First Team [First Team 01]

by Larry Bond

  She checked her watch; the flight north had taken less time than Corrigan had predicted, and she realized she was probably just a little early. Still, she wanted to call him and see, so she ducked into a restroom nearby. But it was a private facility, with an attendant hovering near the sink. She tipped the woman and went back out without using the facilities or the proffered toilet paper.

  Before she could get her bearings in the large room, a man in a long leather jacket stepped in front of her. Corrine took a step around him but he put his hand out to stop her.

  “Off,” she said sharply in English, brushing his hand away.

  “Ms. Alston, I’m your pilot,” said the man.

  Corrine could tell there was a problem and didn’t even bother using the authentication sequence Corrigan had supplied. She started to spin away. But as she did, a short, balding man in a brown polyester coat blocked her way.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Alston,” he told her in English. “My name is Dolov. I am with the Federal Security Bureau. You will come with me, please.”

  “Excuse me, I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said Corrine, though the man’s English had been excellent.

  “You will come with me,” he said calmly.

  “Are you putting me under arrest?”

  “That depends on what comes from our conversation,” said Dolov, in a way that suggested jail might be the most desirable of the possible outcomes.

  ~ * ~

  11

  SOUTHERN CHECHNYA

  Conners jumped to his feet when he heard what sounded like the faint echo of gunfire.

  “Up, up,” he told the Chechen. He kicked his shoes when he didn’t move.

  Daruyev groaned, then turned over and got up slowly.

  “Let’s go,” said Conners. Cursing, he told Daruyev to walk ahead of him. They had to take the trail; there was just no way he could cover his prisoner on the slope, even if Daruyev had been able to climb.

  Conners debated whether it would just be easier to kill the Chechen and be done with it.

  It took twenty minutes to get to the stop below the ridge where they’d thought the lookout was; by the time they got there the sun was starting to rise. As they came close to the lookout spot Conners grabbed the Chechen by the back, using him as a shield.

  “Call them out,” Conners said.

  “Call who?” said Daruyev.

  “Your bastard friends.”

  “These are not my comrades.”

  “Call them.” Conners nudged his rifle against Daruyev’s neck.

  The Chechen whistled. There was no answer.

  “Again,” said Conners. “Use words.”

  “They wouldn’t.”

  “Call them.”

  Daruyev called in a calm voice that he had escaped from the Russians and needed help. But there was no response.

  The mountain fell off too sharply on the left to give an ambusher a place to hide, and the ridge on the right angled away, but Conner still felt exposed. He pushed his prisoner forward; after twenty yards or so he saw another spot up a hundred yards farther where an outlook post could be hidden. They backtracked; Conners peered over the side and decided they could skirt the position by climbing down to a rift that skirted the rocks northward.

  “We go down here,” Conners told his prisoner.

  “That’s going to be hard.”

  “Tough.”

  “Take the gun from my back.”

  “No,” Conners told him, pushing him to start. As he started to follow, there was a noise behind him; he whirled, gun ready.

  “Relax, Dad, it’s only me,” said Ferguson, appearing on the slope.

  “Ferg, where the fuck have you been?” said Conners.

  “Waking sleeping dogs,” said Ferguson. “Quiet. There’s a pair of guards up the trail that way about a half mile. I fell before, and they started shooting up the place.”

  “I heard them.”

  “They didn’t bother looking for me,” said Ferguson. He’d banged his shins and scratched the side of his face in the fall, but otherwise was in decent shape. “I thought half the mountain was going to come down on top of me.”

  “Did it?” asked Conners.

  Ferguson laughed. “I’m still here, ain’t I?” He pointed a finger at Daruyev. “You were going to make him climb down the other side there?”

  “I didn’t know where the hell you were.”

  “So you were going down to the bottom?”

  “I figured that cutback ahead could be covered. I could get around it down there.”

  “Sure, if you have a week.”

  “Don’t bust my chops, Ferg. I thought you were dead.”

  Ferguson smiled at him, then pointed to the way he had come. “There’s a ledge here. It’s narrow, but if you don’t slip, it’ll take you across the road. Then we can get up and across and check out the base.”

  “If it’s there,” said Conners.

  “Don’t be such a pessimist.” Ferguson checked the grenade launcher on Daruyev’s back. He angled it slightly, so the weight would help anchor him to the mountain. “Lean in,” he told him. “You walk just behind me. If you get scared, say so.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “No shit?” said Ferguson, starting out. “Come on. If we hurry, we can wave for the satellite when it comes overhead.”

