Cold Shot (3 page)

It was just too easy to get disconnected from the sea these days, especially on the bigger ships. He’d gone whole days without seeing the sky as a junior officer on the
Bunker Hill
and the
Leyte Gulf
. Those days could turn into weeks, easy, on a carrier where stepping onto the flight deck was a life-threatening exercise. Riley didn’t even like thinking about what life on a submarine would be like. So he walked the deck at dawn, enjoyed the slight rolling of the ship under his feet, and thanked heaven that he could suck in the fresh air whenever he felt like it and listen to the water.

Not that there was much to hear at the moment. The sky was clear today and the only breeze came from
Vicksburg
’s own forward motion.
It’s September,
Riley reminded himself.
Another few weeks before the monsoons. Vicksburg
would be on her way home by then—

“Good morning, Captain.” Riley turned his head without lifting his arms off the rail. Command Master Chief Amos LeJeune was a tall man, half a head taller than Riley, and thin with a frame built from a life of eating bayou food. He carried the usual second mug, which he delivered to his commanding officer, reserving his salute until the captain took the offering.

“Yet to be determined, Master Chief,” Riley said, returning the salute. He took a swig of LeJeune’s brew into his mouth—good stuff. “But the coffee’s decent, so we’re off to a good start.”
Decent
was an understatement. He was sure he tasted chicory.

“Nice to see that I don’t have to start digging out of a hole so early in the day,” LeJeune agreed. The Cajun took a small swig from his own cup.

“Six months aboard today,” Riley observed. “You miss the
Blue Ridge
yet?” The
Blue Ridge
was the command ship for the Navy’s Seventh Fleet in the Pacific.

“The Hotel
Blue Ridge
?” LeJeune asked. “No, sir. She’s a fine ship, that one. Good chilimac. But it’s nice to be on a ship armed with something bigger than a .50 cal. Command ships run at the first sign of trouble and they do it proud. Thought it would be fun to ride toward the trouble for once.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Riley said. “This isn’t exactly a hotbed, is it?”

“Hot, anyway,” LeJeune told him. “Not your fault, sir. Just luck of the draw on the orders. Not that I mind chasing pirates. Oldest naval duty that ever was. But I wouldn’t mind pushing the button to launch a Harpoon at somebody who deserves it.”

“Me too, Master Chief—”

“Sir!”

Riley didn’t remember the name of the female seaman apprentice running toward him along the starboard rail. He’d met every member of the crew but it was tough to keep four hundred names in his head. These kids all came and went too fast.

The seaman slowed to a halt and saluted. “Captain. Master Chief.” Salutes returned, the seaman caught her breath for a second. “Sorry to disturb you, sirs. We’ve got a life raft, maybe three hundred yards off, passing port side aft. Can’t see if there’s anyone in it, but I don’t have glasses.” By which she meant
binoculars
. “Sorry ’bout that, sir.”

Life raft?
Riley thought. There hadn’t been any reports of ships in distress in these waters. “Very well.” He turned to LeJeune. “Master Chief, orders to the bridge, all engines stop. And get Winter up here. We might need the doc.”

“Aye, sir.” LeJeune took Riley’s coffee mug and his own into one hand and threw the contents of both over the side before jogging off toward the ship’s towering superstructure.

Riley faced the seaman again. “Show me.”

“Aye, sir.” The seaman turned and ran aft with her commanding officer behind.

•    •    •

That young lady has some good eyes,
Riley thought. The seaman had underestimated the distance, easy to do on the ocean, where there were no landmarks to help the eye judge size or range, but seeing the raft at all had been a feat. It was a good five hundred yards away and he struggled to make the rescue craft out with his middle-aged eyes until someone fetched him binoculars.

A pair of petty officers guiding their own dinghy dragged the raft by a towline back to
Vicksburg
. Riley could tell from their body language that there was a smell coming off it that could wither a sailor’s nose. They pulled alongside, Riley could see a single body in the raft and the bloating told him everything he needed to know about the castaway’s current state.

LeJeune leaned over Riley’s shoulder. “I think we’re coming a bit late for this one, Captain,” he offered.

