First Team (4 page)

“You’re a foreigner, and you beat the shit out of two guys in the restroom. One of them might’ve woken up and called them,” said Rankin.

“Those guys are probably still sleeping,” said Ferguson.

“Bottom line,” said Rankin, “we still don’t know shit, one way or the other.”

“Well duh, Skip.”

“Hey, if you don’t really want our fuckin’ opinions, don’t ask for them,” said Rankin.

“Sheremetev’s still our best bet,” said Conners. “We ought to concentrate on him, check him out, who he knew, who he didn’t know.”

Ferguson took out his phone. Each man carried one of the high-tech devices; though the size of cell phones, they connected to a dedicated and secure satellite communications system. The only giveaway was a tubular antenna at the side about the size of a fountain pen, which had to be extended to communicate. The phone included a GPS locator chip and a distress mode, which if activated would allow the folks back home to find the phone to within a tenth of a meter. It could also act as a modem for the laptop, and had two silent modes—a vibration alert and a blinking light, as well as associated voice mail.

Ferg keyed in the combination for the special operations center in Virginia known as the Cube, where a mission coordinator—the title sounded more dignified than “gofer”—was on duty twenty-four/seven while the Team was deployed. Unlike a traditional case officer or control arrangement, the coordinator was subordinate to the head of the operation, which was always the officer in the field. The desk handled support, which could literally mean anything; most often it came down to sifting through intelligence and making sure money and cover stories were in place.

Technically, orders for the SF units backing up the Team passed through the desk to the DDO, who then issued them to Van Buren, the head of the SOF group supporting the field operation. In reality, Ferguson and Van Buren generally short-circuited the procedure by speaking directly. While the Team was deployed, an SF unit—generally though not always two ODAs, commonly known as A teams—along with supporting assets—were standing by to bail them out if things got nasty.

“What?” asked Jack Corrigan as the connection snapped through.

“What yourself, Sunshine,” Ferg said.

“It’s fuckin’ two o’clock in the morning,” said Corrigan. “You want cheerful, call back in twelve hours.”

“You got anything for me?” asked Ferg.

“Yeah, you’re off the hook—bullet was definitely a .22 or thereabouts.” Corrigan had had the photos analyzed by an FBI lab.

“Well thank God, because I thought I was a murderer,” Ferguson said. “Who killed him?”

“You’re going to find this hard to believe, but I haven’t a clue.”

“We’re counting on you, Jack.” Ferg reached over and took a swig from the vodka, which burned slightly as it went down his throat. “You think the police down there know?”

“NSA intercepts say they’re looking for you guys as primary suspects. Driving a van, right?”

“Yup.”

“Ran through a garbage dump?”

“Rankin got homesick.”

Corrigan snorted. “They have some sort of Russian investigator coming down to their office.”

“Yeah?” Ferg sat down on the edge of the bed, then lay back. “What’s it all about?”

“Damned if I know. But he’s not police. FSB.”

FSB—the
Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti
or Federal Security Service—was one of the successor agencies to the KGB.

“What division?”

“Antiterrorism. Rock your socks?”

“Right off. So the murder had to do with the waste?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Your guy was into everything. Mafiya might just have gotten tired of paying him off.”

“Maybe we can liaison some information out of them.”

“Oh yeah, right after we turn you over to be arrested,” said Corrigan.

Ferg rolled off the bed. “I can bug the police station down here. Maybe the Russians know more than we do.”

“Set up a tap on the line,” said Corrigan. “Easier.”

“Yeah, but the conversations inside the office are going to be the real thing. He there yet?”

“Not until tomorrow night.”

“Great. Can you work it out with the NSA?”

Corrigan didn’t say anything, but Ferg could picture him leaning back in his black vinyl armchair away from the computer screens and looking up toward the ceiling. “Working it out with the NSA” meant setting up a special channel to capture and analyze the links, and even under the best circumstances it could be a bureaucratic nightmare. These wouldn’t be the best circumstances, either—there were very few Kirghiz language specialists at the NSA. In fact, Ferg knew of only one—a rather curvaceous beauty with too much overbite but a darling accent.

“I guess,” said Corrigan finally.

“Talk to you when it’s done.”

“Look, Ferg, this is probably just another wild-goose chase of yours. The DDO has been asking—”

Corrigan probably said something else, but Ferguson had slapped off the phone before he could hear it.

~ * ~

4

KYRGYZSTAN, THE NEXT MORNING

It was Conners who started the singing.