  ~ * ~

  12

  AKTAU, RUSSIA

  Corrine sat in the small room, waiting for Dolov to reappear. She had her lawyer face on, assuming that she was being observed, and well aware that anything she said might tell the FSB considerably more than she wished. She sat alone in the room for more than an hour, head up, eyes straight, knowing that Dolov’s absence was part of the interrogation process.

  Finally, the door swung open. Dolov and the woman who had checked her pocketbook earlier entered. The FSB officer apologized for keeping her waiting, saying that he had to locate a female guard so he could talk to her.

  “There’s no need for that,” said Corrine.

  “I have to follow the law,” said Dolov. He brushed his hand across his scalp, where he was going prematurely bald. He squinted, then bobbed his head; finally he put his finger to his chin. “The airplane that landed to pick you up—and we do know it’s here for you, Ms. Alston—is contracted to a company that works with the American CIA.”

  Corrine considered what to do. As an attorney, her advice to a client would be to say nothing. But would that help her now?

  “Well I’m not with the CIA,” she said.

  Dolov clearly did not believe her. Corrine realized she needed to find out why he’d stopped her—the fact that they thought she was a CIA officer wouldn’t ordinarily be reason to stop her, Were they just sending some sort of message, hassling a suspected agent for passing through the territory? How was the game played? She had no feel for the rules.

  She was out of her element. She was a lawyer, not a spy.

  Except that she was; her boss had made her one.

  “Do you always accuse Americans of working for the CIA?” she said finally.

  “Two days ago, a very dangerous man was broken out of prison near Groznyy,” said Dolov. “The CIA was involved.”

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “But what does that have to do with me?”

  Dolov said nothing.

  Corrine realized that she had to give him something, a story he could use to justify letting her go. But saying anything meant taking a risk. If she said something that didn’t check out, he might jail her for lying. And, of course, she couldn’t say anything that would jeopardize the others or the operation.

  If you didn’t take risks, you didn’t succeed. That was what Ferguson was all about. He wasn’t a cowboy; he just existed in a system that demanded audacious risks.

  “What were you doing in Kyrgyzstan?” asked Dolov. His voice was more aggressive than before; he wanted results, and he would modify his tactics until he got them.

  “Mr. Dolov, perh
aps we should be honest with each other,” she said.

  “I would appreciate it,” said Dolov.

  Corrine turned to the guard. “You’ll leave us, please,” she told the woman.

  The guard looked at Dolov, who nodded.

  “There is a train of radioactive waste, heading toward Kyrgyzstan. When it left Buzuluk, there were five boxcars that were not part of the removal operation. Now there are four,” she said.

  “Boxcars?”

  “They must have some way of slipping one or two of the waste casks into the other cars. The regular shipments proceed untouched. They’re heavily guarded and all accounted for.”

  “How do you know?” he said. Only now was it clear to her that he was indeed interested.

  “I followed it. You didn’t think I turned up in Kyrgyzstan by accident, did you?”

  “From Buzuluk?”

  “Near there.”

  “Why would you follow the train if you’re not CIA?”

  “Certain organizations are interested in what happens to the waste.”

  “Such as?”

  “Greenpeace, among others.”

  “If I run your name against one of our databases, you won’t appear?”

  “No.”

  “And I suppose the aircraft that has come to meet you wasn’t hired by the CIA?”

  “I have no idea. It may very well be. I daresay that the Russian government has paid for some of our arrangements as well. Radioactive waste is an important problem for all mankind.”

  Dolov remained convinced that she was lying, but the missing boxcar was nonetheless a matter of great interest.

  “Where did the waste go?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be leaving,” she said. “It simply disappeared soon after entering Kyrgyzstan.”

  “Were Chechens involved?” he asked.

  “Chechens?” She shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. I just know it’s gone.”

  Dolov began rocking gently on his heels. Radiological waste was an important issue, more so because of the escape of the prisoner. The woman’s information was extremely valuable—assuming it checked out.

  Corrine had given Dolov the story he needed, but she now had to give him a reason to let her go.

  “What prisoner did you lose?” she asked. “And where was he lost?”

  She saw the inspector’s face flicker with fear for a brief second as he connected the two events. It went from that to a blank officiousness. He was worried that she really was from Greenpeace and that he had told her too much.

  And then he smiled.

  “Let me make a phone call. Perhaps our misunderstanding can disappear.”

  ~ * ~

  13

  CHECHNYA—SEVERAL HOURS LATER

  Unobstructed runway. Two large buildings, hangar-type, at the north end. I don’t see any people, though.”