“I think you’re right,” Riley agreed, following with a private curse. He looked behind him. Most of the crew on deck had heard the scuttlebutt and the few whose duties left them close enough wandered over to see the recovery, morbid though it was going to be. “Master Chief, clear these kids out of here. I don’t want them to see this. Then call the officer of the deck. All engines ahead two thirds as soon as we’ve got this thing aboard. Get some breeze going to carry this smell off the ship.”

“Aye, sir,” LeJeune said, quiet enough for only Riley to hear. “We’ll be seeing this in our sleep for a while.” He turned to the assembled crew and began barking orders that Riley didn’t hear for his focus on the corpse. Smart man that he was, LeJeune started herding the crew toward the far end of the fo’s’cle.

The raft came aboard and the sight was something that Riley wished he could erase from his brain the moment he took it in. The carcass was that of an African man, he presumed, but Riley couldn’t discern any more than that. The face was unrecognizable, the skin blistered, and the arms and legs were twisted at bizarre angles at the knees and elbows.
How long has this guy been out here?
he wondered.
A couple of weeks at least.

The chief medical officer, Thane Winter, stepped up next to Riley and offered him an open tub of Vicks VapoRub. “Put some of this under your nostrils, sir, and breathe through your mouth. It’ll help.” Riley took the CMO’s advice, then handed the tub over to the closest crewman and it began to make the rounds. Winter was right, almost. Riley could still smell the corpse but the mint odor lessened his stomach’s urge to dredge up his breakfast. One of the other petty officers on deck wasn’t so fortunate. The tub didn’t get passed around fast enough and he lost his morning meal over the rail.

Winter pulled on a pair of latex gloves and stepped forward to examine the new passenger, passing through the other sailors who were retreating in the other direction to a safe distance. “I think he’s dead, sir,” one of the officers called out. It was a poor joke and no one laughed.

There’s another candidate for med school,
Riley thought, and silenced the heckler with a look. The few remaining sailors began to disperse of their own accord. Morbid curiosity couldn’t survive long in the face of the smell, it seemed.

Riley felt the ship surge under his feet, the engines pushing her ahead. He saw LeJeune working his way back to the ship’s bow. Winter stood and pulled the gloves from his hands. “Shot through both knees. And someone crushed his hands before they threw him into the raft. He couldn’t have launched it and he certainly couldn’t have steered it even if he had paddles aboard, which he didn’t. No means of propulsion. No navigation or signaling equipment either. No food, just a couple of water bottles. He didn’t even drink one of them. Probably couldn’t get the caps off.”

Riley winced. “Somebody wanted this guy to hurt.”

“Somebody got their wish,” Winter agreed. “He’s also got burns under his clothes that weren’t caused by exposure.”

“Torture?” Riley asked.

“Maybe,” Winter replied. “I won’t know until I can do a work-up on him.” Riley grimaced at the thought of keeping the corpse aboard.

“It wouldn’t be the first time pirates got into an argument over the loot,” LeJeune offered.

Winter shrugged. “This was a murder, Captain,” he said. “We need to document the evidence, then transfer the body to Bahrain for autopsy.”

Riley took a deep breath through his mouth, then stared back down at the body. “Okay. You can get everything up here on deck?” Winter nodded. “Good,” the captain said, relieved. “It would take us a month to get the smell out belowdecks. Get your pictures and get ’em fast. Then call Naval Support in Bahrain and get me an answer within the hour. If they don’t want him, we’ll do a burial at sea. And make sure we’re handling the body according to the local traditions.”

“Aye aye, sir. I’ll round up the chaplain.” Winter marched off.

LeJeune watched the doctor go, and then turned back to his captain. “I’m afraid to ask, sir, but what’re my orders?”

Riley gave the senior enlisted man a rueful look. “Somebody’s got to get this guy into a body bag, Master Chief. Maybe it’ll help keep the smell down.”

“Aye, sir. That’s what I thought.” LeJeune jogged away to catch up with Winter.

Riley exhaled and looked down at the corpse. He finally saw the blood and vomit dried on the bottom of the raft. The body had covered the gory stain until Winter had shifted the bloated man and exposed it.

