by Larry Bond
“See if Corrigan can get us a map of the place from the library,” Ferguson told him.
The CIA had an extensive database stocked with information about foreign buildings, kept for just such emergencies.
“We’ll see what the bugs tell us, what else is going on. We’ll get him,” Ferguson told Rankin.
“When?”
“Sooner or later, Skippy.”
“Don’t fuckin’ call me Skippy.”
“Then don’t be such an asshole.”
“Hey, Ferg, Corrigan wants to talk to you,” said Conners, handing him his phone. “They already have information from the phone tap. They’re charging Guns with Sheremetev’s murder.”
6
KVRGYZSTAN, MIDNIGHT THE SAME DAY
Their rules of engagement dictated a nonlethal takedown, which made the whole thing much more dangerous and a bigger pain in the ass than it would have been.
Not that it wouldn’t have been a big pain in the ass anyway.
While Rankin set some M118 C4 block charges at the front of the building, Ferg and Conklin put their knives to the rubber of all the vehicles in the area, preventing anyone from following them when they were done.
From what they could tell with their infrared sensors, there were no more than six men in the building, not counting Guns, who was being kept in one of the basement rooms along the west side. Two and sometimes three guards worked the hallway; another sat in a guardroom near the stairs. The others were up on the first floor, which only connected to the basement from the front stairwell.
Ferg crouched on his haunches, checking his watch. In his hand was a Mossburg twelve-gauge shotgun loaded with solid lead shot, its sole purpose to blow out the hinges on the door. As soon as the door was gone, he’d reach down and grab his MP-5 — his was the only lethal assault weapon on the team, a necessary backup in case things somehow got out of hand. He also had an M79 grenade launcher loaded with a special canister of tear gas to cover their exit, as well as a sawed-off Remington loaded with M1012 twelve-gauge nonlethal point target cartridges for any odd contingencies.
Conners and Rankin had Jackhammers — combat shotguns that contained ten-round cylinders or “cassettes” loaded with rubber-bullet cartridges. The twelve-gauge cartridges contained plastic-wrapped rubber cylinders that would bruise and perhaps break bones, but were not likely to kill the guards. Rankin’s gun was slung over his shoulder; in his right hand he had an M79 grenade launcher, loaded with an M1029 40 mm crowd dispersal round. Though designed to disperse a crowd, the forty-eight cartridges in the launcher would take down anyone within thirty meters. Conners also had a flash-bang — officially, an M84 stun grenade, which they would pop in as soon as the door came off to disorient the guard or guards in the hall.
All three men were wearing respirator masks with NODs; the charges would take out the electricity and lights, along with the telephone. Conners and Rankin had AN/PVS-14s, lightweight monocles that were preferred by most SF troops because of their weight and the ease of switching over to regular light. (Unlike the older AN/PVS-7, only one was strapped into the device.) Ferguson had a pair of Air-Force-issue Panoramic Night-Vision goggles, which gave him a hundred-degree field of vision. The wide angle would be more useful in the alley and leading the way out. The gear was somewhat bulkier than the others’. They were also wearing lightweight Kevlar vests.
“Ready, boys?” asked Ferg over the com system, staring at his watch.
“None of us are boys, Ferg,” said Rankin.
“Girls, excuse me. Sixty seconds.”
The charge at the front right side of the building — activated by a timer — blew about five seconds sooner than they’d planned. Ferg stepped up and took out the door hinges; as he pulled it away Conners pitched the flash-bang. A second later Rankin leapt into the hallway and unleashed the M1029.
There had been three men the hall; all were taken down by the exploding canister of rubber balls. Rankin, breathing heavily in his respirator, kicked their weapons away, moving down the hall, expecting others to burst in at any second. He pulled the CS grenade off his vest; as soon as he was close enough to get an angle on the guardroom, he tossed it inside.
