First Team Page 7

  Everybody squinted over the screen.

  “So we knock on the front door, they run out the back?” said Ferguson.

  Rankin snorted. “Yeah, right. They could take two companies on before they felt the heat. Even then, you don’t have armor, you’re not getting in.”

  “What do you think, Dad?” Ferg asked Conners.

  “Got to figure they have at least one guy inside the cave at all times,” he said, pointing at the escape route. “I have to tell you, I don’t quite see the cave, let alone the tire or even the hide Skip’s talking about.”

  “It’s there,” said Rankin.

  “I’m not arguing with you. I just have older eyes.” Conners smiled at him. Rankin reminded him of a racehorse that had been shot up with amphetamines for a race, always jittery, sensitive to the touch. Great in the race, but hell before and after. “Be booby traps, probably twists and turns. You’d never get in that way.”

  “I don’t see us getting in at all,” said Rankin.

  “Yeah, Skip’s right on that. We’re going to have to make him come out,” said Ferguson. He got up and started pacing around, thinking over the situation. It was now almost noon. Every hour they stayed there increased the chances they would be found by either the Russians or the Chechen rebels, or both. They still had their informer, but even holding on to him was not without risk.

  The Russians had two companies in Irktan. That was probably the reason they didn’t attack the camp; they figured it wasn’t worth the effort.

  That would have to be changed.

  “Rankin, you see any guard posts on that back end there?” Ferguson asked.

  “They have people on this road way the hell over here,” he said, pointing at a highway nearly two miles from the rear of the fortress area. “The thing is, there’s no way in from the roads. So if they’re dealing with the Russians, they probably figure they don’t have to guard along this area here. Terrain’s for shit, and the Russians never go anywhere without either a caravan of armor or helicopters, or both. If you’re in the fortress, you don’t need to be anywhere else.”

  “And this?” Ferguson pointed to a ravine that ran out the back of the fortress.

  “The escape route,” said Rankin, repeating what he had told Ferguson earlier. “Got a bike right there.”

  The hide for the bike was visible on an earlier photo; the area was not quite as sharp in the most recent shot. But Ferguson decided it must still be there.

  “Why only one bike?” asked Guns.

  “Only one person is important enough to escape,” said Ferg.

  “Only one’s chicken enough,” said Rankin.

  “Maybe it’s for a messenger,” said Conners.

  “Could be,” said Ferguson. One of the briefs on the rebel organization that Lauren had posted with the satellite data emphasized that the leaders looked at the war as a long-term affair—survival was important. In his opinion, the bike was Kiro’s parachute, nothing else.

  “We might be able to sneak in that way, take them by surprise,” said Rankin.

  “We don’t know what’s beyond that opening,” said Conners. “Assuming it is an opening.”

  “Got to be,” said Rankin.

  “Yeah, OK. Listen, I gotta talk to Van,” said Ferguson, standing up. “In the meantime—Rankin, that mortar we have in the kit—”

  “The English piece of shit?”

  “The same,” said Ferguson. “You think you could rig it so some of the shells it fires don’t explode?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they fire and land somewhere, but don’t go boom.”

  “I could do that,” said Conners.

  “Yeah, I could figure it out,” said Rankin quickly.

  “Good. Only a couple. Don’t blow yourselves up, guys,” said Ferguson. As he jogged up the basement steps, the plan began to form in his mind.

  11

  IRKTAN, CHECHNYA—FOUR HOURS LATER

  Rankin finished setting the charge, waiting beneath the car behind the army headquarters building. He could hear Guns haranguing the guards a few feet away, asking about the clinic—demanding to know in very loud and seemingly drunk Russian why foreigners were allowed to poison people there.

  The guards were getting impatient. Rankin heard one of them shove Guns and rolled away from the car. They started kicking the Marine, who’d fallen to the ground as part of his diversion.

