by Larry Bond
“Russians blew up whatever was there a while ago,” Ferguson told him.
“The village?”
“Yup.”
“My mother and sister were there two years ago. I got a letter.”
They drove down the mountain. The APC was gone. At this time of night, the real danger was from Chechen guerrillas. But they saw no one as they made their way northeastward. Daruyev slept; Conners, too, dozed off. Ferguson stopped before dawn and pumped diesel into the tank.
They’d have to take one of the main roads northward to get to Verko. It would be risky even without a prisoner, and as he stowed the empty jerry can, Ferguson considered whether just to evac him out now. But Ferg decided that for the moment he’d proceed as planned, using the Chechen’s help to scout the other two possible sites before taking him home. Assuming they drove during the day, they ought to be able to get to them both by nightfall anyway.
Conners cranked open an eye when he climbed into the truck.
“Long leak,” he said.
“I was peeing in the gas tank,” Ferguson told him.
“You want me to drive?”
“Nah, sleep a bit. I’m thinking we’ll drive into the day.”
“That safe?”
“Of course not.” He started the truck and put it in gear, winding down the dirt road. Conners rubbed his eyes and stretched as much as he could with Daruyev leaning against him.
“Where are we?”
“Near Noza-Jerk,” Ferg said, smiling at the name.
“Noza-Jerk. What a town,” said Conners.
“Then there’s Gora Krybl,” said Ferg.
“I been to Grznyj, Ordzon, Chrebet — I been everywhere, Jack. I been everywhere,” sang Conners.
“Sounds like a song,” said Ferg.
“It is.” He sang a few verses with the names of American cities in Texas. “Old hobo song.”
“Not Irish?”
“Came out of New Zealand or Australia or someplace,” Conners said. “Changed around a lot. Geoff Mack wrote it, or at least a version of it, that a lot of people did.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Your loss,” said Conners.
“Why do you like those old songs?”
“Why do you?” said Conners. “Remind you of being a kid?”
“The childhood I never had.”
“Don’t get philosophical on me, Ferg.”
“I’m not philosophical.”
Bullshit, thought Conners, but he didn’t say anything.
“You think I’m philosophical?” asked Ferg.
“That and reckless,” said Conners.
“Reckless?”
“I’d call it a death wish.”
“That why I hang around with you, huh?” The CIA officer rolled down his window halfway. The blast of cold air stung his eyes, reminding him he was awake.
“You’re not an SF type,” said Conners. “Not a soldier.”
“Not enough discipline, huh?” said Ferg.
“Got that right. You don’t like following orders. And you take too many risks.”
“Got to.”
“You were lucky, Ferg, damn lucky.”
“Which time?”
Conners laughed.
“You’re telling me no SF soldier is reckless?” said Ferguson.
“Not the ones who are alive.”
“Bah.”
Conners didn’t bother arguing.
“Rankin’s not reckless?” suggested Ferg.
“Rankin? No.”
“Bull.”
“Taking risks and being reckless aren’t the same thing, Ferg.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Rankin’s a professional.”
“You Army guys like to stick together.”
“You don’t like him, that’s all. Not that I blame you — he hates your guts.”
“That doesn’t make him not reckless,” said Ferg. “Let’s try that turnoff over there,” added Ferguson, spotting the road.
7
BUILDING 24-442, SUBURBAN VIRGINIA
When Thomas matched Corrigan’s scribble with the name on the map — Verko — he felt as if the ceiling had lit up with spotlights. Verko was connected with several UFO sightings during the 1950s and ‘60s, all reported by villagers in the nearby mountains. The sightings had proven false; at the time Verko was a secret Russian base devoted to a squadron of spy planes.
It looked fairly isolated, a good place to arrange a pickup — but only if he could be sure the Russians weren’t using it anymore.
Or the guerrillas. Thomas threw himself into researching it, gathering every slither of information he could. He began with the generic, pulling up SpyNet and working from there. The base had been officially closed in 1992, though it hadn’t seen much activity for at least ten years prior to that. Thomas jabbed at the keyboard, calling up a set of satellite photos. He culled through a file, then went over to a collection made by a commercial satellite over the past several years without finding any that showed activity on the runway. He did find shadows undoubtedly related to activity there, though there was no new construction.
A scan of NSA intercepts turned up several hits that contained Verko, but most had not been decrypted. The one that had contained something seemed pure gibberish.
He continued to work, guessing logically and illogically. He lost track of time. He didn’t eat. He didn’t emerge from his room. At some point he decided he needed a break. Thomas got up and gathered all of the papers that he’d arranged on the floor in a big pile next to his desk, then dropped to the floor and did a hundred push-ups. When that didn’t rev him, he tried a hundred more. A third set left him so tired he fell asleep on the floor.
How long he slept there, he couldn’t say. He finally woke up because someone was pounding on his door.
“Yes?” he asked, opening it.
Debra Wu stood in the hallway, eying him suspiciously. She was wearing a different skirt, though this one seemed just as short as the other.
“Thomas, the security log says you’ve been here all night,” she said.
