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
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.
