Cold Shot

DAY SEVEN

“Who’s Marcus Holland?” the courier asked from the doorway. Drescher pointed to the far corner where the analyst was sitting and the courier made her way around the table, ogling the mass of papers covering the entire space as she did. “Delivery from Treasury,” she said.

Holland snatched the office envelope from her fingers, tore it open, and a CD in a jewel case slid out into his hand. “Yeah, baby,” he said. He looked up at the courier. “Thanks.” He swiveled in his chair, pulling the disc out as he turned, then grabbed a laptop from the conference table and slid the CD into the tray. The laptop considered the disc for several seconds, then opened a file window.

Drescher caught the young man by surprise as he leaned over the analyst’s shoulder. “Any joy?” he asked.

“Treasury actually coughed up the data. That’s something. Usually getting stuff like this takes a couple of months. The director must have pulled out the big machete to go through the red tape,” Holland said. “Ask me again in a few hours.”

Cooke had never set foot in the Security Council chamber. No CIA director had since George Tenet had taken a seat behind Colin Powell, lending his authority to the case that Saddam was still pursuing weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence failures revealed after that had made any intelligence chief a liability to have in this room. But Cooke had understood Rostow’s reason for ordering her attendance the moment he’d called. He would make the presentation and, if events to come turned out to his liking, he would take the glory. If they didn’t, her presence behind him would give him cover. The media would assume she had misled the president of the United States and she’d have to resign in disgrace, which wouldn’t bother Rostow at all.

The council chamber wasn’t the largest auditorium she’d sat in, only a few hundred feet square. Drescher had told her that the Norwegians had designed and paid for it. She looked behind the central table and studied the Per Krohg mural on the wall that overlooked the circular table — a phoenix rising from the ashes. The artist had meant it to depict the rise of peace in the aftermath of the Second World War. If that’s true, that bird is still having a terrible time trying to climb out of the fire, she thought.

The U.S. seat at the circular table was at the one o’clock position and Rostow was already there, talking to the British prime minister, who was the council president this month. Feldman took his place next to Cooke, the secretary of state and ambassador to the UN both to the left of him. The chamber was full to capacity, with some functionaries crowding at the doors and sitting in the aisles. The room was large enough to seat a few hundred and often the chairs were not all filled, but all of the players at the table were heads of state today. The world had noticed the U.S. Navy moving to cut Venezuela off from the rest of the planet, which had lent credence to the rumor that Rostow was going to present something disturbing to the council. Cooke wondered whether Feldman had passed that tidbit to the Washington Post or if Rostow had done it personally.

The British prime minister pounded his gavel against the table and the room went silent. “I should like to inform the council that I have received a letter from the representative of Venezuela, in which he advises that the head of state of the Bolivarian Republic has declined to attend the discussion of the item on the council’s agenda.”

The audience muttered at that unwelcome piece of news and Cooke heard Feldman cursing under his unpleasant breath. Rostow turned back and looked at Cooke, frustrated. She held his gaze, returned his stare, and gently shook her head. I guess Avila’s not following the plan, she thought. Hard to have an Adlai Stevenson moment when Zorin doesn’t show up. She held herself still in her seat, knowing the news cameras in the gallery could see her sitting behind Rostow, but she searched the room. Avila’s not here. His ambassador isn’t here. She searched the room and saw none of the faces she expected. The Iranians aren’t here, she realized.

“The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda,” the UK prime minister said. “The purpose of this meeting is to hear a presentation by the United States. I call on His Excellency Mr. Daniel Rostow, president of the United States of America.”

Rostow leaned forward in his seat and opened the leather binder on the table before him. “Mr. President, members of the council, honored guests, I would like to begin by expressing my thanks for the special effort that each of you made to be here today,” he began. “My purpose now is to share with you some disturbing information the United States has obtained regarding a conspiracy between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran to traffic in illegal nuclear materials in violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to which both countries are signatories, and in violation of sanctions that this council has imposed on the latter country.”

The silence in the room died in an instant, forcing Rostow to stop as cries and yells rent the air. A hundred different conversations mixed with excited utterances and the UK prime minister had to gavel the room back to attention.

Rostow nodded toward the council chairman, then started again. “The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are United States sources and some are those of other countries. Some of the sources are technical, such as photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what President Avila and his Iranian counterpart are doing. To protect our intelligence sources and methods, I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you is deeply troubling.”

“But why would the Iranians build their nukes here?” Kyra asked out loud. “It would be a lot easier to maintain security on their home soil.” She stuffed the last of her garbage into the MRE pouch and tossed it into a garbage hole they’d dug.

“I could only guess.”

“Your guesses are usually pretty good.”

“Maybe they aren’t building them in Iran because everyone is looking for them in Iran. Nobody was looking for them here,” he said. Jon cleaned out the last of his dessert pouch while he thought. “Chávez was already courting Iran before the September eleventh attacks. Then he was ousted for a few days in a coup in 2002 and the U.S. didn’t lift a finger. After that he probably thought that he was an unwritten charter member of the ‘axis of evil,’ so he started making alliances with every anti-U.S. ally who would talk to him… Iran, Libya, Syria. But Chávez was smart enough to see that he was only three hours away from the U.S., so maybe he figured he needed a little insurance after we invaded Iraq and Gaddafi decided to come clean on Libya’s WMD program. The threat of chemical weapons hadn’t deterred us from taking down Saddam and biological weapons are big bags of hurt to manufacture and maintain, not to mention you can’t control their spread after release. That left nukes.”

Jon cleaned up the remnants of his breakfast and tossed it into the hole. “Iran had the same problem. There were rumors they had a covert weapons program called the ‘Green Salt Project’ since the days of Khomeni, trying to get uranium hexafluoride for a bomb, and they’d gotten some help from AQ Khan. But after September eleventh the risks of getting caught building one went way up and their facilities were getting outed. Ahmadi could bring Iran’s nuclear production infrastructure to the table and Chávez had uranium deposits in the Roraima Basin. Iran had the means and Venezuela had raw materials. Avila’s people mine and ship uranium to Tehran, where it’s enriched, then Avila ships the fissile material back here for final assembly where no one is looking. While we’re looking all over Iran for nuclear facilities, Avila builds them in our backyard. No aspiring nuclear power has ever built its infrastructure outside its own country, so no one considered the possibility until you took that video.”

