First Team [First Team 01] Read online

  “Our friend doesn’t want to go to the capital,” said Ferg. “How’s your Georgian?”

  Guns shook his head, but between them they puzzled out some information. The pilot had been challenged at the airport before taking off and had been buzzed by a Russian fighter just before finding them. He was afraid of being arrested if he returned to the capital. The closest he would take them was Micheta, a town about five miles north of Tbilisi.

  Ferguson called Corrigan and told him to get a car up there.

  “That’s not as easy as you think,” said the desk man.

  “We’re not walking,” said Ferguson. “Why the hell didn’t you get us a real helicopter?”

  “It is a real helicopter.”

  “Corrigan, you and I are going to have a serious talk when I get back. You’re supposed to facilitate my mission, not make it harder.”

  “I’m sorry. The embassy made the arrangements.”

  “They know we’re on the same side, right?”

  “Hold on the line while I talk to them,” said Corrigan.

  “Good idea.”

  “The embassy’ll send a car,” Corrigan told Ferguson finally. “It’s on the way now. Plainclothes Marines.”

  “Guns’ll be overjoyed,” said Ferguson, snapping off the phone.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he pilot had apparently been to the small town before, barely hesitating as he angled in between a set of power lines to land in a small field behind a school building. He stayed in his seat, with the rotors moving.

  “It’s been real,” Ferg told the pilot in English.

  The man gave him a thumbs-up and a wide smile, as if they’d had the time of their lives. Ferguson barely got the door up and closed before the helicopter whipped back upward.

  “Starting to rain,” said Guns.

  “Figures,” said Rankin.

  “We have to move up to the road,” said Ferguson, checking his watch. The Marines were due in ten minutes.

  “ ‘All the money that ever I spent, I spent it in good company,’” started Conners, singing an Irish folk tune, as he picked up Kiro and slung him over his back. The prisoner groaned; Conners sang louder.

  “All the comrades that ever I had, they’re sorry for my going away,” he sang. “All the sweethearts that I once had, they wish me one more day to stay. But since it falls unto my lot, for me to rise and them to not, I’ll gently rise and softly call, good night and joy be with you all.”

  “See, the guy’s dying,” Conners explained to the others. “It’s that kind of song.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” said Rankin.

  “You got a good voice, Dad,” said Guns.

  “And you’re fuckin’ crazy,” said Rankin.

  “And the rest of you aren’t?” said Conners, spotting a pair of headlights approaching.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he Marines took them to a house in the southeast quadrant of the capital, bringing them in through an alley, which made Kiro a little less obvious. Fully conscious, the prisoner had either reconciled himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to escape or had decided to conserve his energy. He meekly allowed himself to be carried from the car into the house.

  Ferg left the others to work out shifts for showering and sleeping while he went over to the embassy. He was met not by one of the resident CIA spooks he’d expected but the charge d’affaires—a young woman in a black silk miniskirt who could have stepped out of any one of two dozen wet dreams he’d had as teenager.

  And any number of others since.

  “You need a shower,” said the charge. Two buttons of her mauve shirt were unbuttoned, giving a hint of lace beneath.

  “I need a plane,” said Ferguson.

  “We’re working on it.” She brushed back her curly blond hair. Obviously she’d been woken up a short while before—Ferguson wondered what she’d look like if she had time to prepare.

  “You really do need a shower,” she said.

  She must be right, he reasoned. Despite all of his innate animal magnetism and the powerful ESP messages he was beaming into her brain, she remained across the room.

  “First I need to talk to the, uh, consul security coordinator,” said Ferguson, using a euphemism for the CIA chief.

  “I’m her. Really, Mr. Ferguson—you need a big-time shower.”

  “Really?”

  “If I had a fire hose, I’d hose you down myself.”

  Ferguson spread his arms. “Take me, I’m yours.”

  “Up the steps, to the right.”

  “You really are getting me a plane, right?”

  “We’re working on it. We were told that you were to be picked up by your own people in Chechnya in a few days.” She looked at him accusingly, as if he’d been boogied out of a date.

  “Didn’t make too much sense to hang around there,” Ferguson said. “Russians were beefing up their patrols, and the Chechens were kicking them in the face.”

  “I’ll find you some clothes.”

  “Why don’t you help me in the shower instead?”

  “I doubt I’d make it without passing out.”

  “I have first-aid training.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Ferguson used half the hot water in Tbilisi washing Chechnya out of his skin. He found a fresh set of clothes—but no charge—in the room outside the shower.

  The outfit included polyester boxers—not his style, but at least his size. The rest of the outfit was so preppy it came complete with tasseled loafers.

  Miss Miniskirt was waiting downstairs.

  “You missed a great shower,” he told her.

  “Sounded like it. You were singing.”

