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  Bolan saw no evidence of bruising anywhere but around the dead woman’s neck. He carefully checked between her fingers, the crooks of her arms and the bend of her knees. He was looking for hypodermic puncture marks in the hidden recesses of her anatomy. He found none. But then again, he was searching in poor lighting.

  Bolan searched carefully through her hairline. Again, he found nothing, though that might simply mean he hadn’t discovered what he was looking for and not that it wasn’t there to begin with. He picked up and looked over her hands. A nail had broken off on the right pinkie finger. He looked on the floor of the bathroom but didn’t see the piece of broken fingernail.

  The soldier tore off a piece of toilet paper from the roll set in the counter next to Tan. He folded it into quarters, carefully pressing creases into the paper. Satisfied, Bolan pulled out his knife and opened it with one hand.

  He rested on one knee and propped Tan’s hand on his other. Using the tip of the knife, Bolan carefully scraped the residue from underneath her manicured nails and into the creases he had formed in the toilet paper. He repeated the process with her other hand.

  He set the knife down, letting the limp hand fall away. He refolded the tissue and then folded it over again. Bolan slipped the tight little packet into the pocket of his jacket before picking up the knife and slipping it away.

  He could smell the lingering scent of Sylvia Tan’s perfume. In the distance he abruptly heard the wail of approaching police sirens. There were no coincidences in Bolan’s world. The police had been alerted to the apartment.

  He felt certain the Russian police units were coming for him.

  Bolan moved quickly through the apartment. If time had permitted, he would have tossed the place out of careful habit, but he was satisfied it had already been sterilized by whomever Sylvia Tan had broken her fingernail struggling against. Sterilized by whoever had strangled her to death and then put her naked body in the pose of a suicide.

  Bolan broke into a jog and, leaving the back hallway, he cut through Tan’s living room and headed for the front door to her apartment. He was parked several blocks away to make his approach more unobtrusive. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation with Grozny military police units.

  He reached up to unsnap the dead bolt to the apartment door. Outside in the street the wailing police siren became deafening as a patrol car screeched to a halt outside. The light bar revolving on the top of the vehicle cast wild patterns through the curtains in alternating flashes of light and dark illumination.

  Bolan threw open the door and hurried out into the hallway. He raced to the back stairwell, since the first police car was arriving at the front of the building. Bolan plunged down them, moving fast. His footsteps were loud in the narrow passage as he quick timed down the stairs.

  Reaching the bottom, Bolan threw open the door, stepped through it and stopped dead. The back stairs led out onto the entrance hall of the apartment. The back door to the building was almost immediately on his right, but in full view of the front doors. He turned and began crossing the short stretch of space between the stairs and the back entrance to the apartment building.

  He heard the front door to the apartment building fly open and heard angry shouts in Russian commanding him to stop. As he ran, he risked a look back over his shoulder and saw two gray-uniformed special police unit officers, weapons already drawn.

  Without thinking of the consequences, Bolan simply hurtled himself through the door and outside.

  The gunfire boomed loud in the sound tunnel of a hallway and bullets cracked into the wood of the door as Bolan leaped out. He spotted a fence across a tiny square of lawn and made for it.

  Images were coming at him like flashes in a viewfinder, incongruous and overwhelmingly rapid. Bolan’s awareness swelled with each burst of adrenaline. He ran toward the fence, avoiding random obstacles in the courtyard that threatened to bring him down: trash cans, empty bottles, bits of refuse. At the same time he was keenly aware of geography and movement beyond his own line of sight.

  He could hear the shouting of the police as they sprinted down the hall behind him, and Bolan caught the flashes of lights turning on inside apartments. He heard more police vehicles racing onto the scene. He moved instinctively, not bothering to identify each threat before avoiding it, like a running back breaking free from the line of scrimmage.

  This night was turning into a real hell ride, Bolan thought as he threw himself into the air. He caught the top of the fence and heaved himself up and over. His belly scraped painfully over the rough wood of the high fence. He kept one hand in a solid grip on the top of the fence and slapped the other one down at arm’s length so that he could push away from the fence as he fell.

