Cold Shot

DAY THREE

The Markarid sat unmoving under the stars, her engines finally cold. Elham had pushed the ship hard over the last day and Avila had arranged for the ship to jump the queue, allowing her to make up a few hours of the lost time and leave some angry captains anchored out in the Atlantic past their schedule times. They would have to wait. Their cargoes of machinery and foodstuffs were trivial.

Hossein Ahmadi stared up at the vessel, seeing her for the first time in weeks. He had seen her like this once before, when she had put to sea from the docks at Bandare ‘Abbas. She looked no different now but for the gash ripped into her island superstructure and the new paint on sections of the hull and tower. He cursed the Somali pirates again.

“That is quite the hole.” Ahmadi turned and saw Andrés Carreño approaching from behind. The director of the SEBIN walked ten feet ahead of the armed soldiers under his command. Carreño dressed like a businessman. The troops behind wore the usual tactical gear that made Special Forces of the world so hard for Ahmadi to distinguish one from another.

“An unfortunate incident in the Gulf of Aden,” Ahmadi admitted. He offered no other details.

“Pirates?” Carreño asked, pressing the matter.

“Yes,” Ahmadi said. A few times since that raid he’d wished that he’d put the gun to the Somalis personally. But their leader received what he wanted in the end, now, didn’t he? the Iranian thought. For that, he was pleased with himself. The manner of the man’s execution had entailed a certain irony.

“My apologies that your men had to remain aboard all day after docking. President Avila felt that it would be more secure to start the unloading process after dark.”

“Likely right,” Ahmadi admitted.

The ramp was in place and Ahmadi saw a man descending in the dark. He recognized Sargord Elham in the dirty light cast by the dockside lamps. The man was dressed not in his fatigues but in more casual clothes typical of a cargo ship’s crew. Wise of him, Ahmadi thought.

“Dr. Ahmadi,” Elham said, finally within earshot.

“Sargord. I received your report. My congratulations on your trip.”

“Thank you. I have nothing new to report in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Very good,” Ahmadi said. He turned to the Venezuelan at his side. “Director Carreño, I present Sargord Heidar Elham of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. It was his unit that dealt with our… incident and safely delivered the vessel to your port.”

“Welcome to Venezuela, and my congratulations, Sargord,” Carreño said, offering the soldier his hand. “We have accommodations for your men at a secured location. Doubtless they’re anxious for some food and companionship?”

“That would be much appreciated,” Elham replied. “But we have four men who should receive medical attention. They fell ill after our intervention in the Gulf. They appear to have recovered, but given the circumstances a thorough physical is in order.”

“Not at a public hospital,” Ahmadi countered. “Director, I presume that you have doctors who can be trusted?”

“We do. I’ll have one join us at the facility after our arrival.”

“Our thanks. The pirates in the Gulf that the sargord skillfully dispatched managed to find the cargo before he could board. The casings were breached,” Ahmadi said. He looked to his countryman. “Were there any further problems with that?”

“No,” Elham replied. “But it was necessary to keep the forward hold sealed for the duration and we skipped some port calls to avoid any unplanned inspections.”

“Understandable,” Ahmadi assured him. “Someone will need to repair the containers before they can be unloaded. I regret, Señor Carreño, that your longshoremen would be the logical choice.”

The intelligence officer frowned at the declaration. “My men?”

“Of course,” Ahmadi said. “The sargord’s men are not engineers and the crew needs to be returned to Tehran immediately for debriefing and… isolation. They were not told of the cargo’s nature and we need to make sure they don’t endanger our operational security. We will need welders and other men with specialized tools and skills. We never expected any such need and so didn’t bring either the men or tools aboard.”

“You could have brought them on your flight,” Carreño observed.

“To do so would have invited more scrutiny,” Ahmadi countered.

Carreño grunted, then shook his head. “No, we have no cleared men with those skills here. And conditions below could be dangerous—”

“Then I suggest you resolve those problems quickly,” Ahmadi said, impatient.

Carreño bristled. “We are equals in this arrangement, not your subordinates. My men are no more expendable than yours.”

“Of course… but your men are here. The equipment is here. We are already behind schedule and you know that timing is everything in this enterprise. It would take several days at least to bring men and materials over from our country and every movement risks drawing unwanted attention. And besides, this will give your countrymen the honor of unloading perhaps the most important cargo to ever come to your shores. I’m sure Presidente Avila would agree with me.”

Carreño gritted his teeth and stepped closer to Ahmadi, anger drawn on his face. “This is not acceptable, Doctor,” the SEBIN director said.

“And yet the schedule and security requirements demand it,” Ahmadi replied calmly. “Please, feel free to call el presidente directly on this matter.” His attempt at a Spanish accent was horrid.

“I will speak to him,” Carreño said, his voice cold.

“I look forward to the conversation. But since you will doubtless need some hours to round up men and tools, I think we could at least begin unloading the legitimate cargo from the other holds if your people are ready,” Ahmadi offered.

“The head longshoreman has already been aboard,” Carreño said. He looked back toward the ship, not trying to hide his disgust. “He tells me it will take most of the night to clear a path to the forward hold anyway. The way your soldiers had to rearrange the containers on the deck to minimize anyone’s view of that”—he pointed toward the tarp hanging from the island—“will slow them down.”

“Then you will have the time you need to take care of the other arrangements.” Ahmadi smiled. “You see, Director? Everything will come off as needed and your efforts will be much appreciated when this is all over. Now, please have your men secure the vessel.” He looked to his fellow Iranian. “Sargord, please inform your men that their housing is being arranged, then join me at my car. We should discuss the voyage.”

Elham nodded, then turned and began to climb the boarding ramp. Ahmadi smiled at Carreño and walked toward his car. The Venezuelan stared at the Markarid, angry, and then waved at his men. A small team moved to the boarding ramp and followed Elham up. The remaining soldiers began to fan out across the dock.

“Si se opone la naturaleza, lucharemos contra ella y la haremos que nos obedezca.”

If nature opposes us, we will struggle against her and make her obey us.

Kyra had not understood why Simón Bolívar would make such a grandiose statement until she had seen the mountains here for the first time. Now, for the second time in her life, Kyra watched the Venezuelan coastal range erupt behind the Caracas beaches to her left as the Boeing 737–900 descended. This was a hard country from top to bottom, beautiful and brutal at the same time in so many places. With cliffs like those running across the northern border, it was little wonder the natives might feel that nature itself wasn’t a friend.

The flight had been long enough to be uncomfortable, more so for Kyra than for Jon. She’d made this flight once before and knew the travel time, but it seemed so much longer and shorter all at once. She could hardly remember leaving the country the first time. She’d been shot days before that plane ride and painkillers in high doses played with the memory.

The airport bordered the Atlantic and the Boeing flew low over the water, reaching the tarmac only a few seconds after finally going “feet dry.” Kyra and Jon deplaned and walked to customs where a Venezuelan military officer stood by the customs door leading into the airport proper, an AK-103 assault rifle in his hands suspended from a sling. Kyra tried not to stare, and instead turned her attention inward, curious about her own reaction to the sight. She had expected to feel anger. Instead, she felt numb.

The customs officer handed over her passport, offering no greeting, no ¡Bienvenidos a Venezuela! which she wouldn’t have appreciated anyway. She hated this country now.

Jonathan passed through the line behind her, speaking surprisingly good Spanish — he’d never said anything about a facility with the language. She wondered if he spoke others and what other skills he’d failed to advertise.

The Agency’s Central Travel Office had arranged a car and the gas was cheap. She did the conversion in her head. Twelve cents to the gallon. Kyra’s international driver’s license was as fake as her passport, but that hardly mattered here. Venezuelan traffic laws were entirely theoretical. They existed but no one obeyed them and they were never enforced without some ulterior motive behind the traffic stop. The government had suspended a total of one driver’s license in the last ten years.

