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  The three Estonians, who had all come from the castle, scattered, taking their own SMGs from concealment in their jackets, firing wild bursts before they could aim, just to buy time to find shelter from what they knew was to come.

  Behind them the few tourists, who had come to see the tower at this hour, yelled and screamed in fear as they tried to run from the gunfire. Farther back the tower personnel reacted to these cries for help by closing the doors and locking themselves safely inside.

  From all sides, a dozen men ran onto the narrow street, all armed with MAC-10s. They were thickset, in civilian clothes, but running like military men. They barked at the passersby to hit the ground, but in the already panicked confusion, that only added to the pandemonium.

  “They must not shoot up the truck. Tell them that,” the intelligence agent yelled at the colonel as he scrambled from the car, running after the colonel as he rushed to join his men.

  “Prick,” the colonel breathed to himself. The priority was to secure the area, clear the civilians, and pick off the terrorists and these new bastards—whoever the hell they were—and not necessarily in that order. He shouldered his MAC-10 and directed two short blasts toward the car slewed across the street.

  The Estonians were pinned down between the truck they had intended to leave behind and the building that was their target. Without either of their leaders, they were helpless drones, having no real idea of how they would get themselves out of this situation. All they knew was that they needed to keep the truck in place and clear of interference. Having each found some cover behind parked vehicles, they concentrated their fire on keeping back their attackers while they counted down time.

  * * *

  THE SECOND GROUP of terrorists was equally determined. The five men from jihad, picked because of their iron will and determination, would do what it took to secure this batch of weapons for themselves. The sudden appearance of a seemingly random task force was not going to deter them. They turned and clustered, directing their fire toward the men who were rushing in from all points.

  The Muslim terrorists might not have had much cover, but they were not as exposed as the Russian task force, who had hit the ground with the sole intention of stopping the terrorist attack with speed. The last thing they had expected was a second attack force, and they found themselves running into a hail of fire from two sources, as the Estonians also sought to drive them back.

  In the short time before they backtracked enough to take cover, the task force had lost half of its number, at least two of which were friendly fire casualties.

  “Take cover. Uri, Valeri, get around the back of the tower and take out the people we came for. The rest of you, keep these others contained so you can put a grenade in their car—”

  “No, you can’t do that so close to the truck!” the intelligence agent screamed.

  The colonel turned on him, his slablike face mottled with fury. “Don’t tell me what I can do. You knew these assholes would be here?” He waved his MAC-10 at the jihad fighters. “You didn’t think to tell me after you crowd the area so we already cut each other down?”

  The agent tried to muster all the authority he could. “I am in charge here. The president has given us provenance over the army, and you must—”

  “I must do nothing, you waste-of-space prick,” the colonel growled. He raised the MAC-10 and tapped a short burst into the intelligence agent. The man’s face, as he died, registered an almost comical shock and fury.

  “Friendly fire,” the colonel spit as the corpse fell away from him. He turned his attention back to the firefight in front of him. Now he felt he could concentrate on sorting out this mess.

  * * *

  “PULL IN HERE,” Bolan ordered as they saw the whole scene unfold before them as they approached. Dostoyevsky guided the Škoda into a stop and killed the engine while Bolan leaned over the back and pulled over the two duffel bags, handing one to his partner.

  “Come on, let’s go!” he said as they got out of the car.

  People rushing toward them, looking back with panic, their cell phones either recording the events on camera or putting them in touch with the authorities.

  No need for the latter. Bolan was already sure they were here. The appearance of men from all points as a firefight developed between the truck and the car told him that. There was something military about them.

  The two warriors moved against the shallow tide of people, weaving between them to get closer to the action. As they neared, moving to the side of the street, using buildings to shelter and conceal them as much as possible, they saw the firefight develop into a pitched battle between three separate factions.

  Three men crouched beside the target truck holding their position. Four men had been moving around a car, one of them now down. And in positions of cover was a group of at least half a dozen that Bolan had tagged as military. Another three had been mowed down in the initial onslaught, and the survivors had taken up defensive positions. Their leader was only about a hundred yards away. They had watched him take out the man next to him.

  “There is trouble in the ranks,” Dostoyevsky said dryly. “I suspect that the intelligence services are trying to ride roughshod on the military, and it has not gone down well. We have an interesting three-point problem. Would it be worth trying to take one of those out before we tackle the other two?”

  “That would be great,” Bolan replied in an equally dry tone.

  The Russian grinned. “Follow me, say nothing—your accent would betray you.”

  Keeping low and swinging an HK into the crook of his arm, pointed down, the Russian moved toward the military man. Bolan did likewise, wondering what his partner had up his sleeve. What he got was unexpected and yet typical Dostoyevsky.

  “Colonel, we meet again. Report, please,” the Russian snapped as he slid into cover beside the colonel, whose face registered something approaching surprise.

