First Team ft-1

by Larry Bond

The smoke felt like a saw blade hacking at Ferg’s eyes as he entered the bar. He pushed into the crowd nonetheless, sauntering through a crowd of off-duty Russian soldiers and Chechens. The Red Star was not the most notorious bar in Groznyy, but it did rate in the top ten. Ferguson slid forward, pushing his way between two natives and making sure to address the bartender first in English, then in Russian. He took his vodka and walked toward a row of tables at the left side of the room. The tables seemed entirely occupied by soldiers, which would have made things much too obvious. It occurred to him that Gribak might not be as accomplished a source as he pretended to be.

  Returning to the bar with his now-empty glass, Ferguson held it out for a refill. When the bartender came back he asked if he knew how one might find Novakich.

  The bartender squinted at him as if he’d asked the way to the Statue of Liberty. Ferguson repeated the name. When he got a frown this time, he smiled at the bartender and let a ten-ruble note float to the bar as he disappeared.

  The next club seemed more a smuggler’s hangout, at least to judge by the efficiency of the pat-down. Ferg once more repeated the routine, adding a visit to a table where he dropped Ruby’s name as well.

  The third club had an American Western theme, with posters of fifties movies and a saddled horse in the corner. Unfortunately, the horse was stuffed. As Ferg walked to the end of the long bar, he wondered if he ought to ask for a sasaparilla. The bartender’s round nose sniffed the air as he approached; Ferg nearly looked at his boots to check if he’d tracked manure in.

  “You know a Novakich?” he asked in Russian, holding on to his money.

  The bartender looked at him, sniffed again, then shook his head.

  “Oh, well,” said Ferg in English, letting the money drop before asking for a vodka. The bartender scooped up the money, replacing it with a shot glass and a bottle. Ferg slid around, sizing up the sparse crowd.

  * * *

  You sure that’s the police?” Conners asked Gribak as the small car sped down the road. The battered Lada looked like an ordinary passenger vehicle to him, though it did stop in the middle of the road in front of the bar Ferguson was in.

  Gribak gave him an exasperated look.

  “All right. I guess you’d know,” said Conners, pushing open the door. He trotted up the road toward the sewer opening, watching to make sure that the police car stopped. As the two plainclothes officers got out and headed toward the bar, he knelt and dropped the grenade through the grate, returning to the truck at a dead run. When he reached it, Conners pulled open the door and leaned back over the roof, aiming the automatic rifle down the block. He shot off a few rounds, then threw the gun into the street as Gribak cursed angrily and hit the gas. They drove through a maze of alleys and narrow streets, and in a few minutes the Chechen’s mood began to improve greatly; he started humming.

  “Very good,” said Conners when he fell silent. “Do you know ‘Finnegan’s Wake’?”

  * * *

  The din in the bar was so loud that the grenade could barely be heard, though the muffled crack set off a chain reaction. Weapons appeared instantly; two men started for the rear exit. Ferg followed, only to find his way barred by a large man in a black turtleneck sweater at least two sizes too small for him. More impressive than his haberdashery was his gun, an H&KMP-5.

  “Guess I’m going a different way,” said Ferguson, stepping back. He saw some men heading toward a door at the right; he followed and found that they were heading out a restroom window that opened onto an alleyway He followed, turning left away from the street as gunfire erupted in the front of the building. He knew it wasn’t Conners — there was too much of it for too long. Someone ahead of him jumped over a fence. Ferg followed, then found himself in the middle of four somewhat angry-looking Chechens.

  “Hey—” he started to say as the one nearest him swung a fist at his face. Ferg ducked, but caught a stick from another in the ribs. As the men closed in he swung his fists in every direction, but something hard clipped him on the side of head. As he fell to the ground there was more gunfire in the alley behind him; he lost consciousness for a moment, and by the time he blinked his eyes open his wallet was gone, and so were his tormenters. He also had a thick swag of wet blood on the side of his neck and shirt.

