Cold Shot (10 page)

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.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

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.

Embassy Suites Hotel

Valencia, Carabobo, Venezuela

32 km south of Puerto Cabello

“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.”

The Puerto Cabello Dockyard

“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.”

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.”