Road Of Bones. Don Pendleton

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      CHAPTER FOUR

      First thing, they ditched the sedan their enemies had seen, however briefly, at the airport. Its replacement was a four-door Lada Priora, stolen from the Kruzhalo shopping center along with a spare set of license plates to complete the short-term disguise. That done, when they were relatively safe, Anuchin briefed Bolan on what lay ahead once they crossed the Lena River.

       “They will be watching the ferry,” she cautioned. “They know that we have no way out now, except overland, which means the Kolyma Highway.”

       “I don’t fancy a swim with the gear,” Bolan told her.

       “No, that can’t be done. It’s too far and too cold, even this time of year. We’ll require a small charter to take us across. Leave the car in Yakutsk and make other arrangements in Nizhny Bestyakh.”

       “What kind of arrangements?” Bolan asked.

       “Something rugged, for the road ahead,” Anuchin said. “If we had a Lada Niva we could try it, but I think a motorcycle is more suitable. Also much easier to find on such short notice. You can ride on two wheels?”

       “Not a problem,” Bolan said. “But what’s this thing about a road of bones?”

       “Officially,” she said, “it’s the M56 Kolyma Highway, linking Yakutsk and Nizhny Bestyakh to Magadan on the Sea of Okhotsk. The distance is something over two thousand kilometers, close to thirteen hundred miles by your reckoning. Those who live along the highway call it Trassa—the Route. They need no other name, since it is literally the only road in the district.”

       “Where do the bones come in?” Bolan asked.

       “Stalin ordered construction of the highway in 1932, using inmates from the Sevvostlag, the Northeastern Corrective Labor Camps. Work continued using gulag labor until 1953, when the highway reached Magadan—a labor camp itself, in those days—and Stalin, at last, had the decency to die. We call the highway Road of Bones for those who died while building it and were buried beneath or beside it. How many? Who knows?”

       “So, it’s a straight shot on this road from Nizhny Bestyakh to Magadan?” Bolan asked.

       “Hardly straight,” Anuchin replied. “There are rivers to cross, with or without bridges, and parts of the so-called highway are crumbling away. Between us and Magadan there are two villages, Tomtor and Oymyakon. Both claim to be the coldest place on Earth, in winter. This time of year, they’re simply…chilly.”

       “So, aside from special wheels, we’ll need new clothes,” Bolan observed.

       “And camping gear, if we can carry it.”

       “One bike or two?” Bolan asked.

       Looking embarrassed, Anuchin said, “I’ve never driven one.”

       “Okay,” Bolan replied. “That limits how much we can pack, keeping the weapons.”

       Bolan tried working on the calculation in his head. A trip of thirteen hundred miles on normal roads, with stops for gas and minimal rest, should take about one day at a steady speed of sixty miles per hour. Slow it down for the terrain that Anuchin had described, however, and the clock went out the window. Add the fact that they would almost certainly be hunted, once her enemies—now Bolan’s—found out where they’d gone, and you were looking at a road trip on Route 666.

       A little slice of hell on Earth.

       The soldier considered it and asked, “When do we start?”

      * * *

      “I’M WONDERING,” Stephan Levshin said, “whether any of you need to be alive.”

       The five men facing him looked nervous, rightly so, since they had failed at what was meant to be a relatively simple task. Although he stood alone before them, and all five of them were armed, Levshin was unafraid. These so-called soldiers were disgraced and dared not lift a hand against the man who pulled their strings.

       When his remark produced no comment, only shifting eyes and feet, he said, “You had the targets literally in your sights, but let them slip away. How does that happen? Does anyone care to explain your failure?”

       Grudgingly, the leader of the party—Nikolay Milescu—answered. “They went to a charter company,” he said. “We spotted them outside the terminal, but not in time. When we moved in, they drove away.”

       “Alerted by the clumsiness of your approach,” СКАЧАТЬ