Page 111 of Close Pursuit

“It turns out you test positive for exposure to radioactive isotopes. Have you been inside a nuclear power plant recently, or had a large ionic dose x-ray in the past few weeks?”

“No. And no.”

Alex piped up. “What specific isotopes did the chromatograph spike on?”

The doctor frowned. “The spike was consistent with unrefined uranium.”

Alex’s jaw dropped, but not nearly as far as Ian’s. “Uranium?” McCloud demanded. “There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake. The techs ran the tests twice. They were startled by the first results and verified them for me.”

“Health ramifications?” Alex bit out. He’d studied radiation poisoning superficially in his medical training but was no expert.

“The levels aren’t life threatening, but do bear watching. You’ll have a slightly increased cancer risk. And you should probably avoid x-rays as much as possible for the remainder of your life. We can discuss chelation to remove some of the isotopes from your liver and kidneys.”

“That I’veingested?” McCloud asked incredulously.

“Most likely way for radioactive cells to show up in your liver and kidneys is to swallow them. A recheck of your CT scan revealed trace amounts of uranium in your lungs, as well. We initially thought the specks were an anomaly in the scan itself.” He added, “You inhaled dust containing trace amounts of the isotope for it to end up in your lungs.”

Alex’s mind raced, and he really, really hated the direction it was going. He asked reluctantly, “Excuse me, Doctor. Did Mr. McCloud test positive for any rare earth metals, or just the uranium?”

“We picked up trace amounts of thorium, samarite, and iron dust in his lung tissue.”

Ho. Lee. Cow. The implications of that all but paralyzed his brain. He caught Ian’s gaze behind the doctor’s back and jerked his head toward the door.

Ian caught his meaning and said, “Thanks for the heads up, Doc. I’ll try to remember where I might have gotten exposed to something like that and let you know. Right now, I’m tired. I’d like to rest if you don’t mind.”

The doctor nodded and left. Alex tucked a chair under the doorknob behind the guy and then turned to Ian. They traded grim looks. Uranium in the Karshan Valley was a game changer.

“Russia has its own internal sources of uranium. I can’t imagine they’d send a mobster after new sources of it.”

“So Shishani was out there for himself. A business deal.”

“With whom?” Alex muttered aloud.

“I didn’t see any long distance trucks or cargo planes come through there. The buyer had to be local. Who—” McCloud broke off and looked faintly ill.

Alex closed his eyes in chagrin. Iran. He looked up at Katie’s brother, and the same realization was clear in his appalled stare.

“So. Those guys were Spetznatz, after all,” Ian breathed.

Alex nodded. He’d suspected the Spec Ops team he and Katie had seen was the elite Russian Special Forces unit, but he’d never dared put it into words.

Mike continued, “The Russians weren’t there to hide samarium mining. They were there to stop the Iranians from getting uranium. Hell, if our side had known what the locals were mining, we would’ve wiped out the village.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Explain,” Ian bit out.

Alex forged on grimly. “My father is intimately familiar with the interior workings of the Russian government.”

Ian snorted at that bit of understatement.

“It’s far from a homogenous beast. There are factions within it and factions within factions.”

“Sounds like the U.S. government,” Ian commented wryly.

Alex snorted in turn. “I don’t think the intent of thatSpetnatzteam was to stop uranium from being smuggled to Iran. I think the intent was to protect it.”

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