Red Cell

PROLOGUE

The floods had killed another dozen people this year, all nameless caraqueños who lived in the shantytowns that covered the hills around the capital city. The mudslides had cut swaths through the slums a week before and dumped the dead into the concrete channel that cut Caracas in half and barely held the Guaire River in its course. Now the canal swelled to its rim with dirty December water and whatever had lined the Caracas streets between the hills and the city center. Cars driving above sent a constant spray into the river, adding a strange sound to the gurgling rush, like the hand of God tearing paper. The brown water was barely visible in the moonlight under this stretch of the Autopista Francisco Fajardo freeway. The shadows turned the canal graffiti into silent monsters, watching the flood, waiting to laugh at anyone foolish enough to play along the water’s edge.

Kyra Stryker trudged along the north side of the river, staying off the dirt embankment and giving herself enough distance that a stumble wouldn’t send her in. The canal was too steep and the river’s current too strong for anyone who fell in to climb out again. The only question was whether the poor soul would expire from the pollution or drowning on his way to the Caribbean Sea. However she was going to die, she wasn’t going to go that way, she promised herself.

It would be no trouble for the enemy to come up behind her here. She’d given up trying to identify possible ambush spots, there were too many, and the river would be the perfect tool for killing a CIA officer and disposing of the body in a stroke if the SEBIN, the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia, were so inclined. They hadn’t been so reckless, yet, but the murder rate in Caracas would make it an easy matter to write off her disappearance. The police, as corrupt as the criminals, would wag their fingers at the embassy officer sent to file the missing persons report. A woman walking alone at night in a dark barrio? Americans need to be more careful, they would say.

Her dirty-blond hair, pulled into a braid, was already wet from the evening drizzle, and she shoved her hands into the empty pockets of her jacket to keep them dry. The rain was keeping most of the natives off the street, which left her feeling exposed. Tall, fair-haired, even dressed down in blue jeans and a brown leather jacket, she didn’t mix well with the normal street crowds in this city. It could have been worse. More than a few of her Farm classmates had drawn slots in Africa and the Middle East, both murderous places for Americans in their own ways, where her only way to disappear would have been under an abaya. Caracas offered civilized living, with natives more friendly to Americans than the government. That made the capital a hostile but not lethal environment in which to hone her craft, at least during the daylight hours.

Working the capital streets at night was another matter.

It would be a simple meeting, or so her chief of station had insisted. But Sam Rigdon was a fool and Kyra wasn’t the only one who thought so. Rigdon was letting the asset, a senior SEBIN officer, choose the site and time of the meet. The asset claimed he knew the city better than any American — probably true but beside the point — and Rigdon had accepted the man’s logic. Kyra wasn’t six months out of the CIA Farm and even she knew conceding that particular power to any asset was plain stupid. In this business, stupid was just another word for dangerous, which could lead to dead very quickly.

“This man has brought us good intel,” Rigdon said. That was questionable at best. The asset’s cigars and Caribbean rum were better than the intel he’d delivered. Kyra tried to talk reason to Rigdon, which was a bold move for someone as junior as she was. CIA chiefs of station were little kings, with the power to eject any junior officer from the country. The mercurial ones were known to do so for the most arbitrary reasons, but Rigdon was more arrogant than erratic, and that was the greater sin. At least the erratic ones could see their mistakes. Some of the other senior officers had stood behind her, and Kyra had heard more than one shouting match erupt behind Rigdon’s closed door while she sat outside. But the station chief just dismissed all worries with an impatient wave. “The asset,” he said, “is still on our side, still working for us. His loyalty will guarantee your safety.”

Kyra was sure that she’d never heard a more stupid thing in her life.

So she was on the street, unarmed. There was no explaining away a Glock to the SEBIN. Caution was her only defense, but the rumble of autopista traffic and the sound of the rushing water assaulted her ears, and the staggered street lighting destroyed her night vision. Every possible route to the meeting site was a surveillance detection nightmare.

