First Team [First Team 01]

by Larry Bond

  “You are Dr. Ziest’s patient,” she said, her voice a question.

  “Allegedly.”

  The nurse gave him an odd look, then led the way to a small room dominated by an examining table and a large medical cabinet. A scale sat opposite the lone chair in the room.

  “You reschedule a lot,” she said.

  “Classic doctor avoidance syndrome,” said Ferguson, stepping on the scale-and adjusting his weight. He’d lost two pounds since his last visit.

  “Dr. Zeist is away,” said the nurse, writing down the weight.

  “That’s what they said. Should we check my height? Maybe I’ve grown.”

  “Please disrobe.”

  “Completely?”

  Ferg said it so innocently that the nurse didn’t know how to react. He started to undo his belt.

  “Dr. Yollum will be in shortly,” she said, retreating.

  “I’ll wait.”

  Ferguson took off his shirt but left his pants and shoes on; he knew from experience what the exam would entail. There was a large chart on the door about the different types of diabetes, and an article from Runner’s Magazine plastered to the wall beneath a piece of plastic. The article—which Ferguson had read on his last visit— hailed the possibilities of running as a therapy for insulin-independent diabetes. It was long on feel-good pabulum and short on actual medical science, but had exactly the sort of cheerful tone that most doctors, including Zeist, liked to greet their patients with.

  Yollum—Zeist’s junior partner—was either too far behind schedule or too inexperienced to offer it. He rapped at the door, then whipped it open, reading Ferg’s chart and swirling inside with the ferocity of one of the SF team members on a hostage rescue. He opened the folder and slapped it down on the cabinet, smoothing it over and tapping the top page before even looking for his patient.

  “They gave you a hell of a dose of radiation,” said Yollum, still looking at the chart. He stood about five-three, and his face was out of proportion to his body— large and square and red, as if he’d washed it with a mild acid before coming to work.

  “Yeah. I still don’t need a light to read a book,” said Ferguson.

  “Dr. Zeist is away.”

  “All I really need is the prescription updated. I’m almost out of the sheets I stole.”

  “You really shouldn’t joke about things like that,” said Yollum.

  “How do you know it’s a joke?”

  “It says in your chart. Double funny bones.”

  “Yuk.”

  “I do my best.” Yollum took his stethoscope and began doing an exam. Ferg flinched as the metal touched his chest—his recent adventures had left him with several large bruises. He was better off than Guns, though—despite his protests, the Marine had been shunted to a Navy hospital ten minutes after a corpsman took a look at him at Guantanamo.

  “You have a number of contusions,” said Yollum diplomatically. “Scratches on your face.”

  “Bar fights are my hobby,” said Ferguson.

  “Cough please.”

  Ferg choked, proving he didn’t have a hernia. Yollum went back to his chart. “You’ve lost weight.”

  “Aerobics.”

  “Mmmm.” Yollum started hunting through the papers. “Your lab work doesn’t seem to be here.”

  Ferg stood and reached into his back pocket. “This is a copy,” he said. “They sometimes get lost.”

  Yollum, embarrassed, took the sheet.

  “Don’t sweat it, Doc. I’m used to the routine. That’s why I had a copy sent to me.”

  Yollum took the lab report, pushing the papers back to see the details of his temporary patient’s history. Ferg watched him stop at the pathology report, his nose twitching slightly as he read the size of the tumor removed from his thyroid—4.2 centimeters—and the fact that it had spread beyond the thyroid capsule. He moved on, pushing through the reports from the radiologist on the full body scans he’d already referred to, hunting for the stack of lab results, which tracked the levels of thyroid replacement hormone in Ferguson’s bloodstream.

  “You’re a little low,” said Yollum.

  “Yeah. Sometimes I forget to take the second pill.”

  “How often?”

  Ferguson shrugged. If he knew how often, he wouldn’t miss it. He thought it worked out to about once a week on average, but there were probably times he missed it more often. Once in a while he missed his morning dose as well, which was much higher; there was always hell to pay for that.

  “Dr. Zeist has you on an unusual protocol,” said Yollum. “T-3 and T-4. We usually just do T-4.”

  Replacement hormone therapy—necessary for someone like Ferguson who had had his thyroid removed—had the aura of an exact science. It had been done for many, many years; in fact, the replacement hormone drugs were so old they predated key FDA requirements. But the truth was that the exact process of how the different hormones worked in the body was still shrouded in mystery. Though the body converted T-4 into T-3, many patients—including Ferguson—reported that they felt considerably better on a combination. Only a few doctors believed them and were willing to experiment with different dosages; Zeist was one.

  “Thing is, Doc, I have a meeting I have to catch. I’d appreciate it if you could write me the prescription. If you want to up the T-3 slightly, I can try it.”

  “You interpreted the lab numbers.”

  “Dr. Zeist showed me how,” said Ferg. It was a lie—Ferguson had done his own research, and in any event it wasn’t rocket science—but Ferguson knew the fib would make Yollum feel better.

