Cold Shot

DAY ONE

Kathryn Cooke didn’t visit the Memorial Garden often. The water in the pond was surprisingly clear today and it rippled a bit as the waterfall rolled gently over gray rocks into the fishpond. The grass inside the low concrete shelf was growing again, and a Canadian goose was picking at the ground looking for breakfast, soon to be chased away by rain from black clouds that were moving in from the west. The Original Headquarters Building stood to the south a few meters away, the auditorium — called the Bubble for its shape — just behind her a few feet away. The Nathan Hale statue, worn and discolored by decades of abuse at the hands of the Virginia climate, was a bit farther to the east.

She closed her eyes and listened to the quiet sounds of the waterfall until she lost track of the time. It was a good spot to think when the weather was right—

“He was a terrible spy.”

She knew the voice but it wasn’t a morning to smile. “Jonathan,” she said.

“Madam Director.” His tone was overly formal.

Cooke finally opened her eyes and stared at the man now sitting on the bench beside her. Jonathan Burke, the chief of the Red Cell, didn’t turn his head at all.

“Nathan Hale,” Jonathan said, nodding at the weathered statue. “Brave man, bad spy. No tradecraft, no cover story, above-average height and facial scars made him unforgettable to the Tory officer in Boston who saw him. Not getting caught on his first mission would have been a small miracle. If it weren’t for his pithy last words, which historians are certain he didn’t say, nobody would’ve remembered him.”

“So it’s a monument to stupidity?” Cooke asked.

“No, to bravery,” he conceded. “We need our heroes, even if they aren’t always the smartest people.” He snorted. “Anyway, you wanted to see me.”

“Yes. But I hadn’t told anyone yet, least of all you.”

“So I saved you the trouble of a call,” he said.

“You’re annoying, you know that?” she asked.

“Being right covers a multitude of sins.”

Cooke tried to let her anger drain away. Jon was arrogant but he earned his keep, even if he was too bold in calling her out. But she hadn’t reprimanded him, had she? Not many people could get away with that and even fewer of that small group worked for her. “And how did you know where to find me?” she asked.

“You work in a building full of spies.”

His isn’t-it-obvious? tone bordered on insubordination, but Cooke let it go. Again. She usually did. It was his version of a sense of humor, but it was beyond her how this man could alienate so many of his peers and, at the same time, maintain a network of informants inside headquarters that reached all the way to the seventh floor. “And you have assets inside my office?”

“Surely you’re not asking me to reveal sources and methods,” Burke answered, his voice flat with mild sarcasm. “Besides, I’m told that women like a man of mystery.”

“That was true before I came to work in a building full of spies. Here I’ve learned to appreciate the virtues of honest men. Not to mention humble ones,” Cooke countered. “Where’s your partner?”

“Kyra’s at the Farm, renewing her field certifications. She’ll be back tomorrow. Just has to requalify on the Glock and she’s done.”

“Generous of you to let her go,” Cooke observed.

“Generosity is irrelevant.” He looked annoyed. “Meetings with other analysts go more smoothly when half of the Red Cell is firearms-certified.”

“I’m sure. You should’ve kept yours up-to-date. Days like this, you might need it in case I decide to send you to someplace very, very dangerous.” Cooke repressed a smirk. “You know, when I first sent Kyra to the Red Cell, I didn’t intend for you to keep her. The Clandestine Service spent a lot of time and money training that girl. Clarke Barron would like to have her back instead of watching her sit at a desk writing papers.”

“Her choice,” Jonathan said. “She can go anytime she wants. We’ve never made the rotation formal.”

“Clarke thinks you’re holding her down.”

Jon shook his head. “They steal a dozen analysts from the Directorate of Intelligence every year. Barron’s just mad that I might have brought someone back from the dark side.”

“It’s a good thing to have case officers with analytical training,” Cooke observed. “It makes for better collection.”

“It’s a good thing to have analysts with field experience,” Jon retorted. “It makes for better analysis.”

Cooke sighed. Time to change the subject. “Have you read the President’s Daily Brief this morning?”

“Not yet,” Jonathan admitted.