Kyra cursed herself for being a coward and refusing to disobey Rigdon’s order.

The footbridge finally appeared after an hour’s walk. It was more a scaffolding than a bridge, barely half-built by the look of it, with a metal grate for a floor. It was twenty meters long, maybe two meters wide, all dark metal, probably rusted over from years of neglect and floodwaters rising and falling over the rails and crawlspace under the walkway. Kyra half expected to see it shored up by vine ropes.

At ten meters from the bridge, Kyra finally saw the asset’s silhouette at the midpoint through the trees but could make out no other details. The lights on the bridge were out, whether from neglected bulbs or shoddy wiring she didn’t know. She saw the burning end of a cigarro rise to meet the asset’s mouth, glow brighter for a short second; then the small light fell into the water and disappeared as he tossed the stub away.

A streetlamp marked where the sidewalk ended at the bridge. Kyra reached the spot, stopped, and put herself in front of the light cone so the illumination was behind her. The asset would only see her silhouette, not her face.

Her chest tightened as she scanned the space in front of her. The streetlamp lit up the line of trees in front of her but the light didn’t go far beyond. No movement, no sound beyond the water and the freeway.

It felt wrong. She couldn’t explain it better than that.

The asset saw her and turned. No question now, she had his full attention. He raised another cigarro and Kyra finally saw his face for a short second as he flicked on a torch lighter and set the tobacco on fire. He frowned as he replaced the unit in his pocket. He could make out her shape in the dark. She was in the right place at the right time, but he was expecting to meet a man, Kyra was sure, not a woman.

Then he did exactly the wrong thing.

He waved her toward him.

Kyra clenched her fists to give the nervous energy somewhere to go. She held her poker face and she cocked her head at him a bit as her mind tore the situation down. It took a bare fraction of a second.

You don’t know me, she thought. They had never met. She wasn’t the asset’s handler. A paranoid asset, worried for his safety, should have been skeptical of a stranger arriving at an isolated meeting site. She could be a random tourist, however unlikely that was at this hour in this dark place, or, more likely, Venezuelan security, so the proper response was to act like he was ignoring her as he would any random person he met on the street. The burden should be hers to give him a prearranged signal to confirm both her identity and that she was clean of surveillance. He should then respond with a signal of his own. The asset had violated that simple protocol.

Nervous? It was the only logical reason to have done what he did. The man was an experienced SEBIN officer, a trained professional. But he’d forgotten his training.

Why are you nervous? There were two possibilities. He suspected surveillance, in which case he knew to give her a signal. Or he had confirmed surveillance, in which case he shouldn’t have even come. Both assumed he really was a traitor in danger of prison or execution if he was caught.

Of course, if he wasn’t in danger, then he would be nervous for a different reason entirely.

You’re here, amigo. No signal. Nervous.

SEBIN was here. But he still wanted her to walk onto the bridge.

He wasn’t afraid he would be caught. He was afraid she wouldn’t be. Afraid that the endgame of an operation in which he had a stake would fail.

Then Kyra saw it all, as clearly as though it had already happened.

El Presidente owned the courts. The conviction of an arrested CIA case officer on charges real and imagined would be a given. The would-be tyrant would use her to extort apologies and concessions from the US. He would make the detention public and drag out the story for weeks, months if he could. Humiliate her, the Agency, the United States. He would claim that her arrest was proof that the US wanted to overthrow him, maybe assassinate him, all to build him up in the eyes of allies here and abroad. He would declare every American at the embassy persona non grata and throw them out of Venezuela as retribution. And when all that was finished, expelling her from the country along with her colleagues would not be a given. He would keep her like a dusty old war trophy on display more to rankle enemies — no, the enemy — than for allies to admire.

Like the North Koreans kept the USS Pueblo in Wonsan Harbor, SEBIN would keep Kyra Stryker in Los Teques prison.

The asset froze in midwave. He had realized his error.

