Cold Shot

DAY SIX

The truck was a smoking hulk, wisps of charred rubber and upholstery rising in the air like strings. The metal frame was still hot and the vegetation beneath was a black waste for several meters around. Even identifying the make and model would be difficult.

Elham stared at the burned wreckage and suppressed the frustration trying to rise in his chest. Emotion was not helpful at such moments, a lesson the SEBIN soldiers encircling the area clearly had not learned. Elham knew curses when he heard them in any language.

One of his own subordinates walked over, his Kaybhar rifle slung across his back, a cigarette hanging from his mouth smoked down almost to the nub. “What news?” Elham asked him.

“From what I can discern, there was a second vehicle here; we can tell that much from the tracks. But the trail disappears at the road. They went east but beyond that, we know nothing,” the soldier said.

“Where is Carreño?” Elham asked.

“The infirmary,” the soldier replied. “He encountered one of the spies in a small building at the southern end of the facility and received a fierce beating for his trouble. The rumor is that he was thrashed by a woman.”

Elham looked at the man, surprised. “A woman? Then he is more pathetic than I believed,” he announced.

“Indeed. These latinos talk forever of their manliness, but a woman puts one of them in the hospital? And we’re trusting them with the security around the operation?”

“That is not our decision to make,” Elham said, failing to keep the disgust out of his voice. “Why was the woman inside that particular building?”

“The SEBIN won’t tell us what the building is for, but our men scouted the area and one of them managed to look inside. It appears that it was a security access point. It is possible that the woman might have been able to access the facility computer network or the security feeds from there.”

Elham grunted. “She couldn’t penetrate the chemical plant, so she attacked a weaker point that let her see inside the building anyway?”

“It’s a possibility. We don’t know for sure. I doubt our hosts will tell us anything. They don’t want to admit their failures.”

“You’re surely right,” Elham agreed, then exhaled a long, slow breath. “This has the feel of a military operation. A spy infiltrates while another provides overwatch from the hill with a long rifle. And the floorboards of that truck are melted out, so it was burned with some kind of thermite grenade.”

“The SEBIN are convinced it was CIA or American Special Forces.”

“They might not be wrong,” Elham conceded. “But we cannot discount the Israelis. In either case, until we can prove otherwise, we must assume the worst case, that the woman has identified the cargo and its location. We have to find her and her companion.”

The soldier nodded in response. “They only have one truck now. They must be traveling together.”

“I agree,” Elham said. “These spies must be caught, but I don’t trust these SEBIN to execute that mission.” He looked around the forest and back up the hill. “Have a squad assemble near the southern fence by the ordnance field in two hours. I have to report to Ahmadi, and then I want to search the hills around the southern perimeter. Given the direction of the shots, the shooter must have been there.”

“Yes, sir.” The soldier walked off to fetch a radio from their own vehicle. Elham turned back to the smoking truck frame and studied the carnage. This operation might be entirely compromised, he thought. If the woman had accessed the network, she might already have transmitted the data to… who? Who are you? Elham thought. The frustration rose in his chest again, begging to run free. He dismissed it. Enough mistakes had been made and he could not count on these new opponents making any of their own.

Drescher walked in, a stack of Styrofoam trays in hand, which he set on the table. “Breakfast, ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of the director’s chef. Poached eggs Erato with crab and hollandaise. Bagels and lox for the kosher among us. Either way, it beats a load of sugar bombs and coffee from the Dunkin’ Donuts in the cafeteria.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” one of the junior analysts muttered as he fought his way through the crowd to the table and took his tray.

“Gratitude, children, gratitude,” Drescher counseled. “I’ve been gone fifteen minutes. Somebody tell me something new?” The group muttered, mouths full of food, but it was apparent no one had anything to report. The senior watch officer frowned, scanned the group, and noticed one analyst in the far corner, disconnected from his surroundings. He was a young black man, business-casual dress, focused on his computer screen. Drescher wandered over and looked past his shoulder at the monitor.

“What’ve you got for me, Holland?”

The analyst looked up for a half second, then put his eyes back on the screen. “The records of all the companies that secured bonds to cover any IRISL cargo ships transiting to Venezuela in the last year.”

“And?” Drescher asked.

“I don’t know if it’s worth anything.”

“Show me,” Drescher ordered.

Holland pointed at the screen. Drescher leaned over and stared at the records, then squeezed the younger man’s shoulder. “For that, you get to miss breakfast. Come with me.”

The SEBIN director’s phone sounded in his pants. He lowered one arm to retrieve the phone and the doctor wrapping the bandage around his torso was forced to stop for a moment until his patient lifted the phone to his ear.

“Carreño.” The SEBIN director sounded weak.

“This is Avila,” came the basso voice through the phone. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the medical building at the Morón facility.”

“You’ve seen the news?”

“I have,” Carreño admitted. To deny it would have been feckless.

“The Americans have penetrated the project,” Avila said. It was an admission of the obvious, meant not to educate his subordinate but to knife him in the ribs.

“I’m aware. I encountered an American spy last night inside the facility.” At least he assumed she had been American.

The phone went silent for several seconds. “And you captured this spy?”

“No,” Carreño told him, another admission that would have been equally feckless to dispute. “She caught me by surprise as I entered the south security hub—”

“She was inside the security hub?!”

The SEBIN director hung his head only because he knew the president couldn’t see the act of disgrace. The doctor finished wrapping his ribs and taped the bandages in place. “Yes. We attempted to detain her, but a sniper in the woods covered her escape. Our patrols executed a search but failed to find them. But their vehicle was burned.”

“So they’re on foot now?” Avila asked.

“No. We found a second set of tracks once the sun rose. We are searching a ten-kilometer radius.”

“And you’re sure she was American?”

“No,” Carreño admitted. “Some of the Iranians feel she might have been Israeli.”

He heard Avila let out an angry hiss. “Israeli? The Mossad? They are more vicious than the CIA, if such a thing is possible,” Avila sneered. “Fix this, Andrés. The Iranians will be nervous.”

Carreño was quite sure that nervous wasn’t the appropriate word. “We will deal—” he began, but the call disconnected before he got the second word out of his mouth.

Avila pushed the phone away from him on the ornate desk and slumped in his chair. Carreño was again proving to be a disappointment and the president wished again that the man didn’t have such close connections with the Castros. Venezuela had few partners and fewer patrons in the world and could spare none of them. The Cubans certainly would not sever their ties if he removed the SEBIN director, but they had other, more subtle ways of expressing their displeasure. And now that the American media had played that tape, all of Venezuela’s allies would be exercising caution—

Avila turned at the sound of frantic pounding behind him. He nodded at one of the security guards standing watch and the man opened the door. An aide hurried inside.

“Pardon my interruption, Señor Presidente—”

“What is it?” Avila snapped.

“The crowds,” the man said. “Some crowds have formed up—”

“I know,” Avila told him. “I ordered it. The Tupamaros—”

“No, sir.” The aide shook his head. “It’s not as you think, sir. These are not Tupamaros or any of the revolutionary militia.”

