First Team

1

Thomas Ciello sat on the floor of his new office, a viceroy of paper. He had estimates, reports, briefings, hints, and scraps of sheer speculation spread in various piles before him; they covered every square inch of the twelve-by-twelve room, including the desk, the three computer monitors, the bookcases — some pages were on the shelves, which were empty except for a dictionary — and two chairs.

He had started with a system, but the organizing principle now involved several layers of calculus, and Thomas had never been very good at math.

“Oh, my God.”

Thomas looked up at the door, where Debra Wu was standing.

“I think I almost understand it,” he told her.

Debra glanced down the hall, then bent to her knees and scooped up pages and files so she could get inside. Thomas noticed that her short black skirt rode up high on her thighs.

“You can’t do this. These papers — this is such a massive security violation — they’ll hang you by your toes.”

“I signed everything out, and nothing’s left the room,” he told her. “A lot of this isn’t even classified, I mean, beyond secret. It’s just—”

Exasperated, Debra put down the papers she had gathered. “Security is — it’s, it’s psychotic—”

Indignation welled up in Thomas’s chest. The staff assistant was hinting that he was less than professional. He tried to temper his response — it was a very short skirt, after all — but it was difficult to remain calm.

“If we’re talking about security,” he said, “are you allowed to see these reports? Are you even allowed in my office?”

Debra rolled her eyes. “Corrigan wants to see you in ten minutes.” She pulled open the door and left, papers fluttering as she went.

Thomas went back to sorting and sifting. Leaving the office was certainly problematic security-wise, but as far as lie understood protocol — and if there was anything he prided himself on it was his understanding of protocol — he simply had to cover all of the compartmented material and lock up when he went out. In his desk was a gray blanket, ordinarily used to cover the desktop. There were actually two of them in his desk, which helped him cover a good portion of the floor. A wall map of the world, several empty manila folders, and his jacket took care of all but two small piles near the door; he considered taking off his Oxford shirt and leaving it on them, but it was one of his favorite shirts. Instead, he simply carried the folders with him as he went to see Corrigan.

Downstairs in the Cube’s situation room, Corrigan used a video feed to watch Thomas clear a security gate before being allowed down the stairs. Debra Wu had buzzed to say the new staffer was “on another planet,” but Thomas seemed perfectly reasonable as he went through the security. He had some documents with him, which he quite properly refused to show the guard at the post. The request was actually a nasty trick; if Thomas had agreed, the man would have written him up for a security violation since he didn’t have the proper clearance for the compartmented data.

Cleared, Thomas walked down the corridor and into the stairway, practically hopping as he walked to the sit room. That was just the sort of enthusiasm Corrigan liked, and he awaited Thomas’s approach with growing optimism.

“All right,” said Thomas as he was buzzed through the glass door. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, I did,” said Corrigan. “What do you know?”

The question caught Thomas off guard. “About the mission or about anything in general?”

“The mission,” said Corrigan. He reached for his coffee cup.

“The mission. Okay. The ship was clearly not related to the plot. See, Kiro — he and the Iranians don’t get along. The Iranian defense minister—”

“We’re a little past that,” said Corrigan. “Tell me about the waste.”

“Which waste?”

“The stuff we’re tracking.”

“Oh that. Nasty. They’ve scraped uranium — most of it’s uranium, but there’s strontium, cesium, other by-products — nickel, that’s ugly. Now if that were stolen, it’d be important. See, it’s being placed in these long containers. They call them casks, but they’re actually flat, and you can handle about fifty at a time with a forklift. The French process allows them to get high-level waste in manageable quantities. As long as it doesn’t get into the air, you’re OK.”

“How are they getting it?” asked Corrigan.

“Uh, aren’t you working on that?” said Thomas.

“I was just wondering what you had found from your end,” said Corrigan, his faith in the new man starting to slip.

“They have bought two forklifts,” said Thomas.

“Who?”

“Allah’s Fist. They’re in Chechnya.”

“Are you sure? Bin Saqr is supposed to be dead.”

“Ha-ha.” Thomas had a quick, tight laugh, as if it were powered by a pneumatic drill. “No. There’s absolutely no evidence that he’s dead. He just hasn’t showed up anywhere. And two companies that were associated with his organization in the past still exist. There are other connections. A Pakistani scientist named Zedian. And the hospitals — there’s a real connection there. They’ve collected and diverted material from cancer-treatment wards. It’s gamma-wave generators, mostly low-level, but if there were enough of it — a matrix, see, with all sorts of different wastes together. You explode it in a bomb, there’s stuff all over the place, and it’s a real bitch to clean up.”

“Let’s focus on the problem,” Corrigan said. “Where is Bin Saqr now?”

“Good question.” Thomas scratched his side with his folders. “The evidence points to Chechnya, but that’s a big place.”

“We need a place where the SF team can make a pickup,” said Corrigan. “Colonel Van Buren has a couple of suggestions, but we want to make sure there are no guerrillas there. Or Russians, for that matter.”

Corrigan handed him a piece of paper with the names of three villages written phonetically.

“These are in Chechnya?” Thomas asked, looking at the names.

“The spelling may not be correct,” said Corrigan. “They were former Russian bases that were abandoned. I think there may be a civilian field in there. Anyway, check them out and see which would be closest to those coordinates at the bottom, where Ferg is. When you’re done with that, let’s put together a theory on what the delivery system would be. Truck bomb? Ship?”

“UFOs,” said Thomas.

“UFOs?” said Corrigan, so incredulous he couldn’t say anything else.

“I recognize one of the names, I think, from a UFO sighting,” explained Thomas. “I didn’t mean they were using a UFO to drop the bomb.”

“Oh,” said Corrigan, still unsure.

Thomas thought he sounded disappointed.

“If it were UFOs, we’d really have trouble, right?” he said brightly. His suspicions about Corrigan were confirmed — his new boss was a believer. God had finally smiled on him.

“We’ll figure it out. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” said Thomas, snapping the paper in the air. He turned and practically ran out of the room as Corrigan rubbed his forehead, worried that Debra Wu’s assessment was too kind by half.

2

Corrine gave the binoculars to Rankin and got out of the car, stretching her stiff back. She missed her workouts. Who would have thought that this job actually involved more sitting than her old one?

It isn’t my old one, she told herself. She was still the president’s counsel.

Rankin got out of the car. “Fresh truck of Russian troops,” he told her, gesturing with the binoculars. “We ought to get ready.”

Corrine nodded. The train had been met by a contingent of uniformed Russian border guards near Kzyl-Orda. They had added two flatcars at the very end of the train, boarding them and riding along. Obviously, the Russians were worried about something, though they, too, had missed the action.

“I have the next few stops mapped out for us,” Rankin told her. “The tracks parallel the road for a ways, and we can use the transceivers to keep tabs. Little town about ten miles from here where we can quick grab something to eat — there’s a long stretch with no sidings or any possible stops, so it’ll give us some leeway.”

“Yeah.”

“You down about the missing boxcar?” he asked.

“You could call it ‘down.’”

“At least we figured out what they’re doing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You were right about following the train. We can’t expect to pull it all together in one shot. Nobody does that, not even Ferguson.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” she said, walking around the back of the car. “You drive.”

Guns called her on the sat phone just as they parked at one of the spots Rankin had picked out for a food stop.

“Lost it totally. Massette thinks they took the trucks north, because the road connects in that direction, but anything’s possible. What do you want us to do?”

There was no one right answer, Corrine realized — it wasn’t like she could pull down a few law books, find some precedents, and present an invincible argument. Whatever she told them to do would be open to second-guessing and interpretation.

As were Ferguson’s decisions on the original mission, Corrine realized.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” McCarthy would have said — his point being to do something.

“All right,” Corrine told Guns. She could see the train pulling up an embankment ahead. “Figure out the most likely route to Chechnya. At the moment it’s our best bet for a destination. Consider that they probably would prefer to drive at night over decent roads where they’re less likely to be stopped. It’s a wild-goose chase, I know, but it’s better than sitting around with our thumbs in our noses. I’ll tell Corrigan what’s going on and see if they can supply any information that will be useful. In the meantime we’ll see if the survey of the satellite photos has turned up anything.”

“You sure you don’t want us to come and back you up?”

“No,” said Corrine. “I think the theft has already been made. Stay in touch,” she said, hitting the kill button.

Rankin pulled open the passenger door and got in, filling the car with a strong odor.

“Some sort of cabbage bilini thing,” he told her. “It was the only thing that sounded edible.”

Corrine was too busy to argue the point. The train had rounded the curve and was out of sight. She pulled back onto the road ahead of a slow-moving bus, accelerating quickly. It didn’t take long to get the train back in view.

“Want some?” asked Rankin.

“It smells hideous.”

“It doesn’t taste as bad as it smells.”

“Gotta make a phone call first.” She juggled the phone in her hands, hitting the preset to connect to the Cube sit room. As she did, the wheels slipped off the pavement; she nearly lost the phone regaining control.

“We want to stay in one piece,” Rankin said.

“Preferably,” she said, glancing at him. She started to laugh.

“What?”

“You have cabbage on your chin.”

“Just camouflage,” he said, wiping it off.

Corrigan, meanwhile, was asking what was going on.

“I’d like Mr. Ferguson to set up some surveillance at the border areas of Chechnya,” Corrine told him after a brief summary of the situation. “I don’t know what extra resources we can spare, but at the moment that’s the most logical destination.”

“Um,” said Corrigan.

“Um?”

“Uh, I think you’re probably right about that being the likely destination,” said Corrigan. “Did Ferg talk to you?”

“No.”

“He’s already in Chechnya.”

“I thought he was waiting for us to find something.”

“He had a lead he was working on. I was under the impression he was going to tell you about it himself.”

“Mr. Ferguson did not inform me,” she told Corrigan. Corrine felt her face flush. “Connect me with him.”

“You can probably do that yourself.”

“Now.”

The line clicked. There was static, then another series of clicks. Finally, a ring. Then another, and another.

“Ferguson,” said a voice at last.

“Mr. Ferguson. Where the hell are you?” Corrine asked.

“Yeah, good question,” he told her. “According to the map, the town we’re near is called Vedona, except that I think there’s supposed to be a diphthong in there somewhere. I saw a sign, but the letters were upside down. Whatever its name is, the Russians burned it to shit a year ago, so we’re more here than there.”

“Why are you in Chechnya?”

“Same reason you’re in Kyrgyzstan,” he told her.

“I want you to set up some surveillance along the border area.”

“Can’t,” he told her. His voice was so cheerful he could have been talking about a ski holiday. “Following a couple of leads with a promising source.”

“What source would that be?”

“You don’t really want to know,” said Ferg.

“Tell me now.”

“Daruyev.”

It took her a few moments to remember who he was talking about.

“The Chechen the Russians arrested for the dirty bomb plot? You spoke to him in jail?”

“Kinda.”

“You went to a Russian prison? They’re cooperating?”

“That would probably be an overstatement,” said Ferguson.

“You didn’t break him out of jail, did you?”

“You know, Counselor, I’m a little tied up at the moment.”

“You were not authorized to do that. You weren’t even supposed to be in Chechnya.”

“Look, I have a mission,” said Ferguson. “The way this works is, I do my job until Slott tells me to stop. How I execute is up to me.”

“I’m in charge now, not Slott.”

“So?”

“I’m in charge now,” she repeated.

“My original orders haven’t been rescinded.”

“Consider them rescinded,” she told him. “You can’t just go off on your own.”

“Look, there’s no way you could have approved this, right? Because you’re a lawyer. I just did us a massive favor,” Ferguson told her.

“Bullshit, Ferguson. Bullshit.”

“I have three possible sites where these bastards may be putting together bombs, and I’m going to check them out. Then Van is going to pick me up and take me home.”

“No. I want you to check the border.”

“Fine. Then you explain why we didn’t check the sites two weeks from now when the bomb’s used.”

“We’ll order satellite photos and survey the sites.”

“I don’t know where they are yet. Besides, these people aren’t stupid. They’re checking the overflights. They probably have telescopes watching everything in the sky. Goddamn satellite tracks are posted on the Internet for Christsake. Come on, Alston. Get up to speed. You’re in the big leagues now.”

She glanced at Rankin. He was frowning, but his eyes were pasted on the road.

“How long will it take you to find out where the sites are?”

“I don’t know. My informant’s a bit cagey. We should be near the first one soon. It’s just about dark. Couple of hours. He says the other two are pretty far west. Couple of days.”

“That’s too long. I want you watching the roads. They’ll take you to the right site.”

“OK,” said Ferguson. “What am I looking for?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Then my way’s better, right?”

“Check out the damn sites,” said Corrine, realizing it was. She couldn’t let a pissing match over who was in charge cloud her judgment.

She’d have to take care of that later on.

“Thanks,” said Ferg. The line died.

She hit the end transmit button and threw the phone at her bag on the floor.

“He’s an asshole,” said Rankin.

“You can say that again.”

3

As Ferguson turned up the road toward the mountains, an eight-wheeled Russian armored personnel carrier lumbered across the road, blocking the path ahead. Two Russian soldiers hopped from the back of the vehicle, guns ready.

“Moment of truth, Dad,” Ferg said. “Don’t talk too much.”

“Uh-huh,” grunted Conners.

Ferg slowed to a stop. He’d printed himself a set of papers indicating that they were authorized to travel to an outpost at Gora Cobolgo, which was near the border farther south. The papers included a document from the interior ministry, which would suggest to the soldiers that Ferg and Conners were FSB. Daruyev, of course, was clearly Chechen, though the implication would be that he was an informer.

“Heya,” said Ferg, rolling down the window as the soldiers approached. The nearest man aimed his rifle point-blank at Ferg’s face.

“What’s your business here?” demanded the soldier.

“I have a pass,” Ferg told him in Russian, though he made no effort to show it to the soldier.

The turret on the armored personnel carrier swiveled in their direction. The APC was a BTR-70, battered by hard use in the Caucasus. The soldier pointed at Daruyev and sneered, calling him a dirty slime. It was hardly the worst thing he could say, though Ferg could feel Daruyev tensing.

