First Team (39 page)

Daruyev had been one of the people responsible for planning the bomb. Before the war, he had been involved in research for food irradiation, and had spent considerable time in America as well as France studying the problem. He told Ferguson and Conners that he had originally argued against using such a weapon, though in the end he was as responsible as anyone for its design, as well as for the theft of some of the material used to construct it.

He had also apparently paid a price beyond his arrest and subsequent fifteen-year sentence—he had lung and thyroid cancer.

“The lung cancer, perhaps because I smoke,” he allowed. “But the thyroid cancer, a large dose of radioactivity, surely.”

“What stage?” asked Ferg.

Daruyev shrugged. “It hasn’t been operated on. I can feel the growth with my fingers,” he started to pull up his hand to show them, forgetting that they were in irons.

“If you can feel it, you’re probably pretty far gone,” said Ferguson. The surgeon had shown him how to palpate—the technical term for feel—his own growth before the operation.

“I guess.”

Other rebels knew of the plot, and of Daruyev. From time to time they contacted him. Kiro’s man was only the latest of a long series. Daruyev claimed that he only listened and never offered true advice.

“A man came to me from Bin Saqr more than a year ago. His questions were dangerous ones,” said Daruyev.

“Why?” asked Conners.

“Because he wanted to know if different types of radiation would cancel each other out, as a practical matter.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ferguson.

“They were wondering if in arranging the material a certain pattern should be laid out. They were more concerned about alpha radiation—you understand, alpha particles, as opposed to gamma?”

“Yup,” said Ferguson.

“They were concerned if there might be a cancellation effect when a bomb was exploded.”

“Is there?” asked Ferguson.

“Bah. It was a question designed to see if I would help them, not to elicit a true answer. An imbecile would know there is no such thing.”

Ferguson started to laugh—he had, in a roundabout way, just been called an imbecile.

“Did you help?” asked Conners.

“No. But if they are asking about alpha waste—that is a much more dangerous prospect than what we planned. Allah’s Fist—they are not against the Russians. They want to destroy all infidels, which means you. I would be wary.”

“So why are they in Chechnya?” asked Conners.

“I don’t know that they are.”

“Someone was to talk to you,” said Ferguson. “And what about Kiro?”

Daruyev made a disparaging noise with his mouth, dismissing Kiro. “Chechnya is a perfect place for the misfits of God,” he said. “The Russians control the cities, but the mountains and hills—they cannot be everywhere at once. Even where they do control, you are proof that their level of efficiency is not very high.”

“You speak like a plant manager, you know that?” said Ferg.

“It was another life.”

Conners stopped the truck in the field near the burned-out buildings they had seen on the sat picture. They took the Chechen out and sat him in the back while they looked over the rains. The cluster of buildings had been burned several years before; there were not only weeds but thick bushes between the ruins.

“Time to call home,” said Ferg. “Find him a good place to sit, then you can take off the hood.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’ll inspire him.”

“Or get him more pissed off at the Russians,” said Conners.

“Same thing,” said Ferg. He took one of the AK-47s and walked across the dirt road they’d driven in on, climbing a hill that overlooked the ruins.

~ * ~

ack, next time you give me background on something, get it right,” said Ferguson, as soon as Corrigan came on the line.

“What?” said Corrigan.

“That nurse almost got us wasted. I mentioned God, and she dialed up an exorcism.”

“Which? In the prison?”

“No, I had a date this morning,” said Ferguson.

“It’s not like we have unlimited resources,” protested Corrigan. “Besides, I told you I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of—”

“Then don’t give it to me.”

“That level of intelligence,” said Corrigan, remembering the information now. “Shit, Ferg, that was good stuff. When I was in the Army if we had that level of intelligence—”

“You’re not in the Army now, Jack. Intelligence is our middle name, remember?”

“Well, it’s going to improve exponentially from now on. I have a replacement for Lauren. A bit, you know, eccentric, but I think he’s a real home run hitter.”

“Good.”

