Don Pendleton - Extraordinary Rendition

He was good to go.

“GET AFTER THEM!” Yuri Bazhov snapped.

“On it,” Osip Bek replied, before he whipped their BMW sedan around a slower car and stamped on the accelerator.

“Who’s the woman?” Danil Perov asked from the backseat.

“How should I know?” Bazhov replied. “Someone sent to pick him up.”

“We nearly had him,” Vasily Radko said.

“We still have him,” Bazhov answered, as he drew his pistol, eased off its safety and held it ready in his lap.

He’d left two men behind to fetch the second car and follow up as best they could. Evgeny Surikov and Pavel Malevich together in the UAZ-469 SUV. They’d have to get directions via cell phone and would likely miss the action, but at least Bazhov had backup if he needed it.

Against two people?

How could they match Bazhov and the four men riding with him now?

As if reading his thoughts, Radko chimed in from the back, saying, “He won’t be armed. You can’t take anything on planes these days. They even catch the plastic knives.”

“Suppose the woman brought him guns?” Bazhov replied. “You didn’t think of that?”

He saw Radko grimace in the rearview mirror.

“Are we still required to take the target back alive?”

“Our orders haven’t changed,” Bazhov reminded all of them. “Whoever kills this guy has to deal with Taras on his own.”

Radko muttered something, but he kept his voice low-pitched, allowing Bazhov to pretend he hadn’t heard. The fear of Taras Morozov would curb his temper to a point, but if their quarry started shooting at them, or seemed likely to escape, what could they do?

Go back to Taras empty-handed, with excuses?

How would that improve their situation?

“What’s that she’s driving?” Bazhov asked his wheelman.

“It’s the VAZ 2112,” Bek answered, staying focused on the traffic that surrounded them. “Zero to sixty-two in twelve seconds. One hundred fifteen miles per hour at the top end. Doing fifty, she will need 120 feet to stop.”

Bek knew cars.

“Don’t run them off the road, then, eh?” Bazhov instructed. “I’m not handing Taras a bucket of strawberry jam.”

“I won’t ram them,” Bek said. “But I can’t promise you that the woman knows how to drive.”

“She’s doing all right, so far,” Bazhov said. “Be damned sure you don’t lose her.”

“No problem,” Bek answered, and put on more speed.

“You be ready,” Bazhov said, half-turned toward his men in the rear. “When we stop them, be careful. The woman can die. Not the man.”

“Not to worry,” Perov said.

“We’re ready,” Radko stated.

Bazhov heard them cocking their weapons behind him and hoped neither one of them blew out his brains by mistake. They were pros, yes, but accidents happened.

If he had to die this night, Bazhov could only hope it would be like a man, and not some poor bastard slaughtered by mistake.

BOLAN COULDN’T READ the street signs written in Cyrillic, but he knew that they were heading north, toward central Moscow. That meant crowds, more traffic, innocent bystanders.

And police.

“You have someplace in mind to ditch them, I suppose?” he asked.

“I’m working on it,” Pilkin replied. “I did not come expecting you to have a tail.

“There is a park off Chertanovskaya Street,” she said. “They have a lake there. Little innocent civilian traffic after dark, because of crime.”

“Just muggers and what have you?” Bolan asked.

“No one likely to trouble us, as long as you have that.” She nodded toward the pistol in his hand. “Unless you’re dead, of course.”

“Won’t matter then.”

“So, we agree,” she said. “Five minutes more, if all goes well.”

And if it didn’t, Bolan knew the drill from prior experience. They’d stand and fight as necessary, if and when they had no other choice.

He shied away from small talk, letting Pilkin drive the car, and concentrated on their tail. Still just one vehicle, as far as he could tell, gaining by fits and starts. Headlights behind it showed him three heads, maybe four.

Assume the worst, and you won’t be surprised.

The worst would be more cars, more guns closing in. With a single chase car there were options. A crash could disable the hunters inside without shooting, and even if guns were required, killing three or four men would be quicker, easier, than taking out eight or a dozen.

Bolan didn’t mind the wet work, but it grated on his nerves that he’d been burned even before he set foot in the country. He considered that a past trip to Russia, or his past collaboration with the FSB, might have some kind of boomerang effect this day, but none of it made sense.

The enemies he’d faced when Moscow was the global capital of communism were no more than faded memories, long dead and gone. More recently, he had enjoyed cautious collaboration with the FSB. Bolan could think of no reason for them to plot his death, much less kill eight G-men to bait the trap.

Anzhela Pilkin could have shot him at the airport terminal, or simply missed their date and left disposal to the thugs who were pursuing them. The whole rescue charade was pointless, if she and her masters wanted Bolan dead.

What if they simply wanted him?

Interrogation was another possibility, but once again, Bolan collided with the brick wall of impracticality. To dress the stage, go through the diplomatic motions, lay the trail—it only clicked if someone in the FSB knew Bolan’s true identity. Or, at the very least, the role he played for Stony Man.

And that, he told himself, was next door to impossible.

So, wait and see, he thought.

And from the chase car’s progress overhauling them, he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

“WHERE ARE THEY going?” Yuri Bazhov asked no one, thinking aloud.

“Can’t say,” Bek responded from the driver’s seat.

“Just drive!”

Bazhov hit speed-dial on his cell phone, waiting through four anxious rings before he got an answer.

“Who’s that?” Pavel Malevich demanded.

“Idiot! Who do you think it is?” Bazhov snapped.

“Yuri! Where are you?”

“Heading north on Chertanovskaya Street. Looks like she’s taking us downtown.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Depends on who she is,” Bazhov replied. “Catch up with us, soon as you can. We need to cut her off.”

He broke the link, muttering curses to himself.

This was what came from working in the dark, when everything was need-to-know and no one told him shit. He couldn’t second-guess the bitch who’d plucked their pigeon from the snare, because he didn’t know who she was or why she’d intervened. Bazhov had no idea why he’d been sent to snatch a stranger from the airport, with instructions that the mark had to be alive upon delivery.

It could be anything. A rival syndicate invading local turf. Perhaps a businessman who’d balked at paying tribute to the Family and now required an object lesson in security. It might be something personal for Taras or the man on top, Leonid Bezmel.

Yuri Bazhov hated puzzles, riddles, anything that taxed his brain unnecessarily. He understood connect-the-dots and liked to skip ahead whenever possible, surprise his adversaries and destroy them with brute force.

He couldn’t do that in the present case, because his hands were tied. His orders barred disposing of this Matthew Cooper, while the woman was a wild card, trouble from the first time he’d laid eyes on her. Bazhov could kill the woman.

But he’d have to catch her first.

And if she had some destination fixed in mind as she was fleeing, what did that mean to Bazhov, his men and his plan? Was she leading them onto another gang’s patch? If she was mixed up with the law, somehow, it could be even worse.