Hard Passage. Don Pendleton

counts.”

      “When we reach Murmansk, if we find them, you will let me see Leo?”

      “I promise to do my best. But understand my first duty is to make sure you come through this alive. I gave my word to your father and I intend to keep it.”

      The Russian expressed her disappointment. “I understand. No guarantees.”

      “You should try to get some sleep,” Bolan counseled her. “You’re going to need it.”

      She nodded and immediately inclined her seat and closed her eyes. Within ten minutes she was out like a light.

      Unable to sleep, Bolan took the time to further study the files of Rostov and Cherenko. He’d already reviewed them twice in his hotel and knew they contained scant information. He had to admit that predicting their next move hadn’t been easy once the meet had gone to hell at the hotel. The other consideration was how the SMJ had beaten him at nearly every turn. There could have been a mole inside the Company, although Bolan figured it would have to be someone pretty high in the food chain, not to mention he doubted the SMJ had enough money to make it worth the risk.

      That left Bolan considering the strong possibility that Rostov and Cherenko had been on the level when they cited a partnership between the SMJ and JI. Maybe a group of young revolutionaries didn’t have the resources to get inside the American intelligence community, but the JI certainly did, and they had proved it on more than one occasion. Bolan recalled the alliance the JI had formed with Japanese terrorists resulting in the theft of an entire U.S. aircraft with a top-secret, unmanned combat airplane aboard. Had it not been for the combined efforts of Able Team and Phoenix Force, they might have gotten away with it.

      What Bolan still couldn’t piece together centered on how an alliance with the SMJ could benefit the Islamic terrorist group. That mystery probably couldn’t be solved until Rostov and Cherenko were safely in custody and on their way to the States. And until he found them, Bolan could do little more than run interference and hope this time around the information from Kisa Naryshkin would put him one step ahead of the competition.

      The Executioner sensed his mission had barely begun.

      JURG KOVLUN WALKED along the back lane of the underground shooting range and watched with satisfaction as the trainees grouped their shots on the paper targets with admirable precision. His training, coupled with the weapons provided by their contacts in the Jemaah al-Islamiyah, had produced the most excellent results. These were the results that the colonel should have been congratulating him for instead of criticizing him for the handling of two Russian punks who weren’t under his control to begin with.

      Why couldn’t the SMJ police their own screw-ups? What did he look like, anyway? He was a professional soldier, a Spetsnaz veteran, not a nanny! There were moments when Kovlun wondered if it had ever been worth his time to join this crazy plan of the colonel’s. While he believed in Anatoly Satyev’s genius as a businessman, he’d never much trusted the man’s military tactics or strategic abilities. Fighting a war like this one took more than simple money-changing and cheap disinformation campaigns. Such a cause as theirs required sound battle plans and the ability to position men appropriately. For example, why conduct business with the JI in Russia on their terms? Why not do the business dealings on neutral ground? And why, especially, had they chosen to involve young revolutionaries? Weren’t seasoned professionals more appropriate for the tasks at hand?

      Well, Kovlun couldn’t deny that the results had been greater than he expected. Of course, Satyev had permitted him a free hand in the training of these gang members, and it hadn’t taken much effort to bring the impressionable trainers in the Sevooborot around to his way of doing things. Through sheer discipline and the transfer of knowledge, Kovlun had turned more than forty SMJ recruits posing as American gang-bangers into a fighting force ready to do the colonel’s bidding.

      They had also chosen this particular location for a very good reason. Portland, Oregon, would serve as a proving ground, of sorts, since the police department here sponsored a local FBI office that specialized in gang activity. These officers and special agents were better trained and equipped to combat gang violence than those in just about any other city in America, Los Angeles included; Kovlun knew that was saying a lot. If these young men could put down the police resistance here, they would be unstoppable anywhere else. The other thing they had going for this plan was a general denial by Americans that gang violence wasn’t a serious problem except in the largest cities. The flaw in that theory, aside from its mass acceptance, was that America had one of the worst gang problems in the world and, per capita, more gang-related murders, robberies and rapes than any other country. This wasn’t exactly a statistic the nation would accept easily, and by that fact alone Kovlun figured the colonel’s plan had a marginal chance at succeeding.

      Kovlun finished his inspection and then ordered the range master to wrap it up before heading upstairs to the club. It lay dark and relatively empty, being only ten o’clock in the morning, but in twelve more hours it would be filled to capacity with teenagers and young adults, the perfect cover from which to launch their first major strike.

      Kovlun nodded in greeting at his two lieutenants, Mikhail Pilkin and Aleksander Briansky. Pilkin had been in the Sevooborot since a very young man, actually a second-generation revolutionary of his father—one of the co-founding members of the organization and now a statistic in the files of the Moscow special police unit appointed to combat youth gangs. Briansky, a former native of the Ukraine, had fled his country and come to St. Petersburg for work, only to discover there was a lot more money to be made with his special affinity for guns. Briansky remained the chief armorer for the group, as well as a unit leader, and Pilkin oversaw most of the tactical operations based on Kovlun’s orders.

      The two were hunkered over a map of Portland spread across the stage at the front of the club.

      “What say you?” Briansky greeted Kovlun in traditional fashion.

      Kovlun nodded and replied, “Their shooting. It is much improved.”

      Pilkin was smoking a cigarette and in a cloud of exhaled smoke he replied, “Aleks performed a few modifications on the guns we received from the Arabs. They’re much tighter now.”

      “We also took out the rattle in some of them,” Briansky added. “It wouldn’t do to have them making noise during the operation, Comrade.”

      Kovlun furrowed his brown at hearing about the defect. “I agree. That was good thinking. I will have to speak with our supplier.”

      “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