  “If I’d known you were close, I would have taken requests.”

  “I heard you down here.” She held out her hand. “I’m Amanda Scott.”

  “Pretty name,” said Ferg. “Goes with your eyes.”

  “I think you’ve been on assignment too long.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” said Ferguson. “You going to offer me a drink?”

  He followed her into a reception room, then through a side panel to a smaller, book-lined study.

  “What are you drinking?” she asked.

  “Whiskey. Pour yourself one.”

  “No thank you.”

  Ferg watched her pour out two fingers into the tumbler. He touched her hand as he took the glass; it was warm, as if her internal thermostat was set several degrees higher than his.

  “So I hate to ask—Why the hell didn’t you get us a real helicopter up to make the pickup?” he asked after a sip.

  “We tried. It was sabotaged.”

  “By who?”

  “Take your pick—drug runners, arms smugglers, Muslim crazies, Russians. Place is out of control.”

  She gave a weak shrug. Her breasts heaved up in a way that made it difficult to question her further.

  “We’ll have an airplane ready no later than tomorrow afternoon,” she told him. “The Marines will stay with you until then.”

  “I could stay here.”

  “I’m afraid the ambassador wouldn’t approve.”

  “I’ll go to your place then.”

  “My boyfriend wouldn’t approve.”

  “He’s an idiot anyway,” said Ferguson.

  “True,” said the woman. “But since he’s standing out in the hall with a gun, maybe we’d better not talk too loud. He’s the Marine who drove you here.”

  ~ * ~

  15

  INCIRLIK, TURKEY

  Colonel Charles Van Buren tried rubbing the fatigue out of his eyes as he powered up his laptop, waiting to hear from Washington that his people were not needed to grab the team and its prisoner. He’d received unofficial word already—from Ferguson himself—which had allowed him to order most of the men and equipment tagged for the operation to bed. Van Buren sympathized with the complaints as they’d disembarked from their MC-130—to a man his volunteers preferred action to sleep�
��but nonetheless he’d been sincere when he offered them a job well-done.

  The colonel felt strongly that it was the outcome that mattered. If the team had gotten out without needing them, then the mission had been accomplished as surely as if Van Buren’s two planeloads of paratroopers and Special Forces A teams had gone into action. Indeed, the military people on the Team had been drawn from Van Buren’s own force, and he felt nearly as paternal toward them as he did toward his own son, James.

  Ferguson was a different story—more brother and friend than son, though he was nearly young enough to be one. Van Buren admired the CIA officer a great deal; though they’d worked together for only a short time, they were good friends. On a professional level, they were a good match, Van Buren’s caution and ability to plan balancing Ferg’s tendency to work by the seat of his pants.

  Still waiting for the official order to stand down—it had to come through the Pentagon—Van Buren pulled out his laptop to compose an e-mail home to his wife and son. Since taking the appointment as the commander of the 777th Special Forces Joint Task Group six months before, Van Buren had communicated with his family almost exclusively through e-mail. It had its advantages—it was certainly quicker than writing a letter, nor did he have to worry about time zone differences. But it surely wasn’t the same as seeing them in person.

  Van Buren brought up the most recent e-mail from his son, James. It was typical James, a terse account of his Babe Ruth League baseball game:

  Dad—2 hrs., trip.; won 7-2.—james

  Two home runs and a triple—Van Buren wondered if his son might have the makings of a pro ballplayer. He’d always thought of James as athletic and brilliant, but now that his boy was fifteen he wondered how brilliant and intelligent and athletic he really was. He had a ninety-five average at school and had started on the varsity football and baseball teams since freshman year. But the school was in a small rural community, and there was no way of knowing how it really compared to the rest of the world.

  Van Buren selected the text of the message and hit reply. Then he began to type.

  James:

  Great game, son.

  He backed up the cursor, erasing “son.” It sounded too stiff.

  Van Buren hunched over the laptop, searching for something else to say. His writer’s block was interrupted by the phone. He grabbed the handset.

  “Yo, Van Buren, who the hell do you think you’re fooling, playing with snake eaters?”

  The voice caught him off guard, but just for a second.

  “Dalton, what the hell are you doing calling Dehrain?”

  “Oh is that where I’m calling?”

  “How’d you track me down?”

  “Friends.”

  “Look, it’s 2300 here, and—”

  “What, you keep banker’s hours now that I’m not around to kick your butt?”

  “Yeah, that’ll be the day.”

  “Listen, I can’t really go into much detail on the phone, not this phone anyway, but I have something I want to talk to you about the next time you’re in Washington.”

  Van Buren leaned back in his seat. Like Van Buren, Dalton had served as a captain with Army Special Forces, bringing home a Purple Heart from Central America. He’d gone on to hold several important posts with USSOCOM, before retiring a year ago to join the private sector.