  It took Rankin all his self-control not to jump up and run to help his companion. Instead, he got up slowly, walking toward the battered Accord, where Conners was waiting with their Chechen informer.

  A woman was walking near the road. Rankin looked at her for a moment, worried that she would stop and say something to him. But she hurried on.

  The sergeant looked back in time to see one of the men give Guns a kick in the ribs, leaving him in a heap against the wall. He waited for him to make it to the corner and start across the street. Then Rankin opened the car door and pulled the Chechen informer out.

  “In two days,” he said, repeating the Chechen words Guns had told him. “Go to Sister. You’ll be paid.”

  The Chechen’s eyes were glued on the hundred-dollar bill in Rankin’s hand.

  “Two days. Understand?”

  The man nodded.

  “Now run.”

  The Chechen understood that. He shook his head and put up his hands.

  Rankin took the pistol from under his jacket. “Run,” he said. “Run.”

  He had to bring the gun up almost to the man’s face before he started.

  The soldiers didn’t see him until he was a good distance down the block. One began yelling; the other knelt to aim at him. As he prepared to fire, Rankin pushed the button on the radio detonator, blowing up the car.

  When Ferguson heard the explosion, he dropped the round into the L16, involuntarily ducking back as the 81 mm projectile whipped upward from the small mortar. In quick succession, he loaded and fired five more rounds from the British-made weapon, raining a half dozen shots on the Russian headquarters. Had these been normal rounds, they would have done considerable damage; the bombs weighed a bit over nine pounds, much of it explosive. Rankin had fiddled with them, essentially turning them into duds. Still, it was very possible that the attack would injure someone, and while Ferguson had no particular love for the Russians or locals, his own people and the Mormons were down in the village. He finished with the dud rounds and moved the mortar to bomb out the road; these rounds sounded the same as they left the tube but their booms were potent cracks that shook the air even where he was positioned, roughly two thousand meters away.

  Ferguson kicked over the mortar, then kicked dirt all around to make it seem as if there had been more people there. Grabbing his gear, he hiked up the ridge he’d scouted earlier, tracking down, then across the hills to a point north of the Chechen stronghold, where he was supposed to meet Rankin and Guns. Conners was already watching at the rear of the fortress; if Kiro tried to escape before the rest of the team got there, Ferg had told him to blow him away. Authorized or not, the death would not be lamented in Washington.

  It took nearly an hour for Ferguson to reach the rendezvous point. As he reached it, he heard an airplane approaching and worried that perhaps the plan had succeeded a little too well—perhaps the Russians were so angry they’d pound the guerrillas so severely that they wouldn’t have a chance to escape.

  The jet was too high and too fast for Ferguson to see. It circled twice over the camp, which was between two and three miles away. On its second orbit the steady hush of the jet seemed to stutter. Then it roared louder than before. Ferguson instinctively ducked; a few seconds later he heard the muffled thud of two medium-sized bombs exploding near the fortress.

  As the plane zoomed away, the CIA officer climbed up the rock with his MP-5 and Remington over his shoulder, looking in the direction of camp. White smoke curled into the sky from beyond the rocks, but he couldn’t see the fort itself from where he was.
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  “That bomb get you, Dad?” he asked Conners.

  “Thought we were on silent com,” grumbled the SF soldier.

  “Just checking.”

  Ferguson went back to the ledge and stowed his gear, then took his binoculars and scouted the approach, adjusting his com set to make sure he’d hear the team when they got into range. He sat down cross-legged, shotgun in his lap, submachine gun at his side, and made himself as comfortable as possible to do the thing in the world he hated the most—wait.

  Guns had been beaten pretty badly, but he was able to walk, and when the car exploded, Rankin ran around the block and met him as they’d arranged. The mortar shells began falling in the field short of the center of town; the timers on the other charges he’d set around town began going off. Rankin applied the coup de grace to the attack by igniting the charge on their Accord; a fireball shot straight up from the gas tank, a spectacular show that would have rated a ten at a fireworks display.

