Hard Passage

Kisa took a deep breath and plodded on. “He had a friend, Sergei Cherenko, who I also helped get out of the country because both of their lives were endangered by the same people.”

“Who, dear?” her mother asked.

Kisa fixed her mother with a level gaze. “Leo and Sergei were members of the Sevooborot.”

Now it was Tolenka Naryshkin’s turn to react. He stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his smoking jacket, marched to the fire and stared with a steely expression at the growing flames. Kisa could tell he’d become angered by her mention of the revolutionary organization. Her father considered them traitors to the country, murderers and dissenters who refused to let the revolution die. Things had improved vastly in Russia over the past nine years, particularly in their part of the country. People no longer had to fear being yanked out of their bed by the secret police in the dead of morning for their political affiliations, or fret over the possible repercussions when a volume of family members suddenly went missing. While things weren’t perfect, not by far, they were much improved.

Tolenka said quietly, “Go on, Kisa. Tell me everything.”

And that’s exactly what Kisa Naryshkin did. She laid it out for her parents, every last detail, stealing regular glances at her father to see how he reacted to certain parts of her tale. She felt horrible having betrayed him like she did, but she could not have stood by and done nothing—risked the possibility of her true love being murdered—as long as she had the connections and resources to give Leo and Sergei a fighting chance.

When she completed her story, she began to cry softly and her mother moved over to the sofa and wrapped comforting arms around her. “You poor child. You’ve taken all this grown-up responsibility upon yourself.”

Tolenka Naryshkin said nothing for a very long time; he just stared into the fire while his daughter cried. Finally he turned and sat in his wingback chair and fixed his daughter with a sympathetic expression.

“When you told us of this, my first thought was to my career and how this might have affected me. But since I retired last year, this is of null effect. What hurts my heart more than anything is that you did not come to me with this in the beginning. However, you are my daughter and there is very little I would not do for you or your mother. In fact, there is almost nothing I wouldn’t do.”

Kisa’s eyes rested on him.

Tolenka sighed. “You really love this man, do you?”

She nodded.

“And what about him? He feels the same way?”

Kisa nodded again. “He was going to send for me once he was safely out of the country and he’d told the Americans about the terrorist plot. And I will go to him.”

Tolenka smiled and reached out a hand to her. “Then tell me how Father can help.”

Kisa emitted a soppy giggle and then rushed to her father’s arms. He hugged her and they held the embrace for nearly a minute. When Kisa had regained some control of her emotional outburst she sat on the table and told her mother and father of the phone call and the alternate plan for Leo and Sergei to catch a boat from Murmansk. Her father considered this information carefully, sat a minute in thoughtful contemplation then rose and crossed to the telephone.

“I will reach out to my contacts in Murmansk,” he said. “I’m sure I can get them safely aboard a—”

The window of the parlor suddenly erupted and a gust of cold air whished at the flames of the fire, causing them to flicker and rise with the additional air flow. Kisa screamed as a man clad in black boots and camouflage pants entered. A black ski mask covered his face but all three of the Naryshkin family members understood the intent from the automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. Another dressed just like him followed afterward.

Tolenka Naryshkin looked quickly around, rushed to the fireplace and grabbed the wrought-iron poker from the tool stand. He rushed the first man and swung the poker, catching the intruder with a glancing blow that bounced off his shoulder and subsequently grazed the masked man’s head. The guy recoiled from the attack, a bit surprised at the resistance. Tolenka’s mother hauled her daughter to her feet by an arm and ordered her to run before pushing her in the direction of the door. Kisa got as far as the door before stopping to look back. Her father was now embroiled in a vicious, hand-to-hand struggle with the second combatant while the first tried to scramble to his feet and help his comrade. The man never made it that far as Kisa’s mother leaped onto the man’s back and began to beat her fists on his shoulders. At one point, she clawed at his face and ripped part of the mask away, taking blood and flesh along with it. The man howled in pain and in one vicious show of strength he threw Kisa’s mother off his back.

Kisa watched in horror as her mother landed hard on the ground and smacked her head against a wall-mounted radiator. Blood gushed from the wound and a sickening crack resounded through the air. Kisa started screaming at the man and he started to raise the machine pistol but her father—who had somehow gotten into the precarious position of having one arm pinned behind his back and the other wrapped around his own throat—kicked furiously at the weapon. The muzzle tracked upward just as the gunner squeezed the trigger and plaster rained down from where a volley of bullets chewed into the wall and ceiling above her head.

“Kisa…run!”

She hesitated another moment and then burst out of the parlor and raced for the exit. She was halfway down the hallway when the front door shot inward, swinging violently against the back wall. The entryway framed a tall, muscular man dressed in skintight black from head to toe. He held a pistol in his right fist and various implements of war dangled from the harness he wore. A pair of icy blue eyes inset on hard, chiseled features locked on Kisa and brought her to a skidding halt.

“You okay?” he asked.

Kisa didn’t say anything for a moment, struck dumb by the awesome sight of the grim specter who entered her house and approached with a confident stride that could only have been forged out of a lifetime of hardships and violence. She seemed unable to form words, but she did manage to point toward the back room and mouth a cry for help.

The man nodded and rushed past her.

THE LAST THING Mack Bolan had expected to see on his arrival at the house of Kisa’s father was a band of SMJ thugs ring the property before two of them made a forced entry through a window.