“I hesitate to reveal this information to you, but I believe that circumstances compel it and there is historical precedent of a U.S. president declassifying even the most highly sensitive information during a crisis of an exceptional nature,” Rostow said. The crowd shifted in response and the president hesitated, playing to the group. “In the first video you saw two days ago, a U.S. operative penetrated a Venezuelan warehouse and witnessed officials from both countries colluding to commit murder. One of those men was Dr. Hossein Ahmadi, who our intelligence collection confirms is a nuclear proliferator. We will make some of this intelligence available to the members of the council immediately after this session. Dr. Ahmadi’s appearance raised fears that his presence on Venezuelan soil was a sign of a larger operation. I must report to this body now that those fears are confirmed. Less than twenty-four hours ago, another highly sensitive U.S. operation recovered video footage from a Venezuelan facility near the town of Puerto Cabello, where Dr. Ahmadi’s presence was also recorded. The facility is an ammunition factory jointly constructed in 2007 by both the Venezuelan and Iranian governments. The still photograph you see behind me is taken from that video, which was filmed by the facility’s own security cameras.”

The lights in the room dimmed. Rostow turned and pointed at the graphic that appeared on the enormous screen behind him above the table — the single frame of the video, the warhead in pieces, with labels overlaying the image, identifying the parts.

“Our analysts have confirmed that the device depicted in the image is, in fact, a nuclear warhead of advanced design.”

The crowd gasped and erupted again. Cooke looked at each of the permanent council members in turn. They were hard to see, the light in the room mostly coming from the image hovering above the council table and the small lights above the individual seats. The French and British were silent, slack-jawed, staring at the screen. The Chinese delegates were quietly talking. The lone Russian, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, was staring down, his eyes closed as he listened to the translation through his headset. Then he jerked upright, eyes open now, and he twisted his head to look up at the photograph.

I guess the translator finally caught up, she thought.

Jon stopped talking as a helicopter butchered the air in the distance with a low, throbbing cry, rising over one of the lower hills to the west, then riding down the tree cover to the valley. It was ten kilometers from their position, by his estimate. It turned north and headed for the coast.

“If that’s true, they’d need more than one facility,” Kyra said. The woman was lying flat on her back, staring at the sky. She set down the Glock that she’d pulled from her holster at the sound of the aircraft. “Puerto Cabello is a long way from the Roraima Basin. I can’t imagine they’d want to move illegal uranium a few thousand miles overland to ship it out from here.” She paused and then she laughed. “That’s why you told Mari to warn other teams on an unsecured phone.”

Jon nodded. “I was hoping the SEBIN would intercept the call and send out security sweeps from any other illegal facilities. When they did, they gave up every covert facility in the country.”

It took the Security Council chairman more than a minute to finally restore order. “I’m sure that everyone here is asking how these two countries managed to accomplish this undetected. Our intelligence agencies have been working to piece the entire conspiracy together and the time line is telling,” Rostow said when the crowd finally hushed to let him speak. Cooke turned her attention to the gallery. Half the crowd was focused on Rostow, the other half looking down, tapping on their smartphones. Journalists, she realized. The story is already out.

The picture on the screen behind the council changed to show a map of Avila’s country, with a half-dozen points marked, satellite photos of each location inset to show factories and facilities. “In 2007, these two nations created a joint enterprise named VenIran that began a series of construction projects on Venezuelan soil. One of these includes the ammunition factory near Puerto Cabello, where the photo I just showed you was taken. Another is a ‘tractor factory’ in Ciudad Bolívar along the Orinoco River. A cement factory in Monagas. A car assembly plant in Aragua. All of these were revealed as part of the nuclear infrastructure during the operation. I cannot reveal to you how this was accomplished, as the sources and methods involved are far too complex and sensitive.”

Thank heaven for small favors, Cooke thought. For once she was grateful that the man was a shameless liar.

“With those and other facilities in place, in November 2008, both countries signed a secret ‘science and technology’ agreement formalizing cooperation ‘in the field of nuclear technology,’” Rostow went on. “That same month, the Iranian company Impasco received a ‘gold mine’ concession in the heart of the Roraima Basin in the southeastern state of Bolívar, which sits along the Venezuela-Guyana border. I would suggest that if you think it’s gold they’re after, you should think again.”

“So you were just making things up as you went along?” Kyra asked.

“Something like that,” Jon admitted. “I had no idea whether it would work, but I figured if your op was blown, there would be no reason not to try. But if Mari’s right, we should have a map of their nuclear infrastructure now. It’ll take a while to figure out what each facility is for; the CAVIM chemical plant has got to be the hub…” Jon trailed off.

“What?” Kyra asked. She’d seen the man cut himself off in midsentence before. The tic usually heralded some unpleasant conclusion.

“The ammunition factory… part of the facility is a chemical plant.”

“Yeah.”

“And those pirates burned to death,” he said. “The ones in the cargo container.”

“Yeah, it sure looked like it.” Kyra zoned out the world and focused on his face, watching the theory play out in his mind, one logical connection joining another and another, latching on to each other in a steady trail. “If Ahmadi was smuggling nuclear material, that would make sense.”

“Not if he was smuggling processed uranium. Even weapons-grade uranium is only weakly radioactive… all the isotopes are unstable. It decays by releasing alpha particles. Anything blocks alpha particles, even your skin. It can’t burn you from the outside. You’d have to inhale it for it to kill you.”

He was staring past her into space now, his hand pressing against his forehead like he was trying to squeeze the thoughts out. It usually meant the logical leaps were coming too fast for even him to track and he had to slow down his mind.

“All the nuclear weapons ever designed have only used two kinds of fissionable material… uranium and plutonium. You want plutonium if you can get it because you only need ten kilograms of the stuff to create critical mass, but you need three times as much uranium. More bang per kilo, as it were, but making it is complicated,” he replied, trying to organize his theory as he spoke. “And at weapons grade, neither one would burn you to death in the time it takes to cross the Atlantic.”

“So what cooked the pirates?” He’d have the answer, she was sure.