Avila gaped, walked to the window, and looked through the blinds. A small mob had formed outside the palacio, signs in hand. He couldn’t hear them but they were clearly yelling at the soldiers holding them away from the gates. “Who are they?”

“Civilians. Locals.” The worry in the aide’s voice was infectious. “And they’re not just here. We have reports from Maracaibo, Puerto Cabello, Ciudad Bolívar in the southeast, and several other port towns. They emerged after the American broadcast.”

“What are you saying?” Avila asked, perplexed.

“Sir… they are protesting you.”

Avila turned his head and looked at the bureaucrat, murder on his face. “How large are the mobs?”

“Not large yet,” the aide replied. “A few hundred in the larger towns.”

Avila nodded. “Contact the television stations. I want no coverage of this at all. None. There will be no ‘Arab Spring’ here… do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. But what about the foreign media? We cannot control them.”

“If you find anyone with a camera on the street, find a reason to arrest them. I don’t care, but smash the camera,” Avila ordered. “I don’t want these people organizing. And make sure the Tupamaros take their place at the American embassy. I want that nest of spies cordoned off. Contain this.”

“Yes, sir,” the aide said, not at all convincing, as he fled the room.

Hossein Ahmadi watched the television replay the warehouse video again. He’d lost count of the times the American news network had shown it. He thought his anger couldn’t rise any higher in his chest and found that he was wrong. Each viewing fed his rage until he could hardly control his hands every time the scene came on the television screen.

Someone rapped the door. “Come,” he said through clenched teeth. It could only be Elham. He’d summoned the sargord, who was the only soldier with standing permission to disturb him anyway.

Elham entered and closed the door behind him. “You’ve seen this?” Ahmadi said.

“Yes,” the sargord answered.

“How did the Americans film this?” Ahmadi knew the answer but his mind didn’t want to accept it.

“They had someone in the warehouse, obviously. Not twenty meters from where we stood,” Elham replied.

“How could you not see such a person?” Ahmadi demanded.

“The question applies to you as well,” he answered, turning the question back on the civilian.

“But you are in charge of security for this operation!” Ahmadi said.

“No, I am not,” Elham corrected him. “My men and I were not privy to any of this until we were pulled from our beds to retrieve your ship and ordered to bring it here, despite the fact that we are not sailors. You allowed the Markarid to be taken over by a pirate crew by refusing to assign an armed crew when she sailed. The Venezuelans took charge after the ship arrived and Carreño was in charge of protecting the dockyard and the ammunition factory. But the security on your operation has been poor from the start.”

“You cannot speak to me that way!”

“I can speak to you any way that I wish, provided that I am prepared to accept the consequences of my choices. And given that your poor choices are heaping consequences on me that I didn’t choose, I am quite prepared to tell you what I think.” He pointed at the television. “My face is in that video as well. Neither of us will escape this unscathed. We will both find ourselves answering unpleasant questions when we return to Tehran, but you more than me, I think.”

Ahmadi clenched his fists and his teeth, breathing hard. He needed a target for his rage and the sargord wasn’t providing a good one. He cursed in Farsi, then took his phone from the hotel room desk, set the speaker, and furiously dialed. The call rang numerous times before someone finally picked up.

“This is Avila,” the other man answered.

“Your man’s incompetence has endangered us,” Ahmadi said without preamble.

“We are dealing with it,” Avila said, defensive. “I will be making a statement later today—”

“This is going to take far more than a statement to correct!”

“Surely, but our dear comandante, God rest his soul, showed us how to deal with American spies. Trust me now, brother. Don’t fear this. God gives us opportunities from adversity. With this, we will finish the revolution that our leader began almost twenty years ago.”

I don’t care about your fool revolution! Ahmadi raged silently. The Venezuelans were infidels, the same as the Americans. “Useful idiots,” as Saddam had once phrased it. “We must move the cargo,” was what Ahmadi finally told him.

“I agree, but we cannot yet. The cargo has been opened, so we must finish the job there first and only then will it be safe to move, I’m told.”

“How long?” Ahmadi asked.

“Two days.”

“Get this done,” Ahmadi said. “Or my superiors in Tehran will have to reassess our alliance.” He turned off the phone.

Elham wondered whether Ahmadi truly had the influence to carry through on the threat. Probably, the soldier thought. The other man was a narcissist but he had no reputation back home for making idle threats.

The size of Gerry Feldman’s office belied the power of his position. The national security adviser’s work space sat in the corner opposite the Oval Office and was larger than most in the West Wing, but there were interns on Wall Street with more space and better views. The furniture was government traditional, the desk of average size, fake wood over particleboard and buried under a landfill of paper. Feldman preferred to hold his meetings in one of the conference rooms or even the Oval Office itself, where the surroundings lent themselves to intimidation. But some conversations needed to go unnoticed by the staff and this was one of them.

Feldman had braced himself to see righteous wrath all over Kathy Cooke’s face, but the CIA director was calm and he was sure that should worry him far more. She was sitting to the side of the couch, legs crossed, an iPad resting on her lap. Cyrus Marshall was doing all the talking. There was no frustration on her face, no fidgeting, no attempts to break into the conversation. The woman was picking her moment and Feldman felt himself growing more tense every second the moment didn’t come.

“You should have run it by us, Gerry,” the DNI said. “You can’t go public like that without warning. There’s damage control—”

“We didn’t leak it—” Feldman began.

“Don’t give me that, Gerry!” Marshall protested. “That video wasn’t twenty-four hours old. How many people do you think even know it existed, much less had access to it?”

“Cy, I’m telling—”

“It was you,” Cooke interrupted.

“Excuse me?” Feldman retorted.

“Before we delivered the video, I had one of our video specialists insert a unique numerical code on a single frame of each copy of the video so we could trace it in the case of a leak,” Cooke said. “We recorded the footage televised last night and identified that code. It matched the one we delivered on your iPad.”

Feldman glared at the woman and let out an exasperated breath. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“That would have defeated the purpose,” Cooke replied.

“My staff—” Feldman started.

“The captain of the ship is responsible for the conduct of his crew,” Cooke answered before he could complete the sentence. “So whether you released it personally or gave explicit or implicit directions to one of your staffers, the responsibility still lies with you.”

“You are not seriously trying to threaten me,” Feldman said, anger creeping into his voice.

“Mr. Feldman, you released that tape last night because you and President Rostow expected that the CIA was going to fail to carry out your order to locate and identify the Markarid cargo,” Cooke said. “You’re looking to squeeze some political capital out of this and given your assumption that we would fail, you saw no point in waiting to start.”

Cooke took the iPad off her lap and laid it on the table, folding back the brown Corinthian leather cover. “Your assumption was wrong. Our officer penetrated the CAVIM facility. But your broadcast triggered a security lockdown and we lost contact with her during the escape. We’re trying to reestablish contact now and retrieve her intel. But you have your crisis and now we all have to manage it,” Cooke continued. “And I’m going to lay down some ground rules for exactly how we’re going to do that.”

