First Team (35 page)

“When the police come, make a commotion,” Ferg told Conners.

“That’s it?”

“Well, that and don’t get caught. Meet me back at Happy Acres when you’re done. Give Gribak fifty euros when you get there. Don’t go more than that; he’ll think you’re queer.”

“OK,” said Conners. Ferguson was so deadpan it was hard to tell if he meant it as a joke or not.

~ * ~

he smoke felt like a saw blade hacking at Ferg’s eyes as he entered the bar. He pushed into the crowd nonetheless, sauntering through a crowd of off-duty Russian soldiers and Chechens. The Red Star was not the most notorious bar in Groznyy, but it did rate in the top ten. Ferguson slid forward, pushing his way between two natives and making sure to address the bartender first in English, then in Russian. He took his vodka and walked toward a row of tables at the left side of the room. The tables seemed entirely occupied by soldiers, which would have made things much too obvious. It occurred to him that Gribak might not be as accomplished a source as he pretended to be.

Returning to the bar with his now-empty glass, Ferguson held it out for a refill. When the bartender came back he asked if he knew how one might find Novakich.

The bartender squinted at him as if he’d asked the way to the Statue of Liberty. Ferguson repeated the name. When he got a frown this time, he smiled at the bartender and let a ten-ruble note float to the bar as he disappeared.

The next club seemed more a smuggler’s hangout, at least to judge by the efficiency of the pat-down. Ferg once more repeated the routine, adding a visit to a table where he dropped Ruby’s name as well.

The third club had an American Western theme, with posters of fifties movies and a saddled horse in the corner. Unfortunately, the horse was stuffed. As Ferg walked to the end of the long bar, he wondered if he ought to ask for a sasaparilla. The bartender’s round nose sniffed the air as he approached; Ferg nearly looked at his boots to check if he’d tracked manure in.

“You know a Novakich?” he asked in Russian, holding on to his money.

The bartender looked at him, sniffed again, then shook his head.

“Oh, well,” said Ferg in English, letting the money drop before asking for a vodka. The bartender scooped up the money, replacing it with a shot glass and a bottle. Ferg slid around, sizing up the sparse crowd.

~ * ~

ou sure that’s the police?” Conners asked Gribak as the small car sped down the road. The battered Lada looked like an ordinary passenger vehicle to him, though it did stop in the middle of the road in front of the bar Ferguson was in.

Gribak gave him an exasperated look.

“All right. I guess you’d know,” said Conners, pushing open the door. He trotted up the road toward the sewer opening, watching to make sure that the police car stopped. As the two plainclothes officers got out and headed toward the bar, he knelt and dropped the grenade through the grate, returning to the truck at a dead run. When he reached it, Conners pulled open the door and leaned back over the roof, aiming the automatic rifle down the block. He shot off a few rounds, then threw the gun into the street as Gribak cursed angrily and hit the gas. They drove through a maze of alleys and narrow streets, and in a few minutes the Chechen’s mood began to improve greatly; he started humming.

“Very good,” said Conners when he fell silent. “Do you know ‘Finnegan’s Wake’?”

~ * ~

he din in the bar was so loud that the grenade could barely be heard, though the muffled crack set off a chain reaction. Weapons appeared instantly; two men started for the rear exit. Ferg followed, only to find his way barred by a large man in a black turtleneck sweater at least two sizes too small for him. More impressive than his haberdashery was his gun, an H&KMP-5.

“Guess I’m going a different way,” said Ferguson, stepping back. He saw some men heading toward a door at the right; he followed and found that they were heading out a restroom window that opened onto an alleyway He followed, turning left away from the street as gunfire erupted in the front of the building. He knew it wasn’t Conners—there was too much of it for too long. Someone ahead of him jumped over a fence. Ferg followed, then found himself in the middle of four somewhat angry-looking Chechens.

“Hey—” he started to say as the one nearest him swung a fist at his face. Ferg ducked, but caught a stick from another in the ribs. As the men closed in he swung his fists in every direction, but something hard clipped him on the side of head. As he fell to the ground there was more gunfire in the alley behind him; he lost consciousness for a moment, and by the time he blinked his eyes open his wallet was gone, and so were his tormenters. He also had a thick swag of wet blood on the side of his neck and shirt.

Ferg sat back against the fence, trying to get his bearings. Finally, he pushed his legs under him, rising to his feet. He gripped the top of the fence and pushed upward, peering over into the eyes of a plainclothes policeman.

“Shit,” said Ferg, dropping to the ground.

The policeman said something similar in Russian, then began blowing his whistle.

