Cold Shot (30 page)

“That’s an impressive piece of work, Mr. Holland,” Cooke said. “Twenty-five years from now, when they can declassify everything, somebody should frame it and hang it in one of the hallways.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” the analyst replied, letting some pride seep into his voice. “It would be pretty to look at if it wasn’t showing something so ugly. But here’s what I wanted you to see.” He pointed at a series of linked nodes sitting near the right edge of the paper. “These are the front companies that hired the IRISL cargo ships that made the Venezuela trips. This”—he pointed to a bank in the center of the new nodes—“is the bank that secured the bonds for those companies for all of those trips. Treasury sent over the records and I was able to dig up some extra information from the Counterterrorism Center and the Information Operations Center. They’ve been helping track where Ahmadi’s money goes and between the two, I’ve got his operation figured out.”

Holland moved back toward the center of the chart and waved his hands over the graphics. “This is the core of his network. Ahmadi receives money from the government in Tehran through a series of banks and front companies, which he then funnels into a secondary series of front companies that do business in Europe and Asia. That’s where he buys the nuclear tech that he ships home to Tehran. The money has always been moved through at least three front companies before any purchase is made and the technology always passes through at least three more front companies before it gets back to Iran.”

“That’s all to evade sanctions,” Cooke noted.

“Right,” Holland agreed. “But here’s the good part.” He moved back to the new nodes on the far right end of the chart. “These front companies stand apart from his usual network. The rest of this”—he waved at the other parts of the picture—“is for buying nuclear technology and bringing it home. But this”—he pointed to the new nodes—“is for
selling
nuclear technology, as far as I can tell. None of those last five IRISL shipments were handled through his usual network.”

“Meaning what?” Cooke asked.

Holland took a deep breath. He was about to leave the realm of pure fact for the land of analytic conclusions. “Whenever Ahmadi buys technology or moves money, he usually accounts for it with the mullahs through the central banks. But this operation in Venezuela is going through an outside bank he doesn’t use for anything else.” Holland traced a line from the new bank on the chart across the page to another node. “The Venezuelans have been paying Ahmadi through this bank here, and after the money comes back to him, he’s been diverting funds to this bank in Switzerland.”

The implications took a few seconds to settle in. “He’s skimming funds,” Cooke realized.

“I think so,” Holland said. “I’ve been looking at this stuff for ten years. I always got the feeling that the mullahs have given him wide latitude in how to run the proliferation network . . . not wanting to burden themselves with all the messy details, as it were. But the money behind this operation is all running through a separate network that doesn’t connect to anything linked up to the regular organization. I can’t imagine that the mullahs would approve of this. If they find out that he’s skimming funds and endangering their nuclear acquisition network, going home could be a very dangerous proposition for him.”

The CIA director finally smiled. “Good work, young man. Get this all ready to take on the road. You’re coming to the White House with me.”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

The sun was far above the low hills in the distance by the time they approached the summit. They hadn’t seen or heard a SEBIN patrol until they’d come within a mile of the base, and the Venezuelan jeeps were staying within a few hundred yards of the fence line. Jon and Kyra closed the last mile largely on their stomachs, pushing through the underbrush with their elbows and knees. Kyra watched her partner, tried to imitate his movements, and found herself impressed by how smoothly he moved.

“It doesn’t look like they’re running extra patrols,” she said, almost whispering. “If anything, they’ve pulled them all closer in.”

“The wider the radius out from a fixed point you want to patrol, the more people you need to cover the area,” Jon explained. “We got through once. The riots are probably tying up the military, and if they don’t have more people available to expand security here, it makes sense that they’d draw them closer in and sacrifice distance for coverage. Makes our job easier, if we’re lucky.”