  Ferg sat back against the fence, trying to get his bearings. Finally, he pushed his legs under him, rising to his feet. He gripped the top of the fence and pushed upward, peering over into the eyes of a plainclothes policeman.

  “Shit,” said Ferg, dropping to the ground.

  The policeman said something similar in Russian, then began blowing his whistle.

  8

  CHECHNYA

  Before Conners paid off Gribak, he made sure he understood how to work the starter and ignition on the truck, which had been modified to discourage thieves. Then he dropped the Chechen off at his father’s store and drove a few blocks to an empty lot where Gribak had said it was safe to leave the truck. He left the rifle under the front seat but took a few of the grenades from the back and walked to the hotel. When he reached the rooms he was a little surprised not to find Ferg there, even though they weren’t supposed to meet for another half hour; Ferguson was always showing up places ahead of schedule, the kind of guy who met you at the end of the bar a drink and a half ahead. Conners checked both rooms, then sat in his, waiting. The TV was old, the picture was fuzzy, and the only channel it seemed to receive was some sort of Russian cooking show. He left it on anyway.

  Three hours later, Ferg still hadn’t appeared. Driving back into Groznyy to look for him was out of the question, but Conners felt as if he had to do something. He walked to the truck and started it up, driving around the town before realizing he was running a good chance of getting lost. It took twenty minutes of left-hand turns for him to find his way back to the lot. Frustrated and needing sleep, he parked and walked back to the hotel, where once again he was surprised that Ferguson wasn’t sitting there waiting for him.

  “Well God,” said Conners, pulling off his shoes. “I’d make you a deal — I’ll give up drinking if you take care of the little bugger. He’s full of himself but in a good way, the bastard.”

  He pushed under the covers, his clothes still on, his pistol in his hand. After a while, he fell asleep.

  When he woke, Ferguson was sitting in the chair next to the bed.

  “Jesus, Ferg,” said Conners, opening his eyes. “What happened to your face?”

  “Before or after I got the shit knocked out of me?” said Ferguson, rising. His neck hurt like hell, but otherwise the wounds were mostly cosmetic.

  As long as he didn’t breathe.

  “Hey, Ferg, you OK?”

  “Yeah.” Ferguson took a swig from the vodka bottle in his hand. “First I got robbed, then the police rolled me. Good thing I had a money belt.”

  “ ‘Cause they didn’t find your cash?”

  “Because there was cash for them to find.” The police had used some sort of pepper spray on him. Fortunately, the men were either locals or too intent on robbing him to check with the ministry office; they’d even left his fake passport on the dirt next to him.

  “It’s part of the plan,” said Ferg, rising. “Get dressed. They have a strict dress code where we’re going — no jammies.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Jail,” said Ferg.

  9

  NEAR THE BORDER BETWEEN RUSSIA AND KAZAKHSTAN

  Guns’s brain flip-flopped as Massette told him a story about watching a group of assassins in Morocco. Though a native of Tennessee, the warrant officer’s English had a decided French slant. Even without the odd inflections, the story he told would have been difficult to follow, tracking back and forth between Paris and the narrow streets of North Africa. Jack Massette had been “loaned” to the DGSE-Direction Generate de la Securité Exterienre, the French Defense Ministry’s General Directorate for External Security — for an investigation into a ring smuggling ricin poison into France, but
the assignment had morphed far from its original outline. Massette and the two French agents he was working with discovered that a criminal group was targeting the terrorist ringleader, apparently because of a financial dispute; they’d been told to allow the assassin to kill their target. Their unspoken orders directed the DGSE agents to do the job if the assassins didn’t.

  “And so I shot him,” said Massette, reaching the punch line, “with the police in the next room.”

  “The Paris police?”

  “No, this was in Algiers. We had to pay these guys five hundred bucks so we could leave. I thought it was pretty cheap.”