They were on the road from Talas, driving in two cars—a car and a truck actually, the first another Honda Accord, the other a Zil, a large truck that had once belonged to the Soviet army. Roughly equivalent to an American 6x6, it easily held the Team’s gear as well as extra gas. Since many were owned either by mafiya members or ex-soldiers with heavy connections, it was a relatively safe vehicle to drive. The only problem for Guns, who was at the wheel, was the clutch. It caught only at the very bottom of the floor when it decided to work at all, and he ground the gears on every second or third shift. Rankin groused every time he did, but didn’t take up the offer to change places.

In the Accord, Conners slumped against the door and after an hour or so of driving began to hum. After a while, Ferguson recognized the tune.

“Whiskey you’re my darlin’ drunk or sober,” he sang out, when Conners hit the chorus.

“You know that one, Ferg?”

“My uncle used to sing it all the time,” said Ferguson. “He was the black sheep of the family.”

“Poor drunk Irishman?”

“Drunk and definitely Irish, but not poor,” said Ferg.

His family had made a fortune in the construction industry—probably thanks to a good deal of graft—by the turn of the twentieth century. Conners, by contrast, had been born and raised in suburban New Jersey, nowhere near rich but not by his sights poor, either. His father had been a union carpenter in New York City.

“You know this one?” asked Ferguson, changing the subject by starting “Finnegan’s Wake.”

The two men traded verses of the old Irish folksong about a painter who’d fallen down from a ladder dead. Finnegan was revived by whiskey at his wake.

“What the hell’s going on up there?” asked Rankin over the radio. Conners had inadvertently hit the mike feed on his belt, regaling the others with their singing.

“Old Irish drinking songs,” Conners explained.

“Yeah, well, lay off the vodka,” griped Rankin.

“You can join in if you want,” suggested Ferguson. “You, too, Guns.”

“I’m not much of a singer,” said Guns in the background.

“Neither are they,” said Rankin. “And if you start singing, too, I’m taking the Uzi out.”

Ferguson and Conners both laughed. Conners spent the next hour teaching the CIA officer the words to “A Jug of Punch.”

~ * ~

uns hadn’t been in the town yet, so Ferguson chose him to go inside the police station and plant the flies, miniature microphones with transmitting devices about the size of a large freckle. Foreigners were required to report in anyway, and they figured it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to come up with an excuse to get back into the detective area—all he had to do was claim that he’d been robbed on the way into town.

“You think they’ll ask me a lot of questions and try and trip me up?”

“Nah, they’re not going to be interested at all,” said Ferguson. “They’ll pretend to fill out the paperwork. You slide the fly in under the desk, and we’re good to go. Leave one in the men’s room, and another out near the front desk. Easy as shit. There’s only three rooms in the whole place—front, back, and the restroom off the hall. Bing-bang-boing, you’re done.”

Though not entirely convinced it was going to be half that easy, the Marine nodded. They were now all in the back of the Zil, parked at the side of the gas station near the center of town. It was 05:45 local; if Guns timed it right, he could go in, be given a seat and told to wait out the shift change, plant his devices, then say he’d come back.

“In and out,” said Ferg.

Guns had joined the Marine Force Reconnaissance for a variety of reasons, including the fact that his older brother had gone through the program. The training was a blast, rigorous but a blast, and he’d proven an adept free-fall jumper. His first assignment had been to the Persian Gulf, where among other gigs he’d infiltrated an oil rig and taken down a two-man suicide boat operation. Everything after that had been rather boring. He was forced—he used that word, though in fact the school was voluntary and his superiors had merely suggested it—into enrolling in a number of language courses run for the military by a company that did a lot of work for the CIA; it was through them that he’d come to Ferg’s attention.

Ferg had made the Team sound as if it was direct action twenty-four/seven. But so far it had been all spy bullshit—talking to people mostly, along with a fair share of sitting around in hotel rooms and driving places. Maybe the Army guys got off on this, but Guns was already thinking he’d join the stinking SEALs before signing up for another round.

“Hey, you going IBM on me?” Ferg asked, noticing Guns wasn’t paying attention.

“What’s that, sir?”

“You’re not thinking, are you?” Ferg frowned at him. “Don’t think. Just do. If you think, you’re going to get sweaty.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Screw the sir shit, right? Makes me think I’m my old man. And he’s dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ferguson smiled at him, then playfully pushed the Marine toward the back of the truck. As he reached the tailgate, he stopped and twirled him around.

“You can’t go with this,” said Ferguson, holding up Guns’s Makarova pistol.