is your way, comrade. Precision and concern for those around you,” Alexandronin stated. He patted the old Heckler & Koch P7 stuffed into his belt. “Respect for accuracy is another thing we have shared, my friend.”
“Can the past tense, Vitaly. The Russian government has an agency off the leash, so I’m going to need your help,” Bolan admonished. “You get killed, who do I tap for intel?”
“Remember Kaya?” Alexandronin asked. “She’s still with the government. Russian Intelligence.”
Bolan winced. “Do you really want to risk her life?”
“She risks it keeping in covert contact with me, Mikhail,” Alexandronin explained.
“Three heads are better than two. Stick with me.”
Alexandronin’s eyes narrowed, his lips turning up into a smile. “You have done more with much less, Mikhail.”
“Focus,” Bolan warned.
Alexandronin nodded. “I am.”
Bolan stubbed out his cigarette, burying it with the other stubby butts in the pile flowing over the top of the ashtray. The soldier palmed his shot glass and got out of the booth. The two black-clad Slavs eyed Bolan suspiciously, confirming to the Executioner that the men were professionals. They focused on him like antiradiation missiles launched at a radar installation. The pair wore their jackets loosely in contrast to Bolan’s snugly fitted wool long coat. The custom-tailoring of Bolan’s coat hid his two Berettas completely, but the lumpy loose jackets worn by the two Russians indicated that the pair were armed with more than flat, sleek auto pistols. Their eyes locked on the glass in Bolan’s hand.
Bolan passed between the pair, shoving them rudely aside. His elbow connected with something big and heavy hidden under the lapels of one jacket. Bolan cursed the pair in Russian. “Move aside, you sons of whores. I need more vodka!”
“Fucking bastard,” one of the professionals snarled, returning his response in Georgian-accented Russian. “Who do you think you are?”
Bolan met his gaze. “A thirsty man in front of two jackbooted thugs. Two pathetic leftovers of a dead regime if my eyes serve me right!”
“You don’t look Russian,” the other hardman said in English. His accent was flawless, further proof that these men weren’t just pulled off the street. “What relation are you to Alexandronin?”
“Brothers in blood,” Bolan returned. “What is your interest?”
“That man is a traitor,” the Georgian gritted in Russian. “And if you consider him your brother—”
“Shut your mouth!” the English speaker said to his companion. He glared at Bolan. “Walk away from this if you value your life, ‘brother.’”
Bolan smirked. “I was just about to suggest the same thing to you.”
Behind him, Bolan could tell that Alexandronin was moving because the Georgian’s interest was suddenly locked on to the booth.
“Trying to distract us?” the Georgian asked.
Bolan snapped his arm straight, the palmed shot glass shattering against the Georgian’s cheekbone. Broken glass slashed ragged wounds through his eyeball and cheek. The other hardman stepped back, driving his hand into his jacket for the heavy chatterbox concealed beneath. Bolan kicked out, catching the English speaker in the side of his knee, folding the man’s leg with the crack and pop of dislocating cartilage and unsprung tendons.
The background drone of the bar suddenly went silent as the millisecond of explosive action brought a spray of blood and the ugly crunch of a shattered knee joint to the patrons’ awareness. The Georgian screamed, half blind from the broken splinters sticking out of his punctured eyeball. Alexandronin slipped up behind him, grabbed a handful of collar and twisted. The tightened neck of his shirt smothered the Georgian hit man’s agony as fabric garroted across his windpipe.
The blunt, short barrel of Alexandronin’s P7 jammed into the Georgian’s kidney. “You reach for the weapon under your coat, and your kidney will end up decorating the floor.”
Bolan helped his broken-kneed opponent to both feet, reaching under the man’s jacket to use the grip of the harnessed machine pistol he wore as a handle to maneuver him. From feel, Bolan recognized it as an Uzi of some form. A good tug let his captive know that Bolan had command of the situation.
The bartender looked under the counter at some form of fight-pacifying weaponry, but the sheer speed and violence of action dissuaded him reaching for it. Whoever the barkeep thought Bolan was, he had the reflexes to counteract anything that he kept under the bar. “Please, guv’nuh, take it outside.”
“That was my plan,” Bolan told him.
Alexandronin tossed some folded pound notes in front of the bartender. “Another bottle of potato juice for the road.”
The Georgian gurgled as the bartender put a bottle on the counter. Alexandronin leaned in toward his captive, smiling. “Grab my vodka for me, friend.”
The Georgian picked up the bottle and the four people left the confines of the bar. Both Bolan and Alexandronin held their prisoners directly in front of them as human shields. By the time they were outside, Bolan had his man’s Uzi well in hand and down by his thigh, safety selector clicked to full automatic.
“Let your rifleman know that he’d better hold his fire,” Bolan warned as they stood under the bar’s overhang. “Unless you wouldn’t mind having a new orifice torn in you.”
The limping, agonized Slav spoke into a collar microphone, speaking quickly. The hardman was straightforward, as Bolan had proven his fluency in Russian, making it clear that any deception would be futile. Bolan couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation because his prisoner wore an earphone, but the hostage explained that he had been compromised.
“Where’s your shooter?” Bolan asked.
“There are two of them,” the hobbled prisoner replied.
“The bar’s quiet again,” Alexandronin noted. He pocketed the bottle of vodka, no longer needing a chokehold on his prisoner as the man was busy holding the tattered remnants of his glass-shredded face together. “The backdoor team is likely moving up.”
“Point the way,” Bolan ordered. “Vitaly, stay sharp.”
“Da,” Alexandronin said.
A distant rifle cracked instantly, and the black-clad human shield jerked violently against Bolan. The prisoner’s blood gushed out of a hole torn into his breastbone, arterial spray spurting through the centralized chest wound like a fountain. Now a deadweight in Bolan’s arms, the corpse still provided some use as a protective barrier, and the Executioner pushed out into the street. Alexandronin forced his prisoner ahead of him, as well, but the riflemen focused on Bolan, their bullets crashing into the unfeeling form of the dead man.
Bolan spotted a muzzle flash, lined up his Uzi and fired the submachine gun. The chatterbox had a range of 200 yards in trained hands, and no living man was more familiar with the stubby Israeli machine pistol than the Executioner. The distant gunmen stopped shooting, but Bolan didn’t feel as if he had scored a hit. Suppressive