“Now you wait a minute!” Feldman ordered. “You don’t get to dictate terms—”

“Yes, sir, in this instance I do,” Cooke warned, her voice rising in anger. “You didn’t clear the release of that information with us—”

“The president gets to decide whether to declassify—”

“Yes, he does. But your reckless advice that he do it without talking to me first endangered our officer!” Cooke slapped his desk in anger. “While the networks were busy last night telling the Venezuelans that we had penetrated their program and had an officer within a hundred feet of their team, that same officer was inside the CAVIM facility trying to retrieve the intel that you and the president demanded. She was attacked and escaped only because a second officer arrived and used a sniper rifle to pin down the entire security contingent long enough for her to get away.”

“You did not fire on foreign nationals on their own soil!” Feldman protested.

“Yes, we did,” Cooke said, calm as the morning. “And you’re not going to issue so much as a reprimand for it because that team recovered video footage from CAVIM that might identify the Markarid cargo. And if that senior officer hadn’t used that rifle, not only would the operation have failed, the team might now be in a SEBIN detention facility with President Avila using them as propaganda tools against you. So if you attempt to punish those officers or my agency, I will be forced to plead our case to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and use the embedded code on the footage in support. Given that they weren’t told about the covert action at the warehouse before it occurred, I suspect the committees weren’t very happy to hear about it from cable news.”

“No, they weren’t,” Feldman admitted. He’d been avoiding calls since the broadcast. “But the law allows us to inform them after the fact in exigent circumstances—”

“I’m sure they’ll be excited to hear why these were exigent circumstances. I have to go to the Hill later today to talk about that,” Cooke advised, pointing at the tablet. “Just as I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear about how an ill-advised White House leak almost cost a decorated CIA officer her life and possibly the intel needed to stop Iranian proliferation of who-knows-what into our half of the world. Details like that tend to leak to the Post too. And before you threaten me with jail, I won’t have to do that. The Hill will do it for me and you know it.”

Feldman leaned forward, anger in his own eyes. “So what are you asking for?” he finally said.

“I’m not asking for anything,” Cooke told him. “I’m telling you that if another shred of classified information about this operation leaks, Congress will hear every gory detail about last night’s operation before the next broadcast is done. I have people in harm’s way down there, two people who I happen to know personally and care about, and it will be hard enough to get the job done and get them home without you”—she pointed her finger at the spot between his eyes—“trying to sacrifice them in exchange for a few points in the president’s next approval poll.”

“You don’t dictate terms to the president of the United States,” Feldman told her.

“I’m just laying out the consequences of a particular choice you might choose to make, sir,” Cooke said. “And I will fall on my sword for this one if necessary,” she finished. Cooke stood and walked out, not caring whether Marshall followed.

The DNI had shared his car with his subordinate, so Cooke’s exit from Feldman’s office had been fine theatrics but she could hardly leave the White House without him. Marshall found her waiting for him inside the West Wing entrance foyer, just past the Secret Service desk. “You didn’t mention that the broadcast gave your people an opening to figure out where the Iranians have the rest of their covert infrastructure down there,” he said.

“If I told him that, he would’ve used it to justify the whole thing, never mind that they had nothing to do with it,” she replied. “It was just fast thinking on the part of a very creative officer.” Good job, Jon.

“That never stopped a politician from taking credit for an accomplishment before,” Marshall noted.

“No, it didn’t,” Cooke agreed. “But they can’t take credit without going public, so I’m not sure they wouldn’t leak that part too.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You said there was no way her people could pull off something like this.”

“No, you said that. I just thought you were right,” Feldman admitted. “We’re going to have to step a little more carefully with Cooke after this. She’s thinking ahead.”

“Yeah. I cut her loose now and the Hill really will start asking some hard questions.” The president shook his head, cursing. “We’ll tackle that later. Has Avila said anything about the broadcast?”

“He did,” Feldman confirmed. He opened a folder and pulled out a pair of typewritten pages. “State sent this over through the Situation Room an hour ago. Avila delivered his rant on that show of his, Aló Presidente.” Feldman botched the accent badly but Rostow didn’t know the difference. He picked up the papers, leaned back in his chair, set his legs up on the Resolute desk, and scanned the translation.

“I guess that’s a ‘no,’ as far as giving up Ahmadi,” Rostow said.

“You expected anything different?” Feldman asked.

“Not really. But we’ve got to crank up the pressure on Avila now. He’s not playing ball. We need to crucify him,” Rostow said.

“We can’t let him move that cargo or Ahmadi out of the country. We lose track of them and he’ll squirm out of this.”

“Yeah,” Rostow agreed. “Call the SecDef. Then call the ambassador to the UN and tell her to get the Security Council to call a special session.”

Feldman grinned. “You want to play Adlai Stevenson?”

Rostow just smiled. “Tell Kathy Cooke that I want her there too. If we have to keep her around, she might as well be useful for something.”

The morning light finally reached into Jon’s sleep and he opened his eyes. The humid air was reaching under his shirt, turning his skin clammy, and he knew there would be no more rest now. The sun was already well above the horizon and approaching the higher branches of the trees that he could see through the shack’s broken windows. The stress of the previous night had driven him to sleep far longer than was usual.

He was sitting upright in the truck bed, having fallen asleep there. He’d volunteered to take first watch. Kyra needed the sleep. The woman had been near staggering around by the time she’d given up trying to find a cellular signal and she fell unconscious within a minute after he’d convinced her to lie down in the truck bed. But Jon had never planned on staying awake through the night. If the SEBIN were going to find them, they’d have managed the feat within the first hour after their escape from Morón. Two hours later, Jon had heard no vehicles, no voices, no helicopters, and he let himself go. Still, he’d slept sitting up, the Barrett beside him.

He felt a weight on his lap and he looked down. Kyra’s head was resting there. Sometime during the night, the young woman had curled up and started using his legs as a pillow. She probably hadn’t even been awake when she did it… wouldn’t remember having done it when she woke up. I guess I can’t tell Marisa that I’ve never been there when she woke up now.

He shifted his legs slightly, which accomplished the task. Kyra opened her eyes slowly, realized where she was, and moved off Jon’s lap, her cheeks flushed red from embarassment. “Sorry,” she offered, groggy, her voice slurring a bit.

“No need to apologize,” Jon said. “You didn’t snore. I’d want an apology for that.”

Kyra smiled, pulled herself upright, and folded her legs against her chest. She scanned the building, getting her first look at their surroundings in daylight. “We’re not in prison. That’s something.”

“It’s a lot, actually,” Jon agreed.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked him.

“Breakfast and a bladder dump,” Jon said. He heaved his body over the side of the truck, then reached back and opened the toolbox mounted under the rear window for the small one-man gas stove stored there. “Then I’m going to find some way to call Mari. We should get back to the embassy. We can upload the video from there.”

“So it’s ‘Mari’ now? You two make up?”

“Not really.”

Kyra grunted. He stared at her but she looked away. “You okay?” he asked.

”That’s a dumb question to ask after last night.”

“‘Okay’ is a relative term,” he said.

