Cold Shot (15 page)

She imagined there had to be some kind of security cordon, certainly patrols, but how far out they would go, she didn’t know. The map said that the hilltop she’d chosen would be just under a mile on foot from the target building if she had to work her way down the hillside, half that as the crow would fly, and it would be a steep climb. So she hoped that whatever security guards went out would find it too troublesome to climb to the summit.

The sun would be down in less than a half hour and she turned to the real business. She pulled out the Canon, affixed the telephoto lens, and set up her pack as a rest for it. Kyra laid herself prone and stared through the camera to get her first good look.

The convoy was there, unmoved since the satellite photo had been taken that morning. She couldn’t see into the trucks but they were surely empty. The enemy, as she’d long since come to think of them, hadn’t shipped the cargo this far just to leave it out in the open. She pressed the shutter and recorded the moment, then moved the camera and stared down at the factory, comparing the buildings to the imagery on her phone.

Kyra panned left, then froze as she saw movement. By one of the warehouses, north of the trucks, a dozen men were milling around on the ground, some sitting, all carrying bullpup rifles like the one she had seen the night before.
Iranian Quds.
That was worth a call and sharing a bit of live video.

She pulled out her smartphone and unlocked the unit. The cell signal was surprisingly strong.
They have their own cell tower here?
That seemed likely and made her smartphone unsafe to use—if the SEBIN were here, they might detect an unexpected call routed through the tower.

For this, we have a solution.
Kyra pulled the LST-5 satellite radio from her pack. It had added more than its fair share of the weight in her pack, almost nine pounds. It didn’t seem that heavy, but one of her Farm instructors had once told her that anything gets heavy in the mountains . . . ounces equaled pounds and pounds equaled pain. The Agency had newer, lighter comms gear. This was an old model, not even classified tech anymore, War on Terror surplus. Kyra had seen one like it in the Agency museum, where any uncleared visitor could study it. She supposed that this was another case of the Clandestine Service trying to prevent any more technology from falling into the wrong hands while Caracas station was rebuilding.

Setting up the radio was simple, programming the crypto a bit harder. “This is Arrowhead.”

“This is Quiver,” Marisa replied, her voice distorted.

“I’m at checkpoint Apple.”

“Roger that. Any trouble?”

“Trouble no. Something interesting, yes.” Kyra connected the Canon to the data buffer, plugged it into the transceiver, turned on the camera’s video feed, and the camera obediently began streaming its picture to the embassy.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

“There are those rifles again,” Marisa observed. “Quds Force. Congratulations.”

Jon ignored the compliment. “Convoy, incoming,” Kyra’s voice announced. Somewhere more than a hundred miles away, the field officer moved the camera to the left and the picture shifted.

A trio of dark SUVs turned off the highway to the warehouse road. The darkened window by the driver of the lead car rolled down as it approached the line of soldiers holding out their hands, signaling it to stop. The guards held it at the cordon for less than a minute before scrambling to let it through and the vehicles all rolled slowly past smaller buildings before stopping in front of the chemical factory. The doors opened and more armed soldiers crawled out of the first and last cars. The driver of the middle SUV stepped out, then opened the rear door and held it for the passengers inside.

Three men climbed out, the first a bearded man in a European-cut suit as black as his beard, including the shirt and tie. Even at long range, through the scope Kyra could see the jowls hanging from his jaw and a paunch hanging over his belt. The man was no soldier, not even remotely fit enough for that job. This was a man who enjoyed his comforts. “There’s Ahmadi,” Marisa said. “That should get the president off Kathy Cooke’s back.”

“Good luck with that,” Jon replied.

The second man was dressed down and unfamiliar, tactical pants and boots, with a pistol holster strapped to a thigh rig on his right leg. The third man also wore a suit, this one not so bespoke as Ahmadi’s. He put a Cohiba to his mouth and lit it off.

“Uh-oh,” Marisa said quietly.

“What—?” Jon started.

“Jon—?” Kyra said over the transceiver, her voice rising. Jon could hear the woman nearly hyperventilating over the speaker.

