“I don’t see us getting in at all,” said Rankin.
“Yeah, Skip’s right on that. We’re going to have to make him come out,” said Ferguson. He got up and started pacing around, thinking over the situation. It was now almost noon. Every hour they stayed there increased the chances they would be found by either the Russians or the Chechen rebels, or both. They still had their informer, but even holding on to him was not without risk.
The Russians had two companies in Irktan. That was probably the reason they didn’t attack the camp; they figured it wasn’t worth the effort.
That would have to be changed.
“Rankin, you see any guard posts on that back end there?” Ferguson asked.
“They have people on this road way the hell over here,” he said, pointing at a highway nearly two miles from the rear of the fortress area. “The thing is, there’s no way in from the roads. So if they’re dealing with the Russians, they probably figure they don’t have to guard along this area here. Terrain’s for shit, and the Russians never go anywhere without either a caravan of armor or helicopters, or both. If you’re in the fortress, you don’t need to be anywhere else.”
“And this?” Ferguson pointed to a ravine that ran out the back of the fortress.
“The escape route,” said Rankin, repeating what he had told Ferguson earlier. “Got a bike right there.”
The hide for the bike was visible on an earlier photo; the area was not quite as sharp in the most recent shot. But Ferguson decided it must still be there.
“Why only one bike?” asked Guns.
“Only one person is important enough to escape,” said Ferg.
“Only one’s chicken enough,” said Rankin.
“Maybe it’s for a messenger,” said Conners.
“Could be,” said Ferguson. One of the briefs on the rebel organization that Lauren had posted with the satellite data emphasized that the leaders looked at the war as a long-term affair — survival was important. In his opinion, the bike was Kiro’s parachute, nothing else.
“We might be able to sneak in that way, take them by surprise,” said Rankin.
“We don’t know what’s beyond that opening,” said Conners. “Assuming it is an opening.”
“Got to be,” said Rankin.
“Yeah, OK. Listen, I gotta talk to Van,” said Ferguson, standing up. “In the meantime — Rankin, that mortar we have in the kit—”
“The English piece of shit?”
“The same,” said Ferguson. “You think you could rig it so some of the shells it fires don’t explode?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they fire and land somewhere, but don’t go boom.”
“I could do that,” said Conners.
“Yeah, I could figure it out,” said Rankin quickly.
“Good. Only a couple. Don’t blow yourselves up, guys,” said Ferguson. As he jogged up the basement steps, the plan began to form in his mind.
11
Rankin finished setting the charge, waiting beneath the car behind the army headquarters building. He could hear Guns haranguing the guards a few feet away, asking about the clinic — demanding to know in very loud and seemingly drunk Russian why foreigners were allowed to poison people there.
The guards were getting impatient. Rankin heard one of them shove Guns and rolled away from the car. They started kicking the Marine, who’d fallen to the ground as part of his diversion.
It took Rankin all his self-control not to jump up and run to help his companion. Instead, he got up slowly, walking toward the battered Accord, where Conners was waiting with their Chechen informer.
A woman was walking near the road. Rankin looked at her for a moment, worried that she would stop and say something to him. But she hurried on.
The sergeant looked back in time to see one of the men give Guns a kick in the ribs, leaving him in a heap against the wall. He waited for him to make it to the corner and start across the street. Then Rankin opened the car door and pulled the Chechen informer out.
“In two days,” he said, repeating the Chechen words Guns had told him. “Go to Sister. You’ll be paid.”
The Chechen’s eyes were glued on the hundred-dollar bill in Rankin’s hand.
“Two days. Understand?”
The man nodded.
“Now run.”
The Chechen understood that. He shook his head and put up his hands.
Rankin took the pistol from under his jacket. “Run,” he said. “Run.”
He had to bring the gun up almost to the man’s face before he started.
The soldiers didn’t see him until he was a good distance down the block. One began yelling; the other knelt to aim at him. As he prepared to fire, Rankin pushed the button on the radio detonator, blowing up the car.
When Ferguson heard the explosion, he dropped the round into the LI 6, involuntarily ducking back as the 81 mm projectile whipped upward from the small mortar. In quick succession, he loaded and fired five more rounds from the British-made weapon, raining a half dozen shots on the Russian headquarters. Had these been normal rounds, they would have done considerable damage; the bombs weighed a bit over nine pounds, much of it explosive. Rankin had fiddled with them, essentially turning them into duds. Still, it was very possible that the attack would injure someone, and while Ferguson had no particular love for the Russians or locals, his own people and the Mormons were down in the village. He finished with the dud rounds and moved the mortar to bomb out the road; these rounds sounded the same as they left the tube but their booms were potent cracks that shook the air even where he was positioned, roughly two thousand meters away.
Ferguson kicked over the mortar, then kicked dirt all around to make it seem as if there had been more people there. Grabbing his gear, he hiked up the ridge he’d scouted earlier, tracking down, then across the hills to a point north of the Chechen stronghold, where he was supposed to meet Rankin and Guns. Conners was already watching at the rear of the fortress; if Kiro tried to escape before the rest of the team got there, Ferg had told him to blow him away Authorized or not, the death would not be lamented in Washington.
It took nearly an hour for Ferguson to reach the rendezvous point. As he reached it, he heard an airplane approaching and worried that perhaps the plan had succeeded a little too well — perhaps the Russians were so angry they’d pound the guerrillas so severely that they wouldn’t have a chance to escape.
The jet was too high and too fast for Ferguson to see. It circled twice over the camp, which was between two and three miles away. On its second orbit the steady hush of the jet seemed to stutter. Then it roared louder than before. Ferguson instinctively ducked; a few seconds later he heard the muffled thud of two medium-sized bombs exploding near the fortress.
As the plane zoomed away, the CIA officer climbed up the rock with his MP-5 and Remington over his shoulder, looking in the direction of camp. White smoke curled into the sky from beyond the rocks, but he couldn’t see the fort itself from where he was.
“That bomb get you, Dad?” he asked Conners.
“Thought we were on silent com,” grumbled the SF soldier.
“Just checking.” 64 I Larry Bond and Jim DeFelice
Ferguson went back to the ledge and stowed his gear, then took his binoculars and scouted the approach, adjusting his com set to make sure he’d hear the team when they got into range. He sat down cross-legged, shotgun in his lap, submachine gun at his side, and made himself as comfortable as possible to do the thing in the world he hated the most — wait.