“Let’s move,” Ferg said. “It’s getting dark. I don’t want to be on the road too long.”

The soldier laughed at him, shaking his head. He brought up the assault rifle quickly, aiming it at Daruyev’s head. Ferg smelled vodka on the soldier’s breath, and for a split second thought the idiot might actually shoot.

He did, but only after pulling the gun upward. Then the soldier laughed again and waved at the APC, which moved back to let them through.

“Calls himself a soldier,” grumbled Conners. “He didn’t even look at your papers.”

“The soldiers here become quite hardened quickly,” said Daruyev. “They quickly become less than soldiers.”

“That’s no excuse,” said Conners.

The road narrowed as they continued upward, until gradually it was just wide enough for the KAMAZ. They started downhill after a sharp turn, and Ferg had to jab at the brakes, barely managing to control the truck on the loose gravel at the side of the road.

“Beyond this curve,” said Daruyev, pointing ahead.

The pass was not marked on the map, and at first it looked more like a creek bed than a roadway. But within a few yards it widened slightly, and while not exactly a highway, was easy enough to drive.

Ferg and Conners had agreed that the Chechen might be bringing them into an ambush, and while that seemed less likely with Russians nearby, they’d already decided to stop well short of the village area so they could first scout the access the Chechen had pointed out. Ferguson found a flat area to park about a mile up from the Russian checkpoint; according to the map and Daruyev’s directions, the village sat about two miles over the ridge to the southeast.

“OK, partner. You wait for us here,” Ferg told the Chechen. “You’re going to wait in the back.”

“The Russians will kill me if they come,” said Daruyev.

“We all take chances,” said Ferg. He put the hood on, then led Daruyev into the rocks a short distance from the truck. Conners rigged a crude anchor from some rope, tying it to the leg irons. Then they took a GPS plot and logged it to make sure they could find the spot again.

“I suggest you sleep,” Ferg told him. “We’ll be back.”

“I trust you,” said Daruyev. He held his head erect as if he could stare through the hood. Ferg pushed him gently to the ground.

You think you’re going to be able to keep him in America after this?” said Conners, as they picked their way quietly up the ridge. They moved parallel to but not on the road, armed with AK-74s. They’d stashed the grenade launcher and the rest of the arms near the KAMAZ and brought along one of the ignition wires to make it more difficult to steal.

“Sure.”

“You can’t be serious, Ferg. The Russians will throw a fit.”

“Who’s going to tell them? Our lawyer boss?”

“She may.”

“Village is that way,” said Ferguson, cutting over the rocks.

According to Daruyev, an abandoned mine sat just below the village. It was in this complex that he thought a dirty-bomb factory might be housed. It was a logical guess; not only would the shafts create a decent hideout, but they would presumably make it difficult to detect radiation.

The southwestern slope they came around had little cover, and while they’d seen no obvious lookout posts in the satellite photo Ferguson downloaded, the Americans moved cautiously toward the village, practically crawling as they tried to make it more difficult for anyone lurking with a nightscope to pick them off.

A deep crevice ran in a jagged line from the top of the hill above the village, as if God had scraped his finger down the mound. The crevice was about fifty yards from the closest foundation; when they reached it, the two men paused to take stock.

“Quiet,” said Conners.

“Yeah. Probably a bust,” said Ferguson. “We’ll leave the village alone, check out the mines.”

“Yup.”

They followed the crevice, picking their way as carefully as possible. The moonlight gradually grew, as if forcing its way through the clouds. After about a half hour, they came to a shallow crater twenty yards or so from one of the mine entrances.

“Bomb hole,” said Conners.

“I guess,” said Ferguson.

“That’s what it is, Ferg.”

“I’m not arguing.” The CIA officer knelt at the edge of the crater, staring at the rectangular cut in the mountain nearby.

“All right,” he said, getting up and starting toward the hole.

Conners squatted at the edge of the crater, leveling his gun in the direction of the mine entrance. Ferguson stopped about halfway there, then began sidestepping to the right down the incline. A narrow path ran across the slope from the hole, switching back about ten yards on his right. Ferg flexed his fingers on his gun, trying to control his breath so he could hear better. Another shallow bomb crater sat to his right, the indentation so slight he could barely make it out. The mountain gaped at him through hewn-rock jaws, blackness far darker than the night in its throat. Ferg saw something move and jerked right, just barely stopping his finger from squeezing the trigger as he realized he’d seen his own dim shadow thrown by the moon.

Conners, waiting at the lip of the crater, saw Ferguson jerk toward the ground. He waited, knowing nothing was there and yet unsure of his knowledge at the same time. He watched Ferguson continue forward into the opening. Belatedly, he pushed himself out of the crater, trotting to keep his man covered. By the time he reached the mouth of the mine, Ferguson had disappeared.

Conners cursed and went to one knee by the entrance. When the CIA officer didn’t reappear after a minute or so, Conners rose and stepped gingerly to his left, then his right, trying to peer inside. He couldn’t see anything. Finally, Conners whistled, softly first, then louder.

“OK, Pops,” said Ferguson finally.

Conners swung around — the team leader was down the slope behind him.

“Place looks pretty empty.”

“What the hell?” said Conners walking in the direction of Ferguson’s voice.

“Train tracks down there. Mines are a maze. Looks empty though.”

“You walked through them?”

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” said the CIA officer. “I’m a ghost. I just float right by.”

“Always bustin’, Ferg. One of these days it’s going to come back to haunt you.”

“Can’t if I’m already a ghost, right?”

They worked their way down the slope. Several other entrances to the mine had been wrecked by explosions. The ruins of a building sat near the largest entrance, which was at the foot of the hill.

“Think Daruyev sent us on a wild-goose chase?” asked Conners, as they climbed back up toward the village.

“I don’t know,” said Ferg.

“Hope that anchor I rigged up holds him.”

“He won’t run away,” said Ferguson.

The Russians had obliterated six of the seven buildings in the small village, but one house remained. It stood apart from the others, roof shorn off, holes where the windows once were. Wires lay in a tangle across the path leading to it; they looked like snakes in the moonlight.

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

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

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

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.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Your loss,” said Conners.

“Why do you like those old songs?”

“Why do you?” said Conners. “Remind you of being a kid?”

“The childhood I never had.”

“Don’t get philosophical on me, Ferg.”

“I’m not philosophical.”

Bullshit, thought Conners, but he didn’t say anything.

“You think I’m philosophical?” asked Ferg.

“That and reckless,” said Conners.

“Reckless?”

“I’d call it a death wish.”

“That why I hang around with you, huh?” The CIA officer rolled down his window halfway. The blast of cold air stung his eyes, reminding him he was awake.

“You’re not an SF type,” said Conners. “Not a soldier.”

“Not enough discipline, huh?” said Ferg.

“Got that right. You don’t like following orders. And you take too many risks.”

“Got to.”

“You were lucky, Ferg, damn lucky.”

“Which time?”

Conners laughed.

“You’re telling me no SF soldier is reckless?” said Ferguson.

“Not the ones who are alive.”

“Bah.”

Conners didn’t bother arguing.

“Rankin’s not reckless?” suggested Ferg.

“Rankin? No.”

“Bull.”

“Taking risks and being reckless aren’t the same thing, Ferg.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Rankin’s a professional.”

“You Army guys like to stick together.”

“You don’t like him, that’s all. Not that I blame you — he hates your guts.”

“That doesn’t make him not reckless,” said Ferg. “Let’s try that turnoff over there,” added Ferguson, spotting the road.

7

When Thomas matched Corrigan’s scribble with the name on the map — Verko — he felt as if the ceiling had lit up with spotlights. Verko was connected with several UFO sightings during the 1950s and ‘60s, all reported by villagers in the nearby mountains. The sightings had proven false; at the time Verko was a secret Russian base devoted to a squadron of spy planes.

It looked fairly isolated, a good place to arrange a pickup — but only if he could be sure the Russians weren’t using it anymore.

Or the guerrillas. Thomas threw himself into researching it, gathering every slither of information he could. He began with the generic, pulling up SpyNet and working from there. The base had been officially closed in 1992, though it hadn’t seen much activity for at least ten years prior to that. Thomas jabbed at the keyboard, calling up a set of satellite photos. He culled through a file, then went over to a collection made by a commercial satellite over the past several years without finding any that showed activity on the runway. He did find shadows undoubtedly related to activity there, though there was no new construction.

A scan of NSA intercepts turned up several hits that contained Verko, but most had not been decrypted. The one that had contained something seemed pure gibberish.

He continued to work, guessing logically and illogically. He lost track of time. He didn’t eat. He didn’t emerge from his room. At some point he decided he needed a break. Thomas got up and gathered all of the papers that he’d arranged on the floor in a big pile next to his desk, then dropped to the floor and did a hundred push-ups. When that didn’t rev him, he tried a hundred more. A third set left him so tired he fell asleep on the floor.

How long he slept there, he couldn’t say. He finally woke up because someone was pounding on his door.

“Yes?” he asked, opening it.

Debra Wu stood in the hallway, eying him suspiciously. She was wearing a different skirt, though this one seemed just as short as the other.

“Thomas, the security log says you’ve been here all night,” she said.

“Might be.”

Verko wasn’t a Russian base, he realized — it was a guerrilla stronghold.

“Corrigan wants to see you. Does he know you were here?” she added.

“I don’t know.”

“You want some coffee?”

“Why not?” He got up, orienting himself among his papers. “Tell Corrigan I’ll be down in a while. I have to put some things together. I need to make a few queries.”

“Okey-dokey,” said Debra, retreating.

“Don’t forget the coffee.”

Even though Debra warned him that “the loony slept under his desk,” Corrigan wasn’t quite prepared for the analyst’s disheveled appearance when he entered the secure chamber about an hour later. His hair stuck out in every direction; his shirt was half-out of his pants, and he seemed to have dust and lint pasted all over his body.

“I figured it out,” said Thomas.

“What?”

“They’re putting the bomb together at this place called Verko. It’s in the mountains, and it used to be an airbase.”

“Verko — that was one of the pickup possibilities,” said Corrigan.

“Verko’s the place you’re looking for,” said Thomas. “Allah’s Fist bought ammonia nitrate and had it tracked into a village a few miles away nine months ago. We have two sat photos showing those trucks on the road to the facility.”

“When?”

“Six months ago.”

“At Verko?”

“No, but that has to be where they’re going. And one of the companies that was associated with Bin Saqr rented a house in the village. Medical waste — they’ve been grabbing all the cesium they can get. Maybe other stuff. The analysts warned about this — I know the man who put the estimate together. Very reliable. I have an inquiry into NSA to see what intercepts may link with this.”

Thomas’s hair poked out at odd angles, and his eyes nearly bulged from his head. As much as Corrigan wanted to believe that the analyst had solved the problem, the portrait he saw before him did not inspire confidence.

“Take me back to the beginning,” he told Thomas.

Thomas explained what he had found a second time. Even laid out in a semilogical manner the shadows and glimpses of trucks near but on the base sounded less than definitive. Corrigan brought up a sat picture of the abandoned base on one of the computers.

“Where exactly would they do the work?” he asked. “The Russians dismantled the hangars they had there in the eighties. These buildings — are they big enough?”

“That is a problem,” said Thomas. “I don’t know.”

Corrigan frowned. “What do they do with the bomb once they put it together?”

Thomas shrugged again. “I haven’t figured it out yet. But it would be a perfect site. It hasn’t been under Russian control for the past five or six years, exactly when the head of Allah’s Fist disappeared.”

“That’s all you have? No intercepts there, no nothing?”

“Not yet.” Thomas peered over Corrigan’s shoulder. Maybe the Russians had burrowed into the side of the mountain, putting the planes in a nukeproof shelter. Or maybe there was a ramp elevator along one of the aprons.

Now if it had been an alien base, the transnuclear engines would allow it to slide through a fissure in the mountains without detection.

Probably he could rule that out.

“Maybe you should get some sleep while we work this over,” said Corrigan. “I’ll put in a request to NRO for every scrap of satellite data they have.”

“I have that all under way already,” said Thomas. “But I’m sure this is the place.”

“Sure sure, or just sure?”

“Sure,” said Thomas.

Corrigan debated calling Ferguson. If he was wrong, the officer would bash in his head.

“Get some more backup,” said Corrigan finally.

“On it, boss,” said Thomas, running from the room.

Corrigan finally realized there might be such a thing as too much enthusiasm, not to mention eccentricity.

Even so, he picked up the phone to call Ferg.

8

The marshaling yard was less than two years old, and while small by Western standards, it stretched out across the landscape like a city unto itself, with close to a hundred miles worth of track. Freight cars from all over Russia and Europe were scattered along the various spurs, each located and tracked by computer as massive freight trains were put together. Nearly all contained garbage.

The cars carrying the rad waste were in their own section of the yard, heavily guarded. They’d found a spot to watch the yard nearly two miles away from the perimeter of the facility, and though the view was unobstructed, Rankin had to sit on the roof of the car with his binoculars to see.

Corrine slept inside. Rankin had almost had to slug her to get her to take a rest. He was worried that she was going to burn herself out; she was clearly pushing herself because she thought she’d screwed up somehow losing the boxcar.

Rankin reached across the roof for the thermos of tea — coffee had become increasingly difficult to find — and poured himself a cup. He was just taking his first sip when the sat phone rang. To answer, he had to enter a personal ID code, then say his name into the receiver. The computer analyzed his voice pattern; if it didn’t match its records, the phone was temporarily locked into transmit mode and Corrigan — or whoever was making the call — alerted. Once the embedded GPS device gave a positive marker on the phone’s location — a matter of two seconds — the person on the other side could decide how to proceed.

“This is Corrigan. We have new information,” he said. “There’s a former Soviet airbase in the southern mountains of Chechnya called Verko. Ferg’s en route to check it out, but we think they’re gathering their waste there. Van Buren needs Corrine to authorize the SF mission if it pans out.”

“She’s sleeping right now,” said Rankin.

“Well, wake her the fuck up,” said Corrigan.

“You sure it’s the place?”

