First Team by Jim DeFelice, Larry Bond Read Free Book Online Page A

check.
     
    “Shit. Stop the fuckin’ car,” said Ferguson. “Shit.”
     
    “Huh?” asked Conners.
     
    “Pull off the road.”
     
    “But—”
     
    “Now!”
     
    As the car skidded to a stop, Ferg threw open the door. He reached back and pulled Guns out, dragging him around the back of the car to the side of the road. A row of darkened buildings sat a few feet away.
     
    “Take off your clothes,” Ferg told him.
     
    “Huh?”
     
    “Take off your clothes,” said Ferguson, and he grabbed Guns’s waistband and helped. As the Marine started to undress, Ferguson reached into his pocket for his flashlight, then pulled down Guns’s underpants.
     
    “Hey!”
     
    “Shit.” Ferg put his fingernails on the Marine’s leg next to his scrotum and pulled off a small black disk. He held it up in front of Guns’s face just to prove that he wasn’t a pervert, then threw it toward the abandoned buildings. He took a small bug detector from his inside jacket pocket and ran it over Guns’s body, cursing himself for not taking such an obvious precaution earlier.
     
    When Guns, completely naked without shoes or anything, got back in the car, Ferguson told Conners to get onto the highway and floor it.
     
    “I’ll give Yellow Jacket one thing,” said Ferguson, pulling off his vest so he could give his shirt to Guns to wear. “He’s no dummy.”
     
    ~ * ~
     

7
     
    ORSK, RUSSIA—TWO DAYS LATER
     
    Ferguson unscrewed the cap on the bottled water and poured it into the tall glass. He leaned back on the balcony of the hotel, glancing down toward Conners, who was watching the street. They’d split into twos at the Kyrgyzstan border, unsure whether or not Yellow Jacket was still tracking them here. Guns and Rankin were about a half hour late.
     
    Conners looked over and shook his head, then went back to staring at the street. After Kyrgyzstan, Cel’abinsk felt not only huge but almost luxurious. The air was clean; the weather pleasantly warm and dry. Ferg loosened his jacket and took out his phone; if he waited too long to call home, Corrigan would get nervous.
     
    “How we doin’, Jack?” he said, leaning back against the chair.
     
    “How are you doing?” said Corrigan. There was a funny note in his voice.
     
    “What’s the problem?”
     
    “Hold on.”
     
    Ferg realized what was up as the phone line clicked. The next thing he heard was the melodious baritone of his boss, the deputy director of operations at the CIA.
     
    Only his voice was melodious.
     
    “You shot up a police station?” demanded Daniel Slott, by way of a greeting.
     
    “Actually, Dan, it wasn’t a police station. And knowing what your reaction would be, we used nonlethal weapons.”
     
    “Tell that to the ambassador.”
     
    “Give me his number.”
     
    “The secretary of state is wondering what the hell is going on,” said Slott, in a way that implied he actually cared what the secretary of state thought—which Ferg knew wasn’t true. “He asked the director in front of the president what we’re doing tear gassing Police officers in Kyrgyzstan.”
     
    “How is the General, anyway?” Ferg asked, referring to Thomas Parnelles, who headed the CIA. Parnelles was an old CIA hand and a good friend of Ferguson’s deceased father; they’d done time together during the good ol’ bad days of the Cold War. General was a nickname from an operation where Parnelles impersonated a Jordanian officer.
     
    Only a captain, actually. But Ferg’s dad had been a private, and to hear the story not a very convincing one.
     
    “Don’t change the subject on me, Ferguson,” said Slott. “You used tear gas in a police station?”
     
    “I can definitively say we did not use tear gas in a police station.”
     
    “Then what did you do?”
     
    “I recovered a member of my team who was being held under false pretenses.” He yawned. “I’m a little tired.”
     
    “You’re a little reckless. More and more.”
     
    “More