressed him.

“Yes, sir. From the appearance of the scene.”

“I’ll have to tell our friend,” Marshak said.

“Yes, sir.”

No names, although the line was meant to be secure. Who really knew these days?

“I don’t suppose there’s any way to find out what they learned, if anything?”

“No, sir. Without the package…” Levshin left the obvious unspoken.

“No.” Marshak released a weary breath. “You must retrieve it, Major. At all costs. I will arrange for reinforcements as required.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I don’t believe the package has left the area. There’s been little time, and it may have been damaged.”

“Ah.”

Some hope, at least, if the interrogator’s ministrations made it difficult for Tatyana Anuchin to travel. Still, she’d managed to escape, aided by whom? At least one killer and a wild card in the game, unknown to Marshak. If the man—or men—were good enough to sneak up on the capture team and take them down, could he—or they—smuggle the woman out of Yakutsk?

Out of Russia?

That was unacceptable. Unthinkable.

“You understand how bad it is for all of us, unless we put it right,” Marshak reminded Levshin.

“Absolutely, sir. Our friend’s men failed you. I will not.”

“See that you don’t,” Marshak replied, and cut the link.

Six dead in Yakutsk now, counting the traitor Dollezhal. Digging so many graves in permafrost was tiresome, but there had to be room enough for half a dozen bodies in the Lena, surely. Failing that, Stephan could drop them down a mine shaft.

Out of sight, and who would give a damn?

Grigory Rybakov, of course. Four of the dead were his men, out on loan to help the FSB and cover his own ass at the same time. To plug the leak before it drowned them all.

And how bad would it be if Sergeant Anuchin escaped?

Russia’s constitution banned extradition of citizens to stand trial abroad, but in rare cases trial on foreign charges might proceed in Russian courts, with “necessary foreign experts” participating in the prosecution. That wouldn’t save Rybakov’s men in the States or in Europe, of course, but Marshak cared little for them.

He was concerned about himself, the damage to his reputation, his career—and yes, to his accumulated fortune—if the bitch who had betrayed him wasn’t found and silenced. He could deal with an internal inquiry, assisted by superiors who had as much or more to lose than Marshak did.

But if the case went public, he was lost.

A colonel made a nice fat sacrifice for others higher up the chain of rank. A general, perhaps, or someone in the prime minister’s cabinet. Maybe the prime minister himself?

Before any of his superiors went down, they would be pleased to let him take the fall, resign in shame, perhaps receive a token prison term. There’d be a pension of some sort when he was finally paroled, of course…unless he had an accident in jail, or even prior to trial. Such things weren’t unknown in Russia.

They were commonplace, in fact.

The answer was to find Anuchin and destroy her, with the man or men who cared enough to rescue her. And those who had employed them, if he had the opportunity.

And it had to be accomplished soon.

* * *

WHILE ANUCHIN showered, Bolan used his cell phone for a call to Yakutsk Airport. The Russian agent had gone through the telephone directory with him and had compiled a short list of three charter airlines operating from the local airport.

Bolan passed on Yakutskiye Avialinii, which Anuchin described as an official airport subsidiary, and tried his luck with the second company in line. Private Jets Charter Service had an English-language website and an operator who agreed that they could fly two passengers to Tokyo aboard a Dassault Falcon 50 or a Hawker 800 on three hours’ notice for nine thousand dollars U.S.

The soldier put the nonrefundable deposit on his Visa card, and drifted to the bathroom, knocking hard enough for her to hear him in the shower.

“Almost done,” she told him.

“Take your time,” he called back through the door. “Our flight takes off at seven-thirty.”

She turned the shower off and said, “You’ve booked a plane?”

“It’s set,” he answered. “All we have to do is check in with their booking agent at the terminal.”

There was silence from Anuchin then, except for sounds of rustling fabric. Bolan guessed a towel, then clothing she had taken from a closet in the safehouse. Feeling like a voyeur, he retreated to the living room.

She joined him moments later, dressed in slacks, a blouse and sweater, with a towel around her head. There was a certain stiffness to her movements, which was no surprise after the ordeal she’d been through.