 . . . Sailors take warning,
Riley thought, finishing the adage that had started his morning walk on deck.
Can’t wait to make this one somebody else’s problem.

DAY ONE

Memorial Garden

CIA Headquarters

Kathryn Cooke didn’t visit the Memorial Garden often. The water in the pond was surprisingly clear today and it rippled a bit as the waterfall rolled gently over gray rocks into the fishpond. The grass inside the low concrete shelf was growing again, and a Canadian goose was picking at the ground looking for breakfast, soon to be chased away by rain from black clouds that were moving in from the west. The Original Headquarters Building stood to the south a few meters away, the auditorium—called the Bubble for its shape—just behind her a few feet away. The Nathan Hale statue, worn and discolored by decades of abuse at the hands of the Virginia climate, was a bit farther to the east.

She closed her eyes and listened to the quiet sounds of the waterfall until she lost track of the time. It was a good spot to think when the weather was right—

“He was a terrible spy.”

She knew the voice but it wasn’t a morning to smile. “Jonathan,” she said.

“Madam Director.” His tone was overly formal.

Cooke finally opened her eyes and stared at the man now sitting on the bench beside her. Jonathan Burke, the chief of the Red Cell, didn’t turn his head at all.

“Nathan Hale,” Jonathan said, nodding at the weathered statue. “Brave man, bad spy. No tradecraft, no cover story, above-average height and facial scars made him unforgettable to the Tory officer in Boston who saw him.
Not
getting caught on his first mission would have been a small miracle. If it weren’t for his pithy last words, which historians are certain he didn’t say, nobody would’ve remembered him.”

“So it’s a monument to stupidity?” Cooke asked.

“No, to bravery,” he conceded. “We need our heroes, even if they aren’t always the smartest people.” He snorted. “Anyway, you wanted to see me.”

“Yes. But I hadn’t told anyone yet, least of all you.”

“So I saved you the trouble of a call,” he said.

“You’re annoying, you know that?” she asked.

“Being right covers a multitude of sins.”

Cooke tried to let her anger drain away. Jon was arrogant but he earned his keep, even if he was too bold in calling her out. But she hadn’t reprimanded him, had she? Not many people could get away with that and even fewer of that small group worked for her. “And how did you know where to find me?” she asked.

“You work in a building full of spies.”

His isn’t-it-obvious? tone bordered on insubordination, but Cooke let it go. Again. She usually did. It was his version of a sense of humor, but it was beyond her how this man could alienate so many of his peers and, at the same time, maintain a network of informants inside headquarters that reached all the way to the seventh floor. “And you have assets inside my office?”

“Surely you’re not asking me to reveal sources and methods,” Burke answered, his voice flat with mild sarcasm. “Besides, I’m told that women like a man of mystery.”

“That was true before I came to work in a building full of spies. Here I’ve learned to appreciate the virtues of honest men. Not to mention humble ones,” Cooke countered. “Where’s your partner?”

“Kyra’s at the Farm, renewing her field certifications. She’ll be back tomorrow. Just has to requalify on the Glock and she’s done.”

“Generous of you to let her go,” Cooke observed.

“Generosity is irrelevant.” He looked annoyed. “Meetings with other analysts go more smoothly when half of the Red Cell is firearms-certified.”

“I’m sure. You should’ve kept yours up-to-date. Days like this, you might need it in case I decide to send you to someplace very, very dangerous.” Cooke repressed a smirk. “You know, when I first sent Kyra to the Red Cell, I didn’t intend for you to keep her. The Clandestine Service spent a lot of time and money training that girl. Clarke Barron would like to have her back instead of watching her sit at a desk writing papers.”

“Her choice,” Jonathan said. “She can go anytime she wants. We’ve never made the rotation formal.”

“Clarke thinks you’re holding her down.”

Jon shook his head. “They steal a dozen analysts from the Directorate of Intelligence every year. Barron’s just mad that I might have brought someone back from the dark side.”

“It’s a good thing to have case officers with analytical training,” Cooke observed. “It makes for better collection.”

