Terrorist Dispatch (Executioner)

by Don Pendleton

  PAVLO VOLOSHYN TOOK the bad news as he always did, in silence, with his face deadpan. No casual observer would have guessed that he was raging on the inside as he listened to the caller from Manhattan, visualizing scenes of carnage that would put most slasher films to shame.

  Some of the scenes his mind played out were memories; the others, wishful plans.

  “I understand,” Voloshyn said, when he had heard it all. “Keep me updated if you learn more, absolutely. Use whatever cash you have on hand for funeral arrangements. And do nothing with the property until you hear from me.”

  It was the best that he could do from where he sat in his office near the ancient Golden Gate, overlooking the Dnieper River. He had lawyers and accountants to concern themselves with such details, one of the top firms in Manhattan on retainer for a sum that would have made him blanch ten years ago. Of course, Voloshyn had not been a warlord then.

  How times had changed.

  There had been times when Voloshyn hadn’t believed he would live to reach his forty-first birthday, now six months behind him, and others when he’d been convinced that he would finish out his days in prison. He’d been wrong on both counts, thanks in equal part to personal determination, ruthlessness and Russian meddling in his homeland. He had been born a Russian subject, liberated with his country when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, but now the bear was back again, snuffling around and claiming territory for itself, provoking what amounted to a civil war among his countrymen.

  Voloshyn could admit it to himself, however—war was good for business in so many ways. It helped divert authorities from routes where contraband was smuggled and increased his profits from the arms trade. Refugees, particularly young women and children, were ideal targets for human trafficking—no families to miss them, no real inclination by police to learn where they had gone, if anyone even remembered they existed.

  In his role as a supporter of Ukraine’s resistance against Moscow, Voloshyn had gained a measure of respectability and influence that had eluded him throughout his adult life. He was a folk hero to some; to others, a figure feared and admired in equal measure.

  Not that he regarded all Russians as enemies, by any means. Voloshyn could honestly say that some of his best friends were Russian—not members of the current leader’s regime, but still close to the true seat of power, oligarchs and cartel leaders who were not political in any normal sense but who survived and prospered from relations with the government, subverting it occasionally, more often collaborating with it, buying portions of it when the price was right.

  Now, with the bad news from Manhattan on his plate, he owed one of his Russian friends a call. With any luck, Voloshyn could prevent a rift, forestall the outbreak of another costly war.

  And if he failed...well, there was something to be said for striking first.

  Mid-Atlantic, 40,000 feet altitude

  THE UIA AIRLINER’S menu offered travelers a choice of meals. One was a “full course” dinner, featuring salad, a hot entrée and dessert; the other was a “testy” Caesar sandwich. Bolan gambled on a typo in that case and chose the sandwich, with a beer to wash it down, knowing he still had six full hours of airtime yet ahead of him. The food was fine, not irritable in the least, and when he’d finished it, he pulled the plastic shade down on his window and relaxed with sleep in mind.

  Despite his long experience at sleeping anywhere and everywhere, as time allowed, the dark oblivion eluded him at first. His mind was focused on Kiev and on what was waiting for him there.

  Ukraine’s capital lay outside the troubled country’s major war zone, which was farther to the east in Donbass, on the Russian border. Still, the impact of that fighting had been felt in countless ways, including acts of terrorism, displaced persons streaming westward, protest demonstrations on both sides of Russian annexation and challenges from Chechen paramilitaries who regarded Ukraine’s lawfully elected government as an oppressive junta suppressing the will of the people.

  Nothing new in that, per se, for a society whose national anthem was titled “Ukraine Has Not Yet Died.” Most of it lay beyond Bolan’s brief for this mission—“above his pay grade,” in the popular smart-ass lingo. What did concern him was the rise in crime throughout Ukraine, particularly organized varieties, including but by no means limited to narco-trafficking, gunrunning and wholesale human trafficking.

