Cold Shot (9 page)

Kyra looked over the weapons. “These jokers shot me once. I’m not going out without a gun again.”

“As long as you’re smart about it,” Marisa told her. “Shouldn’t need anything bigger for this than a sidearm.”

Kyra stared down at the guns, then hefted a Glock 17. “My favorite.” She looked over the table and another weapon turned her head. “You mind if I take that one?”

“I can live with that,” the chief of station said. “Just don’t get caught with it. There’s a hidden panel under the floorboard.” The woman paused, trying to find the soft way to serve up hard news. “If you get in trouble, I have no one to help you. You’re up on the personnel recovery protocols?”

“I am,” Kyra assured her.

“For the record, you’re
Arrowhead
on this one. Do
not
get seen, do
not
get caught. They tried to bag you once. I’d hate to serve you up on a platter after what you went through to get away from them the first time.”

•    •    •

The deputy station chief’s office was embassy standard, only a little larger than Jon expected, furnished with a hardwood desk and a large couch. That position was unfilled so it was little wonder Mills had looked tired. She was probably doing a tremendous amount of the grunt work usually reserved for lesser bodies. It didn’t help that the computers took all day to boot up. He’d waited almost fifteen minutes before the computer had finally finished its business. He supposed that the servers needed time to establish secure connections with Langley—

“Jon?” He saw the chief of station standing at the door.

“You’ve got a few minutes before she leaves. The girl knows how to pack a bag but the commo gear is giving her fits. You know those old units,” Mills said, her attempt at humor weak and she knew it. “Did you see the opplan?” she asked him.

“I read the file,” Jon said. “Doesn’t look complicated.”

“Simple is better.”

He said nothing and made no effort to move the conversation. “I was hoping to talk,” Marisa said, finally uncomfortable with the silence.

“You had five years to start a conversation. I don’t see any reason why you’d want to now,” he said.

“Because today we’re finally together again?”

“Not a great reason in the age of the telephone,” he said.

“You hate phones.”

“Yes, I do,” he admitted. “But I make exceptions and use them from time to time.”

Marisa shifted her weight on her feet, nervous. “Your hair is longer. You’re going gray,” she told him.

“I should be. I earned it.”

“We might all earn a few gray hairs on this one,” Marisa said, trying to shift the conversation to something less personal.

“I did tell Kathy Cooke this wasn’t a good idea,” he conceded.

“You’re having meetings with the director?” Marisa asked, surprised.
And telling her that you don’t like her decisions?
That was the real question she’d wanted to ask but she held it back.

“We know each other,” was all he said.

Kyra appeared at the door. The conversation was finished and Marisa felt a sharp pain in her chest, something she hadn’t felt for some time. “Kathy Cooke is a smart woman. I’m sure it’ll come off okay,” she said. Then she fled the room as slowly as dignity allowed.

•    •    •

“That was sweet,” Kyra said a few moments later, slight sarcasm tingeing her voice. She had changed clothes, her blue jeans and casual shoes gone in favor of khaki pants and boots that were going to be warm in the equatorial heat. At least she had chosen a plain tee instead of some heavier long-sleeved shirt. Her dirty-blond hair was tied off into a single ponytail that fell just to the top of her shoulders. She looked every bit the foreign tourist come to hike through the backcountry. “Are you going to tell me what went on between you and Miss America there?”

“Eavesdropping, were you?” Jon asked her.

“I’m a spy. I get a pass,” she replied.

“I don’t suppose you’ll just leave it alone?”

“You can tell me now or I can keep hounding you over the comm when I’m out in the woods. Surveillance is boring. I’ll have nothing but time.”

“We got close. I became an analyst and she took a job at headquarters. Then she left. Nothing more to tell.”

Kyra studied her partner with an odd expression. “That might be what happened, but it’s not what happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For an analyst, there are times you suck at it,” Kyra told him. “Women can read each other. You know that moment when you’re in a crowded room with a woman and you finally figure out that she might be trying to send you signals?”

