Hard Passage

Hard Passage
Don Pendleton

Acting as unofficial backup to a CIA mission threatening to go hard, Mack Bolan is ready for action on the frigid streets of St. Petersburg, Russia.Soon a mix of blood and intelligence creates a picture of a deal brokered between militant Russian youth gangs and Jihadists–aimed at the United States. With too many pieces missing from the puzzle, Bolan plays the game he's played and won countless times before: shake up the enemy's infrastructure, derail its timetable and declare total war. But the fuse is lit–all the way to the streets of Portland, where America's most violent gangs are being armed and primed to unleash the enemy's ultimate, shocking agenda….

Bolan considered exploding the grenades remotely

He dismissed the thought immediately. Too risky to civilians. Risking the lives of noncombatants was not acceptable.

Mack Bolan was in the business of conserving life, and killed only when necessitated by factors of duty or self-defense. He didn’t believe the ends always justified the means, and he refused to do anything to put more blood on his hands.

When it came to the rules of engagement, Bolan had never believed it was right to salve his conscience with some “greater good” theory that civilian casualties were the natural collateral damage of warfare. Bolan valued human life much more than that.

Bolan fought for those who were unable to fight for themselves.

Hard Passage

Mack Bolan

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jon Guenther for his contribution to this work.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into thin air.

—John Quincy Adams

(1767–1848)

There are those who say what I do takes courage. The thing is, fighting alone takes skill. Courage is a willingness to persevere—to never give up fighting for what’s right even when the odds are stacked against you.

—Mack Bolan

To the men and women in the American armed forces

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“I’m freezing, Leo!” Sergei Cherenko said.

Leonid Rostov looked at his friend with dismay and tried not to let Cherenko see him shiver. A biting, icy wind—usual for February in St. Petersburg—cut straight through the meager lining of his coat and chilled him to the bone. Rostov watched the snow swirl around them, his hands tucked inside his coat, his fingers numb. They had been standing in place for more than two hours, eyes glued to the nondescript building where men and women were meeting to decide the fates of Rostov and Cherenko.