She didn’t need a map to find the embassy, which was another reason Jon was willing to give up the wheel. The Avenida La Armada led to a freeway, the Autopista Caracas — La Guaira, which curled through the ridges northwest of the city. Traffic was a mess; Kyra had expected nothing less and figured the drive would take the usual hour instead of the forty-five minutes she’d hoped for.

She took the off-ramp onto the Autopista Francisco Fajardo, and saw the artificial Guaire River snaking under the elevated highway. The buildings, even the graffiti, looked suddenly familiar.

She had faced the double agent on the bank of that river right… there.

The rusty bridge where the man stood that night was still in place over the muddy water, the bushes that covered the raid teams were still a nasty tangle, unmanaged and uncut. The streetlight where she’d started to run was still standing. She wondered if it still worked.

Kyra was surprised at how calm she felt, no shakes, no racing heartbeat. She felt so… detached? That was the word. Detached from that moment, like she could look at it all clinically now. The alley she had turned down for cover seemed closer to the bridge now than it had in the dark… but she must have been shot before she made it that far. Maybe there?… at the dead-end space before the alley, where she’d knocked that first soldier onto his back—

“Eyes up,” Jonathan said. Kyra looked up and realized she was drifting left into the guardrail. She gently straightened out and veered back into the lane, no jerking of the wheel.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She meant it, not that Jonathan would have known had she been lying. He was looking at her, intensely she realized, but reading personal cues was not his forte.

Kyra didn’t look in the rearview mirror. She’d seen the site. It held nothing for her.

The U.S. Embassy compound sat in the center-east of the capital city, built on a twenty-seven acre rise in the Colinas de Valle Arriba neighborhood, overlooking the Las Mercedes shopping district a half mile below in the valley. The embassy itself was five stories, red granite with walls that caved in and out of the front at oblique angles like the architect had lost his ruler and resorted to a drafting triangle instead. Kyra had found it strange when she’d first seen it years ago, but had come to appreciate the design—

“That is the ugliest building I have ever seen,” Jonathan said. “And they put it on a hill.”

“It’s all hills here, Jon.”

“And the rum here must be excellent, judging by the architecture.”

“It is, actually,” Kyra admitted. She turned off the road to the parking lot in front of the building and began searching for a parking space. The cars were all American-made, a strange sight given the Fiats, Peugeots, Renaults, and Haimas they’d seen on the freeway.

“Had your share the last time you were here, did you?”

“The water isn’t always safe to drink,” Kyra told him.

“Convenient.”

“I thought so,” she agreed, smirking.

“So who’s the station chief now?” Jon asked.

“No idea,” Kyra replied. “I heard they cleaned house after Michael Rhead got pulled out last year.”

“Which brought you no small satisfaction, I’m sure.”

“I didn’t cry for him,” she said. She got out of the car and started walking for the front gate, where the Marine guards stood waiting to check their IDs. “Follow me,” she ordered.

Jonathan obeyed, which was a rare thing.

Like third-world warlords, station chiefs could be happy tyrants who ruled with a fist and a smile and made subordinates take on the most menial tasks. So Kyra was surprised when they were asked to wait at the embassy lobby so the station chief could come down from her office to escort them herself. They found a padded bench and spent the time staring at the walls.

They sat in place for ten minutes. Kyra was staring at President Rostow’s official photograph when she heard the footsteps on the tile floor. Then she felt her partner tense up in a way she’d never seen.

“Hi, Jon,” Marisa Mills said.

Marisa Mills was a severe exception to the unwritten rule that chiefs of station were supposed to be nondescript. She was a tall woman with brown hair that fell to her shoulders and looks that probably drew slander about how she earned her assignments. Kyra watched Jon as pleasantries were stiffly exchanged and he seemed impervious to the woman’s charm, but social graces had never been his strong point.

Not impervious, she concluded. Active resistance. No, that wasn’t right.

Anger. Jon was trying to cover it and failing.

Kyra was sure that Mills knew it. The older woman seemed uncomfortable, intensely so. She was making an effort to be friendly to Jon, but the woman was proceeding with caution.

The trio marched through the embassy to the elevators and passed the ride up in silence. When the doors opened, Mills took the lead. Kyra stepped off, Jon trailing, and the last eighteen months of her life washed away in an instant. Back again, she thought. Kyra knew every turn, one turn after another with no hesitation in her steps.

Jon said nothing as Mills led them through the halls. Kyra wanted to ask him about Mills, how they knew each other, but the other woman was too close and would’ve heard any such question.

They approached a security door, no different from the ones at Langley, gray with a badge reader and a massive dial bolted into the metal. Mills swiped her badge, the door clicked open after a second’s delay and she pulled it open.

Mills’s office was typical of her position, large, with a view of the valley and shopping district a few thousand feet beyond the embassy wall. The desk was real hardwood, handcrafted by some local artisan, and Mills had cleaned out an entire drawer of her file cabinet for use as a tea shelf. Kyra saw that she kept no vanity wall in her office the way the men usually did, no pictures of family, just a few relics and photographs drawn from past assignments. A large photo sat behind the desk, Mills standing in some sand-swept village and looking attractive even in a brown tactical shirt and utility pants, surrounded by rough American men in Levi’s and dirty shirts, all carrying automatic weapons or sniper rifles. Beside the picture was an engraved KA-BAR knife thanking her for her service to some Agency unit whose designator Kyra didn’t recognize beyond the first initials of SAC. The Special Activities Center wasn’t the most welcoming unit to outsiders, even fellow NCS officers. Some officers could work with them but only those with Special Forces training ever really were allowed to join.

“Director Cooke opened up your file for me,” Marisa said, looking at Kyra. “Forgive me for asking, but how’s the arm?”

Worried about whether I can carry my load in the field. Kyra turned and lifted her sleeve. Mills cursed in amazement. She leaned over the desk and touched the jagged lateral scar running across the younger woman’s triceps where the 7.62mm round had torn out the skin and muscle a year before. “That must’ve been a bloody mess.”

“It healed up okay. I was on painkillers for a while. Physical therapy took a few months,” Kyra said. She thought about mentioning the psychological counseling but decided not to volunteer that story. She rolled her sleeve down.

“I’m sure,” Mills said with sympathy. “They tell me you had a hand in taking down the last station chief down here?”

“That was Director Cooke, ma’am. She just used my case to pull the trigger on him.”

“Wish I’d been there,” Mills said. “I never met my predecessor and I’ll crack his head if I ever do. That jackass destroyed this station’s asset networks, tech ops, you name it. I had to send most of the staff back to the States because we didn’t know whether their names had been leaked to the locals. It’s going to take another year to get this place back on its feet.”

“I would’ve thought that the NCS would have this place back up and running by now,” Kyra told her.

Marisa shrugged. “Venezuela has never been a high-priority target and the Agency moves at the speed of government. I had seven people in station, counting myself, until last month, when el presidente decided to randomly accuse half the embassy of espionage just because. He declared a dozen people persona non grata and got lucky. He named my one case officer and the only Global Response man I had… couldn’t have done better if Michael Rhead still was passing him names. Heck, I actually launched an investigation to see if we were penetrated, but with only five people left to question, it only took me two hours. Avila just got lucky. So now I’ve three techs, two reports officers who have no reports to write… and now I’ve got you.”

She fell back into her chair, looking suddenly tired. “Sorry, not your problem. But you need to know that we don’t have a lot of resources in place right now, so it’s good to have someone who’s been on the ground here. We need the help.”

Jonathan said nothing, nodding only slightly, grunted, tried to half smile, and failed. It was as close as he usually came to you’re welcome. Mills exhaled, leaned back, then stared at him. “And now they’re sending me analysts to run field ops,” she said. Her smile announced that she wasn’t truly annoyed at the thought. A proper station chief should have been cursing Kathy Cooke’s lineage and sanity by now, if not outright refusing the orders. You know we’re analysts but you’re not even putting up a fight… station chiefs don’t like sending analysts into the field. She’d been there before. She looked over at Jon and decided to let him handle the answer. She’s giving you an opening… trying to get you talking?