  They took a quick left turn off the main drag and jumped in a truck they’d stolen earlier. Guns slumped against the door as Rankin drove around to the road that led to the rendezvous point.

  “Fuckin’ Russkies don’t have a clue,” he told the Marine, who merely groaned in response. “They’re little rabbits, cowering in their holes. Assholes had any sense, they’d have their knives out—cream us just as soon as look at us.”

  In Rankin’s opinion, the Russians’ entire posture had invited attack—he would have had a better perimeter force, better sweeps, checkpoints—he wouldn’t have let a couple of foreigners, one of them a gimp, waltz right out of town under his nose. A machine gun would have commanded the top of the ridge beyond the road, wiping them out as they drove.

  “You complaining?” Guns asked him, as they stopped to get rid of the truck just beyond the ridge.

  “I’m just saying they’re awful lazy.”

  “They kick pretty good.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was worried they were going to arrest you.”

  “Ferg said they wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah, well, Ferg’s not always right.”

  “Think they broke my rib.”

  “Bastards. We shoulda killed every one of them,” said Rankin.

  He climbed on top of the truck and turned his field glasses back toward the town. Two BMPs, armored personnel carriers mounting a light cannon, had taken up a position at the nearest end of town.

  “They coming for us?” Guns asked.

  “Not yet. They better get their act together, or we’re back to square one.”

  “You don’t think blowing up the commander’s car will piss them off?”

  Rankin spun around so quickly he nearly fell off the truck. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

  “With what? Your binoculars?” Ferguson looked at Guns, who was hunched over the front of the truck. “You all right, Marine?”

  “I’m fuckin’ fine.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Come on, boys; we got a long walk to catch up to Dad, or he’s going to have all the fun.”

  12

  IRKTAN, CHECHNYA

  After more than two hours in the woods, they were still a good mile and a half from the back of the fortress. With the sun starting to set, Ferguson decided they’d have to split up. He was worried that the rebels would decide to sneak out of the fortress as soon as it was dark.

  “Conners’ll just blast’em,” argued Rankin.

  “If he has to, that’s OK. But he also might get his ass handed to him,” said Ferg. “You help Guns come up as fast as you can.”

  “I can make it by myself,” said Guns. “Both of you guys go.

  “I don’t know, Guns,” said Ferguson.

  “Go on.”

  “I don’t need no Marine Corps macho bullshit,” said Ferg. “I need you in one piece.”

  “Fuck yourself, I am.”

  “He can make it,” said Rankin.

  Ferguson debated with himself. If there was a firefight behind the fortress, Rankin would be extremely useful. On the other hand, Guns wasn’t likely to go too much faster with Rankin helping him.

  “You sure you can make it?” he said to the Marine.

  “Yeah, I can do it,” said Guns.

  “I’m counting on you. I got to keep these Army guys in line. One Marine, two Army—about right.”

  “You need five grunts for a jarhead,” said Guns, wincing through his smile.

  “Yeah, that’s about right,” said Ferg. “You use the radio if you get stuck. You got me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They had to stop after a mile and put on their night goggles. The quickest way to the ravine over the cave exit was across a sheer rock wall. It would be impossible in the dark—Ferguson had mapped a route below, which would have brought them almost opposite the vehicle hide—but if they got across it they’d be almost on top of the exit, in perfect position to control it. From there, one man could cover the other as he went across to the left down to the spot where Conners was waiting near the vehicle, which he’d already incapacitated.

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Rankin, looking at it through his goggles. “No way.”

  “Leave the pack if it’s too heavy,” said Ferg. “Come on. I’ve gone across rock quarries that were tougher.”

  “At night?”

  “Oh shit yeah,” said Ferguson, examining the wall. “There’s plenty of handholds, couple of ledges. Won’t be a problem.”

  “You’re crazy man. I’m not doing that.”

  “Your call,” said Ferguson, starting out.

