Don Pendleton: Hard Passage

He dismissed the thought immediately. Too risky to civilians. Risking the lives of noncombatants was not acceptable.

Mack Bolan was in the business of conserving life, and killed only when necessitated by factors of duty or self-defense. He didn’t believe the ends always justified the means, and he refused to do anything to put more blood on his hands.

When it came to the rules of engagement, Bolan had never believed it was right to salve his conscience with some “greater good” theory that civilian casualties were the natural collateral damage of warfare. Bolan valued human life much more than that.

Bolan fought for those who were unable to fight for themselves.

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jon Guenther for his contribution to this work.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into thin air.

—John Quincy Adams

(1767–1848)

There are those who say what I do takes courage. The thing is, fighting alone takes skill. Courage is a willingness to persevere—to never give up fighting for what’s right even when the odds are stacked against you.

—Mack Bolan

To the men and women in the American armed forces

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

“I’m freezing, Leo!” Sergei Cherenko said.

Leonid Rostov looked at his friend with dismay and tried not to let Cherenko see him shiver. A biting, icy wind—usual for February in St. Petersburg—cut straight through the meager lining of his coat and chilled him to the bone. Rostov watched the snow swirl around them, his hands tucked inside his coat, his fingers numb. They had been standing in place for more than two hours, eyes glued to the nondescript building where men and women were meeting to decide the fates of Rostov and Cherenko.

“Why can’t we just go in there?” Cherenko demanded.

Rostov removed his hands from inside his coat long enough to blow into them, and said, “Because it would be the fastest way to getting our throats cut.”

Cherenko’s cheeks reddened more. “But they could not possibly know we are here!”

“Shush!” Rostov scolded him. “Keep your voice down, Sergei. Do you want to die where you stand?”

What Cherenko took for paranoia, Rostov knew to be prudence. Recent violence had increased against those who betrayed the Sevooborot Molodjozhny—also known as the SMJ—and Rostov didn’t feel like becoming another of their statistics. Many had attributed the violent outbreaks against foreign immigrants—particularly those of Arabic heritage—to the works of the Sevooborot. In truth, the youthful revolutionaries couldn’t have cared less about the immigration problems in Russia. The fascists and social purists were responsible for most of that carnage, and their activities were confined to cities where large populations of foreign exchange students attended college, Moscow being one example.

Rostov and Cherenko had been members in good standing with the Sevooborot until two weeks earlier. Rostov had no trouble with the violence perpetrated by his comrades, even that against locals, but he didn’t believe it was wise to involve outsiders in the great undertaking Sevooborot was about to embark on. When he made his opinion known to other members they betrayed him to the leadership, and before long he received an ultimatum to immediately and unequivocally renounce his claims or suffer penalties. Rostov refused and they forced him out, along with Cherenko. Cherenko, who had never done any wrong, became a sacrificial lamb solely because of his friendship and history with Rostov. The warning had come unbidden from a few men inside the group sympathetic to Rostov and Cherenko. The pair had been awakened in the dead of night, then rushed sleepy-eyed through the cold and crunching snow to a waiting automobile.

Two weeks passed and the safehouse where Rostov and Cherenko had been staying was compromised. With the help of his girlfriend’s connections in her job with a local government office in St. Petersburg, Rostov and Cherenko managed to contact the American government with a plea for asylum and immunity in trade for information about a plot against the United States.

Now they stood directly across the street from the small hotel where Peace Corps volunteers met. Among the group was a pair of undercover agents with forged documents that would get Rostov and Cherenko out of Russia and into the United States. Neither man really had a plan for what he would do after that, but for the moment the most important thing was to make contact without detection by their former colleagues. The Sevooborot had eyes and ears everywhere.

Rostov settled on the best course of action and with a self-assuring nod took two steps in the snow before he felt Cherenko’s hand fall on his shoulder. Rostov turned to look at his friend and saw Cherenko’s eyes weren’t focused on him but rather on something up the road. Through the grayish light of dusk and the white tendrils of snow he made out the gloomy whitewash of fast approaching headlights.

Rostov stepped into the shadows of the building and grabbed his friend’s hand, pulling the man down with him as he crouched. For at least an hour the street had been relatively deserted, people staying off the roads due to the inclement weather. Most citizens knew when to stay indoors, which left one of two possibilities: one, the occupants were outsiders; two, they were counting on the fact most people had the good sense to stay off the streets. Something in Rostov’s psyche told him the latter scenario seemed more likely. A minute later his suspicions were confirmed when the vehicle stopped at the curb in front of the hotel and four men in black leather jackets with machine pistols spilled from it.

The men looked in all directions, a bit wildly, and Rostov caught himself holding his breath. Fortunately, the gunners didn’t see the two men crouched in the shadows of the tobacco shop across from the hotel. Rostov and Cherenko watched with a mixture of fascination and horror as the men turned, barged through the revolving door of the hotel and faded from view. For a time, they heard nothing but the sounds of the violent storm and the muffled idle of the waiting car’s engine.

And then an idea crept into Rostov’s mind.

AGENT LYLE CARRON OF THE Central Intelligence Agency’s counterespionage unit watched the Peace Corps volunteers with feigned interest. He had only marginal curiosity in the activities of the people arrayed along the rows of tables in the hotel conference room, and he cared even less about their itinerary over the next few days. The thing that concerned Carron most as he checked his watch were the two young men who had missed their deadline.

Carron gazed at his counterpart across the room. The Company had just given the young, fresh-faced accountant from Langley his first assignment here for no other reason than his fluency in Russian. Big deal. Carron was fluent in Russian, too, seeing as how he’d operated with fair regularity in this country ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And while he admired the youthful exuberance of his fair-haired companion, what he really wished was that they had sent another veteran with him on this mission. Now he had to babysit three kids instead of just Rostov and Cherenko.