Six blocks to the nearest safe house.

Kyra ran.

SEBIN raid teams exploded from the dark. Men in black balaclavas, helmets and armor, heavy boots, with sidearms and carbines, all yelling in Spanish. Three teams, maybe six men each, had taken positions at both sides of the bridge in the trees where the darkness gave them almost perfect cover. One fire team erupted up from the bridge midpoint itself, where the soldiers had lain in a space under the dirty grates. There would be more, probably spotters in nearby buildings, maybe on the rooftops. Kyra would have been trapped from the moment she set foot on the bridge.

The first team, the group that had been hiding under the bridge crawlspace, was trying to climb out through the grates. The bridge was narrow and their gear was bulky. It would take them thirty seconds to get to the shore.

The second team was on the other side of the river, twenty meters away. They were already on the bridge, but the team climbing up from the crawlway would block them off. Team two wouldn’t be in play for almost a full minute.

The third team on her side of bridge was at the bottom of the embankment, just above the canal and behind the trees only ten meters away, but they had to climb through the brush that covered the earthen wall to reach her. It would take three seconds for the closest soldier to reach the top of the embankment, which was already too late. Kyra would be almost thirty meters away.

She was already running at full speed and no soldier encumbered by a rifle and other gear was going to catch her. She aimed for an alleyway to her left and prayed that another team wasn’t waiting in the dark.

She turned the corner and she saw no light at the other end. No light, no SEBIN, she realized. No exit. Kyra tried to stop, skidded on the slick, dirty concrete, and knew she was going to hit the wall. She put her arms up to soften the impact. Her body hit the wall. She pushed away and made her legs move again.

The second alley was another ten meters away. Kyra covered the distance in three seconds. She reached the opening and then saw the man in black gear standing behind the corner begin to raise his weapon. Kyra was still moving at full speed and couldn’t have stopped on his order if she’d wanted to. She raised an arm, put a palm-heel strike into his throat at full speed and the contact sent her tumbling to the wet ground. The soldier got the worst of it. Her momentum and the slick concrete were enough to take him off his feet. He flipped over and landed on his back, breaking ribs on both sides, snapping a collarbone and tearing his rotator cuff. It would be months before he would be able to raise his weapon again.

The sound of several sharp cracks cut through the noise of the autopista traffic. “Idiota!” someone shouted. Kyra sprinted into the darkness, praying that she didn’t trip on garbage or a homeless man or some other detritus.

She heard footfalls behind her, at least a half dozen she thought, but she didn’t turn her head to see. Judging by the sound, they were entering the alley as she was leaving it.

Kyra slowed just a bit as she came out of the alleyway. It was past midnight and the sidewalk largely empty of pedestrians. She turned right and kept running, not sure of her next waypoint. El Museo de los Niños was north of her position, maybe two hundred meters. Kyra set course for it and accelerated back to her full speed. Her breathing was now ragged, her heart pounding as hard as she had ever felt it. Only one arm was swinging like it should.

She reached the museo. It was an strange building, modern South American architecture, a thousand odd angles surrounded by trees and kiosks and signs. Plenty of places for a fugitive to break visual contact with her pursuers. She sprinted around the building. The footfalls behind her were more distant now, almost getting lost in the street noise of the cars still on the road. A siren sounded somewhere and she wondered whether it was meant for her. The raid teams would be screaming over encrypted radios for support. The target had escaped the net and vehicles were certain to enter the equation at some point if the chase went on long enough. She had to keep them guessing about her direction.

Kyra ran through the complex, obstacles and handrails rushing past so quickly that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to turn fast enough to avoid one if she saw it too late as she came around a corner. She passed the museum proper and raced out onto the street.

Four blocks to the safe house.

She needed to get enough distance between herself and the raid teams so no one would see her enter the safe house, or it wouldn’t be safe for long. She turned right onto the Avenida Bolívar. It was an eight-lane freeway lined by trees on both sides with a concrete median running down the center. It was also well lit, which would give away her position once the raid teams came out of the alley. She needed to be on the other side of the street when that happened. Traffic was light at this early hour, in that it wasn’t a complete wall of gridlocked cars.