  “Fuck,” said Rankin, snugging his ruck tighter and following.

  Ferg found a ledge about chest high and climbed up onto it. It was about eight inches wide, and he didn’t have to lean too much to keep his balance as he went. He stopped after a few feet to tighten the shotgun; the MP-5 was in its Velcro rig. There was a guard post about a hundred yards farther up the ridge to the left, but to see down here the lookout would have to crawl out and peer over the rocks, extremely unlikely as long as they were quiet.

  The ridge ended twenty feet out. A hundred and fifty yards of nearly sheer wall separated Ferguson from a pile of rocks that would be easy to scramble across. The drop was at least two hundred feet.

  Rankin really didn’t want to know how far down it was. He could feel the sweat swimming down his fingers. He watched Ferguson begin climbing the wall, working his way across. Fucker probably wants me to fall, Rankin thought to himself, pushing his fingers into a rock and kicking for something to put his foot into.

  Ferguson was about ten feet from the rocks when he ran out of places to put his hands and feet. At first he thought it was just because of the darkness and eye fatigue—the goggles tended to make his eyes blurry after a while—but gradually he realized it was a real problem. He climbed up a few feet, only to find his way barred in that direction as well. He stared and stared, trying to find a hold, and was still staring at it when Rankin finally reached him.

  “Now what?” whispered Rankin. He was breathing hard, probably hyperventilating.

  “I don’t know,” said Ferguson. “The rock’s so smooth I can’t find a hold anywhere. No cracks. Nothing.”

  “Well you better find one. I’m getting tired.”

  “We could turn around,” said Ferguson.

  “I’m not going back.”

  “Just wanted to give you the option. I’m going to push off and jump.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Better keep your voice down,” said Ferguson. He went back to studying the wall. If he were wearing climbing shoes, he might take a risk on a nub just out of his reach; the face sloped ever so slightly, and he thought—knew—he could get his finger there before his balance got too unwieldy.

  Nah. Too far. He had to jump.

  “Hold my gun,” he told Rankin, sliding the shotgun off his
shoulder. He took one last look with the night goggles, then took them off and worked them into his ruck, figuring—hoping, really—they’d be safer there.

  “Shit,” said Rankin.

  “Dude, you got a ledge there, you ain’t fallin’.”

  “It’s three inches wide.”

  “Suck it up.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Ferguson took his gun back. “When I get on the rocks and get the NOD back on, you can toss me your gear.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Well, jump with it if you want. And be quiet. The guard post isn’t that far away. If you curse when you land, do it quietly.”

  “Shit.”

  Ferguson shifted right, shifted again, got his left leg in place, and sprang to the rocks.

  His belly caught the side, but he held on without slipping. He got up, unsteady but intact, then put his NOD back on. He waved at Rankin, waiting.

  Rankin tossed the MP-5 to him. Ferg caught it with one hand, a stinking circus catch.

  What a hot dog, the SF soldier thought as he eased himself out of his ruck. He waited until his head stopped spinning, then tossed it out to Ferguson, who used two hands this time.

  “Your NOD,” said Ferguson in a loud whisper.

  Rankin had already decided he was keeping it on. He shook his head, then waited as Ferguson began moving toward the edge of the rocks, positioning himself so he could grab Rankin if he fell short.

  Rankin waited a second more, then jumped. Heavier than Ferguson and without the experience of midnight daredevil sessions in college, he came down short of his mark but still on the rocks, bowling Ferguson over as he fell.

  “Serves you right,” he groaned, getting up.

  “You got to lose weight, Skip.”

  Conners watched them come down the rocks, picking their way down the right side of the ravine.

  “You took your time,” he told Ferguson, as the CIA officer made it to the base of the hill.

  “You’re still here? I thought the Chechens would have asked you inside for a little training.”

  “There’s two motorcycles,” he told Ferguson. “I moved them. I figured they might come in handy.”