“Problem?” he asked

“That’s Andrés Carreño,” Kyra’s voice declared.

Marisa looked down at Jon and covered the handset microphone. “She knows.”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

On the hilltop, Kyra couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the valley below. “I saw his face, just for a second. He was standing on a metal bridge over the Guaire Canal and all the lights were out. He finished a cigar and I saw his face when he lit another one. It was him . . . matched the face in the file.” Her voice quivered slightly and she clenched her teeth, hoping Jon hadn’t picked it up.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

Marisa reached down and covered the microphone on Jon’s headset. “Keep her calm,” she advised. “She needs to detach. There’s nobody there to help her if she has a panic attack.”

“She won’t let that happen,” Jon said. “She’s been through worse.”

“You sure?” the station chief asked.

“Yes.”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

There was a long pause before Jon spoke again. “Did you ever hear what Churchill said about being under fire?”

“No,” Kyra replied.

“‘There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.’”

“His boys put one in my arm. I say that was a result,” Kyra noted. She was suddenly conscious of the scar running across her triceps, could feel its full length on her arm. She felt her hand starting to shake. She let go of the camera carefully, trying not to disturb it, rolled onto her back, and looked at the ceiling of her shelter, clenching her fists.

“He took his best shot at you and you got out,” Jon reminded her. “Now he’s the one in your scope and he doesn’t even know it. Keep that in your head and he won’t worry you so much.”

“My rifle doesn’t have that kind of range.” Kyra let out a long breath.

“I’ll bring you a bigger one,” Jon said.

Kyra finally smiled, feeling some of the tension in her shoulders ease. That was as close as she’d ever heard him come to telling a joke. She rolled back onto her stomach and took control of the camera again. “Any idea who the other two are?” she asked.

“One of them is Hossein Ahmadi,” Jon replied. “No idea about the guy with the pistol. But anyone with Ahmadi is worth some pictures.”

“Already done,” Kyra said. Headquarters would have to enhance the lighting in the pictures but the screen shots would be more than good enough for some DI analyst to confirm identities.

Carreño smoked his cigar as he trailed behind the Iranians, the lit end giving Kyra something to follow in the growing dark. The trio walked through the front doors of the chemicals building and the guards closed the doors behind them.

“Quiver, Arrowhead,” Kyra said, finally returning to protocol. “Did you get all of that?”

“Yeah, we got it,” Jon said. He checked a live satellite feed of her position, saw her body appear on his screen as an orange blob lying prone. “Shut down for the night. We’ll contact according to schedule with anything new. The birds overhead don’t show anyone in your sector.”

“No patrols?”

“Some, but they all seem to be down at the valley edge. Nothing at your altitude.”

“Thanks. Catch you in the morning.” Kyra switched off the transceiver and the phone went dead.

The dark had finally settled, the only lights now coming from the halogen lamps at the factory’s fence, which cast hard shadows that reached out even to her shelter, a mile away. It was a strange relief. Every guard’s night vision would be destroyed. No one would be able to see past the tree line in any direction and she was buried in the trees well enough that a roving patrol would have to practically step on her to find her. She was as safe as she could be until morning.

She crawled outside her blind, sucked in fresh night air, and stared up through the forest canopy at the stars. The facility lights blotted out the dimmer ones, but the Milky Way still stretched out across the sky above her.
Like home.
For a moment, she felt like she was in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills, sitting on the bank of the James River on a warm April night.

The memory lasted only a second before her mind cut through. Home was a long way north and a mile below were men who would kill her without thinking twice.

Kyra crawled back into the shelter and laid her head down on her pack. It occurred to her that Jon hadn’t actually told her to get some sleep. He was not the kindest man she’d ever known but he was not condescending, and for that, this one night, she was grateful. She knew sleep wouldn’t come tonight. She closed her eyes anyway.

DAY FIVE

The Oval Office

The White House

Washington, D.C.

Feldman dropped prints of Kyra’s photos on the Resolute desk. “There’s your connection. Ahmadi is at the CAVIM site. Whatever he brought is in there.”

