Cold Shot

DAY FOUR

Cooke stared at the iPad, disgust drawn across her face. “You’ve confirmed their identities?” she asked.

“I woke up some senior analysts in the wee hours. Once they got enough coffee in themselves, they called it,” Drescher confirmed. “The White House is going to want to see this.”

“I know,” Cooke said, resigned. She looked up and Drescher watched her stare at the ceiling. “Call the Multimedia Production Group,” she said. “I need one of their video specialists for an hour.”

It was a long list.

“We have high confidence that the subject in that video is Hossein Ahmadi,” Cooke said. “He’s Iran’s version of AQ Khan. He’s currently in charge of the Iranian nuclear program and answers directly to the Iranian president… maybe to the supreme leader, but we’re not sure. The Iranian government has always been fairly opaque. But we do know that Ahmadi is the most serious nuclear proliferator in the world at the moment. He’s not in Khan’s league, but he still sells technology and nuclear fuel to lots of people we don’t like.” She set the iPad on the coffee table in front of the president. The video was frozen on the picture of the Iranian.

Rostow picked up the tablet and replayed the video. She could tell the precise moment he saw the SEBIN soldiers shoot their rifles into the cargo container. Rostow clenched his teeth and his eyes narrowed. “Do you think he’s shipping weapons of mass destruction to Avila?” The president of the United States had too little worry and too much relish in his voice for Kathy Cooke’s taste.

“We have no evidence of that, sir,” she corrected him. “One of our officers confirmed that the vessel was, in fact, the Markarid. She penetrated the warehouse in Puerto Cabello at great personal risk, where she collected the intel on Somali pirates that you saw and determined that Ahmadi and Andrés Carreño were on-site. Carreño even appears to be deferring to Ahmadi, which I’m fairly sure wouldn’t happen without President Avila’s explicit consent.”

“Those Venezuelans they executed… we don’t know why they were sick?” He’d watched the video four times. The sight of the Somali pirate in the bag had almost cost him the eggs Benedict the Navy stewards had delivered to the Oval Office that morning.

“No, sir,” the CIA director confirmed. “Our Office of Medical Services examined the video but couldn’t determine a cause for their condition.”

“Exposure to nuclear materials?” Gerry Feldman asked. The national security adviser flipped through the other pages on his own tablet. “Any chance the ship was smuggling chemical weapons? Or that the group just got food poisoning?”

“Ahmadi hasn’t been known to traffic in chemical weapons,” the director of national intelligence advised. Cyrus Marshall had stayed silent, as was his habit, letting his subordinate take the lead and offering his own comments at the moments they would have the most influence. “Every intel report we have on him says that he deals in nuclear technology and materials. Any chemicals that he smuggles are related to the nuclear fuel cycle. But if he is moving chemical weapons, then he’s branching out into new markets and that wouldn’t make me any less worried. And I doubt the Venezuelans would let Iranians shoot their own citizens over a case of food poisoning.”

“So these dockworkers”—Rostow tapped the iPad—“weren’t puking because of bad food. They were tossing up breakfast because they’d been exposed to something nasty, maybe even a significant radiation source. And these soldiers”—another tap on the iPad—“killed them and disposed of the bodies because they were evidence.”

“That seems likely, sir,” Cooke confirmed.

“And the Venezuelans didn’t have a problem with Ahmadi ordering them to shoot their fellow citizens on the spot?” Rostow asked, incredulous.

“It seems that Carreño did, though he didn’t argue the issue very hard,” Cooke said. “The audio we were able to extract was faint, so the transcript isn’t complete, but what we did get suggests that Ahmadi overrode him.”

“Hossein Ahmadi is no small-time operator, Mr. President. Ahmadi wouldn’t come to Venezuela for some shipment of guns or even minor nuclear tech. He could delegate that to somebody else,” Marshall said, not looking up from the computer on his lap. “If he’s down there, wielding that kind of influence, then President Avila is serious about either putting together his own nuclear program or becoming a supplier to Ahmadi. The Venezuelans are sitting on top of huge reserves of uranium in the Roraima Basin and they were giving the Iranians mining access as far back as ’09.”