  Ferguson shifted around as he spoke. He couldn’t see the top of the peak opposite him, so he had no idea what defenses might be hidden there. The mountain also shadowed whatever was directly below him on the western side of the base, and some of the road to the northeast.

  “Here’s something,” he said, as a vehicle emerged from one of the two buildings; it looked like an old-fashioned bread van. Another followed, and another and another. They drove out to three different points surrounding the airfield.

  “Maybe they’re radar trucks,” suggested Van Buren, who was listening along with his intelligence staff to Ferguson’s briefing. “The satellites have cleared overhead, so it’s possible that they drive out there once they’re gone.”

  “I don’t see any antennas or radar dishes,” reported Ferguson. “I don’t see any missiles either.”

  Van Buren’s G-2 captain began explaining that the vans might contain a short-range, low-power radar, which would give them some early warning of approaching helicopters. Another officer said that it was possible that the rebels were using the mountain itself as the base for tropo-scatter antennas, with the transmission portions relatively short and camouflaged. Such a system would be difficult to see, though it was likely to leave gaps in the coverage.

  “I don’t know,” said Ferguson. “Maybe have somebody look at the satellite photos again. Can you get a U-2 in?”

  “Russians’ll shoot it down in a heartbeat,” said Van Buren.

  “Could they hide missiles in the vans?” asked Ferguson.

  “Shoulder-launched missiles, sure.”

  “Hang tight,” said Ferguson, as a new set of vehicles appeared from the building. These were tracked ZSU-23-4 Shilka antiair guns, sometimes called “Zoos,” old but reliable flak cannons that could fill the air with shells. Their altitude was limited, but they were deadly against helicopters and low-flying planes. Parachuters would be massacred.

  The southeastern end of the base dropped off sharply about twenty yards after the end of the runway. The eastern side of the complex south of the buildings was relatively flat, with a dirt road but no aircraft access ramp. Trenches flanked the runway for about three-quarters of its length. The runway itself was rather narrow and pockmarked with small craters at the sides. The Air Force people had already looked at the sat photos and decided they could get a Herky Bird in there and out.

  “I have four F-117As,” Van Buren said. “We can take out four targets—the vans and one of the antiair emplacements. But every shot has to count.”

  “Better to take out the guns and jam any radar on the way in,” suggested one of his captains. “Then we target the missiles when we’re on the ground.”

  “What if they have heat-seekers in them?”

  “We go in with flares and a decoy.”

  “Still risky.”

  “Why don’t you have the Stealth fighters take out the guns and two of the vans,” said Ferg. “Conners and I hit the last van ourselves. We link up near the buildings. We can work it into deck, like we’re the real attack. We have a grenade launcher. We have to get down there anyway to confirm this is the place. So we call in, attack starts, we get the van and move on.”

  “That might work,” said Van Buren. “You have readings?”

  “Not yet,” said Ferguson.

  “We’re doing a lot of work here, Ferg. It’s going nowhere without real data. Even then, we have to get Alston’s OK.”

  “It’s got to be the place, Van.”

  “Fergie?”

  “It’s all right, Van. You guys just get ready to hit it. I’ll get the numbers.”

  “Don’t get so close they induct you into their army.”

  “I hear they have a hell of a retirement plan,” said Ferguson, snapping off the phone.

  ~ * ~

  14

  AKTAU, RUSSIA

  Dolov did not reappear. Instead, a short, frumpy-looking woman in her midthirties came into the room dragging Corrine’s bag. The woman said absolutely nothing, staring at Corrine as she checked her things. Apparently she was free to go.

  The terminal was by then full of people. Food vendors were hawking wares from boxes and small pushcarts; she bought a bottle of mineral water and a sandwich, which she gulped down while walking back toward the Specials door. As she approached the office, a short man in a leather coat pushed away from the wall and came toward her. Corrine eyed him warily, not sure now who or what to trust. “Ms. Alston?” “Yes.”

  “A friend sent me to get you,” said the man. “My name’s Tru. I’ve been waiting.”

  He was an American, or at least his accent was; it had the brassy tone of the New York area in it.

  “What friend?” she asked.

  “Jack?” he said, more a question than an answer.

  “What’s the weather like?” she said, starting the authentication sequence.

  “Warm. Visibility at five miles.”

  “And getting better?”

  “Probably not.”

  “That’s good enough.”

  “I hope so.”

  She swallowed the last of her water, then threw the bottle
in a garbage can as she followed him toward a hall at the side of the airline counters. She hesitated, then tossed her bag, including her sat phone and wallet, in there as well.