  Guns was going to ask how he’d gotten to Algiers when the train started to move again. As he put the Russian Calina in gear, the engine revved like a psychotic lawn clipper. The Vaz-made car looked and drove like a Ford Focus that had gone through one too many rinse cycles, but it had the virtue of going relatively far on a tankful of watered-down Russian petrol.

  The road veered sharply to the left, following the rugged line of the hills. The border with Kazakhstan was about five miles to the south; Rankin and Corrine had already gone across. The road gradually became narrower and soon changed from macadam to barely packed gravel. The train tracks ran off to the left, running through a shallow valley to the border crossing. Though they saw that the train was stopping, there was no place for them to pull off; the two men lost sight of the cars as they drove on, looking for a good place to stop.

  By the time Guns found a lot in front of a roadside inn, they’d lost sight of the train. Massette got out and walked to the right; Guns took his pocket binoculars and went left, crossing the road and sliding down the hill about twenty yards before reaching a place where he could see the train. It had pulled onto a siding to let another train pass; the soldiers accompanying it milled around, waiting as the approaching passenger train climbed the grade, its single diesel engine spewing black smoke.

  Guns began walking back toward the car, angling up the slope. He was just about back to the roadway when an old jeeplike vehicle pulled alongside and stopped. Two men got out; he stopped for half a second before realizing he was undoubtedly staring at members of the Russian Federal Border Service in civilian dress.

  As nonchalantly as possible he continued across the slope. The men shouted at him. Guns looked up at them and waved, not sure exactly what to say or do until one of the men reached beneath his jacket and unsnapped the flap on his holster. Guns gestured meekly and began climbing the slope.

  The man asked in English what he was doing with the binoculars.

  Guns looked at them in his hand, trying to come up with an explanation that would make sense. Before he could find one, a voice on the road above began speaking in a jovial French.

  “Permit me to introduce my colleague, Dr. Miles from the University of Paris,” said Massette, switching to English as he spoke to the two Russians. He pattered on about ornithology and the presence of a rare wren native only to these hills. Massette’s performance was aided by a bird book which he produced from his pocket, and within a few minutes he was quizzing the Russians about possible sightings. They were FSB agents, more dangerous than border guards, but he was so convincing that the conversation continued for more than ten minutes; had the Russians not been en route to an appointment they undoubtedly would have adjourned to the nearby inn, picking up the first round.

  “Good thinking,” said Guns when they were back in the car.

  “I learned with the French that bird-watching is a very valuable hobby,” said Massette. “As long as you take it to extremes.”

  * * *

  Corrine watched from the hilltop as the train rounded the bend and headed into the long tunnel. She put the glasses down, then checked the map. The train would change engines at a small yard about fifteen miles from here. Guns and Massette were supposed to cover the switch but had been delayed at the border crossing; Corrine had to decide whether to stay with the train and lose it as it went into the yard, or leave so they could circle northeast to get to the only point where the yard itself would be visible.

  Given that the yard was the most likely place for something to happen, she opted to leave. She pulled out her phone as she walked back to the car, telling Massette and Guns what was up. Massette complained that the line to the border wasn’t moving.

  “Don’t sweat it,” she told him. “Call me if anything happens.” She clicked off the phone. “We’ll go to the yard at Kadagac in their place,” she told Rankin.

  “Your call,” he said.

  Corrine glanced at him, unsure whether he was questioning her decision or not.

  “My call,” she said, her voice a little sharper than she intended.

  * * *

  Guns let Massette drive after they got over the border, thinking it might get him to stop complaining about the guards who had held them up for a twenty-dollar bribe before letting them pass. Massette was outraged that anyone would sell out his duty so cheaply.

  In fact, the men had been persuaded to do their duty for that fee; getting them to do something illegal would have cost a bit more. Since joining the Team and watching Ferguson, Guns had come to understand how money lubricated nearly everything; he tried not to get too cynical or angry about it. Ferg had told him it was simply a fact of life, there to take advantage of.

  “You missed the road,” said Guns, as Massette blew by the turnoff. “The train line’s down there.”

