Don Pendleton: Extraordinary Rendition

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.

Mack Bolan®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

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

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

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.

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.