“It’s a good thing to have analysts with field experience,” Jon retorted. “It makes for better analysis.”

Cooke sighed. Time to change the subject. “Have you read the President’s Daily Brief this morning?”

“Not yet,” Jonathan admitted.

Cooke nodded, picked up a binder sitting on the bench beside her, and handed it to the man. She motioned for him to open the notebook. “Three days ago, the USS
Vicksburg
pulled a corpse out of the Gulf of Aden a hundred miles off the coast of Somalia,” she started. “African male, midthirties. The deceased was found in a life raft without any means of navigation or propulsion. The captain assumed that he was a Somali pirate.”

“Probably a safe bet. Not many good reasons for Somali men to be that far out in the Gulf,” Jonathan observed.

“The victim’s knees had been shot off and his hands had been crushed. The bones were practically powder. NSA Bahrain performed the autopsy, but couldn’t establish a time of death. He’d been out there awhile . . . exposure to the elements and such. Pages two through six. I apologize if you haven’t had lunch yet.” It was ten o’clock in the morning.

The next several pages were color photographs of the deceased. Jonathan studied each one while Cooke stared away in silence. He reached the coroner’s report and read through the paperwork more slowly than she would have preferred.

After more than a minute, he looked up. “Burns under the clothes. Interesting.”

“The
Vicksburg
’s chief medical officer thought it could be torture but he couldn’t identify the tool used on him. There was no pattern so the CMO theorized it might have been some kind of chemical burn.”

“You want me to find the ship he came from,” Jon said.

“Nobody loves a pirate but someone really had a grudge against this one,” Cooke explained. “I’m thinking that maybe his crew attacked a ship that somebody
really
didn’t want captured.”

“Maybe,” Jonathan said. “Somali pirates seized the cargo ship
Moscow University
back in 2010 and the Russian Navy took it back a day later. But it was just carrying crude oil . . . nothing illegal.”

“Yes, but the Russians publicized that raid. Nobody has gone public with this one, and from the state of the body, the raid happened a while ago,” Cooke pointed out. “This could be Iranians smuggling rockets to Hamas or Hezbollah . . . maybe the Russians running guns into a half-dozen African states. Lots of possibilities, none of them good.”

“True,” Jonathan admitted. “The time interval would make it tough to identify the ship.”

“The analysts tell me that there’s no way to find that ship without a starting point in time and space and a general course heading, none of which we have.”

“You expected a different answer?” Jonathan asked.

“You don’t sound surprised,” Cooke countered.

“They’ll look at this as a geometry problem,” he explained. “Take the geographic starting point, multiply the number of hours since death by the maximum possible speed of the vessel and calculate the product of the equation. Pull out a map and draw a circle with the starting point at the center and the radius in miles traveled. Then they’ll wait a month for the State Department to coordinate with a few dozen other countries to investigate every ship that’s docked during the time frame at every port inside the circle. A general course heading would reduce the possibilities, maybe by half, but the problem set would still be prohibitively large.” He turned toward Kathy and finally looked her in the eyes. “You want me to do better.”

“Isn’t that the Red Cell’s job? To solve the puzzles that other analysts find impossible?” Cooke asked.

“Only as a favor to you. It’s not actually in the job description,” Jon told her. “The geometry method is one approach to finding a ship. It isn’t the only one, often not the best one, and its utility declines the farther out you get from the starting point in both space and time.” He shoved the photographs back into the binder. “I’m taking this,” he said, holding up the file. “I’ll call when I have something.”

“Thank you for doing this,” Cooke said. “You could have made it unpleasant.”

“The day is young.”

He stood, then paused. Cooke looked up and was surprised to find him staring down at her. She smiled up at him.
Not here, not now.
There were a hundred office windows with a view of the garden.

“Jon?” Cooke said.

“Yes?”

“I’ve missed you.”

Jon didn’t answer for what seemed like a minute. “You know where to find me,” he said finally. It wasn’t a rebuke. “You should leave that office a little more.”

“President Stuart only had a year left in office when he gave me the call. I thought they would replace me after the election,” Cooke said. “I serve at the pleasure of the president.”