If so, he didn’t take the opening. Mills leaned forward again, opened a file, and pushed it gently to them. “I think this is already a wasted trip. The Markarid finished docking procedures not long after you got on the plane and the locals got busy right after dark.” She pulled out two satellite photos from the folder and laid them side by side on the table. “This was taken two hours ago.”

Jon lifted the photo and held it so both he and Kyra could see. The Markarid sat in her berth, lit by halogen lamps and overrun with dockworkers and, presumably, soldiers scattered in random fashion. A security cordon sealed off a nearby warehouse and access to the ship. A line of five-ton military cargo trucks sat dockside.

“And this was taken after you landed at the airport,” Marisa said, touching the second picture. Kyra looked down at the photograph. The Markarid was in the same location, but there were no men to be seen. The security cordon was absent now and the cargo trucks gone.

“You don’t have images of the actual cargo?” Jon asked.

Marisa shook her head. “Whatever they pulled off that ship, they did it when we didn’t have a bird overhead. They knew exactly when there would be a blind spot in our coverage and timed that bit of the operation to match. Sorry, Jon, but that cargo is gone and we don’t have a clue where it went.” She sat back in her chair. “But to be fair, you probably couldn’t have gotten close enough to do us any good anyway. The government took control of the major ports over a decade ago and they block off whole sections of the docks from time to time.”

Jonathan took the papers and scanned the new satellite imagery, with Kyra looking on. He’d fallen into his professional mode now, all emotion gone from his voice and face. He held one of the photos inches from his eyes.

“I’d still like to get out there,” Kyra said. “The dock is cleared, no soldiers or anyone else. If they’ve already unloaded whatever it was that they cared about, I might be able to get in there now. They might have left something behind that would tell us where they went.” She looked at her partner, who was still staring at the picture. The silence was unlike him and she wondered whether he wasn’t using this development as an excuse to stay quiet.

“I’d be surprised if you find anything. This was a precision operation,” Mills countered.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Jon said finally.

The comment shut Marisa down instantly. No answer for that? Kyra thought. Precision strike, Jon. She watched the other woman’s face carefully. The chief of station held a good poker face, giving away nothing… but she was staring at Jon. The senior analyst stared back, some unknown message passing between them.

“You remember where the garage is?” Marisa said finally, not looking at Kyra.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kyra said.

“You can pack up down there.” She finally turned her eyes to Kyra. “We keep ops gear in the storage room in the back. Once you get out there, I want updates on the hour. You run into any trouble, back off and come home.”

“I’ll leave tonight… less chance that I’ll run into anyone on the docks in the wee hours.”

Marisa nodded her approval, then focused on the man in the room again. “Jon, why don’t you go get some chow, then set up shop next door. I don’t have a deputy yet, so you can take that office.”

Jon sat in his chair for a minute and Kyra could almost see his brain processing the order, something conflicting. Finally he grunted again, scooped the papers, and made for the hall.

Kyra focused on Marisa as the older woman watched Jon march out of the room. The station chief’s face twitched a bit and it took her several seconds to refocus on the young woman still in the room. “Just us case officers and girls now. I’ll walk you down to the garage,” Mills said. She stood and followed Jon’s path out into the hallway, Kyra trailing behind, and the station chief caught the younger case officer’s gaze. “Jon is a direct one, isn’t he?”

“He won’t cop to having Asperger’s, but it’s the current theory,” Kyra offered.

“How long have you known him?”

“Almost two years,” Kyra said. “How long have you?”

“Picked up on that, did you?” Mills asked. She sighed. “Ten years. We met in the Sandbox.”

Iraq, Kyra realized. “And how long were you dating?”

Mills’s eyebrows went up. “Did he—”

“No, he didn’t.” Kyra stopped her.

“You guessed.”

“Not really. As a general rule, station chiefs don’t drop everything and escort DI analysts through an embassy, suggesting you had a special reason for doing so. We sent a travel cable in advance, you would’ve read it, seen his name, and known he was coming; hence your reason. Jon’s pucker factor went up ten notches when he saw you, and given his usual disdain for authority, that’s an unusual reaction unless the other person is someone he knows and dislikes. Jon doesn’t care for people in general but his actual dislike is earned,” Kyra said. “You wouldn’t be a station chief unless you had significant time in the NCS, and you wouldn’t be the station chief here, cleaning up Michael Rhead’s mess, unless you were very, very good at the job. In the NCS, that means you’re both charismatic and ruthless, even more than usual since you’re a woman. I would know. But you have no wedding ring and there are no pictures in this office of anyone resembling family or a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend. Either would give you a reason to hold him at arm’s length when you met us in the lobby, but you didn’t do that.”

Kyra opened the stairwell doors, eschewing the elevators, and the two women began the march downward. “Given how you persisted in trying to be friendly with Jon despite his hostility suggests you know why he wasn’t warming up to you and you feel some responsibility for it. All of which means that you had a previous relationship with him, a close one, and you flipped the off switch, probably because it was standing in the way of your career.”

Mills smiled, not in a perfectly happy way. “I see why he likes you.”

“What makes you think he does?”

“I’ve only met one other person who does what you just did and he just left the room,” Mills told her. “He’s been teaching you observation and logic but he can’t read people like you can, even people he knows well. That’s beyond him. You have a talent he doesn’t, so when you master the other bits you’ll be better than him at this business and I suspect he knows it. He wouldn’t waste his time with someone who didn’t have that potential. As you said, he doesn’t care for people. His dislike is earned but so is his tolerance.”

“We’ve been through some business together,” Kyra confessed.

“That business with China, I assume,” Mills said. “Anyway, we didn’t know that ship was coming until it was practically throwing towlines onto the dock. So the best I can do is send you out with some general kit and pray. Are you good with that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kyra said. “I volunteered for this. I’m not going to back out now.”

“Good woman,” Mills said. “One more question. How long were you down here before the Chavistas shot you?”

“Six months.”

“Do you know who you were supposed to meet on that bridge?”

“Does it really matter?”

Mills smiled, sympathetic. “Maybe not.” She pushed open the stairwell door on the bottom level, which led to a long hallway. She pointed at one of the doors. “Welcome to the garage.”

The CIA garage was separate from the regular embassy motor pool for reasons that had nothing to do with elitism, much smaller, and housed a far wider variety of vehicles. Several of the vehicles were SUVs and trucks, not the town cars and vans the State Foreign Service officers had at their disposal. Kyra preferred that. Her upbringing in central Virginia had left her partial to vehicles built for unpaved roads. She’d learned to drive on dirt trails bordering the James River and had bent the axles on three vehicles before she’d started college, all to her father’s frustration.

The darkened shop was full of autos but devoid of people. Marisa flipped a switch and the fluorescent lamps brightened the space with a harsh, unnatural light.

“There’s your ride.” Marisa pointed to a far corner occupied by a Toyota 4Runner that had seen a few minor collisions. It made sense not to fix every scrape, Kyra supposed. New cars, unblemished, driven by Americans, would draw attention. Curiosity from the locals was never a good thing and the dirt and dents would turn no heads.

“It’ll do,” Kyra said. “Wish I had more time to prep.”

“You and me both. Gear is on the table,” Marisa said without sympathy. She waved a hand toward a table by the corner.

Kyra stared at the inventory laid out on the plywood slab. “They haven’t given you the latest and greatest here, have they?” she asked.