  Swinging his legs over, he somersaulted onto the ground, landing on both feet, dropping at the knees to absorb the shock. He pivoted first left and then right. Bolan was in an alley between the lines of apartment buildings. It was wide and relatively clean but not particularly well lit. One end of the alley let out to his right and was closest to the direction where he had parked his car.

  Bolan dug his heels into the ground, exploding into a sprint like a racer out of the blocks. His hands cut in perfect time to his steps, increasing his speed. He sucked in energy-giving oxygen and expelled it forcefully. His legs drove down into the ground and propelled him forward.

  Time stretched for him, reaching out from the center of his perception. Out of the wailing chorus of sirens, one suddenly spiked loudly above the others. A revolving pattern of light abruptly materialized, casting wild shadows on the alley walls. Bolan heard the squealing of locking brakes, tires screaming in protest. The police car shot into the mouth of the alley, directly into Bolan’s path. Headlights pinned him in midstride.

  Bolan didn’t think, he simply reacted, moving automatically and trusting his instincts. He spun sideways and threw himself nearly prone into the direction he had just come from. He dug in and erupted back down the alley. As he ran Bolan heard car doors thrown open and the chatter of keyed-up Russian police troopers.

  Ahead of him Bolan saw the first of the troopers from Tan’s building clear the fence and land on the other side. The man popped out of his crouch and reached for the gun he’d holstered while scaling the fence. His eyes went wide as he saw Bolan hurtling toward him.

  The Executioner raced in close, leaping into the air at the last moment as the police officer abandoned his gun and attempted to fall back into a defensive martial-arts stance. Bolan drove his knee straight into the man’s side, knocking the wind from his lungs and throwing the smaller man back against the fence.

  The police officer stumbled back and Bolan moved in, as relentless as a jackhammer. He clasped the shorter man with both his hands around the back of his head, using his body weight to push the man’s face down. Like trip-hammers, Bolan’s knees fired up, cracking hard into the line of the man’s jaw near the point of his chin.

  It was finished in three moves and Bolan dropped the unconscious police officer, leaving him in a heap on the ground. Not missing a beat, Bolan reached up and caught the second Russian officer as the man rolled over the top of the fence to back up his partner. Bolan hurled him to the unforgiving pavement. The man gasped for air and moaned before the soldier’s foot pummeled him into darkness.

  Bolan ran for it. A shot rang out, but the shooter was running as he fired and the round flew wide. Not wanting to sacrifice raw speed, Bolan made no attempt to cut back and forth as he sprinted. He simply put his head down and charged forward. Reaching the end of the alley he turned sharply to the left, putting a wall between him and the police troopers gunning for him.

  Behind him more shots rang out and a distant, disassociated part of Bolan registered the angry whine of pistol rounds as they cut through the air. Windows in a car parked across the street from the open mouth of the alley shattered abruptly, scattering glass onto the street.

  Out on the avenue Bolan cut to his right and sprinted across the street. He ducke
d between two buildings and immediately scaled a second fence. Cutting across the little courtyard, he skirted the edge of the building in the narrow space between the fence wall and the side of the structure.

  Burst out onto another street, Bolan crossed it at a dead run. A red sedan locked its brakes as he cut across its trajectory. Without breaking stride Bolan leaped up and slid across the hood of the vehicle. The driver, a middle-aged woman wearing a scarf over her hair, screamed and threw her hands up to cover her face.

  Bolan hit the ground on the other side of the vehicle and finished sprinting across the street. The woman slammed her hand down on her horn in outrage. Bolan pulled his keys out of his pocket as he ran, hit the electronic key fob and unlocked his car. Reaching the vehicle, he opened the door and slid behind the wheel, chest heaving.

  He started the vehicle, turned around to look out his rear window, hammered the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator.