  “I’m not saying the protocol is bad. But if you’re having trouble remembering to take the second pill, it’s going to do more harm than good. The replacement drugs are also a kind of chemotherapy for you, and considering the size of the tumor and the scans—”

  “I know what the statistics are,” said Ferg. He tried smiling, but he was starting to run low on patience.

  Yollum clearly had a lecture on the tip of his tongue about how slow-moving his type of thyroid cancer was, how even someone diagnosed with Stage IV had a chance of surviving five years after surgery and even beyond—but he stowed it at the obvious tone of impatience.

  “I’ll write the prescription.”

  “I need the lab report back,” said Ferguson. “I found it useful to hold on to copies of my stuff.”

  “Of course. I’ll have the office staff make a copy. Bob, you’re due for another scan.”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you want to set that up now?”

  Did he want to? No. The scan itself was a major hassle—you drank a bunch of radioactive iodine and lay in a claustrophobic machine while a special camera climbed over your body and hunted for stray thyroid cells, which by definition would be cancerous. Then you tried not to get close to anyone for the next few days, since you were radioactive. But that was the easy part—in order to do the scan with a high degree of accuracy, you had to go off the thyroid medicine for several weeks. It was like signing up for clinical depression.

  “How about the shots?” said Ferguson, suggesting an easier protocol.

  “You really have to have a clean scan first, usually two. Maybe next time.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Ferg. He wasn’t sure whether to bother with the scan or not; according to all the studies, further treatment didn’t affect survival rates, which pretty much meant they were useless.

  “You probably want to discuss it with Dr. Zeist. Come into my office, and I’ll write the prescriptions for you. Government worker, huh?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Ferg, pulling on his shirt. “Pay sucks, but you can’t beat the health plan.”

  ~ * ~

  4

  CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA—LATER THAT DAY

  To get into the Cube, Corrine Alston had to run a gamut of security checks, then stand in a small booth that looked a little like a stainless-steel shower stall that checked for high-tech transmitting devices or bugs. Corri
ne swore she could feel her skin tingle as she stood in the device, and when she came out her ears were ringing.

  Her guide walked her down the hall of the unpretentious building, which was housed in a corner of an industrial complex not far from the Beltway in Virginia. They were on the ground floor, but the elevator they entered went in only one direction—down. When it stopped, they walked down another hall, past several locked doors, then to a stairwell guarded by two Special Forces soldiers in civilian clothes. This stairwell led down to the operations floor, where a secure conference room and a somewhat smaller operations room used to communicate with SF units and officers in the field was located.

  Corrine’s ID and thumbprint were scanned at the top of the stairs. She was then waved ahead without her guide, who lacked the extremely limited clearance needed to descend the steps.

  After such a variety of high-tech precautions, the room itself was remarkably plain. There was a whiteboard at the front, an old-fashioned projector, and a small computer projector. A laptop sat on one of the two tables; the man in charge of the briefing used it to project slides onto the whiteboard. The only person in the room that Corrine recognized was Daniel Slott, the deputy director of operations for the CIA. He sat with his arms folded on his lap at one corner of the first table, his gray-speckled goatee shimmering with the reflected light from the computer slide projector.

  Slott introduced Corrine to the others, stating her title and adding that she had just returned from interviewing the prisoner at Guantanamo. He gave no explanation for her presence. Though his tones were politic and soothing, the audience would have had to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to realize he resented her being there.

  “Just to give a little background on how serious the matter is,” said Slott, turning to Jack Corrigan, “could you please review the slides on reactor waste.”

  “Sure thing,” said Corrigan.

  Slott had told him they’d be spoon-feeding a guest from the White House, and so he had dusted off his full set of PowerPoint slides on the waste at Buzuluk. He liked the second slide especially—it showed a pile of reactor rod assemblies on the ground that reminded him of the Tinker Toys he’d had as a youth—except that these were glowing on a clandestinely exposed gamma-ray-sensitive film.

  Corrigan quickly went through the background on the experimental reactors built by the Russians and moved on to the waste material stored at the site. A typical reactor fuel load would consist of anywhere from ten to nearly two hundred fuel elements or assemblies; in general these were rods (usually though not always clad in zirconium) that contained uranium oxide pellets. A high percentage of the uranium in these pellets—3 to 4 percent, similar to the amount in Western commercial operations— were 235U. Once inserted in the reactor, they were made to undergo a chain reaction that produced a number of by-products, including weapons-grade plutonium.

  Not all of the reactors were configured as the ones indicated in his slides, Corrigan hastened to tell Corrine, but this footnote led to another slide indicating how dangerous plutonium was as waste—ten-millionths of a gram would cause cancer if inhaled.