Cooke nodded, picked up a binder sitting on the bench beside her, and handed it to the man. She motioned for him to open the notebook. “Three days ago, the USS Vicksburg pulled a corpse out of the Gulf of Aden a hundred miles off the coast of Somalia,” she started. “African male, midthirties. The deceased was found in a life raft without any means of navigation or propulsion. The captain assumed that he was a Somali pirate.”

“Probably a safe bet. Not many good reasons for Somali men to be that far out in the Gulf,” Jonathan observed.

“The victim’s knees had been shot off and his hands had been crushed. The bones were practically powder. NSA Bahrain performed the autopsy, but couldn’t establish a time of death. He’d been out there awhile… exposure to the elements and such. Pages two through six. I apologize if you haven’t had lunch yet.” It was ten o’clock in the morning.

The next several pages were color photographs of the deceased. Jonathan studied each one while Cooke stared away in silence. He reached the coroner’s report and read through the paperwork more slowly than she would have preferred.

After more than a minute, he looked up. “Burns under the clothes. Interesting.”

“The Vicksburg’s chief medical officer thought it could be torture but he couldn’t identify the tool used on him. There was no pattern so the CMO theorized it might have been some kind of chemical burn.”

“You want me to find the ship he came from,” Jon said.

“Nobody loves a pirate but someone really had a grudge against this one,” Cooke explained. “I’m thinking that maybe his crew attacked a ship that somebody really didn’t want captured.”

“Maybe,” Jonathan said. “Somali pirates seized the cargo ship Moscow University back in 2010 and the Russian Navy took it back a day later. But it was just carrying crude oil… nothing illegal.”

“Yes, but the Russians publicized that raid. Nobody has gone public with this one, and from the state of the body, the raid happened a while ago,” Cooke pointed out. “This could be Iranians smuggling rockets to Hamas or Hezbollah… maybe the Russians running guns into a half-dozen African states. Lots of possibilities, none of them good.”

“True,” Jonathan admitted. “The time interval would make it tough to identify the ship.”

“The analysts tell me that there’s no way to find that ship without a starting point in time and space and a general course heading, none of which we have.”

“You expected a different answer?” Jonathan asked.

“You don’t sound surprised,” Cooke countered.

“They’ll look at this as a geometry problem,” he explained. “Take the geographic starting point, multiply the number of hours since death by the maximum possible speed of the vessel and calculate the product of the equation. Pull out a map and draw a circle with the starting point at the center and the radius in miles traveled. Then they’ll wait a month for the State Department to coordinate with a few dozen other countries to investigate every ship that’s docked during the time frame at every port inside the circle. A general course heading would reduce the possibilities, maybe by half, but the problem set would still be prohibitively large.” He turned toward Kathy and finally looked her in the eyes. “You want me to do better.”

“Isn’t that the Red Cell’s job? To solve the puzzles that other analysts find impossible?” Cooke asked.

“Only as a favor to you. It’s not actually in the job description,” Jon told her. “The geometry method is one approach to finding a ship. It isn’t the only one, often not the best one, and its utility declines the farther out you get from the starting point in both space and time.” He shoved the photographs back into the binder. “I’m taking this,” he said, holding up the file. “I’ll call when I have something.”

“Thank you for doing this,” Cooke said. “You could have made it unpleasant.”

“The day is young.”

He stood, then paused. Cooke looked up and was surprised to find him staring down at her. She smiled up at him. Not here, not now. There were a hundred office windows with a view of the garden.

“Jon?” Cooke said.

“Yes?”

“I’ve missed you.”

Jon didn’t answer for what seemed like a minute. “You know where to find me,” he said finally. It wasn’t a rebuke. “You should leave that office a little more.”

“President Stuart only had a year left in office when he gave me the call. I thought they would replace me after the election,” Cooke said. “I serve at the pleasure of the president.”

“I never asked you to resign.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

Jonathan smiled only slightly, then marched away on the sidewalk that wrapped around the Old Headquarters Building to the northwest entrance. Cooke closed her eyes again. After another five minutes, she gave up and walked in the other direction to the front doors.

The Glock 17 kicked up in Kyra Stryker’s hands and she pulled it back down until the sights lined up with the target’s head again. The trigger had a smooth five-pound pull; she sent another round downrange and the bullet punched through the paper right where she wanted. The slug sent up a puff of dust from the dry dirt backstop twenty feet behind, one of a dozen kicked up at that moment by other shooters standing to either side.