“Could they be putting together a program just to build some reactors for power?” Rostow asked.

“Hugo Chávez announced back in 2010 that his government was taking the first steps toward building a ‘peaceful nuclear program,’ as he called it,” Cooke admitted. “They’d signed an agreement with the Iranians two years prior to cooperate on developing nuclear technology. But both countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and shooting dockworkers doesn’t inspire confidence that they’re trying to comply.” She shifted on the couch and set her tablet back on the low table that sat between her and Rostow.

“And your people didn’t pick up on Ahmadi making any visits down there before?” Rostow asked her.

“Unfortunately, sir, our entire operation in Venezuela was gutted eighteen months ago by the former chief of station.”

“That was the Michael Rhead fiasco?” Rostow asked.

“Yes, sir,” Cooke confirmed. “We were able to convince President Stuart to remove him, but not before he’d exposed several of our people to the SEBIN. As a precaution, we had to transfer most of our people out of country and start a review of every asset we had. We didn’t know which Venezuelan assets we could trust. We’ve been rebuilding but we can’t just replace the entire case-officer corps en masse and it’ll take years before we can rebuild our asset networks. Until that happens, our coverage down there will be spotty at best.”

“I understand, but your people caught this and that was no small feat given what you’re working with,” Rostow said. The man sounded sympathetic and Cooke started to wonder whether she hadn’t misjudged him. “Your team is still on-site?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kathy…” he started, then paused for dramatic effect, she thought. “Do your people know where the Markarid cargo is now?”

“No, sir, not for certain. We have a possible lead but we need time to run it to ground. We suspect it could be somewhere at the CAVIM ordnance factory in Morón.”

“If that’s correct, I take it you’d agree that we need to know what Ahmadi has shipped to that facility?”

Cooke carefully parsed the words and looked for hidden meanings. She found none. Still she spoke with caution. “If we can confirm that’s the destination, it should be a priority target, sir,” she concurred.

Rostow nodded, smiling. “Your officer is still in the field?”

“Yes, sir. We’re going to task her to conduct surveillance—”

“I don’t think surveillance will cut it,” Rostow said. “Ahmadi isn’t going to leave that cargo sitting out in the open for every satellite in orbit to see. We need somebody to get inside that facility.”

Cooke froze, alarmed. “Sir, we have very little intel on the CAVIM facility beyond just the general layout and none on the interior of any buildings on-site. Trying to send a team in blind would be exceptionally dangerous. There would be a very high probability of failure.”

“How much time would you need?” Feldman asked.

Cooke turned to the national security adviser. You should tell him that this isn’t a smart idea, she thought, and then had to suppress a tiny smile. I sound like Jon. “Months, at least. A year would be better.”

“Months?” Rostow asked, clearly not liking the answer. “Kathy, we don’t have months. If the cargo is there, Ahmadi could move it at any time.”

“Sir, that one officer is the only field officer we have in-country. We don’t even have a Global Response unit that could pull her out if she got in trouble. We have no insiders to feed us intelligence on security, floor plans, nothing. Even under optimal conditions, an operation like this takes—”

“I don’t want to hear months, Kathy. I don’t even want to hear weeks. Ahmadi could be on a plane out of the country tonight. We need to know what’s inside that facility and we need to tie Ahmadi to it.”

“I understand, Mr. President, but—” Kathy started.

“No ‘buts,’” Rostow interrupted. “I’ve read the CIA mission statement. ‘We go where others cannot go, we do what others cannot do.’ It’s time to live up to that. I know it’s dangerous, but I need your people to find a way in there. If the Iranians are moving nuclear material or weapons of mass destruction into this hemisphere, we need to know now and we need to stop them.”

There it is, Cooke realized. He wants his own “thirteen days in October.”