~ * ~

8

CHECHNYA

 Before Conners paid off Gribak, he made sure he understood how to work the starter and ignition on the truck, which had been modified to discourage thieves. Then he dropped the Chechen off at his father’s store and drove a few blocks to an empty lot where Gribak had said it was safe to leave the truck. He left the rifle under the front seat but took a few of the grenades from the back and walked to the hotel. When he reached the rooms he was a little surprised not to find Ferg there, even though they weren’t supposed to meet for another half hour; Ferguson was always showing up places ahead of schedule, the kind of guy who met you at the end of the bar a drink and a half ahead. Conners checked both rooms, then sat in his, waiting. The TV was old, the picture was fuzzy, and the only channel it seemed to receive was some sort of Russian cooking show. He left it on anyway.

Three hours later, Ferg still hadn’t appeared. Driving back into Groznyy to look for him was out of the question, but Conners felt as if he had to do something. He walked to the truck and started it up, driving around the town before realizing he was running a good chance of getting lost. It took twenty minutes of left-hand turns for him to find his way back to the lot. Frustrated and needing sleep, he parked and walked back to the hotel, where once again he was surprised that Ferguson wasn’t sitting there waiting for him.

“Well God,” said Conners, pulling off his shoes. “I’d make you a deal—I’ll give up drinking if you take care of the little bugger. He’s full of himself but in a good way, the bastard.”

He pushed under the covers, his clothes still on, his pistol in his hand. After a while, he fell asleep.

When he woke, Ferguson was sitting in the chair next to the bed.

“Jesus, Ferg,” said Conners, opening his eyes. “What happened to your face?”

“Before or after I got the shit knocked out of me?” said Ferguson, rising. His neck hurt like hell, but otherwise the wounds were mostly cosmetic.

As long as he didn’t breathe.

“Hey, Ferg, you OK?”

“Yeah.” Ferguson took a swig from the vodka bottle in his hand. “First I got robbed, then the police rolled me. Good thing I had a money belt.”

“ ‘Cause they didn’t find your cash?”

“Because there was cash for them to find.” The police had used some sort of pepper spray on him. Fortunately, the men were either locals or too intent on robbing him to check with the ministry office; they’d even left his fake passport on the dirt next to him.

“It’s part of the plan,” said Ferg, rising. “Get dressed. They have a strict dress code where we’re going—no jammies.”

“Where’s that?”

“Jail,” said Ferg.

~ * ~

9

NEAR THE BORDER BETWEEN RUSSIA AND KAZAKHSTAN

 Guns’s brain flip-flopped as Massette told him a story about watching a group of assassins in Morocco. Though a native of Tennessee, the warrant officer’s English had a decided French slant. Even without the odd inflections, the story he told would have been difficult to follow, tracking back and forth between Paris and the narrow streets of North Africa. Jack Massette had been “loaned” to the DGSE
-Direction Generate de la Securité Exterienre,
the French Defense Ministry’s General Directorate for External Security—for an investigation into a ring smuggling ricin poison into France, but the assignment had morphed far from its original outline. Massette and the two French agents he was working with discovered that a criminal group was targeting the terrorist ringleader, apparently because of a financial dispute; they’d been told to allow the assassin to kill their target. Their unspoken orders directed the DGSE agents to do the job if the assassins didn’t.

“And so I shot him,” said Massette, reaching the punch line, “with the police in the next room.”

“The Paris police?”

“No, this was in Algiers. We had to pay these guys five hundred bucks so we could leave. I thought it was pretty cheap.”

Guns was going to ask how he’d gotten to Algiers when the train started to move again. As he put the Russian Calina in gear, the engine revved like a psychotic lawn clipper. The Vaz-made car looked and drove like a Ford Focus that had gone through one too many rinse cycles, but it had the virtue of going relatively far on a tankful of watered-down Russian petrol.

The road veered sharply to the left, following the rugged line of the hills. The border with Kazakhstan was about five miles to the south; Rankin and Corrine had already gone across. The road gradually became narrower and soon changed from macadam to barely packed gravel. The train tracks ran off to the left, running through a shallow valley to the border crossing. Though they saw that the train was stopping, there was no place for them to pull off; the two men lost sight of the cars as they drove on, looking for a good place to stop.

By the time Guns found a lot in front of a roadside inn, they’d lost sight of the train. Massette got out and walked to the right; Guns took his pocket binoculars and went left, crossing the road and sliding down the hill about twenty yards before reaching a place where he could see the train. It had pulled onto a siding to let another train pass; the soldiers accompanying it milled around, waiting as the approaching passenger train climbed the grade, its single diesel engine spewing black smoke.