Conners meanwhile was trussing the Russian guards with plastic hand restraints while Ferg pounded on the doors, yelling for Young with the aid of a loudspeaker device that fit inside his hood. He heard something at the second door, shouted at the Marine to stand clear, then brought up his submachine gun and fired out the lock. It took two kicks to get the door open. Ferg waited half a beat, then threw himself across the frame, sweeping his gun around.
The room was empty.
At the far end of the hallway in the guardroom, Rankin pumped a shell into a coughing, writhing figure on the floor in front of the bunk beds, then pulled the door to the room closed, sealing in the incapacitating gas. As he jumped back outside, something clattered down the steps at the front of the building.
Rankin hit the first man down square in the stomach, bowling him over with a shell. Bullets ricocheted down the stairwell — real bullets, which sent chips of masonry from the walls splattering into Rankin’s bulletproof vest.
“Let’s move it,” he yelled into his mike. “Get that fuckin’ Marine the hell out of bed and let’s go.”
Ferg went to the next door in the hallway, shot it open, and leapt inside. Through his viewer he saw someone coughing on the floor. He grabbed at the man’s arm, pulling him outside.
“Guns?” he asked. The man was wearing different clothes — military-style khakis — but he was the right size and shape, and he didn’t have a weapon or a belt. “Guns?”
The man coughed in reply. Ferg had to stare a moment at his profile to make sure it was his man, then began dragging him backward just as a fresh burst of automatic fire ripped down the stairwell at the front of the hall.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” said Rankin. He waited for the gunfire to stop — whoever was firing had burned the whole clip — and tossed another tear gas grenade up the stairwell. His ears felt like they’d been hit with large rocks.
This would have been a hell of a lot easier if we could just kill the bastards, Rankin thought to himself.
One of the guards on the ground near him started to move. Rankin cursed and threw himself across the hall, kicking the bastard in the head. A fresh round of bullets stuttered down the stairwell.
“Ferg? Conners? What the fuck?” he yelled.
“Yeah, I got him,” said Ferg. He left Conners to help Guns out and ran to the exit to make sure they were clear. “Time to go, boys.”
“We ain’t fuckin’ boys,” said Rankin. As soon as the rounds from above stopped, he leaned the Jackhammer around the corner and leaned on the trigger, sending three rounds of the rubber balls ricocheting upward. Then he began retreating backward.
Ferguson slammed his canister of tear gas down the hall, but it didn’t explode properly. Cursing, he grabbed a smoke grenade from his pocket and thumbed away the tape he’d applied to keep them from accidentally going off. Smoke from the cartridge began whispering out as Conners emerged from the building. When Rankin didn’t appear immediately behind him, Ferg put his hand on Conners’s side and pushed him toward the alley. Rankin was about ten feet from the exit. A shadow moved at the far end.
“Duck,” said Ferguson. He’d grabbed the Remington, and now he pumped it twice, the shells and shadow disappearing in the smoky interior. An AK-47 barked; Ferg fired two more shots and started to run. As he cleared the alley he tripped the two small M5 MCCM bangers set near the doorway — pseudoclaymore mines, they unleashed a hail of plastic balls with a good loud boom and fierce flash, stalling any pursuit.
Firing the Remington conjured a bit of unwelcome nostalgia — he was nine, learning to shoot clay pigeons with his father at a range in Connecticut. Ferg pushed the memory away from his mind, but it was impossible to banish it from his hands, which caressed the stock even as he ran for the Honda, which they’d parked two bloc
ks away. By the time he reached it, he’d pulled off his gas mask and night goggles. They weren’t being followed, at least not as far as he could tell, and the charge that had taken down the electric lines seemed also to have knocked out power to that part of the city.
“Blow the truck,” he said as he pulled open the rear door. “Hit it, Rankin.”
The truck was in a lot near the building, back two blocks away. They couldn’t hear the explosion.
“Did it go?” Ferg asked, as Conners slapped the car into gear.
“It went,” said Rankin.
“You sure?”
“Fuck you.”
Ferg turned and looked at Guns for the first time. He had his face in a wet towel and the window rolled down.
“Hey, you all right, Guns?”