“Just wake her up and let me talk to her. Her phone’s off-line.”

Rankin climbed down and tapped on the window. Corrine opened her left eye slowly, then closed it. He tapped again, then opened the door and gave her his phone.

“Corrigan,” he told her.

“Thanks,” she said sleepily. She pulled herself upright in the seat. “I’m here.”

“We think we know where the waste is headed. Ferguson’s on his way to check it out — it jibes with some information he already had. This could be it.”

“All right,” she said. “Tell Mr. Ferguson to proceed. Inform the assault group and give them whatever preliminary data on the target is appropriate. But no action until my authorization.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Corrine waited a moment before answering, reminding herself that not everyone was against her — and that even if they were, she wasn’t going to help herself by blowing up.

“I’m absolutely sure,” she said in an even voice. “I need you to get me on a plane out to Turkey to meet with the strike force ASAP.”

“Civilian or military?”

“What’s faster?”

Corrigan hit some keys on one of his computers. “I can get you on a flight to Aktau, if you can get to the airport in fifteen minutes.”

“Where’s Aktau?”

“It’s on the Caspian. From there I can get you to Turkey, no sweat. Or Chechnya.”

“Turkey will do.”

“Someone will be there. It may be a contract; going to be hard to get a military plane in there without drawing attention. I’ll round up whatever I can.”

“You’re a regular travel agent,” she said, hanging up.

9

Ten miles east of Verko the highway turned into a minefield. Two burned-out Russian tanks tipped them off; Conners pulled off the road and got out of the truck, scouting it out. They were on a ridge that ran along the side of a mountain maybe twenty-five hundred meters high, with the peak another thousand or so meters above them. Conners felt as if he were being watched, and guessed that the tanks had been mined.

Ferg, who’d been sleeping lightly, climbed down out of the cab and walked over.

“Looks like a bitch,” said Conners.

“Yeah, this has got to be the place,” said Ferg.

“How we gonna get there? Take us two or three days to drive all the way north and around on the other highway, and we got joker boy in the cab.”

Ferguson looked up at the ragged walls. “Got to be paths we can pick our way across.”

“Take us two days.”

“Maybe.”

Ferguson glanced back at the truck. They’d have to take Darayev’s leg chains off to travel by foot.

Corrigan’s intelligence jibed with Darayev’s information; they might indeed be closing in on the site. But if they were, terrorists might be all around them. The Chechen was potentially a serious liability — even if he wasn’t trying to steer them toward an ambush, he might find the opportunity to escape irresistible. He could easily lead the terrorists back to them, or at least alert them to their presence.

On the other hand, Corrigan’s track record on vital data wasn’t necessarily impressive. They’d need Daruyev to get to the next site if this one was a bust.

“All right. Let’s assume we’re being watched,” Ferg told Conner. “We back up, go down to that blown-out farm we passed, get the satellite photos, pick our way back over.”

“Long way, Ferg.”

“Just a day’s worth of climbing. Van’s going to need time to get everything in gear anyway.”

“Daruyev coming?” asked Conners.

“Somebody’s gotta carry the gear,” said Ferg.

Like most of the other buildings they’d passed, the walls of the main house of the small farm down the road were scorched black, the soot so embedded in the rocks that years of rain had only pushed it deeper. The farm looked like just another abandoned homestead as they parked nearby — until the curtains in the window moved.

“Shit,” said Conners. “People are living in there? The roof’s gone.”

It was too late simply to back out onto the road; the people had seen them and might alert the Russians, or the guerrillas — or both — to their presence. Conners felt angry, illogically blaming them for intruding — they’d have to kill them, he thought.

“Well let’s go say hello,” said Ferguson, hopping out of the truck. He slung his gun nonchalantly over his shoulder and — once Conners had his own weapon pointing toward the front of the house to cover him — walked toward the front door.

He knocked, though he knew that anyone inside wouldn’t answer. After a second knock, he walked around to the window with the curtain. He couldn’t see much of the interior, and when no one appeared after two hard raps, he went around to the back.

An old man stood in the doorway, aiming an ancient hunting rifle at him.

“Zdrátvuitye,” Ferg said to him in Russian. “Hello.”

The old man didn’t move. Ferguson then tried his Chechen, explaining that they were friends who had to help someone reach his rightful place. When that didn’t impress the man — Ferguson wasn’t entirely sure that his pronunciation could be deciphered — he switched to English, realizing that while the man wouldn’t understand it, it might convince him he wasn’t Russian.

“It’s all right,” he told the man. “We’re friends. I need a place to keep my truck.”

He switched back into Russian and repeated the sentence. Ferg guessed that the man’s sympathies lay with the rebels, and that he would leave them be if he thought they were connected with them. Whether he could be trusted beyond that was a question Ferguson couldn’t answer; there were no telephone lines, and no obvious radio antenna, so as far as that went the old man wasn’t going to be notifying anyone very soon.

“So can I park my truck?” Ferg asked in Russian.

A voice inside the house said something Ferguson couldn’t hear. The old man waved his hand in that direction, as if shushing them.

“That the missus?” asked Ferg.

The man told him something in Chechen that Ferg couldn’t understand. He smiled and asked for food in Russian. The Chechen frowned, then started toward the door. Ferguson decided to follow. Inside, he found the old man’s wife standing with a long knife by a stove. Behind her were five small children, ranging in age from a few months to two years. The woman was so short and bent over from osteoporosis that her head was just barely above Ferg’s knee, but her arms were thick, and her wrists flicked the knife as if she were one of the three musketeers. Ferguson waved at her, then leaned to the side to smile at the children, who were trying to puzzle out exactly who he was.

One of the children started to laugh, and the old woman drew back, still on her guard but no longer menacing. The old man, meanwhile, had hung the rifle on a pair of hooks and taken some paper and matches to the stove, which had a tinderbox for wood directly under the top. Fire started, he moved a kettle toward the front and turned to his wife, haranguing her for not being hospitable. Ferguson reached into his pocket and found some coins; it would have been an insult to give them to the old man, but the children were fair game. The oldest clinked two large coins together, then passed one to the next toddler in line, who promptly tried to taste it. This elicited a tirade from the old woman, who chastised Ferguson as well as the children before confiscating the coins.

Out in the truck, Conners felt his legs falling asleep when Ferg finally appeared. The old people had given him a few hard-boiled eggs, some tea, and bread. Conners fell on them hungrily.

Ferguson had asked for a chisel or saw, but either the old man had neither or just couldn’t understand what he was talking about. They got Daruyev out of the cab and brought him around to a broken-down stone wall at the side of the road. Using the tire iron, they managed to break the chains between his legs, but there was no question of getting the manacles off.

“I’m trusting you,” Ferguson told him. “But if you move an inch to escape, I’ll have to kill you.”

“Yes,” said Daruyev.

Conners looked up and saw the old man coming out from the house. He took a step back and raised his rifle. The old man ignored him, jabbering to Ferguson that he had a jug of water, and then pointing to a better place to put the truck.

“They’ll have that thing apart in a half hour,” said Conners as they began walking south across the road, toward what looked like a narrow trail in the satellite photos.

“Nah,” said Ferg.

“Sell it then.”

“The truck will cause them considerable difficulty if the Russians come,” said Daruyev. “They won’t be able to explain it.”

“Why would they have to?” said Conners.

“If a Russian asks a question, you have to have an answer.”

“There aren’t too many Russians in the area,” said Ferg.

“Good thing for them,” said Daruyev.

“Good thing for all of us,” said Ferg.

By nightfall, they had reached a narrow plateau in the mountains about seven miles east of Verko. They were making much better time than Conners had predicted, so good in fact that Ferg decided to press on. The night was clear, and according to the sat photos a pass ran to the south which would make it easier to hook around from the southwest, the side opposite the only road into the base. If they could make it, a mountain about a mile from Verko in that direction had an only partially obscured view of the landing strip there, according to the 3-D rendering Corrigan had supplied.

So they kept walking, moving in single file, spread out along the rock-strewn path. Daruyev moved silently; if he was familiar with the way, he didn’t let on. Several times Conners, at the tail, lost sight of him and had to hustle to catch up, but the Chechen made no sign of trying to escape.

By midnight, they had reached the other side of the mountain Ferg wanted to use as a vantage point. The cold air clawed at their fingers and legs; their cheeks hollowed out, and their ears began to ring with the wind. They stopped for a rest. Ferg noticed that Daruyev’s shoes were stained black; his feet were bleeding.

“I’m thinking one of us stays here, while the other scouts around that ridge there,” said Ferguson. “If there’s going to be a lookout post, it’ll be up over there. You going to fall asleep?”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Conners told him.

“Don’t sing too loud,” Ferg told him, setting out.

It took Ferguson more than three hours to climb up the mountain far enough to cut across to what looked like a lookout post on the 3-D map Corrigan had created and posted on their secure Web site for him. To cross the last hundred yards he had to climb up a crevice and get up and across an overhang. Tired and cold, he sent several loose stones tumbling below. The first time he froze; he was too precariously placed to swing his gun up for defense. When nothing happened after a few minutes, he began climbing again. When more rocks spilled a few seconds later, he barely paused. Either the people in the lookout were sleeping — or the post wasn’t manned.

A half hour later, standing behind the ridge, he discovered that the latter was correct — the ridge dropped off sharply, and it wasn’t as a good a spot in real life as it appeared on Corrigan’s simulation.

But there was a better spot off the side of the road and down about three hundred yards. In the darkness he couldn’t tell if there were rocks there or people. Nor was the question academic — the ridge gave him some cover to pass, but anything beyond it would be easily visible, certainly once the sun came up. The only thing to do was to track back down about a quarter mile, where he could pick up a narrow ledge that angled in the opposite direction, skirting around the mountain before rejoining the trail near a V-shaped rift about three miles below.

In the daylight, the climb would have been merely difficult. The combination of nighttime and growing fatigue, not to mention the proximity of the guerrilla guards, lifted it into the interesting category.

There was enough of a moon that Ferguson picked out the start of the ledge easily; he found as he went that he could see the wall fairly well, probably nearly as well as if he’d been wearing his night glasses on a pitch-black night. But after he’d gone about a half mile the ledge began to slope sharply toward the mountain, making it harder to walk on. Clouds had been moving in, making it more and more difficult to see. Still, Ferg was only about fifty feet from the rift when he lost his balance. As his right foot slipped on a loose rock, his left hand reached for a hold that proved to be a shadow. In the next second, he felt himself momentarily defying gravity.

“Oh, shit,” he said to himself.

Then he started to fall.

10

The airport was large by Russian standards, and with decent security. To pass to the main area where her charter to Turkey was supposed to be waiting, Corrine had to show ID and pass through an X-ray gate. The woman guard checking her purse and bags was more interested in her aspirin than the satellite phone; as she held up the bottle to examine it Corrine started to explain that it was for headaches.

“I know what it’s for,” said the guard frostily in English, tossing it back in the bag and dismissing her.

The terminal had all the charm of a 1970s American bus station, with two rows of plastic-backed seats dividing a scuffed linoleum floor. The seats were empty; the few passengers waiting for planes at that hour milled near the gates at the opposite end of the hall. Corrigan had told Corrine to go to a window with a long name in Cyrillic letters; the word was “special” and when pronounced in Russian sounded almost like it did in English, but with the dots and backward symbols it looked more like a magic spell than a sign. She found the words on a door, not a window, though in roughly the place he’d said; she walked back and forth twice before deciding it had to be the place. But no one answered when she knocked.

She checked her watch; the flight north had taken less time than Corrigan had predicted, and she realized she was probably just a little early. Still, she wanted to call him and see, so she ducked into a restroom nearby. But it was a private facility, with an attendant hovering near the sink. She tipped the woman and went back out without using the facilities or the proffered toilet paper.

Before she could get her bearings in the large room, a man in a long leather jacket stepped in front of her. Corrine took a step around him but he put his hand out to stop her.

“Off,” she said sharply in English, brushing his hand away.

“Ms. Alston, I’m your pilot,” said the man.

Corrine could tell there was a problem and didn’t even bother using the authentication sequence Corrigan had supplied. She started to spin away. But as she did, a short, balding man in a brown polyester coat blocked her way.

“Excuse me, Ms. Alston,” he told her in English. “My name is Dolov. I am with the Federal Security Bureau. You will come with me, please.”

“Excuse me, I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said Corrine, though the man’s English had been excellent.

“You will come with me,” he said calmly.

“Are you putting me under arrest?”

“That depends on what comes from our conversation,” said Dolov, in a way that suggested jail might be the most desirable of the possible outcomes.

11

Conners jumped to his feet when he heard what sounded like the faint echo of gunfire.

“Up, up,” he told the Chechen. He kicked his shoes when he didn’t move.

Daruyev groaned, then turned over and got up slowly.

“Let’s go,” said Conners. Cursing, he told Daruyev to walk ahead of him. They had to take the trail; there was just no way he could cover his prisoner on the slope, even if Daruyev had been able to climb.

Conners debated whether it would just be easier to kill the Chechen and be done with it.

It took twenty minutes to get to the stop below the ridge where they’d thought the lookout was; by the time they got there the sun was starting to rise. As they came close to the lookout spot Conners grabbed the Chechen by the back, using him as a shield.

“Call them out,” Conners said.

“Call who?” said Daruyev.

“Your bastard friends.”

“These are not my comrades.”

“Call them.” Conners nudged his rifle against Daruyev’s neck.

The Chechen whistled. There was no answer.

“Again,” said Conners. “Use words.”

“They wouldn’t.”

“Call them.”

Daruyev called in a calm voice that he had escaped from the Russians and needed help. But there was no response.

The mountain fell off too sharply on the left to give an ambusher a place to hide, and the ridge on the right angled away, but Conner still felt exposed. He pushed his prisoner forward; after twenty yards or so he saw another spot up a hundred yards farther where an outlook post could be hidden. They backtracked; Conners peered over the side and decided they could skirt the position by climbing down to a rift that skirted the rocks northward.

“We go down here,” Conners told his prisoner.

“That’s going to be hard.”

