First Team (16 page)

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 security 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.

“May be that I’m just paranoid,” said Ferguson. “But I think we’re being followed.”

Their backup plan called for them to divert to the embassy, pick up more Marines, then drive out to a military field about seventy-five miles away. Ferg also had the option of driving straight out to the military field and calling for the C-12 to meet them there. He took out his sat phone and called Amanda, who was at the airport waiting for them.

“You really should have showered with me,” he told her when she answered the phone.

“Mr. Ferguson, where are you?”

“My girlfriends call me Ferg.”

“We were told you were en route.”

“I think we have a tail. It’s an operation, at least two vehicles, one a panel truck, which doesn’t make me feel too good.”

“Where are you now?”

Ferguson had to ask the driver for the highway name. Amanda didn’t answer when he relayed it.

“You around, Beautiful?” he asked. He saw the panel truck turn off behind them, but couldn’t tell what car was following them.

“We think the Russians are watching the airport,” said Amanda, returning. “We’re checking.”

“All right, let’s go over to plan B. We’ll drive right out to the second pickup,” said Ferg. “I think it’d be better if we had the security teams meet us en route.”

“I agree,” said Amanda.

“I knew you were easy.” Ferg glanced at the mirror, trying to make out if there was another car. The Marines were edgy in the back, and even the driver had checked his pistol, snugged into a shoulder holster beneath a sports coat. “Let me think on this a second. Keep the line open.”

“What’s going on?” asked Guns over the com set.

“People at the airport. Probably pissed that we didn’t choose Aeroflot.”

“We going over to the field?”

“Maybe. Let’s do another loop, what routine are we up to driver—C?”

The driver nodded. They had worked out a series of streets to follow to lose trails without executing high-risk maneuvers.

Assuming those were the Russians behind him, Ferguson realized they’d invested an awful lot of resources into the operation. Given that, they might have staked out the backup airfield as well—it was, after all, the next best choice, and pretty obvious.

Back to the embassy then. Have a helo come in. Too bad they couldn’t just land the C-12 on the roof.

“Hey, Beautiful, our airplane ready to go?” Ferguson asked Amanda.

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell him to take off.”

“Huh?”

“Tell him to take off. He’s going to pick us up.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet. I have to talk to the driver and look at a map.”

“Ferg—”

“See, I told you I’d grow on you.”

~ * ~

nce they were sure the C-12 was in the air, the driver in the lead car pulled a sharp 180 on the highway they were driving on. As the others sped on, he rammed into the panel truck, taking out the only vehicle they’d spotted that could be carrying a sizable force of troops. Veering as he was sideswiped, the driver of the van tipped over his truck, smashing into an oncoming car. Meanwhile, the Mercedes with the prisoner and the van sped off the road back onto city streets, racing through a series of alleys and lots to a stretch of warehouses at the eastern edge of the industrial section.

“You with us?” Ferg asked Amanda back at the airport. She was the only one whose radio could communicate with the pilot of the plane, which had taken off and was spinning back toward the edge of city.

“We’re ready.”

Ferg saw the plane overhead.

“Do it,” he told the driver.

The Marine slammed on the brakes as they turned the corner to Swvard Avenue, cutting off the station wagon following them. Ferg jumped from the truck as the Marines piled out in the back, brandishing weapons. The station wagon and a black Russian Lada behind it slammed to a halt; a large truck stopped behind them and men started coming out of the back. Someone got out of the Mercedes—a man in a yellow sports coat.