Rostow didn’t bother to pick up the pictures. He leaned over and gave them a cursory glance, then looked up. “I want pictures of the cargo, not more of the guy who brought it there.”

“Not going to let Cooke off that easy?”

“Not a chance,” Rostow replied.

CIA Director’s Office

Drescher caught up with the CIA director as she stepped out of her office. “You talked to the White House?” he asked.

“I did,” she confirmed. “The CAVIM photos bought us zero currency with them.”

Drescher grimaced and stepped in behind her as they walked down the short, narrow hall to the conference room. “That’s not unexpected, I guess.”

Cooke nodded, pushed the door open to her conference room and stepped inside. It was full this time, every seat at the table taken except for her own. Two dozen computers were now mounted on the desk and around the walls, with cables snaking over the floor in secured bundles. Stacks of papers sat by each workstation with several legal boxes in the table’s center.

Drescher took a seat by the door without being asked, ready to drive the computer. “Good morning,” Cooke announced to the room. A dozen quiet replies came back, repeating her words. “There is no time for pleasantries on this and I will not repeat myself or answer questions. Your office directors chose each of you here at my request to support an ongoing operation that has been ordered personally by the president. You are all senior officers. There’s not a person in this room under a GS-14 who hasn’t been on the job at least a decade, so this is possibly the most experienced team you will ever be part of during your career in this building. Until further notice, your office is either here or the Ops Center. The operation is compartmentalized, so you will either sign the paperwork in front of you in the next thirty seconds or you will leave this room and not return. Understood?”

Every man and woman in the room signed the papers. “Thank you,” Cooke said. “Thirty-six hours ago, an agency officer operating out of Caracas station in Venezuela tracked an Iranian cargo ship to the Puerto Cabello dockyards. We don’t know what cargo she was carrying, but our officer entered a warehouse in the dockyard and recorded the following video.”

Drescher darkened the room and played the footage on the monitor on the front. The room remained silent except for a single quiet gasp when the soldiers fired into the container. Ahmadi’s face appeared on the screen and Drescher froze the movie on that frame.

“That man, as some of you know, is Hossein Ahmadi. The officer who recorded this video tracked Dr. Ahmadi and, we hope, his cargo to the CAVIM explosives facility in Morón, twenty-two kilometers west of Puerto Cabello.” Drescher advanced the presentation to an overhead satellite photo of the area. “At this moment, the officer is sitting on a nearby hilltop overlooking the facility, conducting surveillance,” Cooke finished. “Lights.”

The room brightened and all heads turned back toward the director. “Dr. Ahmadi is, as of this moment, the most serious nuclear proliferator in the world. You will find his bio in the file in front of you and all of the intelligence the Counterproliferation Center has ever accumulated on him and his network is now available to you. Because of Ahmadi’s known activities, the president is concerned that his cargo could be nuclear in nature. We believe it is inside the main chemical production facility at CAVIM. The president has given us thirty-six hours to determine what that cargo is.”

This drew protests that she stifled with a look. “I understand your concerns and I sympathize. We have our orders and it’s not your place to question them. It is your job to help us carry them out and determine how we can take Ahmadi off the board. So I want you to find a way to penetrate that building. I want the layout analyzed and the security system dissected. I want to know if there’s a hole, a weakness, a malfunctioning camera, a way to hack into the computers there,
anything
. I want you to review every Venezuelan asset Caracas station ever worked going back to the founding of this Agency to see if anyone still living might know a way in or if any past asset might work there now. If you find something, you are authorized to run, not walk, down that hallway to my office. My secretary has standing orders to admit you no matter what I’m doing or who I’m meeting with. Understood?”

Heads nodded. “I realize that this is an exceptionally difficult assignment,” Cooke said, finally relenting from her hard line. “It might not even be possible, but we will not fail because we did not try. Thank you for your service. Get started.”

Everyone rose and the legal boxes were open with papers coming out before her hand reached for the door.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

1. POTUS COMMENDS STATION FOR ITS EFFORTS THUS FAR AND EXPRESSES HIS RELIEF THAT ARROWHEAD WAS NOT DETAINED BY HOST COUNTRY SECURITY SERVICES.