“Gerry, amend the presidential finding,” Rostow said, ending the discussion. “The CIA has forty-eight hours to determine whether the Markarid cargo is inside the CAVIM facility. No ‘best guesses’ or ‘high-confidence’ estimates. I want some confirmation with hard evidence and I don’t care how you get it.”

“Sir,” Marshall protested, finally intervening. “That’s not real—”

“Cy, we’re talking about possible weapons of mass destruction here. I’m not going to put the national security of the United States at risk because CIA wants to be cautious. The debate is over. Kathy, if you can’t get behind this, you can resign.”

And there’s the trap, she thought.

Cooke considered the options, then made her choice.

She balled her fists and put them on the couch to push herself up. “Mr. President—” she began.

Marshall put his hand gently on her knee, stopping her from getting up. “We’ll get it done, Mr. President,” he assured Rostow, cutting her off.

Rostow turned his head and stared at the DNI with a poker face that Cooke was sure he used to mask frustration. Then the president smiled at her and Marshall and nodded, cool. “Thanks for coming. I want daily reports from you personally on this until further notice,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” the DNI replied.

The Oval Office door closed behind them and Cooke and Marshall started for the West Wing entrance, brushing people aside as they marched through the building. Cooke refrained from cursing the president only because she was moving through hostile territory and anything she said would be reported.

They reached the West Executive Avenue entrance and Marshall pulled the foyer door shut behind him.

“What was that?” Cooke demanded before the door clicked.

“You’re not going to fall on your sword on this one,” Marshall told her. “I’m from Oregon so I got to follow Rostow up close when he was governor back home. This is what he does when he wants to clean out an agency. He gives them an impossible tasking for reasons that will sound good to the public, and if they refuse, he fires everyone who protests and replaces them with his people. If they try but fail, he fires them for incompetence and does the same thing.” Marshall stopped talking to catch a breath, then leaned against the wall. “Kathy, as long as you’re at Langley, you can act. This president thinks CIA is responsible for half the evil in the world, so if you quit, he’ll have a clear path to putting in a hit man who’ll pull out the long knives and gut the place. It’ll take the Agency twenty years to recover. It’ll be like ’76 when Jimmy Carter put in Stansfield Turner.”

Cooke nodded and slumped. “He fired eight hundred field officers in one night. They called it the ‘Halloween massacre.’”

“And Rostow wouldn’t bat an eye if it happened again,” Marshall replied, agreeing with her sentiment. “But they like you on the Hill. If you’re holding the office and acting in the best interests of the country, he can’t just dump you without drawing political fire. So, can you get a team down there?”

“Even if I could, they wouldn’t be any better prepared to penetrate the factory than the one person already on-site,” Cooke replied. “One person, a dozen, it doesn’t matter, they’re all likely to get captured or killed.”

“Get back to Langley and work on the problem. I’ll help any way I can.”

“Thanks.” She pushed open the door and walked out to the parking lot.

Feldman closed the Oval Office door behind the CIA director and the DNI, then turned back toward the president and leaned against the wall. “I thought you had her.”

“I did have her,” Rostow groused. “Did you see her face? She was going to resign and Cy stopped her.” The president threw himself back into his chair and gritted his teeth. “I’ve squeezed her for all the political capital she’s worth. Earned me plenty of goodwill with Congress, especially the intel committees, and the feminists were ready to throw me a party. But we need a clean break from Harry Stuart… get our own man in her seat, someone who knows how to take orders.” The president grabbed the iPad off the table and started the video playing again. “What do you think about this?” he asked, smacking the tablet.

“Yeah, that was some good porn,” Feldman agreed. “If the Iranians are moving nuclear material down there, it would be the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again. Nobody’s going to stand for the mullahs smuggling radioactive material over here. The world almost blew up the last time someone tried to move nukes into Latin America. Nobody wants a replay of that.”

“We can’t prove that’s what they’re doing.”