Still, she declared, “That’s better.”

“You can rest awhile before we go,” Bolan said. “Longer, on the flight.”

“They must have asked you questions.”

“Just my name, and whether I could pay,” Bolan replied.

“Your name. Which is…?”

They hadn’t got around to formal introductions yet. “Matt Cooper,” Bolan said. “And yours, I know.”

“Of course, you must. You’re CIA?” she asked.

“A cousin, several times removed.”

“You realize the airport will be watched,” she said.

“I know it’s possible.”

“Call it a certainty. They’ve caught me once already there,” she stated. “You have no reinforcements?”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“I fear it’s hopeless, then,” she told him.

“That’s the spirit.”

Anuchin sat and began to dry her short hair with the towel.

“There are two ways to reach or leave Yakutsk,” she said. “If not by air, then over the Kolyma Highway, which begins at Nizhny Bestyakh, on the east bank of the Lena. We can only reach Nizhny Bestyakh by ferry, which my enemies will also watch.”

“Let’s try the charter first,” Bolan replied, “before we count it out.”

“Of course,” she said. “But you must be prepared to fail.”

“If that’s the way you feel,” he said, “you should have thought about it at the start, before you put your own neck and your partner’s on the chopping block.”

That obviously stung her, but she took it, nodding.

“You’re correct. We were a pair of fools.”

“It’s never foolish when you try to do the right thing,” Bolan said. “Sometimes it has a price, but that’s the way things work.”

“A great price, yes?” Anuchin said. “First, Sergey’s life. Now yours and mine.”

“We’re not dead yet,” Bolan reminded her. “A little confidence could help you stay alive. But if you’re giving up, why don’t you tell me now. I don’t need any deadweight on my shoulders while I’m running.”

“Confidence, of course,” she said. “And weapons, yes?”

“I’ve got a fair stash from the warehouse,” Bolan said.

She tried a smile and said, “Let’s see them, then.”

* * *

NIKOLAY MILESCU SIPPED a cup of bitter coffee he had purchased at a kiosk in the international arrivals and departures terminal, watching the travelers who scurried past him, hoping for a glimpse of a familiar face—the person he’d been sent to capture, or to kill, if all else failed.

Milescu had a photo on his cell phone of the woman he was hunting. She wasn’t the type he favored, though he wouldn’t kick her out of bed. Too bad for her, she’d never get to know him in that way and learn how he could please a woman.

All the future held in store for her was pain.

The problem: she was hard to hold.

In fact, the woman had been picked up once already, at that very airport, but she had been liberated by a man or men who left the snatch team dead. Milescu’s boss said one man was responsible, but why take chances? So he’d sent four other guns along, put Milescu in charge and promised them a fat reward if they secured the fugitives.

Alive or dead.

Milescu personally didn’t think it likely that the woman would return to catch another flight, after she had been kidnapped from the terminal the previous night, but people frequently did stupid things. He would remain alert and stay in contact with his soldiers, placed strategically around the airport.

With that in mind, he palmed his Motorola phone, the Tundra model that combined normal calling and web access with push-to-talk service, effectively making the cell phone a small walkie-talkie. Keying the button to contact all four men at once, he commanded, “Report in by number.”

“Number two,” Vasily Ryumin answered. “Nothing yet in the domestic terminal.”

“Three here,” Naum Izvolsky said. “Baggage claim is clear.”

“Number four,” Viktor Gramotkin replied. “Nothing but peasants in the parking lot.”

Milescu waited to hear from Gennady Stolypin, stationed on the roof to watch the charter hangars through binoculars. When half a minute passed with no response, he keyed the phone again.

“Waiting for check-in, Number Five.”

“Hold on,” Stolypin answered him belatedly, ignoring all decorum. “I have someone just arriving… Can’t see who it is yet.”

“Where?” Milescu asked. “Which hangar?”