She had a rhythm going now, two shots per second, still loud enough to come thumping through her earmuffs. Her first trainers had taught her to aim for center mass and she put the last three bullets there just to prove she could do it right, but today she was pushing herself. The requalification shoot would be the one that counted and going for the head now would make the target’s chest look a mile wide by dinnertime.

The Glock locked open, ready to receive another magazine, but Kyra had expended the four that she’d hand-loaded. The certification test would be for the Glock only, but Kyra tried never to miss a chance to fire something with a little more kick when the opportunity arose. She waited until the other shooters stopped, then ran out with the group to swap out her target for a fresh sheet. She wanted a pristine outline to work with for the other gun.

The Heckler & Koch 417 was a beautiful piece of work, a gas-operated battle rifle with a twelve-inch barrel and holographic sight. She pushed a clip into the body and chambered the first round. The weapon felt heavy for its size but that’s what slings were for. She took a breath, released it, and stifled the reflex to inhale again. She looked through the sight, picked her spot, put her finger inside the guard and pulled back on the trigger. The barrel erupted, flash and smoke, and the rifle kicked just hard enough to hurt.

She emptied that magazine, twenty rounds, every burst in the target’s head, then the second and third. She liked this gun, had thought about buying one for herself, but her salary didn’t allow it, not yet anyway. She could be patient. The Agency gave her enough time with its toys to satisfy her urge.

Her ammo expended, Kyra stretched her arms behind her back to work out the soreness in her shoulder. She would need a heat wrap on it tonight after a long, hotter shower and Kyra still wanted to hit the jogging trail that ran behind the student billets through the old-growth forest that lined the river.

She swept the empty magazines into her range bag and cleaned her station. Several of the other shooters, all men, she realized, were staring — half at her, half at her target. The bullet holes were all in nice, tight circles at the forehead and center mass of the thoracic cavity and Kyra had been shooting for fun, not for score. Still, she had done as well as any man here could’ve managed and better than most.

She realized that the closest gawker was speaking to her and had forgotten that she still had ear protection on and couldn’t hear him. She pulled off the headset.

“What?” Kyra asked.

“I said, you’re a SPO, right?” A security protective officer, one of the guards who kept the unwashed masses out of Agency facilities.

Kyra looked past the man and scanned the firing line, where the other men had pulled down their ear protectors to hear her answer. She wondered if they hadn’t been taking bets. Kyra looked at the man’s face and she saw instantly that he was trying to project confidence, bordering on bravado, but a twitch around his right eye betrayed a sense of nervousness. He was wearing a tactical shirt and pants but both were relatively new, hardly worn. Not an operator. Those were all former soldiers and Special Forces who spent more time in the bush than in buildings, and they all came to the Agency with considerable weapons training. Her talent for observation had suggested it but the man’s target confirmed it. The shot pattern on his target was respectable but not impressive. A case-officer trainee, then, like she had been a few years before.

That would make you more comfortable, wouldn’t it? she thought. If I had some good reason to be better than you?

She shook her head.

“Then who are you?” the man asked.

She pulled off her safety glasses, dropped them and the ear protection into the bag, and then zipped it up. “I’m an analyst,” she said.

Half the men on the line whooped, the other half cursed, and her interrogator grimaced as his face flushed red. He turned back toward his comrades and shuffled through the dust. She was sure he’d be on the business end of some late-night hazing now.

Kyra holstered the Glock, then slung the bag and the HK over her shoulder, and walked back toward the range house.

The jogging trail was a mile of wide gravel and cleared dirt through the pines and old-growth trees, with poison ivy and Virginia creeper on the sides to keep runners on the path. It started by the main road that ran past the dining hall and her billet, bordered a field of unexploded ordnance, or so the signs warned, then curved west into the woods. The Virginia humidity was still on the rise in late spring and the evening air was cooler than normal for this time of year. It had been getting dark when Kyra set out, but the moon was full and she plowed on through the night. She’d even decided to tackle the challenge course despite the inherent danger of attacking such obstacles in the dark. Broken ankles and torn ligaments were real possibilities, as was spending the night in the forest a mile from her billet, crippled, until some other jogger came along in the morning to help her back. But daylight wasn’t a luxury or even a friend in the intelligence business… it was the enemy often as not, something to be shunned. Darkness was the ally for those who weren’t afraid of it.