“Plutonium is a by-product of nuclear reactors,” Jon said. “U238 goes in and nuclear waste comes out — spent fuel rods made up of U234 and trace amounts of plutonium239 and a laundry list of nasty isotopes that emit beta and gamma particles that can cook a human being in short order. That’s why they have to bury the stuff behind some serious shielding for a few million years. But with the right equipment, you can extract the plutonium from the fuel rods. You need a reprocessing facility to do that and one key element of the reprocessing cycle is nitric acid.”

“And they set up shop in a chemical factory,” Kyra replied, repeating his assertion. Her own mind was racing now, trying to follow his leaps and conclusions. “The Venezuelans mine the uranium and ship it to Iran, where it’s processed and run through a reactor to produce spent fuel rods. Then they ship the fuel rods and other parts for the warhead back here,” she realized, “and the Venezuelans reprocess the waste to extract the plutonium.”

“Which they use to make the nuclear ‘pit,’” Jon agreed. “Except this time, a group of pirates took the ship and broke into the cargo hold. They cracked open one of the fuel-rod containers and got a lethal dose. The Iranians took the ship back and locked the bodies down in the hold, except for the one they threw overboard—”

“Why do that?” Kyra asked. “That makes no sense.”

Jon shook his head. “I don’t know. It was a stupid act, but that’s not the point.”

“The point is that the CAVIM facility isn’t just a chemical factory,” Kyra said. “It’s a nuclear reprocessing plant.” She looked at Jon and realized that she’d reached the end of his analytical process. “The Iranians aren’t shipping nuclear warheads into Venezuela. They’re making the nuclear warheads here.”

“And in December 2008, the Republic of Turkey intercepted an IRISL vessel carrying cargo destined for this so-called tractor factory.” Rostow’s list of allegations was getting tedious now, coming one after another in an endless stream of criminal charges, but Cooke kept herself rigid. The audience was alternately locked on to the American president or their laptops and tablets, and the CIA director could hear the combined sounds of dozens of reporters and spectators clicking away at their keyboards. “But the cargo didn’t contain tractor parts. It contained large quantities of explosives. Now, why would a tractor factory need explosives? It’s a shame President Avila isn’t here to tell us, isn’t it?”

“You’d need them to build an implosion weapon,” Jon explained. “You surround the nuclear core with explosives in a very precise pattern. They go off simultaneously, forming a perfectly spherical pressure wave that compresses the core, forcing it to critical mass. Inject a little tritium or deuterium at the right moment to enhance the fission reaction and you’ve got a bomb with more explosive yield than either Fat Man or Little Boy.”

“Convenient that the CAVIM factory produces explosives,” Kyra observed.

“Isn’t it?” he agreed.

The audience had fallen silent. Rostow had finally stopped speaking, using the dramatic pause in his presentation to enhance the effect of its blistering rhetoric.

The U.S. president said nothing for almost ten seconds, then leaned forward, his voice low and measured again. “After my recent broadcast, President Avila of Venezuela released a statement declaring his country’s innocence and accusing my country of imperialism. He accused my country of hypocrisy and of faking the evidence presented. Well, President Avila,” Rostow said, staring directly at the network cameras in the back of the room, “let me say to you, sir, that the evidence released then and the evidence I have released now have not been faked or fabricated in any way. It is you, sir, who have deliberately and cynically deceived this body and the world about your efforts to help Iran evade its obligations in pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is you, sir, who is trying to upset the balance of security in the world. You and Venezuela, in concert with Iran, have created this danger, not the United States. The world has seen how far a Venezuelan chief of state is willing to go in order to deceive this body.”

Rostow leaned back, pulled off his glasses, and dropped them on the table, exaggerating the weariness implicit in his gesture. “Mr. President, members of the council, I have ordered the United States Navy to establish a blockade of the northern coast of Venezuela and prevent any ship or aircraft from departing the country. We cannot afford to allow President Avila the opportunity to smuggle Hossein Ahmadi or any illegal nuclear materials out of the country. I ask this council to pass a resolution supporting that action. I further ask this council to pass a second resolution imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela if it does not immediately comply with its obligation under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and open its nuclear sites to IAEA inspectors immediately. I am submitting draft resolutions to that effect today.”

The UK prime minister nodded slowly, then leaned forward to his own microphone. “The draft resolutions are accepted for review. We will take a ten-minute recess and then reconvene.” He slammed the gavel on the wooden desktop.

The audience erupted; arguments and conversations broke free in a dozen languages, and more than a few members of the crowd ran for the doors, cell phones pressed to their ears.

Feldman spun around in his seat. “Where’s Avila?” he growled.

“Caracas, I presume,” Cooke replied.

“Why isn’t he here?!”

“We have no intelligence that answers that question,” the CIA director replied.

“That isn’t acceptable,” Feldman told her.

“It’s the only answer I can give you. But if you’re asking for a theory, I’d say he’s not here because he had a good idea of what the president was going to say and didn’t feel the need to defend himself… possibly because he’s close to becoming a nuclear power and there’s nothing the UN can do to stop him before he gets that warhead put together.” She pushed herself up and began to button her jacket. “If you don’t need me to be a show prop anymore, I have to get back to Langley. I still have people down there and we need to get them out.”

“Don’t try to bring them home just yet, Kathy. This isn’t over and I don’t need you diverting resources that we might need—” Feldman began to order.

“We all serve at the pleasure of the president.” Then Cooke leaned over, putting her face inches from his. “But I’m going to protect my people, Mr. Feldman,” she told him.

She turned her back to the men, made her way around the center table, and walked out of the Security Council chamber. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency was quite sure she would never see it again.

The American Marines had broken out the riot gear now. The television on the hotel wall showed the U.S. military guards standing in a line, making a show of force for the mob that certainly numbered in the low thousands now. The scene shifted to show the crowd on the other side of the gates. The protest signs they carried were crude, offering the usual insults and making the typical demands. They’d burned a few flags, but having run out of those they had begun to express their anger through violence, and the bricks and bottles were now coming over the wall at a steady clip. The heavy metal barrier was holding the crowd back despite their best efforts to shake it free from its hinges in the masonry — the U.S. State Department clearly had learned a few things about security and construction since losing its embassy in Iran to the locals in ’79—but it couldn’t restrain them forever. Only a few caraqueños had tried to climb the walls, mostly young, stupid boys anxious to prove their manhood to their peers and nearby girls, but they’d had the sense to retreat when the soldiers had moved toward them. That couldn’t last. One of the boys would finally try to outdo his fellows by staying on the wall too long and then things would get interesting.