  “By Stalin’s mustache, I never expected to see you again,” he murmured. “You work for his people, I suppose?” He indicated the dead intelligence man. “Friendly fire,” he added as an afterthought.

  “I saw. I don’t blame you. He was a prick,” Dostoyevsky said simply. “Most of the president’s men are, which is why they still hire men like myself and my colleague, even though the general would prefer we died like him.”

  The colonel grunted, and then gave them a precise and pointed commentary on what had occurred, why he thought the operation had been badly handled and the situation they were in now. Dostoyevsky listened intently, and when the colonel had finished, he spoke with authority.

  “We can redeem this. Pull your men back and allow us to mop up. Two men will not get in each other’s way.”

  “What about this damned weapon that gives the president a hard-on?”

  “When we are done, we will call you back and you can deliver his toy.” He grinned. “I won’t even mind you taking the credit this time.”

  The colonel’s granite eyes studied the Russian, searching for a sign of betrayal. They found nothing, and he gave the order for his men to withdraw to safer ground. As he also made to rendezvous with the remains of his unit, he nodded briefly to Dostoyevsky.

  “I never took your credit, and I won’t this time. You know that,” he muttered before leaving.

  When he had slipped away through the parked cars to where he had located his men, Bolan looked long and hard at the Russian.

  “Remind me never to play poker against you,” he said simply before issuing directions and outlining his own plan. The Russian nodded, and without another word, the two men parted company.

  * * *

  ONE OF THE JIHAD MEN had been felled by SMG fire that had come from the Russian military in that initial burst of activity before they had been driven back. The remaining four were using the car doors as cover, and alth
ough the vehicle was now riddled with shot and they stood in a sea of broken glass, it had been enough to keep them protected while returning fire and, as they saw it, drive the Russians back. Grim faced, they now turned their attention to the truck.

  One of them tried to move toward it, but he was met with a hail of fire. He hunkered back against the car, feeling the HK fire thud into the bodywork around him but just about keeping him safe. His lips parted in a thin smile. He had failed to progress in distance, but his men now knew where the three Estonians were located.

  He barked orders for his men to circle and engage, laying down fire that would cover him as he ran for the truck. He trusted that the Estonians would not dare to fire too close to the weapon. The area around it formed, he hoped, a kind of protective ring. Once inside that, then he was home free.

  Stepping from cover and pouring rapid fire in the directions identified, the three jihad men moved quickly across the tarmac toward points they had identified as cover.

  Immediately two of them were cut down by chattering bursts that chopped across the fire they laid down. It came from behind them, where they thought they were clear, and they were down before they had a chance to identify the location.

  The third man whirled, throwing himself to the ground and rolling back toward the cover of his own car, just as his commander moved, then hesitated and looked back. He watched a grenade as it arced through the air and landed on the tarmac, bouncing once and rattling against the underside of the car’s chassis.

  His curse died on his lips as the grenade detonated, the car disappearing in a plume of flame and smoke. There was little of him left. The terrorist who had tried to roll back to cover felt the scorching blast, shards of metal from the explosion ripping into him. He was alive but unable to move, as he saw a tall, gaunt man step out of cover and level a gun at him. In his last moments he thought of the virgins waiting for him after death and was relieved that an enemy would be so merciful as to end his suffering quickly.

  * * *

  FROM THEIR POSITIONS of cover, the three Estonians saw the jihad terrorists move out from the car, look amazed, and were then flattened by the blast from the grenade. The Estonians heard the chatter of fire cease as the other gunman was cut down, and then in the sudden silence that was ruined only by the licking of flames in the air, heard the short burst that ended the last terrorist’s suffering.

  The Estonians were in visual contact with one another, but had no practical way of quickly communicating. They would be forced to act independently and react, rather than plan.

  The problem was that none of them had been in combat for some time, and they were rusty; they knew they were up against men who were not. They were hesitant, yet at the same time knew that this was a sure way to die.

  They did not see Bolan and Dostoyevsky as they skirted the parked vehicles, moving so that they kept a barrier between themselves and the enemy until they were in a location where they had an angle of fire covering all three identified terrorist positions.

  Time was tight. The colonel would be getting hell over his comm system after the car detonation and had possibly already discovered that he had been duped. Bolan and the Russian had to secure the truck and get it away. Any issues with the weapons inside could be handled once they were clear.

  Two of the terrorist positions were far enough from the truck to allow them to use grenades from a distance. Both men had accurate-enough throwing arms to land in the target zone. A direct hit was not a necessity. Flushing them out would be enough.

  The grenades detonated almost simultaneously. The ground shook with the force of the blasts as Bolan and his partner raced from cover, crouching and firing on the run at intervals toward the remaining position, spraying the area where the grenades had landed.

  The two Estonians in the blast range had been silenced, either dead or too injured to move and return fire. That left just the one man, who was forced from his position by the hail of gunfire that peppered his cover, decimating it and the ground around him. He tried to run, but there was nowhere to hide, and he was mowed down quickly.