  Corrigan clicked into another series of slides on the waste by-products that had resulted from the experiments and reactor production. He especially liked the strontium-90 slide, since it illustrated how strontium could replace calcium in bones. The slides explained that the fuel assemblies themselves became potent radiation emitters, as the cobalt, iron, manganese, and nickel in the rods as well as the stainless steel interacted and transformed during the process. He touched briefly on the difference between alpha waves, which to be honest Corrigan himself didn’t totally understand.

  Alpha radiation—actually a helium atom—was easily stopped in the environment, though once in the body it could do very serious damage because it tended to ionize or remove electrons from other elements. Beta radiation in high doses could cause burns; it was emitted during radioactive decay, and, like alpha radiation, was usually a threat once a substance containing it entered the body. Gamma radiation was a problem on a different order—its high-energy, short-wavelength energy penetrated just about anything, even several feet of concrete. Though often compared to X-rays, in general, gamma radiation occupied a different part of the energy spectrum.

  The effect of the different radiation-producing materials varied greatly, depending not only on the type of radiation emitted but how the radiation was “received” by the body. Massive external doses could kill immediately, but effects of smaller doses over time were more complex. Strontium in the body, for example, would replace calcium in the bone. There it could cause bone tumors and leukemia. Irradiated iodine might cause thyroid cancer, and on and on, as the slides indicated, documenting radiation amounts and the damage likely at various distances and exposures.

  Ferguson had seen these slides several weeks before, and so he turned his attention to Miss Alston, the president’s personal counsel and unofficial babysitter. According to Slott, the secretary of state had gone ballistic when he found out they snatched Kiro without running the notion by him or the Russians, and obviously Miss Alston was the result.

  Corrine was good-looking—Slott’s briefing there hadn’t done her much justice— but that only made Ferguson resent her presence even more. She was obviously just another broad who’d slept her way to the top. She came complete with one of those riches-to-riches princess stories the media loved—parents in the movie biz, who dumped their daughter East to GW and then Columbia Law while she was still a teenager, mixing a little righty and lefty influence together. Among the other things the media liked to report on was the marathon she’d run at eighteen.

  Ferg lost interest in her as the analysts took over and reviewed the most pertinent intercepts and satellite data. Using Kiro’s information as a lead, the NSA had helped them locate a tanker currently being refitted in Bandar ‘Abbas, Iran. The ship was designed to transport ethylene, which meant it had a large tentlike structure covering the main deck—the perfect place to put dirty nuclear waste.

  At 89.9 meters long, the ship had held 2960 cubic meters of fuel before entering dry dock for refitting. Drawing from 2.5 to 3.5 meters, it was designed to navigate on inland waterways as well as the ocean—which meant it could sail upriver to its target. Explosives were stored near the ship, another vital ingredient for a dirty bomb, since the material would have to be spread out over a wide area. The analysts were sure this had to be the dirty-bomb ship—if indeed there was one.

  “You want to talk to us about the ship, Ferg?” said Slott.

  “Straight operation,” he said. “We go in, we observe, we blow it up.”

  Colonel Van Buren, sitting next to him, rolled his eyes. He knew Ferguson was just busting balls—they’d discussed the operation at great length over a scrambled phone as he flew to the States for the briefing. Van Buren had plans for a full-scale assault—two borrowed SEALs units along with his entire Special Forces Army Group, Stealth fighters, and a pair of AC-130 gunships. But he and Ferg had agreed that the initial operation would consist of only a small force. The Team, led by Ferg, would be deposited on shore by the SEALs so they could reconnoiter with the help of local agents. The larger operation would have to wait for hard evidence.

  But Van Buren knew Ferguson couldn’t resist tweaking noses. He had obviously already taken a dislike to Ms. Alston. The colonel watched her hackles rise; she had no reason to take the CIA officer lightly.

  “You can’t blow it up if it’s loaded with radioactive waste,” said Corrine.

  Ferguson leaned over to give her a condescending smile. “Why not?”

  “Because of the collateral damage,” she said. “The whole ship—a tanker—filled with radioactive waste?”

  “It wouldn’t all be waste,” said Corrigan. “There’d be a lot of explosives to spread it around.”

  “Why should we care?” said Ferg, bothered by the know-it-all tone in her voice. Did she seriously think he hadn’t considered the consequences of the operation o
r his actions?

  “It is a legitimate concern,” said Slott. “But I don’t think Bob is serious about blowing it up. As for the composition of the waste—”

  “Hey, shit happens,” said Ferguson, sliding back in his seat.

  “Ferg and the Team will check the situation out,” said Van Buren, realizing he had to save Ferguson from himself. “Very small group, the way we usually operate. We scout it, then we do what’s appropriate. We’ll have several options. I have a plan already.”

  “Van’s right,” said Ferguson.

  “According to the analysts, it’s possible that they’re staging the waste from a different site, or that this is only one part of the operation,” said Slott. “If the waste were already at the ship, we think we’d have picked up some readings from different sensors we’ve had in the waterway. We have got some other targets to look at outside of the port before we look at the ship.”