“Maybe we don’t need to,” Feldman offered. “Saddam didn’t have any WMD in ’03, but he refused to play ball, so everyone assumed he did and the entire country lined behind George Bush for war. We just have to do the same thing here but we don’t invade. The longer Avila holds out and refuses to play ball, the worse he looks.”

Rostow heaved himself to his feet, wandered back to the Resolute desk and sat on it, dropping the iPad on top. He began swinging his legs as he thought, gently hitting the antique with his shoes on the backswing. “Avila wouldn’t want a war with us. Castro at least had the Russians backing him and Krushchev had ICBMs and the whole Soviet Navy. The Iranians don’t have a fraction of that firepower. They couldn’t back up Avila even if they wanted to.” Rostow smiled and hit the iPad with the flat of his hand. “It’s perfect… all the political upside of the ’62 crisis with none of the risk.”

“And everyone on the Hill lines up behind you or they end up looking weak on national security.” Feldman stared at the Oval Office ceiling, running the possibilities through his head. “You’d have to call Avila out in public,” he said finally. “Demand that he give up the cargo and Ahmadi. You get both of those and your political capital would go through the roof. We’d be able to push Congress on everything, not just foreign policy. This could break the dam open, grease the skids for everything we want to do in the first term. And nobody will be able to touch you on the national security issue during the reelection campaign,” Feldman said. He slapped the table with his hands like it was a drum.

“But we’d need some real proof if we’re going to force Avila’s hand,” Rostow said. “Kennedy had pictures of the actual missiles and Adlai Stevenson used them to pin Krushchev’s boy to the wall in the UN Security Council. Zorin couldn’t wriggle out of it… ‘Don’t wait for the translation, yes or no’ and all that.”

Feldman thought for a minute, then shook his head. “Forget it, it’s a pipe dream. Cooke’s people will never get into that factory. But you’ve still got proof that Ahmadi is down there and video footage of him at the site when they executed those workers. That’s juicy stuff.”

“And maybe we get him to cough up Ahmadi to save his own hide. We take down the ‘next AQ Khan.’ They’d be showing that on the History Channel for the next ten years,” Rostow said.

“Yeah,” Feldman agreed. “But that video’s classified, so we can’t just release it to the press corps.”

“How do you want to handle it?”

“You don’t need to know,” Feldman advised. “I’ll take care of it.”

The George Washington Parkway was the most beautiful drive in the District and Cooke watched the scene without seeing as it passed to her right. Getting lost in thought was one of the luxuries that having a driver afforded her. In her younger days, she’d spent hours at a time in Moscow watching for surveillance, which amounted to looking in the rearview mirror more than at the road ahead while memorizing license plates. It had made her wish that she’d been there during the Cold War when fewer Muscovites had owned cars. After the Soviet Union had fallen, the number of cars on the Moscow roads had climbed steadily, making life tougher for U.S. intelligence officers trying to ply their trade. She’d been skilled at surveillance detection years ago but it was one skill that she had allowed to atrophy with no regrets.

Cooke lifted the handset to the portable STU-3 mounted between the front seats. She dialed and encrypted the call. “It’s Cooke,” she said without preamble. “I’m ten minutes out. The president has given us forty-eight hours to figure out whether the Markarid cargo is at the CAVIM factory.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate.” Drescher’s sense of humor was dry for Cooke’s taste but it seemed to fit the situation now.

“I want a task force on this… all of the directorates at the table, and I want you to run it. The first meeting is in twenty minutes, my conference room.”

“Roger that. See you soon.” Of all his traits, Cooke liked most that Drescher knew when a conversation was finished.

“Thanks.” She hung up the phone.

The Miraflores Palace had begun its long life as the family residence of Joaquín Crespo, one of Venzuela’s past presidents who knew not Bolívar, or so Diego Avila thought the Bible might have phrased it. Crespo was a warlord, a member of a corrupt elite who had either forgotten or ignored Bolívar’s legacy and tried to extend his betrayal by installing an ally in the president’s office as his successor through a fixed election. The masses had rebelled, Crespo had moved to put down their uprisings, and some righteous mobber had used a rifle to put an end to his perfidy and his life at the town of Cojedes.

