Ferguson pushed another wad of gum into his mouth, continuing to chew furiously as he watched Guns approaching the rendezvous at the gas station. He had the NOD’s magnifier on max, but he still had trouble seeing in the distance beyond the corner. Conners was tagging along behind Guns, his MP-5 hanging down at his side. They’d decided the heavy weapons were necessary after dark, and Guns had his under his coat.
“Don’t see nobody,” said Guns, still walking.
“He’ll be watching you,” Ferguson told them. “Just keep going. Dad, you’re going to have to go in there with him so it doesn’t look like you’re waiting to ambush them. Tuck the gun beneath your coat. It should show a little, just don’t make it too obvious.”
“You gonna fuckin’ blow their noses for them, too?” said Rankin. He was sitting next to Ferguson in the passenger seat, his Uzi in hand. He had a grenade launcher and a dozen 40 mm rounds on the floor. Both men were wearing their vests.
“I will if I have to,” said Ferg. “What color snot you figure is in Guns’s nose?”
Rankin gave a little laugh. Ferguson pushed against the steering wheel, noticing something moving in the station.
“Okay, Guns, your man is in the station looking at a magazine. Look menacing.”
“Shoulda sent Rankin for that,” said Dad.
Ferg swung the NOD around, looking through the back window. The Russians tended to stay put once it got dark — they weren’t dumb — but there was always the possibility of a patrol.
Anyone else on the street could be assumed to be a rebel or a member of the local black-market gangs, or both.
Inside the gas station, Guns went to the clerk behind the counter and asked if he could buy some cigarettes. The clerk pushed a pack toward him on the counter. It said Marlboro on it, but instead of red the label was a sickish orange, an obvious counterfeit.
The price was a hundred rubles.
Without saying anything, Guns reached into his pocket for the money.
Connors, standing by the door, eyed the other man. He was about five-four, and his rib cage seemed to have been shifted permanently, as if his chest were twisted on his body. He had a scar at the base of his chin and a blank look in his eyes, as if he were staring at a spot far in the distance.
Guns dropped the bill on the counter, took the cigarettes, and went outside. Conners followed; the informant came out last.
They walked to the side of the building. The man held up his hands, seeming to anticipate a pat-down. Conners didn’t disappoint him, pushing his legs apart as he slid the muzzle of his submachine gun in the man’s back. He wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest, and he didn’t have a weapon. That worried Conners, because it implied that he was being watched by a bodyguard, even though they hadn’t seen one.
Ferg told him he was worrying too much.
“And you’re worrying too little,” said Guns.
“Nah, we’re cool,” said Ferg.
“Five-mile hike,” Guns said. “Up that road near the creek, then off the trail for another two miles.”
“What happens then?” Ferg asked.
“Won’t say. He’ll show us up the road, then that’s it.”
“Probably an ambush,” said Rankin.
“If it were, he’d have a vest,” said Ferg. “Go for it,” he told Guns. He watched with the NOD as they crossed the street, the Chechen in the lead. The man walked with a limp.
“I wouldn’t trust that fuck as far as I could throw him,” said Rankin as they watched them cross the street.
“You have a better plan?”
“Let him point it out on the map, we check it out tomorrow night.”
“Which only gives them more time to set up the ambush, or to shake information out of our guy,” said Ferguson. He waited a few minutes, then put the car in gear as Conners began to hum “A Jug of Punch” over the radio.
“You do ‘Danny Boy,’ and we’re not backing you up,” Ferguson threatened, parking the car. The two American soldiers and the Chechen source were behind them now; Ferg could see them in the rearview mirror.
“Hey, I like ‘Danny Boy,’” protested Conners.
Ferguson and Rankin waited for the others to pass before getting out of the truck. Carrying rucksacks with gear as well as weapons — Ferg had his shotgun and Rankin the Uzi — they gave the others a good start, then began trailing them. The truck would have been too obvious and an easy target besides.
The road twisted and turned as it climbed into the mountains. It took a little more than an hour to reach the turnoff that allegedly led to the guerrilla stronghold. Connors walked off the road about ten yards and promptly lost the trail in the rocks.
“He’s going to have to do better than this,” he told Guns.
Guns started to explain that the Chechen would have to accompany them farther. They weren’t going into the camp, but they wanted a better idea where it was.
The Chechen started to back away.
Ferg and Rankin had steadily closed the distance, and by then were only a hundred yards behind. As Guns continued to argue, Ferguson came up and put his Remington 870 against the back of the Chechen’s head. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills, pressing them into the man’s hand.
“Five more when we see it. We won’t cause trouble,” he said in Russian. “But you have to earn your money.”
The guerrilla camp was bigger than they’d expected, and housed enough men to spare six guards on the perimeter that faced the road and town below. Rankin saw at least one ready but unmanned gun emplacement, and the configuration of the hills suggested there would be any number of weapons trained on the approach. He also thought there was also a minefield across a valley that flanked a large rock outcropping commanding the approach.
“No way we’re sneaking in the front door,” said Rankin when he returned to the copse off the road where the others were waiting. “And the way the ridge runs off to the right and left, I don’t know if we can get in at all.”
“We’ll have to rethink this,” admitted Ferguson. He pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to Guns, then pointed to their informant. “Tell our friend this is just extra rent — he’s our houseguest for the evening.”
“He’s not going to be pleased,” said the Marine. “Claims he has to get back to his wife.”
“Tell ‘em we’ll kill the person she’s sleeping with for no charge when we’re done.”
It took them more than an hour to get back to the car and drive the five miles to the abandoned building Ferguson and Rankin had found earlier. The ramshackle farmhouse had a few small holes in the roof but was otherwise intact. The road to it was another story — pockmarked by bomb craters and two rubble barriers, it was so bad they had to leave the car about a mile from the house. They slipped it in under some trees, obscuring it from the Russian helicopter patrols; as a precaution against thieves Rankin pulled the wire from the coil and took it with him.
Conners gazed at the stars as they walked, trying to orient the unfamiliar sky against his faded memory of an astronomy course he’d taken in high school a million years before. There was a time when knowing the stars would have been a critical talent on a deep insertion like this; compass, sextant, and a clear sky would help you work out where you were. But GPS gear had made the math obsolete; now the stars were just pretty things to look at.
When they were a little less than a half mile from the farm building, they spread out into the field, approaching slowly to make sure they weren’t walking into an ambush. Guns told the Chechen to stay with him — and to stay nearby. He didn’t bother threatening the man with his submachine gun; their informant wasn’t happy but had already proven he was the sort of man who would stick around as long as the hundred-dollar bills kept appearing.