Her hand ached to hold that Glock.

Kyra saw a large break in the traffic. She waited until the cars got closer, then turned suddenly and sprinted onto the street. Crossing the eight lanes took almost three seconds, her timing had been perfect, and the traffic closed up behind her. The raid teams would have to find their own break in the cars to cross without getting hit. Kyra angled right again, then ran north up a side street until she reached the Avenida México intersection. She turned east. Her legs and lungs were both burning now. Her right arm still wouldn’t come up higher than her stomach.

Three blocks to the safe house.

The avenida curved to the northeast. Kyra followed the bend and saw the Galería de Arte Nacional ahead to her right. She looked behind her and saw no one. The raid teams were probably still looking for a break in the Avenida Bolívar traffic. She ran left in between two large buildings, found a concrete doorway, and leaned against one of the pillars to catch her breath. She didn’t want to stop long, but the adrenaline would carry her only so far. Her bad arm was starting to ache a bit and Kyra knew that she was running up against the limits of her endurance. Her chest was heaving and her legs burning. She hadn’t paced herself, had probably just run a six-minute mile, and the exertion was catching up to her.

She looked back down the avenida and saw no one. Then she listened. In the distance, more than one engine was racing faster than it should, tires screeching. Kyra stumbled back onto the sidewalk and started running again, north this time.

Two blocks to the safe house.

Kyra passed only a few pedestrians over the next hundred meters. She looked back. The SEBIN teams were nowhere she could see and she started to relax. They had been out of visual contact too long. They could find her now only if one of the cars got lucky or if she made a mistake, a favor she didn’t intend to grant.

She reached the Avenida Urdaneta and looked west. The high-rise was there. Kyra ran toward the building, half-stumbling now. Her leg muscles were starting to give out. She looked down an alley and saw a car blitzing along on a parallel street far too fast. They were close.

One block to the safe house.

The sounds of the cars were louder now and her endurance was fading quickly, faster than she had expected. She couldn’t stay on the street much longer or one of the cars would find her. Her arm ached now, like the pain was deep in the bone, and it was becoming harder to ignore.

Kyra reached the edge of the apartment building and ran up the side street. The safe house was on the fourth floor and the building had a service entrance on the east side. She reached the door, then fumbled in her pants for the key that the deputy chief of station had slipped her before she’d left for the meeting. Her hands were wet from the rain, both shaking hard from the adrenaline rush. She tried to use her right, but it was numb at the fingertips and she had to switch to the left.

She finally jammed the key into the lock, the door opened, and Kyra slammed it open with her body. She closed it behind her, locked it, and leaned back against the entry.

She knew she wasn’t safe, not yet. But she was off the street and that was something. Finding her now would involve a door-to-door search of a dozen square blocks or more. Caracas was all skyscrapers and shantytowns with little in between. There would be tens of thousands of apartments in the search radius. The SEBIN had no picture of her to show the locals and no guarantee that she had stopped running so soon.

Four flights of stairs. Her aching lungs and thigh muscles hurt so much that the thought made her want to cry.

Move. Kyra willed herself forward. She could hardly think at all.

She found the stairwell entry ten feet down the hall. Kyra climbed the four stories, almost pulling herself upward on the handrail the entire distance with her good arm. She managed not to fall into the hallway, then staggered toward the safe house apartment. The hall was empty.

Kyra found the right number, fumbled the keys again, and finally managed to open the door. She stepped inside, closed the door, and threw the dead bolt. Her heartbeat finally slowed a bit. Her lungs still burned, but she was catching her breath, finally. Her legs were weak and she wanted to collapse onto the floor.

Safe. Not really, she knew. But as safe as she could be right now.

The keys fell from her hand onto the wood floor. She left them and searched for the light switch.