  Knowing that they needed to claim the truck and clear the area before the Russian military on site closed in, or reinforcements arrived, Bolan wrenched open the back doors of the truck.

  For one moment the world lurched sickeningly to a stop. Several of the nuclear devices were stacked in the back of the vehicle, their trigger mechanisms attached and blinking blandly at him.

  Shaking himself from the shock, the soldier clambered in and pulled the doors shut while the Russian threw himself into the driver’s seat. The ignition was easily dispensed with by a man with the right knowledge, but even Dostoyevsky’s nerveless fingers fumbled slightly under the pressure. He looked up, expecting to see men approaching and a hail of fire greet him. As the engine fired, the road ahead was still empty.

  He threw the vehicle into gear and pulled away from the tower with a squeal of tires on road. The vehicle was thrown into a tight turn, pitching Bolan across the weapons in the rear of the truck, as the Russian saw the remains of the military detachment run toward him, yelling and firing their weapons. The glass at the passenger side of the cab starred, and the Russian swore loudly as he slammed the truck into a higher gear and hit the gas.

  In the back of the truck, ignoring the fire that took out the small back windows and dented the rear doors with a hammering that echoed through the interior, Bolan set to work deactivating the weapons. It was a simple task if you knew what to do. The thing that really caused him concern was the time set on the trigger.

  “Move it! They haven’t given us much time,” he yelled at Dostoyevsky.

  “We haven’t given ourselves much time,” the Russian returned. “Colonel Rostov was always a mean bastard, and he’ll want my balls now that I’ve deceived him.”

  Bolan wanted to ask how he knew and recognized the colonel, but that would have to wait. He paused momentarily and slipped his smartphone from its secure place in his blacksuit.

  “The other two trucks have stopped moving. The closest one is only a klick or two away. Presnensky District, Third Ring Road. Mean anything?”

  The Russian laughed hollowly. “They are consistent in their thinking, I’ll grant them that. Moscow City they call it—the new Moscow International Business Center. A showpiece.”

  “Not unless we get there damned quick,” Bolan said grimly, returning to his task.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The president sat behind his desk. On his laptop, he watched footage of the firefight taken from CCTV. His face openly betrayed his dissatisfaction, and the security chief seated opposite squirmed in his seat. His eyes met the flinty gaze of the boss.

  “This is it?” the Russian president said mildly. When his tone was that soft, then it was time to run for cover.

  The security chief nodded.

  “So you have no idea why two men...two men...took out eight terrorists, pulled the wool over the eyes of the military and then escaped with the hardware?”

  “To be fair, sir, we had already taken out one of the terrorists ourselves, so it was really only four of—”

  The premier crashed his fist onto the keyboard of his laptop. “It doesn’t matter how many they killed or we killed, you moron. The very fact that they could do this—in the middle of Moscow—is the point. Do you know where they are headed now?”

  “We believe so, sir.”

  The president shook his head sadly. “‘We believe so,’ is it? For this you have control of how many men?” He stood, taking his laptop and throwing it at the security chief. “Idiot—you should be on their asses right now. You should be blasting the living shit out of them.” He came out from behind his desk, and for a moment the security chief believed that his boss would shoot him where he sat. Instead, he strode right past him, calling over his shoulder, “Come on. If a job
is worth doing, then you have to do it yourself around here.”

  * * *

  BY THE TIME BOLAN had finished dismantling the trigger mechanisms on all the devices in the truck, Dostoyevsky had piloted the vehicle around Third Ring Road and was on top of the construction site that was the Moscow International Business District. A large part of it in the Presnensky District was now complete, and some parts were already occupied, but there was one corner that was still largely a building site. As the Russian negotiated the entrance, Bolan could plainly see that this was where the action was going down.

  Their journey had been remarkable for being free of trouble. Apart from the usual Moscow traffic flow, which was like open warfare, they had not been obstructed by any intervention from the authorities, which was what both Bolan and his partner had been expecting. There had been no marked or unmarked vehicles in pursuit, no roadblocks established and no air traffic that was seemingly intent on tracking them.

  “I don’t like it when it is this quiet,” Dostoyevsky commented. “That is the time when they usually hit you with the sucker punch.”

  “They can track us by CCTV,” Bolan replied. “My guess is that they’ll look to intercept us when we reach the business park. They’ll know what we’re doing and probably already have people there.”

  The sight that greeted them, as the Russian drove through the populated area of the MIBC, gave them confirmation of his theory.

  By the entrance to the MIBC, business was being conducted as though nothing was wrong. However, as the truck raced through the parked traffic and the milling throng of people, scattering them, it became clear that pedestrians and vehicles seemed more anxious to move away from the less-developed area of the park. Even over the roar of the truck’s engine as the Russian propelled the truck on, it became clear that a firefight had developed.

  Turning a corner, Dostoyevsky hit the brake hard, pitching Bolan forward even as the Russian yelled a warning.