“Private Jets,” Stolypin answered. “Wait a second, while I… It’s a GAZ four-door. Can’t say what model from this distance. There, it’s stopped. The driver’s getting out…a man. And now, a woman. Let me check the photo. Yes! It’s her! I can take them down from here!”

Stolypin had a VSK-94 sniper’s rifle with him on the roof, the silenced model, semiautomatic, with a 20-round box magazine of 9 mm SPP rounds.

“No!” Milescu snapped over his walkie-talkie, up and moving toward the nearest exit. “Do not fire! You know the order.”

“Yes,” Stolypin answered back. “Alive or dead.”

“With higher pay if she’s alive. Just watch and wait, until we get there.” To the others then, in case they weren’t in motion yet, he said, “All hands to Private Jets, south of the terminal!”

His men confirmed with clicking signals, staying off the air. They would be closing on the target, moving swiftly but without a frantic sprint to draw attention from the terminal’s police officers.

Milescu reckoned he should thank the woman, if he got the chance. Her desperate stupidity had saved him from a long day sitting at the airport, wasting time while someone else hogged all the glory.

Now, his task was simple—neutralize the woman’s escort, one way or another, and collect her for the boss. Take both alive, if possible.

And deliver them to a fate worse than death.

Private Jets Charter Service

“I DON’T SEE ANYONE,” Tatyana said. “Do you?”

“Not yet,” Bolan replied.

Which proved precisely nothing. They could be under surveillance from a distance, and he wouldn’t know it until bullets from a sniper’s rifle dropped them on the tarmac, dead or dying by the time the echo of the shots arrived. The Executioner had done that sort of work himself, times beyond counting, and he knew the risks involved.

But sitting in the sedan, outside the hangar, wouldn’t keep them safe.

“Sit tight a minute,” Bolan said, and stepped out of the car. He left the key in the ignition for her, just in case, but saw no adversaries as he scanned the runway. No one lurking in the hangar’s shadow. No vehicles close enough to box them in.

The problem now: they had to discard their weapons prior to boarding, or they’d run afoul of customs when they got to Tokyo. Japanese law forbade private possession of firearms, except for strictly regulated sporting shotguns and air rifles, with maximum penalties of ten years in prison and a fine of one million yen per offense.

Bolan nodded, alert as Anuchin stepped out of the car. The hangar stood no more than thirty feet away, their Hawker 800 already rolled out and prepared for departure. In profile, it was nearly eight feet shorter than the Learjet 60 Bolan had arrived on, but its wingspan ten feet greater.

Eighteen minutes to boarding, by Bolan’s watch, if they got through the sign-in procedure on time. And from there—

Bolan knew a curse in Russian when he heard one. He followed Anuchin’s gaze and saw two men approaching at a run from the direction of the airport terminal. As he watched, a third man cleared the exit, laboring to catch the other two.

So much for signing in.

“Come on!” he snapped, turning back toward the car. When he was halfway there, a sharp crack on the pavement marked a near-miss from a distant rifle, somewhere high and well beyond the runners.

Bolan dropped into the driver’s seat and gunned the sedan’s engine. Anuchin was a second later, and she had to slam her door as he was wheeling out of there, tires screeching on concrete. The choice was fight or flight, and Bolan picked the option that would maximize their chances of survival with a long-range shooter in the mix.

He fled.

The runners weren’t in range to use whatever weapons they were packing as he roared away from them. The rifleman had no such handicap, however, and his second shot glanced off the roof of their vehicle with a resounding bang!

Still no sound from the piece itself, and since the sedan couldn’t aspire to supersonic speed, that meant the rifle had a sound suppressor. Its shots wouldn’t alert police inside the terminal unless he took a hit and crashed the car.

In which case, Bolan figured, they were dead.

Anuchin had retrieved one of the weapons liberated from her captors, a compact PP-19 Bizon submachine gun, but it wouldn’t do her any good unless he stopped the car, or someone tried to cut them off before they cleared the airport’s ring of access roads.

Which, in the circumstances, was entirely possible.

A last shot from the sniper struck their trunk before Bolan swung left around a cargo terminal, putting its bulk between the shooter and himself. Another moment put them on the highway leading back to Yakutsk, with no evident pursuit.

