Cold Shot (37 page)

•    •    •

The last jeep crashed to a stop with black smoke rising out of the hood before the Barrett’s echo died. The men scrambled out of the vehicle, afraid the engine was going to catch fire and the jeep burn with them inside. They hunkered down behind it, then came out running for the cover of Ahmadi’s jeep while one of their company fired his rifle in Jon and Kyra’s direction.

Neither analyst bothered to duck. The man was shooting from the hip and couldn’t have hit them at half the distance handling his weapon like that. Jon put a round at his feet and the man twisted to run so suddenly that he fell on the asphalt. The Venezuelan dragged himself back up and ran after his comrades.

“You know, you haven’t actually hit anybody with that thing,” Kyra noted.

“Not trying to,” Jon replied.

She checked her watch. “Nine minutes.”
Four vehicles in less than a minute,
she thought.
We might live through this.

Jon swept the field, looking for men trying to move up. A head stuck out, then pulled back behind one of the dead cars. Jon didn’t waste a shot. The soldiers were staying put and none of them seemed confident enough of their skills to try a rifle shot at this distance with open sights.

“Eight minutes.”

Jon saw movement behind the second jeep he’d taken out. The engine on that one had broken out in flames and he held the scope on the burning wreck. The soldiers were pulling something from the back.

•    •    •

Elham saw the soldiers pulling out a large crate.
Idiots.
He pointed violently at the intersection ten feet away. “Move up on the side streets,” he yelled. But the men refused to listen. At least the fools would serve as a distraction. The Iranian threw open the cargo door to his own dead car and pulled out his rifle case. He dropped it on the ground, threw the locks, and raised the lid.

The Americans weren’t the only ones who could hit a target at this range.

•    •    •

“You see that?” Kyra asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Jon assured her. He lined up the crosshairs where the soldier seemed likely to stand.

The Venezuelan soldier stepped out from cover, the RPG-7 launcher on his shoulder. It would be a thousand-foot shot, well within the effective range of the weapon if he had the time to fire. Jon refused to give it to him. He pulled the Barrett trigger and the bullet tore a large chunk out of the concrete wall behind the man. He dropped the RPG and fled for cover.

Jon ejected the Barrett’s empty clip and reached for his satchel to pull out another—

•    •    •

Elham locked the bipod on the Steyr and set it on the side of the jeep. The angle on the Americans’ position was poor. The shooter was in an elevated position, giving him a low profile. Elham would get one shot at best and that would be hurried. His opponent would see him, line up, and Elham would have to get his shot off first.

He reached for a bullet tucked into his vest, this one an armor-piercing round. He slid the black-tipped slug into the ejection port and pushed the bolt forward. A regular round would probably have done the job, but he saw no point in being stingy. He pulled the cap off the Leupold Ultra M3A scope mounted on the rail above the Steyr barrel.

•    •    •

“Jon! One o’clock!”

He moved the rifle to the position Kyra had called out and saw the soldier lining them up with a long-barreled rifle.
Sniper,
Jon thought.
That’s no good.
“Back! Get back!” he yelled. He needed two more seconds to reload the Barrett and he didn’t have them.

•    •    •

The Steyr’s barrel spewed fire. The Iranian’s .50 round hit the roof just below the edge where the American rifleman was crouched. The bullet blew through the concrete with a hideous crunching sound that Kyra had never heard before.

•    •    •

Elham swore. He’d never fired at an elevated angle so steep and had underestimated the drop rate of the bullet. He looked through the scope . . . he hadn’t hit the Americans, of course, but they were out of firing position. He pulled back on the bolt, ejected the spent casing, and loaded another round.

•    •    •

Jon pushed the Barrett clip into the rifle and loaded the first round. “You got him?” he called to Kyra.

“Yeah, I saw where he’s set up.”

“You think you can get his attention with that thing?” He nodded at her HK.

“How far is it?”

“Seven hundred feet?” John guessed.

“At that range, getting his attention is about all I can do with this,” she said. “She’s not a long-range gun.”

“Don’t need you to hit him,” Jon told her. “Wait until he shoots again, then put a few in the asphalt close enough to make him think about it.”

