First Team (5 page)

He’d managed to grab it out of his belt without Guns feeling him take it. The Marine was torn between belting him and asking him how he’d managed to get it away so smoothly.

“I’m going in there unarmed?”

“We’re here for you, Guns,” said Ferg. “Just walk in there, do it like we rehearsed. You can seem nervous, that’s fine. Be nervous.”

“I ain’t nervous.”

“Yeah, right,” said Rankin. “Give us your fuckin’ phone, too.”

Guns scowled at him but handed it over. He ducked out the back of the truck.

Rankin had climbed up a telephone pole down the street from the station an hour ago, sliding a thick rubber sleeve containing the bugging mechanism over the wires; it was already uploading stolen data to an NSA eavesdropping satellite. Once the flies were in place, Ferg would activate the booster transmitter nearby, and they could split.

“All right children. Be ready. I’ll take the walk,” Ferg told the others, getting out to cover Guns into the station.

“Long as Conners don’t sing, I’m fine,” said Rankin, picking up his Uzi.

Ferg cocked the beak of his cap down over his head. If the others had argued that he’d been seen too much to shadow Guns—a fair argument—he’d have told them their Russian sucked too bad for them to get out of trouble. But he’d have gone no matter what; he was a little worried about the Marine.

~ * ~

he police inspector’s right and left eyes didn’t work together, and Guns had a hard time not staring at them as he gave him the basic information for his report. The man looked to be about fifty; his fingertips were stained brown from cigarettes. He asked his questions in Russian though Guns had started out in Kirghiz.

The story Guns told of being robbed was common enough—a roadblock on a dark road after making a wrong turn. The policeman could probably have copied it from a dozen reports in his computer. Instead, he hunt and pecked it in, using a keyboard so old half the letters were worn away.

“Occupation?”

“Sales representative,” said Guns. He was a Belgian working for an Italian firm interested in shipping medical waste. There was in fact an appointment at one of the furnaces that the inspector could check if he wished.

The phone rang. The inspector reached over to answer, continuing to type with one finger. His bored expression didn’t change, though his left eye rotated a little.

Guns got up from the chair, making as if he were stretching his legs. He’d planted the first fly near the front desk when he came in, but had waited to find a good spot for the second. Ferg had told him he could put it under the lip of a desk or under a chair if all else failed, but it would be better if it were higher. It was so small that it could sit out in the open and not attract attention.

According to Ferg anyway.

A nude calendar hung on the wall. Guns inspected it, pausing over Miss MaPT (March). As he did, he pressed his hand against the wall, sliding the fly beneath the calendar.

As he backed away, he watched it slip to the floor.

He froze. As nonchalantly as he could, he stepped back, glancing toward the detective. The man was still hunting and pecking with one hand, holding the phone up with another. Every so often he grunted. He didn’t seem to be watching Guns at all, though it was hard to tell with those eyes.

Guns took a few steps as if stretching, then bent to tie his shoes.

Which were loafers.

He slid the fly onto his thumb, got up. As he did he lost his balance, banging against the waste can and falling against the wall. Once more he pushed the bugging device in—this time sticky side against the paint.

If the detective had noticed his display of coordination and lust, he didn’t let on. The man finished his conversation and looked at Guns with skewed eyes, asking where he was staying. Guns gave the name of one of the city’s hotels, noting that he hadn’t had a chance to get over there and check in yet, though he had a reservation.

More hunting and pecking followed.

“We will contact you if anything comes of it,” said the inspector finally. His tone of voice pretty much admitted that there was no possibility of this ever happening. “Would you like advice?”

“Sure,” said Guns.

“Next time, fight back. It’s legal.”

Given the circumstances Guns had described—two men with shotguns approaching the car in the dark—fighting back would have been suicidal. But Guns thanked the inspector as if he had given him the soundest advice in the world.

He stopped in the restroom on the way out and got rid of the last fly. Two officers in the front were joking about how fat they were getting as Guns passed. He pretended not to hear and started for the front door.

“You’re an American, aren’t you?”

In a perfect world, Guns would not have reacted to the question. But the sharp tone, and more importantly the fact that the words were in an almost unaccented English, took him by surprise. He turned to the right and saw a man in a rumpled yellow jacket staring at him from a metal chair at the side of the room near the door, his legs sprawled forward on the floor and his head propped up by two fingers stuck against his nose.