“Rhead pretty well gutted the entire operation down here,” Marisa replied. She leaned against the Toyota. “HQ set up a task force that still hasn’t figured out just how far it all went and they didn’t want to risk Avila’s boys laying hands on any of the really good stuff until they could be sure we were battened down. So the NCS took the best gear home and left us with this. They swear we’ll get a full load-out when the station gets built up again, but they’re in no hurry. So take whatever you’ll need.”

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

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

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

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

“I am,” Kyra assured her.

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

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

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

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

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

“Simple is better.”

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

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

“Because today we’re finally together again?”

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

“You hate phones.”

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

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

“I should be. I earned it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Eavesdropping, were you?” Jon asked her.

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you talking about?”

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

“Yes.” His tone said otherwise.

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

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

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

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

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

“This is still—”

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

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

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

“Faith in what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kyra used one hand to extract a smartphone from the military pack she’d confiscated in the garage. She placed the Bluetooth headset in her ear and told the phone to call Mills’s office.

The phone took its own good time connecting the call and encrypting the feed, long enough that Jon was sure Kyra would be getting impatient. “You’re not there yet,” he finally said without preamble.

“Are you tracking me?” Kyra asked

“Of course. There’s not a phone made these days that doesn’t have GPS.”

“How’s the scenery?” Marisa asked, leaning close over Jon’s shoulder. He didn’t move.

“Jon thought Caracas was ugly,” Kyra said. “This is worse.” She held up her phone and switched on the video, streaming the feed to him for several seconds, then turned off the camera.

“I’ve slept in worse places. You’ll survive,” he assured her.

“We’ve scoped out some possible sites for you to leave the truck and sent them to your phone,” Marisa cut in. “The freeway should take you around the docks to the south, then curve back to the northeast. Imagery says the Markarid is docked at a quay in the port’s north end. Stay on the highway after you pass the port and you’ll go north past a fuel storage field. There’s a delta on the other side of that where you can park. Don’t go past it if you don’t find a good spot… there’s a naval base just up the road.”

“Marvelous.” She’d be within spitting distance of the Venezuelan military. Kyra pressed another button and the phone displayed an overhead map, her location marked by a moving blue dot. “What’s the distance to the target?” Kyra asked.

“About a half mile across the water,” Marisa said. “Walking around the beach, probably twice that.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Kyra agreed.

“Don’t be afraid to bag it and come home,” Jon offered.

“It’s a little late for that, Jon.”

“It’s never too late to walk away from stupid,” he said.

“Enter.”

Elham pulled the door open and walked past the SEBIN guards who had kept him in the hall for the last ten minutes. He felt no contempt for those men. He had stood a post his share of times for men not worth protecting and he was sure the soldiers outside felt the same about Ahmadi.

Ahmadi’s suite was the largest in the hotel and at least as large as Elham’s home at the military base back in Tehran. The decor was suited to Western tastes, of course, but Ahmadi hid his distaste masterfully if he felt any. The doctor sat at a square dining table, moving sausages onto a plate already filled with pastries and polenta. He had forgone water for wine to drink and a small bowl of quesillo flan sat by his plate. The civilian was a man at ease in these surroundings.

“Asr be kheyr, Sargord Elham. Or perhaps sobh be kheyr?” Ahmadi welcomed him.

Elham looked at his watch. “Sobh be kheyr. It is past midnight.”

“Yes. The jet lag never seems to work in our favor, does it? We’ll pay for that come the morning,” Ahmadi mused. “Would you care for some breakfast?” He waved his knife over the food.

“No, thank you.” He and his men had finished the last of the lavash bread, feta cheese, and quince jam they’d found in the Markarid’s small mess hall before leaving the dockyard a few hours before. It was a small meal, the last one they’d have before having to inflict Venezuelan food on their stomachs. He was in no hurry to do that.

“I presume the convoy has arrived?” Ahmadi asked.

“On schedule,” Elham confirmed. “Carreño’s men are surprisingly efficient, if unhappy about working under our guidance.”

“‘Our guidance,’” Ahmadi said, smiling as he pronounced each word, sarcasm in his tone. “I was not aware that soldiers had such talents for diplomatic words.”

“It’s a necessity. The Quds Force spends much of its time training foreign fighters,” Elham told him. “Teaching requires a certain skill with language. Students learn best when they feel valued and respected.”

“Indeed,” Ahmadi replied. “You finished your review of the security of the operation?”

“Unbreached,” Elham said. Except for your order to throw that pirate overboard. Ahmadi’s cruelty repulsed him. Elham had done some repellent things in his time, but out of duty alone. The civilian’s choice to torture the Somali had been pure indulgence. What do you truly care for security? Only that you’re not embarrassed. He didn’t say it… that need for diplomatic language again. “The cargo arrived at the facility. I watched them secure it before leaving to come to you. The Markarid has a nominal security detail aboard and the dock has been emptied. Carreño has refused to let any of the longshoreman near the ship until we can guarantee there is no residual danger to his countrymen. That will require some diplomacy of its own.”

“Irrelevant,” Ahmadi replied. “I could not care less what happens to the rest of the cargo. But I will have another crew flown here and they can take the Markarid home again. What did you do with your unwanted guests?”

“We loaded them into a cargo container and moved it into the warehouse by the dock. Our hosts are arranging a train to carry the container to a suitable site for disposal, far from here. Carreño has promised to wrap up that detail, not by choice of course,” Elham replied. “But we have another problem.”

“Oh?”

“Some of the longshoremen are sick. Some of my men suffered the same problem during the voyage but they recovered. I can’t say whether the same will be true for these men.”

“You think they should be eliminated?” Ahmadi asked.

“Security hinges on the details. The best way to manage some risks is simply to never take them.” Like throwing sick pirates overboard in life rafts, he thought but decided not to say. “Others are easily solved, if one is prepared to take steps from which other men shrink. The longshoremen need to be secured for the long term, certainly. Of course, it’s possible that their medical condition might solve the problem for us. If not, their executions might be necessary.”

“You sound unhappy about that,” Ahmadi observed.

“I do what duty requires,” Elham answered him. “Whether I enjoy it is unimportant.”

“And Carreño is unwilling, no doubt. You need me to come.”

Elham nodded. “Carreño will be unpleasant to manage on this. We secured his people with the rest of our guests, and I warn you that the smell is both quite impressive and unmistakable. We got to enjoy it for most of the voyage. I will not be sorry to see this particular problem behind us.”

“On that we agree.” Ahmadi wiped his mouth with the napkin and tossed it onto the emptied plate. “Very well. Tell the guards to bring the car.”

“That’s it,” Kyra said. She was lying prone behind the tree line, looking though a Leupold spotter’s scope from her bag mounted on a small tripod. The Markarid was surprisingly large given the distance, a testament to how long the cargo ship truly was. Half of the space between her and the vessel was Atlantic water, the other half sand and scrub, nothing to obstruct the view. Kyra held her phone up so she could see the screen next to the ship docked in the far distance and flipped through the color photographs, swiping through them with her finger. The vessel matched the pictures down to the rust pattern on the hull.

An adaptor cable connected the scope with her phone, which was streaming the video to Jon. “The name in big English letters is kind of a giveaway,” Jon said in her ear.

“The international language of commerce. Convenient,” she said. Staring through the optic, she panned from the ship’s fo’c’sle aft, then stopped and swore quietly. “Check out the ship’s island. You see that?”

The gaping hole was covered by a tarpaulin sheet badly tied down and the ocean wind kept the corner waving in the air. Underneath was a dark void, a hole directly into the corridors behind with twisted metal and mangled pipes in view, burned paint and scorched stains around the edges.

“There’s your RPG hit. I’d bet money that was a thermobaric round,” he said.

“You think that’s what the Iranians are smuggling in?”

“Sure. But the question is whether it’s the only thing they’d be smuggling in,” he said. “The Venezuelans could buy those from plenty of countries. They wouldn’t be worth a raid at sea.”