An intelligence officer who was afraid of the dark was in the wrong business.

Kyra pushed through the course and made it back to her billet in time to catch the bar with time to spare, a hot shower notwithstanding. She’d missed dinner, but she’d had the dining-hall chow enough times to know that was no great loss and there were plenty of all-night dives close by.

Kyra rested her elbows on the hardwood trim that lined the bar counter, set her glass down on the granite top, and scanned the room. It was almost empty. The flat-panel televisions were all tuned to news channels that were recycling the same stories for the second time since she’d arrived. The fireplace behind her was framed by a pair of elephant tusks mounted on wooden bases that sat on the stone hearth. She couldn’t imagine how they had made their way to the Farm, or how the Agency had even allowed it, but she supposed that some cowboy from the Special Activities Center had smuggled them in. Three men were playing pool badly at a nearby table. One lonely soul was throwing darts at an old board to her left and Kyra hoped the young man didn’t have aspirations of becoming a professional.

Her cell phone rang, a Bruce Hornsby song that turned the bartender’s head. Kyra looked at the screen on the phone, then smiled. “Hey, Jon.”

“You’re at the bar, aren’t you?” he asked without preamble.

“Yep.” Really, Jon? Where’s the trust?

“Beer?”

“Ginger ale,” Kyra answered. And proud of it.

“Ginger ale and what?”

“And ice.”

“Good for you.” He wasn’t being condescending, she knew. Kyra wasn’t an alcoholic, but she’d come close and working a job where one’s coworkers were hard drinkers was a prescription for trouble. Jon knew it and was being protective, which was a rare thing for him. She’d learned to appreciate it, slowly.

“How was the range?” he asked, changing the subject.

“It was good. I requalify on the Glock first thing in the morning.”

“I heard you were shooting the place up with the heavy artillery.”

Kyra half smiled and wondered who at the Farm was part of Jonathan’s network of informants. “I wanted to play with something that had a bit more kick.”

“The joys of life are in the small things, I suppose,” he said. “You’re wrapped up down there?”

Here it comes. She was surprised he’d taken this long to get to the point. “Just the one test left, yeah,” Kyra admitted. “Why?”

“I need you back. The director gave us an assignment this morning,” he told her. “We have to track down a ship.”

“And you haven’t found it by now?” Kyra teased.

“I have some thoughts, but I thought you might like a chance to look things over.”

That’s generous. It was also unusual, for Jon anyway. Jonathan didn’t like letting a puzzle lie unsolved and he was stubborn and socially distant, so these kinds of gestures were as close as he ever came to admitting any affection for her, and they were rare. Kyra checked her watch. She couldn’t get to Langley until well after midnight at the soonest. “I’ll head out first thing after my range test,” she said.

“Get here by lunch.” Jonathan disconnected.

Kyra set the phone back down. Well, she thought. That calls for something a bit stronger.

She tapped the counter. “I’ll take a Coke.”

The rising sunlight was cutting through the river fog when Kyra decided it was time to leave. Then she stood there another ten minutes anyway. Jonathan could wait that long. If he complained, she would blame the delay on traffic. Route 95 north was always an iffy proposition and the Washington Beltway was forever a tangled mess. It would be a lie but the view here was worth a sullied conscience.

Kyra sat on a fat granite boulder on the shoreline, no coat, enjoying the morning air. She did love the Farm. It was very much like home, Scottsville, which sat farther inland along a Virginia river like this one. This would be a fine place to end a career, teaching a new generation of case officers their trade. But that would be years away if ever.

She looked east along the trail and found the spot she was looking for. It was overgrown now with cattails and marsh grasses. Pioneer had sat there a year ago the day after she had exfiltrated him from China. He had lived here for three months after so they could debrief him and set up his new life. She had seen despair in the man’s eyes that afternoon, the first time he had realized the full price he would finally pay for treason. To never go home again… she couldn’t imagine it. Kyra had sat down beside him that afternoon for an hour, saying nothing because she spoke no Mandarin and he spoke almost no English. It occurred to her that this place, which felt so much like home to her, must have felt like an alien world to him.