A righteous end for an oppressor, Avila thought, but the man knew how to build a house. It was a shame that it was only the president’s official workplace and not his residence, but Avila would not break the traditions that Chávez had laid down. The edifice was a piece of exceptional workmanship, white brick, red-tiled roofs, immaculate, with a Japanese garden. The neoclassical building stood out in the surrounding sea of gray apartment buildings that looked like they belonged in old Soviet Moscow. Avila had been a carpenter before Chávez’s revolution, which skill let him appreciate the expert work of the palace builders. It was the finest house he would ever work in, though the fortune he was amassing in office would provide him an excellent residence in which to retire in Ciudad Bolívar, the home of his youth. But that was years away and he had no plans to leave Miraflores despite what his political opponents were promising their followers about the next election. Venezuela belonged to the Chavistas, now and forever. They would not allow the moneyed elites to take control again and bring their corruption back. The revolution was eternal.

Avila strode across the courtyard, pausing to light a small cigarillo, a cheap brand that he’d favored since his teenage years and had never found wanting, though his other tastes had matured since his youth. Lunch today would be pabellón criollo with shrimp and scallops and a bottle of Pessac-Léognan, all waiting for him in the Boyacá room.

And it would wait longer still for him. A functionary ran up to him with a secure cell phone in hand, holding it out. Avila took it, stared at the screen, then held it to his face. “Andrés, amigo mio, what is the good news?”

“The dockyard has been sanitized,” Carreño told him, a bit of anger seeping through his voice. “The Markarid will sail as soon as our friend can arrange for his government to send another crew.”

“That was unfortunate, but it’s done now. All else proceeds as planned? No other security issues?”

“None,” Carreño said.

“And there is still no sign that the Americans or some other intelligence service has been tipped to the operation?”

“None,” Carreño said. “After their station was gutted last year, I don’t think they’re in any position to give us such trouble.”

More good news. This conversation might have a good end after all, Avila told himself. “And I presume the American embassy is being watched?”

“As always.”

“Good,” Avila said, finally satisfied. “Where are those unfortunates now?”

“At the CAVIM facility. They will be buried behind the tree line of the ordnance test field. I have given orders to have the job complete by morning.”

“Good. That is good,” Avila said. “Stay well, my friend.” He disconnected the call, then dragged on the cigarillo and resumed his walk to lunch.

Kyra had no idea whether the hotel room cost more than the Agency per diem allowed and, for the moment, didn’t care. The bed was soft, the room as modern as any hotel back in the States, and she hadn’t slept on the plane. The adrenaline and caffeine pills had kept her going through the night but she’d faded as soon as she’d laid her head on the mattress.

Her smartphone sounded and Kyra slept through it. It sounded again, then a third time before the noise finally penetrated her dreams. She turned, half conscious, and managed to wrap her hand around the device.

Kyra looked at the clock on the wall opposite her bed: 1100 hours. Still, she’d slept less than six hours and could’ve slept six more. But the Venezuelans had impressive coffee and she decided that she was going to find some before she went out to wherever Jon and Marisa wanted to send her next.

She deactivated the lock screen, then stared at the phone until her vision finally focused. She tapped the link embedded in the decrypted e-mail and a map appeared with a location indicator standing out in the center. She zoomed the map out and ordered the handheld computer to show her the route and distance. It was less than twenty minutes away, but the phone was assuming she would be driving the entire route. That wasn’t going to happen. She spent ten minutes staring at the satellite view. The marked facility was surrounded by high hills and a dense forest that went for miles.

“You suck, Jon.” She dropped the phone on the bed. She was at least going to do herself the courtesy of a shower and a decent lunch before marching off into the trees again.