“Tough.”

“Take the gun from my back.”

“No,” Conners told him, pushing him to start. As he started to follow, there was a noise behind him; he whirled, gun ready.

“Relax, Dad, it’s only me,” said Ferguson, appearing on the slope.

“Ferg, where the fuck have you been?” said Conners.

“Waking sleeping dogs,” said Ferguson. “Quiet. There’s a pair of guards up the trail that way about a half mile. I fell before, and they started shooting up the place.”

“I heard them.”

“They didn’t bother looking for me,” said Ferguson. He’d banged his shins and scratched the side of his face in the fall, but otherwise was in decent shape. “I thought half the mountain was going to come down on top of me.”

“Did it?” asked Conners.

Ferguson laughed. “I’m still here, ain’t I?” He pointed a finger at Daruyev. “You were going to make him climb down the other side there?”

“I didn’t know where the hell you were.”

“So you were going down to the bottom?”

“I figured that cutback ahead could be covered. I could get around it down there.”

“Sure, if you have a week.”

“Don’t bust my chops, Ferg. I thought you were dead.”

Ferguson smiled at him, then pointed to the way he had come. “There’s a ledge here. It’s narrow, but if you don’t slip, it’ll take you across the road. Then we can get up and across and check out the base.”

“If it’s there,” said Conners.

“Don’t be such a pessimist.” Ferguson checked the grenade launcher on Daruyev’s back. He angled it slightly, so the weight would help anchor him to the mountain. “Lean in,” he told him. “You walk just behind me. If you get scared, say so.”

“I’m not scared.”

“No shit?” said Ferguson, starting out. “Come on. If we hurry, we can wave for the satellite when it comes overhead.”

12

Corrine sat in the small room, waiting for Dolov to reappear. She had her lawyer face on, assuming that she was being observed, and well aware that anything she said might tell the FSB considerably more than she wished. She sat alone in the room for more than an hour, head up, eyes straight, knowing that Dolov’s absence was part of the interrogation process.

Finally, the door swung open. Dolov and the woman who had checked her pocketbook earlier entered. The FSB officer apologized for keeping her waiting, saying that he had to locate a female guard so he could talk to her.

“There’s no need for that,” said Corrine.

“I have to follow the law,” said Dolov. He brushed his hand across his scalp, where he was going prematurely bald. He squinted, then bobbed his head; finally he put his finger to his chin. “The airplane that landed to pick you up — and we do know it’s here for you, Ms. Alston — is contracted to a company that works with the American CIA.”

Corrine considered what to do. As an attorney, her advice to a client would be to say nothing. But would that help her now?

“Well I’m not with the CIA,” she said.

Dolov clearly did not believe her. Corrine realized she needed to find out why he’d stopped her — the fact that they thought she was a CIA officer wouldn’t ordinarily be reason to stop her, Were they just sending some sort of message, hassling a suspected agent for passing through the territory? How was the game played? She had no feel for the rules.

She was out of her element. She was a lawyer, not a spy.

Except that she was; her boss had made her one.

“Do you always accuse Americans of working for the CIA?” she said finally.

“Two days ago, a very dangerous man was broken out of prison near Groznyy,” said Dolov. “The CIA was involved.”

“That’s terrible,” she said. “But what does that have to do with me?”

Dolov said nothing.

Corrine realized that she had to give him something, a story he could use to justify letting her go. But saying anything meant taking a risk. If she said something that didn’t check out, he might jail her for lying. And, of course, she couldn’t say anything that would jeopardize the others or the operation.

If you didn’t take risks, you didn’t succeed. That was what Ferguson was all about. He wasn’t a cowboy; he just existed in a system that demanded audacious risks.

“What were you doing in Kyrgyzstan?” asked Dolov. His voice was more aggressive than before; he wanted results, and he would modify his tactics until he got them.

“Mr. Dolov, perhaps we should be honest with each other,” she said.

“I would appreciate it,” said Dolov.

Corrine turned to the guard. “You’ll leave us, please,” she told the woman.

The guard looked at Dolov, who nodded.

“There is a train of radioactive waste, heading toward Kyrgyzstan. When it left Buzuluk, there were five boxcars that were not part of the removal operation. Now there are four,” she said.

“Boxcars?”

“They must have some way of slipping one or two of the waste casks into the other cars. The regular shipments proceed untouched. They’re heavily guarded and all accounted for.”

“How do you know?” he said. Only now was it clear to her that he was indeed interested.

“I followed it. You didn’t think I turned up in Kyrgyzstan by accident, did you?”

“From Buzuluk?”

“Near there.”

“Why would you follow the train if you’re not CIA?”

“Certain organizations are interested in what happens to the waste.”

“Such as?”

“Greenpeace, among others.”

“If I run your name against one of our databases, you won’t appear?”

“No.”

“And I suppose the aircraft that has come to meet you wasn’t hired by the CIA?”

“I have no idea. It may very well be. I daresay that the Russian government has paid for some of our arrangements as well. Radioactive waste is an important problem for all mankind.”

Dolov remained convinced that she was lying, but the missing boxcar was nonetheless a matter of great interest.

“Where did the waste go?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be leaving,” she said. “It simply disappeared soon after entering Kyrgyzstan.”

“Were Chechens involved?” he asked.

“Chechens?” She shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. I just know it’s gone.”

Dolov began rocking gently on his heels. Radiological waste was an important issue, more so because of the escape of the prisoner. The woman’s information was extremely valuable — assuming it checked out.

Corrine had given Dolov the story he needed, but she now had to give him a reason to let her go.

“What prisoner did you lose?” she asked. “And where was he lost?”

She saw the inspector’s face flicker with fear for a brief second as he connected the two events. It went from that to a blank officiousness. He was worried that she really was from Greenpeace and that he had told her too much.

And then he smiled.

“Let me make a phone call. Perhaps our misunderstanding can disappear.”

13

Unobstructed runway. Two large buildings, hangar-type, at the north end. I don’t see any people, though.”

Ferguson shifted around as he spoke. He couldn’t see the top of the peak opposite him, so he had no idea what defenses might be hidden there. The mountain also shadowed whatever was directly below him on the western side of the base, and some of the road to the northeast.

“Here’s something,” he said, as a vehicle emerged from one of the two buildings; it looked like an old-fashioned bread van. Another followed, and another and another. They drove out to three different points surrounding the airfield.

“Maybe they’re radar trucks,” suggested Van Buren, who was listening along with his intelligence staff to Ferguson’s briefing. “The satellites have cleared overhead, so it’s possible that they drive out there once they’re gone.”

“I don’t see any antennas or radar dishes,” reported Ferguson. “I don’t see any missiles either.”

Van Buren’s G-2 captain began explaining that the vans might contain a short-range, low-power radar, which would give them some early warning of approaching helicopters. Another officer said that it was possible that the rebels were using the mountain itself as the base for tropo-scatter antennas, with the transmission portions relatively short and camouflaged. Such a system would be difficult to see, though it was likely to leave gaps in the coverage.

“I don’t know,” said Ferguson. “Maybe have somebody look at the satellite photos again. Can you get a U-2 in?”

“Russians’ll shoot it down in a heartbeat,” said Van Buren.

“Could they hide missiles in the vans?” asked Ferguson.

“Shoulder-launched missiles, sure.”

“Hang tight,” said Ferguson, as a new set of vehicles appeared from the building. These were tracked ZSU-23-4 Shilka antiair guns, sometimes called “Zoos,” old but reliable flak cannons that could fill the air with shells. Their altitude was limited, but they were deadly against helicopters and low-flying planes. Parachuters would be massacred.

The southeastern end of the base dropped off sharply about twenty yards after the end of the runway. The eastern side of the complex south of the buildings was relatively flat, with a dirt road but no aircraft access ramp. Trenches flanked the runway for about three-quarters of its length. The runway itself was rather narrow and pockmarked with small craters at the sides. The Air Force people had already looked at the sat photos and decided they could get a Herky Bird in there and out.

“I have four F-117As,” Van Buren said. “We can take out four targets — the vans and one of the antiair emplacements. But every shot has to count.”

“Better to take out the guns and jam any radar on the way in,” suggested one of his captains. “Then we target the missiles when we’re on the ground.”

“What if they have heat-seekers in them?”

“We go in with flares and a decoy.”

“Still risky.”

“Why don’t you have the Stealth fighters take out the guns and two of the vans,” said Ferg. “Conners and I hit the last van ourselves. We link up near the buildings. We can work it into deck, like we’re the real attack. We have a grenade launcher. We have to get down there anyway to confirm this is the place. So we call in, attack starts, we get the van and move on.”

“That might work,” said Van Buren. “You have readings?”

“Not yet,” said Ferguson.

“We’re doing a lot of work here, Ferg. It’s going nowhere without real data. Even then, we have to get Alston’s OK.”

“It’s got to be the place, Van.”

“Fergie?”

“It’s all right, Van. You guys just get ready to hit it. I’ll get the numbers.”

“Don’t get so close they induct you into their army.”

“I hear they have a hell of a retirement plan,” said Ferguson, snapping off the phone.

14

Dolov did not reappear. Instead, a short, frumpy-looking woman in her midthirties came into the room dragging Corrine’s bag. The woman said absolutely nothing, staring at Corrine as she checked her things. Apparently she was free to go.

The terminal was by then full of people. Food vendors were hawking wares from boxes and small pushcarts; she bought a bottle of mineral water and a sandwich, which she gulped down while walking back toward the Specials door. As she approached the office, a short man in a leather coat pushed away from the wall and came toward her. Corrine eyed him warily, not sure now who or what to trust. “Ms. Alston?” “Yes.”

“A friend sent me to get you,” said the man. “My name’s Tru. I’ve been waiting.”

He was an American, or at least his accent was; it had the brassy tone of the New York area in it.

“What friend?” she asked.

“Jack?” he said, more a question than an answer.

“What’s the weather like?” she said, starting the authentication sequence.

“Warm. Visibility at five miles.”

“And getting better?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s good enough.”

“I hope so.”

She swallowed the last of her water, then threw the bottle in a garbage can as she followed him toward a hall at the side of the airline counters. She hesitated, then tossed her bag, including her sat phone and wallet, in there as well.

Tru continued down the hallway, past a baggage-screening area to a large empty room. Various machinery sat at the far side of the room, piled and bunched up near the wall. To the left was a set of metal garage-style doors. Tru went to one, bent and opened it, waiting for her so he could close it behind them.

Corrine shivered as the outside air hit her. Tru walked to the left, steering around a large yellow tractor used to move aircraft. Jets were lined up along the rear of the terminal building, crews zipping back and forth as they were prepped and loaded. Tru’s shoulders rolled back and forth as he ducked past them; the short man strolled past the lineup of aircraft as if he were lord of the place.

Corrine followed as he turned to the left at the end of the building, walking out beyond a large Russian airliner toward a two-engine Airbus, which sat alone in the sea of concrete. The Airbus — an A310, capable of holding over two hundred passengers — had the red livery and insignia of the Turkish National Airline, THY. Corrine expected to find a smaller plane beyond it, but when Tru crossed around to the left side of the aircraft she realized this was the only plane there. A rickety-looking push ramp was at the door directly behind the cockpit; two men in coveralls were standing nearby.

Her contact bounded up the steps to the open cabin door. Corrine hesitated at the bottom of the steps, then clambered up. As she reached the cabin, the men below grabbed the boarding ladder and pulled it away.

“Think you can button up?” Tru asked from the flight deck. “There’s a diagram on how to shut it.”

Corrine struggled at first, the movement slightly awkward, but once the door was moving toward the side it slapped in easily. She pushed through the curtain to her left, only to find that the rest of the airliner was completely empty.

“No movie today,” said Tru behind her. “Come sit up here with me.”

“Don’t you need a copilot or a navigator or something?”

“Nah. I know where I’m going. But I do get lonely.”

Corrine slid into the seat normally reserved for the first officer. The A310 had a glass cockpit, with the latest flight controls and data systems. While normal flight protocol would call for a two-member flight crew, an experienced pilot could fly the aircraft by himself. Tru was already talking in Russian with a member of the ground crew assigned to him, and in a few minutes the airplane’s engines spun to life. The pilot turned to her, gave her a smile, then released the brakes and began trundling down the access ramp, taking a place in the lineup to the runway.

“I don’t think we’re bugged, but you never know,” he told her. “I did do a check.”

“Thanks,” she said, as he turned the plane to the flight line.

15

While Ferguson had been talking with Van Buren, Conners had studied the sat photos and the 3-D simulation, trying to correlate it with what he had seen. The easiest way—”easiest” being a relative term — was up what seemed to be a secondary road through a canyon at the southern end of the base, but the approach was bound to be mined. Conners thought they might be able to get down a ravine on the northeast side of the mountain, since they were already beyond the lookouts who would guard it. The satellite data showed an old dumping ground at the base of the slope; a double fence ran a few yards away from it.

“That’s a steep slide,” said Ferguson.

“I can make it,” said Conners.

“What about Daruyev?”

Their prisoner was sitting a few yards away, hands manacled and a hood covering his face.

Conners didn’t say anything. It would be easiest, he thought, to kill him.

“Can’t do that,” said Ferguson.

“Just leave him here,” said Conners.

“Nah.” Ferguson looked at the satellite photos again. If they could see where they were going, it might be possible to go down the slope with the prisoner. Even so, they’d also have to worry about at least one and probably two lookout positions that had a view near the bottom.

“There’s a Russian satellite that moves overhead just about 1600 hours,” said Ferg. “If we figure these lookouts and everybody on the base will make themselves scarce then, maybe we can get through then.”

“That gets us at the fence while it’s still light,” said Conners.

“Yeah?”

“Safer in the dark.”

“Not going down the hill. That spot there can be seen from both the base and this lookout here.”

“If that’s a lookout. Still safer in the dark, Ferg. Even if these guys have night gear, which we haven’t seen at all. To get there by 1600 we have to leave now.”

“You feeling tired?”

“Why don’t we just wait another night?”