The safe house apartment was maybe a thousand feet square, just a single bedroom, a bathroom, a sitting room, and a kitchen, all clean and bare-bones. She found the bed and fell onto it.

Kyra had forgotten about the arm. She felt pain erupt from her right side as she landed on the mattress, and the agony was more intense, more sharp than anything she had ever felt. She cried out, then stifled it, afraid that the neighbors would hear her. She didn’t know how thin the walls were. With her good arm she pushed herself back up to sitting and finally looked down at the aching limb.

There was a hole in her leather jacket, midway between her shoulder and elbow. Kyra pulled the jacket off, carefully, but movement was agony now. The dark stain on the back of her arm was surprisingly large. Deep red, almost black where it mixed with her shirt, it ran all the way down to her wrist.

She knew there would be only one way of getting the shirt off without serious pain. She pulled a Leatherman from her pocket, held it in her left hand, and opened the knife blade with her teeth. She slipped the blade under her collar and pulled it to the right, then around the junction where the sleeve met the shoulder. She cut the sleeve loose. It slid off her arm and fell with a wet noise onto the floor.

There was a tear across her triceps, skin and muscle torn loose in a shredded horizontal line. She couldn’t see the bone at the bottom of the gory furrow only for the blood. Adrenaline had masked the pain.

When—?

The brain has a gating mechanism that had kept her mind focused on the more immediate pain, and the adrenaline had kept her from feeling the gunshot wound. Her brain got its first look and switched its focus from her tortured lungs and legs. The pain from the laceration detonated across her upper body, cutting off her thoughts, and Kyra had to stifle an open scream.

The first aid kit would be in the bathroom. Kyra stumbled in, trying to keep her arm from moving, and found the large duffel bag under the sink. CIA security, former Boy Scouts she was sure, always came prepared. The trauma kit was designed more for a war zone than a metropolis. Trying to focus through the haze, Kyra found the two items she needed most. The first was a roll of QuikClot gauze. The second was a morphine syringe. She stabbed herself with the needle in the arm, just above the wound and had to suppress another scream as it entered her torn flesh. She depressed the plunger, then pulled the needle out. It was the longest ten seconds of her life.

Her arm began to numb and her body finally began to stop shaking and relax. Kyra felt the pain begin to fade and steeled herself for the next bit of self-surgery. She balled up a wad of QuikClot in her left hand, the only one she could still feel, and packed it into the wound. The cloth stopped the bleeding almost on contact.

The morphine worked fast. She hadn’t been able to think when she dosed herself, hadn’t checked the amount. Whatever the dosage, it had been enough. Too much, maybe.

She rolled the gauze around her arm to hold in the wad she had stuffed into the tear in the arm. It was an ugly wrap job, but both the drug and the cloth did their job and a pair of butterfly clips finished the task.

Kyra staggered back into the bedroom and almost collapsed before reaching the bed. She pulled herself off her knees onto the mattress and rolled onto her back. She rifled through her jacket and found the encrypted cell phone the deputy chief of station had given her two hours before.

The morphine and stress release were going to knock her unconscious, she knew. She had maybe a minute to call before she passed out in a haze. Her arm was entirely, mercifully numb.

A pair of sirens sounded outside the window. She couldn’t judge the distance but they seemed to come from different points.

Not safe here, she thought. She didn’t know the last point at which the SEBIN had seen her, and therefore the point that would mark the center of the enemy’s search. They could be nearby, going high-rise to high-rise, floor by floor. The SEBIN could come crashing through the safe house door. They could be outside, in the hall, on the stairwell. The walls wouldn’t keep them out.

The room seemed to shrink around her. Kyra felt the panic rising inside her chest, the stress of the last few minutes finally catching up. Her good hand started shaking, this time not from shock or pain.

Not safe.

Kyra speed-dialed the only number programmed into the cell phone.

The call connected. The voice on the other end was American.

“Operator.”