“Might be.”
Verko wasn’t a Russian base, he realized — it was a guerrilla stronghold.
“Corrigan wants to see you. Does he know you were here?” she added.
“I don’t know.”
“You want some coffee?”
“Why not?” He got up, orienting himself among his papers. “Tell Corrigan I’ll be down in a while. I have to put some things together. I need to make a few queries.”
“Okey-dokey,” said Debra, retreating.
“Don’t forget the coffee.”
* * *
Even though Debra warned him that “the loony slept under his desk,” Corrigan wasn’t quite prepared for the analyst’s disheveled appearance when he entered the secure chamber about an hour later. His hair stuck out in every direction; his shirt was half-out of his pants, and he seemed to have dust and lint pasted all over his body.
“I figured it out,” said Thomas.
“What?”
“They’re putting the bomb together at this place called Verko. It’s in the mountains, and it used to be an airbase.”
“Verko — that was one of the pickup possibilities,” said Corrigan.
“Verko’s the place you’re looking for,” said Thomas. “Allah’s Fist bought ammonia nitrate and had it tracked into a village a few miles away nine months ago. We have two sat photos showing those trucks on the road to the facility.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“At Verko?”
“No, but that has to be where they’re going. And one of the companies that was associated with Bin Saqr rented a house in the village. Medical waste — they’ve been grabbing all the cesium they can get. Maybe other stuff. The analysts warned about this — I know the man who put the estimate together. Very reliable. I have an inquiry into NSA to see what intercepts may link with this.”
Thomas�
��s hair poked out at odd angles, and his eyes nearly bulged from his head. As much as Corrigan wanted to believe that the analyst had solved the problem, the portrait he saw before him did not inspire confidence.
“Take me back to the beginning,” he told Thomas.
Thomas explained what he had found a second time. Even laid out in a semilogical manner the shadows and glimpses of trucks near but on the base sounded less than definitive. Corrigan brought up a sat picture of the abandoned base on one of the computers.
“Where exactly would they do the work?” he asked. “The Russians dismantled the hangars they had there in the eighties. These buildings — are they big enough?”
“That is a problem,” said Thomas. “I don’t know.”
Corrigan frowned. “What do they do with the bomb once they put it together?”
Thomas shrugged again. “I haven’t figured it out yet. But it would be a perfect site. It hasn’t been under Russian control for the past five or six years, exactly when the head of Allah’s Fist disappeared.”
“That’s all you have? No intercepts there, no nothing?”
“Not yet.” Thomas peered over Corrigan’s shoulder. Maybe the Russians had burrowed into the side of the mountain, putting the planes in a nukeproof shelter. Or maybe there was a ramp elevator along one of the aprons.
Now if it had been an alien base, the transnuclear engines would allow it to slide through a fissure in the mountains without detection.
Probably he could rule that out.
“Maybe you should get some sleep while we work this over,” said Corrigan. “I’ll put in a request to NRO for every scrap of satellite data they have.”
“I have that all under way already,” said Thomas. “But I’m sure this is the place.”
“Sure sure, or just sure?”
“Sure,” said Thomas.
Corrigan debated calling Ferguson. If he was wrong, the officer would bash in his head.
“Get some more backup,” said Corrigan finally.
“On it, boss,” said Thomas, running from the room.
Corrigan finally realized there might be such a thing as too much enthusiasm, not to mention eccentricity.
Even so, he picked up the phone to call Ferg.
8
NEAR KASHI, KYRGYZSTAN
The marshaling yard was less than two years old, and while small by Western standards, it stretched out across the landscape like a city unto itself, with close to a hundred miles worth of track. Freight cars from all over Russia and Europe were scattered along the various spurs, each located and tracked by computer as massive freight trains were put together. Nearly all contained garbage.
The cars carrying the rad waste were in their own section of the yard, heavily guarded. They’d found a spot to watch the yard nearly two miles away from the perimeter of the facility, and though the view was unobstructed, Rankin had to sit on the roof of the car with his binoculars to see.
Corrine slept inside. Rankin had almost had to slug her to get her to take a rest. He was worried that she was going to burn herself out; she was clearly pushing herself because she thought she’d screwed up somehow losing the boxcar.
Rankin reached across the roof for the thermos of tea — coffee had become increasingly difficult to find — and poured himself a cup. He was just taking his first sip when the sat phone rang. To answer, he had to enter a personal ID code, then say his name into the receiver. The computer analyzed his voice pattern; if it didn’t match its records, the phone was temporarily locked into transmit mode and Corrigan — or whoever was making the call — alerted. Once the embedded GPS device gave a positive marker on the phone’s location — a matter of two seconds — the person on the other side could decide how to proceed.
“This is Corrigan. We have new information,” he said. “There’s a former Soviet airbase in the southern mountains of Chechnya called Verko. Ferg’s en route to check it out, but we think they’re gathering their waste there. Van Buren needs Corrine to authorize the SF mission if it pans out.”
“She’s sleeping right now,” said Rankin.
“Well, wake her the fuck up,” said Corrigan.
