First Team [First Team 01] Read online

  “Why aren’t you staying there?” she asked.

  “Too expensive,” he told her. “Besides, this is such a lovely place. Do you speak German?”

  She did not, but the promise of payment in euros allayed her suspicions and she showed them to a pair of rooms at the top of the first set of stairs. They decided Conners’s was more private, and after searching and scanning for bugs using a small frequency detector, Ferguson took the laptop from the bag, using the sat phone to connect to their encrypted Web site.

  “That where we’re going?” asked Conners, pointing to the sat photos.

  “This one,” said Ferg. He double-clicked on the thumbnail and a large .jpg file began filling the screen.

  “Looks like an old castle.”

  “It is. Supposedly built by the Turks about six hundred years ago.”

  “The Turks were here?”

  “Turks have been everywhere,” said Ferg. “It’s a jail now.”

  “We’re going there?”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t want to leave the Happy Acres Motel?”

  “Well it does have TV,” said Conners, thumbing toward the set in the corner. It looked like it dated from the 1950s.

  “True enough.”

  “So what’s the deal, Ferg? What are we doing?” Ferguson still hadn’t explained what they were up to—unusual for him. The SF soldier didn’t need long-winded explanations, but he didn’t like it when people started acting differently than they had before. In his experience, it wasn’t a good sign.

  Ferg killed the telephone connection. With the Web browser down, he launched a scrubber program to erase the history files and all traces of what they’d just seen.

  “We got a lawyer poking around now, Dad. We have to watch what we do,” Ferguson told him.

  “She told you not to tell me what was going on?”

  Ferguson didn’t answer.

  “We ain’t gonna get you in trouble, are we?” Conners stood against the door, his arms folded. “Ferg?”

  “I’m just following my original orders until I’m told not to.”

  “I’m not arguing with you,” said Conners. “I just want to know what the hell’s going on, that’s all.”

  “Das is goot.” Ferguson took a beat-up black knapsack bag from the suitcase and slid the laptop into it. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  ~ * ~

  T

  he roast beef not only tasted like beef, it seemed to be nearly fresh. The beer the cafe served was thin, but that made it easier to order a second. It was between lunch and dinnertime, and the cafe was nearly deserted; they sat in a booth at the back end of the dimly lit room, speaking mostly in English, though Ferg threw in Russian and a little German every so often.

  “I want to get the guy Kiro’s guy talked to,” he told Conners. “Jabril Daruyev. He’ll know what’s going on.”

  “How do you get him to talk?”

  “Ve haf our vays,” said Ferguson.

  Conners frowned.

  “Personally, I’d like to just beat the shit out of him,” said Ferguson, “but the Russians have probably tried that.”

  “Even if we grab this guy, Ferg, what makes you think he’ll talk?” asked Conners.

  Ferg sipped his beer. Grabbing the Chechen was the right thing to do, but he was bound to take shit for it. Ferguson didn’t particularly mind; his dad had taught him that lesson long, long ago. The bureaucracy would get its pound of flesh from you no matter what; better to follow your conscience so you could live with yourself when they cut the rope. The old man had lived and died by that creed.

  “They have this stuff similar to thiopental sodium,” said Ferg. “Only it works.”

  “That like Sodium Pentothal?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s OK to use?”

  “It works.”

  “You have some?”

  “No. They have it at Guantanamo, though. We’ll send him there.”

  “Why didn’t they use it on Kiro?” asked Conners.

  “Because the lawyer wants to put him on trial,” said Ferg. “If they shoot him up, she figures it’ll come out and queer the case.”

  “That’s the only reason?”

  Ferg shrugged. Sodium—TFh4—the “street” name of the drug, whose chemical name ran about a paragraph long—would also do fairly serious damage to a person’s liver, but no one seemed to worry about that. “Daruyev doesn’t have to stand trial for anything he did in America. No objections to using the drags.”

  “Lawyer told you that?” asked Conners.

  “Not in so many words.” Ferg picked up his beer.

  “If they’re building this thing in Chechnya, maybe they’re targeting the Russians,” suggested Conners.

  “Could be,” said Ferg. “But you notice that the Russians weren’t all that concerned about Kiro until we blew up the commander’s car, right? You think we ought to count on them to stay on top of it?”