The SUV was not nearly so large or comfortable as the town cars Ahmadi preferred, but his choice of expensive vehicles was limited in this part of the South American backwater. Public attention was risk, but surely he didn’t have to settle for this. Then the truck ran over a badly maintained section of road and Ahmadi reconsidered. These country roads would destroy a better car’s suspension, and perhaps his spine along with it. Maybe sacrificing a bit of luxury in return for saving one’s back was the wiser choice? Still, it grated on him.

He sighed and turned to the soldier riding next to him in the backseat. “You’ve impressed me with your performance on this operation, Sargord,” Ahmadi said. “You seem like a man who is too smart to be a soldier. Surely you have higher ambitions?”

Elham ignored the implied insult. “I am a career soldier, not a conscript. Most of the Quds Force are. There is no career soldier who doesn’t aspire to the higher ranks,” he said carefully.

“Ah. The leader of the Guardians of the Revolution… I suppose that would be a worthy calling to have,” Ahmadi said. “So we are both cementing Khomeini’s revolution in our own ways. You fought the Americans in Iraq?”

“I did,” Elham confirmed.

“You killed many?” Ahmadi asked.

“Not directly. I trained insurgents to make roadside bombs out of the artillery shells we supplied. My students were very effective in that regard. A few others were promising marksmen and I taught them to be snipers.”

“Do you regret it? Not taking a more direct hand in the affair?”

“No,” Elham said. On that point, he didn’t care for diplomacy.

Kyra finished packing the Leupold back in the truck, then secured her Glock and a pair of extra clips in the concealed carry pocket of her pack. She shoved the smartphone into one of the other pockets. A few other odds and ends consistent with her cover as a tourist hiker were scattered throughout the bag, but the gun alone ensured that no cover would stand up if she were searched.

She was not going to submit to a search. Kyra had faced down the SEBIN before. She knew she could outrun them, if nothing else, though that had been in a city. The Caracas traffic had given her more obstacles than the local security service could overcome. That was absent here. The terrain near the dock would be too open for an extended chase and running in sand would be a futile maneuver. She would have to stay hidden this time and pray that the dock was as empty as it had seemed through the scope.

She touched the earpiece. “I’m heading over. Everything still clear?”

“Lots of activity on the west side of the port, but nothing on the eastern end by the ship. The bird is showing a few guards by the gangplanks so I don’t think you’ll be getting aboard. And they can see the front of the warehouse, so you’ll want to stay away from that side of the building. I guess everybody else has standing orders to stay away until further notice.”

Kyra nodded automatically, a gesture she knew Jon couldn’t see even as she made it. His report was both good news and bad. The light security by the ship would better her chances of getting in and out but almost certainly proved that whatever the Iranians had smuggled in aboard the Markarid was gone.

“Let’s hope they stay there,” she said. She pulled the pack over her shoulder, closed and locked the truck, then started the trudge around down the delta’s shoreline toward the dockyard.

“I find that surprising,” Ahmadi said, leaning back and adjusting his belt. The man’s stomach reached over his belt, his belly surely as soft and white as a pillow under his shirt judging by the size. “To be so close to our greatest enemies with so many opportunities to kill them… and you have no regrets that you didn’t get to shoot even one?”

“It’s a poor soldier who lets killing become an indulgence and not a necessity.”

“Shouldn’t a man take joy in his work?” Ahmadi smiled. “Did you know that I was part of the ’79 Revolution?”

“No.”

Ahmadi stared at the passing fields, his memories becoming more real to him than the vehicle in which he was riding. “I was in the crowd outside the American embassy that day… the fourth of November. I had abandoned my graduate work at Oxford to come home and support Khomeini. The shah had fled our country and was dying in America. One of my friends was the first over the wall… brave one he was… would that it had been me. In that moment, I could see it all so clearly, what was about to happen. I knew we would overrun the building, taking prisoners and using them to bargain for the shah’s return. I helped cut the chains off the gates and was one of the first inside.”

“You helped take the hostages,” Elham realized.

“Oh, I did more than that,” Ahmadi admitted. “I lived at that embassy for the next year. I helped guard the Americans, I interrogated them. I pulled the trigger of a rifle in mock executions in the basement. The American staff there… they were such weaklings. A few refused to break, but the rest? Crying like women at a funeral before we even tied the blindfolds. More worried about their lives than what it would mean for their country if we succeeded in forcing Carter to deliver up the shah.”

“You failed in that,” Elham observed.

Ahmadi shrugged. “Allah took His justice before we could take ours. Who am I to complain when the great Judge of Heaven renders such judgment? I went down to the basement that night and watched another interrogation and wondered what good the Americans were to us then. It seemed so very unjust that such people should be a superpower.”

“You still feel that way?” Elham said. The answer was obvious.

“I’ve come to see they can be cunning people,” the civilian admitted. “They can be complicated people — at times capable of great feats and true bravery, at other times, so self-indulgent, so weak-minded. They have no single religion so they have no moral center, which makes them unpredictable. But always cunning when they need to be. That is the only reason to fear them.”

“True enough, I suppose, though I think we’re not that different,” Elham said, surprised by his own candor. Ahmadi had enough connections at home to put an end to higher ambitions with a single remark.

“And how do you see them?”

“I’ve found the Americans to be…” He paused for a moment, picked the word carefully. “… determined,” he finished.

The satellite image showed a dirt trail running through the woods from the south side of the storage field below the paved road to the southern end of the dockyard warehouses. Kyra found it without trouble and marched across packed dirt in the dark for almost an hour, staying close to the tree line so she could disappear into the shadows if anyone approached. It was almost midnight now and the waxing moon was her only light. It was enough for most of the walk. Her night vision was undisturbed until she approached the dockyard, where some of the large lamps finally grew bright enough to interfere.

Kyra reached the edge of the paved yard. Another fuel storage depot was off to her right, large white towers that reflected the moonlight and brightened the open space. A large warehouse sat directly in front of her five hundred feet to the west. The Markarid’s berth and warehouse were northwest of her position with a fence running between the two mammoth storage buildings.

She pulled a night-vision monocle from her satchel and scanned the yard. She saw nothing, then touched her earpiece. “I’m here. You sure I’m alone?”

“Still three guards by the gangplank, but that’s a hundred yards from the warehouse. Anyone else there is inside a building with a heavy roof,” Jon replied.

Kyra nodded, then calmed her breathing. There was no cover story she could offer that would explain her presence away once she entered the dockyard. The Glock and a hard run would be the only things between her and prison.

That’s more than I had last time, she reminded herself.

She ran north along the trees for almost a hundred feet, then west, skirting the edge of the fuel storage depot. She had to skirt a smaller building, some kind of office, she guessed, but the lights were off. She reached the fence. It wasn’t topped with barbed or razor wire. The longshoremen had erected it for organization, not security. Kyra ran parallel to the barrier until she reached another darkened shed. She mounted the building quietly, then went over the fence and landed in a crouch.

“I’m over.”

“I see you,” Jon said in her ear.

“I’m going to try the warehouse. I’ll see if I can get a look at the dock from inside. If there’s nothing there worth our trouble, I’ll pull back.”

“Roger that.”

Kyra crept along the building’s metal wall, occasionally stepping around stacked wooden pallets and forklift tires. The warehouse itself was at least five hundred feet long, two hundred feet wide, easily bigger than a soccer field. The main doors on the east side were chained shut, which didn’t surprise her. She hadn’t expected her luck to be that good. She moved around the perimeter, stopping to listen and testing every door until she found an unsecured window. She slid it open a foot, then squeezed herself inside.

“You respect the Americans?” Ahmadi asked.

“I have no particular feelings toward them, hate or admiration,” Elham confessed. “I’m just a soldier and I want my country to prosper. If the Americans stand in the way of that, I will do my part to remove them from the road. That is the definition of duty. An American general once said that a man can do no more but should aspire to do no less. But where does the road lead that our leaders have chosen for us to travel?”