“Yes.” His tone said otherwise.

“By the time that moment comes, the woman’s been throwing herself at you and humiliating herself in front of every other girl in the place for at least a half hour. I’ve spent less than that around Mills and I can tell you that she cares what you think about her . . . and she’s scared.” Kyra grinned, a wicked smile that unnerved the man.

“That makes no sense at all,” Jon said, frowning.

Kyra shook her head, amazed that he couldn’t see signs that were so simple. “I know I just blew up your mental model for dealing with Mills, so I’ll just say this—she’s that girl who always had a date in high school anytime she wanted one, so she never learned to appreciate any single relationship. Everything came easy because she was pretty so she ended up with no self-confidence and she’s been spending her life ever since trying to prove she’s more than what people see. You probably treated her different, the way she always wanted, and she didn’t realize it until it was gone. Now she’s wondering whether she screwed up.”

Jon nodded, clearly not understanding what he’d just heard. “You’re heading out?” he finally asked, almost desperate to turn the conversation. He looked out the window. The sun was getting low in the sky now.

“I wanted to say good-bye before I left,” she said, confirming his suspicion.

“This is still—”

“—not a good idea, I know,” Kyra told him, finishing his sentence for him. “You said the same thing about China and Pioneer last year. That turned out okay.”

“Just because something turns out okay doesn’t mean it wasn’t a stupid plan.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. “But have faith. I do.”

“Faith in what?”

Kyra held up an earpiece headset for him to see. “That you’ll be here if something does go wrong.” She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek before he could pull back, something she had never tried. “Thanks for caring,” she said quietly into his ear. Then she made for the door and was gone before he could protest.

Puerto Cabello

Carabobo, Venezuela

75 km west of Caraca
s

Of those men, only a very small group of officers knew what we were going to do that night, the troops didn’t know a thing. In other words, their superiors had decided these men would risk their lives for a political enterprise about which they knew nothing.

Hugo Chávez said those words. He had been talking about the night he had tried to overthrow the government by force in ’92, but Carreño thought it odd how they could have applied to what had just happened on the dock.
El comandante
truly had been a prophet even if God had struck him down too early.

The truck bounced under him as Carreño sliced into the Cohiba with a stainless-steel cutter, put the tobacco roll to his mouth, and lit it off with a small torch. All three objects were gifts from the Castros, which was fitting. Venezuela had kept Cuba’s economy afloat on a sea of free oil for almost two decades. Free cigars and the tools to properly enjoy them were all they could offer their patrons in return for financial salvation.

His friendship with the revolutionary brothers had paid Carreño other dividends over the years. The Cuban intelligence service had performed the occasional service, improved his standing with his superiors, at least the ones who weren’t rivals. He had cleared those lesser men out of his path, sweeping them aside through brazen operations against the Americans that had made his political enemies look like fools.

His operational record had been perfect until that single failure, that one exception that still rankled. His influence in the government now would be second only to Avila’s had that little operation gone right. That fool Rhead had been drunk on his own ego and swallowed the information that Carreño had fed him without question. He had led the CIA station chief like a chicken to the axman’s stump. Avila had wanted an American intelligence officer in custody . . . no more randomly accusing Americans who worked at the embassy of espionage as a public distraction from the government’s failures or to earn a bit of momentary support from the masses. A live CIA officer, provably a spy, in jail, undergoing a trial that would have lasted months would have given Avila a more lasting card to play.

What had gone wrong that night, Carreño still wasn’t sure. Rhead hadn’t shown for the meeting on the bridge over the Guaire River and the Venezuelan had no idea who the woman was who had come in his place. She’d stood under the streetlamp where he couldn’t see her face. It had unnerved him for the briefest moment and in an instant he’d made a single error, waving the woman over instead of giving her the appropriate signal. She’d caught it and she had run faster than anyone Carreño had ever seen in his life. Two dozen men hadn’t been able to catch her on foot and a dozen more in cars had lost her in the Caracas streets.