2. POTUS FURTHER COMMENDS STATION FOR IDENTIFYING SUBJECT AHMADI AND CONFIRMING THE POSSIBILITY OF ILLEGAL CARGO SHIPMENTS INTO VENEZUELA.

3. DUE TO THE IMPLICATIONS OF INTEL RECOVERED THUS FAR BY ARROWHEAD, POTUS ORDERS COS CARACAS TO DETERMINE THE NATURE OF THE MARKARID CARGO WITHIN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS. POTUS RECOGNIZES THAT WILL INVOLVE INCURSION INTO TARGET FACILITY BUT POSSIBLE DANGER POSED BY THE CARGO JUSTIFIES ANY RISK INHERENT. C/CIA HAS ESTABLISHED A TASK FORCE TO EVALUATE ALL OPTIONS . . .

•    •    •

“It
is
a direct order from the president of the United States,” Marisa noted.

“It’s a stupid order,” Jon said. “Either he’s a complete idiot, he thinks the Agency has some invisible ninjas, or he’s intentionally setting us up to fail. None of those speaks well of him. The only way into that place would be for DoD to invade the facility and take it over.”

“We’ve seen that happen before, haven’t we?” she asked. “Arrowhead?”

“I’m here.” Kyra’s voice came through the table speaker, the encryption stripping it of its natural timbre.

“You’re the one on-site. Opinion?”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

Kyra stared at the headquarters cable on her iPad screen in disbelief.
Forty-eight hours?
She looked at the time stamp—more than a quarter of the time was gone.
This is politics,
Kyra realized . . . but Cooke knew how to play political games. The young officer had seen that.

“He’s right. It’s stupid. I’ve been staring at the place all night,” she continued. “There’s no covert in-and-out into the main building. At a minimum we’d need an asset who could get us the security layout, if not just do the whole job for us with some tech ops support. I’m assuming we don’t have that?”

“You assume correctly,” Marisa confirmed.

“Then I’ve only got one other option,” Kyra said.

“Explain,” Marisa ordered. She looked down at Jon, who had straightened his back and was making no effort to hide his disbelief.

“Do you have an overhead of the site?” Kyra asked.

Jon brought one up on the wall monitor. “Roger that.”

“Southwest corner, quarter mile east of the trucks, where the fence butts up against the open field,” Kyra said.

The base was a mile long at its widest point and it took Jon several seconds to find and focus the image on the location and increase the magnification. “What about it?” Marisa asked.

CAVIM Explosives Factory

“There’s no way into the actual building, but we’re the Red Cell so I figured we should start looking outside the box. It took me two hours, but I noticed a pattern. Patrols run along the fence line north and south, but not to the west through the field. There’s no human security there, no road, and I think I know why. Do you see it?” In her hidden blind, Kyra focused the telephoto lens on the camera at the field west of the fence.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

Jon and Marisa stared at the field. It was enormous, brown and patchy with large round clumps of foliage missing from the high grass, like some large animal had scooped out handfuls of vegetation. “Oh, there is no way—” Jon started.

“I don’t see it,” Marisa admitted. She squinted at the screen, wondering whether there was some minute detail Jon had found—

“Arrowhead, there is no way you are going through that field,” Jon ordered.

“Why not?” Marisa asked.

“Because it’s an ammunition test range,” Jon told her. “These”—he drew circles around the missing foliage with his finger—“are blast craters, probably mortar strikes judging from the size. And there’s probably unexploded ordnance in there. That’s why SEBIN doesn’t patrol it. They don’t want their own men blown up and those unexploded shells are security enough. It’s like a minefield.”

“I hate mortars,” the chief of station said.

“Right there with you,” Jon said. Marisa looked at him again, smiling. She was surprised to see him nod at her, a brief acknowledgment of that moment the decade before when they had come so close—

“I wouldn’t have to traverse the full length of the field,” Kyra advised. “See that camera on the southwest corner post?”

“Yeah,” Marisa assured her.