“You sure it’s the place?”
“Just wake her up and let me talk to her. Her phone’s off-line.”
Rankin climbed down and tapped on the window. Corrine opened her left eye slowly, then closed it. He tapped again, then opened the door and gave her his phone.
“Corrigan,” he told her.
“Thanks,” she said sleepily. She pulled herself upright in the seat. “I’m here.”
“We think we know where the waste is headed. Ferguson’s on his way to check it out — it jibes with some information he already had. This could be it.”
“All right,” she said. “Tell Mr. Ferguson to proceed. Inform the assault group and give them whatever preliminary data on the target is appropriate. But no action until my authorization.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Corrine waited a moment before answering, reminding herself that not everyone was against her — and that even if they were, she wasn’t going to help herself by blowing up.
“I’m absolutely sure,” she said in an even voice. “I need you to get me on a plane out to Turkey to meet with the strike force ASAP.”
“Civilian or military?”
“What’s faster?”
Corrigan hit some keys on one of his computers. “I can get you on a flight to Aktau, if you can get to the airport in fifteen minutes.”
“Where’s Aktau?”
“It’s on the Caspian. From there I can get you to Turkey, no sweat. Or Chechnya.”
“Turkey will do.”
“Someone will be there. It may be a contract; going to be hard to get a military plane in there without drawing attention. I’ll round up whatever I can.”
“You’re a regular travel agent,” she said, hanging up.
9
SOUTHERN CHECHNYA — SEVERAL HOURS LATER
Ten miles east of Verko the highway turned into a minefield. Two burned-out Russian tanks tipped them off; Conners pulled off the road and got out of the truck, scouting it out. They were on a ridge that ran along the side of a mountain maybe twenty-five hundred meters high, with the peak another thousand or so meters above them. Conners felt as if he were being watched, and guessed that the tanks had been mined.
Ferg, who’d been sleeping lightly, climbed down out of the cab and walked over.
“Looks like a bitch,” said Conners.
“Yeah, this has got to be the place,” said Ferg.
“How we gonna get there? Take us two or three days to drive all the way north and around on the other highway, and we got joker boy in the cab.”
Ferguson looked up at the ragged walls. “Got to be paths we can pick our way across.”
“Take us two days.”
“Maybe.”
Ferguson glanced back at the truck. They’d have to take Darayev’s leg chains off to travel by foot.
Corrigan’s intelligence jibed with Darayev’s information; they might indeed be closing in on the site. But if they were, terrorists might be all around them. The Chechen was potentially a serious liability — even if he wasn’t trying to steer them toward an ambush, he might find the opportunity to escape irresistible. He could easily lead the terrorists back to them, or at least alert them to their presence.
On the other hand, Corrigan’s track record on vital data wasn’t necessarily impressive. They’d need Daruyev to get to the next site if this one was a bust.
“All right. Let’s assume we’re being watched,” Ferg told Conner. “We back up, go down to that blown-out farm we passed, get the satellite photos, pick our way back over.”
“Long way, Ferg.”
“Just a day’s worth of climbing. Van’s going to need time to get everything in gear anyway.”
“Daruyev coming?” asked Conners.
“Somebody’s gotta carry the gear,” said Ferg.
Like most of the other buildings they’d passed, the walls of the main house of the small farm down the road were scorched black, the soot so embedded in the rocks that years of rain had only pushed it deeper. The farm looked like just another abandoned homestead as they parked nearby — until the curtains in the window moved.
“Shit,” said Conners. “People are living in there? The roof’s gone.”
It was too late simply to back out onto the road; the people had seen them and might alert the Russians, or the guerrillas — or both — to their presence. Conners felt angry, illogically blaming them for intruding — they’d have to kill them, he thought.
“Well let’s go say hello,” said Ferguson, hopping out of the truck. He slung his gun nonchalantly over his shoulder and — once Conners had his own weapon pointing toward the front of the house to cover him — walked toward the front door.
He knocked, though he knew that anyone inside wouldn’t answer. After a second knock, he walked around to the window with the curtain. He couldn’t see much of the interior, and when no one appeared after two hard raps, he went around to the back.
An old man stood in the doorway, aiming an ancient hunting rifle at him.
“Zdrátvuitye,” Ferg said to him in Russian. “Hello.”
The old man didn’t move. Ferguson then tried his Chechen, explaining that they were friends who had to help someone reach his rightful place. When that didn’t impress the man — Ferguson wasn’t entirely sure that his pronunciation could be deciphered — he switched to English, realizing that while the man wouldn’t understand it, it might convince him he wasn’t Russian.
“It’s all right,” he told the man. “We’re friends. I need a place to keep my truck.”
He switched back into Russian and repeated the sentence. Ferg guessed that the man’s sympathies lay with the rebels, and that he would leave them be if he thought they were connected with them. Whether he could be trusted beyond that was a question Ferguson couldn’t answer; there were no telephone lines, and no obvious radio antenna, so as far as that went the old man wasn’t going to be notifying anyone very soon.
“So can I park my truck?” Ferg asked in Russian.