  ~ * ~

  E

  ven Ferguson realized that breaking a prisoner out of the Brown Fortress, as the Russians called the prison ten miles away, was impossible. So he had decided to let the Russians do it for him.

  The idea had started to form when they were in Chechnya, as a hazy backup plan to the snatch of Kiro. The details remained slightly hazy, because a great deal of it depended on the Russians themselves. But it was already in motion.

  Conners drove into Groznyy early in the evening, wending his way through the streets toward the address Rahil had given Ferguson in Baku. He now had a completely different cover story, one that accounted for his halting Russian—he was back to being an American, sent there as a sewer plant expert by UNESCO. Ferg assured him the cover wouldn’t be tested, though he had a folder on the car seat detailing various bacterial tests just in case. Rahil’s friend acted as if she had no idea who he was, and even mentioning Rahil—as Ferguson directed—brought no response. A hundred-dollar bill, however, got him a room with working electricity on the second floor of the small hotel.

  Inside, he took out his pistol and sat in the armchair opposite the door, waiting.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he store looked more American than Russian, shelves crammed around a cash register at the side close to the door, displays of newspapers and candy in easy sight of the cashier. Ferg walked to the back cooler—it was filled with Coke—opening it as another customer came in. Then he let it snap closed and walked around to the right, where the door to the back room was ajar, a sagging chain lock holding it closed.

  “I’m looking for Ruby,” he said in Russian. “Ruby?”

  A tall, thin man with a black shock of hair hanging over his forehead stuck his face in the crack.

  “I’m looking for Ruby,” Ferg said, this time in English.

  The tall man said something in Chechen that Ferguson couldn’t decipher. Instead of answering, Ferg held up his wrist and slid off his watch.

  “Where’s Ruby?” he repeated.

  The tall man reached for the watch. Ferg drew it back. That brought a fresh spree of indecipherable Chechen. When the door did not open, Ferguson slid the watch back on his wrist and walked over to the cooler. He took out a Coke and walked toward the front of the store.

  A gnomelike man with a closely cropped beard met him in the aisle. The man wore a long sweater that was so worn it looked like an old woman’s housecoat; thick as a brush, his short gray hair stuck up from his scalp as if he’d put his hand in an electrical socket.

  “I’m Ruby,” he said. The accent was so thick that Ferguson at first wasn’t sure it was English. “Come.”

  The man shuffled to the last cooler at the back of the store. He opened the door and slid the case rack back, passing into the storage area as if he were walking into the secret chamber of a haunted mansion. Ferg followed, waiting as Ruby slid the rack of soda back in place. His steps made a kind of snuffling sound as he went, not unlike the sound rough sandpaper makes as a craftsm
an finishes off the edge of a piece of furniture. Produce sat in wooden crates beyond the row of soda; behind them were large metal canisters for propane or some similar gas. At the very back of the space was a doorway; as he followed the gnome through it, Ferg slid the Glock down from his jacket sleeve and brought his hand up, and so both he and Ruby faced each other with loaded pistols in the dimly lit room beyond the store.

  Ruby started to laugh. Ferg smiled.

  Ruby pulled back the hammer on the pistol, a Zavodi Crvena Zastava .357 revolver that looked like a cannon in his tiny hand.

  Ferg’s Glock, small for an automatic, permitted no such intimidating gesture, though at this range it would do sufficient damage to make the situation a draw.

  “I think we can make a deal,” ventured Ferguson.

  “Your watch is counterfeit.”

  “No. It’s real.” Ferguson actually felt insulted.

  “Bah.”

  “Seriously. I got it in New York.”

  “Now I know it’s fake.”

  “I can arrange other payment.”

  “Perhaps I will look at it.” Ruby held out his hand.

  Ferg heard something behind him. His eyes and gun still frozen on Ruby’s face, he took a short step to the right, then another.

  “I hope he’s coming back with a credit approval,” said Ferg.

  Ruby shouted to the man outside, telling him to go back. The man outside began arguing with him. Ruby shook his head and lowered his gun.

  “Children,” said the Chechen. He went to the door and leaned into the storage room, his body shaking as he unleashed a string of invective. The man outside—Ferg guessed it was the man he’d seen at the chained door, though he’d looked no more like Ruby than Ferg did—whimpered once or twice, then retreated.