“You surprise me again. I was not aware that soldiers were ever philosophers,” Ahmadi mused.

“Soldiers spend a lot of time thinking about the causes for which they’re asked to die.”

“You question our leaders?” Ahmadi asked.

Elham considered his answer, but only for a few seconds, lest Ahmadi get the wrong idea. “Leaders are just men and even the best are fallible. Even when Allah speaks, we are sometimes slow to hear or we misunderstand the divine message. So I obey my orders, but not out of any particular loyalty to any particular leader or even all of them together. I simply trust that our country has Allah’s favor and He will make everything right. If our leaders do their jobs well, they push forward His work. If they do their jobs poorly, Allah’s will rolls forth anyway, perhaps just a bit more slowly. My calling is just to do my part.”

“Sargord, you are a diplomat after all.”

The warehouse was completely dark inside. Kyra had to scan the space with the night-vision monocle to get her bearings. She listened for voices or movement, heard nothing, and then started to move. The building was also mostly empty of cargo, which surprised her. There were open shelves in the back, storage bins for hand tools, compressors, gas cans, and other equipment. More stacks of pallets were scattered randomly around, the occasional chair and card table set together where some longshoremen took their lunch or played cards. It was her father’s garage on a massive scale. The dust kicked up by her boots was visible in the green light of the night-vision camera.

“Still with me?” she whispered.

“Yes, but your signal isn’t great,” Jon advised.

“I’m in the warehouse… metal roof.”

She padded forward as quietly as her boots would allow. The massive space had pieces of equipment here and there, scattered around in no organized way she could identify. One green cargo container, covered in streaks of rust red, sat near the main doors to the west. A forklift was parked a dozen feet away, its metal tines lowered to the ground. Kyra looked around again, the monocle turning the warehouse interior a sickly olive color. She closed her eyes and listened hard again for almost a minute, but heard nothing.

She made her way to the front and approached the metal box. “Only one container in here,” she reported. “Don’t know if they unloaded this one from the ship.”

“That’s strange. Port warehouses are usually full. They might be reserving that one for special cargo,” Jon said. “Can you get the box open?”

Kyra pulled out a Maglite from her bag and clicked it on, the red light helping to preserve what little night vision she had. She played over the container. She approached the door…

Then it hit her, a horrendous odor, stronger than the smell of diesel fuel and oil, rolling out of the box into the warehouse. It was possibly the worst thing she had ever smelled. It staggered her and she wondered why the owners had bothered locking the enormous metal crate. No one in their right mind would open it out of pure curiosity. She couldn’t remember ever having inhaled anything so evil and her stomach heaved, almost out of control. Kyra clenched her jaw shut, forcing the bile back down.

“The smell—” She was breathing through her mouth. Even so, Kyra could feel the odor in her throat. This is the mission, she told herself, but her stomach took no comfort in the thought.

“Can you open it?” Jon asked.

A padlock sealed the container door. “I think so… give me minute.” She knelt on the floor, opened her bag, and rifled through it. She pulled out a steel sheet, the size of a credit card, with lockpick tools laser cut into it. She popped out the two pieces she needed, tucked the card into her thigh pocket and set to work, inserting the torsion wrench into the padlock, then the half-diamond pick. Opening locks wasn’t her specialty and it took her two minutes and far more silent profanities to get the lock open. Done, she put the tools back in her shirt pocket, pulled the handle, and swung the door open.

“What is it?” Marisa said. She leaned over Jon’s shoulder to see the monitor. He didn’t flinch.

The station chief stared at the screen until Kyra’s flashlight played over the contents.

The metal box trapped the light, magnified it. The container only held two cargoes.

In the back, shapeless black bags, stacked in no orderly way, each one roughly the size of a man—No, Kyra realized. Exactly the size of a man.

In the front, men, a dozen, still alive. They were curled up on the metal floor, covered in their own bile and excretions. The sight caused Kyra’s stomach to heave again, harder this time, and she barely held it down.

She forced herself not to stumble backward. “Jon?” she asked, using his name and breaking communications protocol. “You seeing this?”

One of the men reached up at her with a shaking hand. “Ayúdame,” he begged weakly in Spanish.

Help me.

“Yes,” Jon said simply.

Marisa looked at him, surprised. There was a gentleness in his voice she’d hadn’t heard for years. She’d never known him to show sympathy often.

“How many?” he asked.

Kyra didn’t want to open her mouth to answer. “Eleven body bags, I think,” she spit out as quickly as she could. “Twelve men in the front. They’re still alive and they’re not Africans. I’m pretty sure they’re Venezuelans… the accent is right.” More of the men had raised their arms to her, some pleading, others too weak to even say a word.

“Eleven… counting the one the Navy pulled out of the Gulf, that’s a good ballpark number for a pirate team,” Jon said.

“We have to help these men,” Kyra said. She knew the answer.

“Arrowhead, this is Quiver,” Marisa announced, touching her own headset microphone. “There’s nothing you can do for them.”

“I can’t just leave them like this—”

“Arrowhead, you have no way to move them out. Even if you could help them back to your vehicle, somebody is going to come back for that container,” Marisa said, trying to be patient. “If they open it and find any of those men missing, they’ll know somebody was there. I know this feels wrong, but if you want to help anyone, all you can do is get the intel. You have to get what you came for and get out. That’s the only way you can help anyone.”

I know. Kyra refused to say it.

“I hate to ask this, but you need to open one up in the back and get some footage,” Marisa said.

“Are you serious?” Kyra asked. It was as close to begging as she’d ever come.

“We need confirmation,” she said.

Kyra muttered a curse too low for the smartphone to record. She entered the container, her sense of smell objecting, almost violently, and she stepped over the grasping Venezuelan men. She knelt down before the closest bag.

“Arrowhead?” Marisa called out.

“Yes?” she gasped, trying not to breath.

“When you open it, don’t puke. Whatever you’ve got to do, you hold it down.”

“I can’t promise that,” she said, gasping for air. The smell alone convinced her that she wouldn’t be able to hold down her dinner when she pulled the zipper. Whatever she found inside—

“If you puke, they’ll know you were there,” Jon advised.

“I doubt that.” She’d felt the men’s bile pulling on her boots. But Jon was being logical again. And here I thought you were actually worried about me. So much for sympathy. “Do my best.” She put her flashlight in her teeth and tried not to inhale. She aimed the smartphone with one hand and reached for the cadaver bag with the other.

Jon and Marisa watched Kyra’s hand grasp the zipper as the Venezuelan men groaned and pleaded in the background. She tugged, the zipper caught for a moment, and Kyra had to wrestle it for leverage with one hand. It finally came, sliding open fast, and the corpse inside was exposed to the light.

For a half second, they saw it — an African male, his head massively bloated from the gases of decomposition trapped under his skin and open blisters covering his face and lips. His hair was patchy, bald in spots, with sores on the scalp where the follicles were absent. They couldn’t tell his age for the swelling—

The smartphone and flashlight swung away from the corpse in opposite directions, the picture went dark and they heard Kyra heaving, trying desperately to keep her jaws clenched shut. The young woman needed almost a full minute to control herself, and they heard her trying to suck in air.

The smartphone and flashlight swung back onto the corpse and Kyra held the picture for a full five seconds. “That enough?” she pleaded.

“Jon, hostiles inbound,” Marisa said. She pointed at the IMINT feed on the wall monitor. A pair of vehicles had passed through the gates to the dockyard and were approaching the warehouse.

“Yeah, that’s enough,” Jon said. “You’ll have company in one minute. We can get stills from the video. Close everything up.”

Kyra nodded and did as she was ordered. She stepped over the men until she stood outside the container door and tried to breathe fresh air in through her nose. It didn’t help. The odor was trapped in her sinuses now and she wondered if she would ever get it out. She turned back and looked down at the men, still reaching up to her but too weak to move otherwise, even to drag themselves out of the box. Tears began to flood out of her eyes. “¡Lo siento!” she said, her voice breaking. I’m sorry.