  The car responded smoothly and Bolan shot out into the street and roared past the stalled sedan in reverse, so close to it he almost sideswiped the woman’s car. Once the front of his car had cleared the trunk of the sedan, Bolan turned in a tight bootlegger maneuver around the vehicle.

  Pointed in the direction he’d reversed in, Bolan again worked his clutch and put the car into gear. The tires gripped the pavement and the vehicle surged forward.

  Within seconds Bolan had disappeared into the labyrinth of narrow Grozny streets.

  12

  The Executioner put the folded paper into a plain envelope and, after getting instructions on his scrambled line, left the package in a dead drop in a men’s room at the Grozny airport. Support had promised him a five-hour turnover on the bio-forensics. In the meantime, Bolan returned to the safehouse.

  Sylvia Tan had led him into a trap to protect Sable. Or to keep him from Sable. If she had truly swung and was working with Sanders, then she surely would have been more forthcoming. That meant Tan, as Bolan had suspected after first seeing the photos of the two women together, hadn’t turned. She hadn’t turned Sable onto Sanders; she’d turned Sanders onto Sable. She’d remained loyal to her original handler.

  Tan is a dupe.

  That note was significant. The stringer wasn’t necessarily warning Sanders about something he didn’t know, but about something Tan didn’t know. If Tan was still loyal to Sable, but was a dupe, that meant her control wasn’t who she thought it was. She could have asked Bolan to take her in. Instead she’d been killed, silenced after setting him up.

  Obviously the motel had been a field operations center. The shooters in that room were stationed there. The place had not been chosen specifically as an ambush to cross him. Otherwise he’d never have made it away alive. They’d have taken him down as soon as he’d gotten out of his car. Who needed a hit team staged in a Grozny slum, ready to roll at a moment’s notice?

  The list of possibilities was too extensive: international jihadists, arms dealers, drug smugglers, enforcement for Russian syndicates, affiliates of intelligence concerns, mercenaries specializing in leftist causes. The list went on.

  Bolan needed another thread to run down, another way to try to locate Sanders, to find Sable. He was tired of being outgunned. The city had turned deadly on him and instead of rolling with full battlefield gear, he’d been shooting it out with a handgun. That had to change.

  While making the call to arrange the blind drop, Bolan also asked for contingency equipment. There was nothing illegal in the safehouse. If it was investigated or raided by local authorities, it needed to turn up clean so as not to cast suspicion on the front company the Agency used to conduct business here. The voice on the other end of the scrambled line had assured Bolan that he would be receiving a key to a locker with just the sort of “foul weather” insurance he was looking for.

  Who was left who might have a line on Sable? Bolan wondered. Kubrick claimed to be in the dark. Lich was more of a mystery than Kubrick. Who else had been up on Sable?

  He forced his racing mind to slow. Baby steps. He needed to proceed with baby steps. The answers were there; he just needed perspective.

  What did he know? He knew Sanders had called from an unsecured line. Bolan stopped himself. That wasn’t the beginning. Sanders had wanted to bring in Sable. He’d learned of Sable through Tan. He’d found Tan from Kubrick. Kubrick had found Tan because he’d been surveying the CDI. He’d been surveying CDI because classified material had been getting out.

  He frowned. What had been getting out? He ran down the list of breaches he had seen while going over the files in the Grozny station: technology, research, financial transaction records…

  Bolan began pacing. Financial transactions? Tan was a research scientist, so she probably had no more access to financial transactions than the company janitor. Someone else had given those out. Kubrick hadn’t been running just Tan, couldn’t have been. Who else?

  Dieter Vesler, the president of CDI.

  That was the only other name of note in the institute files—Vesler, who Agency records showed was sporting a serious cocaine habit and a penchant for living beyond even his generous means. Kubrick had been onto Vesler. He’d fed Tan to Sanders, but Kubrick had kept Vesler all for himself. The chance that there were two opposition control officers running doubles in the CDI were remote. If Sable was running Tan, then she was probably running Vesler.