“Like your own revolution, no?” Avila asked. Ahmadi and the soldier, Elham, stood inside the room, staring at the television. The crowd below seemed to offer no fascination for the Iranians, he saw. Well, it isn’t their country, he supposed. The future of their mutual enterprise was at stake, admittedly, but the protests and sporadic violence signaled their triumph, he was quite sure.

Ahmadi grunted. He could hear the yells from the streets below even here on the top floor of the residential tower where the Venezuelan president had arranged to hide him from sight. “It does remind me of my younger days,” he admitted. “The day we took the Americans’ embassy in Tehran was the real moment we saved our country from the West. It is strange how easy it was in the end. The Americans are like shadows… frightening until you finally touch them and realize that their image was their power all along. A little courage is enough to break their hold.”

Avila smiled and leaned on the balcony rails, placing his forearms on the metal guard. “Our comandante Chávez first tried to take power in 1992, when he staged a coup against el presidente Carlos Andrés Pérez. The plan was to take Miraflores, the Ministry of Defense, the military airport, a few other important sites. But he was betrayed by defectors and trapped inside the Military Museum. This…” Avila raised his hands in a sweep over the protests twenty floors below. “This is what he had hoped to see. And some civilians did rally here and in other cities… Maracaibo, Valencia. Still, it all fell to pieces. The comandante was captured and went to prison. But God’s will was done and he emerged victorious. The coup earned him the people’s loyalty and they elected him president seven years later. But his revolution truly began that night of the coup.”

“You were there?” Elham asked.

“I was,” Avila told him, pride on his face. “Would that I had been a soldier and had been taken with him that night, but I was just a factory worker then. But when I heard of his move on the capital, I ran out and joined the civilians who moved against the city center in Valencia. The troops came against us and we fought them. I escaped arrest, but I knew that God had called me that night to join the Bolivarian revolution. I moved to Caracas, and when the comandante was freed, I devoted myself to his cause. He was more than a leader, I think. He was like a prophet, blessed by heaven to return freedom to this country.”

“And how many died in your coup?” Elham asked.

Avila shrugged. “A dozen soldiers in the actual attack. A few dozen more when they were called to suppress the crowds. They killed almost a hundred of us. But you are right, hermano. Their courage was enough to bind the movement together.” The president slapped the metal rail standing between him and the empty air beyond. “And now Chávez’s dream is made real. The revolution will never end, but here, today, it becomes final … irreversible.”

“But not all of these people are protesting against the Americans,” Ahmadi said. “I’m told that a good many are against you.” And me, he didn’t say.

“We have experience handling protests,” Avila said, waving a dismissive hand at the crowd.

Ahmadi nodded, then looked back at the city below. “And President Rostow’s address to the UN doesn’t worry you?”

“What can they do now?” Avila said.

“They do have a fleet off your coast,” Ahmadi observed.

“And what will they do with it? What will they shoot with it?” Avila asked. “We will harass them and they will do nothing… perhaps turn some ships away from our ports, but nothing else. You will see. As you said, their image is their power. Even when they put up a line around Cuba during 1962, they wouldn’t attack the island itself. They knew what the price would be. And when the weapon is assembled, we will announce it to the world and the Americans will leave. No doubt there will be a period of upheaval. The Americans will try to rally the world against us, to impose sanctions or some other punishment. But our brother Castro has survived sanctions for decades. Your own country has survived sanctions for decades. We will persist and the Americans will have to accept what is.”

“I think you will find that the Americans do not like to accept ‘what is.’ They much prefer to define the rules by which everyone else must play. They’re stubborn that way,” Elham told him.

The door to the room opened without warning. Carreño stomped in and tossed a leather briefcase on the desk before collapsing himself on the cushions. “You have good news, I presume?” Avila said, more an order than a question.

“No,” Carreño said, ignoring the directive. “My motorcade was attacked leaving Miraflores.”

Avila’s eyes widened and his mouth tightened. “Explain.”

“We were pulling out of the gates. A few people in the crowd had thrown rocks, bottles, garbage, but someone threw a Molotov, which hit the car. My driver was able to evade and get us away—”

“They knew who you were?” Avila asked.

“They didn’t care who I was,” Carreño told the president. “We were just some officials leaving the palacio and they tried to kill us. It could have been you and they would have done the same. And this is spreading, Diego.” The SEBIN director called the president by his first name, too worked up to care about protocol now. “The reports are that the crowds in the other cities are still growing. Attacks on the troops are getting more violent. We are taking casualties.”

Avila nodded, his teeth clenched. The intelligence officer knew his chief of state well enough to see that he was embarrassed by the news. Weakness before allies was not to be tolerated. “I don’t want these groups coordinating.”

“We can shut down Internet service…the phone companies will follow orders. We can send soldiers to occupy them if they won’t,” Carreño suggested.

“We should shut down the entire cellular network,” Avila replied.

“That would make it difficult to coordinate with the gangs and other civilian allies.”

Avila grunted. “Very well. Leave it up for now. But if the situation grows worse, it will have to come down.”

“Yes, sir,” Carreño said, suddenly tired.

Captain Dutch Riley stepped through the hatch onto the Vicksburg bridge. “Captain on the bridge,” the officer of the deck announced.

“Report,” he ordered.

“We have a contact bearing one-eight-three, ten thousand yards on course zero zero zero, speed twenty-five knots,” the lieutenant replied. “Sir, she’s approaching the red line and will cross in four minutes at her present speed. Signal bridge reports she’s a warship, likely a Lupo-class frigate. I’ve ordered a course change to intercept, speed thirty knots. What are your orders?”

“Very well. The XO is in the CIC?”

“Yes, sir.”

Course zero zero zero, Riley thought. That was no navigational error. Due north. She’s going to run the line. “Set Condition One, then ask him about it,” Riley ordered, nodding his head toward the approaching vessel.