Kyra didn’t look up from the truck bed. “He was there… Carreño. He was the one who came into the security shack while I was inside,” she told him. “I caught him by surprise when he came in. Got him on the ground and had my gun on him. I could’ve put two in his head. My hands were shaking but at that range I couldn’t miss.”

Jon just nodded slowly, no sign of surprise at her admission that she’d wanted to murder a man. “My dad was in the Corps. I was twelve when he decided that I needed to learn how to handle a gun. He started off that first lesson with this speech about how ‘one day, the Good Lord will come again and remove that seed of evil that lives in us all, but until then, we need guns.’”

Jon’s voice took on a southern accent as he repeated the words. Kyra had never heard him talk that way but it sounded oddly natural coming out of his mouth. “And then he told me something that I never forgot. He said, ‘Don’t you never point that gun at anyone unless you’re gonna kill him, ’cause there are two kinds of people in this world… those who’ve killed people and those who haven’t. Once you become the former, you cain’t never go back to being the latter.’” Jon pulled out the gas stove and closed the toolbox. “I’m glad you didn’t join that group.”

“Did you ever kill anyone? When you were in Iraq?”

Jon avoided her gaze as he set the stove up. Kyra could tell he didn’t want to answer the question. She was surprised when he did. “Mari and I were assigned to Task Force North in ’06,” he finally said. “We spent time hunting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi together… worked the case for a couple of years, taking apart insurgent networks. I found some evidence that the Iraqis were smuggling munitions through a Syrian border town and shipping the goods to a transit point in al-Yusufiah… right in the middle of the Triangle of Death. The Rangers and Delta Force launched a raid on the place… big fat mansion right in the middle of this dirty little town. We were on a rooftop doing overwatch when things went pear-shaped. A couple of mortar crews started dropping rounds on the teams. The sniper team near us took a round. I grabbed their rifle and found that first crew on top of a mosque. Then I put a .50-caliber in one of them… hit him center mass. The round must’ve punched right through his heart. His body seized up for a second when the bullet went through him. It left a hole big enough for me to see daylight through the scope.”

He stopped talking and ran his hands through his hair. Kyra had been with him long enough to know his body language. This hurts, she knew, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe he needed to get it out.

Jon started again after a minute. “I didn’t even think after that. I shot his partner in the face and watched his head bust apart like a fat melon. I guess their friends didn’t like that much. They zeroed us… put a round on the roof behind us, missed us by a couple dozen feet. Mari was on her feet when it hit. The shock wave would’ve blown her off the roof if I hadn’t grabbed her. It was five stories down.”

“Knight in shining armor, Jon,” Kyra said. “She didn’t stand a chance after that.”

Jon fiddled with the gas stove, screwing a fuel canister to the intake. Kyra watched his face. Jon had always been a hard target, even for her, and she wondered how Kathy Cooke had ever cracked that wall. Kyra read body language like most people read English but her partner still was a cipher most days. But today, this morning, she saw pain in his eyes. “She’s not the kind to settle down. Mari hung around Langley for a couple of years, punching her tickets at headquarters until she got offered her first chief-of-station post. I was done with the field, she wasn’t, and that was that.”

Kyra nodded. “You were a pretty good shot with that rifle last night. It’s at least a half mile from the hill down to the base,” she offered, trying to shift the subject to something less painful for him.

“Not that good… but good enough, I guess. It helped to have a big scope,” Jon demurred. He smiled at some memory. “My father made me practice on his old M1 Garand for hours, dry-firing in the living room. He always said, ‘You gotta be able to focus on that target, ’cause when the bad man is on the move, that cold shot might be the only one you get.’”

“What’s a cold shot?” Kyra asked.

“When you fire a rifle, the barrel heats up and expands. The more rounds you fire, the more it expands. That expansion causes each bullet to wobble a little bit more and the gun gets a little less accurate each time you fire,” Jon explained. “Doesn’t matter at close range, but over a long distance it can make the difference between a hit and a miss. So ‘when the bad man is on the move,’ you might only get the first round you shoot when the barrel is cold. Miss that and the target gets harder and harder to hit each time you pull the trigger. Doesn’t help that he knows you’re shooting at him then either.” Jon finished setting up the stove and set it on the tailgate. “Where’d you learn to shoot? Did the Agency teach you?”

Kyra rested her head on her knees and stared at the man for a long minute. “You know I grew up near Charlottesville? A little town on the James River called Scottsville?” she asked.

“You’ve mentioned it.”

“Everyone out there hunts, even the girls. The first day of deer season, half of my school was always off in the woods. I had a boyfriend when I was fifteen… cute guy named Matt. He took me on one of his hunting trips and gave me one of his twenty-gauge shotguns.” Kyra looked around at the forest. “I was so anxious to shoot that gun that I pulled the trigger on the first animal I saw. There was a raccoon up in this pine tree, and I lined up on it and shot it. But it didn’t drop. It turns out that I’d crippled it and it just hung there off this branch.” She stopped, realized that tears were starting to flow. She wiped them off with her sleeve, then turned away from Jon and looked off in the woods. “After a few minutes, I guess it just got too weak and fell to the ground. It still wasn’t dead. It tried to crawl away from me, but it couldn’t use its back legs. Matt had heard the shot and finally showed up. I was shaking so bad that he had to put it down for me.”

Kyra turned back, looking at Jon and away from the trees. “I know it’s not the same as shooting a man, but I never wanted to shoot another living thing after that. But I signed up with the Agency and they put a gun back in my hand down at the Farm. I got comfortable with them again… even got back to where I really liked them. I told myself that shooting that dumb animal had freaked me out just because I was a kid and now I wouldn’t have any trouble pulling the trigger on someone if I had to.”

“And then you had Carreño on the floor,” Jon said. He was no good at reading body language, but he didn’t need it to know what was running through the woman’s head.

She nodded. “That man almost got me killed. I’ve got a scar on the back of my arm two inches long because of him. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone, and for one second, I really wanted to put him down. I couldn’t do it.”

“There’s a difference between killing someone because you have to and killing him because you want to,” he said. “You decided not to murder a man. That doesn’t make you weak.”

“Then what does it make me?” Kyra said.

“It makes you someone with a conscience. As long as you’ve got that, you can always get righteous again if you go off the road,” he said.

Kyra sat in the truck bed, legs pulled to her chest, pondering that. Jon had the water boiling on the stove before she finally spoke again. “I think the op is done,” she said.

“I think you’re right. Which makes it all somebody else’s problem now,” Jon said. “What’re the options on the food?”

Time to change the subject? Kyra rifled through the Meals-Ready-to-Eat that she’d found in the truck cab behind the driver’s seat. “There’s not much here that looks like actual breakfast… just some MREs. Pork rib or chili with beans is as close as it gets.”

“Pork rib. You really don’t want me to eat the chili.”

Kyra pulled the plastic pouches out of the box.