She finally got fresh air into her lungs and her mind finally focused in that moment. She began scanning the warehouse, desperately searching for any way to help the men still crying out, but there was nothing. Whoever was approaching was coming for them and she wondered if God Himself would forgive her for what she had to do next.

She heard a sound… a motor, a heavy one rising as it approached the building.

“Lo siento,” she cried again, quiet, then she grabbed the container door.

“¡Señorita, no! ¡Ayúdanos, por Dios!” one of them men pleaded weakly. By God, help us!

With her conscience yelling at her louder than the men, Kyra closed the door and threw the handle, cutting off their pleadings. The tears were flowing now, falling in the dust on the floor. She sobbed, her chest heaving, and she moved like a machine, refusing to listen to her emotions. She set the padlock, then twisted the head on her Maglite, killing the light, and the space went dark for a few seconds—

— and then she could see again. A moving light streamed under the warehouse door, then stopped as whatever truck had approached came to a stop outside.

Kyra ran for the rear of the warehouse, moving through the shelving and equipment scattered about the back.

Metal struck metal at the warehouse front and one of the sliding cargo doors began to open. Kyra judged the distance to the window and knew she wouldn’t make it through and out before the men entered the warehouse, the lights from whatever vehicle they had filling the space.

She looked back to the door. If the truck was there—

She turned, ran, and slid down behind a pallet stack near the back that sat at an angle to the truck lights and the cargo container. It wasn’t a solid barrier, but the wooden frames would break up her outline and any shadow she would cast behind. The cargo container sat an angle to her… she could still see the container door. She set the smartphone against the bottom of the stack, as close to it as she could, aiming the camera to the front, and darkened the screen.

The door slammed open and the full lights of a five-ton cargo truck flooded into the building, lighting up everything to the back wall. The only dark space for fifty yards in any direction was found in the shadows cast by the cargo container, the pallets, and the forklift.

Buried in shadow, Kyra pulled open the concealed carry pocket on her bag and pulled out her Glock. She wiped her face with her gun hand, trying to clear her eyes and she clenched her teeth, forcing herself to stop crying.

“Stay down,” Marisa muttered. She and Jon stared at the screen, the image transmitted by Kyra’s phone still coming through, steadier now because it was resting on the floor.

Jon said nothing. Kyra didn’t need the distraction.

The men entered the building, talking in Spanish phrases. She saw three… four… five… realized there would be more outside. Several carried assault rifles. Soldiers. She looked through the pallet stack, trying to identify uniforms but saw only dark silhouettes cut out of the truck lights.

They approached the cargo container and the closest man opened the door. “¡Madre de Dios, qué olor!” Mother of God, that smell!

Most of the other men recoiled, muttering in agreement, covering their faces with their hands or collars to no good effect.

Three men approached and the gaggle of soldiers parted to let them have a clear view. Two of the men weren’t dressed for the occasion. Both wore suits, European cut. The man on the left was medium height and kept a thin cigar clenched in his teeth. The man in the center was the shortest of the three, overweight, with a beard. The last man, farthest to the right, was dressed more casually, tactical pants and work shirt, but carried an assault rifle, a model Kyra couldn’t identify.

The trio walked forward, staring inside the container.

“You see the problem,” Elham said in Farsi. Carreño didn’t speak the language and hated it when his visitors did, but Elham didn’t care for the man or his frustrations.

“These are longshoremen?” Ahmadi asked.

“Yes, the crew that repaired the cargo breach and unloaded the body bags you see behind them,” Elham replied. “Our hosts had intended to assign them other duties and then remove them one by one under less obvious circumstances. But they became sick too quickly and now they are too weak to assign any duty at all. If they’re released, they might find their way to the hospitals, which would certainly cause a security breach. But having so many go missing at once will raise questions.”

“I understand,” Ahmadi said. Then he switched to Spanish as he turned to Carreño. “I don’t understand your problem. The solution here seems obvious.”

“I would prefer to try to give them some medical treatment… ease their suffering. Some might recover. We can remove them to some location where they would present no danger—” Carreño told him.

“That cannot be allowed. Every man here is a possible security leak every minute they draw breath,” Ahmadi replied.

“You would just execute them?”

“It’s not the ideal answer to the problem, but the only one that I see. You can always call el presidente if you disagree.”

Carreño shook his head. “No. I had hoped that we might avoid this but I will not bother el presidente with it.”

“I think that is a wise choice, my friend.” Ahmadi nodded and turned to the Iranian soldier at his right. “Sargord, please make sure the job is finished, then call me.” Not waiting for an answer, he started walking back to the car. Carreño frowned then nodded to the soldiers milling around the container and followed Ahmadi out the door.

Kyra pulled herself quietly into a crouch, the Glock pressed against her forehead. The men argued, their words mostly incomprehensible to her. She was too far away to make out the discussion, part of it in Spanish, which she could understand, part of it not. The smartphone would record the noise. With luck, some tech from the Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology would be able to enhance the audio track and tease out the words.

The two men in suits finally walked back to the vehicle. One of the soldiers barked a command in Spanish. Two soldiers stepped up to the container and raised their rifles and pointed them into the box. She heard the men inside pleading and begging, their cries indistinct to her ears. Please, no—

“Oh, no,” Marisa protested quietly. Jon said nothing. She grabbed his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back, surprising her.

The guns chattered and the muzzle flashes lit up the warehouse like strobes. The gunfire echoed off the metal walls and Kyra could hear some of the rounds bouncing around the container. Small holes appeared and the truck headlights streamed through them. It lasted less than five seconds, the echoes a bit longer, then the warehouse was quiet again, the still air broken only by the sound of a car driving away on gravel.

The soldiers moved forward, slinging their rifles over their shoulders. Several laid out more body bags on the warehouse floor and they began to load the dead longshoremen inside. The minutes crawled by, too slow, and Kyra caught herself quietly praying, something she hadn’t done for quite some time. The soldiers began hauling the bodies out to the truck, two men to a corpse. She heard grunts, curses, a thud as a body bag was dropped. The job went on for almost fifteen minutes more.

“¡Terminado!” someone exclaimed. “¡Afuera, ya, antes de que me ahogué!” Finished! Outside, now, before I suffocate! The Spanish resolved itself to English in Kyra’s mind automatically.

The warehouse went dark again. The soldiers were moving for the door. The man in khakis carrying the bullpup rifle pulled his own phone out of his pocket. Kyra risked a quick look around the pallet and saw him for an instant before he passed behind the cargo container. She watched as he stopped, waiting for his call to connect. Finally he began to speak, and Kyra couldn’t understand a word.

“What is that?” Marisa asked. She leaned in, trying to hear the soldier’s foreign words through the tinny speaker of Jonathan’s monitor.

Jon twisted his head, listening.

“That’s not any language I know,” Marisa finally said.

“It means ‘the job is done,’” Jon said. “In Farsi.”

The cargo truck’s engine started up as the last man walked out the door and closed it behind him. Kyra exhaled but didn’t move until the light under the door finally swung away and she heard the truck rumble off in the distance. She put the Glock back in her satchel, then recovered her smartphone. She walked slowly to the front of the container. The soldiers had closed it but not locked it. She pulled the door open, then pointed her smartphone at the pools of blood covering the floor, shooting video for several seconds. Then she closed the door, touched her headset, and began to walk toward the rear of the building.

“Still with me?” she asked quietly.

“We’re here,” Marisa said through the speakerphone. “You okay?”

“No,” Kyra said. “They killed them all.”

“We saw,” Marisa said.