“It’s pointed into the tree line and hasn’t moved all night. I don’t know if it’s jammed or just not built for it. But judging by the angle, I’d bet it can’t see into the field more than twenty-five yards off axis, right about where that tree fell into the field along the edge. I could move through the woods to that point and enter the field and crawl along the perimeter. I’d bet there won’t be any ordnance that close to the edge or to the fence. Assuming the fence isn’t electrified, I could go over or cut through,” Kyra said.

“That’s not bad,” Marisa said quietly.

“The failure mode on that plan is ugly, but even if you manage it, what’s the point?” Jon asked. “You still can’t get inside the plant.”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

“Look at that shack fifty yards north of the fence corner,” Kyra ordered. She swung her camera left and focused on the small building.

“We see it,” Marisa replied through her earpiece.

“There’s a junction box on the building’s south wall. Cables from all of the security cameras on the western fence run to it, and there’s an air-conditioning unit on the west side, too big for a building that size, so it could be there to cool some computer equipment on the inside,” Kyra reported. “Nobody’s come in or out all day. I’d bet that’s a security junction for this end of the base. If I can get in there with some gear, I might be able to tap the security camera feeds and see what else is going on, maybe even inside some of the buildings. We might get lucky.”

“Give us a minute, Arrowhead,” Jon told her.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

He hit the speaker mute. “There’s no way,” Jon said. “Risk the patrols, crawl through a minefield, and ‘we might get lucky’? You can’t approve that.”

“We’ve got nothing else,” Marisa told him.

“Then we push back against the order,” he protested. “You at least have to call headquarters—”

“Jon, the orders were twelve hours old when we got them,” Marisa advised him.

“Screw the deadline!”

“I can’t just refuse to follow an order from the president of the United States!” Marisa said, her voice rising.

“Disobeying stupid orders—”

“You don’t get to decide when the president of the United States is being an idiot! If you want to do that, quit the Agency and start a blog!” Marisa managed to refrain from yelling, but only just. “And even if he is stupid or malicious, he’s not wrong! Jon, if Ahmadi is smuggling nuclear material into this half of the world, we have to know. When was the last time anyone tried that?”

Jon glared at her. “Nineteen sixty-two.”

“Darn right, nineteen sixty-two. And the world almost ended. The only reason it didn’t is because the Russians are rational. The mullahs in Tehran, maybe not so much,” she reminded him. She reached out her hand and put it on his. He didn’t pull his away, but he didn’t look at her. “We have to know before they move that cargo even if we have to risk some people.”

“This isn’t ‘some people,’” he protested. “She’s not some random warm body out there who you never have to talk to—”

“I know she’s your friend and I wish I didn’t have to recommend the option to the director, but I think I do,” Marisa broke in.

“You’re going to get her killed.”

“I truly hope not.” Marisa pressed the button again, turning on the microphone. “Arrowhead, this is Quiver. If approved, when can you proceed?”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

Kyra’s heart hammered against her ribs. “I’d have to return to the truck, grab some gear. And I couldn’t move before nightfall anyway.” She checked her watch. “Three hours?”

“Copy that, Z–minus three hours,” Marisa came back. “Get your gear, check in when you get back. I’ll give you the green light or not.”

“Roger that.” Kyra shut down the phone and stared at her watch again.
Three hours.
The risks in her plan suddenly felt so much larger than they had just a few minutes before.

Kyra grabbed the HK, then crawled out of the blind and started to run down the back side of the mountain. Two miles to the truck, two miles back.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

Marisa touched the speakerphone and shut it down, then dipped her head, trying to catch Jon’s eye. “I am sorry,” she said. She couldn’t tell whether he believed her. “We’ve got three hours. I’ll call the director. If the task force can come up with a better option, we can still call it off—”

“They won’t,” Jon said. “Kathy will have to approve it and Kyra will run down that mountain straight at the enemy like she always does.”

Marisa was afraid to answer. There was no question that Jon knew both women better than she did and the station chief desperately wanted to know how. But the man refused to open up and she couldn’t ask him all of the questions that had been backing up in her mind for a decade now. “I’m sorry I don’t have anyone to send her for backup—”