Cold Shot (29 page)

The corporal stepped forward and raised his tear-gas launcher to his shoulder. The crowd didn’t recoil, started yelling louder instead. As the first youth reached the top of the gate and stood straight up, waving his comrades forward, Mansfield pulled the trigger, heard the launcher utter a loud thump, and felt it press against his shoulder. The CS grenade struck the teenager square in the chest, white smoke trailing, and the young man pitched backward, falling into the bodies below. The rest of the Marine line followed Mansfield’s lead, more CS grenades sailing over the wall into the crowd, pouring out their white smoke. The yells turned to coughs, then gagging, tears flowing as the vicious aerosol attacked the crowd’s tear ducts. One of the protesters sucked in a lungful and immediately vomited onto the ground, collapsing to his knees. Someone grabbed one of the grenades and threw it back inside the compound. Mansfield returned the favor and sent another canister over the wall to replace it.
I can do this all day, morons,
he thought, though he knew it wasn’t true.

“Get ready to fall back,” he ordered his men. The president had denied them permission to use their guns and without that, intimidation had been their only defense and that was failing fast. Mansfield checked his watch.
I hope those Seahawks aren’t late,
he thought.
We don’t have ten minutes—

•    •    •

It was the shouting that finally woke Marisa. The couch had been disturbingly comfortable, a sign of how tired she really was. The sunlight was breaking through the slats of the window blinds in her office, forcing her to squint until her eyes could adjust, a process that was taking a little longer every year. But the loud voices in the hallway drove her to sit and force her mind to focus faster than she normally preferred to do. There was no coffee in the pot to help this morning.
Gonna have to do it the old-fashioned way,
she thought.

She managed to get her feet on the floor just as a Marine sergeant threw her door open. “Report to the back field, now!”

“What’s happening?”

“The barbarians finally decided to storm the gates, ma’am. The boys outside hit ’em with tear gas and ran them back, but that won’t keep ’em away long and we don’t have permission to shoot ’em. The last Seahawks are inbound, ETA four minutes. If you’re not aboard in five, I can’t promise you won’t end up on the business end of a long rope,” the Marine told her.

“Understood,” Mari said. The sergeant turned back to the hall and she heard his boots pounding on the thin carpet as he moved to the next room to make sure it was clear. The chief of station reached for her phone. It would take her sixty seconds to reach the rally point the Marine had identified. That meant she had three minutes to make two phone calls.

CIA Operations Center

7th Floor, Old Headquarters Building

CIA Headquarters

“This is the senior watch officer,” Drescher announced, pressing the headset to his ear.

“This is chief of station Caracas,” Marisa announced. “The Marine Security Detachment advises me that the embassy is about to be overrun. I am abandoning the station and will be evac’ed by helicopter to the U.S. Fourth Fleet.”

“Are all your people out?”

“My staff moved out last night per my orders and arrived aboard the
Harry Truman.
We still have our two officers in the field. I’m the last one in station. I will reestablish contact as soon as I’m aboard a U.S. vessel.”

“Copy that,” Drescher said. “I’ll inform the director. We’ll be expecting your call.”

“Drescher, I need the director to make a call for me,” Marisa advised.

“What’s up?”

“The plan is for everyone to get flown out to the
Truman,
but I need to stay on-site until we retrieve Burke and Stryker from the field.
Vicksburg
is the closest ship. I need the director to talk to the SecDef or someone else with some pull and get me out onto that ship.”

“I’ll mention it to her.”

“
Grazie.
Talk to you soon. Caracas out.” The line went dead.

Drescher turned to the bullpen and pointed at the array of monitors on the front wall. “I want the embassy in Caracas on that screen
now
!” Everyone in the room scrambled. The senior watch officer had never yelled like this before that any of them could remember.

Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

They parked the truck farther out this time, at least three miles from the CAVIM site. The hike to the hilltop would be far longer . . . Jon estimated it would be nightfall by the time they reached the summit and made it back to the truck, assuming the SEBIN didn’t intercept them first. The humidity was no worse than a Virginia summer but Kyra was sure she’d be sweating heavily within the hour.

