First Team

by Larry Bond

  “He had a lead he was working on. I was under the impression he was going to tell you about it himself.”

  “Mr. Ferguson did not inform me,” she told Corrigan. Corrine felt her face flush. “Connect me with him.”

  “You can probably do that yourself.”

  “Now.”

  The line clicked. There was static, then another series of clicks. Finally, a ring. Then another, and another.

  “Ferguson,” said a voice at last.

  “Mr. Ferguson. Where the hell are you?” Corrine asked.

  “Yeah, good question,” he told her. “According to the map, the town we’re near is called Vedona, except that I think there’s supposed to be a diphthong in there somewhere. I saw a sign, but the letters were upside down. Whatever its name is, the Russians burned it to shit a year ago, so we’re more here than there.”

  “Why are you in Chechnya?”

  “Same reason you’re in Kyrgyzstan,” he told her.

  “I want you to set up some surveillance along the border area.”

  “Can’t,” he told her. His voice was so cheerful he could have been talking about a ski holiday. “Following a couple of leads with a promising source.”

  “What source would that be?”

  “You don’t really want to know,” said Ferg.

  “Tell me now.”

  “Daruyev.”

  It took her a few moments to remember who he was talking about.

  “The Chechen the Russians arrested for the dirty bomb plot? You spoke to him in jail?”

  “Kinda.”

  “You went to a Russian prison? They’re cooperating?”

  “That would probably be an overstatement,” said Ferguson.

  “You didn’t break him out of jail, did you?”

  “You know, Counselor, I’m a little tied up at the moment.”

  “You were not authorized to do that. You weren’t even supposed to be in Chechnya.”

  “Look, I have a mission,” said Ferguson. “The way this works is, I do my job until Slott tells me to stop. How I execute is up to me.”

  “I’m in charge now, not Slott.”

  “So?”

  “I’m in charge now,” she repeated.

  “My original orders haven’t been rescinded.”

  “Consider them rescinded,” she told him. “You can’t just go off on your own.”

  “Look, there’s no way you could have approved this, right? Because you’re a lawyer. I just did us a massive favor,” Ferguson told her.

  “Bullshit, Ferguson. Bullshit.”

  “I have three possible sites where these bastards may be putting together bombs, and I’m going to check them out. Then Van is going to pick me up and take me home.”

  “No. I want you to check the border.”

  “Fine. Then you explain why we didn’t check the sites two weeks from now when the bomb’s used.”

  “We’ll order satellite photos and survey the sites.”

  “I don’t know where they are yet. Besides, these people aren’t stupid. They’re checking the overflights. They probably have telescopes watching everything in the sky. Goddamn satellite tracks are posted on the Internet for Christsake. Come on, Alston. Get up to speed. You’re in the big leagues now.”

  She glanced at Rankin. He was frowning, but his eyes were pasted on the road.

  “How long will it take you to find out where the sites are?”

  “I don’t know. My informant’s a bit cagey. We should be near the first one soon. It’s just about dark. Couple of hours. He says the other two are pretty far west. Couple of days.”

  “That’s too long. I want you watching the roads. They’ll take you to the right site.”

  “OK,” said Ferguson. “What am I looking for?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Then my way’s better, right?”

  “Check out the damn sites,” said Corrine, realizing it was. She couldn’t let a pissing match over who was in charge cloud her judgment.

  She’d have to take care of that later on.

  “Thanks,” said Ferg. The line died.

  She hit the end transmit button and threw the phone at her bag on the floor.

  “He’s an asshole,” said Rankin.

  “You can say that again.”

  3

  VERONVKA, CHECHNYA

  As Ferguson turned up the road toward the mountains, an eight-wheeled Russian armored personnel carrier lumbered across the road, blocking the path ahead. Two Russian soldiers hopped from the back of the vehicle, guns ready.

  “Moment of truth, Dad,” Ferg said. “Don’t talk too much.”

  “Uh-huh,” grunted Conners.