•    •    •

One of the Americans turkey-peeked over the edge. Elham’s shoulder took the hit as the Steyr sounded again, and the round punched into the lip of the roof for a second time. He waved the Venezuelans forward. A few refused, two others nodded and began to run.

Elham turned back, put his eye to the scope—one of the Americans, the woman, was firing in his direction. He heard metal rounds hit the jeep over the noise of Ahmadi yelling in fear, heard sharp pops as the slugs buried themselves in the frame, and he saw a few puffs of dust kick up from the building walls nearby, nothing too close. Seven hundred feet was a difficult shot under these conditions for anything other than a long-range gun with a good optic mounted on the rail. Still, given the range, the woman had done as well as her weapon would allow—

The jeep’s rear tire blew out and the exploding rubber that decompressed less than five feet from Elham’s head sounded for all the world like a mortar shell to his ears. His eyes shut involuntarily against the blast of dirty, stale air that struck his face, blinding him. On pure instinct, he grabbed the Steyr and rolled back to his right. Two degrees farther left and the American’s shot would’ve ripped his brain out of his skull.
Praise Allah.
Still, the American had him targeted, while Elham’s own sight picture had been destroyed. By the time he could line up again, the CIA officer would put the next round through his head.

•    •    •

“You shoulda blown his stinkin’ head off,” Kyra observed. Jon wasn’t shooting to kill and she knew why. She prayed that shooting to scare would be enough.

“No thanks,” he said. “Check the side streets and get ready to pop smoke,” he ordered. Kyra ran to the north side of the roof and saw a dozen Venezuelan soldiers running up the street toward them. She knelt down, raised the HK, and pulled the trigger. Three rounds of fifteen hit the lead soldier, one in the hip, two in the legs, and he tumbled onto the street.

Jon heard her firing. “How we doing?” he yelled.

Kyra shook her head and ran for the roof’s east end.

Over the Atlantic

Marisa covered the microphone with her hand. “How long?” she asked. The pilot held up three fingers.

“Arrowhead, Quiver. We are ETA three minutes. Can you hold?” Marisa asked, trying not to yell into her mic.

“Quiver, Arrowhead. LZ is not secure, repeat, not secure. We have a convoy of hostiles pinned down to the west, but there are more coming from the other three directions. Our position is about to be surrounded and we cannot retreat.”

“Say again, you have a
convoy
pinned down?” Marisa asked.

“Roger that, Quiver.”

Go Jon, go,
Marisa thought. The pilot turned back to her and covered his mic with a glove. “How many on your team?” he called back.

“Two,” Marisa replied. The pilot uttered a curse of approval and awe.

“Arrowhead, do you want us to clean up the LZ a bit before we set down? We’ve got some presents ready for your hosts.”

“Negative, Quiver. Bad guys will be coming up inside the building by the time you show up—” Marisa heard the line go dead.

“Arrowhead? Arrowhead?!”
Hurry up!

“Feet dry,” the pilot announced. Marisa looked down and saw the blue water of the Atlantic meet the sand of a Venezuelan beach.

Morón, Venezuela

Jon picked up the Barrett and moved away from the edge of the roof. There was no point in sniping now. He ran to the radio and checked the display as Kyra ran back and joined him by the stairwell entrance. “They’re inside,” he told her. “And I saw a few running into some other buildings. They get on those roofs and we aren’t going to have any cover.”

“Radio’s dead,” Kyra told him. “Out of power. Helo is two minutes out.”

“You keep them from coming up the stairs,” Jon ordered. “I’ll cover the other rooftops if anyone comes out.”

Kyra stepped inside the tiny shack, looked down over the railing, and heard boots on metal. The stairwell wrapped around in a circular fashion, leaving a hole in the center all the way to the bottom. She could see movement, bits of dark uniforms five stories down. She held the HK over the rails and sent the rest of her clip down the stairs. Men yelled and she heard the rhythm of heavy feet on the steps turn to a clatter of men diving for cover. Someone returned fire and Kyra jerked back as the bullets buried themselves in the shack’s plaster ceiling. She swapped out the empty clip for a full one, racked the slide, then pointed her gun down again and let the soldier know she was still there.

Outside, Jon reached into his pack and pulled out two M18 smoke grenades, olive drab with bright red tops. “Kyra!” he yelled. She stuck her head out and he tossed one to her. He pulled the pin on the other, released the spoon, and tossed the device toward the center of the roof. Red smoke began to pour out in a thick cloud.