The Marine coughed and shook his head in a way that seemed to mean yes.
“Turn left,” Ferguson told Conners.
“Where the hell are we going?” demanded Rankin.
“We have to make sure the truck blew,” Ferg told him.
“I set the fuckin’ charge,” insisted Rankin.
“Don’t take it personally.”
“Screw you, don’t take it personally. You didn’t want a big goddamn explosion, right? So now you think I screwed up.”
Ferguson had the shotgun between his legs, the barrel pointed downward into the floorboards. He caught another whiff of nostalgia — his father instructing him on gun safety. “Keep the gun cracked in the car,” was the way he always put it.
His first shotgun, a real grown-up gun. Not a toy, said his father.
“Something’s burning,” said Conners, pointing to the red glow in the distance. It was beyond the ministry building they’d hit, about where the truck had been.
“Good,” said Ferg. “Hit the road.”
“This all would have been easier if we could’ve just killed the bastards,” said Rankin.
“Would’ve been easier with a whole A team,” offered Conners.
“Hey, next time we’ll call Delta,” said Ferg. “They would’ve done it with bare hands and sticks.”
Conners laughed, but Rankin, still angry, said nothing. In his opinion, Ferg had made the takedown too risky by insisting they not use lethal force. The CIA officer had the authority to override that directive if the situation warranted.
In the back of the car, Guns’s eyes felt like they were going to fall out of his skull. His throat felt as if it were made of rug that a dog had used to sleep on. His nose was stuffed with oily rags. The towel Conners had given him wasn’t helping his eyes any; more likely it was rubbing the irritant into them.
“You used fucking tear gas?” he said finally.
“You’re welcome, Jarhead,” said Rankin up front.
Ferguson reached to the floor and brought up a squeeze bottle. “Irrigate ‘em. I’m sorry about the gas.”
The car veered hard left, then settled back onto the roadway. Conners had lost the pavement in the dark. They’d mapped out a route to the main highway over dirt roads, but it had looked a hell of a lot easier in the daylight.
“Rankin, I need you to get out the map,” Conners said.
“Yeah, I thought so,” said Rankin, reaching for it.
Guns recounted what had happened, starting with the man with the yellow sports coat.
“Some sort of Russian,” he told Ferguson. “FSB.”
“What sort of questions?”
“Nothing really. Asked if I’d cooperate. When I played dumb, he split.”
“No other questions?”
“Asked me about some Chechen.”
“Which Chechen?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. Some sort of guerrilla. Muslim, maybe.”
“If I get Corrigan to say a bunch of names to you, you think you could pick it out?”
“ ‘Kiro,’ he said.”
“Kiro. We can check that,” said Ferg. “What else did they ask?”
Guns pushed his eyes into the towel, re-creating the interrogation. There had only been one with an FSB man. The others were with a local inspector, who asked over and over why he had killed Sheremetev.
“What’d you say?” asked Ferg.
“I said I didn’t.”
“That’s all they asked?” said Ferg.
“That’s it.”
“Where’d you get the duds?”
Guns laughed, then told him about the examination in front of the doctor and his nurse.
“Fuckin’ guy checked me over good. I’m standing there thinking I want to pork his nurse — Mr. Young starts coming to attention, I swear — and he does a hernia check.
“Shit. Stop the fuckin’ car,” said Ferguson. “Shit.”
“Huh?” asked Conners.
“Pull off the road.”
“But—”
“Now!”
As the car skidded to a stop, Ferg threw open the door. He reached back and pulled Guns out, dragging him around the back of the car to the side of the road. A row of darkened buildings sat a few feet away.
“Take off your clothes,” Ferg told him.
“Huh?”
“Take off your clothes,” said Ferguson, and he grabbed Guns’s waistband and helped. As the Marine started to undress, Ferguson reached into his pocket for his flashlight, then pulled down Guns’s underpants.
“Hey!”