The operation had revealed Carreño for the double agent he’d played for more than a year. Rhead was a fool but his CIA superiors were not. They recalled him a few months later, and most of his staff were gone by the summer. The SEBIN lost their window into the CIA’s operations in the country. They went totally, utterly blind and even the Cubans hadn’t been able to help them change that for the last year. He didn’t know who was running CIA operations in his country now but whoever had taken charge was very, very good. His people were watching the embassy, using every resource they had but the Americans were making no mistakes. An entire year’s work and Carreño was no closer to prying open the CIA’s networks now than he had been at the beginning.

Avila was still angry with him for that failure and that wouldn’t change until he could show
el presidente
something that satisfied him. Close ties with the Castros kept Avila from firing him, but not from assigning him the occasional duty like this one, which was beneath him. This operation with the Iranians—this could give him that success he needed to squelch Avila’s anger, but he should have been overseeing it from a distance, staying just close enough to move the pieces but far enough away that he could blame failure on some junior officer. Instead, he’d had to stand there watching dockworkers unload cargoes of scrap metal, fertilizer, and tractor parts, all legitimate goods that happened to be in the way of the containers he actually cared about. A recruit could’ve done it but Avila justified the assignment by claiming the national interest was far too important to entrust to anyone but his chief spy.

He took another long drag on the Cohiba and let the smoke mix with the anger in his chest. They were minutes from the facility now and the real work could begin. Ahmadi had been right about one thing—if this operation came off well, this truly would end up the most important cargo ever unloaded onto a Venezuelan dock. And as the Iranian had predicted, Avila had approved using Venezuelan men and tools to unload the cargo without question. Carreño wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to how the operation would end for them, but perhaps Chávez was speaking to him now, telling him that every man had his role to play. For some, they would do their part, never really knowing why they had been called to give their lives in the service of their country. Perhaps that gave their sacrifice some noblility . . . they fulfilled their duties through faith alone and not for any sure knowledge of what the purpose of their lives really was. Didn’t God ask the same? Perhaps that’s why he had taken Chávez too young, so the man’s words could come back to Carreño this very day, to help him endure to the end and teach him patience at the same time.

The Venezuelan intelligence chief would have to ponder that. He didn’t believe that the Iranians really worshipped the same God, doubted they believed it either, but someone above had blessed this operation. Despite the mistakes Ahmadi’s people had made, letting their ship get taken by savages, they were still so very close to the end. He had just a few more days to endure; this unpleasant business would be short, and in his pocket there was no shortage of Cohibas to help him pass the time. Then Avila would have no more reason to ever assign him such duties again despite his position . . . and perhaps one day he would replace Avila in the Palacio de Miraflores. That alone would make this all worth it.

Autopista Valencia/Route 1

Puerto Cabello

Carabobo, Venezuela

200 km west of Caracas

Three hours behind the wheel revealed more of the country than Kyra had seen during the six months of her first tour and she felt the resentment toward her former station chief rising with each mile. This was a beautiful land, with large stretches that looked so much like the James River Valley, where she’d spent her childhood. Only the small shantytowns that stood every few miles along the roadside reminded her that this was not home.

The freeway turned north at the town of Valencia and carried her toward the ocean for twenty miles, then turned east, bending back toward Puerto Cabello. The Atlantic met the shoreline only a few hundred yards to her left and the port town finally opened up before her five minutes after the eastward bend.

The architecture of the city was unremarkable, mostly low buildings of old concrete and brick with no semblance of any coherent design to the whole. A few high-rise buildings towered above the rest in the northern district that jutted out into the bay on an angular delta. The twilight sun did nothing to improve the look, with harsh shadows and darkening faces on the buildings giving the scene a threatening look . . . or maybe she was just projecting her own thoughts on what was an average town. There was no doubt that the bullet that had torn up Kyra’s arm had stripped away the love she’d once felt for this country. She had no trouble believing that the cities, the actual buildings themselves hated her as much as the people seemed to in her mind.