The junior officer looked up, surprised that the captain was declining to take immediate command. “Aye aye, sir,” he said, trying to suppress a smile. The OOD turned on the 1MC. “General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations. General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations. Damage Control, set Condition Zebra.” Then he took a deep breath, switched off the shipwide speaker, and raised the mic again. “Venezuelan warship, this is USS Vicksburg. State your intentions.” He held the mic to his chest, keeping a mental countdown as he waited for the answer, which didn’t come in time, and so he lifted the mic to his mouth and repeated himself.

Captain Rafael Loyo of the Bolivarian National Armada of Venezuela fought down the urge to tell the American his real desires in profane terms and restricted himself to his orders. Whether the admirals in Caracas were actual fools or just playing at it for some higher purpose, he didn’t know, but regardless, he didn’t like them using his ship this way. My ship? he thought. It wasn’t really, he knew, but every captain liked to think so. The days were long gone when pirates sailed these waters and captains acted alone for months, sometimes years at a time, without orders from their superiors. In those days, a ship truly did belong to its master and commander. Now a captain was never truly alone and the admirals above and far away used ships like pawns. A disobedient captain could be removed on a whim, whisked away by helicopter within hours of even questioning an order. He wanted desperately to disobey this one, but there was no point to it. The admirals would have their way and the American blockade line would be tested, whether with the Almirante Brión or another vessel.

Vicksburg? Loyo ransacked his memory and came up with nothing. One of the junior officers finally handed him a vessel recognition card — Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser. The American ship was four times the size of the Almirante Brión, bigger, heavier, a severe mismatch in every way but speed. His own ship was a Lupo-class missile frigate, built by the Italians to counter the Russian Navy ships in the Mediterranean, then later upgraded by the Americans before Chávez turned so completely hostile to them. The Brión was no ship to be trifled with, but it was now badly outmatched, not nearly the equal of the vessel he was approaching. At best, with luck and God’s blessing, she might actually manage to sink the Vicksburg. She had a pair of Mark-32 torpedo tubes, American designed, and the ordnance to go with them. If Loyo fired first at close range, he might prevail. But the Vicksburg would surely savage his own ship in short order, sending her to the bottom in the time it took the torpedo to transit the space between them. One antiship missile from the American ship would kill his entire crew and they did not deserve that fate. They were a good crew, mostly boys who should not have been pawns in this stupid game of machismo that the politicians were trying to play with the rest of the world.

Loyo would not fire first. He would not be the man to plunge his country into a war the Americans could win very, very quickly.

He looked down through the forward windows at the foredeck. His men were at their stations, guns manned, but his sailors were untested. Venezuela hadn’t fought a naval battle since… when? The War of Independence in 1824? Certainly not in his lifetime. None of his men had ever fired a gun in anger and now they were facing down the most powerful navy in all of history? The admirals and politicians expected this crew of untested young men to embarrass the Americans? He would count himself fortunate if one of those nervous teenagers on the deck didn’t do something foolish out of pure fear.

“Vicksburg, this is the Bolivarian National Armada ship Almirante Brión,” Loyo replied over his own mic. The Venezuelan sailor rankled at having to answer in English. It was another sign of which navy truly ruled these international waters. “I am engaged in the defense of Venezuelan coastal waters per international law. You are in violation of our territorial sovereignty. Withdraw immediately.” Foolishness, he thought. They were well past the twelve-mile line that marked the end of Venezuela’s territory and the U.S. captain surely knew it. He didn’t need a GPS to tell him that. At this distance, a sextant and compass would’ve been more than enough to figure that out. They will not run.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Riley muttered, too quiet for anyone else on the bridge to hear.

“Brión, this is USS Vicksburg,” the OOD said. He took a deep breath, excited that the captain was putting his trust in him, terrified of speaking even a single word wrong. “We are in international waters and are engaged in the enforcement of the Venezuelan quarantine per orders of the president of the United States and UN Security Council resolution twenty-five eighty-seven. You are hereby ordered to remain inside the zone or you will be fired upon. Heave to or reverse your course.” He looked to his commanding officer for approval. Riley nodded at him and watched the young man’s confidence start to swell.

The response was immediate. “Vicksburg, this is Almirante Brión. You are in Venezuelan waters. You will withdraw or we will seize your vessel in the name of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for violations of our national laws.” The Venezuelan captain’s English was accented, heavy to the point of being unintelligible through the speaker.

“Brión, this is your last warning. Reverse course or you will be fired upon,” the OOD ordered.

The Americans were holding their ground, as Loyo had believed they would do. Both vessels were well out into the open oceans, both their captains knew it, and Vicksburg’s captain must have thought Loyo a fool for disputing that reality. But his orders were clear and Loyo intended to follow them. He could hardly expect his own men to follow his orders if he was willing to disobey those he was given.

“Steady as you go,” he ordered the sailor at the helm.

“Steady as you go, course zero zero zero, sir.”

“How long to the quarantine line?” Loyo asked

“Two minutes, ten seconds, sir,” the helmsman answered. The younger man’s voice quavered a bit as he said it.

“Very well.” He’s afraid, Loyo knew. I don’t blame him. I’m afraid. But perhaps his leaders were right and the Americans wouldn’t fire. Any fight now would be one-sided and perhaps the fear of appearing as bullies before the world would stay the Americans’ hand.

Maybe, Loyo thought. He would know in two minutes.

“They’re holding course and speed, sir,” the OOD reported a minute later. “They’ll cross the red line in fifty-five seconds.”

My responsibility if we have to fire, Riley thought. The first shot in a conflict should never be laid on the shoulders of a subordinate, he believed. The younger officer had performed well but it was time for Riley to take back his command. “Very well. Lieutenant, once she crosses the red line, put one shot across her bow with the five-inch gun.”

“Aye aye, sir,” the officer of the watch said, relieved that the captain was finally taking charge. “Forty-five seconds.”

“Distance to the Vicksburg?” Loyo asked. He stared at the American vessel through his binoculars. She was some distance away, but even so, she was large enough for him to see the five-inch gun swivel on the foredeck.

“Thirteen-point-five kilometers. Ten seconds to the red line, Captain,” the helmsman announced.