Jaime Reyes slowed his car and exited the freeway onto the side road that led to the Colinas de Valle Arriba district. He enjoyed this part of the drive the most. The rest of Caracas was nothing special. He’d seen far prettier cities during his twenty-two years with the State Department and not many worse. Buenos Aires was a particular favorite, even if it wasn’t truly the Paris of South America as it had once been called. But Caracas was fast becoming the Pyongyang of the continent, he thought — a crowded city filled with unfinished construction projects, crumbling infrastructure, and violence that the government wouldn’t acknowledge. Almost twenty years of Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution had taken it on a downhill slide from a modern municipality to second-world status, fast falling to the lower rungs on the ladder.

But it was his last assignment before retirement and for that he wasn’t sorry. Reyes had had his fill of traveling and living abroad, of learning new languages and cultures. He hadn’t had to do that for his assignment to Venezuela… the real reason he’d taken it. He already spoke the language, understood the culture, which wasn’t much different from the rest of the continent. He could handle everything but the food. He was tired of fighting the food. His intestines weren’t as resilient as they’d once been and he was having too many disagreements with his stomach about what constituted a good meal these days. It was time to go home for good, to spend some time with his daughters. His oldest was about to make him a grandfather for the first time, his ex-wife had abandoned the family for the bottle, and he wanted to be there when his grandson came into the world.

Reyes made the last turn off the main road onto the trail that led to the embassy—

What—? Reyes slowed the car to a stop. The group of men was standing in front of the embassy gate, crude signs in hand, mostly sheets with crude letters painted by hand. Several were yelling at the Marine embassy guards standing inside the compound. Stupid protesters, Reyes thought. They must have come in response to the news broadcast from last night. Like we had anything to do with that. Don’t blame us when your own people let a bunch of thugs come into your country and shoot your own.

The men spotted his car and a number of them started to move toward him, sticks in hand. Reyes stared at them, decided they meant business, and put his car in reverse. He hit the gas, and only then looked in the rearview. He tried to slam the brakes but was a second too slow and the car hit one of the men who had formed up behind him, knocking him to the ground. Reyes heard him scream in pain, genuine or not he couldn’t tell. The rest of his comrades began screaming and cursing and banging on the car. The men from the gate reached his vehicle and joined their fellows. Reyes locked the doors.

Get out of the way! He gunned the engine, hoping to scare them into moving. They didn’t move, so he put the car back in drive and let it jerk forward, hoping that would frighten them. The crowd jumped back, not to the side, angrier than before. One of them produced a baseball bat, put it to his shoulder, and swung, connecting with the right-front headlight and smashing it out.

The crowd got in close now, rocking the car. Reyes went for his cell phone, trying to call embassy security for help, but fumbled it and lost it under the seat. He leaned down in desperation trying to find it—

— and heard the loud crunch as the caraqueño with the bat shattered the driver’s-side window. Glass exploded into the car, striking his face. Reyes sat up on reflex and then the men’s hands were clawing at him, pulling at his seat belt. One of them, a teenager, leaned into the car, reaching across him, trying to unbuckle the belt. Reyes punched him in the face, bloodying the boy’s nose, then grabbed his hair and smashed his face against the shattered window frame. The boy yelled out in pain and retreated, only to be replaced by another, this one smart enough to unlock the door. It swung open and then there were a half-dozen hands ripping at his clothes and trying to pull him out. Someone’s fist connected with his own nose and pain exploded from his sinuses backward into his head and he saw stars. Stunned, he felt blood pouring out of his nose onto his suit, and then someone did manage to unlock his belt and he felt the mob pull him out onto the concrete. He tried to curl up, but a foot connected with his head and his ears started to ring louder than the Spanish and English curses being thrown as fast as the blows.

Then someone else screamed in pain, the yells and curses taking on a sense of panic, and the attack stopped. Reyes managed to open an eye and saw… boots. Strong hands grabbed him under the armpits and he heard someone shouting Spanish orders in a bad accent at the crowd. The Marines from the gate had come out, guns drawn. One of the protestors was on the ground, someone who had been foolish enough to take a swing at one of Marines and been made to eat asphalt for his trouble.

One of the guards lifted him up. “Can you walk?” he asked.

Reyes nodded, groggy, and the Marine shifted to support the older man and they jogged as fast as the consular officer’s weak legs would allow. The other Marines fell back in a line between them and the crowd advanced forward as fast as the Americans were retreating. Then they were inside and Reyes heard someone slam the gates shut behind him.

Marisa ran through the lobby doors, following the small crowd that had run down from the upper floors of the embassy. She finally broke through into the large foyer, pushing aside some of the gawkers who’d assembled to watch the scene. A man was sitting on the bench, clothes torn, a blood-soaked rag being held to his nose by one of the Marine guards.

“What happened?” she asked a second Marine standing over the bleeding civilian.

“We’ve got a mob at the gates… attacked him in his car. They pulled him out onto the street. Would’ve beat him to death if we hadn’t gone out for him.”

“How big was the mob?”

“No idea,” the Marine replied. “A few hundred, maybe, but getting bigger by the minute. Buncha cockroaches, coming out from everywhere, faster than I could count.”

“Where’s the local security?” she asked.

“What local security?” the Marine replied. “That buncha morons are probably getting paid off by the local cops. Wouldn’t be the first time the government paid some gang to take care of their dirty work.”

Marisa turned and ran for the stairs.

The crowd outside the perimeter was large, maybe a thousand bodies by Marisa’s estimate, but it could’ve been more. The Marines were holding them back with a show of force but she didn’t know whether they had permission to fire or even if their weapons were loaded. The mob was raucous, bordering on chaotic, and the screams and curses were audible even from this distance. Young men were burning U.S. flags, others were heaving bottles over the fence, a braver few were grabbing the gates and trying to shake them off the hinges. No doubt more than a few of them were Bolivarian militia, the civilian forces that the government called out when it needed some intimidation while keeping its own hands clean. A few others might have been from the armed gangs that ran the slums in the 23 de Enero neighborhood… maybe La Piedrita, maybe the Tupamaros. She hadn’t seen any guns in the crowd, but she was too far away to tell.

One of her few junior officers ran into the room, paper in hand, which he shoved at the station chief. Marisa scanned it, then picked up her secure phone and dialed a number she’d hoped to never use. It rang only twice before someone picked up. “Director’s office.”

“This is chief of station Caracas. I need to speak with the director.”

“Hold, please.”

Marisa didn’t have to wait long. Someone apparently had orders giving calls from Caracas station priority.

“Marisa, it’s Kathy Cooke.”

“Madam Director,” Marisa acknowledged. “We have a situation developing down here, ma’am… a serious mob outside the embassy. They’ve already assaulted one of the state officers downstairs as he was trying to get in to work. It’s not a riot yet, but it’s close. They’re calling the rest of the staff, telling them to stay home. An hour ago there was nobody out there. Then the sun came up and now I’m looking at a thousand people.”

“You think Avila organized it?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, ma’am,” Marisa replied. “Probably some Bolívars, maybe some of those gangbangers the government lets run loose. I can’t see any guns from my office window, but that doesn’t mean anything and could change in a hurry anyway. Whoever they are, we’re locked down here. The Marines aren’t letting anyone in or out.”

