Hard Passage
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….
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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 didnât 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 âgreater goodâ 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.
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.
âJohn Quincy Adams
(1767â1848)
There are those who say what I do takes courage. The thing is, fighting alone takes skill. Courage is a willingness to persevereâto never give up fighting for whatâs right even when the odds are stacked against you.
âMack 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
âIâm freezing, Leo!â Sergei Cherenko said.
Leonid Rostov looked at his friend with dismay and tried not to let Cherenko see him shiver. A biting, icy windâusual for February in St. Petersburgâcut 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.
âWhy canât we just go in there?â Cherenko demanded.
Rostov removed his hands from inside his coat long enough to blow into them, and said, âBecause it would be the fastest way to getting our throats cut.â
Cherenkoâs cheeks reddened more. âBut they could not possibly know we are here!â
âShush!â Rostov scolded him. âKeep your voice down, Sergei. Do you want to die where you stand?â
What Cherenko took for paranoia, Rostov knew to be prudence. Recent violence had increased against those who betrayed the Sevooborot Molodjozhnyâalso known as the SMJâand Rostov didnât feel like becoming another of their statistics. Many had attributed the violent outbreaks against foreign immigrantsâparticularly those of Arabic heritageâto the works of the Sevooborot. In truth, the youthful revolutionaries couldnât have cared less about the immigration problems in Russia. The fascists and social purists were responsible for most of that carnage, and their activities were confined to cities where large populations of foreign exchange students attended college, Moscow being one example.
Rostov and Cherenko had been members in good standing with the Sevooborot until two weeks earlier. Rostov had no trouble with the violence perpetrated by his comrades, even that against locals, but he didnât believe it was wise to involve outsiders in the great undertaking Sevooborot was about to embark on. When he made his opinion known to other members they betrayed him to the leadership, and before long he received an ultimatum to immediately and unequivocally renounce his claims or suffer penalties. Rostov refused and they forced him out, along with Cherenko. Cherenko, who had never done any wrong, became a sacrificial lamb solely because of his friendship and history with Rostov. The warning had come unbidden from a few men inside the group sympathetic to Rostov and Cherenko. The pair had been awakened in the dead of night, then rushed sleepy-eyed through the cold and crunching snow to a waiting automobile.
Two weeks passed and the safehouse where Rostov and Cherenko had been staying was compromised. With the help of his girlfriendâs connections in her job with a local government office in St. Petersburg, Rostov and Cherenko managed to contact the American government with a plea for asylum and immunity in trade for information about a plot against the United States.
Now they stood directly across the street from the small hotel where Peace Corps volunteers met. Among the group was a pair of undercover agents with forged documents that would get Rostov and Cherenko out of Russia and into the United States. Neither man really had a plan for what he would do after that, but for the moment the most important thing was to make contact without detection by their former colleagues. The Sevooborot had eyes and ears everywhere.