  “We’re so far behind,” said Massette. “They’re past the tunnel. They should be changing engines in the yard by now.”

  “Yeah, but we were going to follow the line.”

  The older man didn’t bother answering. He also didn’t bother turning back. Guns wondered if he ought to tell him to turn back and what to do if he wouldn’t. He decided he was being ridiculous — and as he thought that, he saw the line again through the front corner of the windshield. As Massette had predicted, the train was long gone.

  * * *

  The train moved slowly into the far corner of the yard, shunted there by an ancient switcher engine. At least two platoons of soldiers were deployed to guard it, ringing off the area.

  Rankin and Corrine watched from a hill nearly a mile and a half away as the cars were pushed onto the new line. A row of freight cars as well as two small sheds blocked their view as a pair of American-made SD40s painted bright red began trundling toward the Y-shaped exit the train would take.

  “We got a problem,” said Rankin. “We’re missing a car.”

  “What? They’re all there.”

  “One of the boxcars they tagged along at the end. It’s gone.”

  “Shit. Are you sure?”

  “I can’t see too well. Wait.”

  Rankin pushed forward against the steering wheel, angling the glasses against the windshield. Impatient, Corrine opened the door and ran down the gravel embankment to the train line where they’d parked, standing on the rail and peering into the yard.

  The boxcars had been unhooked from the rest of the train and were being towed to another track by the switcher. The cars with the waste remained on their own under heavy guard.

  She looked to the left, scanning the yard for the missing car.

  Rankin got out and climbed on top of the car to use his binoculars.

  “Anywhere?” she asked.

  “Can’t see it. Why would they take an empty freight car?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t empty,” she said.

  And now she realized how they did it — material was loaded surreptitiously at Buzuluk in what was supposed to be an empty car tagged on to the end of the train for transport. That was why the Russians couldn’t figure it out — the containment cars all made it. The waste that was being stolen wasn’t in the cars.

  “We’re going to have to find it,” she told Rankin.

  “We have to stay with the rest of the train,” he said. “Otherwise, we can’t be sure.”

  She pulled out her phone, wanting to get the unpleasant task of tel
ling them that she’d screwed up over with quickly.

  That was what it was, she knew — they’d missed the decoupling and screwed up.

  “They’re moving.”

  “Shit,” she said. She was sure she was right — but what if she were wrong? The meter that had recorded the discrepancy was farther south.

  What should she do?

  Play it safe. She had to.

  “Come on,” she told Rankin. “They’re moving. Let’s go. The others will have to look for the car.”

  10

  CHECHNYA, NORTH OF GROZNYY

  Ferg and Conners hadn’t gone to jail — they were merely staking out the road to it, waiting for the man in the yellow sports coat.

  Though it rolled off the tongue easily, Ferguson had not chosen the name “Novakich” to spread around Groznyy simply for its phonetic value. It belonged to one of the people who had worked with Jabril Daruyev on the Moscow dirty bomb plot. Novakich had not been heard of in several years, and according to Corrigan the Russians believed he was dead — which ought to make Ferguson’s inquiries all the more interesting to them. If American agents were poking around looking for Novakich here, sooner or later the Russian FSB would want to see what Daruyev knew about him. Ferguson wasn’t sure the FSB officer assigned to find out would be Sergiv Kruknokov — the man in the yellow sports coat — but he hoped so; he already admired the agent and would enjoy outsmarting him once more.

  If things went the way Ferg wanted them to, the inspector would have the man taken from the jail to be interviewed in the city. At that point, they would ambush the vehicle and take the prisoner themselves. They had taken both the truck and the car they hired earlier, stashing the truck in a wooded copse a short distance away while using the car for surveillance on the hillside dirt road.

  “What if they bring a truckload of troops for escorts?” Conners asked, as they watched the road.

  “First of all, they never do that,” said Ferg. “Troop trucks and convoys are too obvious a target. They move them in cars, with only two guards. The escort runs five minutes ahead and back.”