The Executioner elected to penetrate the house via the front door, the one place his enemies had not thought of, which would permit him quick and ready access to most of the first floor yet facilitate a hit-and-get scenario if the situation called for it. As soon as the SMJ hoods crashed through the window, Bolan went EVA and approached the front door, drawing his Beretta 93-R on the move and adjusting the selector switch to 3-round bursts. One kick with his two-hundred-plus pounds behind it proved sufficient to the task. The door rocketed aside and Bolan’s eyes locked on those belonging to the frightened face of a young woman: Kisa Naryshkin.

“You okay?”

She seemed unable to find her voice, but the pointing and whimpering was enough information for Bolan to act on. The warrior moved swiftly past her and toward the room where the pair of SMJ hoods had made entry. He had nearly reached the doorway when one of the militant youths emerged with a machine pistol in his hands. Bolan raised the Beretta and squeezed the trigger, the triburst vaporizing the man’s skull. The almost headless corpse shot backward and exited through the massive floor-to ceiling window of the back hallway.

Bolan turned into the room in time to see the second SMJ terrorist whipping an older man with his SMG. The young hoodlum stopped and looked at Bolan in shock. The Executioner wiped the man’s surprised expression from his face with a 3-round burst to the chest. The impact flipped the man off his victim; his body slid across the polished, wooden floor and smacked to a halt against the back wall of the parlor. Bolan crossed to the victim. Blood seeped from a deep laceration across his cheek but otherwise he was breathing and thrashing about in semiconsciousness. He’d live. Bolan then noticed the woman and crouched next to her to check for a pulse at the neck: also alive. He rose as Kisa entered the room.

“You speak English?” he asked. When she nodded he said, “Call for help and stay locked in here until I return.”

Bolan closed the door behind him, then headed up the hallway. He reached a front room on the opposite side of the house in time to catch two more SMJ gunners, each coming through one of the two windows. The men appeared surprised to see Bolan waiting there, pistol drawn. They foolishly tried to bring their SMGs to bear, but the Executioner easily had the drop on them. His first burst sent one of the men back out the window with a trio of bullet holes to the chest. The second toppled inward, triggering a fusillade of rounds that gouged through a rug and into the wooden floor beneath it as Bolan’s second burst caught him at belly, sternum and chin.

Bolan switched out magazines as he wheeled and left the study. He entered a room on the other side of the hallway and crouched in a corner where he could cover the entire dining area. He heard a window break and watched a moment later as a small, elderly woman in a housecoat burst through the swing door of the kitchen and ran screaming toward an exit door at the far end of the dining room. Two SMJ youths followed through that door, machine pistols held at the ready.

Bolan steadied the Beretta 93-R in a two-handed grip and squeezed the trigger. The 9 mm Parabellum slugs struck the first unsuspecting gunman in the chest and slammed him against a china cabinet. The other gunner reacted with incredible speed and swept the entire area with a furious stream of sizzlers from his AKSU assault rifle, but he was well high of Bolan’s position in the shadows. Undaunted by the rounds buzzing over his head and slapping into the plaster walls, the Executioner took time to sight on the gun-toting hoodlum. He squeezed off a double-tap that drilled six rounds through the man’s chest, several puncturing a lung and his aorta. The AKSU flew from the enemy’s fingers and he staggered to his knees before toppling onto his side. His body twitched several times as he bled out.

And with that, Bolan accounted for the six men he’d observed surrounding the residence.

Satisfied he’d neutralized all aggressors, Bolan rose and returned to the parlor. He rapped his knuckles softly against the door and called Kisa by name. She opened it a moment later and admitted him. Her father now sat on the edge of the sofa at the head of the woman who they had placed there. The man held a bloody handkerchief to his face while keeping vigil on the woman, who Bolan had to assume was his wife.

“You’re out of danger now,” Bolan said.

The man nodded and then extended his free hand. “I don’t know who you are, sir, but we owe you our lives.”

Bolan shook the man’s hand and replied, “You’re welcome. But it’s best you forget it now.”

Kisa stepped forward and laid a hand on Bolan’s forearm. “Are you from America? Were you the one they sent to help my Leo?”

Bolan shook his head. “No, I was the backup plan. These men who attacked you are with the SMJ. They’ve already killed two American intelligence officers, and you might have been next if your friend, Sonya, hadn’t decided to tell me where you were.”

“I see,” Kisa replied.

“I don’t think you do. With the two men who were supposed to get Rostov and Cherenko out of the country dead, it’s now up to me to find them and finish the job. I’m on your side, but I’ll need your full cooperation.”

“And you shall have it,” the man replied.

“Father—” Kisa began, but the old man shook his head.

“No, Kisa, this man has saved my family.”

He looked at Bolan and said, “My name is Tolenka Naryshkin. I am Kisa’s father. I am recently retired from military intelligence.”

“The GRU,” Bolan said.

Tolenka nodded and continued, “I will not bother to ask your name, as I’m sure you would not be able to give me your real one. Under any other circumstance, I would report you immediately to the police. And while I am a soldier and statesman, I am also a family man and a patriot. And I recognize when another soldier is doing something for a greater cause.”

Tolenka held out his hand and, after staring at the man a moment, Bolan removed the Beretta from his holster and dropped it into Tolenka’s palm. “Now you should take Kisa and go. She will be able to tell you where to find these men.”