“Sir, shall I target the Vicksburg?” the gunnery officer asked.

Target them? Loyo thought. I suppose we must. The Vicksburg’s guns were surely trained on his vessel. Loyo nodded. “Very well.” Loyo counted backward in his mind. Diez, nueve, ocho, siete, seis, cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno…

“We have crossed the red line, sir.”

For a moment, Loyo thought the Americans would do nothing, that his superiors had been right. The U.S. Navy would not fire. The quarantine was an illusion and the Vicksburg and her sister ships and the aircraft flying between them in a thousand-mile line were all an empty show of force. Then anger began to surge in him, fury that the Americans had tried to oppress his country again, to intimidate them into acting out of cowardice. But he and his men were not cowards. He felt a bit of pride swell in his chest, that he and his men had braved the danger despite their fears—

The Vicksburg’s five-inch gun roared, fire and smoke tearing into the blue sky. The round struck the water just ahead of the bow, missing the Brión by only tens of meters and spewing a geyser into the sky that flew as high as the ship’s bridge. The officers on the bridge began to yell, alternately asking for orders and hurling them around, contrary directions given as discipline started to break down in the face of real hostile fire.

It’s over, Loyo thought. The Americans were not hesitating, they were not backing down… no sign of weakness. We cannot fight them and win—

Riley had heard his ship’s gun fire before, but never in anger, only in drills. It sounded the same this time, but he felt no joy in it now. Heave to, you idiot, he ordered the other ship’s captain. Whoever was in charge of the Brión had to know how badly he was outgunned. You obeyed your orders, you made the good show, now don’t be stupid—

“Sir!” the officer of the deck yelled. He pointed out the window.

The Brión’s OTOBreda 127mm deck gun flashed orange and red. It was a strange thing, to see the sight without hearing the noise of the gun, and it took Riley a second to realize the cause. The sound was slower than the light.

The sound wave was also slower than the round the gun had just fired. They wouldn’t hear it before it hit.

“Come right, steer course one one five! All engines ahead full!” Riley ordered.

“Come right, steer course one one five, all engines ahead full, aye, sir!” the OOD repeated, confirming the command.

Riley grabbed the 1MC. “All hands, brace for shock!” He felt Vicksburg’s four General Electric turbine engines surge under his feet, trying to squeeze out the few horsepower that they hadn’t already been throwing into the water. The two propellers chewed into the Atlantic and the ship began a hard turn to port—

The round hit the Vicksburg just aft of the island, ripping into metal and armor, sending a small fireball and white smoke back out over the water. Riley heard the dull thud, followed by the scream of his wounded ship as the steel plating was torn and the entire vessel shuddered under the blow.

No! Loyo thought. The explosion on Vicksburg’s superstructure seemed impossibly large given the distance and he knew without question that American sailors had just died. He prayed to God that it wasn’t so but the shot had hit the ship a solid blow. He’d seen it rocked in the water and was sure he would be able to see the hole in the armor when the smoke cleared… assuming he lived that long.

“Who fired?!” he yelled. He knew the answer before he’d asked the question. The OTOBreda gun was controlled by a single console, operated by one crewman who controlled the entire firing sequence. “I didn’t order you to fire!”

The crewman, barely more than a teenager, looked out, terrified. He panicked, Loyo realized. The Americans fired and in his terror he fired back. But now that the Vicksburg was wounded, fired on by his ship in international waters, the Americans had cause to return fire in kind, and the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser carried ordnance that would crack a Lupo-class ship in half.

Loyo grabbed for the radio mic. “Vicksburg, this is Brión! Do not fire! Repeat, hold your fire! Our shot was an accident! An accident!” He doubted the American captain would believe him.

In his panic, Loyo failed to realize that he was yelling in Spanish.

“XO, return fire, all guns!” Riley ordered. “Then ready the Harpoons to fire on my order.” Riley’s executive officer was in the Combat Information Center.

“Return fire, all guns then ready Harpoon launch, aye sir,” the XO replied over the radio. Vicksburg had two five-inch guns and they both roared almost before the executive officer had finished confirming the order.

The ship shuddered as both guns went off at once and Riley watched the forward gun spew its spent metal shell out of the turret. The reload would be automatic and take a little more than a second. He heard the speaker come alive again, the captain of the Brión yelling something, but Riley didn’t speak Spanish and didn’t care now what the man had to say anyway. His rules of engagement allowed him to respond “in kind” and the Venezuelans weren’t going to get another shot.

Both of Vicksburg’s five-inch shells connected with the Venezuelan ship. The Almirante Brión heaved under the captain’s feet and Loyo heard men scream in terror as the vessel bucked in the water. Fire erupted from the foredeck and the captain heard the screech of tearing metal as shrapnel scattered across the deck. Loyo wasn’t sure where the second round had hit, surely aft of the island, and he prayed the explosion wasn’t near the waterline. Men and bodies took flight, some pitching out over the rails into the water, others sliding across the deck, coming to rest against bulkheads and whatever else blocked their paths.

The men of his bridge crew were lost in their own yells and panic, their drills and training hardly remembered. The fire control officer was paralyzed by his own fear and terror at what he had started. Any order Loyo gave would take long seconds for the men to carry out now, assuming that enough of them could control themselves long enough to hear him and obey.

He lifted his binoculars and looked out across the water at the enemy vessel. Vicksburg’s five-inch guns flashed again and Loyo knew that more of his sailors were about to die.

He also knew that the five-inch guns weren’t Vicksburg’s heaviest weapons. A single Harpoon missile would end this fight in seconds, maybe cracking the Brión in half, maybe not, but surely sending her to the bottom with every sailor aboard who couldn’t stagger to the deck and throw himself into the sea. He couldn’t let that happen. There were too many young boys aboard, too many men who deserved to go home today. Could he sink the Vicksburg before she fired? If the captain gave the order to launch his torpedoes, were there enough men belowdecks who would hear and obey to carry out the order? Maybe he couldn’t stop this at all. If his ship was to die, he might be able to sink the American ship too—

Loyo felt a heavenly calm settle over him. No, he thought. Even if he gave the order, a Harpoon would cover the distance in a fraction of the time it would take his torpedoes to reach the Vicksburg and his men would die. If they managed to fire the torpedoes before the Harpoon struck, the Vicksburg would be crippled, possibly sunk, either way unable to perform rescue operations even if the captain were so inclined, and men would die all the same.