“Longer we wait, Dad, the more chance we have of getting nailed. Besides, if we get down there and check out the place as soon as it’s dark, we’ll have more time to get away if the place is clean.”

“You really think it is?”

“No way, or I wouldn’t be going down. But it’s a possibility.”

“What do we do then?”

Ferguson shrugged. “We go back, get the truck, and look behind door number three.” He reached into his rucksack for the bread the old woman had given them. “Hungry?”

Conners took the bread. “What I could really use is some coffee.”

“What I could really use stands about five-five, and has handles right here,” said Ferg.

16

Thomas stared at the tube, watching as it filled with a list of green letters denoting files of intercepted, deciphered, and translated intercepts tangentially related to Verko. He chose one at random and opened it; it was a Russian interior ministry estimate of how long it would take to clear land mines in the region. Thomas chose another, which referred to the need for firefighting apparatus. A third was filled with gibberish, though whether that was a glitch on the American side wasn’t clear.

Thomas got up from his desk. He’d piled up his papers and reports so he could pace from wall to wall; it helped him think.

Why set up a base at an old airport, he thought to himself, unless you have an airplane? And yet there were none there, at least not according to the sat photos or anything else he’d seen.

If it were big enough, Thomas realized, an airplane would be the perfect delivery system. Packed full of explosives and waste, you could crash it into a city, or maybe explode it above — death would rain everywhere.

So where was the plane?

He sat back at the computer and did a search of Interpol and the FBI looking for stolen planes. Nada. Then he realized that it wasn’t absolutely necessary to steal an entire plane. It might make more sense to take different parts, ship them in by truck, and put the airplane together. He found different sites where plane parts could be purchased. Then he made a few calls for background information and data. A rather cranky FBI intelligence expert told him that it would be next to impossible to put a plane together from parts; not only would it cost much more than the aircraft itself, but finding people with the expertise to assemble everything would be a nightmare.

Besides, there would be records of the purchases anyway, and you’d need a ton of shell companies to obscure what you were doing.

Stubbornly, Thomas clung to the theory. The agent’s objections led him to a file listing parts purchases that had been blocked because of Customs concerns, and it was on that list that he found a company whose name matched the gibberish in the NSA intercept he had opened.

Thomas hand-copied the symbols, then went back to the intercept, holding the paper up to the screen. Then he went back to the Customs database and did a general search. There were no hits. But a similar try in one of the Interpol networks led to an Algerian airline company, which Thomas already knew was on a list of possible fronts for Islamic militant groups. The gibberish was actually an acronym for an airline company name in Arabic.

He stood up from his desk, cracked all of his knuckles, then sat back down and began running requests for information on the airline and any company it did business with.

17

By the time Corrine Alston’s plane arrived, the mission and its various contingencies had been fairly well mapped out. Colonel Van Buren met her at the foot of the plane, holding out his arm as she stepped somewhat wobbly onto the tarmac. Corrine smiled but didn’t take his hand, walking toward the Hummer with a crisp step that belied her fatigue.

The Special Forces command unit was sequestered in a distant hangar at a far corner of the base. A pair of Hummers containing advanced communications gear was parked at one side of the space. Another vehicle — a modified civilian Ford Expedition — sat outside, data from its satellite dishes snaking through the long cable on the floor. A quartet of communications specialists sat in front of flat panels and keyboards at a station behind the Humvees. Besides being able to communicate with troops in the field and the Pentagon at the same time, the specialists could tap a few keys and get realtime information from sources that ranged from the NSA wiretaps to specially launched Predator aircraft.

It was also rumored that they could order McDonald’s-to-go around the globe, though the com specialists cited the fifth amendment on the topic.

Near the communications section, a large topographical map of the target area sat in the center of two large folding tables, along with a number of satellite photos and hand-drawn diagrams depicting various phases of the operation. Van Buren’s G-2 captain gave the briefing, laying out what they knew and working through the overall game plan. To circumvent detection by the Russian air defenses in the region, radar-evading Stealth fighters and special C-130s equipped to fly below radar level would be used. The attack would begin with four Stealth fighters firing on the air defenses. With the defenses secured, a company of SF troops would jump from an MC-130E, aiming to land along the southeastern end of the airstrip. A second company of SF troopers, along with technical experts and a company of men trained in handling hazardous waste, would be aboard an MC-130E, prepared either to land once the strip was secured or to jump in if necessary. Van Buren would be aboard this aircraft so that he could personally supervise the operation on the ground.

Support would be provided by an AC-13 OH gunship, which would train its howitzer on any pockets of resistance. Once the base was secured, the dirty-bomb facilities would be examined and secured. Depending on the exact situation — one of the reasons Van Buren wanted to be on the scene himself — it would either be blown up or merely prepared for Russian occupation. Guerrillas considered of value would be ex-filtrated along with the assault troops.

The operation would be coordinated with help from the unit’s specially equipped MC-17X, a jet-powered aircraft based on the C-17 and outfitted with comprehensive communications gear and a scaled-down side-looking radar adapted from the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) used by the regular Army to coordinate large-scale ground battles. Dubbed “Command Transport 3” in typical SF disinformation style, the one-of-a-kind MC-17X would remain beyond the border until the Stealth fighters launched their attack. At that point it could move forward and use its sensors to help the attackers.

Once the attack was under way, the Russians would undoubtedly see it. While their reaction was difficult to predict, it was likely they wouldn’t be pleased. A flight of F-15 Eagles would accompany the command plane and be prepared to intervene.

The Air Force had also provided two tankers with escorts to cover any contingencies. Two long-range, Special Operations Chinooks would stand by near the border as SAR aircraft; each would have a contingent of paratroopers aboard in addition to Air Force pararescue personnel who were being temporarily plucked from another section for the night.

The planners had debated whether it might be possible to launch the airborne assault before hitting the missile defenses — the attack would tip the ground units off, costing the paratroopers the element of absolute surprise — but in the end decided it was too risky to fly the aircraft overhead without eliminating the antiair. As the intelligence officer began to explain why they were using the Chinooks rather than the Air Force Blackhawks — officially it had to do with the range, though there was a decided prejudice in favor of the massive two-rotor beasts among Van Buren’s staff — Corrine held up her hand.

“Colonel, I’m going to accept that you and your people understand the logistical needs here much better than I do,” she said. “What you’ve outlined is fine, and I don’t need to cross-examine you on the nitty-gritty. Just make sure we have everything we need.”

“We can accomplish the mission,” he told her — though he was pleased at the vote of confidence.

“The question is — do we have the right place?” she said.

“We won’t know until Ferg is inside,” said Van Buren. “It’s not a cautious approach, but once we have people in that space, there seemed to be no sense waiting another day or two days before launching the assault.”

“Where is Mr. Ferguson now?”

“He called a while ago to tell us he was infiltrating the base,” said Van Buren. “He should make his report in four hours. We’ll be ready to go; it’ll take us a litde over two hours to launch the attack from that point. Assuming we have your permission.”

“You’ll get it if the waste material is there. Where are they building the bombs?”

“We’re not sure yet. One of those buildings,” said the colonel.

“At what point will the Russians realize something is going on?”

“Hard to say.”

Van Buren turned to his Air Force staff officer, who explained that it was likely radar contacts would appear as soon as the F-l 17s launched their attack. By then, the C-130s would have to come up off the deck anyway. Under ordinary circumstances, the Russians would have from two to four aircraft standing by in the sector; if scrambled, they could reach the base within roughly fifteen minutes, though it was impossible to predict in advance what their readiness status would be.

“What if we’re challenged?” Corrine asked.

“Escorts come up from the border as a last resort,” said the captain.

Corrine knew from the earlier briefings that alerting the Russians beforehand would almost undoubtedly tip off the terrorists; the military had been penetrated by various resistance groups. She’d contact them once the attack was under way, and hope for some cooperation — though she wouldn’t count on it.

They were looking at her, waiting for approval.

She thought back to her meeting with the president, the CIA director, and the others. They’d been worried about the May 10 intercept, unsure whether it was real or not — whether it was a real deadline, or just a day picked from thin air.

It was May 8.

“Proceed as you’ve planned,” she told Van Buren. “Pending word from Mr. Ferguson.”

Van Buren smiled, but as he turned from the table he felt pangs of doubt. Questions flooded into his brain: Did he have enough men. Was the timetable too tight? Were the risks too great?

He stepped back and looked at the map. Between the analysis the CLA had provided and Ferguson’s scouting, it was clear that there could be no more than two or three dozen fighters at the base itself; he’d outnumber them two or three to one and have twenty times their firepower. It was a good plan.

Assuming the dirty bomb was there.

18

They’d missed a sentry point, a fact they didn’t realize until they were almost on top of it. Fortunately, it was located just below the ledge they were using to skirt down toward the access road, situated to give the men at the post a good view of the north. Ferguson saw it as he cleared a rock jutting from the side; two guerrillas were kneeling forward against the rocks just five feet below him.

He froze, but either Daruyev or Conners kicked some rocks behind him. As one of the guards began to turn his head, Ferguson threw himself forward feetfirst, swinging his rifle up to use as a club. His left boot slammed into one of the sentries’ shoulder as he rose, and all three men rolled in a tumble, Ferguson temporarily sandwiched between the guerrillas.

Whether because he had the advantage of surprise or fury, he managed to get to his feet without either man drawing a weapon; the butt end of his AK-74 slammed the nearest back against the rocks senseless. The other guard took a step backward, then slipped and fell down the embankment. Ferguson threw his rifle to the side and started after the man. By the time he reached the road he’d lost his own balance, sliding on his side and butt and landing a few yards behind the enemy guard, who was struggling to his feet.

The man began to run. Ferguson gave chase. After a few steps, he realized with surprise that he wasn’t gaining — that in fact, the guerrilla was faster than him. He kept running, in disbelief that he had encountered someone faster than him. Ferguson had won both the hundred- and four-hundred-meter track sectional championships when he was a senior in prep school, and would probably have finished first in the states had he not had the flu the day of the meet — or so he legitimately believed, having finished second and third. He kept sprinting, expecting that the man would soon tire, but it was Ferguson who finally had to slow his pace, and by the time the man left the trail to plunge down another spot in the rugged mountain, Ferguson was so far behind him that he lost him in the wooded copse below. He stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the trees from the trail, repeating the word “fuck” over and over, still not believing that he had lost the race. Finally he retreated back up the road, walking, stretching his legs which were fairly stiff and depleted after the exertion.

Conners — who had no legacy as a track star to uphold — trussed the guerrilla whom Ferguson had knocked cold, made sure he didn’t have any weapons, then climbed back up to get Daruyev.

“Let’s go,” Conners told him, wary that he might be planning a trick. They went back to the lookout spot; Ferguson returned shaking his head.

“Fucker outran me,” said Ferguson.

“Shit,” said Conners.

“Fucker outran me. Can you fucking believe that?”

“You shot him?” asked Conners, even though he hadn’t heard a shot.

“Fucker outran me.”

“Ferg — he got away?”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Ferguson slapped his hands on his hips, cursing again. He looked down at the lookout post. There was no radio, nothing in fact beyond the rifles that the two men had had. He went over to the trussed guard, who was curled over on his stomach and still out of it. Ferguson searched him slowly; the man had nothing but lint in his pockets.

“Probably means they change guards pretty regularly,” said Conners.

“Yeah. That and they can count on hearing gunshots.”

Neither fact was a real plus.

“Best bet is to try to get inside before our friend reaches the next post,” said Ferg. “Doable?”

Conners shook his head.

“Well let’s take a shot anyway,” said Ferg. They were running behind, and now were at least an hour and a half from the start of the slope, which would take several more hours to descend. It was unlikely they’d make it to the base by sunset, let alone when the satellite would make it easier to approach.

“Going to be a bigger problem for the assault team,” said Conners. “We’re going to have to tell them.”

“I don’t disagree,” said Ferg. “But let’s make sure this is the place anyway. They won’t jump if they don’t hear from us.”

“That supposed to be encouraging?”

Ferg laughed and went over to Daruyev. He tapped him on the shoulder.

“How’s it going?” Ferguson asked him.

“If a guard ran from his post,” said Daruyev, “he may not turn himself in. It would be a sign of cowardice. He’d be shot.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not counting on that,” said Ferg.

“He may try to ambush you.”

“That’d be easier to deal with,” said Ferguson, glancing at Conners. He took the Chechen’s elbow and set him in motion, gently nudging him toward the incline and the trail. Conners took the lead, his eyes squinting and his body tightening almost into a squat. He disliked point, not because he was afraid of being shot, and not because he was up front, where any screwup would be obvious, but because it always left his neck buzzing. The muscles along his spinal column inevitably spasmed and pulled against the nerves somehow. There was no way to relax or stretch them, at least in his opinion, without completely dropping his guard.

About ten minutes later, they came to a shallow ridge that ran down across the mountain like an indentation on cardboard to guide a fold. The rift didn’t show up too well on the sat photo, but it looked like it would cut off about a third of the hike down. It would also keep them from the view of the first lookout, though not the second. The only problem was a decent drop to the main slope about a hundred feet above the junkyard.

Ferguson studied it, trying to puzzle out if they’d be able to get down from the point where the ridge ended. According to the three-dimensional rendering, the dropoff was twenty feet nearly straight down.

“What do you think, Ferg?” asked Conners.

If they took the shortcut and couldn’t figure out a way down, they’d have to come all the way back up. The mission would be scrubbed for at least a day — assuming the terrorists hadn’t found them by then.

On the other hand, if they didn’t chance it, the man he’d lost would sound the alarm anyway.

“Let’s do it,” said Ferguson. “Let me take point.”

19

Rankin took a sip of the bottled water, swishing it through his teeth. The train had been parked on a siding about two miles out of town, waiting for reasons that weren’t obvious, at least to him. The guard had been increased and now included two helicopters, which he could hear hovering a short distance away. Kyrgyzstan had supplied two truckloads of soldiers, and the Russians had a helicopter working along the track, checking for sabotage, another new development.

Rankin took another swig of the water, trying to stay awake. The waste receiving station lay about ten miles to the south; his operation was just about done. Obviously, the missing boxcar had contained the smuggled material, but he had to hang in until the bitter end.