“Did you see that last guy? He was carrying an assault rifle… some kind of bullpup I’ve never seen before.” She reached the window and climbed through, her boots quietly grinding gravel as she put her feet down outside. She closed the window as far as it would allow. Then she sank to her knees and sat in the gravel, her back against the wall.

Jon shrank Kyra’s video feed to a small window and began typing furiously on the keyboard. “You’ve got access to Intelink?” he asked Marisa.

“Yeah,” she assured him. “We weren’t gutted that badly.”

Jon grabbed the mouse and started clicking links, cursing the slow connection. He finally found the page he was looking for on the classified network. “Did his rifle look like this?” He clicked another button and shared his screen with Kyra’s phone.

She looked down at her phone and stared at the photograph. “I think so, yeah. What is that?”

“It’s a KH-2002. They also call them Khaybars. It’s a Chinese design, ripped off from the M-16, but they’re made in Iran,” Jon told her. “That guy was a member of the Revolutionary Guard… probably Quds Force.”

Quds Force? Kyra thought. She looked down the road past the storage field and saw the taillights of the cargo truck in the distance, turning onto the paved road that led to Route 1. The SEBIN were bad enough. “Jon, he made a phone call when they finished up,” she whispered.

“We’re on that,” Marisa told her. “Are you clear?”

“Looks like it,” Kyra said. “They’re already on the freeway, heading south. If they don’t exit, they’ll end up heading west.”

“Noted,” Marisa replied. She checked the wall monitor. “Overhead says you’re clear back to the dirt trail. You go find someplace safe to hunker down for the night, and that doesn’t mean the truck. Get back into town. Find a hotel. Check back in when you’re there, then go to sleep and get some breakfast. I’ll have new orders for you in the morning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kyra said. “I don’t think I’m going to sleep very much.”

“Understood,” Marisa replied after a short delay. “Do your best.”

Kyra ended the call, then looked around. There was no movement, no sound. The silence around the complex had an edge to it now, like the dark was alive and watching. An intelligence officer who was afraid of the dark was in the wrong business? Idiot, she cursed herself. An intelligence officer who wasn’t afraid of the dark was a fool.

She worked back to the fence, climbed the barrier, made her way back through the shadows by the storage field to the trail, and didn’t relax at all when she entered the forest.

“In the old days, you and I would’ve had a betting pool on where they’re going,” Marisa announced, trying to lighten the tension.

“They’re going to the CAVIM explosives factory in Morón,” Jon announced. “I assume that you have a file on that somewhere.”

Marisa said nothing for a good ten seconds. “You want to explain that conclusion?” she finally asked.

“Let’s assume the man with the bullpup was Quds Force. That means we have an Iranian cargo ship docked at a Venezuelan port with Iranian special forces soldiers in the group. Therefore whatever they smuggled in was part of a joint operation between both countries,” Jon replied. “Ever since Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first allied back in 2001, both countries have been opening joint commercial operations all over Venezuela… almost twenty years now. A tractor factory in Ciudad Bolívar… a cement plant near Ciudad Guyana on the Orinoco River… lots of buildings. If any of them are cover facilities used for joint operations like this, whatever cargo they unloaded from the Markarid is probably headed for one of them. Now assume that to minimize the possibility of a security breach or accident, they had the Markarid dock at the port closest to the destination,” he said. He rifled through a pile of papers, extracted one, and held it out to her. “This one at Morón is operated by the CAVIM, the Compañía Anónima Venezolana de Industrias Militares, the state Military Industries Company.”

“Morón’s only twenty minutes away,” Marisa protested. “It’s a straight shot west on Route 1. Those cargo trucks have a range of a couple hundred miles, fully gassed. No reason they couldn’t be going south—”

“Where is the next closest joint facility?” Jon asked.

Marisa stepped out to her office and returned with a map. She unrolled it across the table behind Jon’s desk. “An ammunition factory in Maracay. It’s another CAVIM site, thirty miles southeast of the dock.”

Jon searched through his stack and pulled out another paper. “There was a pair of very large explosions at two different locations at that factory in 2011,” he said. Marisa took the paper and scanned it. “Some analysts suspect the fires were meant to cover up a weapons transfer to FARC terrorists in Colombia, but they put the factory on everyone’s radar in any case. I doubt Avila would use it now for joint operation with the Iranians that he wanted to keep out of sight. After that, the next closest facility is a bicycle factory in Cojedes, two hundred kilometers southwest, which appears to actually be a bicycle factory,” he told her. “But the explosives factory is another story. In 2007, Iran Air and Conviasa partnered to fly an air route from Caracas to Damascus to Tehran, but, funny enough, no private passengers could ever seem to buy a ticket on those flights and the passengers who did board in Caracas never passed through immigration or regular security. Once it hit the press, the air bridge shut down in 2010. But there was a report that CAVIM sent shipments to Tehran from the explosives plant aboard that flight, but everything went diplomatic pouch, so it wasn’t subject to search.”

Another long pause. “Is that what you were doing in here all afternoon?”

Jon shrugged. “I had three hours to kill after Kyra left. Figured I might as well get smart on these people. Heaven knows you don’t have anyone else down here to go through this stuff.” He smacked a pile of papers he’d stacked next to the computer.

“Yeah.” Marisa was reluctant to agree, but there was no denying the truth. She smiled. “Back in Iraq, you always did clean out the Rangers and the Deltas with those betting pools of ours,” she admitted. “I presume you’ll be wanting satellite imagery of the factory in Morón?” she asked.

“That would be marvelous,” Jon said.

“Heaven help you if you’re wrong and we lose those trucks,” the chief of station warned.

“We’ve already lost those trucks, unless there’s a satellite overhead. So if they’re at Morón, I’m going to look like a big freakin’ hero.”

“You’ll deserve it,” Marisa admitted. “Any idea who those two civilians were?”

Jon brought up the video, cued the soldiers’ entrance into the warehouse, then began stepping through it frame by frame until he got a still frame with good lighting, the men’s faces identifiable in the car lights.

“I know this one—” Marisa pointed at the man with the cigar. “That’s Andrés Carreño, head of SEBIN.” She took off her headset, patiently wrapped the cable around the muffs, then cursed and threw it across the room.

“Problem?” Jon asked.

“Kyra told you about that night she got shot?”

“Not in detail.”

“Carreño was the double agent she was supposed to meet. He almost got her killed,” Marisa told him.

“Does she know?” he asked.

“I asked her. She evaded the question but I don’t think we can take the chance. If he’s involved, she’s done with this operation.”

“Headquarters will override you,” Jon said.

Marisa frowned and stared down at him. “Why?”

“Because I know who this one is.” Jon pointed at one of the men on the screen, the shorter, fatter man of the trio. Marisa stepped forward, leaned in, and saw that Jon was pointing at the man who had given Carreño his orders. “And when the president finds out who that is, he’s going to order us to stay on the target.”

Jacob Drescher pressed the F9 key on his keyboard, forcing his in-box to reload. The list of field cables didn’t change and he fell back in the chair, trying not to sigh in frustration. The rest of the night shift did not need to hear his exasperation.

He looked out over the bullpen. All heads were down except for two officers standing by the coffee machine, reloading on caffeine and quiet gossip, and one heading into the annex room to wrestle with a photocopier. As a rule, Drescher preferred the quiet because that meant a quiet world beyond the fence at Langley. Tonight he knew better and the incongruity was quiet torture, but he refused to take it out on his people.

He looked at the clock. Barely a minute had passed. He pressed F9 anyway.

The list changed, a new entry at the top. There we go. Drescher double-clicked the cable and it filled the screen. He scrolled past the addresses and endless crypts and code words to the part that really mattered, and that bit he read in silence. Then he read it again.

This just turned into a bigger mission, he thought.

Director Cooke was at home but he doubted she was asleep. Drescher picked up the phone and dialed. “Madam Director, this is the Ops Center. Going ‘secure voice.’” He pressed the button that encrypted the call.