“No, I’m Belgian,” Guns answered in English. He gave it a slight French accent, or at least what he hoped would sound like a French accent. He reached into his pocket and took out a business card to give to the man, though a voice inside his head was screaming at him to get the hell out of there.

The man reached his hand up and flicked the card away.

“Arrest him,” he told the police officers who had been joking together. “He’s an American spy.”

Before Guns could protest, another policeman came through the front door, blocking any possibility of escape.

~ * ~

5

KYRGYZSTAN

Ferguson, sitting at a cafe next to the police station, glanced at his watch. Guns had been inside for over two hours.

The wait wasn’t particularly long by Kyrgyzstan standards, but Ferguson didn’t like it. Several men had gone inside since Ferg had gone into the restaurant, and while most were clearly policeman, he guessed that the man from the FSB had been among them.

Ferguson leaned back in his seat, hiding his face behind a newspaper. He had an earbud in his left ear, which was facing the wall. He lifted his hand to his face, pretending to scratch his nose.

“Rankin, Conners, what do you guys think?”

“I think I got to take a leak,” said Rankin.

“That’s helpful,” said Ferg.

“Can we use your boom to listen in?” asked Conners.

The boom was a long-distance microphone with several modes, including one that could pick up vibrations off windows. But it was rather bulky and could be easily spotted.

“Better to switch on the flies,” said Ferg. He’d hesitated doing so because there was a theoretical possibility that they could be detected.

“I say do it,” offered Rankin.

“Yeah, all right. I’ll go hit the transmitter. You know the routine, Dad.”

“Take a minute,” said Conners in the truck.

The flies transmitted to a receiver they’d placed in a sewer a short distance away, and from there would upload to the same satellite system the phone tap used. Corrigan could access the line from the Cube and relay it back via the secure sat phones. Conners would call and arrange for the relay while Ferg slipped out to activate the transmitter.

He was just getting up when the door opened at the front of the police station. Two policemen emerged, shouldering Guns between them to a police car down the block. A short man in a yellow sports coat followed outside, casting his eye up and down the block before getting into his own car.

“Shit,” muttered Ferg.

“I see it,” said Rankin.

“Meet me at the sewer.”

“Story of your life,” said Rankin.

By the time Ferg was close enough for his phone to turn on the transmitter, the car had a good head start. He jumped into the Zil as Rankin hit the gas.

“We lost ‘em,” said Conners, sitting between them.

“Fuck,” said Rankin.

“All right, let’s not get a speeding ticket,” said Ferg. “Rankin, slow down and take that left. I think I know where they’re going.”

Ferguson guessed that they were taking Guns to the detention facility in the basement of the old Soviet building at the end of town—a logical guess borne out by the fact that the car, or one that looked just like it, was double-parked in the street as they passed.

“Let’s hit ‘em now,” said Rankin.

“Relax, Skippy,” said Ferg, who knew the sergeant hated the nickname. “Let’s reconnoiter first.”

“We can’t leave Guns in there,” said Conners.

“We’re not going to,” said Ferg. “But we don’t want to be guests ourselves, right?”

Rankin turned the truck down a broad but empty street just past the building, going as slowly as he dared while looking out the side window. The building looked solid, and while there were no soldiers or guards outside, getting Guns out wasn’t going to be easy.

To Ferguson, Guns’s arrest represented a break, but it was difficult to explain to the others that the longer he remained in the Kyrgyz custody, the more information they were likely to gather. That was the downside of working with the SF people— they were bodacious in firefights and quick on their feet, but they tended to want to reduce everything to bangs and bigger bangs. Sometimes you had to put a little sweat in.

“What are we doing, Ferg?” asked Rankin as he took a second turn around the block.

“I think I have a spot where we can put the boom up, see what we get. Park the truck as close as you can get. Dad, did you set up the bug relay?”

“Didn’t have a chance.”

“Go for it as soon as you park. Let me out here.”

“Why?” asked Rankin.

“All that chay made me have to pee,” said Ferg.

“Fuckin’ officer material,” said Rankin, unleashing his worst slur as he stopped the truck.

~ * ~

hy are you interested in the Chechen?”

Guns gave the man in the yellow jacket a quizzical look. It wasn’t difficult—he had no clue what the SOB was talking about.

The man frowned. He’d told Guns that his name was Sergiv Kruknokov, that he was Russian, attached to the Federal Security Service or FSB, and that he had no jurisdiction here.