The second pair of five-inch shells hit the Brión, tearing into the steel plates, one round hitting the superstructure, and Loyo lost his footing as the entire island shuddered, as though some giant’s fist had struck his ship. The deck was hidden by dark smoke now, and Loyo could smell it in the air. Electronics were burning, the insulation on the wires melting.

Vicksburg’s guns flashed again. There was only one choice to make and he had to make it now. The next five-inch shells might kill his radio and all hope of ending the fight while some of his men lived.

Loyo picked up the mic, cleared his mind, and made sure this time that he was speaking in English.

“Vicksburg, this is Almirante Brión,” he said calmly. “We surrender.”

Two more shells from Vicksburg’s deck guns slammed into the Brión’s hull, ripping holes in the hard metal, one of them near the waterline.

“Cease fire!” Riley ordered.

“Cease fire, aye,” the XO confirmed. Down in the CIC, the fire control officer slammed his hand down on the controls and the guns obeyed their captain.

The bridge crew turned to their captain, waiting for his next command. Riley looked out at the Venezuelan ship.

The Brión was almost hidden by a cloud of black smoke. Oil and fluids were burning somewhere belowdecks and he could see the flames through the gaping holes in the hull. She’d taken six hits from his five-inchers and would’ve taken at least that many more before a Harpoon would’ve closed the distance and torn her in two. Riley wondered for a moment how close the fire control team had been to launching the antiship missile he’d ordered.

He lifted the mic to his mouth. “Brión, this is Vicksburg. We accept your surrender. Heave to and prepare to receive boarding parties.”

“Understood, Vicksburg. We will receive your boarding parties. Please understand that we fired on your vessel by accident. Repeat, we fired by accident. Can we render any assistance to your crew?”

Riley’s eyebrows went up at the question. They want to help us? It took some humility for the man to make that offer, he realized. Their captain is telling the truth. Maybe we’ve got a chance to back everyone down here.

He turned on the radio. “Brión, thank you for your offer. Your concern is much appreciated. We will discuss mutual assistance after our boarding party has come aboard your vessel.”

“Understood, Vicksburg. Standing by to receive your launch.”

Riley flipped the switch on the 1MC. “This is the captain,” he said. His voice echoed throughout the passageways and across the smoking deck outside. “I have accepted the surrender of the Venezuelan warship Almirante Brión. Their captain reports that they fired by accident and has offered their assistance. We will maintain general quarters until we confirm nonbelligerence.” The captain could imagine how well that bit of news was being received belowdecks by the crew. “Your performance during the fight was exemplary. Well done. Let’s show them how Americans can be gracious in victory. Boarding parties to the deck in one minute. All departments, send damage and casualty reports to the bridge immediately. Master Chief LeJeune to the bridge.”

It took LeJeune less than thirty seconds to obey the order.

“How does it look?” Riley asked.

“We’re okay, I think. One clean hit to the island. We’ve got wounded; looks like four casualties and we took some damage to the multifunction radar.”

“Status of the casualties?” Riley asked.

“I’m not sure, sir. I saw them as I passed by them running. At least one critical that I saw, judging by the burns. Two others look serious. We’ll have to evac them out.”

“Very well,” Riley acknowledged. “Make it so.”

“Not going to seize the ship, sir?” LeJeune asked, nodding his head at the Almirante Brión. “You’re passing up your chance to be a commodore for a few hours,” he said, a bit of dry mirth in his voice.

Riley pondered that for a minute. “No,” he said finally, too quiet for the rest of the bridge crew to hear. “He never fired a shot after that first salvo and he says that was an accident.”

“You believe that?”

“If it gives us the chance to avoid a shooting war and killing a lot of Venezuelans kids, I’ll choose to believe it,” Riled responded. “We’ll help patch them up and then send them home under their own flag. Tell Doc Winter to get over there and help take care of their wounded after he’s prepped our own for evac. We’ll airlift anyone he can’t treat here over to the Truman.”

“That’s generous,” LeJeune conceded.

“Maybe the sight of two wounded ships helping each other out after a misunderstanding might get everyone to calm down a bit,” Riley said.

“Maybe, assuming it really was a misunderstanding,” the master chief agreed. “But the politicians aren’t always so good at connecting compassion with common sense.”

The stars were out, the lesser ones near the horizon disappearing in the light that the port town was throwing into the sky. Jon stared at the darkness just over the town where only a single point remained. Mars, he thought. There was a red tint to it. Or perhaps the color came from the smoke. Several pyres rose from Puerto Cabello: four, and one had started in the last hour. All were too large to be campfires set by tourists on the beach, and if Marisa had been right, there wouldn’t be any tourists on the beach now anyway. He closed his eyes, hoping to pick up some stray sound from the port city that might give him some clue about what was happening, but all was silent. Humidity muffles noise, he knew, and this country had more than its share of humidity.

He turned his back to the city lights and searched the now-darkened valley floor for any sign of Kyra. The young woman had left hours before to fetch the truck. He’d wanted to accompany her, but she’d insisted on going alone. You’re better on the Barrett, she’d said. The hill’s defensible and you can cover me. Neither was true. There was no defensible position against an enemy that could bring in helicopters and lay down fire from the air, and the forest canopy kept him from seeing her once she reached the base of the hill. But he couldn’t argue with her assertion that it made no sense for them both to get arrested if someone was waiting for them at the abandoned shack. So she’d left all her gear but her gun, climbed down, and walked into the woods. He’d stared through the Barrett scope at the cluster of buildings where they’d left the vehicle, looking for some sign of her until growing darkness had made that futile. Now he hoped to see truck headlights through the woods from that direction, but there was nothing. That made sense, too. Kyra would probably be navigating with her night vision alone, fearing that headlights would be visible from the air. There was no sound from her engine either. At this distance, the humidity was probably stifling that too.

He could call her on the PRC-148. She was carrying hers. Without the antenna or transceiver, the radios were only good for line of sight and he could see far enough, but he didn’t want Kyra to think he was looking over her shoulder.