Then he could sleep.

He ran his fingers across his scalp, digging in with his fingernails. Scratching was supposed to increase the blood flow, make your brain work better.

He could always take a pill if he had to. Ferg called them “pseudobenz” — though they worked like pep pills, they were chemically different and allegedly nonaddictive. Rankin didn’t trust that, and had never actually taken one, not even to familiarize himself with the sensation. As far as he knew, Ferguson hadn’t either, nor did he push the pills very much — one of the Team leader’s few redeeming characteristics.

Actually, Ferguson had a few positive characteristics, but Rankin didn’t like him anyway.

Rankin reached for the door handle, deciding to stretch his legs. He was just getting out of the car as the sat phone beeped.

“Rankin.”

“Alston,” said Corrine on the other end. “What’s it look like there?”

Rankin gave her an update.

“I think we should pull the plug on the surveillance,” she said. “We have some action going down.”

“OK,” he said.

“Corrigan will get you transportation,” she said.

The line went dead before he could say anything else.

20

The ravine ended in a shallow chimney, almost like the section of a funnel emptying onto the more gentle slope. They had twenty feet of rope with them but no way of securing it above.

“We lower Daruyev, then you climb down,” Ferguson told Conners.

“And what the hell are you going to do?”

“I’ll just jump,” said Ferguson.

“Well one thing’s in our favor,” said Conners. “It’s 1355. The guards’ll be hiding from the Russian satellite.”

“Try to smile as we go down,” Ferguson told him. “Make some Russian photo reader’s day.

“Better I give him the finger.”

Ferguson took the rope and went to the prisoner, wrapping the end around his chain and making a knot that Daruyev could reach to untie.

Then he took the hood off. “I want you to see where you’re going,” Ferguson told him.

“Thank you.”

“It’s going back when you’re down.”

The Chechen nodded reluctantly.

“You’re trusting him?” said Conners, taking the rope.

“He’s not going anywhere,” said Ferg. “We have a deal.”

Daruyev said nothing. Conners mentally calculated how he’d shoot him if the bastard ran.

Once they started to lower the Chechen, there was no way to see where he was. They kept paying the rope out against the rock at the lip of the drop, straining as it cut into their hands. Finally, they felt a tug. He’d made it.

“You’re up, Dad.”

“You sure you got me?”

“If I don’t, you’ll be the first to know.”

Conners eased himself downward, putting his legs against the side of the narrow chimney to try and ease the strain on Ferguson. Even so, Ferguson felt himself being pulled forward as he neared the bottom; his feet started to slip, and if Conners hadn’t jumped the last yard or so, he might have gone over. He tossed down the rope, slung his pack and guns on his back, and told them to get out of his way.

The sides of the chimney were exposed enough for him to get down about ten feet fairly easily. When they ran out, he began working down the left side, reaching down gingerly to a decent hold and pushing his knees in at one point to maintain his balance. He’d gotten another four feet lower when he felt his grip loosening; Ferg flailed with his foot, and caught something, but then felt his other leg twist around behind him, his muscles too fatigued to follow his brain’s command. Fearing he would fall on his back or head, he threw his upper body against the rock, sliding down against the mountain.

Daruyev and Conners, who’d been waiting to help him, both grabbed him as he fell, keeping him from tumbling down the slope.

“Thank you, boys,” said Ferguson, spitting the dirt from his mouth.

“You are committed,” said Daruyev.

“We call it crazy,” said Conners, taking point down the slope.

The Russians had used the bottom of the gully as a junkyard, and the men had to pick their way over piles of wrecked chairs and office furniture as they made their way down the last fifty yards or so. The sun’s shadows were starting to darken the bowl between the mountains where the base was, but if anyone happened to come up along the perimeter fence, they’d be seen easily. Ferguson and Conners stopped constantly, aware that they were pushing their luck.

Finally, Ferguson reached the perimeter fence. He could hear the sound of generators humming and some other machinery. The two large hangar buildings were across the field to his left, but the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere closer. As he craned around to get a better view, he saw a vehicle moving on the left just before the start of the runway. He slid down, watching as it moved behind the buildings to the perimeter road.

“What do you think?” Conners asked, sliding down with Daruyev.

“They’re working on something,” said Ferg. He took out the rad meter; its needle didn’t budge. Disappointed, he slid it back into his pocket.

They could hear another vehicle approaching. Ferg and Conners settled back against two large, wrecked filing cabinets, waiting as it passed. The vehicle stopped somewhere to their right, though there was no way to get an angle and see where.

“What’s in the mountain?” asked Conners, when the truck didn’t appear.

“Good question. We’re going to have to go in and find out.”

“There’s probably a cave or something, with the entrance disguised so you can’t see it from above,” said Conners.

Ferguson shrugged, though he agreed. “I think it’s dark enough to get past that first fence at least. We can go through over there — see where it meets the ground?”

“What about our friend?” asked Conners.

“Let’s leave him here and pick him up later,” said Ferguson.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

“Better than bringing him in, don’t you think?”

They used another one of their handcuffs to tie him to a large piece of a desk near the bottom of the pile. Daruyev complained that he couldn’t sit comfortably. Ferguson rearranged some of the metal refuse, and the Chechen was able to hunch his legs up under himself into a squat, which for some reason seemed more comfortable to him.

“Will you take off my hood?” he asked.

“Sorry,” Ferguson said. “I’m not going to do that. Give him a drink of water,” he told Conners.

“No,” said Daruyev. “Shoot me.”

Ferguson and Conners exchanged a glance.

“Why?” asked Ferguson.

“I’d rather die now than wait,” said the Chechen.

“You’re not going to get killed,” said Ferg. “I told you I was taking you back.”

“If the others find me, they’ll kill me.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist.”

“Mr. Ferguson, please.”

“I’ll come back for you, Daruyev. I told you I would.”

“Should’ve killed him, Ferg,” Conners said, as they crouched on the other side of the fence ten minutes later. “You coulda used the knife.”

Ferguson changed the subject.

“If we get over the fence there, we can walk south along the strip that borders the runway. From there, we can see the other side of the slope, find out if there’s a cave or something, then we can cross to the buildings.”

“The post at the gate has a clear view of the runway. And God only knows what’s in front of the mountain.”

“Yeah. What I think we have to do is cross here, that way we can see south around where the truck ought to be. Maybe I move down closer that way, get into the shadows, see if I have to climb over.”

The top of the fence had three strands of barbed wire, but he could clip it down and get over fairly easily.

“You get too close to that cave or whatever is over there, there’ll be guards,” said Conners.

They discussed it for a while longer, Conners in general preaching a more conservative line, Ferguson plotting a considerably bolder course. At the end, Ferg told him he’d go in, cross the runway, and check the buildings. Conners would hang back, covering him at first, and then see what he could find out about the cave. They didn’t have their com devices, but they could communicate using the sat phones, which were set to vibrate rather than ring.

“Can you climb over the fence with that grenade launcher on your back?” Ferguson asked.

“If I have to.”

“If it’s too heavy, leave it. Once you’re in, move down the ditch,” said Ferguson. “They’re not going to be watching the middle of the base. When you find the entrance, let me know. Your meter working?”

“It claims it is,” said Conners, who had checked it at the perimeter.

“Take the Prussian blue,” he told Conners, referring to the antiradiation sickness pills they carried. Though not a panacea, the drug helped ward off some effects of radiation sickness. “We get in there, we just get a general idea of what’s going on. We don’t have to collect autographs.”

“I ain’t arguing with you. What should I do with Daruyev if you get nailed?” asked Conners.

“I ain’t fucking getting nailed,” said Ferguson, starting away.

Conners thought to himself that he was getting old and tired, confusing caution with wisdom. His body ached, and his eyes were stinging from the lack of sleep. Worse, he could feel the thirst for a beer in his mouth.

He stood up, pushing away the fatigue as Ferg went over the fence.

Ferguson slid down to the ground next to the fence, trying to make his body as compact as possible. Empty, rock-strewn fields dotted by nubs of thick grass lay on either side of the runway. It was several hundred yards across to the buildings. To his right, the mountainside jutted out and cut off whatever was there.

He took out the rad meter, got nothing. The device had an audible alarm; he set it, put the earphone in his ear, then put it back in his pocket. He worked his legs beneath him into a crouch, then sprang across the dirt perimeter roadway, making it in two bounds. Slowly, he began to crawl toward the runway.

After nearly ten minutes, much of it spent on his belly or all fours, he reached a set of runway lights near the edge of the concrete. There were lights in the metal jacket, though one of them had been broken. Ferguson huddled near the structure, listening — he could hear voices riding over the base from the buildings, but couldn’t see anyone. Nor did he have a sufficient angle on the cave entrance yet.

Ferguson hunched down and ran to the nearby ditch. He crawled along it about ten yards, looking for a good spot to cross the runway, but of course he would be exposed no matter where he went. Finally, he just thought screw it all, hopped up out of the ditch, and ran for the other side.

It took forever to get there, days out in the bright sun, exposed to the world. Finally, he landed in the other ditch, his heart thumping so loudly he wouldn’t have been surprised if the people in the buildings heard it beating.

After catching his breath, he started crawling again, this time angling to his left. A light was on at the side of the building; its circle ended about twenty yards from the fence at a pile of rocks. He thought if he could get into the rocks, he’d be able to get around them, then work his way behind the building, maybe even right up to it.

But to do that, he had to cross the edge of the field, exposed not only to the front of the buildings but the guard post at the gate. He was more worried about the guard post than the buildings, even though he was probably five times as far from it; there were definitely people there. Of course, their job was to look outside the base, not inside, but Ferguson wasn’t in a position to hand out demerits if they spotted him.

He continued to crawl, the earth cold against his chest. Twice he stopped to make sure the earbud was still in place, surprised that he’d found no radiation yet.

About ten yards from the flank of the building, he heard voices again. He froze, waiting for them to grow louder. When they didn’t, he began inching forward again, finally getting to what he had thought were rocks but turned out to be a collection of cut-up tires. Ferguson pulled himself behind them, caught his breath.

There was another light at the back of the buildings; he’d have to walk through it to see inside.

Ferguson brushed some of the dirt from his shirt and pants, then started out again.

21

Van Buren decided that rather than waiting on the runway, they would launch the planes and fly to a point just across the border, waiting for word. The increase in risk and logistics problems — tanker time had to be coordinated like a complicated minuet — was well worth the decrease in the time to strike. As far as possible, the flight patterns were arranged to make it appear to anyone watching — which would include the Russians — that the mission was headed toward Iraq.

Van Buren tried to fight off the adrenaline that built as his Herky Bird left the tarmac. Getting too keyed up, too hot for action, would blur his judgment. He had to be just south of the power line — just on the calm edge of the hurricane.

“Ms. Alston for you, sir,” his communications specialist told him.

Van Buren nodded, and his headset clicked on. She was aboard the MH-17, which was airborne to the west.

“We’re still waiting for word from the ground,” she said.

“Yes we are,” he said.

“I’ve been speaking to Corrigan. The NSA has netted two intercepts with the Russians mentioning the base. At the moment they’re decrypting more material. They seem to think it’s something worth checking into as well. Still not proof,” she added.

“That’s why we have the Team there,” said Van Buren.

“Very good, Colonel. Break a leg.”

“Break a leg?”

“It’s a theater expression. It means good luck, which is supposed to be bad luck to say.”

“Break a leg,” said Van Buren.

22

Ferguson leaned against the window, staring inside the large hangarlike building, trying to interpret the different shadows inside. He could see several trucks and a number of crates in the area to the left. Beyond that was a wall that seemed as if it blocked off another section of the building, maybe for use as offices or barracks.

The only way to know what was going on inside was to climb in. The window was the casement kind; it worked by a crank. Ferguson put his knife in and pushed. As the blade threatened to bend, he backed off the pressure. The window squirted open about a quarter inch, just enough for him to put his fingers on the edge and pull.

With the window open, Ferguson got a light click in his earbud: gamma radiation, though at a level barely above background.

The window was so narrow he couldn’t fit through with his ruck and rifle, so he placed them against the wall where he could reach back for them and began squeezing through. He had one foot on the floor and was twisting his back to bring the other through the window when the lights went on.

Conners had remained in the shadows by the fence as Ferguson worked his way across the field toward the buildings. He didn’t move until Ferguson was on the other side of the runway. Then he ran directly to the trench, his chest heaving as he slid feetfirst into the depression. One of the legs of the grenade launcher’s tripod poked him as he got down, but having come that far with the weapon, he wasn’t about to give it up.

There was definitely activity at the cave or whatever it was at the mountain flank; he could hear machinery and people moving and see a whitish glow that had to be coming from floodlights. But the entrance was angled away; to see it he would have to go almost to the end of the runway.

And so he began to crawl on his hands and knees.

Ferguson let his body fall through the window to the floor, as if he were a sack of rice. He thumped loudly — but not quite as loudly as the cough of the truck motor turning over and catching about fifty feet away. He lay on his back for a moment, then turned over. Truck wheels moved on his right; another engine started up, the place smelled like exhaust. Ferguson drew himself to his knees and got up, moving quickly to his right to get behind more vehicles. There were voices, loud — he put his hand over the tailgate of a pickup and rolled over, sliding into the bed as a truck a few yards away started up. He heard the beeping of a backup signal echoing in the empty building.

Then he realized it wasn’t a backup warning at all — it was his rad meter.

The door to the pickup opened, and the truck shook as someone got in. Ferguson reached his hand down for his pistol: He could take out the driver, whoever was nearby, call Conners, get the assault started before they wasted him.

Someone shouted something. Ferguson drew his gun up, ready.

The door of the pickup slammed shut. There were footsteps nearby.

Another truck started up. Ferguson leaned against the side of the pickup, waiting.

More trucks, more exhaust. He felt himself starting to gag on the fumes.

Then the terrorists were gone.

Conners had gotten about fifty yards from the spot where he’d gone into the ditch when he heard the first truck back near the building. He stopped, staring in its direction.