  Ferg slowed to a stop. He’d printed himself a set of papers indicating that they were authorized to travel to an outpost at Gora Cobolgo, which was near the border farther south. The papers included a document from the interior ministry, which would suggest to the soldiers that Ferg and Conners were FSB. Daruyev, of course, was clearly Chechen, though the implication would be that he was an informer.

  “Heya,” said Ferg, rolling down the window as the soldiers approached. The nearest man aimed his rifle point-blank at Ferg’s face.

  “What’s your business here?” demanded the soldier.

  “I have a pass,” Ferg told him in Russian, though he made no effort to show it to the soldier.

  The turret on the armored personnel carrier swiveled in their direction. The APC was a BTR-70, battered by hard use in the Caucasus. The soldier pointed at Daruyev and sneered, calling him a dirty slime. It was hardly the worst thing he could say, though Ferg could feel Daruyev tensing.

  “Let’s move,” Ferg said. “It’s getting dark. I don’t want to be on the road too long.”

  The soldier laughed at him, shaking his head. He brought up the assault rifle quickly, aiming it at Daruyev’s head. Ferg smelled vodka on the soldier’s breath, and for a split second thought the idiot might actually shoot.

  He did, but only after pulling the gun upward. Then the soldier laughed again and waved at the APC, which moved back to let them through.

  “Calls himself a soldier,” grumbled Conners. “He didn’t even look at your papers.”

  “The soldiers here become quite hardened quickly,” said Daruyev. “They quickly become less than soldiers.”

  “That’s no excuse,” said Conners.

  The road narrowed as they continued upward, until gradually it was just wide enough for the KAMAZ. They started downhill after a sharp turn, and Ferg had to jab at the brakes, barely managing to control the truck on the loose gravel at the side of the road.

  “Beyond this curve,” said Daruyev, pointing ahead.

  The pass was not marked on the map, and at first it looked more like a creek bed than a roadway. But within a few yards it widened slightly, and while not exactly a highway, was easy enough to drive.

  Ferg and Conners had agreed that the Chechen might be bringing them into an ambush, and while that seemed less likely with Russians nearby, they’d already decided to stop well short of the village area so they could first scout the access the Chechen had pointed out. Ferguson found a flat area to park about a mile up from the Russian checkpoint; according to the map and Daruyev’s directions, the village sat about two miles over the ridge to the southeast.

  “OK, partner. You wait for us here,” Ferg told the Chechen. “You’re going to wait in the back.”

  “The Russians will kill me if they come,” said Daruyev.

  “We all take chances,” said Ferg. He put the hood on, then led Daruyev into the rocks a short distance from the truck. Conners rigged a crude anchor from some rope, tying it to the leg irons. Then they took a GPS plot and logged it to make sure they could find the spot again.

  “I suggest you sleep,” Ferg told him. “We’ll be back.”

  “I trust you,” said Daruyev. He held his head erect as if he could stare through the hood. Ferg pushed him gently to the ground.


  “You think you’re going to be able to keep him in America after this?” said Conners, as they picked their way quietly up the ridge. They moved parallel to but not on the road, armed with AK-74s. They’d stashed the grenade launcher and the rest of the arms near the KAMAZ and brought along one of the ignition wires to make it more difficult to steal.

  “Sure.”

  “You can’t be serious, Ferg. The Russians will throw a fit.”

  “Who’s going to tell them? Our lawyer boss?”

  “She may.”

  “Village is that way,” said Ferguson, cutting over the rocks.

  According to Daruyev, an abandoned mine sat just below the village. It was in this complex that he thought a dirty-bomb factory might be housed. It was a logical guess; not only would the shafts create a decent hideout, but they would presumably make it difficult to detect radiation.

  The southwestern slope they came around had little cover, and while they’d seen no obvious lookout posts in the satellite photo Ferguson downloaded, the Americans moved cautiously toward the village, practically crawling as they tried to make it more difficult for anyone lurking with a nightscope to pick them off.