  As Brognola’s dossier had informed him, the top ranks of Ukrainian organized crime included native-born mobsters, interloping Russians and Chechens, plus stragglers from Poland, Albania, Romania and the Czech Republic fighting for scraps from the big boys’ table. Two leaders in particular stood out from Brognola’s synopsis, one for his presumed ties to Stepan Melnyk in New York, the other a Russian who played both sides in Ukraine’s civil war, arming the Right Front and various other half-baked militias with the tools to kill one another and an untold number of civilians, using the chaos of wartime to cover his traffic in contraband flowing both ways through Ukraine.

  The first was Pavlo Voloshyn, a thug with more cunning than most of his cronies so far, who’d started out peddling drugs on street corners, graduated to booking bets, then fixing soccer matches to improve his odds, then to loan-sharking and smuggling of all kinds. Authorities suspected that he’d killed his first man at the tender age of nineteen years, but they could never prove that case—or any of the twenty-seven others logged against his name in “open” files. Voloshyn had served time for pimping and possession of narcotics, the latter overturned when the state’s key witness begged to recant his original testimony. Not that it helped him: he had disappeared, shortly after Voloshyn walked out of prison a free man.

  Stepan Melnyk had been a middle-ranking cog in Voloshyn’s machine when he served a short term of his own, for assault, and then decided to try his luck in New York. NSA logs and other sources revealed ongoing communication between Melnyk and two numbers in Kiev that traced back to businesses owned by Voloshyn. No one could prove the two men personally spoke, but Bolan wasn’t laying out a case for trial. He operated from experience, gut instinct and the kind of common sense too many people had forgotten in an age of social media, where every passing thought was posted to the web and viewed by thousands—sometimes millions—in the course of hours.

  In every way that mattered, he knew that Melnyk and Voloshyn were connected. Whether it had been a sometime partnership of pure convenience, or some kind of master-servant operation, Bolan neither knew nor cared.

  The Russian angle in Kiev was more or less controlled by Bogdan Britnev, forty-eight, a native of St. Petersburg who’d moved to Moscow as a child and prospered there after the fall of communism ushered in a kind of chaos. He had followed all the normal steps from street muscle to leadership among the criminal element, then saw a golden opportunity in Ukraine with the outbreak of war and set up a branch office there. According to the goods from Stony Man, he worked closely with Voloshyn, although they’d also had their spats from time to time.

  That’s interesting, Bolan thought, before he drifted off, at last, to dreamless sleep.

  Kiev, Ukraine

  “I HEARD ABOUT your comrade’s difficulty in New York,” Bogdan Britnev said, frowning at the speakerphone in front of him. “My friends also have had some...difficulties.”

  “Coincidence, you think?” his caller asked.

  “It’s always possible,” Britnev allowed. “But likely? I am skeptical.”

  “As I am,” Pavlo Voloshyn replied.

  “The problem with such things is—”

  “Distance,” Voloshyn finished for him.

  “Exactly. I have other people in the neighborhood who could investigate, perhaps, but do I risk them? Is it easier and wiser just to wait and see what happens next?”

  “That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Ah.” Now they were getting to the crux of it.

  “
I have received a message from Manhattan. One of Melnyk’s people. Did you ever meet Stepan?”

  “I never had the pleasure,” Britnev said.

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but he was competent—or so I thought.”

  “The message?” Britnev prodded him.

  “From one of the survivors.”

  “Naturally.” How could dead men make a trans-Atlantic call?

  “He thought one man, or possibly a small group, might have been responsible for what befell my friends, and yours.”

  Britnev considered that. “Official?” he inquired.

  “There was no indication of it. No arrests until the bodies started falling. Only now are members of the FBI beginning to investigate.”

  “A covert agency, perhaps?” Britnev suggested.

  “If it had happened here,” Voloshyn said, “I might suspect the police. Americans, for the most part, only behave that way in other countries, I believe.”

  “But now, you think...?”

  “I’m not sure. If there was a motive...”

  “Something like the incident in Washington, perhaps?”

  “That was not my affair!”