Where the hell was Ferguson, he wondered. He brought his gun up and began moving back in the direction he had come. Another truck appeared from the building, then another and another. They stopped in front of the second building; men came out from it and got into the vehicles. Then, with their headlights still off, they drove onto the dirt road that ran around the fence, heading toward the cave area.

Knowing Ferguson, Conners thought, he’s in one of the damn trucks.

He had just started to move along the ditch again when the sat phone began vibrating.

“Yeah?” he whispered into it.

“Pay dirt,” said Ferguson. His voice was only slightly lower than normal. “Gamma-wave generators around, trace stuff — they stored stuff here. The real shit must be over in the mountain.”

“Where are you Ferg?”

“Inside the north building. I’m calling Van in. You at the cave yet?”

“No.”

“Wait for me then. Once we have the layout psyched, we have to take out a van for them.”

“You OK, Ferg?”

“Never felt better. Well, except after sex.”

23

Corrine pushed the headset closer to her ear, having trouble hearing despite the fact that the volume was adjusted as loud as it would go.

“Please repeat,” she told Van Buren.

“We have material at the base,” he repeated. “Cesium in one of the buildings. Looks like medical waste. They’re checking out the possible work site now.”

“How much material?”

“We’re not sure yet.”

“They weren’t transporting medical waste,” she said.

“I understand that. They’re still doing the recce. There’s a possible cave at one end of the base where most of the waste may be.”

Corrine pushed forward, leaning over the console in the jet. She had been looking for it all to tie into a neat bow, but that wasn’t going to happen.

She had to make the call. Just her. And it wouldn’t be neat, no matter what she did.

Suddenly, she realized why the president had sent her to Russia when she could have run the mission back home. Maybe the thing about proving herself was real, but more importantly, he wanted her to make the call on the mission — and not be pressured by the people around her at the CIA or Pentagon. If she were in the White House situation room, or the Tank, or anywhere, generals would be barking at her, cabinet members looking on, their underlings all taking notes.

Here, it was pretty much her, with no one of enough rank to awe her.

“Proceed with the mission, under my authorization.” She glanced at her watch to take note of the time for her log.

24

Once he’d climbed through the window back outside the building, Ferguson decided that since he’d be exposed to any patrol on the perimeter as well the guard post at the gate, his best bet was to walk with his rifle slung over his shoulder, as if he were one of the terrorists.

Whether doing so fooled anyone or not, he made it to the field near the runway without being stopped or, as far as he could tell, seen. He slid down the shallow embankment, then began working south in Conners’s direction, which he had from the GPS reading on the phone. The glow from the mountain bunker had grown; he guessed the trucks had gone there, though he couldn’t see them or the opening itself.

Working his way south, he came to a deeper part of the ditch, then found himself walking in half a foot of water. He tried to step to the side but slipped down — deeper, falling into a foot of muddy, stagnant water. He crawled up out of the sludge like a primeval salamander. Clambering onto the runway, he decided that was as good a place as any to cross. He rose, and with his first step heard the sound of a pickup truck leaving the building behind him.

With his second step, he saw the truck’s headlights come on and arc across the field in his direction.

As Conners caught sight of Ferguson climbing from the ditch about twenty yards north of him, he saw the door to the north building open again and a truck emerge. But this time, the vehicle threw its lights on. Soldiers ran near the gate. Conners realized the man they’d lost earlier had finally reached the base and sounded the alarm.

The lights swung across the field as Ferguson started to run. A moment later, a machine gun began barking, a PK of some sort mounted on the back of the truck.

Conners threw the Russian grenade launcher off his back, setting it up to fire. As he did, Ferguson sprawled across the runway to his left, rolled back, and began firing his AK-74. The headlights on the pickup died, but the heavy machine continued to fire, chewing up the concrete just short of them.

Before Conners could sight the weapon, Ferguson had managed to reach the ditch. He ran to the north, away from Conners, and fired again, this time raking the side and catching one of the spare jerry cans of fuel in the back of the vehicle. The can exploded, and flames shot up, cooking off machine gun ammo in a thunderous orgy.

Conners let go of his weapon and took out the sat phone.

“We have a hot LZ,” he said, warning the assault team to expect gunfire.

Automatic fire stoked up again, this time from closer to the runway.

Corrigan was on the line, and Van Buren. Conners told them they were taking fire, described the arms he’d seen, and gave the basic layout of the firefight.

“We’ll be there as quickly as we can,” said Van Buren calmly.

25

Thomas found it at the bottom of a small slip of blue paper that held a summary of a translated message dating back nearly a year.

Manila.

One of Bin Saqr’s companies had rented a hangar at Manila airport. They had also bought fuel there.

He secured his room and hurried down to tell Corrigan what he had discovered. His adrenaline was flowing and he felt light-headed as he waited to be cleared through the security and in to see Corrigan. But as he walked down the hall Debra intercepted him.

“I got it, I got it, I got it,” he told her, waving the small blue paper madly.

“Calm down, Thomas. Calm down,” she told him. “He’s really busy right now. The operation is under way.”

“I have to tell him,” said Thomas, and he pushed her aside, overcome by his conviction that he was right. He marched into the situation room.

As soon as he saw the analyst, Corrigan threw his hands up, trying to flag him to stop and be quiet. He was in the middle of a four-way conversation with Colonel Van Buren, Corrine Alston, and Conners. The Team had been discovered at the Chechen base.

“Manila,” Thomas hissed. “They’re going to Manila, and then LA.”

Corrine must have heard him, for she asked what was going on.

“We’re working up new intelligence,” said Corrigan, trying to sort everything out. His brain felt like it had taken some of the rounds exploding near Conners.

“We’ll be at the target inside forty minutes,” said Van Buren. “We’ll get them out.”

“Good,” said Corrine.

Thomas stood on the balls of his feet, bobbing slightly. Debra stood behind him, shaking her head.

“All right. What do we have?” Corrigan asked.

Thomas smoothed out the paper and explained. Corrigan’s brain was suffering from the effects of far too much coffee and far too little sleep; he couldn’t quite follow the logic.

“You were supposed to look for an airplane,” said Corrigan.

“Yes, but here — they have a hangar in Manila. They’ve purchased jet fuel,” said Thomas.

“What do they need fuel for if they don’t have an airplane?” said Corrigan.

“That’s my point!”

Corrigan put up his hand. “Okay,” he told Thomas. “See if you can flesh this out with more information. And Thomas, you can use the phone, right? You can call me, rather than running down here.”

“Is there one in my office?” asked Thomas, honestly not remembering seeing it.

26

As soon as the truck blew, Ferguson turned and began running down the ditch toward Conners. As he reached him, a flare ignited above; the night went crimson, then bluish white, then quickly black.

“Cheap Russian flares,” he said, spotting Conners coming toward him.

“Stay down, Ferg. There’s another truck heading toward the top of the runway.”

“You call in Van Buren?”

Before Conners could answer, one of the guerrillas in the back of the truck began firing a machine gun. It took a few moments for the Americans to realize they weren’t being targeted.

“The assault group’s on their way. Forty minutes, give or take.”

The machine gun stopped. The truck raced by, not fifty yards away, speeding toward the southern end of the runway.

“Can we get the missile van from here?” asked Ferguson.

“If I knew where it was, I could tell you,” said Conners.

“In that general direction,” said Ferg.

“You sound more and more like an officer every day, Ferg.”

“It ought to be near the gate,” said Ferguson, starting in that direction.

Conners took the launcher and bumped behind him, trying to keep up. The Chechens, meanwhile, seemed to have convinced themselves that their enemy was at the southern side of the base and were concentrating there. Every so often, someone fired an automatic weapon at the shadows.

Ferg and Conners were just about at the end of the ditch when the Chechens lofted another flare. They hunkered down, but several rounds of automatic fire showed they’d been spotted.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” said Ferguson, jumping up and running. Conners fired about half his clip, then hustled after Ferguson, who crossed the paved area and threw himself into the weeds and rocks beyond the start of the runway. Something green lit up the area to the right, and the ground to the right of them churned into dust and rocks.

Conners slapped the grenade launcher down and fired into the burbling stream of tracers. He got off two rounds before the maelstrom swung lower. Conners found himself in a sea of dust and debris. He couldn’t breathe. Coughing, he fell on his back, struggling to get away.

A large rock splintered from one of the shells hit him in the leg, smacking him so hard he flew back from the launcher. Pelted by fresh dirt, he had started to get up when a piece of metal hit his chest. He screamed with the pain, even as it pushed him over into the ground. Then something began dragging him away.

Ferguson had grabbed him and started to retreat back toward the ditch, only to find his path swirling with the 2 3 mm slugs spit out by the gun. He changed direction, pulling Conners back near the fence where they’d come in as the ZSU-23 churned up the field near the runway.

“I couldn’t nail it,” said Conners.

“Yeah,” said Ferguson. “F-l 17s’ll have to get it on their own. You all right?”

“Beat to shit.”

“Bleeding?”

“That or I pissed in my pants.”

Automatic fire stoked up again. Headlights circled the field, and a searchlight, apparently on a vehicle, appeared at the far end of the base, near the entrance.

“Think you can make it over the fence where we came in?” Ferguson asked. “I think it’s probably quieter for us there.”

“My leg’s fucked up,” said Conners.

“How fucked up?” Ferguson took out his phone, pushed out the antenna arm, and hit power. But the phone didn’t come on.

“I can walk.” Conners pushed it under him and rocked a bit. The pain increased, but they couldn’t stay there, and he thought he might be able to hobble away.

Ferguson rapped the phone against the ground, trying to get it to work.

“I can tell you’re Irish,” said Conners.

“Give me your phone.”

Conners reached for it, but it was gone; he’d lost it somewhere in the confusion.

They ducked as lights swung toward them. Ferguson shoved the phone back into his pocket, then belatedly slipped a fresh clip into his gun.

“Patrol,” warned Conners. “They’re going to the ditch.”

“Let’s get some distance between us and them,” said Ferguson. He grabbed the back of Conners’s jacket and pulled him upright, getting Conners to lean on him as they ran along the fence toward a spot he’d seen earlier where they could crawl under. Ferguson found it, then held it up for Conners as he squeezed through. The trooper’s pant leg had been torn to shreds, and Ferg guessed his leg had been mangled as well. Ferguson grabbed his side, working his body against Conners’s to push him through, then sliding under himself. He got under the soldier and levered him upward, tottering forward to the outer fence.

“Gonna be mines around here,” Conners groaned.

“You think?”

“Ferg.”

“We’re clear. Come on,” said Ferguson, pushing him to the fence. The ravine they’d come down earlier was somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t find it. His head raced. Something seemed to move above him; Ferguson pushed up, raising his rifle, but there was nothing there.

The ZSU-23 started firing again, its four barrels spitting great bolts of lightning across the field and runway.

“If moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live ‘til I die,” mumbled Conners, singing the words to the song.

“Stay with me, Dad.”

“It’s there. The hole is there,” said Conners, pounding on the fence. He surprised himself by lifting his body up on the fence. Suddenly he realized his leg didn’t hurt anymore — he pulled himself upright, then rather than sliding below he climbed up and over, holding himself carefully before starting back down.

Ferguson crawled through and met him below. The waste area where they’d left Daruyev was up about ten yards on his left. Conners started along the fence, leaning against it for support. As he went, he took out his pistol.

“Daruyev, we’re back,” yelled Ferguson.

“No!” yelled the Chechen.

A hail of bullets followed. Ferguson and Conners threw themselves to the ground as the fusillade tore through the fence.

“You fucks,” shouted Ferg. He jumped up, finger nailing the trigger on his gun. Fire burned his brain — he was the gun, spitting bullets, ferocious fury thunder mangling the twisted metal and rocks before. The magazine clicked empty — he changed it without thinking, still the bullets smashing through the guerrillas who’d ambushed his prisoner.

Conners had left the grenade launcher and its charges, but he still had his hand grenades. He took one from his jacket, set it, and yelled to Ferguson to duck as he heaved it as far as he could.

Ferguson didn’t hear the warning. The blast slapped him onto his back.

By the time he got up, a fresh flare shot up from the base behind them. In the grayish white shadowlight, Ferguson saw Daruyev twenty yards away, slumped over his bound hands. There were bodies all around him. Ferguson watched in the fitful light of the flare, expecting Daruyev to move. When he didn’t, the CIA officer began clambering up the pile of debris, making his way toward Daruyev.

Three figures started down the slope, maybe seventy yards away, silhouetted by the light of the flare. Ferguson hunched down, carefully took aim, then burned his clip on them, folding the three guerrillas in half.

Daruyev remained slumped over. Ferguson reached to push his head up, to see if he was breathing, but as he did his fingers felt wet and mushy, and he realized two or three bullets had gone into the back of the Chechen’s skull, fired from so close that they had come clean through. He let go and began making his way back down.

Conners rested against the fence, waiting, a grenade in his hand. A new song played in his head, but he couldn’t place the words; they were tangled somehow, confused. His leg didn’t hurt, but his head pounded from the inside out, as if he had a ticking bomb there.

“Dad, let’s go,” said Ferguson, reaching him.

“Yeah,” said Conners.

Somehow, Ferguson had kept his knapsack through all of the confusion. He pulled it off his back, sorting through the contents as he searched for more clips for his rifle. He had the laptop and the roll-printer, another shirt, a second pistol with ammo, first-aid kit —

“Ferg!” insisted Conners, reaching for him. “We’re sitting ducks here.”

“All right, let’s move,” said Ferguson, finally finding a pair of clips at the bottom. He cinched the bag. He reached for the fence, then lost his balance and fell through — the Chechen gunfire had ripped through one of the posts, and the metal swung open like a rusty screen door.

Ferguson helped Conners through, then found the hole in the second fence. The SF soldier’s cheek was wet; he’d been hit somewhere in the face and was bleeding. Conners felt an overwhelming urge simply to lie down and sleep, but he knew he couldn’t, knew in his head that he had to watch out for Ferguson. They began working their way toward the cave area, their goal now not recce, but survival. Meanwhile, the Chechens gathered for a sweep across the base, starting from the top of the runway.

