Road Of Bones. Don PendletonЧитать онлайн книгу.
“As I see, from looking at my clock,” Delorme said. “I wish your agent luck.”
He’ll need it, Brognola thought as he cut the link.
Yakutsk: 9:58 a.m.
STEPHAN LEVSHIN CHECKED the LED screen on his cell phone, failed to recognize the caller’s number, but decided to answer.
“Yes?”
On the other end, an unfamiliar voice said, “I am told you are the man to call about a certain woman and her friend?”
“Who told you that?” Levshin said, not denying it.
“I don’t remember,” the caller said. “It is either true, or not.”
“In that case, it depends upon which woman we’re discussing, and which friend.”
“I don’t have names,” the caller said, “but someone had a photograph. The woman hasn’t changed since it was taken. And a man was with her. If the person who advised me was mistaken, and there’s no reward…”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” Levshin said. “A stranger calls, anonymous, and asks for money? You must understand my skepticism, eh?”
“I understand you only pay for goods collected, yes?” the stranger said. “If I direct you to the ones you seek, it cannot be an act of charity.”
“Say this, then,” Levshin countered. “If I follow your directions and collect the proper goods, you will be compensated. If you are deceiving me, it would be most unwise.”
“No threats, or it is goodbye, eh? We understand each other, without that.”
“I hope so,” Levshin said.
“All right. You need to look in Nizhny Bestyakh, at a motorcycle shop. The owner’s name is Ilya Vitruk. You’ve already missed them there, but he can tell you where they’re going.”
“What’s the address?”
Levshin’s caller rattled off a number and a street name, which he dutifully repeated.
“If your information is correct—”
“I’ll call you back,” the stranger said. “We can arrange the payment when you’re satisfied.”
The line went dead, leaving a void of doubt in Levshin’s mind. He knew his people had been circulating photographs of Tatyana Anuchin throughout Yakutsk and, more recently, in Nizhny Bestyakh. The photos had his temporary cell phone number printed on the back, for easy contact. Since he had no fear of the police, and would discard the phone as soon as he had found the runners, Levshin saw no risk to the procedure.
And, perhaps, it had paid off.
A motorcycle shop meant they were running. Eastward, since it was the only compass point available. The Lena River blocked them westward, and striking off to north or south meant running overland to nowhere, without highways. Northward lay the Arctic Circle, with perhaps a scattering of villages where they could never hope to hide. Southward lay Mongolia, but only if they crossed the Stanovoy and Yablonovy mountain ranges, with peaks above eight thousand feet and no passable roads.
So, it was Magadan or nothing for the fugitives.
Over the Road of Bones.
Levshin had calls to make, and quickly—to his people on the Lena River, and to others already scouring the streets of Nizhny Bestyakh, in case his targets had managed to cross the river unseen.
Which it seemed that they had.
The call might be a ruse, of course, even someone’s idea of a joke. If it was, the prankster would live to regret it, but not very long. Meanwhile, Levshin would treat it as a serious lead and hope for the best.
He’d scramble troops to the target and see what they found. If it paid off, then another call was necessary, to Moscow next time, for a status report to Colonel Marshak. He’d be relieved to know the net was tightening around the peasants who presumed to threaten him and those above him.
Levshin’s task was to eliminate that threat, to see that order was preserved. Success was paramount.
And the alternative, he knew, was death.
CHAPTER SIX
With space for packing at a premium, Bolan and Anuchin shopped wisely in Nizhny Bestyakh. They started with new outfits for the road, judging that it was better to perspire a bit by day than freeze at night. Their choices—thermal underwear and socks, insulated gloves, flannel shirts under sweaters, with hunting pants and jackets over all—were chosen with respect for what Anuchin knew about the Road of Bones.
As for the rest, they bought two compact sleeping bags; a two-person tent that folded into a twenty-inch square and weighed under seven pounds; a case of bottled water, half the bottles emptied and refilled with gasoline; and enough MREs—as in “meals, ready to eat”—for a week on the road, if they ate twice a day. Bolan passed on the idea of buying a camp stove, preferring to leave space in the BMW’s panniers for extra ammo magazines. Last-minute accessories included a first-aid kit, a small tactical flashlight, an NV-01 survival knife from the Kalashnikov factory and an entrenching tool useful for digging or chopping.
For weapons, they each carried pistols—the MR-444 for Bolan, an MP-443 for Anuchin—but most of the hardware captured when Bolan had rescued Anuchin was left in a garbage bin without firing pins. The soldier kept his short AKS-74U, while Anuchin chose a little PP-2000 SMG.
Thus prepared, they rolled out of Nizhny Bestyakh on a two-lane blacktop, eastbound. The bike ran smoothly on asphalt, was easy to handle, but Bolan knew they’d have some rough riding ahead of them, between rural villages. How well the motorcycle would handle rough country in practice was anyone’s guess.
Likewise, Bolan could only guess how much free time they had before Anuchin’s trackers picked up their trail and returned to the chase. In another life, he had eluded and defeated mafiosi by the hundreds, in urban jungles spanning the world from Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City to London, Paris and Rome. Always outnumbered and outgunned, he’d learned to play the odds, turn them around and use the overconfidence of his opponents to destroy them.
But a hunt in wide-open country, where the quarry had to move and couldn’t go to ground, was an entirely different game. In this case, Bolan’s enemies held all the high cards—numbers and weapons, familiarity with the killing ground and the ability to plug both ends of a restricted pipeline. Bolan couldn’t veer off-course, reverse directions or duck down a rabbit hole into Wonderland.
Still, he and Anuchin had surprised their adversaries twice, with her escape from custody and—Bolan hoped—with their passage from Yakutsk through Nizhny Bestyakh. They had a lead, however slim it might turn out to be, and the Executioner had worked with less.
The men who’d underestimated him were legion. Those who had survived that grave mistake were few and far between, remnants of an endangered species driven to the point of near-extinction.
In the bad old days, the men who’d hunted Bolan knew who they were looking for, what he had done, what he could do. They came for him despite all that, driven by greed or rage, a hunger for revenge or fear of their employers’ wrath, a few propelled by simple arrogance.
The hunters who would follow him along the Road of Bones were at a disadvantage, then, in that respect. They’d only caught a glimpse of Bolan’s style, with five men down. It could have been dumb luck. The home team would be confident.
And they would pay for it in blood.
But whether he’d be able to complete the job remained an open question. Bolan wouldn’t know until they got as far as Magadan and found out what was waiting for them there.
How many enemies?
What kind of help from Hal?
One thing was certain,