  “Of course. I understand.” Britnev smiled at the speakerphone. “But it could easily be misinterpreted.”

  “In which case, why attack your interests, as well?” Voloshyn asked.

  And that was troubling. It suggested knowledge no one should possess. “I have no answer,” Britnev finally admitted.

  “Then, I think we both should be on guard.”

  “Here? In Kiev?”

  “Until we know there is no danger from outside,” Voloshyn said.

  Stating the obvious, Britnev replied, “I am always on guard.”

  “But more than normal, eh? Until this passes, or we manage to explain it.”

  Britnev tried to see the angles, figure out how Voloshyn’s alarmism could injure him, but saw nothing. “There’s never any harm in being cautious,” he agreed.

  “And we should stay in touch.”

  “As usual, comrade.”

  “Good day, then.”

  “And to you.”

  Britnev switched off the speakerphone and rocked back in his chair, scowled at the vaulted ceiling of his office for a while, and then reached out to make the first of several urgent calls.

  Boryspil International Airport, Kiev, Ukraine

  BOLAN’S FLIGHT WAS seven minutes early, which impressed him. He collected his single suitcase from the baggage claim area, then proceeded to Customs and Immigration, presenting the young, fresh-faced clerk with a passport in the name of Matthew Cooper, with a New York address. He claimed tourism as the reason for his visit, verified that he would leave the country before ninety days and said that he had nothing to declare. The kid seemed to consider opening his bags, then let it go and stamped his passport with a green-ink rectangular seal, including the date and some text Bolan couldn’t translate.

  He had booked a car while he was somewhere over the Atlantic, reserving a ZAZ Vida four-door sedan from Sixt at the airport.

  His Amex Platinum card—again, under Matt Cooper’s name—secured the ride and all available insurance, just in case. He paid extra for GPS to help him navigate, and programmed it for English once he’d found the Vida parked outside and done a walk-around to satisfy himself that it was fit for service.

  Bolan’s list of local contacts, courtesy of Stony Man, was short: two arms dealers who sometimes did work for the CIA, and an officer of the Ukrainian National Police who had collaborated with the DEA and FBI on cases where his own brass turned blind eyes to flagrant criminal activities. That contact was a corporal who had poor prospects for longevity, much less advancement, if he held his present course.

  Good news for Bolan in a pinch, but not so much for Corporal Maksym Sushko, if he delved too deeply into Bolan’s war.

  The arms dealers were simpler, strictly play for pay without a thought as to what their products might be used for. One operated in Kiev’s Darnytsia District, on the city’s southeast side, the other downtown, in Pechersk. He chose the second, for proximity to Kiev International, and programmed the address into his GPS before he left the airport’s parking lot. A mellow voice, androgynous yet somehow pleasing, steered him toward his destination, offering encouragement and guidance all the way.

  He found the address he was looking for on Naddnipryans’ke Highway, on the left bank of the Dnieper River. Proprietor Itzik Franko ran a hair salon, catering to stylish clients who had no idea that underneath the sinks where they were shampooed and the chairs where they were blow-dried lay a basement filled with lethal military wares.

  It took longer to park near Franko’s shop than to cross town and find the place, but Bolan got it done. He locked the ZAZ and walked a block back to his destination, wondering how he would lug his purchases along the crowded sidewalk in broad daylight, unobserved.

  One problem at a time.

  He reached the shop, peered through its window at a row of women sitting under hair driers resembling old-time space helmets and pushed his way inside.

  8

  Bykivnia, Kiev

  Bolan crossed the Dnieper River to meet his contact in a city of the dead. Bykivnia, situated in Kiev’s northeastern quadrant on the Chernihiv Highway, had been a thriving village until Josef Stalin’s paranoia overwhelmed him in the mid-1930s, prompting the Great Purge that included winnowing of real and imaginary traitors from the Red Army and Communist Party, coupled with repression of rural peasants. First hundreds, then thousands and tens of thousands vanished into prisons or forced labor camps, and from there to mass graves.