  Ruby returned to the room, gesturing wildly and mumbling to the effect that the world was a disappointing place, and there were no greater disappointments than sons. Without glancing at the American or otherwise acknowledging his presence, he walked to the only pieces cf furniture in the room—two large four-drawer filing cabinets, legal size, in the corner.

  “Chay?” he asked, pulling open one of the drawers and removing a teapot.

  “Good,” said Ferg. He kept his gun in his hand as Ruby removed the pot and two small cups from the drawer, then went back into the storage room and returned with a card table and an extension cord. Several more trips were needed before the kettle was bubbling with water and metal chairs had been unfolded around the table.

  “Strong,” said Ferg, when he finally sipped the tea. The dark green liquid tasted as if it had been made of anise and cinnamon as well as tea leaves.

  “Yes. There is no more good tea,” said Ruby, speaking in Russian. The Chechen had left his gun on the file cabinet and now had the air of a professor down on his luck. There was no hint in his voice whether he thought the liquid an exception to the rule, or proof.

  “If anyone were to have good tea, it would be you,” said Ferg.

  “It would. If anyone did.”

  “I need weapons,” said Ferg.

  “Why else would you be here?”

  “Why else?”

  Six AK-47s—Ruby would sell no fewer than that—and two RPG-18s, single-shot antiarmor missiles with a 64 mm warhead, were available for about three times what they should have fetched, according to the information Ferg had obtained through Corrigan. Which was a pain, not because he couldn’t pay it—he had a stack of counterfeit rubles with him—but because to do so would signal him as an easy mark and cause considerable trouble down the line.

  A long series of negotiations followed, with Ferg starting at a quarter of the going rate—as much an insult as Ruby’s asking price—then working slowly toward one and a half times what Corrigan’s data indicated was a fair price. It took nearly twenty minutes for them to reach that point, and it was only the addition of two dozen grenades and six mines that sealed it. They celebrated the agreement by brewing a fresh pot of tea.

  “Now a truck,” said Ferguson, and the bargaining began all over again. It took another half hour before he finally obtained a pickup with petrol at what he thought was a good price—he could judge that only by how long it took to reach agreement. By then his bladder was overflowing, and he excused himself, positioning some of the necessary cash in his pocket on the way back.

  When he returned, Ferguson asked if it might be possible to obtain the services of a few men. The Chechen hesitated sufficiently to let him know it would not be easily done. When he did not protest when Ferguson told him to forget it, the American realized that there would be no way to hire the mercenaries he was hoping for. While that lack complicated his plan, it did not torpedo it, and after one last cup of chay he left a small deposit and went immediately with Ruby’s son to round up the truck. Ruby was so pleased with the entire day’s work that he gave Ferguson two VOG-25 grenades completely gratis—a thoughtful gesture, even if the grenades were useless without their rifle-mounted launcher.

  The son complained about his father as soon as they left the store. When they reached the truck, he hinted that he deserved a tip. When Ferguson scoffed he insisted on one; when Ferg began laughing he started to sulk, almost in tears.

  The CIA officer pulled a fifty-euro note from his pocket.

  “I need a driver,” he said.

  And so he obtained the services of Gribak Morkow, who, besides knowing the best roads to Groznyy, spoke surprisingly good English.

  The real price of his services was a seemingly unending diatribe against Ruby. Gribak kept making sweeping statements about the sins of fathers in general and asking Ferguson if what he said wasn’t true.

  ~ * ~

  C

  onners had almost fallen asleep in the chair when the rap came at the door.

  “Come,” he said, his gun aimed at the opening.

  Ferg pushed inside. “Still here, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on. Get your stuff.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, if they’re not going to arrest you, we’ll move on to plan B.”

  “You didn’t want them to arrest me, did you?” asked Conners, taking his small bag.

  “Just bustin’,” said Ferg.

  Gribak had the truck idling down the street. Two AK-47s were beneath the front seat, along with several clips and two of the hand grenades.

  “When the police come, make a commotion,” Ferg told Conners.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, that and don’t get caught. Meet me back at Happy Acres when you’re done. Give Gribak fifty euros when you get there. Don’t go more than that; he’ll think you’re queer.”

  “OK,” said Conners. Ferguson was so deadpan it was hard to tell if he meant it as a joke or not.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he 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.