“So our friends can’t get back?” Cooke asked.

“They’re probably safer hunkered down in the woods right now. They couldn’t reach the gate, and even if they could the Marines wouldn’t open it now. Some idiot could make a run through it and we’d have Tehran ’79 all over again,” Marisa said.

“Can you get the team to a safe house?” Cooke asked.

“I don’t know,” Marisa replied. “Ma’am, it’s not just here. I’m holding a report from the ambassador. His people are getting calls from AmCits all over the place. People are getting roughed up, threatened, and a lot are calling to find out whether they should get out of the country. It’s not on the news back home?”

“Not yet,” Cooke told her. “I’ll check with SecState and see what he wants to do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Marisa replied. “But if the SecState decides to evacuate the embassy, we’ll have to find another way out of the country for our friends.”

“We’re already thinking about that,” Cooke reassured her. “If all else fails, I have some good friends in a five-sided building who might want to give their people a chance to stretch their legs. Anyway, stay safe, keep your staff inside and we’ll get back to you ASAP.”

Cooke disconnected from the other end and Marisa cradled the receiver. Out at the fence, a young man determined to prove his machismo tried to scale the gate and a Marine moved forward, ready to bash the protester’s fingers with the butt of his rifle. The caraqueño protester jumped back and his friends screamed at the yanqui Marine, hands waving wildly in the air as another pyre of flags lit up behind them.

A mob is only as smart as the dumbest guy in it, Marisa thought. And there’s no shortage of dumb guys out there today.

Cooke hung up her own phone and leaned back. She hadn’t slept the night before… in fact, hadn’t slept in two days now and the fatigue was catching up with her. She’d done this before, but she wasn’t a young woman anymore. Discipline could only carry her so far, caffeine a little farther, and neither as far as they once did.

“Ma’am?” Drescher was at the door with one of his team behind him, but she couldn’t remember the younger man’s name.

“Come in?” Cooke asked, sounding more tired than she’d intended.

“Ma’am, this is Marcus Holland,” Drescher said. “He’s got something you should see.”

Holland looked up at Drescher, who just nodded his head at the CIA director. The young analyst swallowed, nervous. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he said. “I work down in the Counterproliferation Center and I’m the primary analyst who’s been following Hossein Ahmadi. I’m the one who ID’d him on the video. I mean, I know his face. You should see my cube downstairs, ma’am. I’ve got so many pictures of him pinned up it looks like a shrine. All I need is some candles,” he stammered. “Anyway, I’ve been on that account for almost eleven years now—”

“That’s a long time to work one target, Mr. Holland,” Cooke observed, politely interrupting his narrative.

“He’s a big target, ma’am. He needs to go down, ma’am.”

“I agree. What do you have to show me?” Cooke asked. Her patience was fading along with her mental faculties.

The young analyst laid a folder down on the desk. “We always suspected Ahmadi was dealing with the Venezuelans but we’ve never had any evidence. But once we found that ship, I figured that he must have some other front companies that we don’t know about yet. So I started looking for them.” He pointed at the top sheet. “The MV Markarid is owned by IRISL. If we assume that Ahmadi has been shipping supplies and equipment using IRISL vessels, there have been five vessels that made the same trip in the last year. All of them sailed directly from Iran, some with no stops, some with just one or two. I tracked down which companies contracted those vessels to see whether there was a connection and found that they all secured bonds for those trips through one bank.”

“Which suggests that they could be front companies acting in collusion,” Cooke observed.

“Yes, ma’am,” Holland said, clearly pleased that the director had reached the same conclusion as he had. “I’m still trying to figure out where they fit into Ahmadi’s network, but I believe he probably created them just for this one series of operations. That would fit with his known method of operation. He compartmentalizes his operations pretty much like we do… pretty good tradecraft. Anyway, if we can get the bank records for some of those companies, I think we might be able to identify some of the accounts that Ahmadi is using to finance his proliferation network. We probably can’t get anything on the ones incorporated in Iran—”

“But two of them are incorporated in Venezuela,” Cooke said, reading off the report.

“Yes, ma’am. Joint companies, running their money through the Iran-Venezuela Joint Bank, another one of those pet partnerships that Hugo Chávez set up with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in the day.”

Cooke smiled, feeling a new rush of energy surge out of her bones into her body. “What do you need?”

It was Drescher who spoke up. “A call to the secretary of the treasury.”

“That, I can do.” Cooke picked up her phone again.

Elham knelt down by the crude shelter on the hilltop. The shooter was here, he thought. How long was he watching? That a sniper had been in position long enough to build a shelter worried him. The Iranian had built such shelters himself, but only when he was planning on staying in place for days at a time. Once he had waited in a single spot for two weeks for his target to arrive. Patience was a sniper’s tool every bit as much as his rifle.

His squad was inside the tree line below, where the hill began to slope down sharply, but there was a good break in the trees here. He could see the entire facility in the valley below, including the chemical factory and the security hub a half mile to the south. He must have watched from here, Elham thought. In every other spot on the hill there were trees obstructing the view.

The soldier looked to his right, moved some of the grass with his hand, and found the spent brass he’d hoped the shooter had left behind. Sloppy, not to clean up. Or he had to leave in a hurry? Probably the latter, he decided. Once his partner’s security breach had been detected, he would have had to flee the site as soon as she was in the woods and he could no longer see her to provide cover fire.

Elham lifted the shell. It was very large, a .50-caliber, like his own Steyr. That was not a surprise. The shooter had killed several vehicles with his gun and nothing smaller would have done the job reliably at this distance.

But he didn’t kill anyone, Elham considered. Because he wasn’t skilled enough? Or he didn’t want to? A human would have presented a smaller target, but even hitting the front of a moving jeep at this distance took considerable skill. I think you didn’t want to hit anyone. Why? Elham wondered. Political considerations? Or personal? It had to be the former. A sniper who wouldn’t kill? That made no sense to him.

He must have lain prone, the soldier thought. He pulled his Steyr rifle over his back, then laid himself into the dirt, pushing the weapon’s stock against his shoulder. Yes, here, like this, he thought. It was the most stable position to make an accurate shot over that distance. The angle is right. The berm was the rest for his gun. Elham raised his head, then rested his hand atop the stock and his chin on that. The feeling that swirled inside him was strange, like he understood this shooter, a man he’d never met. It told him nothing about where the other sniper was now, but he knew this other soldier had skills that he could respect.

One of the other soldiers came jogging up the hill, the incline steep enough that he covered the distance no faster than he could have done walking. The man was carrying some piece of metal in his hands. Elham pushed himself back onto his knees and stood, slinging the Steyr back over his shoulder. “What do you have?”

“An antenna.” The man handed over the equipment, a long, slender rod with several more rods screwed onto it at right angles down its length. “I recognize the type. The Americans used them in Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars.”

“Yes, I’ve seen them,” Elham agreed. “Did you find any other equipment?”