The fence ended with a roll of barbed wire and a large cement column that had been set into the rocks. They moved into the tumble of rocks slowly, looking for a place they might hide until the assault began. Ferguson’s boot kicked a low cement curb in the darkness, and he tripped, just barely getting his hands out in front of him as he fell. He pushed up, grunted at Conners to warn him, then realized there was a door directly ahead of him on the side of the mountain, camouflaged by an overhang and a boulder at the side.

Something moved on his right. A voice asked in Chechen who he was.

Ferguson froze, then slipped his right hand back to his belt, grabbing his knife. The Chechen said something again; it sounded like a name, and Ferguson — the rifle now in his left hand pointed at the shadow — took a chance and repeated part of it, clipping it off as if he were annoyed.

This elicited more words from the guard, enough so that Ferguson finally got a good idea where he was, ten feet away. The man’s legs started to crunch the gravel of the narrow path.

Ferguson slipped down, waiting. The man walked forward, cursing his companion for running off and leaving his post.

In the darkness, Ferguson’s aim was off, and rather than pulling the knife around the front of the man’s neck and cutting him cleanly, he jabbed it on the side, pulling down to the left as he did. But his momentum as he leapt was so great the blade severed the external carotid artery as well as the jugular and sliced the man’s windpipe. Ferguson heard him gurgle, felt the convulsions as the man tried desperately to grab back his life.

Conners waited a few yards away, clutching his pistol. His head had begun to feel light, and when Ferguson rose and called to him, he thought he said it was time to grab a beer. Conners stumbled on the path, nearly tripping over the dead guard before he reached Ferguson by the doorway.

“Lets see what’s inside,” said Ferg, nudging it open. He could hear machinery humming somewhere ahead of them. Ferguson took a few steps forward, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. He was on a narrow ramp leading to a well-constructed bunker. There was light beyond, and a much larger hangar area. The facility had been built by the Soviets, not to house their spy planes, but rather a small squadron of planes equipped with hydrogen bombs. It had been camouflaged to avoid detection from the air, or space for that matter.

“Dad, you with me?” he asked Conners, who was still back by the door.

Conners grunted. “My head’s fucked up,” he told the CIA officer when he came back to him. “Something smacked it.”

“Let’s find a place for you to stay while I reconnoiter,” Ferguson told him as he tossed the first-aid pack to him. “Our friends’ll be landing soon.”

“I’m OK, Ferg,” Conners insisted.

“Don’t be a crybaby,” said Ferguson. They moved down the ramp, toward the light.

Samman Bin Saqr yelled at the team that was supposed to be readying the plane. The men were in the way, fumbling at their duties rather than moving expeditiously. Time was of the essence; from the alarms that had been sent, he thought the infidel Russians had discovered the operation and sent soldiers to infiltrate it. Soon they would call in bombers for the attack.

In his fury he considered changing his target and flying to Moscow rather than striking the American paradise as he planned. But that was vanity, jealousy at being found — it was not what God had directed.

Bin Saqr mastered himself, calmly listening while Jehid, who was in charge of preparing the aircraft for flight, reported what needed to be done to finish placing the casks of high-alpha material along the outer skin, where the explosives would shatter them and produce a radiological cloud. At the same time, more work remained to set the fail-safe charges in the airplane’s freight compartment.

There was too much to be done. The flight preparation alone stretched a half hour, and it could not be done safely in the hangar.

And then Allah whispered the solution to Bin Saqr, as he had many times in the past.

“Get the work teams outside,” Bin Saqr told Jehid. “Do everything at once. As soon as we are sure we can take off, we will.”

“Some of the material may not be in place.”

“That is immaterial now.”

“But it means working in the darkness. It may take longer—”

“We will leave in fifteen minutes,” snapped Samman Bin Saqr.

Jehid turned quickly and sprinted to his work teams.

Sound echoed oddly against the concrete of the hangar. There were people and machines somewhere beyond where they were, but Ferguson couldn’t quite figure out exactly where. He walked up the ramp into a long open area, where he saw a set of metal railings blocking off a section below. Light shone up through the space. Ferguson slid on his belly to get a look, pushing along the floor like a swimmer gliding across an Olympic-sized pool.

An airplane sat in the massive space below. He craned his head, trying to get a view of the aircraft, a large 747 that was being worked on. Men were running around it frantically. There were two large lifts near the rear of the plane and a ladder up to the flight deck. A welder was working on something near the wingroot on the right side.

“Fuck,” said Ferg, backing away.

“What’d you see?” asked Conners, back by the ramp. The side of his head was caked with blood. His leg looked worse.

“They have a plane,” said Ferguson. “I bet it’s packed with waste.”

Ferguson took off his backpack and pulled out the rad meter. He registered enough gamma and alpha radiation to sound the alert; the isotope ID flashed: Cesium.

And uranium. They were taking both gamma and alpha radiation, with a bit of beta thrown in for good measure.

“Don’t breathe,” he told Conners. The REM equivalent was pushing over a sievert.

“Very funny.”

“I want to look at that plane,” said Ferguson. “There’s only a bit of uranium — some sort of spill. I bet there’s more on the plane, or in it.”

“Come on — don’t be crazy. There’ll be guards all over,” said Conners.

Ferguson slid back to the front, adjusting the meter’s sensitivity as he tried to work out where the waste was. The workers were moving — there was a loud cranking sound, and a rush of air.

The bastards were going to take off.

Ferguson began moving along the railing, looking for a way down. Conners, meanwhile, had gotten down on his hands and belly — his knees wouldn’t hold him — and pushed himself out to see what was going on. He saw Ferguson reach a stairwell at the end of the room.

“Ferg,” he croaked, trying to stop him.

Ferguson didn’t hear him, and wouldn’t have stopped if he had. He slid over the rail onto the steps, not daring to jump. A ramp ran alongside them. At the foot there were barrels and crates, most empty, which had once contained waste.

The large jet just barely fit in the space; its tail towered over two rows of large crates at the back of the hangar. There were toolboxes and other gear scattered along the floor at the left.

Ferguson dropped behind the crates at the back as two men approached. He pointed his gun in their direction, but the men stopped at a tool case, picking it up by the handles at the side and walking toward the front. He could see as he peered around the side that the door to the hangar was open.

Ferguson thought he might be able to shoot out the tires of the plane, but he’d have to get under it to do so. He took a step out from the crate, then saw feet walking toward him. He took a step and jumped onto the side of a mobile ramp, flattening himself against it. Conners crawled around above, reaching the ramp next to the stairs. He pulled himself up on the railing, hugging it as he slid down.

Ferguson climbed up the scissor apparatus that lifted the mobile ramp, then pulled himself onto the platform, above the Chechen workers who’d come for more tools. He aimed his rifle at them, no more than six feet away, but once more the workers were too absorbed to notice him. When they turned around and walked toward the front, Ferguson went to the machine to climb down and saw Conners at the end of the ramp next to the stairs.

Ferguson angrily waved at him to stay down, but the sergeant didn’t seem to notice. He started hissing at him. When that didn’t work, Ferguson started to climb over the rail. But he put his hand on the joystick controlling the platform, inadvertently telling it to descend. He jerked his hand back but the machine continued downward, the lever locked. Conners saw him finally, scanned the nearby area, then limped toward him, reaching the platform as it hit its stop.

Both men waited, guns ready. No one appeared — the noise of the platform was just one more background sound of people doing their jobs to get the plane ready.

“Hey,” said Ferg. “You think we can shoot out the tires?”

“Why don’t we toss a couple of grenades inside?” suggested Conners. He bent over the platform.

“Now you’re talking,” said Ferguson, pulling him onto the scaffold and standing up to hit the lever. The machine began to rise.

Conners reached to his vest for his grenade, patting his chest before realizing he wasn’t wearing his combat webbing; he wasn’t in his SF gear, of course. He reached down to his pocket for the grenade he’d had back at the fence, but it was gone. He’d already used it.

“Get the grenades ready,” said Ferguson, as the ramp hit its stop.

“I only have a pair of flash-bangs,” said Conners.

“All right,” said Ferguson. “We’ll get the tires and maybe the engines once the action gets close. In the meantime, let me check out what’s going on inside here.” They were just below the rear cargo door of the plane — a door that had been added as part of the operation to turn the large jet into a flying dirty bomb. Ferguson turned and looked inside the jet. The space was narrow, lined with metal containers — actually carefully packed radioactive materials and explosives arranged in a precise pattern to maximize the spread of the material at detonation. Ferguson climbed inside, scaling a row of boxes that had been bolted to the floor; he felt as if he were inside a kid’s giant Erector set.

Conners heard someone yelling, then saw a strobe light flashing against the walls. The plane started to move.

Not wanting to leave Ferguson behind, Conners screwed up his strength and got to both feet, the pain pounding every muscle and nerve and fat cell in his body. He threw his pistol into the hold and lurched across the open space onto the plane platform.

Ferguson ducked as the gun flew in, then fell with the shifting momentum of the aircraft. He got up, grabbed Conners, and started to push him toward the open door space, ready to jump back, but it was already too late — the platforms were a good ten feet away.

27

Fifteen miles from the airfield, Major Greg Jenkins put his hand on the control for his F-117A’s IRADS system, jacking up the contrast on the target. During the Gulf War, the Stealth fighters had had to rely on laser-guided bombs, which robbed the pilot of some flexibility during the attack as the system had to lase its target. But Jenkins and his flightmates were firing GPS-guided munitions. Their targets had been preprogrammed before takeoff, and while the pilot could override them, his gear showed him there was no reason to. He got a steering cue on his HUD, the computer compensating for the wind.

As he swung to the proper position, Jenkins hit the red button on his stick, which gave the computerized bombing system authority to drop the bomb. The bay doors behind him opened with a clunk — air buffeted the plane, and warning lights blinked on the dash, reminding him he was a sitting duck, an easy and very visible radar target as long as the plane’s symmetry was broken.

This was the longest part of the flight. Even though it took the automated systems only a few seconds to eject the bombs, in these few seconds Jenkins was the most mortal of men, obvious to the radars and a slow, barely maneuverable black target in a light sky.

And then the buffeting stopped with a loud clunk, and the warning lights were gone, and though he was too busy to glance over his shoulder — and the view too obstructed to see — Major Jenkins knew he had just nailed his prize and would live to celebrate it.

Van Buren listened as the F-117A pilots checked in, announcing that their missiles had been launched. The Hercules with the first drop team was late, about three minutes behind schedule. But they were into it now, no turning back; the gun-ship was just coming on station, its first task the van that Ferguson was supposed to hit.

His hope that Ferg had somehow made it disintegrated a few seconds later as the gunship pilot reported a direct hit on the van, with “shitloads of secondaries.”

As the gunship began mopping up the two ZSU-23s left at the north end of the field, Van Buren said a silent prayer for his friend and Conners, then made himself get up and check on his men.

28

The plane had already gotten outside the hangar when Ferguson heard the first rumble. There were shouts from below and explosions in the distance.

“Let’s get to the cockpit,” he told Conners. “We’ll stop the bastards from taking off.”

Conners grunted and started after him. As Ferguson began to run, he heard a sound similar to a vacuum cleaner and felt the aircraft starting to shake. The dim light narrowed. The engines whined to life.

“The door,” yelled Conners.

Ferguson tripped as he ran. He grabbed his rifle, but then stopped himself from firing as the mechanism slapped shut. They were in the dark.

“There’s got to be some sort of switch if it’s powered,” Ferguson told Conners. “We’ll get it later if we have to. Let’s try to get in the cockpit. Come on.”

Ferguson reached the wall at the front of the plane and slapped at it with his hands, trying to feel for a ladder or something that would take him up to the flight deck, which on a 747 sat at the top of the plane, almost like the second story of a two-story building. There was no ladder, and he couldn’t find a handhold. He went to the side, found a place to climb up, but lost his balance and tumbled to the floor of the plane, smacking his head so hard as he landed that he temporarily lost consciousness.

Conners, unable to climb, felt around with his hands for a ladder or steps. As he did, he smelled metal burning. A loud secondary explosion sounded in the distance, rocking the jet.

“Get down here, you guys,” he called to the assault team, as if they might hear him over the engines on the plane. He stepped back, pulled his rifle up, and aimed it at the door. But as he started to press the trigger, the plane jerked forward. Conners lost his balance, and the three slugs buried themselves harmlessly in the material wedged along the roof of the fuselage.

29

The AC-130 located not one but two different active antiaircraft batteries. The first shot from its howitzer nailed one of the ZSU-23s in the center of its chassis, causing the four barrels to fold in on themselves midshot. Flames crescendoed in every direction, red and yellow streamers that unfolded like the petals of a flower.

The pilot of the AC-130 U “U-boat” had to come hard south to get a shot on the second battery, which had been located to the east of the camp proper. As he pulled the big Herk on to her mark, he saw that the Chechens had moved an airplane onto the end of the runway.

They were committed to the flak dealer, which began spraying lead in their direction. The pilot got a cue on his target screen and hit the trigger, but the shot trailed off as the Herk hit a sudden updraft current. He worked the stick and the rudder as if he were piloting a World War II dive bomber, homing in on its prey. Sparks flew across his bow, but he had the shot. The large aircraft shuddered, then seemed to push forward and simultaneously dip her right wing. They’d been hit — but they’d also nailed the ZSU-23-4.

30

Samman Bin Saqr realized with the first explosion that he had miscalculated badly — it was not the Russians who had found him, but the Americans. As calmly as he could, he worked the plane, starting the engines, securing the hatches, moving forward on the runway.

His flight engineer had not come aboard, but that was a minor matter. He began to turn as he reached the northern end of the runway, his right wing nearly scraping the side of the building as he turned. He hesitated for a second, fearful that in his ineptitude he had failed Allah. But then God smiled at him — he cleared the building and had the nose of the plane pointing into the wind, directly down the runway.

“Let us proceed,” he told his copilot, Vesh Ahmamoody. Vesh reached for the thrusters, propelling the flying bomb into the sky.