  A deep crevice ran in a jagged line from the top of the hill above the village, as if God had scraped his finger down the mound. The crevice was about fifty yards from the closest foundation; when they reached it, the two men paused to take stock.

  “Quiet,” said Conners.

  “Yeah. Probably a bust,” said Ferguson. “We’ll leave the village alone, check out the mines.”

  “Yup.”

  They followed the crevice, picking their way as carefully as possible. The moonlight gradually grew, as if forcing its way through the clouds. After about a half hour, they came to a shallow crater twenty yards or so from one of the mine entrances.

  “Bomb hole,” said Conners.

  “I guess,” said Ferguson.

  “That’s what it is, Ferg.”

  “I’m not arguing.” The CIA officer knelt at the edge of the crater, staring at the rectangular cut in the mountain nearby.

  “All right,” he said, getting up and starting toward the hole.

  Conners squatted at the edge of the crater, leveling his gun in the direction of the mine entrance. Ferguson stopped about halfway there, then began sidestepping to the right down the incline. A narrow path ran across the slope from the hole, switching back about ten yards on his right. Ferg flexed his fingers on his gun, trying to control his breath so he could hear better. Another shallow bomb crater sat to his right, the indentation so slight he could barely make it out. The mountain gaped at him through hewn-rock jaws, blackness far darker than the night in its throat. Ferg saw something move and jerked right, just barely stopping his finger from squeezing the trigger as he realized he’d seen his own dim shadow thrown by the moon.

  Conners, waiting at the lip of the crater, saw Ferguson jerk toward the ground. He waited, knowing nothing was there and yet unsure of his knowledge at the same time. He watched Ferguson continue forward into the opening. Belatedly, he pushed himself out of the crater, trotting to keep his man covered. By the time he reached the mouth of the mine, Ferguson had disappeared.

  Conners cursed and went to one knee by the entrance. When the CIA officer didn’t reappear after a minute or so, Conners rose and stepped gingerly to his left, then his right, trying to peer inside. He couldn’t see anything. Finally, Conners whistled, softly first, then louder.

  “OK, Pops,” said Ferguson finally.

  Conners swung around—the team leader was down the slope behind him.

  “Place looks pretty empty.”

  “What the hell?” said Conners walking in the direction of Ferguson’s voice.

  “Train tracks down there. Mines are a maze. Looks empty though.”

  “You walked through them?”

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” said the CIA officer. “I’m a ghost. I just float right by.”

  “Always bustin’, Ferg. One of these days it’s going to come back to haunt you.”

  “Can’t if I’m already a ghost, right?”

  They worked their way down the slope. Several other entrances to the mine had been wrecked by explosions. The ruins of a building sat near the largest entrance, which was at the foot of the hill.

  “Think Daruyev sent us on a wild-goose chase?” asked Conners, as they climbed back up toward the village.

  “I don’t know,” said Ferg.

  “Hope that anchor I rigged up holds him.”

  “He won’t run away,” said Ferguson.

  The Russians had obliterated six of the seven buildings in the small village, but one house remained. It stood apart from the others, roof shorn off, holes where the windows once were. Wires lay in a tangle across the path leading to it; they looked like snakes in the moonlight.

  Ferguson decided to check the house out; he approached quietly, though it was clear the village as well as the mines had been abandoned years before. The interior remained intact, a table and chairs in a room visible through one of the windows. The scene struck him as something out of a bizarre dream.

  Conners waited impatiently for Ferguson, suspecting that the Chechen had lied to them to make his escape.

  “Have a turnip,” said Ferguson, looming from the shadows. He tossed one to Conners.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Turnips.”

  “Yeah, I see that,” said Conners, turning it over. It was shriveled.

  “How long you figure it takes a vegetable to rot?” Ferg asked.

  “Jesus, Ferg, how the hell do I know?”

  “That’s how long ago the Russians burned the village,” said Ferguson. “Daruyev didn’t know.”