“Do you think she took it well when she woke up?” Marisa asked.

“Doubtful,” Jon replied.

“How do you know?”

“Not because I’ve ever been with her in the morning, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Jon said, a tinge of annoyance in his tone.

“So you always skipped out before she woke up?” Marisa teased. She suppressed a laugh when she saw the murderous look that crossed Jon’s face. “C’mon, Jon, she’s a pretty girl. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“No, and not your business,” he warned.

“Lighten up, Jon. You never could figure out when I was teasing you.”

“I figured it out. I just didn’t care for it,” he said, his voice cold.

Marisa’s smile died. She opened a file folder and laid the contents on his desk… satellite photos. “Maybe this’ll make you happy.”

“The CAVIM facility?” he asked, picking them up.

Marisa nodded. “They came in five minutes ago, about the same time you were sending your partner on a hike through the woods. And it gets better.” She walked around behind him and leaned in close over his shoulder, pointing to a line of dark squares on one photograph. “Five-ton cargo trucks. Same type and number as the ones at the dock by the Markarid. There’s no way to tell whether they’re the same cargo trucks, but it’s something.”

“It’s not inconsistent,” Jon said. “Theories are difficult to prove but easy to disprove. Too many analysts get invested in their theories, so they latch on to the data that backs up their ideas and downplay or ignore the information that contradicts them … confirmation bias. That doesn’t happen when they look for evidence that disproves the theory. And this”—he held up the photo—“doesn’t disprove the theory.”

“So what’s the next step?”

“Gather more data,” Jon said. “Analysts can never have too much data.”

The hike was well over a mile, closer to two, from the back road where Kyra had hidden the truck. The undergrowth there was thick, a double blessing. The weeds hadn’t been run down, suggesting that no one had driven down that path in weeks at least, and the taller biomass had given her more than enough material to camouflage the truck, hiding it behind a woven wall of branches, leaves, and other greenery. Her vehicle would be unrecognizable to anyone passing by on the larger road a hundred yards east. She’d walked the distance and stared at her work to be sure. That task done, Kyra had entered the cab one last time and pulled out a panel in the floor. She extracted a Hechler & Koch HK416 and some extra magazines and sealed them up in the scabbard of a larger backpack, an Eberlestock, which held some Meals-Ready-to-Eat, an evasion map and compass, a survival blanket and medical kit, a change of clothes and other supplies. The Glock she hid in a holster in the small of her back under the tail of her khaki shirt. Then she loaded a Canon camera with a high-power telephoto lens, strapped on the pack, and started off to the west.

It took her over two hours to reach the hilltop, stopping every few hundred yards for a minute or two to listen and observe. She was a mile from the closest road and the sun was dropping fast now. There was no question she would be sheltering underneath the trees tonight. She couldn’t have made it back to the truck before dark and didn’t want to try. The pack wasn’t overly heavy and she was in very good shape, but her legs burned anyway from the constant need to shift her balance on the uneven terrain. The HK and its ammunition added eight pounds to her load, but she didn’t begrudge herself that. If there was a security patrol in these woods and she had to lose everything else to run, the rifle was staying with her. The camera and commo equipment were a different story.

Scouting around the summit, just below the brow, she found a small depression with a decent opening through the forest that promised a good view looking out and down. She took another hour to erect a cover over the dip and a shallow trench around it, giving her a low ceiling of branches and leaves over her head for the inevitable rain that would come if she had to stay long enough. Anyone in the valley looking up wouldn’t see it, either with eyes or with optics.

The CAVIM factory was not a single building, but a string of small complexes spread out over a square mile. Each set of smaller buildings was connected to the rest by several roads that twisted through the forest. Jon had updated her map by the time she’d gotten out of the morning shower, marking a clutch of warehouses where the SEBIN had parked the cargo trucks. It was the largest assemblage in the area and the one closest to a chemical processing plant, its nature obvious even to her untrained eye. Her phone had a theodolite app and Kyra had put it to use, marking waypoints on the topographic map.