Jon took up the cell phone instead. He dialed the one number in its memory, the call went through on the first try, and he waited for the encryption to start up.

“This is Quiver.”

“Quiver, Sherlock,” he told Mari. “Just checking in.”

“Good to hear your voice,” she said. “What’s your status?”

“Arrowhead has gone back to move the truck closer to our position. She left three hours ago, still isn’t here,” he reported. “She should be back soon. How are things at your place?”

“Some of the locals weren’t thrilled to hear that Avila is trying to take the country nuclear,” Mari said. “Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail over the wall a half hour ago. Not sure what things are like outside the walls. None of the media are showing what’s happening. I think the president here has shut that down. We’re just getting snippets and cell-phone video from bloggers. But from what we can tell, there are some pretty ugly riots going down across the country.”

“I think that’s going on here too,” Jon said. “I see smoke columns going up from the city closest to my position.”

“Roger that.”

“Anything new on the bad guys?” he asked.

“POTUS made an appearance before the UN and called them out. The Security Council approved his request for a blockade. He doesn’t want them moving their package out of the country. The ambassador is working the phones with the Colombians and the Brazilians to make sure their borders stay closed, but it sounds like Guyana isn’t cooperating… some greedy autocrats are holding out for some bribes in return for their help. Whoever thought Western security would hinge on Guyana? Anyway, congratulations. You set off the sequel to the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“It gets better,” Jon said. “I’m pretty sure the base where Arrowhead found the package has a nuclear reprocessing facility hidden away somewhere. Probably under the chemical plant.”

“Was that on the video?”

“No. But it’s a logical deduction. I’ll spell it out for you when I see you. For now, just tell the folks back home. Someone there is bound to be smart enough to work backward from the conclusion to figure out my reasoning,” he replied.

“You’re not a weapons analyst. How do you know this stuff?”

“I’ve written a few Red Cell papers on proliferation,” he replied. “If the facility isn’t here, it’s at one of the other sites. And if that’s right, then all they need is a single nuclear reactor, even a small one, and they’ve got everything they need to run the nuclear fuel cycle.”

“I believe you. You were always right.”

“You always found that annoying,” he said.

“Yeah, I did, but the arguments were fun,” she admitted. “Until that day in the sandbox. You were different after that. I always hoped you were going to get over what happened, but you never did.”

“That’s the funny thing about Asperger’s. It turns out that when a memory gets dredged up, you get all of the emotions that came with it the first time… they don’t fade. Combine that with an eidetic memory and time doesn’t heal a thing.”

Marisa closed her eyes as that revelation sank in. He never told me. No, that wasn’t right. You didn’t stay long enough to find out, did you? “How do you get past them?” she asked quietly, trying to be careful. Words felt dangerous now, each one a weapon primed to go off if she picked wrong.

“You try hard to never think about them… or you replace them with something better. Whichever works,” he told her.

“Is that what you’ve been doing since I left?” Marisa asked. “Replacing them?” Of course he was, she thought. How could he not?

Jon said nothing and silence filled the time, giving her the answer. “Jon, Syria was coming apart. Assad was breaking out the chemical weapons. The Special Activities Center doesn’t always let us tell families or friends where we’re going. You know that.”

“I do. But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me you were coming back. I found out you were in D.C. when I read about it in an intel cable.”

She shifted the phone headset to the other side of her head, used her newly freed hand to lock the window shades open, and looked out at the city as her mind sifted through the answers she could give. Small pyres of smoke were rising in a dozen columns, from the shantytowns that covered the mountain hills to more than one spot between the residential and commercial towers surrounding the Plaza Bolívar in the city’s heart.

“I didn’t know how to help you—” she began.

“So you just left?” he asked. “That certainly didn’t help.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.” It was all she could find to say.

“Almost anything else you could have done would’ve been more helpful than leaving,” he told her.

Now it was Marisa’s silence that hung in the air. “Does it ever help when the other person says they’re sorry?” she asked finally.

“No,” Jon said, plain and fast enough to cut. “That’s the funny thing about emotions, especially the rough ones. They don’t care why they were born and they’re never in a hurry to die. All you can do is live with them until you can learn to ignore them. And all the excuses and apologies in the world don’t change that a bit.”

“I’m—”

A Marine appeared in her doorway, a member of the Embassy Security Group. “Just a second, Sherlock,” Marisa said, using his unofficial crypt again, a signal that the conversation had gone from personal to professional. She covered the phone with her hand. “What is it?” she asked the sergeant.

“The ambassador just received orders from SecState, ma’am. We’re evacuating the embassy. You and your people are to sanitize and secure your spaces, then report to the lobby in one hour. Choppers will be landing behind the building and all personnel will be relocated to the quarantine fleet, where you’ll board a transport for Washington.”

Marisa sat, stunned into silence. She finally forced herself to speak. “I have people in the field. I can’t leave them out there.”

“You can’t stay here, ma’am. You won’t do them any good if the mob comes over the fence and you get taken.”

Marisa nodded. “Understood. Tell the ambassador the rest of my people will be ready to ship out. I’m staying here until my people are safe or the situation becomes untenable.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Jon… SecState is closing the embassy. We’re being evacuated.”

“How long?” he asked.

“One hour… not enough time for you and Arrowhead to drive back, even if you could get inside the gates, which you can’t. They’re going to relocate us to the fleet. I’m staying here until they drag me out. Once I get to whichever ship we land on, I’ll talk to the captain and see if we can’t arrange a personnel recovery mission for you. If you have to move, get to a safe house.” Marisa paused. “Arrowhead knows where one is in Caracas.”

“Roger that,” Jon said. “Don’t forget about us.”

“I never have,” Marisa said. Jon disconnected. She stared at the phone, then dropped it on her desk. She started to stack the classified folders on her desk. The chief of station could already hear the industrial shredders in the next room warming up.

Jon turned the phone off. The sky was full of stars now, the sun entirely gone. He could have forgotten that he was in a hostile land if not for the smoke that broke up the lights of Puerto Cabello on the horizon. He was still watching the sky an hour later when the growl of the truck’s engine finally cut through the silence.