Cold Shot: A Novel Read online

  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.”

  Autopista Valencia/Route 1

  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.

  The Puerto Cabello Dockyard

  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.

  Autopista Valencia/Route 1

  “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 Puerto Cabello Dockyard

  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.

  Autopista Valencia/Route 1

  “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 Puerto Cabello Dockyard

  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.

  U.S. Embassy

  Caracas, Venezuela

  “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 Puerto Cabello Dockyard

  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.

  U.S. Embassy,

  Caracas, Venezuela

  “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.

  The Puerto Cabello Dockyard

  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—