  Why this hadn’t been reflected in the files troubled Bolan. Who was hiding the information, who was protecting Vesler? Kubrick? Lich? Both? Bolan looked at his wristwatch, noted the time. He got ready to go. He’d left his car, which was potentially compromised, in a multistory parking garage.

  Police agencies would be looking for him, but no pictures had turned up on the news. He was wanted, but he was still anonymous. The clock was ticking rapidly and people’s lives hung in the balance.

  Bolan’s sat phone buzzed from where it rested on the kitchen countertop. He looked at the number in the display and grunted in recognition. Things were about to start rolling. He picked up the phone.

  “Go.”

  “Hello, Striker,” Barbara Price said over the secured line.

  Bolan found himself smiling, despite himself. It was good to hear the woman’s voice, even if it was coming from halfway across the world.

  He listened carefully to the terse but vaguely worded instructions Price gave him. He contemplated the implications of what he was hearing.

  “Right. Good. Thanks, Barb,” he said and hung up.

  Bolan walked out of the kitchen to the front of the house. He looked out the window from behind a heavy curtain, surveying the street in all directions and elevations. Other than an old woman walking up the street carrying a small bag of groceries and a teenage boy walking a dog, the street was empty.

  Satisfied, Bolan looked down to the end of the street to where his new car sat, waiting. The BMW was sleek and black, but most importantly, it had a V8 engine and would be a standard transmission as he had specified.

  Bolan gathered what he needed and left the safehouse, heading down the street, alert for anything out of the ordinary. Reaching the car, he slid into the driver’s seat. The interior of the automobile was antiseptically clean. He adjusted the seat and mirrors before reaching under the driver’s seat and removing the keys. The German-made engine started smoothly when he turned the ignition.

  Bolan opened up the glove compartment. Inside was an owners’ manual and a manila envelope. Bolan pulled the envelope out and opened it. Inside was a folded piece of paper. He scanned what it read and snorted with derision. The operation in Grozny had just taken a very interesting turn.

  The DNA found under Sylvia Tan’s fingers belonged to Herman Kubrick.

  IN THE TRUNK of the BMW, in a false bottom under the spare tire, the Agency had put the field kit Bolan had requested. As a result he wore a new bulletproof vest under his shirt and in addition to the weapons he had acquired, Bolan carried a mini-Uzi machine pistol. The Uzi combined two main factors vi
tal in urban-based close-quarter battle. It was very easy to conceal and it put out a tremendous rate of fire.

  Bolan knew he faced a very real potential of coming up against heavier ordnance, but he needed move around the city with as low a profile as he could muster. The machine pistol was a compromise in that sense. In addition, the mini-Uzi had come with an attaché case apparatus so that it could be fired by depressing a button trigger in the handle, as well as openly.

  After driving for twenty minutes, Bolan pulled over to the side of the road. He lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus on them until the house, set some hundred yards away, came into sharp focus.

  Bolan concentrated his focus into tight parameters, forcing himself to become methodical, almost machinelike in his thoroughness.

  He began to slowly sweep the binoculars over Kubrick’s property.

  The Executioner didn’t project images or intentions onto his target area, but rather scanned in a completely passive mode. Sometimes the mind didn’t comprehend what the eye truly saw, and only a relaxed attention could decipher the myriad of tiny clues and then put them together.

  Kubrick’s house was outside of the international zone reserved for dignitaries, diplomats or any foreigner working on behalf of a sponsoring government. He lived “on the economy” as it was termed in official circles. His house was in the section of Grozny where a larger Middle Eastern population contained a much smaller Asian one.

  Kubrick’s house was two stories set in a half-acre plot on a street lined with expensive, but tasteful homes. A ten-foot-mortar-and-charcoal-colored-stucco wall surrounded the property with a pedestrian entrance in the center of the wall, facing the street, and a double car garage set to the southeastern corner of the property.

  A path wound through the property about twenty yards from both the garage and the front gate, through a small garden to the front of the house. The upper story of Kubrick’s house was half open deck and half living structure with a pagoda-style roof. A red cedar deck encircled the house.