Inside, Kyra did the same and dropped the grenade down the stairwell’s center hole. It fell four stories before finally hitting a railing, metal on metal, green smoke rolling out and shrouding the narrow climb in a dark fog within a few seconds. Kyra followed the grenade with more rounds from the HK.

•    •    •

“LZ in sight,” the pilot said. Marisa looked ahead of the Seahawk and saw the red cloud growing on a building rooftop. On the street below, soldiers were moving through the streets toward the apartment complex.

The door gunner saw the dead trucks and jeeps littering one of the streets to the west. “Your people do good work, ma’am!” he yelled.

Marisa grinned back at the young man, sending a thrill up his spine.

•    •    •

“There!” Jon pointed north. Kyra followed his arm and saw the Seahawk boring straight for the building faster than she had thought a helo could go. She turned back to the stairs. The smoke had filled the entire stairwell now down to the floor, but the sound of the boots on the metal steps were closer, maybe three stories below. She fired the HK over the railing again until it ran dry, trying to buy a few more seconds, and the men below scattered again.

•    •    •

The Seahawk pilot pulled up the nose and dumped speed so fast that Marisa felt her stomach throw itself against her ribs. The helo dipped, then swung sideways and came down on the roof, landing hard, the rotors blowing the smoke away in a whirlwind, the door gunner facing the stairwell entrance.

•    •    •

Kyra didn’t wait for the order. She turned and ran for the helicopter, Jon behind her by two steps. She reached the door—

—and found Marisa’s outstretched hand. The woman pulled her in onto the metal floor. Jon pulled himself aboard behind her, tossing the Barrett onto the floor.

Bullets struck the steel door behind the older woman . . . someone was firing up at the helicopter from the ground. “Go! Go! Go!” the door gunner yelled.

The pilot pulled back on the collective, then forward on the stick before the Seahawk was ten feet off the roof. The helicopter surged forward and began a turn back north—

“RPG!” the door gunner called out. Kyra looked out the open door as she fumbled with her seat harness and saw the contrail rising up from behind one of the trucks Jon had killed. The helo lurched hard as the pilot dove underneath the rocket-propelled grenade and it sailed over their heads, missing the metal bird by a dozen feet. The pilot pressed the stick forward hard, diving between a pair of higher buildings. The Seahawk was running a hundred miles an hour and accelerating when it cleared them.

“You okay?” Jon yelled at Kyra. The young woman nodded. He turned to Marisa. “It’s about time—” He stopped midsentence.

Marisa was on her knees, blood staining her T-shirt in a spreading pool on her left side. “Jon—? I’m sorry . . .” She toppled forward into his arms.

He stared down at her in shock. “Get me a blowout bag! NOW!”

•    •    •

Elham lowered the Steyr and watched the American helicopter race off into the northern sky. He gotten off one shot at the moving Seahawk and hit it too high. “So much for catching your spies,” he told Carreño.

The Venezuelan cursed in disgust. “Someone get me a jeep!”

White House Situation Room

“It survived?” Rostow practically yelled the question at his national security adviser.

“Yes, sir, it did,” Cooke confirmed. “The MOP took out the entire CAVIM site, the convoy, and everyone inside the blast radius, but the nuke was in some kind of hardened transport crate already being moved out.” She didn’t point out that the MOP had almost taken out Jon and Kyra. She was sure that Rostow had never been worried about that. “One of our officers managed to get in close enough after detonation to confirm visually that the warhead survived.”

The DNI’s jaw dropped. “She was that close?” Marshall asked.

Cooke nodded. “She got inside the back of the cargo truck that was transporting it. She says the transport crate had been cracked open but there was no way to recover the warhead before reinforcements were going to arrive. Carreño’s people have since loaded it into another truck and it’s on the move.”

“Great. Just great,” Rostow groused. “We’ve lost it.”

“No, sir, we haven’t,” Cooke said. “Our officer hid a phone inside the transport crate. Once she was able to tell us that, we started tracking it. The signal is intermittent and not terribly precise. We think the crate is interfering, but we do know that the warhead is on its way back to Caracas. But we’ll lose the signal for good once the battery dies.”