Don Pendleton - Cold War Reprise

“Why not give one of your informants a call? They should know where to find at least knockoffs of big-name dresses,” Bertie said. “Your boss wants skin and curves, not a label. He wouldn’t know Dior if the designer himself bit him and sang a chorus of ‘I’m a fancy dress I am!’”

“My hero,” Laserka said.

So here Laserka was, standing outside a warehouse that was a covert marketplace for smuggled goods from outside of Russia. Though capitalism and western retail had invaded Moscow with a vengeance, despite the political backslide of the current administration, the black market was still prosperous, usually having better prices than the state-and foreign-owned department stores, as well as a better selection. Laserka had changed out of her office wear, which would have labeled her as a government official of some sort. Instead, she wore a black turtleneck, a hooded sweatshirt with an unauthorized rhinoceros logo on one lapel, and a pair of knockoff jeans that hugged her long, athletic legs. She kept her pistol on hand, in a small black leather purse just large enough to hold the compact weapon and two spare magazines.

There were a couple of burly men at the side door to the warehouse, their build and alertness pegging them as former Russian army, probably hired as much for their size as for their military training to serve this particular clandestine market. Laserka walked up to the pair as they glowered at her. “Is the store open?”

One man’s eyes narrowed as if rusted gears struggled to motivate in his primitive skull. “Are you police?”

It was a standard challenge. If a buyer entered, denying his or her law-enforcement status, any evidence gathered on such an excursion was considered inadmissible to the well-bribed Russian judiciary. If Laserka did admit she was a cop, any purchase she made would be used against her by proprietors if she had to testify against them.

Since Laserka’s department dealt mainly with narcotics and military-grade weaponry, not jeans or watches, she grinned. “Off duty. I need a dress.”

The two hulking goons looked at each other, then chuckled. “Come on in, Off-duty.”

“Make sure you give us a good look when you try your dress on,” the other said with a leer.

Laserka winked and squeezed past the two hired muscle and entered the warehouse.

Inside, all she found were empty tables. Confusion seized Laserka for a moment. Certainly the proprietors toured a series of abandoned buildings to keep ahead of the Moscow police, but her informant, Vladimir, had said that the bazaar would be at this location today. It took only a few heartbeats to scan the empty warehouse for signs of life, and she whirled toward the doorway she’d just entered. She saw one of the six foot ex-Army hulks blocking the doorway, a wicked spring-blade knife locked in his hand.

Laserka leaped over an empty table, knowing she couldn’t get to her concealed Makarov in time. The sound of the knife spring echoed in the old warehouse as a four inch spear-point blade rocketed out of the handle. The razor-sharp tip plucked at the hood of her sweatshirt as she dropped out of sight.

“You and that spring knife!” the other thug snarled, shoving his way into the warehouse. He held a suppressed pistol.

“Mine makes less noise,” Spring-blade said, but he traded his empty handle for a more standard blade, a wickedly curved jambiya Arab-style knife.

The gunman grunted and triggered his handgun, bullets chasing after Laserka as she kept low, scrambling along the aisle of abandoned tables. “Stand still, Off-duty! It won’t hurt so much!”

The off-duty RIA agent flipped a table on its side as a barricade against the pistol-toting killer. Robbed of power by the suppressor they passed through, the slowed bullets plunked limply against the aluminum tabletop. The shield gave her the time to pull her Makarov from her purse. With a flick of her thumb, the pistol was live and ready to fire. She rolled out into the open and sighted on the gun-toting assassin. The gunman hadn’t expected Laserka to take the low road, firing from prone. He had been waiting for her to pop over the top of her barricade.

The Makarov barked twice, bullets punching into the would-be murderer’s center of mass. The hot little 9 mm rounds cracked the big man’s sternum, but their impact only seemed to stagger him. Laserka swung her aim up to the middle of the stunned thug’s face and cranked off two more shots that obliterated the goon’s face.

The table barricade rattled loudly as it was slapped aside by the burly knife man.

“You’re supposed to die, bitch!” the thug roared, lunging at her.

Laserka rolled, firing one shot at the blade-wielding killer as her Makarov passed across him. She was rewarded by a cry of pain from the raging slasher. The big killer landed on the concrete floor, the jambiya jarred from his fingers as he landed. Laserka was struggling to her feet when a massive paw wrapped around her gun hand.

Training took over and Laserka let herself be pulled in closer to her large opponent. With his strength adding to her momentum, she powered an elbow into the hollow of the burly assassin’s throat. The jolt was enough to shock him into releasing her arm. Laserka stumbled back, raising the Makarov again.

The pistol barked three times, recoil trying to wrest her off target, but Laserka held on tightly, punching the last of her magazine through her opponent’s face.

Panting, Laserka denied a wave of relief that wanted to pass through her. She reloaded her gun quickly.

Batroykin and Vladimir had set her up to be murdered.

Bolan slapped the cheek of his prisoner, trying to get him to wake up. It was a relatively gentle action, but the assassination team leader bit down hard. The head killer had only started to blink with returning consciousness when something crunched in his back teeth. The sound of the breaking capsule, combined with a sudden fit of convulsions had Bolan rushing to pry the man’s mouth open. It was too late, almond-smelling foam bubbling out of the dead man’s mouth.

The corpse’s eyes rolled up in his head, and Bolan cursed that he didn’t have time to retrieve the other unconscious death squad member that he had left behind the bar. Taking a paper towel, Bolan cleaned up the dead man’s mouth, wiping bubbling drool from his lips. Pulling out his PDA, Bolan clicked a picture of the lifeless face. As an afterthought, he took the dead fingers and dipped them into ink from a broken pen and used a sheet of complimentary stationery to record the corpse’s fingerprints.

Bolan looked over the Uzi and the magazines he’d confiscated in the assassination attempt. He took some clear adhesive tape and laid it along the bodies of the magazines, then laid out the strips on more plain white paper. Close examination of the tape picked up three or four good, readable fingerprints. The warrior took a moment to compare the results with the prints taken off the corpse sitting limply in the chair. To his sharp eyes, they appeared different enough to be worth copying and transmitting back to Stony Man Farm. Thanks to the science of forensics, Bolan was able to disprove the adage, “dead men tell no tales.”

Bolan linked up with Aaron Kurtzman at Stony Man Farm in the electronic ether utilizing his wireless secured broadband connection from his laptop.

“I thought you told Hal that you were going on vacation,” Kurtzman said without preamble.

“It turned into a busman’s holiday,” Bolan confessed. “A friend of mine ended up on the receiving end of a Russian-speaking murder team.”

“Russian speaking? That will narrow down the database to compare these faces to,” Kurtzman replied. “Oh, you’ve got fingerprints, too?”