The day they moved him out, she’d driven him to the airfield. He’d learned a little more English by then and was able to offer a broken farewell. They loaded him on the plane and she watched as it took off into a cloudless sky and disappeared. Now she wondered where he was. She knew the Clandestine Service wouldn’t tell her anything. Pioneer was no longer an Agency asset but his case was compartmentalized as heavily now as it ever had been.

Kyra heard movement in the brush behind her and she turned. A family of white-tailed deer, unafraid of humans, was grazing near her truck, which she’d parked on the paved one-lane trail that doubled as a bike path along the shoreline.

Time to go, she thought, and this time she forced herself to move. Kyra trudged up to her Ford Ranger and crawled in. The deer looked up when she started the engine but didn’t run.

She drove out to the main road and it took five minutes to reach the main gate. Kyra rolled down her window and passed her badge to the guard at the shack.

“You coming back?” he asked.

“Not today,” she said.

He filed her badge away in a box to be recycled. “Have a safe drive.”

Kyra nodded and pulled out onto the highway and pushed the truck ten miles over the limit.

The traffic had mostly stayed out of Kyra’s way but the Agency parking lots hadn’t been so cooperative. A failed twenty-minute search for something better left her parked by the Mail Inspection Facility and had given her more than a quarter-mile walk to enter headquarters.

Kyra navigated the crowd by the cafeteria, then finally bypassed it altogether through a stairwell by the library that opened into the 2G corridor. Kyra plodded down the empty hallway, swiped her badge against the reader, and the door to 2G31 Old Headquarters Building clicked open.

She didn’t bother to announce herself. Jon’s door was cracked open and the vault was small enough that he would hear her entrance.

“The file’s on your desk,” he called out from his office.

Kyra dropped her satchel by her chair then leaned over the desktop. A manila folder was laid open there, a photograph on top of the papers. She glanced at the picture and regretted it.

“And this couldn’t wait until after I had lunch?” Kyra asked him, staring at the photo. A burned, bloated carcass of an African male looked back at her. Kyra was not squeamish, but someone had died slow and ugly. She skimmed over the Vicksburg CMO’s description of the remains.

“Feel free to eat while we work,” he said over her shoulder, missing her point entirely. Kyra looked up, startled. She’d been focused on the gory photo and hadn’t heard him come over.

“Not a problem now,” Kyra said. Any semblance of hunger was gone. “I think this guy is a little beyond help.”

“True, but not the smartest observation you’ve ever had,” Jonathan said. “And not the problem at hand. The starting assumption is that he’s a pirate, tried to take a ship or actually managed it, and somebody dumped him back out into the Gulf of Aden. That’s not usually how pirate raids go down, so she’s wondering whether he didn’t target a ship that someone really cared about.”

“What if he wasn’t a pirate?”

“Then this entire mess is somebody else’s problem. But that would make him boring, so let’s ignore that for now.”

“Boring is good in this business,” Kyra countered.

“Says the woman who just spent a week shooting automatic rifles. Anyway, it’s the director’s assumption,” he pointed out. “And I like it because it’s not boring.”

“All right. No starting point in space or time?” Of course not, she realized. If they had that, any decent analyst could have found the ship. “So we have to deconstruct a scenario that we know nothing about, in reverse, and hope that it might provide some clues to what we should be looking for,” she observed.

“Correct,” Jonathan replied.

“And you waited until I got back to do this because…?”

“I have my own thoughts but I want to hear yours,” he said.

Kyra stared at Jon, focused on his body language. The fifteen months she’d been in the Red Cell had been more than enough time to learn that Jon didn’t coordinate his analysis with anyone, even people he liked, who were few. A training exercise? Or you need to prove something to someone? “It’s a red team exercise,” Kyra said. “A decision tree. But decisions are subjective evaluations reached through education and cultural influence, which we don’t share with the subjects who made them. So you’re asking me to mirror image.”