She imagined there had to be some kind of security cordon, certainly patrols, but how far out they would go, she didn’t know. The map said that the hilltop she’d chosen would be just under a mile on foot from the target building if she had to work her way down the hillside, half that as the crow would fly, and it would be a steep climb. So she hoped that whatever security guards went out would find it too troublesome to climb to the summit.

The sun would be down in less than a half hour and she turned to the real business. She pulled out the Canon, affixed the telephoto lens, and set up her pack as a rest for it. Kyra laid herself prone and stared through the camera to get her first good look.

The convoy was there, unmoved since the satellite photo had been taken that morning. She couldn’t see into the trucks but they were surely empty. The enemy, as she’d long since come to think of them, hadn’t shipped the cargo this far just to leave it out in the open. She pressed the shutter and recorded the moment, then moved the camera and stared down at the factory, comparing the buildings to the imagery on her phone.

Kyra panned left, then froze as she saw movement. By one of the warehouses, north of the trucks, a dozen men were milling around on the ground, some sitting, all carrying bullpup rifles like the one she had seen the night before. Iranian Quds. That was worth a call and sharing a bit of live video.

She pulled out her smartphone and unlocked the unit. The cell signal was surprisingly strong. They have their own cell tower here? That seemed likely and made her smartphone unsafe to use — if the SEBIN were here, they might detect an unexpected call routed through the tower.

For this, we have a solution. Kyra pulled the LST-5 satellite radio from her pack. It had added more than its fair share of the weight in her pack, almost nine pounds. It didn’t seem that heavy, but one of her Farm instructors had once told her that anything gets heavy in the mountains… ounces equaled pounds and pounds equaled pain. The Agency had newer, lighter comms gear. This was an old model, not even classified tech anymore, War on Terror surplus. Kyra had seen one like it in the Agency museum, where any uncleared visitor could study it. She supposed that this was another case of the Clandestine Service trying to prevent any more technology from falling into the wrong hands while Caracas station was rebuilding.

Setting up the radio was simple, programming the crypto a bit harder. “This is Arrowhead.”

“This is Quiver,” Marisa replied, her voice distorted.

“I’m at checkpoint Apple.”

“Roger that. Any trouble?”

“Trouble no. Something interesting, yes.” Kyra connected the Canon to the data buffer, plugged it into the transceiver, turned on the camera’s video feed, and the camera obediently began streaming its picture to the embassy.

“There are those rifles again,” Marisa observed. “Quds Force. Congratulations.”

Jon ignored the compliment. “Convoy, incoming,” Kyra’s voice announced. Somewhere more than a hundred miles away, the field officer moved the camera to the left and the picture shifted.

A trio of dark SUVs turned off the highway to the warehouse road. The darkened window by the driver of the lead car rolled down as it approached the line of soldiers holding out their hands, signaling it to stop. The guards held it at the cordon for less than a minute before scrambling to let it through and the vehicles all rolled slowly past smaller buildings before stopping in front of the chemical factory. The doors opened and more armed soldiers crawled out of the first and last cars. The driver of the middle SUV stepped out, then opened the rear door and held it for the passengers inside.

Three men climbed out, the first a bearded man in a European-cut suit as black as his beard, including the shirt and tie. Even at long range, through the scope Kyra could see the jowls hanging from his jaw and a paunch hanging over his belt. The man was no soldier, not even remotely fit enough for that job. This was a man who enjoyed his comforts. “There’s Ahmadi,” Marisa said. “That should get the president off Kathy Cooke’s back.”

“Good luck with that,” Jon replied.

The second man was dressed down and unfamiliar, tactical pants and boots, with a pistol holster strapped to a thigh rig on his right leg. The third man also wore a suit, this one not so bespoke as Ahmadi’s. He put a Cohiba to his mouth and lit it off.

“Uh-oh,” Marisa said quietly.

“What—?” Jon started.