  Dalton joked about his medal, claiming it was certified proof that he was an asshole, but the fact of the matter was that he had earned it rescuing two civilian DEA agents from a guerrilla ambush, and had humped one of his own men to safety besides. Few officers, even in Special Forces, could make such a claim; in Van Buren’s opinion, the military had lost a good man when he separated from the service.

  “So?” asked Dalton.

  “I’m going to be in Washington pretty soon,” said Van Buren. Assuming the Team’s assignment wrapped up without a problem, he’d be returning to debrief with Ferguson.

  “Good. When?”

  “Soon.” Van Buren wouldn’t elaborate even if he knew, not even for an old friend.

  “Need to know, huh?” Dalton laughed after a few moments of silence.

  “My schedule’s not really my own.”

  “When you’re here, I want you to drop by and talk about career opportunities. Give me a call at home. Just leave a message where I can get you. Don’t worry about the time.”

  Van Buren laughed. “What, you have an inside track for general?”

  “Something better, VB. Much, much better.”

  And with that, Dalton hung up.

  ~ * ~

  16

  GEORGIA—THE NEXT DAY

  Even Rankin felt better after a shower and shave, and he didn’t complain when Ferguson laid out the itinerary the next morning. A car and a van would take them to the airport, where they’d meet a C-12 at a hangar borrowed from a Turkish freight company. The C-12 was a two-engine Beech aircraft once used as an observation platform for an Army unit, now painted gray with a civilian registration ostensibly from Germany. While not exactly a jumbo jet, it was more than adequate to take them to Incirlik. Once at the large Air Force base in Turkey, they and their prisoner would board another plane and fly to the military detention center at Guantanamo on Cuba. Linguistic experts and interrogators were already en route to Turkey to get the interrogation process started as soon as they arrived.

  Thanks to the Kiro lead, analysts at the CIA were eying Chechnya as the nexus for a large operation aimed at stealing nuclear waste. Presumably Kiro would tell them something once they got him to Guantanamo; in the meantime more than two dozen people were poring through intercepts, studying satellite photos, and rummaging through mountains of data looking for hints of an operation that had thus far remained hidden.

  Ferguson hadn’t forgotten that the shipment of waste that had started all of this hadn’t been tracked down, nor was he necessarily impressed by the analysts’ efforts thus far. He would have liked to talk to the imprisoned Chechen who knew about making dirty bombs. But he was ready to go home and take a few days off.

  Tbilisi sat in the center of ancient trade routes connecting Europe and Asia, and was a prized possession and sometime victim for Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, Tartars, and Turks, all of whom had occupied and occasionally mugged it for centuries after it was founded in A.D. 455. The Russians came to the city in 1801; Georgians tried rebelling but were ultimately crushed in 1905, their revolt a little premature. When the successful revolt came, Georgia remained in the empire.

  Under the Soviets, life had been constrained and drab. Deep in the heart of the Caucasus, the city had a European feel to it; the buildings and bridges over the Kura reminded visitors of Austria or eastern Czechoslovakia, as the Czech Republic was then known. An industrial center with a population over a million, the city boasted a major university as well as important research facilities and a lively theater. But years of civil war and failed economic reform since the end of the Soviet Union had helped transform the country into a kingdom of gloom. Tbilisi now was the forlorn capital of chaos, ruled by crime lords, corrupt politicians, drug runners, and committed madmen. Armed escorts did not draw a raised eyebrow here, and when the Marines—dressed in plainclothes though even a casual passerby would know they were Americans—blocked off the street in front of the safe house, no one even bothered to glance their way.

  The Marines brought three vehicles—two Mercedes sedans borrowed from the embassy and a van that carried the bulk of the security team. Ferg put Kiro in the backseat of the second Mercedes between Conners and Rankin. They’d changed his clothes and handcuffed him, nudging him into a compliant haze with a shot of Demerol; he also had a hood so he couldn’t see where he’d been or where he was going. Guns, sitting in the front with his MP-5 and three clips on the floor, had a syringe with another double dose of Demerol in his pocket in case the prisoner began acting up.

  Ferguson got in the front of the van, which was trailing immediately behind the sedan with the bulk of the s
ecurity team. The first Mercedes started out as they locked up; it would run ahead to make sure there were no problems with traffic.

  They were just crossing the river when Ferg spotted the small yellow station wagon. It had only a driver, no passengers, and at first the fact that it made the same turns they made seemed just a coincidence.

  “Let’s take some turns,” he told the others, and the Marine drivers worked out a quick set of detours along the river, driving through a tourist area. The station wagon stayed with them for a while, then disappeared; a panel truck seemed to take over as they came back onto the main street.