“Mirror imaging isn’t entirely useless if you’re aware that you’re doing it,” Jonathan counseled her. “Strategies often are culturally dependent; tactics, not so much. The more basic your options, the less they care what country you’re from.”

“Okay,” Kyra conceded. She stared at the picture of the bloated corpse. Funny how quickly you can get used to seeing that. Her mind churned, Jonathan letting her sit in silence, totally comfortable and willing to wait on her. “So assuming he was a pirate engaged in a mission, there are… three possibilities for how he ended up in the life raft. First, his own crew did it, in which case the ship is probably still under pirate control and docked at one of the haven ports along the Somali coast. If that’s true, NSA will probably identify the ship from phone calls between the pirates and the ship’s owner. Or if the cargo really is that valuable or interesting, the pirates might offer the ship to any country or intelligence service willing to bid for it.” She shuffled through the other papers in the file. “I take it there haven’t been any intercepts or offers or we wouldn’t be doing this. So we can probably discount that idea.”

“I agree,” Jonathan said. “And the second?”

“The ship’s crew took the vessel back,” Kyra suggested. “But if the crew had the will and the firepower to retake the ship, the pirates probably never would’ve gotten aboard in the first place. So that doesn’t seem likely.”

“And the third?” Jonathan said, sounding like a proud parent.

Kyra paused for a brief moment. “Someone retook the ship from the outside.”

“Excellent,” Jonathan said, smiling. “So how do we narrow the candidate list of countries?”

“Lots of countries in the area have military units that could’ve done it. The ones that don’t could’ve hired mercenaries. So the real question is how the raid team got on board the ship.” Her thoughts turned back to the hard landing she and Jon had made on the Abraham Lincoln off the coast of Taiwan the year before.

“A good thought,” Jonathan said. “There are only three real possibilities for that. Airdrop from a cargo plane, fast-roping from a helo, or a rope climb from an assault craft. The first option would be the hardest. Parachuting from altitude onto a moving ship is doable but it’s the riskiest option, especially if it’s a night raid… leaves the men exposed to hostile fire for a relatively long period with no covering force.”

“Fast-roping from a helo solves that problem. That’s a short, fast drop while a door gunner lays down cover fire,” Kyra said.

Jonathan nodded. “A small boat also is a common option, though problematic depending on weather and the size of the vessel you’re boarding. If the target is a large cargo ship, that could be a long climb if you’re under fire.”

“The pirates did it,” Kyra noted. “Unless Somalis have graduated to helicopter boardings.”

“The crews of most cargo vessels aren’t heavily armed, if at all. That usually eliminates the ‘under fire’ part of the equation.”

“So if we assume a helo drop, they would’ve had to launch either from a nearby coastline or a vessel out in the Gulf that has a flight deck,” Kyra said. “Combine that with a special forces capability and I’d be looking at Israel, Iran, the Saudis, or Pakistan… maybe India at the furthest. How many countries are part of Task Force 150? Any of them looking good for it?”

“Seventeen,” Jonathan told her. “I looked it up. A lot of them are smaller European countries with no interest in smuggling anything through the Gulf worth a military raid to recover at sea. But the Russians and Chinese keep a presence in the area.”

“I wouldn’t put it past the Russians and I’ll blame the Chinese for anything just for old times’ sake. But I don’t see how we can narrow it down any further just looking at the geography or naval presence.”

Jonathan nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Neither NSA nor Naval Intelligence has picked up intercepts over the last two months from any of those countries that seem useful. So let’s look at our theoretical raid on the ship. Assume a military team has retaken the ship and captured the pirates. What next?”

“I think at that point, the captain has two choices. First, return home. Second, continue to his destination. But in either case, the cargo ship would be late for port calls, assuming it had any scheduled.”

“Which isn’t an uncommon occurrence anyway,” Jonathan told her.

Kyra stared down at the picture of the swollen corpse. But you really made somebody angry, didn’t you? Shot in the knees. Smashed hands. Burns everywhere. She said nothing for several minutes. This was where she had the advantage over Jon — for all his logical skills, he couldn’t read people. I’m sure you made them mad just by taking the ship. But was that it? Or did you do something else when you got on board? Killed somebody? “Why not just shoot him and toss him.” She waved the picture. “This was cruel. He made somebody angry.”

