First Team (43 page)

Ferguson decided to check the house out; he approached quietly, though it was clear the village as well as the mines had been abandoned years before. The interior remained intact, a table and chairs in a room visible through one of the windows. The scene struck him as something out of a bizarre dream.

Conners waited impatiently for Ferguson, suspecting that the Chechen had lied to them to make his escape.

“Have a turnip,” said Ferguson, looming from the shadows. He tossed one to Conners.

“What the fuck?”

“Turnips.”

“Yeah, I see that,” said Conners, turning it over. It was shriveled.

“How long you figure it takes a vegetable to rot?” Ferg asked.

“Jesus, Ferg, how the hell do I know?”

“That’s how long ago the Russians burned the village,” said Ferguson. “Daruyev didn’t know.”

“Real test will be if he’s still there,” said Conners.

“That just means he couldn’t escape,” said Ferguson.

~ * ~

4

INCIRLIK, TURKEY

At one point in its venerable career, the Douglas DC-8 had served as an electronic warfare aircraft, mostly for training but in two instances supporting combat operations. Like many an old soldier, however, its days of glory were long gone, and the only hints of its past were a few scars on the gray-painted fuselage where sensors had once hung.

Van Buren—who was just a few years younger than the plane—tried to stretch some of the kinks out of his back as he trotted down the steps to the Incirlik tarmac. Two members of his command team were waiting with the Hummer nearby—Major Corles, who coordinated G-2 or the intelligence aspects of the mission, and Danny Gray, an Air Force major who liaisoned with Air Force Task Group Charlie, a specially constituted command that “owned” and maintained the aircraft Van Buren would draw on for his mission. Like 777th itself, Task Group Charlie was arguably the most versatile in the Air Force, fielding everything from helicopters to Stealth fighters.

“CentCom has some people coming over,” said Corles. “We’re going to draw on them for some logistics support. Pete’s working it out. All we need is a target, and we’re good to go.”

Van Buren grunted. He’d spoken to Ferg an hour or so earlier; the officer said he had three sites to check out, and one was bound to be golden.

That was Ferg; always the optimist. But if he did find something, they had to be ready to hit it right away. At the same time, they had to plan an exfiltration in case he didn’t; he had a valuable source for debriefing back at Guantanamo.

The others updated him on the situation there as the truck sped toward the hangar that had been appropriated to house their unit temporarily. Much of what they said was now routine, and Van Buren’s mind drifted back to his lunch with Dalton. The lure of the job—the lure of the money—continued to tease him; he hadn’t gotten much sleep on the flight over though the plane had a special bunk for that purpose.

He was thinking of James, and what he might owe his son. A good college education, certainly.

He could get that if he applied to West Point. Van Buren realized on the plane that they’d never discussed that; in fact, he had no idea where his boy wanted to go to school—or even if he did at all. They hadn’t discussed much of anything about his future, except for baseball.

The realization that he didn’t know what his son wanted shocked him. It was possible, probably even likely, that James didn’t know himself. But as his father, Van Buren realized he had a duty to find out. He wanted to pick up the phone and call him, but of course he couldn’t; he hadn’t even been able to do that while he was in the States.

If he wanted to go to Harvard, what then?

What would keep him from taking Dalton’s job? The colonel himself? The thrill of getting shot at?

Van Buren just barely kept himself from laughing out loud—getting shot at was no thrill, though there was a great deal to be said for having survived being shot at. He did love the action, the adrenaline pumping in your chest. But he personally hadn’t been under fire for quite some time, and in truth that was the way the Army wanted it. Colonels, even Special Forces colonels, weren’t supposed to put their noses on the firing line.

Planning a battle, helping run it—that was an incredibly difficult and important job, the sort of thing only a very few men could do, and even fewer could do well.

But adrenaline
was
part of the reason he was here. If there was an operation, he was going to be in the thick of it, and no one could tell him not to be.

Except maybe his son.

“We should have F-117s available, if needed,” Gray was saying. “I’m a little sketchy on when we can get them over here, though.”

Van Buren snapped upright. No one who worked for him should be sketchy about anything.

“We’ll get everything crystal clear,” he told the others. “Everything.”

There was a bit more snap in his voice than he’d intended, and the others responded with studied silence.

~ * ~

5

GURJEV, KAZAKHSTAN

Guns waited in the front of the basement cafe near the center of town while Massette called Corrine to update her. The server’s Russian had an accent Guns wasn’t familiar with, but he’d nonetheless managed to order tea and sandwiches. He wasn’t exactly sure what was between the bread, but was so hungry it didn’t matter. By the time Massette came back Guns had already cleared his own plate and was eying Massette’s food.

Gurjev was a large crossroads in western Kazakhstan on the Caspian Sea. They’d driven nearly four hundred miles without finding a trace of their quarry.
“Mon ami,”
said Massette, pulling back the chair. “They got something?”

“No. But Alston is very stubborn,” Massette said. “She wants us to keep looking.”

“Yeah. She’s almost as bad as Ferg.”

“Stubbornness is overrated as a personality trait,” said Massette, taking his sandwich.

~ * ~

6

VERONVKA, CHECHNYA

Daruyev hadn’t escaped. Ferguson and Conners found him huddled over his chains, snoring loudly.

“Shame to wake him,” said Conners.

“Too heavy to carry,” said Ferg. He took out his pocketknife and hacked off the rope. “Let’s go,” Ferg told Daruyev. “Time for door number two.”

Daruyev blinked his eyes open. “Nothing?” he asked.

“Not today. Where we going next?”

“A place called Verko. The Russians abandoned it years ago. It’s safe.”

“Safe for who?” asked Ferguson.

The Chechen smiled, but said nothing, instead tracing out the general direction on the map Ferguson showed him. The base wasn’t marked there.

“What was the village like?” Daruyev asked, as they started down the mountain. “Did you talk to people?”

“Russians blew up whatever was there a while ago,” Ferguson told him.

“The village?”

“Yup.”

“My mother and sister were there two years ago. I got a letter.”

They drove down the mountain. The APC was gone. At this time of night, the real danger was from Chechen guerrillas. But they saw no one as they made their way northeastward. Daruyev slept; Conners, too, dozed off. Ferguson stopped before dawn and pumped diesel into the tank.

They’d have to take one of the main roads northward to get to Verko. It would be risky even without a prisoner, and as he stowed the empty jerry can, Ferguson considered whether just to evac him out now. But Ferg decided that for the moment he’d proceed as planned, using the Chechen’s help to scout the other two possible sites before taking him home. Assuming they drove during the day, they ought to be able to get to them both by nightfall anyway.

Conners cranked open an eye when he climbed into the truck.

“Long leak,” he said.

“I was peeing in the gas tank,” Ferguson told him.

“You want me to drive?”

“Nah, sleep a bit. I’m thinking we’ll drive into the day.”

“That safe?”

“Of course not.” He started the truck and put it in gear, winding down the dirt road. Conners rubbed his eyes and stretched as much as he could with Daruyev leaning against him.

“Where are we?”

“Near Noza-Jerk,” Ferg said, smiling at the name.

“Noza-Jerk. What a town,” said Conners.

“Then there’s Gora Krybl,” said Ferg.

“I been to Grznyj, Ordzon, Chrebet—I been everywhere, Jack. I been everywhere,” sang Conners.

“Sounds like a song,” said Ferg.

“It is.” He sang a few verses with the names of American cities in Texas. “Old hobo song.”

“Not Irish?”

“Came out of New Zealand or Australia or someplace,” Conners said. “Changed around a lot. Geoff Mack wrote it, or at least a version of it, that a lot of people did.”