Ferguson saw light glint off a windshield in the distance. He pulled up his binoculars; it was a Russian troop truck, driving on the road they’d taken.

“All right, listen Corrigan, I’d love to stand around and chat, but I’ve got work to do. Call Van and arrange a pickup for me. I want to get out tonight if we can.”

“No can do,” said Corrigan.

“Why not?”

“You’re in Chechnya.”

“Am I? No shit. I thought I was sitting in Disney World. I’m talking to Mickey Mouse, after all.”

“Working with you’s a barrel of laughs, Ferg.”

“Yeah, well listen, I have to go. See what you can figure out for me, Corrigan.”

“It may take a few days.”

“Pull something together tonight,” he said, snapping off the phone and running down the hill.

~ * ~

13

WEST OF KADAGAC, KAZAKHSTAN

 The boxcar seemed to have disintegrated into the air. Guns and Massette drove all the way to the yard and back to the border four times without spotting it on any of the sidings; they sneaked into the yard and searched for it there, going so far as to check several cars to see if they had been painted over. Twice yardmen asked what they were doing, and at one point Guns thought he would have to pull out his gun and shoot a worker who seemed a little too insistent in his questioning.

It wasn’t in the yard. Massette thought the tunnel must have something to do with the disappearance; they searched it without finding a siding or even a doorway, Guns’s heart pounding the whole time as he worried a train would come and flatten him inside. They used their Geiger counters on the sidings without finding anything, then as a last-ditch effort began walking the tracks with the detectors.

About a half mile north of the tunnel, the tracks ran level with a sandy road on the right. Massette realized there was something odd about it, and began madly kicking around in the dirt; Guns couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing until Massette stopped with a curse, then dropped down and scraped soil from the buried rails.

“That bulldozer,” said Massette, pointing toward the woods.

There was a gap between the buried rail spur and the tracks of about four feet, just long enough for a flanged section to be fitted in. They found the pieces—the pair looked like long, curved french fries, with triangular heads—in a pile of rocks near the woods with some blocks and metal bars and chain. A few yards farther on, the rails were no longer buried; they headed through some brush toward a clearing a few hundred yards ahead.

Guns took out his pistol, holding it behind his back as they walked up the rail line. Massette stopped suddenly, catching sight of something in the distance.

“Better flank me,” he said.

Guns trotted into the woods to parallel him. The tracks ran in a large semicircle to the east, back in the direction where the tunnel had been. A small clearing sat beyond a set of cement posts; a partially dismantled train car sat in the middle of them.

“And here we are,” said Massette loudly, arriving in the clearing. “
Merde alors.”

It looked as if the flat casks from the French processing operation had been stacked on the bottom and sides of the car; at roughly a foot thick, they could have been easily missed by a casual inspection. The rad meters registered only trace amounts of material, bits of contamination that had been picked up inadvertently at the original waste site and left on the car. The casks—assuming of course that they had been there—would have contained high-alpha-producing waste, highly dangerous, but only if the containment vessels were broken and the material pulverized.

“Put it in trucks here,” said Massette. “Or one truck. We should probably follow this road,” he told Guns. He pulled out his map.

“It’s not on the map,” said Guns.

“Setting this up must have taken quite a long time.”

“Yeah,” said Guns.

“The fact that they would then blow up the train and leave the remains, leave the bulldozer, eliminate the possibility of using it again—they’re ready to go.”

~ * ~

14

CHECHNYA, NORTH OF GROZNYY

 The Russian truck drove up the road at a steady speed, not racing but not plodding either. Conners had pulled their vehicle behind the only large hunk of remains and done his best to obscure any tracks leading off the roadway; he hunkered in the ruins with their prisoner, ready with the RPG. Ferguson, crouched in a ruined basement closer to the road, aimed his AK-47 at the truck, even as he willed it to continue on its way.

It did not.

Jabbing off the side, the vehicle came to a shaky halt. A soldier jumped down from the cab, rifle in hand, walking around warily to the back. A minute later the driver got out, stretching his legs and hoisting his own rifle from the cab.