“Your point?” Jon asked.

“Maybe I’m mirror imaging too much, but special forces don’t usually do this kind of thing. They’re professional and efficient. Either detain the guy or just shoot him and be done with it. I don’t know, maybe they were mercenaries. Or maybe our pirate here did something that really ticked somebody off. He killed someone… members of the crew or the raid team. Or maybe he broke into the cargo. If there was something aboard that justified a military raid and this guy cracked into it, then maybe the ship isn’t just late for port calls. Maybe it’s missing port calls altogether because it’s hauling something the owners can’t risk being discovered during a port call,” she suggested. “Has NSA picked up any reports of a cargo ship missing port calls along the African coast for the last two months?” Kyra asked.

“See? Not boring,” Jon said. He held out another folder, which Kyra took and opened.

“You had this figured out before you called me last night,” she said.

“I had a theory,” he admitted.

“Then why make me go through the exercise?” she asked.

“I thought you might like the privilege of briefing the Director.”

“When?” Kyra asked.

“Ten minutes.”

“You don’t want the credit?”

“Call me generous,” he said.

“You softie.”

“Hardly. You’ll be the one on the hook to answer the really hard question that you know she’ll ask,” he warned.

Kyra thought about that for a second. “How will we know we have the right ship?”

Jonathan nodded. “You might want to think about that one on the way upstairs.” Kyra grinned as she walked out, missing his own rare smile as the door closed behind them.

“We have a theory,” Kyra said, setting the binder down on the coffee table before Cooke and taking a seat next to the director. The first page was a color photograph copy of a cargo ship, with information from the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control listed to the side.

“The MV Markarid,” Kyra told her. “She’s a dry bulk carrier owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. IRISL smuggles cargo for the regime and this particular ship’s been banned by the UK and by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control from docking at US and British ports. The NPWMD tag is the marker for Treasury’s Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Sanctions Program.” Kyra realized that Cooke knew that fact as soon as she’d said it. Embarrassed, the younger woman pushed ahead and turned Cooke’s binder to the second page, a map of the African east coast with a line drawn in red ink by hand and ruler tracing a southern course. “She put to sea seventeen days ago from Bandar-e ‘Abbas,” she continued. “Satellite imagery shows that she passed through the Strait of Hormuz and followed a southerly course for thirty-six hours before making a sudden turn southwest, here.” Kyra pointed to a junction in the line. “If you extend that line”—which Jon had done with a ruler and a Sharpie. She traced the line with her finger—“you run straight into Eyl, which is a major pirate port on the Somali eastern coast. But two days later, she turned southeast away from Eyl and headed down the coast toward Madagascar.”

Cooke studied the page. “You think she was hijacked off the Omani coast?”

“That’s the guess,” Jon confirmed. “Somali pirates have been charging farther north for years. Pirates might have taken the ship and the mullahs decided they really didn’t want anyone looking at whatever was in the hold. Naval Intelligence reports that the Iranians launched a Moudge-class corvette from Bandar ‘Abbas, the Jamaran, less than twelve hours after the Markarid changed course and that ship’s course would’ve put it within helo distance of the Markarid within twenty-four hours. The Jamaran has a flight deck and usually carries a Bell 214 helo,” he explained. “They could have sent out a team to take back the ship.”

“And the boarding party decided to have a little fun or send a message, whatever, and put this guy out to sea.” Cooke turned the book back to the autopsy photos.

“The sea currents around the area at the time roughly match to put the life raft in Vicksburg’s path if it was launched from the Markarid at the point of the course change,” Jonathan observed.

“But this may not have been for ‘fun,’” Kyra disagreed, tapping the pirate’s picture. “The Markarid has missed three scheduled port calls over the last month.”

“Missing one is common. Two is a problem and three is trouble,” Cooke agreed. “So the cargo is too important to turn the ship around and too illegal to risk a port-call inspection now that the container is breached. I like it. Where is she now?”

“Her last known position was east of Dar es Salaam three weeks ago and heading south by southwest,” Jon answered, pointing at marks near the bottom of the map. “After that, imagery loses her west of the Seychelles. I would guess she’s well out in the Atlantic by now.”