“I never asked you to resign.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

Jonathan smiled only slightly, then marched away on the sidewalk that wrapped around the Old Headquarters Building to the northwest entrance. Cooke closed her eyes again. After another five minutes, she gave up and walked in the other direction to the front doors.

The Farm

Somewhere in the Virginia Tidewater

The Glock 17 kicked up in Kyra Stryker’s hands and she pulled it back down until the sights lined up with the target’s head again. The trigger had a smooth five-pound pull; she sent another round downrange and the bullet punched through the paper right where she wanted. The slug sent up a puff of dust from the dry dirt backstop twenty feet behind, one of a dozen kicked up at that moment by other shooters standing to either side.

She had a rhythm going now, two shots per second, still loud enough to come thumping through her earmuffs. Her first trainers had taught her to aim for center mass and she put the last three bullets there just to prove she could do it right, but today she was pushing herself. The requalification shoot would be the one that counted and going for the head now would make the target’s chest look a mile wide by dinnertime.

The Glock locked open, ready to receive another magazine, but Kyra had expended the four that she’d hand-loaded. The certification test would be for the Glock only, but Kyra tried never to miss a chance to fire something with a little more kick when the opportunity arose. She waited until the other shooters stopped, then ran out with the group to swap out her target for a fresh sheet. She wanted a pristine outline to work with for the other gun.

The Heckler & Koch 417 was a beautiful piece of work, a gas-operated battle rifle with a twelve-inch barrel and holographic sight. She pushed a clip into the body and chambered the first round. The weapon felt heavy for its size but that’s what slings were for. She took a breath, released it, and stifled the reflex to inhale again. She looked through the sight, picked her spot, put her finger inside the guard and pulled back on the trigger. The barrel erupted, flash and smoke, and the rifle kicked just hard enough to hurt.

She emptied that magazine, twenty rounds, every burst in the target’s head, then the second and third. She liked this gun, had thought about buying one for herself, but her salary didn’t allow it, not yet anyway. She could be patient. The Agency gave her enough time with its toys to satisfy her urge.

Her ammo expended, Kyra stretched her arms behind her back to work out the soreness in her shoulder. She would need a heat wrap on it tonight after a long, hotter shower and Kyra still wanted to hit the jogging trail that ran behind the student billets through the old-growth forest that lined the river.

She swept the empty magazines into her range bag and cleaned her station. Several of the other shooters, all men, she realized, were staring—half at her, half at her target. The bullet holes were all in nice, tight circles at the forehead and center mass of the thoracic cavity and Kyra had been shooting for fun, not for score. Still, she had done as well as any man here could’ve managed and better than most.

She realized that the closest gawker was speaking to her and had forgotten that she still had ear protection on and couldn’t hear him. She pulled off the headset.

“What?” Kyra asked.

“I said, you’re a SPO, right?” A security protective officer, one of the guards who kept the unwashed masses out of Agency facilities.

Kyra looked past the man and scanned the firing line, where the other men had pulled down their ear protectors to hear her answer. She wondered if they hadn’t been taking bets. Kyra looked at the man’s face and she saw instantly that he was trying to project confidence, bordering on bravado, but a twitch around his right eye betrayed a sense of nervousness. He was wearing a tactical shirt and pants but both were relatively new, hardly worn.
Not an operator.
Those were all former soldiers and Special Forces who spent more time in the bush than in buildings, and they all came to the Agency with considerable weapons training. Her talent for observation had suggested it but the man’s target confirmed it. The shot pattern on his target was respectable but not impressive. A case-officer trainee, then, like she had been a few years before.

That would make you more comfortable, wouldn’t it?
she thought.
If I had some good reason to be better than you?

She shook her head.

“Then
who
are you?” the man asked.

She pulled off her safety glasses, dropped them and the ear protection into the bag, and then zipped it up. “I’m an analyst,” she said.

Half the men on the line whooped, the other half cursed, and her interrogator grimaced as his face flushed red. He turned back toward his comrades and shuffled through the dust. She was sure he’d be on the business end of some late-night hazing now.