  One such repository for “the disappeared” was now a National Historic Memorial, the Bykivnia Graves. Most of its modern, silent occupants began their journey to Bykivnia at Lukyanivska Prison, built for 2,800 inmates and commonly jam-packed with twice that many until not-so-secret executions started up in 1936, serving the function of a steam pressure release valve. Meanwhile, at Bykivnia, mass burials first frightened off, then crowded out the living residents, until the town became a grim Ukrainian necropolis.

  Graveyards didn’t bother Bolan. Generally, they made nice, quiet meeting places with long lines of sight. He’d met often with Hal Brognola at Arlington National Cemetery, outside DC, and sometimes visited that resting place of heroes even when he wasn’t on a job for Stony Man.

  Bolan had no fear of the dead, friendly or otherwise, and if the living caused a problem for him at Bykivnia, he would be prepared.

  His shopping at the Franko hair salon had worked out well. For his primary weapon, Bolan had purchased an AK-12 assault rifle, a modern version of the classic Kalashnikov, chambered in 5.45 mm, featuring a red dot scope and laser sight; a telescoping in-line stock for better recoil control; an ambidextrous cocking lever and fire selector, the latter offering semi-auto, 3-round bursts, and full-auto fire at a top rate of six hundred rounds per minute, or a thousand rpm when set in 3-round-burst mode.

  For distance work he had a Turkish Kalekalip-Tubitak KNT-308 bolt-action sniper’s rifle, chambered in 7.62 mm and mounting a Steiner 5-25x scope with a G2B Mil-Dot illuminated reticle, including a four-post crosshair configuration. His sidearm was a Glock 18 selective fire pistol, muzzle threaded to accept a suppressor, and he’d backed that up with a Russian NR-40 combat knife boasting a black wooden handle, an S-shaped guard and a six-inch clip point blade.

  Finally, in case he had to replicate the big bang theory, Bolan had picked up an RPG-7 with a variety of rockets, and supplemented that with a dozen F1 hand grenades of Russian manufacture.

  So Bolan was ready for anything short of an air strike as he approached the Bykivnia Graves, parked the ZAZ and prepared to go EVA. He was supposed to meet his contact at a monument set in woodland, constructed like a huge rock ca
irn, surmounted by nine stylized concrete crosses. Bolan already had it spotted, with a cheap tourist map for backup, and made his way toward it on foot.

  The only question now: would he be meeting with a live contact, or adding to the local population of ghosts?

  * * *

  CORPORAL MAKSYM SUSHKO parked his unmarked Mitsubishi Lancer north of the Bykivnia Graves and walked back for his rendezvous with a stranger. The solid weight of his Fort-12 double-action pistol, cocked and locked with thirteen rounds of 9 mm ammunition, was reassuring to a point, but as he neared his destination under gray skies, with a rising wind, Sushko wished he had brought the AKSU-74 SMG from his car.

  Should he go back for it?

  Not now. It would betray weakness, if anyone was watching him, and enemies already hidden in the cemetery were more likely to attack him when his back was turned.

  Sushko trusted the contact who had sent him here, but only to a point. Full trust in anyone, these days, was very difficult to nurture, even harder to maintain. He served in the National Police under Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. Times were changing, but brutality and corruption still existed. However, Sushko knew many officers who did their best with what they had, trying to fight crime and preserve the peace.

  And he was one of them.

  What brought him here, then, meeting with a foreigner in what his superiors would likely call an act of treason?

  Corporal Sushko was fed up, disgusted by the negligence and corruption that still existed in the newly formed National Police. Winnowing out the old guard was not happening as quickly as the government had planned. He felt embarrassed by association with the officers who sold themselves to oligarchs and mobsters, turning into errand boys, bagmen, muscle and even executioners for those they should have been arresting and sending off to prison in chains. His government had repealed capital punishment in 2000, to wangle a seat on the Council of Europe, and while Sushko recognized the many abuses of execution under both Russian and post-Soviet rule, he still believed that some people needed to die.