  “Real test will be if he’s still there,” said Conners.

  “That just means he couldn’t escape,” said Ferguson.

  4

  INCIRLIK, TURKEY

  At one point in its venerable career, the Douglas DC-8 had served as an electronic warfare aircraft, mostly for training but in two instances supporting combat operations. Like many an old soldier, however, its days of glory were long gone, and the only hints of its past were a few scars on the gray-painted fuselage where sensors had once hung.

  Van Buren—who was just a few years younger than the plane—tried to stretch some of the kinks out of his back as he trotted down the steps to the Incirlik tarmac. Two members of his command team were waiting with the Hummer nearby—Major Corles, who coordinated G-2 or the intelligence aspects of the mission, and Danny Gray, an Air Force major who liaisoned with Air Force Task Group Charlie, a specially constituted command that “owned” and maintained the aircraft Van Buren would draw on for his mission. Like 777th itself, Task Group Charlie was arguably the most versatile in the Air Force, fielding everything from helicopters to Stealth fighters.

  “CentCom has some people coming over,” said Corles. “We’re going to draw on them for some logistics support. Pete’s working it out. All we need is a target, and we’re good to go.”

  Van Buren grunted. He’d spoken to Ferg an hour or so earlier; the officer said he had three sites to check out, and one was bound to be golden.

  That was Ferg; always the optimist. But if he did find something, they had to be ready to hit it right away. At the same time, they had to plan an exfiltration in case he didn’t; he had a valuable source for debriefing back at Guantanamo.

  The others updated him on the situation there as the truck sped toward the hangar that had been appropriated to house their unit temporarily. Much of what they said was now routine, and Van Buren’s mind drifted back to his lunch with Dalton. The lure of the job—the lure of the money—continued to tease him; he hadn’t gotten much sleep on the flight over though the plane had a special bunk for that purpose.

  He was thinking of James, and what he might owe his son. A good college education, certainly.

  He could get that if he applied to West Point. Van Buren realized on th
e plane that they’d never discussed that; in fact, he had no idea where his boy wanted to go to school—or even if he did at all. They hadn’t discussed much of anything about his future, except for baseball.

  The realization that he didn’t know what his son wanted shocked him. It was possible, probably even likely, that James didn’t know himself. But as his father, Van Buren realized he had a duty to find out. He wanted to pick up the phone and call him, but of course he couldn’t; he hadn’t even been able to do that while he was in the States.

  If he wanted to go to Harvard, what then?

  What would keep him from taking Dalton’s job? The colonel himself? The thrill of getting shot at?

  Van Buren just barely kept himself from laughing out loud—getting shot at was no thrill, though there was a great deal to be said for having survived being shot at. He did love the action, the adrenaline pumping in your chest. But he personally hadn’t been under fire for quite some time, and in truth that was the way the Army wanted it. Colonels, even Special Forces colonels, weren’t supposed to put their noses on the firing line.

  Planning a battle, helping run it—that was an incredibly difficult and important job, the sort of thing only a very few men could do, and even fewer could do well.

  But adrenaline was part of the reason he was here. If there was an operation, he was going to be in the thick of it, and no one could tell him not to be.

  Except maybe his son.

  “We should have F-117s available, if needed,” Gray was saying. “I’m a little sketchy on when we can get them over here, though.”

  Van Buren snapped upright. No one who worked for him should be sketchy about anything.

  “We’ll get everything crystal clear,” he told the others. “Everything.”

  There was a bit more snap in his voice than he’d intended, and the others responded with studied silence.

  5

  GURJEV, KAZAKHSTAN

  Guns waited in the front of the basement cafe near the center of town while Massette called Corrine to update her. The server’s Russian had an accent Guns wasn’t familiar with, but he’d nonetheless managed to order tea and sandwiches. He wasn’t exactly sure what was between the bread, but was so hungry it didn’t matter. By the time Massette came back Guns had already cleared his own plate and was eying Massette’s food.