The Atlantic, Cooke thought. Heading north again? Or west? “The Suez Canal would’ve cut a few thousand miles off the trip. Kind of a tell that she didn’t go that way,” Cooke observed.

“The chances for inspection go way, way up in the Suez,” Jonathan agreed.

“There’s no real proof that we’re right,” Kyra admitted. “It is just a theory.”

“But if this is right, I want to know what the mullahs are sending into my half of the world on a vessel flagged for smuggling materials related to weapons of mass destruction.” Cooke looked up at the analysts. “One more question. If it is an Iranian ship, they’ve probably reflagged and repainted it by now. How will we know we have the right ship?”

Jonathan smiled and looked sideways at Kyra. The younger woman shot him a wry look. You suck. “Cargo ships keep smaller life rafts stored on the deck for easy access in case of an emergency. The Markarid will be the ship missing a life raft.”

Cooke pondered that answer for a moment, then grunted her approval. “Very well, thank you.”

Cooke hated to visit Jacob Drescher in the mornings. The senior duty officer was at his best in the dead of night and better still when some war or riot was keeping his staff busy and he was giving orders to his own troops. An appearance by the CIA director near his end-of-shift would trigger the man’s sense of duty to stay in the office until he finished whatever tasking she would deliver. Only a direct order would prevent that and even then he would come in early that night to attack the request if the day shift hadn’t finished the job.

The Ops Center was quiet, its usual state more often than not. The sun leaked in through the blinds in the back, not entirely closed. The monitor array that dominated the front wall showed morning news shows in three quadrants. The fourth showed Cooke’s own schedule for the day. The Ops Center would have been a waste of resources if it couldn’t reach Cooke no matter her location.

“Good morning, Madam Director.” Drescher had sidled up to her while she was staring at her own schedule.

“Morning, Jake. Anything new?” She knew the answer. Drescher would have called or sent a runner if the answer had been yes. Most people seemed to have a muddy line about when events were important enough to disturb the Boss. It wasn’t muddy for Drescher. The man seemed to know intuitively when it was time to pick up the phone and Cooke had learned to trust his judgment.

“No, ma’am. The world’s quiet, mostly,” the senior duty officer replied. “At least the parts we care about. Something we can do for you?” Drescher asked.

“You’re off duty in an hour?”

“Unless you need me longer.”

“I want you to find me a ship,” Cooke told him.

“That’s always a tall order.” He respected the director too much to use the word maddening… hundreds of ships in constant motion en route to and from ports spread across millions of square miles of ocean. There was no way to assemble the entire picture fast enough before it all changed. “The MV Markarid?”

Cooke let out a frustrated exhale. “Jon came to see you?”

“No, it was that young lady he works with, but I’m sure he was the taskmaster. You don’t think he’d go through the trouble to dig up those satellite photos, do you?”

“No, that would be ‘boring.’”

“I’ve got a crew looking at all the African ports. They’ve already checked the Seychelles and are working their way down the eastern coast now. We’re pinging the South African National Intelligence Service for anything they’ve got, and we’ve got a request in with NATO to poll the European ports and see if she’s scheduled to dock anywhere in the EU,” Drescher confirmed. “It’s been tying up my manpower. I could use a few spare hands if you’ve got any to lend.”

“I’ll give you Jon,” Cooke said with a smirk. “It’s his theory. No reason he should just be an idea man and leave the real work to other people.”

“That’ll help,” Drescher said. “What would help more would be the Markarid’s itinerary. I can’t begin to tell you how much that would help.”

“I doubt the Iranians will share,” Cooke told him. “But don’t be surprised if she’s coming west.”

“Yeah,” Drescher admitted. “But it’ll be the devil to find her out on the open ocean staring at imagery. The Iranians are friendly with the Cubans and the Venezuelans, so we’ll check those ports along with Africa and Europe. But I can’t promise anything.”

Cooke shrugged. “Maybe we’ll catch a break.”

“I’ll call you when we’ve got something”—by which the man meant don’t wait up, she knew. Jacob Drescher was a pessimist but Cooke knew he was right. Luck seemed to favor the enemy more often than not.

“Fine,” Cooke said. “Now go home.”

“Yes, ma’am.”