“That’s all you brought?” Jon asked. The girl had holstered her Glock and no other weapon was in sight.

“I left my HK under a rock with the comms gear,” she told him. “I was traveling light at the time. If you’d brought it and the rest of the gear back when you came down, we wouldn’t have to do this right now.”

“I was also traveling light,” he told her.

Kyra’s smartphone sounded in the truck’s cab. “I’ll get it,” Jon announced. He jumped from the bed, threw open the passenger-side door, and disconnected the phone from its charging cable. The screen showed a single bar for reception. “Sherlock,” he announced.

“Sherlock, this is Quiver. The station is about to be overrun and I’m bugging out. I’ll contact you as soon as I reach the fleet.”

For the first time, Kyra saw Jon reel, his mind scrambling to answer. “Copy that,” he finally said.

“You and Arrow—” Jon heard the call drop. He stared at the screen in surprise.
No Signal.
He lowered the phone, then dropped it on the passenger seat. “We just lost the embassy,” he said, quiet.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

The line died.

Marisa looked at the smartphone screen in surprise:
No Signal.

She dug another phone out of her desk and it delivered the same message.
The cell towers are down,
she realized. The timing was too good to be coincidence . . . and that meant the mob coming over the wall was under Avila’s control. Anyone they caught in the building would find themselves at the tender mercies of the SEBIN by nightfall.

“Time to be going,” Marisa muttered under her breath. She ran for the hall.

The Oval Office

Washington, D.C.

“He let them go?” Rostow asked in disbelief. “They killed two U.S. sailors and he let them go?”

“Sent them back across the red line to port,” Feldman confirmed. “After his chief engineer fixed their navigation system and the ship’s medical officer treated sixteen wounded Venezuelan sailors. No fatalities.”

Rostow cursed, crumpled the cable report the national security adviser had given him, and threw it across the Oval Office. The director of national intelligence held his peace. “Who’s the captain of the
Vicksburg
?” the president asked.

Feldman had to consult a binder for that answer. “Dutch Riley. Good service record—”

“He doesn’t make admiral as long as I’m president,” Rostow ordered. “Taking the ship would’ve given us a card to play with the media—”

“With all due respect, Mr. President, you’ve got that anyway,” Marshall pointed out. “There’s visible damage to the
Vicksburg
’s hull. The chief of naval operations says the sailors killed in the incident will be arriving at Dover Air Force Base later this morning and you know the media will cover that. I think Captain Riley’s decision to release the
Almirante Brión
will play well overseas, and especially with the countries that voted with you on the UN resolution. It makes President Avila look like the aggressor and your quarantine like a measured response.”

Rostow grunted but chose not to rebut the DNI’s observation.

The Oval Office door swung open and an aide hurried inside, clutching a piece of paper. Rostow pulled the report out of her hand and skimmed the text. He stared at the paper for a long time, long enough to make Feldman and the staffer uncomfortable. “Thank you,” he said. “That will be all.”

The staffer shuffled out a little slower than she had entered and closed the door behind. The president passed the report to Feldman. “CIA and State both say the Venezuelans are coming over the wall at the embassy.”

“But everybody’s going to get out,” Feldman noted, not looking up from the paper. “That’s good news. You won’t have a hostage crisis to manage like Carter did. That cost him reelection as much as anything else,” he observed, still reading the report. “This works in our favor as long as they only get the building.”

“Don’t you see it, Gerry?” Rostow asked. “This whole thing is coming apart. Avila’s not going to negotiate. He’s attacked one of our ships and he’s trying to seize the embassy. He wants to throw us off until he can figure out what to do.” The president stood up from the couch, walked to the Resolute desk, and pressed a button on his phone. “Get me Kathy Cooke at CIA,” he said. The secretary in the reception room outside the Oval Office complied.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” Cooke said.

“I just got your report on the embassy. What’s new with the warhead?”