“A military pack with some survival equipment and a cell phone, halfway down the hill, that direction.” The soldier pointed away from the facility. “It’s a common model, available at any number of stores. It’s fairly new, no rust, so it’s not been there long enough for the rain or humidity to corrode it. We suspect the shooter lost it when he fled.”

“A common cell phone wouldn’t have worked with this,” Elham said, hefting the antenna. “You found no other communications gear?”

“No, sir. The cable connected to this was cut, and it looked like the antenna had been thrown down the hill, so he probably took any radio he had with him.”

Elham shrugged. “Probably right.”

“First the warehouse, now this,” the soldier remarked. “This entire operation is penetrated. The Americans or the Israelis could have an insider in the chemical factory.”

Elham considered the suggestion, broke it down in his mind. “I don’t think so. If they had someone that close, they wouldn’t have needed to send an operative into the base to the security hub. No, if they have an asset inside the program, it’s not someone that close. But there has been a serious breach, that much is true.”

“Do you think setting that pirate adrift somehow led them to this site?”

Elham considered the question. “I can’t imagine how anyone could have connected the two, but stranger things have happened before.”

The soldier scanned the hilltop. “I can’t believe the SEBIN didn’t patrol up here. You can see the entire valley floor from here.”

“Yes,” Elham replied. “They probably suspected that the trees provided enough cover to make it unsuitable as a surveillance site.”

“Fools,” the soldier spat. “They have no one who thinks like a real sniper. I’d sleep in the trees if I had to.”

“Agreed,” Elham told him. “Finish the sweep and let’s start down. It’ll be growing dark soon.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kyra sat in the truck cab, the iPad on her lap and plugged into the truck’s charger. The video file seemed endless. There had been thirty-two cameras and it turned out that twenty-five of them were positioned in the facility’s interior… the SEBIN had mounted more cameras inside the various buildings than out. They were more worried about their own people than they were about anyone coming in from the outside, she realized.

Kyra looked at the digital clock on the truck radio. It was late in the afternoon now, Jon was trying to get a cellular signal long enough to make a call and had been working on that task on and off since breakfast, muttering to himself most of the time. Some of his ramblings had contained a few choice profanities that Kyra swore to remember and deploy at some appropriate future moment.

She turned back to the iPad. She’d scrubbed through more than half the footage now. Most of it was mundane, images of offices and entranceways, many of which were empty. Other cameras had captured large industrial spaces, filled with valves and pumps with workers milling around the machines.

After another hour of tedium, Kyra reached the end of yet another camera’s feed, the twenty-first, and she began to fear that she’d captured nothing useful. Maybe they didn’t have a camera on the cargo? she thought. It was possible that the cargo was so sensitive that Carreño and his masters didn’t want any record at all—

The next clip of footage began to play out on the iPad screen.

That’s it.

“Jon?” she called, her voice quavering.

Jon clambered out of the back and took his place in the driver’s seat. Kyra handed him the iPad. He stared at the screen, no expression on his face.

“What now?” she asked.

“We find a phone,” Jon said.

Kyra reached up and tested the ledge. It didn’t move and she carefully put her entire weight on it, lest Jon’s ascent had weakened it. The stone held and she looked down for a toehold large enough for her boot. “When we were in China, I seem to recall that you told me that going out on the street was a stupid idea,” Kyra offered. “How’s this any different?”

“When we were in China, you didn’t speak the language and there were actual streets with people on them,” Jon answered.

Kyra only grunted in response, shifted her satchel to the other shoulder, and took his hand so he could help her clamber up the outcropping. The trees had finally given way to a steep hillside whose surface was rocky enough that only weeds could grow on it. She turned back and saw the abandoned string of buildings where they had left the truck, at least two miles away now. They had stayed inside the woods, where the canopy of the trees would give them cover from an air search. Only one helicopter had flown over and that at least a mile to the east. She had questioned the wisdom of leaving on foot, but Jon worried that their truck would be identifiable. It would also restrict their travel to roads where the SEBIN were more likely to be looking. Kyra had found no serious problems with his logic but her body was arguing the decision now all the same.

Another ten minutes’ climb brought them to the summit. Puerto Cabello appeared to the north, maybe five miles distant. “Try it now,” Jon suggested.

Kyra pulled her phone, turned it on, and stared at the screen. “One bar,” she advised. “Better than none.” She pressed a button. The unit dialed but the call refused to connect the first time, then the second, finally getting through on the third.

“This is Quiver.” The encryption almost hid the anxious tone in Marisa’s voice.

“Quiver, this is Arrowhead.”

“Good to hear from you, Arrowhead. A lot of people are worried about you two.”

“We’re good,” Kyra said. “We also have the intel from the facility and think we’ve identified the cargo.”

“Can you transmit it from your location?”

“Unlikely,” Kyra told her. “The signal here is weak and it was a two-hour hike to reach this position. I’ll be surprised if the signal holds long enough to transmit the whole file.”

“Where’s your comms gear?” Marisa asked.

“Back at the CAVIM site. We didn’t have to time to recover it before we had to bug out.”

“Understood. Can you get me anything useful?” Marisa asked.

“Maybe some screen shots?” Kyra offered the phone to Jon, then dug the iPad out of her satchel.

“What did you find?” Marisa asked.

“Quiver, Sherlock. It’s a nuke,” Jon said. “One warhead, partially disassembled.”

Marisa stared at the monitor on her desk as the image from Kyra’s iPad resolved itself slowly in her browser. The CAVIM security camera had been mounted high in the corner of the room, facing toward the center of a large machine shop stocked with drill presses and lathes and other advanced tools she couldn’t identify. In the room’s middle was a large stainless-steel table mounted on wheels. The table was clear except for a conical device, partially assembled, parts lying around it in organized fashion.

Dear God in heaven, she thought; whether this was the start of a prayer she wasn’t sure.

“We’ll still need the full video,” Marisa finally advised after more than a minute’s wait. “Otherwise Avila will just claim that we photoshopped the images.”

“We’re sitting on twenty gigabytes of security footage from the CAVIM site,” Kyra said, taking the phone back from Jon. “Maybe we can load up and head into Puerto Cabello or some other town… find an Internet café—”

“I’d advise against that,” Marisa said. “I don’t think a pair of Anglos are going to get a warm welcome in any major city at the moment and I don’t want to risk losing the footage to a street mob.”

“I guess the word got out about the op,” Jon remarked, leaning in to listen on the small speaker.

“Not the op you’re thinking,” Marisa corrected him. “The White House leaked the footage that Arrowhead recorded in the warehouse and CNN put it on the national news. You can thank the national security adviser for the chaos at the facility last night.”

Kyra snarled, too angry to even utter a proper curse. “Any chance we can make it back to the embassy?”

“Don’t even try and that’s an order. The barbarians are at the gates. There’s a mob outside that’s already assaulted one Foreign Service officer and the Marines are looking for a fight. The ambassador is going to order nonessential embassy personnel back to the States if it gets any worse, but the mob isn’t letting anyone out so the DoD is prepping to evacuate everyone by helicopter if the order comes down. The rest of us are banned from leaving the compound. We’re sleeping on couches here. All other AmCits have been advised to leave the country and more than a few tourists are sitting in holding cells. Avila’s people have even arrested some journalists. So I don’t think it’ll end well if you show your faces out there. Just hold your position and check back every four hours. We’ll figure something out. You still have enough gear to last for a while?”