At least, not yet.

“So, we’re not flying out,” Anuchin said.

“Not today,” Bolan agreed.

“And we cannot hide in Yakutsk.”

“I wouldn’t like the odds,” he said.

She slumped. “In that case, there is nothing left except the Road of Bones.”

CHAPTER FOUR

First thing, they ditched the sedan their enemies had seen, however briefly, at the airport. Its replacement was a four-door Lada Priora, stolen from the Kruzhalo shopping center along with a spare set of license plates to complete the short-term disguise. That done, when they were relatively safe, Anuchin briefed Bolan on what lay ahead once they crossed the Lena River.

“They will be watching the ferry,” she cautioned. “They know that we have no way out now, except overland, which means the Kolyma Highway.”

“I don’t fancy a swim with the gear,” Bolan told her.

“No, that can’t be done. It’s too far and too cold, even this time of year. We’ll require a small charter to take us across. Leave the car in Yakutsk and make other arrangements in Nizhny Bestyakh.”

“What kind of arrangements?” Bolan asked.

“Something rugged, for the road ahead,” Anuchin said. “If we had a Lada Niva we could try it, but I think a motorcycle is more suitable. Also much easier to find on such short notice. You can ride on two wheels?”

“Not a problem,” Bolan said. “But what’s this thing about a road of bones?”

“Officially,” she said, “it’s the M56 Kolyma Highway, linking Yakutsk and Nizhny Bestyakh to Magadan on the Sea of Okhotsk. The distance is something over two thousand kilometers, close to thirteen hundred miles by your reckoning. Those who live along the highway call it Trassa—the Route. They need no other name, since it is literally the only road in the district.”

“Where do the bones come in?” Bolan asked.

“Stalin ordered construction of the highway in 1932, using inmates from the Sevvostlag, the Northeastern Corrective Labor Camps. Work continued using gulag labor until 1953, when the highway reached Magadan—a labor camp itself, in those days—and Stalin, at last, had the decency to die. We call the highway Road of Bones for those who died while building it and were buried beneath or beside it. How many? Who knows?”

“So, it’s a straight shot on this road from Nizhny Bestyakh to Magadan?” Bolan asked.

“Hardly straight,” Anuchin replied. “There are rivers to cross, with or without bridges, and parts of the so-called highway are crumbling away. Between us and Magadan there are two villages, Tomtor and Oymyakon. Both claim to be the coldest place on Earth, in winter. This time of year, they’re simply…chilly.”

“So, aside from special wheels, we’ll need new clothes,” Bolan observed.

“And camping gear, if we can carry it.”

“One bike or two?” Bolan asked.

Looking embarrassed, Anuchin said, “I’ve never driven one.”

“Okay,” Bolan replied. “That limits how much we can pack, keeping the weapons.”

Bolan tried working on the calculation in his head. A trip of thirteen hundred miles on normal roads, with stops for gas and minimal rest, should take about one day at a steady speed of sixty miles per hour. Slow it down for the terrain that Anuchin had described, however, and the clock went out the window. Add the fact that they would almost certainly be hunted, once her enemies—now Bolan’s—found out where they’d gone, and you were looking at a road trip on Route 666.

A little slice of hell on Earth.

The soldier considered it and asked, “When do we start?”

* * *

“I’M WONDERING,” Stephan Levshin said, “whether any of you need to be alive.”

The five men facing him looked nervous, rightly so, since they had failed at what was meant to be a relatively simple task. Although he stood alone before them, and all five of them were armed, Levshin was unafraid. These so-called soldiers were disgraced and dared not lift a hand against the man who pulled their strings.

When his remark produced no comment, only shifting eyes and feet, he said, “You had the targets literally in your sights, but let them slip away. How does that happen? Does anyone care to explain your failure?”

Grudgingly, the leader of the party—Nikolay Milescu—answered. “They went to a charter company,” he said. “We spotted them outside the terminal, but not in time. When we moved in, they drove away.”