“Shit.” Ferg put his fingernails on the Marine’s leg next to his scrotum and pulled off a small black disk. He held it up in front of Guns’s face just to prove that he wasn’t a pervert, then threw it toward the abandoned buildings. He took a small bug detector from his inside jacket pocket and ran it over Guns’s body, cursing himself for not taking such an obvious precaution earlier.
When Guns, completely naked without shoes or anything, got back in the car, Ferguson told Conners to get onto the highway and floor it.
“I’ll give Yellow Jacket one thing,” said Ferguson, pulling off his vest so he could give his shirt to Guns to wear. “He’s no dummy.”
7
ORSK, RUSSIA — TWO DAYS LATER
Ferguson unscrewed the cap on the bottled water and poured it into the tall glass. He leaned back on the balcony of the hotel, glancing down toward Conners, who was watching the street. They’d split into twos at the Kyrgyzstan border, unsure whether or not Yellow Jacket was still tracking them here. Guns and Rankin were about a half hour late.
Conners looked over and shook his head, then went back to staring at the street. After Kyrgyzstan, Cel’abinsk felt not only huge but almost luxurious. The air was clean; the weather pleasantly warm and dry. Ferg loosened his jacket and took out his phone; if he waited too long to call home, Corrigan would get nervous.
“How we doin’, Jack?” he said, leaning back against the chair.
“How are you doing?” said Corrigan. There was a funny note in his voice.
“What’s the problem?”
“Hold on.”
Ferg realized what was up as the phone line clicked. The next thing he heard was the melodious baritone of his boss, the deputy director of operations at the CIA.
Only his voice was melodious.
“You shot up a police station?” demanded Daniel Slott, by way of a greeting.
“Actually, Dan, it wasn’t a police station. And knowing what your reaction would be, we used nonlethal weapons.”
“Tell that to the ambassador.”
“Give me his number.”
“The secretary of state is wondering what the hell is going on,” said Slott, in a way that implied he actually cared what the secretary of state thought — which Ferg knew wasn’t true. “He asked the director in front of the president what we’re doing tear gassing Police officers in Kyrgyzstan.”
“How is the General, anyway?” Ferg asked, referring to Thomas Parnelles, who headed the CIA. Parnelles was an old CIA hand and a good friend of Ferguson’s deceased father; they’d done time together during the good ol’ bad days of the Cold War. General was a nicknam
e from an operation where Parnelles impersonated a Jordanian officer.
Only a captain, actually. But Ferg’s dad had been a private, and to hear the story not a very convincing one.
“Don’t change the subject on me, Ferguson,” said Slott. “You used tear gas in a police station?”
“I can definitively say we did not use tear gas in a police station.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I recovered a member of my team who was being held under false pretenses.” He yawned. “I’m a little tired.”
“You’re a little reckless. More and more.”
“More and more?” asked Ferguson. “I wasn’t reckless before? I thought that was a job requirement.”
Slott made a grinding noise with his teeth. Recognizing that he would get no real details from Ferguson — and admitting to himself that he probably didn’t want any — he changed the subject. “Have you found out what’s going on?”
“Working on it.”
“Did they take uranium or what?”
“I don’t think so. The way it looks, the most likely accounting for the discrepancy is two casks of the control rods,” said Ferg. “But that’s only that one trip. I’m not really sure.”
“When will you know?”
“Not sure. We’re working on it.”
“Well work faster.”
“Aye-aye, Captain Bligh.” Ferg leaned forward and took hold of his glass. “If you’re through busting my chops, I’d appreciate talking to Corrigan again.”
There was a click. Corrigan came on the line with an apology.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ferguson told him. “You run through the satellite photos?”
“We have it narrowed down to six possible spurs,” said Corrigan.
“Just six?” said Ferg. “Not twelve?”
“Actually, it is more like twelve. But I had them arbitrarily lop off some.”
“Who the fuck is doing the analysis for you, Corrigan? Monkeys?”
“Monkeys would be faster,” said the deskman. “We’ve been screwed since Nancy left. I need someone who can coordinate this stuff for me.”