“Yes, but not as much as I’d like,” Kyra said. “I left my pack on the hill and Sherlock torched my truck last night… didn’t have time to move much over.”

“We needed a diversion,” Jon offered in his defense.

“I’m in a forgiving mood,” Marisa replied. “His practical joke worked. The locals bit hard. Security sweeps went out from four other facilities less than an hour after he called. We’ve got every one of their covert facilities pegged now. So, nice work,” Marisa said. A few hundred miles away she hoped it made him smile, but wasn’t optimistic.

Her pessimism was justified. Jon just grunted, making Kyra grin. “Sherlock says, ‘You’re welcome.’”

“No, he didn’t,” Marisa replied. “But thank you anyway. We’ll find out a way for you to deliver the intel.”

“We do have another option,” Jon said.

“What’s that?” Marisa asked.

“We can try to recover the comms gear from the CAVIM site,” he said.

“I think that would qualify as one of your ‘stupid ideas,’” Marisa replied after a delay.

“Probably,” he admitted. “But maybe worth the risk if that’s really a nuke.” He tapped the iPad.

“We’ll consider it. Hold your position. We’ll get you out soon.”

“This is Drescher.” The watch officer set his pen down on the desk to give Mills his full attention.

“Mills, down in Caracas,” the station chief replied. “I’m sending you a file. You’ll want to have some analysts from the Counterproliferation Center go over it first, but you might want to call Kathy Cooke in.”

“She’s in a meeting with—”

“I think you’ll want to pull her out,” Mills interrupted.

Drescher’s eyebrows went up. “What do you have?”

“Arrowhead found something on the security footage. And you need a bigger task force.”

Drescher’s briefing had been terse and the single image from Kyra’s iPad spoke for itself. A group of analysts from the Counterproliferation Center and two other departments had filled in enough blanks that Cooke felt justified in interrupting the president’s private luncheon with the first lady with a call two minutes later. Rostow’s inclination had been to dismiss her with prejudice but Cooke’s manner had convinced him, hostility notwithstanding, to clear his schedule for the next hour. Cooke obviously disliked him but she was not suicidal, he supposed.

Feldman and Marshall passed into the Oval Office ahead of her and she closed the door behind the last staffer out. “Whatever it is—” Rostow started.

“It’s more important than whatever you were talking about,” Cooke said abruptly. She set her folder on the coffee table, pulled out the stapled packets, and passed them out. “This is the information that our officer recovered from the CAVIM facility night before last.”

Rostow flipped through the pages, then stopped at the still images, marked over with technical notations. He looked up in disbelief. “You’re not serious.”

“I am, I assure you. We’ve had analysts from our Counterproliferation Center and the Office of Weapons Intelligence, Nuclear Proliferation, and Arms Control study the photos along with some engineers from our Directorate of Science and Technology. We’ve also sent it to the Department of Energy for review, but our people concur. That”—Cooke said, pointing at the device in the photograph—“is a nuclear warhead in the final stages of assembly.”

“The last estimate I heard from your people was that the Iranians wouldn’t have nuclear weapons for another few years!” Rostow protested.

“Analysts’ estimates have always varied,” the director of national intelligence corrected him. “That’s been true for us, the Brits, the Israelis, and everyone else with a stake in the game. But given their rate of progression in acquiring equipment and expertise, there was never any question that Iran was going to get there eventually. The only real question was whether they would have the will.”

“So much for our push to open talks with them about easing sanctions,” Feldman muttered. “Better to make them feel like they wouldn’t need nukes than to keep playing these hide-and-seek games.”

“I’d have to disagree with that, sir,” Marshall replied. “Threat equals intent plus capability. Intent can change quickly and without warning, so if you want to make sure the threat is zero, make sure the capability is zero. Letting hostile countries develop capability while hoping their intent stays peaceful is rarely a winning strategy.”

“Defense without offense is the art of losing slowly,” Cooke agreed.

“Enough,” Rostow ordered. “So this isn’t an ammunition factory either?”

“It’s also an ammunition factory,” Cooke corrected him. She reached over and turned the binder pages to a second set of images. “The footage shows that they’ve converted just one floor of the building for nuclear assembly. We can’t confirm what they’re doing with the rest of it.”

“How long before that thing is assembled?” Feldman asked.

“It’s difficult to tell from the image, but it could be as little as a couple of days. After that, Ahmadi could load it up and move it out on anything as small as a jeep,” Cooke told him.

“And then we’ll never find the thing again,” Feldman said. “We can’t let that get out of the country. And we sure can’t let them mount it on some missile.”

Rostow nodded. The president’s face had gone white and he looked shaken to Cooke. “Assemble the National Security Council. Meeting in the Situation Room in twenty minutes.” He stared Cooke directly in the eyes. “You know I’m going to release this to the UN.”

“I understand that,” she replied.

Rostow furrowed his brow. “You’re not going to even try to argue with me about it.”

“This is one case where the world really does ‘need to know’ what’s going on,” she said. It was a rare thing to hear that phrase invoked in reference to the general release of information rather than keeping it secret. Jon would find that ironic, she thought.

By choice, Command Master Chief Petty Officer Amos LeJeune spent most of his time below with the enlisted men, coming up to spend time in the command centers only as necessary. He couldn’t complain about the view, but was happier to see the outside world from the deck where he could feel the sun. But captains lived on the bridge and Riley was no exception. The commanding officer stood facing a monitor that showed Vicksburg’s current position in the western Atlantic.

LeJeune approached the captain and took the offered printout. The time stamp on the message fell within the past hour. “We’re being chopped to the Fourth Fleet.”

“Really? And who else is joining our little party?”

“Harry Truman, for starters,” Riley told him. “Fifteen ships total.”

“That’s a lot of metal to be moving around the ocean. Did the rear admiral care to explain why we’ll be delaying our arrival at home?”

“He did,” Riley said, surprising the petty officer. “You saw the news last night?”

“That story out of Venezuela?” LeJeune nodded. “It’s all the news networks have been playing all day.”

“The president’s just ordered a blockade. I guess he doesn’t want that Iranian gentleman to leave.” Riley scrolled the electronic map southwest until it stopped over a small point of Venezuela’s northern coast. “We’re assigned here, southeast of Curaçao. Half the fleet will be in place by tonight. We’ll be one of the last to show for the party, on station by tomorrow night. I have no idea how long we’ll be here.”

“Mighty close to Aruba,” LeJeune noted. “A shame we won’t be making any port calls.”

“I think most of the crew would just settle for home,” Riley said.

“Most of the crew has never been to Aruba,” LeJeune countered. “I’ll let ’em know. ‘Ours to do and die.’”

“Very well.”

LeJeune handed the orders back to the captain and left the bridge to the officers.