“We have no new information on the state of the warhead itself. However, the latest imagery at the facility suggests they might be getting ready to move it. I’ll bring it to you—”

“Don’t bother,” Rostow said. “Just send the files to the Situation Room. What’re you seeing?”

“A new convoy of five-ton cargo trucks are lined up at the CAVIM plant by the boneyard. There were no heavy vehicles on-site prior to their arrival a few hours ago,” Cooke confirmed. “We can’t say for sure—”

“If they move that warhead, can your people track it?” Rostow said, cutting the woman off.

“We can’t guarantee it, no,” Cooke replied. “Satellite coverage isn’t perfect. We could get some drones in the air but the Venezuelans do have an air force. Without a tracking device on the warhead itself, there’s always a chance we could lose it.”

“That’s not acceptable,” Rostow said.

“It’s the reality, sir,” Cooke replied.

“How many troops are stationed at the CAVIM site?” Rostow asked Cooke.

“We don’t have a precise number but our analysts believe it’s somewhere around two hundred,” she replied.

“Thanks, we’ll let you know what we decide to do.” Rostow pressed a button on the phone, disconnecting the call.

“We could send in a Special Forces team to recover it,” Feldman suggested. “That invasion option is still on the table.”

Rostow shook his head. “I don’t want casualties,” he said. “It’s one thing for Avila’s people to kill ours when they cross the quarantine line, it’s another for us to invade their country, put boots on the ground, and then have them come out in body bags for the media to see. But we can’t lose the thing. If Avila squirrels it away somewhere and then it goes off next year in Baltimore or Denver or who-knows-where . . .” He trailed off, then shrugged. “If they’re trying to move it, we have to take it out. Call the National Security Council. I want the SecDef and the Joint Chiefs in the Situation Room in thirty minutes.”

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

The SH-60B Seahawk touched down on the grass as Marisa threw open the door to the rear courtyard. She sprinted across the asphalt onto the grass as the helicopter doors slid open and the last members of the embassy staff started to board, naval aviators pulling the civilians in. Marisa recognized the ambassador as the last man to climb onto the first aircraft.
Good for you, sir,
she thought.

She reached the second and the Marine sergeant who had ordered her out grabbed her hand and pulled her up. The helo began to lift off before he slid the door shut.

The Seahawk rose into the air, whipping the short grass underneath its blades until it cleared the embassy building, then leaned forward and began to move north. Marisa craned her head over the sergeant’s shoulder and looked out the window, down at the complex. Civilians were racing through the main gate and over the fence by the hundreds. The guard shack by the entrance was burning, smoke rising into the air high enough for the Seahawk to pass through the dirty column of ash.

The glass doors to the front entrance were already smashed open and the mob was moving inside.

Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

“You didn’t tell her what we’re going to do,” Kyra noted. She checked the rearview mirror. The highway behind was still empty.

“She’d say it was stupid. She’d be right.”

“And yet here you are,” Kyra said. “Besides, wasn’t this your idea?”

“Do you remember Sherlock Holmes’s old maxim that once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I have my own variation on that. Once you’ve eliminated the worst options, whatever remains, however stupid, must be the best option available,” he told her.

“And people say you don’t have a sense of humor.”

CIA Director’s Conference Room

Holland’s link chart was a masterpiece ten years in the making. The graphics depicting Hossein Ahmadi’s proliferation network had more than five hundred pieces scattered across it, with lines connecting people and companies, showing who had called whom, who had done business, where the money had flowed. The paper showing the Ahmadi network was eight feet long, three feet high, and getting wider by the year. It was a complex work of art so large that Holland’s office had invested in an industrial-size large-format printer just so he could put it all on one page. It was as close to producing a Monet as any DI analyst ever got, and there was the curse of the job. So long as Ahmadi was free to do business, Holland could never finish the chart because the Iranian doctor was making new contacts and creating new front companies, forcing the young man to add more and more nodes to the array.

Holland was tired of it. Ten years was enough; he now had five more banks and a tangle of new lines added to the picture, and he renewed his vow that he was going to make Dr. Ahmadi retire from business. That decision was out of his hands, but he now had friends in high places who were paying attention.