“Jon—?” Kyra said over the transceiver, her voice rising. Jon could hear the woman nearly hyperventilating over the speaker.

“Problem?” he asked

“That’s Andrés Carreño,” Kyra’s voice declared.

Marisa looked down at Jon and covered the handset microphone. “She knows.”

On the hilltop, Kyra couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the valley below. “I saw his face, just for a second. He was standing on a metal bridge over the Guaire Canal and all the lights were out. He finished a cigar and I saw his face when he lit another one. It was him… matched the face in the file.” Her voice quivered slightly and she clenched her teeth, hoping Jon hadn’t picked it up.

Marisa reached down and covered the microphone on Jon’s headset. “Keep her calm,” she advised. “She needs to detach. There’s nobody there to help her if she has a panic attack.”

“She won’t let that happen,” Jon said. “She’s been through worse.”

“You sure?” the station chief asked.

“Yes.”

There was a long pause before Jon spoke again. “Did you ever hear what Churchill said about being under fire?”

“No,” Kyra replied.

“‘There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.’”

“His boys put one in my arm. I say that was a result,” Kyra noted. She was suddenly conscious of the scar running across her triceps, could feel its full length on her arm. She felt her hand starting to shake. She let go of the camera carefully, trying not to disturb it, rolled onto her back, and looked at the ceiling of her shelter, clenching her fists.

“He took his best shot at you and you got out,” Jon reminded her. “Now he’s the one in your scope and he doesn’t even know it. Keep that in your head and he won’t worry you so much.”

“My rifle doesn’t have that kind of range.” Kyra let out a long breath.

“I’ll bring you a bigger one,” Jon said.

Kyra finally smiled, feeling some of the tension in her shoulders ease. That was as close as she’d ever heard him come to telling a joke. She rolled back onto her stomach and took control of the camera again. “Any idea who the other two are?” she asked.

“One of them is Hossein Ahmadi,” Jon replied. “No idea about the guy with the pistol. But anyone with Ahmadi is worth some pictures.”

“Already done,” Kyra said. Headquarters would have to enhance the lighting in the pictures but the screen shots would be more than good enough for some DI analyst to confirm identities.

Carreño smoked his cigar as he trailed behind the Iranians, the lit end giving Kyra something to follow in the growing dark. The trio walked through the front doors of the chemicals building and the guards closed the doors behind them.

“Quiver, Arrowhead,” Kyra said, finally returning to protocol. “Did you get all of that?”

“Yeah, we got it,” Jon said. He checked a live satellite feed of her position, saw her body appear on his screen as an orange blob lying prone. “Shut down for the night. We’ll contact according to schedule with anything new. The birds overhead don’t show anyone in your sector.”

“No patrols?”

“Some, but they all seem to be down at the valley edge. Nothing at your altitude.”

“Thanks. Catch you in the morning.” Kyra switched off the transceiver and the phone went dead.

The dark had finally settled, the only lights now coming from the halogen lamps at the factory’s fence, which cast hard shadows that reached out even to her shelter, a mile away. It was a strange relief. Every guard’s night vision would be destroyed. No one would be able to see past the tree line in any direction and she was buried in the trees well enough that a roving patrol would have to practically step on her to find her. She was as safe as she could be until morning.

She crawled outside her blind, sucked in fresh night air, and stared up through the forest canopy at the stars. The facility lights blotted out the dimmer ones, but the Milky Way still stretched out across the sky above her. Like home. For a moment, she felt like she was in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills, sitting on the bank of the James River on a warm April night.

The memory lasted only a second before her mind cut through. Home was a long way north and a mile below were men who would kill her without thinking twice.

Kyra crawled back into the shelter and laid her head down on her pack. It occurred to her that Jon hadn’t actually told her to get some sleep. He was not the kindest man she’d ever known but he was not condescending, and for that, this one night, she was grateful. She knew sleep wouldn’t come tonight. She closed her eyes anyway.