was a grunt over the radio, the sound of a fist striking flesh. Somewhere in the foggy haze, Alexandronin had hurled himself into hand-to-hand combat with the last of the enemy assassin’s hit men.
T HE RPG BLAST LANDED so close to Vitaly Alexandronin that it shocked the Russian expatriate to the core. Shrapnel had opened several lacerations on his head, arm and torso. Pain burned through his stocky body, but it was only a background ache, adrenaline numbing him to his body’s protestations. His fist throbbed from where he had punched the reporting gunman in the ear, carpal bones cracking against hard skull. It was a clumsy attack, but the hard-liner thug had been knocked off his feet. Blood poured from the hit man’s ear where the ruptured eardrum drained out.
The man’s head hadn’t flexed like a jaw would have, and the result was broken knuckles and fractured hand bones. Alexandronin dismissed the self-diagnosis. Catherine, the love of his life, had been shattered far worse by scum such as the one he had struck.
Alexandronin speared his fist under the sternum of his stunned opponent, driving the breath out of the assassin’s lungs. As the gunman folded up in pain, he dropped his Uzi. Alexandronin chopped down hard on his downed foe’s throat. The killer’s trachea collapsed, accompanied by the sickening crunch of his larynx. Blood poured over the dead man’s lips, his eyes bulged out by the force of the blow.
“Two bastards I give in your memory, my love,” Alexandronin rasped. As he spoke, he tasted blood in his mouth. A cough pushed up a mouthful of sticky crimson. He was so high on adrenaline, he had ignored the pain of a piece of shrapnel that had cut between his ribs and penetrated deep into one lung.
It was bad, he knew, if he could fill his mouth with blood on one weak cough. But Alexandronin was not dead yet. The man he knew as Belasko would need a prisoner or two to continue closing down the foul conspiracy that had taken Catherine away from him.
The team commander’s attention had been drawn by Bolan, the two men maneuvering around each other, Uzis snarling and cracking in a leaden debate of point and counterpoint. It was a ballet of bullets and dodges between the two men.
Alexandronin scooped up the partially spent Uzi of the man whose throat he had crushed and reversed it into a club. The assassination team’s field commander didn’t notice his primary target’s sudden charge until the eight-pound mass of the submachine gun hammered between his shoulder blades with stunning force.
The commander folded to the ground, insensate as Bolan held his fire.
“You’re hit,” Bolan noted, ignoring the unconscious prisoner that Alexandronin had just taken.
The Russian smiled, putting his best face on the lie. “It is far from my heart, Mikhail.”
The buckle of the expatriate’s knees betrayed the truth, however. Bolan reached out and caught his ally before he collapsed to the ground. The soldier lowered Alexandronin to a reclining position. He looked for the injury that had caused him so much weakness. Bolan ripped open his friend’s shirt and saw the ugly, puckered gash over Alexandronin’s ribs.
“Lung hit,” Alexandronin explained. “Not near heart…probably pleural artery…Can’t control that kind of bleeding in the field…”
“Quiet. Save your breath,” Bolan ordered.
“Adrenaline…pumped oxygen through blood…” Alexandronin continued. “No breath left to save. I’ll be gone in…minutes. You have…last gift.”
“Vitaly, damn it!”
Alexandronin cupped Bolan’s cheek, smiling at the big American. “Don’t mourn for me, Mikhail. My comrade, my brother, I had already died the day Catherine did.”
Bolan pressed a button on his PDA. “I’ve already transmitted a call for an ambulance. Hang on and the paramedics can stabilize you.”
“It would just be surviving, my friend,” Alexandronin told him. “Not living.”
He coughed, blood foaming on his lips. Bolan stroked the dying man’s forehead, frowning. “Give Catherine my love when you see her again, Vitaly.”
Alexandronin smiled weakly. “The dead all know the love meant for them unspoken in the hearts of the living. We do not need revenge to prove that fealty.”
“What plot these men are protecting, it needs to be stopped,” Bolan said. “I’ll end it.”
Alexandronin clapped Bolan on the shoulder. “It is your way. It’s why I called you. You will protect others from suffering as I did when Catherine was taken away from me.”
Sirens sounded in the distance. “Take your prisoner, Mikhail. Those are police, not paramedics.”
Alexandronin closed his eyes, his last breath a deep sigh.
“Sleep well, my friend,” Bolan whispered, lowering Alexandronin’s head gently to the ground.
The Executioner hauled the unconscious assassin over his shoulder and darted down a causeway to reach his rental car. He left behind the ghosts of the friendly dead to their much delayed reunion.
The warrior intended a different gathering for the damned souls he was about to pass judgment on.
CHAPTER THREE
Opening up the interface to the Russian Intelligence Agency’s GUI system, Kaya Laserka noted that she had twenty-four new e-mail messages. The field agent, assigned to the Moscow Organized Crime Interagency task force, clicked on the tool bar, taking her to her electronic Inbox. Most of the mail was one form of memo or another, mostly tedious reminders and uninspiring trinkets like tenure awards or daily positive reinforcement sayings.
The header of one e-mail, however, brought a chill to Laserka’s spine.
“Catherine was murdered,” it read in bold, blocky font.
Laserka waited what seemed an eternity as her slow T1 connection, burdened by the equivalent of Third World technical issues, struggled to load the message. There was a link to a London newspaper Web site that carried the report of a brutal, coma-inducing beating of Catherine Rozuika Alexandronin. There was also an appended note that she had been taken off her life support when her husband, Vitaly, was informed that she had been rendered brain dead. The return e-mail was to a free online service, one she didn’t recognize. However, the title Outcast 1995, contained the year her mentor and training officer, Vitaly Alexandronin, left Russian Intelligence amid a government scandal. Laserka had no doubt who the sender was.
Almost a decade and a half before, Laserka had been a fresh young rookie to Russian Intelligence, and Alexandronin had given her a wealth of lessons and experience that carried her across the intervening years. Laserka fired off a response e-mail, but the server spit back a “message not deliverable” response.
The mail had been sent four days earlier, Laserka noted. She had been stuck on an investigation and away from her work terminal. She’d only just returned to Moscow the previous night after a week in the field, running a surveillance operation. She’d had no urge to go to the office. She had been tired, sweaty and hungry, and only wanted to scrub her auburn hair clean of the stink of perspiration, stale coffee and an ever-hanging cloud of cigarette smoke trapped in her locks. Laserka was as fit and trim as when she was just a raw recruit, but closing in on the latter
