Don Pendleton - Hard Passage

“Would it not be better if we were to just shoot him between the eyes the next time he gives us crap weapons?” Pilkin asked.

“Save the hard-on for your many girlfriends, Mikhail,” Kovlun warned.

“Sorry, Comrade, but I don’t much trust the Arabs.”

“I don’t trust them, either, but for now we’re forced to work with them. I have assurances from my people that once we’ve accomplished this mission we will no longer have to deal with them.”

Briansky’s eyebrows rose. “Does that mean we will also be able to start choosing our own targets?”

“I choose our targets,” Kovlun countered. “Now and in the future. Not you, not anybody else. Got it?”

Briansky nodded.

Kovlun didn’t like having to slap them down—they had actually turned out to be fairly competent operatives despite their youth—but he’d learned as a leader that young men full of piss and iron who were anxious for a fight occasionally needed to have their reins jerked so they didn’t go off half-cocked and do something stupid.

“Have you heard the status on the little problem I brought to you earlier, Mikhail?”

Pilkin shook his head. “We’re still working on it. Which reminds me that we may have another problem with that.”

“I don’t want to hear of any more problems. I’ve already had my ass torn apart one time for this and I don’t want to bear any further criticism. Cherenko and Rostov are part of the Sevooborot, not part of this unit, and that means they shouldn’t be my problem. I thought I’d made that clear the first time.”

“You did, but this is a new development, and I have to tell you about it, especially when there’s a chance it could compromise our operations here.”

Kovlun’s hair stood on the back of his neck. “And what is that?”

“An American agent,” Pilkin replied. “Not the two men from the CIA. We managed to take care of them easily enough. This is another man, one we do not recognize and who doesn’t show up on file with any of our contacts inside the intelligence networks. Even the Brit who made the initial contact with Kisa Naryshkin can’t tell us who this man is.”

“So what?” Kovlun said. “I don’t see the problem. He’s one man.”

“Yes,” Briansky interjected. “But this ‘one man’ has already taken out more than two dozen of our best operatives. So he may be one man but he fights like an army! Unless, of course, the reports we’ve received are exaggerated.”

Pilkin continued, “Not to mention that he somehow found out about the idea you had to grab Kisa Naryshkin and hold her out as bait until Leo Rostov came calling for her. Now the American’s disappeared with her and we have no idea where they’ve gone.”

“What about her old man?” Kovlun demanded.

“He’s onto us, too. He’s got so many guns watching him now there’s no way we could get to him even if we wanted to. And he’s chosen to protect this American by claiming it was him who took out all of the men at the house.”

“Yeah, as if anyone would actually believe that,” Briansky added with a disgusted wheeze.

Kovlun had lit a cigarette and begun to pace the floor. “Oh, they’ll believe whatever General Tolenka Naryshkin tells them to believe, you can be sure of that. I’m not even confident my people can get their hooks into him. And if he’s covering for the American, your resources will never be able to track a man who doesn’t allegedly exist.”

“The cops are too busy cleaning up the mess of bodies this man has already left behind,” Briansky pointed out.

Not to mention that most of them are Sevooborot, Kovlun thought. Which meant they wouldn’t be looking too hard for the perpetrator, especially not when they heard stories about some lone, shadowy American who committed all these heinous acts. The St. Petersburg police didn’t have much cause to feel empathetic when a young revolutionary fell under violent means. They had certainly committed enough acts of violence against others, many of them low-ranking members of the Russian government. The Sevooborot couldn’t very well expect the full weight of justice to rush to their aid when the tables were turned. Kovlun understood that, and he’d never really been a fan of civilian revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government by force of arms. That was better left to those trained for that kind of activity.

Finally, Kovlun said, “I would agree this does present a bit of a problem. Very well. I’ll make some phone calls and see what I can find out about your mysterious American. In the meantime, the shooting drills are wrapping up and I want inspections on equipment and weapons to start immediately after lunch. Your units will depart for their respective targets at 2000 hours sharp. The men are free to engage in recreation on site once inspections are completed, but nobody leaves and no alcohol from now until we’ve returned. Any man caught sneaking a drink will be shot on sight. The same goes for drugs.”

“Yes, Comrade,” the men declared in unison.

Kovlun wheeled and headed for the club exit. He needed to head downtown, find a decent place to have a late breakfast. On his way, he would make those phone calls. Yes, he would find this American, if he even existed.

And then he would destroy him.

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