Kyra’s legs burned as they pushed up the back side of the hill. There were some tire tracks in the underbrush now. Some crazed SEBIN driver had tried to steer his vehicle to the top, slid out on the steep grade, then turned back down. If anyone had made it to the top, they’d finished the journey on foot, and her own tracking skills weren’t good enough to find signs of that in the leaves and dirt. She scanned the hillside below, saw nothing, then paused to listen. She heard vehicles in the far distance, but no voices. “Almost there,” she said quietly.

Kyra shifted the Glock in her hand and moved forward.

USS
Vicksburg

11°22' North 67°49' West

75 miles north of the Venezuelan coast

Marisa first saw the
Vicksburg
when the Seahawk was still ten miles out. She’d had to take it on faith that Kathy Cooke would twist the SecDef’s arm and her faith had been rewarded much sooner than expected. The trio of helos had all gone “feet wet” over the Atlantic, the pilots had confirmed which was carrying the chief of station, and the other two had peeled away from the third, headed for the
Truman
a hundred miles east. The unfortunate passengers aboard Marisa’s Seahawk, a pair of senior Foreign Service secretaries and a Marine, had been surprised to learn they wouldn’t be joining the ambassador and his party on the C-2A Greyhound that would fly him out.
Vicksburg
would ferry them over, just an hour or so late. The CIA chief of station had other business to conduct, the
Vicksburg
was the closest ship, and her needs trumped theirs so long as she had officers in hostile territory.

The Seahawk arced around the ship, tilted aft, as though the pilot wanted the passengers to see the damage to
Vicksburg
’s hull. Marisa stayed silent, but the other civilians couldn’t hold their peace, curses and gasps erupting as they saw the hole in the ship’s island. They were still a quarter mile out by the station chief’s guess. Engineers were welding plates over the open wound, and she could see the small lights of their torches flashing and dropping sparks into the blue water.

The helo took its place over the aft end of the ship and Marisa looked down at a flight deck that was too small for the purpose.
And still moving,
she realized.
Vicksburg
wasn’t a stationary target and the Seahawk pilot was matching the forward motion of the vessel as he descended. Marisa was sure that maneuver was far harder than he was making it look. The Seahawk was maybe sixty feet long, as best Marisa could judge, and the flight deck seemed smaller than that. She supposed the pilot could’ve lowered a cable and let the ship winch them down, but the Atlantic water was calm, visibility good, and the pilot didn’t bother, putting the aircraft down on the center of crosshair painted on the deck and giving his passengers a landing as smooth as any they’d ever felt. They uttered silent prayers of gratitude and scurried from the helicopter with the help of sailors outside as soon as the side door opened. Marisa waited until the rest were gone, then crawled out, declining the proffered hand of the master chief standing below to help her.

“I need to speak with the captain,” she yelled over the noise of the hangar doors sliding open.

“You’re Mills?” Master Chief Amos LeJeune asked. “Come with me, ma’am.”

•    •    •

Marisa had expected an escort to the
Vicksburg
bridge, but it made sense, she supposed, to have her conversation with Dutch Riley in a more private space. The J2 (intelligence) office was a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility not unlike those at headquarters, probably not that different from the other offices aboard the
Vicksburg
except for the massive spin-dial lock on the heavy door. The SCIF was empty now except for the two of them, whether by some order Riley had given out of earshot Marisa didn’t know.

The captain closed the door behind them and took his seat on the edge of one of the low desks bolted to the bulkheads. “Well, Miss Mills, you got me down here,” Riley said. “What can I do for you?”

“I have two officers who were out in the field when the mob surrounded the embassy and they couldn’t get back—”

“And you want me to execute a personnel recovery mission?” the captain interrupted.

“Something like that.”

“I sympathize, but I just finished a shooting match with a Venezuelan warship that could’ve started a war,” Riley told her. “I don’t want to press my luck by violating Venezuela’s sovereignty without direct orders.”

“Captain, my people are in clear and present danger. They are in the woods somewhere, not ten miles from the coast—”

Riley held up his hand to cut her off. “I have no doubt that you’re telling me the truth and that your people are in some serious trouble. You’ve got promises to keep but I’ve got orders to follow. If we can help your people, we will, but I’ll need the green light from some higher-ups before I can violate Venezuelan airspace, and that’s the end of the argument.”

She felt her anger surge inside her, but fought it back. Cursing this man would accomplish nothing and she might well need his help later. She had no cards to play here and she was in no position to make enemies. “Captain, I need to contact Langley and then my officers.”

“You can use anything in here, and I’ll tell comms to render any assistance you might need,” Riley said, waving toward the rest of the SCIF. “We’ll get you set up with a rack and mess privileges for as long as you’re here.”

Marisa nodded blankly. She could hardly think. “I understand,” she said.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to the bridge.”

“Of course.” The captain let himself out of the security vault, the heavy door closing behind him with the sound of clanking metal. Marisa looked around, saw that she was alone in the intelligence center, then barely stifled a scream of frustration.

White House Situation Room

The members of the National Security Council looked around the table, counting heads. They weren’t idiots. Fools did not reach these men’s level and they weren’t oblivious to the fact that some members of the council weren’t sitting at the table—SecState, CIA director, all of the staffers. The only men around the table, they noted, were the ones directly involved in the movement of military forces and everyone else was out of the room, probably to minimize leaks, and that meant covert action was on the table.
Then shouldn’t Kathy Cooke or Cyrus Marshall be here?
they would be wondering.

Time to stop that.
Rostow didn’t bother to thank them for coming. Subordinates didn’t merit that particular courtesy. “Gentlemen, the best intelligence we have right now suggests that the Venezuelans are preparing to move that warhead,” Rostow said, nodding at the screen. A staffer worked the touch-screen control from his seat at the desk and the monitor at the front of the room went live, a satellite video of the CAVIM site playing on the screen. Cargo trucks were lining up at the chemical factory loading dock. “If it goes missing, we might not find it again before it turns up somewhere we won’t like.”

“And you don’t want ‘the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud’?” the SecDef asked.

Rostow frowned at the inference. He’d been a vocal critic of that particular argument when it had first been made more than a decade before. It rankled him how often he’d found himself having to sustain the policies of predecessors that he’d attacked during his election campaigns. “What I want is to either seize it or destroy it,” the president replied, evading the question. “I want a plan on the table that we can execute immediately to make that happen.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs reached under the table, opened a briefcase, and pulled out a binder. “We’ve had a CONPLAN worked out for similar contingencies ever since Chávez first started inviting Iranians into his country,” he said. “It doesn’t precisely address the current logistical situation but we can adapt it in short order. That said, Mr. President, we need you to answer a few questions.”

You were ready for this coming in,
Rostow realized. There’d been no looks of surprise, no confusion at all. They’d anticipated this and coordinated among themselves before they’d set foot in the West Wing. No, these men were not idiots. That’s what military men do, he realized—prepare for contingencies and he was just another contingency to them. He kept the anger generated by that thought off his face. “Proceed,” he ordered.

“Sir, depending on the operational window, seizing the CAVIM site is possible,” the chairman answered. “The logistics aren’t complicated and Venezuela is close enough to U.S. soil to let us place airlift assets over the target site without midair refueling on the inbound leg. We could certainly put enough troops on-site to make it happen with a high probability of success, but we need to know three things. First, do you want the operation to remain covert or do you want a public show of force? Second, what is your tolerance for casualties? Third, do you want the facility destroyed after the warhead is seized?”

Rostow rocked back in his chair.
Casualties.
That nuisance again. “I don’t care if it remains covert. In fact, I think we should send a message to Iran and anyone else who’s trying to develop their own nukes in our half of the world in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Obviously, I want casualties kept to a minimum.” He shared looks with Feldman. The sight of coffins being unloaded at Dover Air Force Base was something he didn’t want on CNN and the other news networks. “And do I want the facility destroyed? Yes. I don’t want them trying this again.”