Cold Shot (18 page)

Kyra cut into the fence, snipping one link after another in a perfectly vertical line. When she judged that the height of the broken line was right, she set to work cutting metal at ground level, a foot on either side of the vertical gash she’d just made. It only took a few cuts. She evaluated her work, an inverted T, then pushed herself forward on the ground.
Quiet now,
she thought as she pushed the severed fence to the sides.

Then she was through.

Kyra drew her Glock and sidestepped to the edge of the shack, the gun in both hands pointing down, and she looked around the corner.

The next shack up the road was . . . twenty feet? “All clear?” she whispered.

“Two hostiles one hundred yards north of your position and still walking away. The same ones who had a party by the fence while you were lounging around. Anyone else in the area must be inside a building.”

Kyra took a deep breath, then pushed off and ran, moving as quietly as her boots would allow. The cover of the second shack seemed to arrive slowly. She reached it after a few seconds, then crouched, her back against the metal wall, and she closed her eyes to listen.

Nothing.

She realized she hadn’t heard Jon’s voice over her earpiece during the entire op.
Where are you?

CAVIM Explosives Factory

Chemical Production Facilit
y

Andrés Carreño walked out the front door past the SEBIN guards standing their posts. Seeing them standing at attention, he held his tongue and swallowed his curses at Avila for assigning him this duty. Words spoken in anger could last long in this country and travel to the most inconvenient places.

He hated the chemical plant. The smell always lingered in his nose for days, killing his sense of smell and affecting the taste of his food. It seemed especially noxious tonight. The Venezuelan spy chief pulled the tobacco roll from his pocket, lit it with the torch, and sucked in as much smoke as the small tube would give up in three puffs. He exhaled, looked up at the stars, then started to walk south.

Palacio de Miraflores

Caracas, Venezuela

“Señor Presidente!” The pounding on the door was insistent, almost panicked. Avila dragged himself from his bed, leaving behind the young lady, not his wife, who was sharing it this evening. He stumbled over, pulling on a shirt and pants, then opened it.

A staffer stood in the hall, a young man whose name Avila had never bothered to learn. “What is it?” The functionary thrust a piece of paper at the head of state, which Avila took. His eyes refused to make sense of the blurred words and he had to force them to function.

What—?
Avila cursed and shoved the paper back at the staffer. “Where is Carreño?”

“We don’t know, Señor Presidente
.
No one can reach him. He was at the Morón facility within the last hour but no one can find him now,” the younger man said, afraid to be the messenger of that particular piece of news.

“And Ahmadi?”

“At his hotel in Valencia.”

“He must be moved,” Avila said. “That location is no longer secure. Set the television in my office to this foreign news network, then call the defense minister. I want him here within the half hour  . . . and find Carreño!”

The young man ran off, trying to balance his dignity against the president’s anger.

CAVIM Explosives Factory

The door to the security hub faced the road, east, and there were no windows on the south or west side that Kyra could see. She leaned out from behind the shack, giving her cover just far enough to see that there was a padlock on the door, ten yards away.
No one inside.
There was a camera on the roof corner closest to her position, but it was pointed at the road. As long as she stayed close to the fence, Kyra guessed, she’d be able to stay behind, then under its field of vision. There was a series of toolsheds twenty-five yards to the north but she could see they were empty. The closest building that could have occupants was a hundred feet away, with no window looking south.

She took a breath, expelled a prayer, and ran for the security annex, staying in the grass. There were no yells, no shots, and then Kyra was behind the building.
Keep going.
She crept around the south side, keeping the building between her and the two soldiers who were, doubtless, far out of earshot now, but they would be able to see farther than they could hear. She moved under the camera, staying close to the east wall, and finally stood in front of the door.

“Quiver, Arrowhead. Door is padlocked. Trying to open it now.”

She inserted the torsion rod, then the pick, and started to work the tumblers.

CIA Director’s Conference Room

On the monitor’s thermal image, several guards ran out from the CAVIM factory.

“Oh, there we go,” Drescher said. “Someone was watching the news.”

Cooke looked at Drescher, murder on her face. “You want me to call the White House?” he asked

She took five seconds to answer. “Not yet,” she finally said. “But soon. We have more immediate priorities.” Cooke looked toward the screen. “Call Jon and Mills.”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

The padlock dropped open. Kyra lifted it, swung the latch out, then replaced the lock. The doorknob turned easily in her hand and she moved inside and closed the door in a single movement. No yells. No shots. She’d made it inside. Getting back out to the fence would be no easier—

One thing at a time.

The darkness was broken by the system status lights on a series of rack-mounted servers and other gear. It was cooler here than outside, with the air suffering from the processed smell of air-conditioning. The small building had no windows, but light could still leak out from under the door. She pulled the Maglite from her pouch, turned it on, and swept the room with the red light.

“I’m in,” she said.

The only furniture was a chair parked in front of a desk with a monitor sitting on it, which connected to a CPU underneath. The desk sat next to the rack, which stood taller than Kyra’s head and was full of single mounted servers and other equipment, not all of which she could immediately identify. She swept the south wall—

There you are.

The video cables reached to the floor from a junction box on the wall. She leaned in, trying to squeeze herself into the space, and found the box where the wires connected in the rack.

Kyra dropped to one knee, pulled her satchel over her head, set it on the floor, then unzipped the top and pulled out the iPad, a set of cables, and a tool kit. Then she extracted the little black box.

•    •    •

Carreño walked slowly. The cigarro reached the end of its short life; he dropped it, reached for one of its brothers, then decided against it. His supply here was limited and he didn’t want to burn through them all in a single night.

He passed a pair of SEBIN soldiers walking north, who saluted him as he passed. He returned the salute, sloppy and hardly caring. He saw the southern fence a few hundred feet down the gravel road. He’d go that far, maybe then smoke another cigarro, and return. A half hour’s walk total. Maybe longer if he moved slowly.

•    •    •

Kyra pushed the cable head into the iPad port, then launched the app. The room lit up from the new picture, causing her to suck in a nervous breath.

The iPad screen split into eight boxes, each showing the feed from a different camera. She swiped the screen and the eight boxes scrolled off, replaced by eight more. Then again and again. Kyra had access to the take from at least thirty-two different cameras through the facility, some inside buildings, which ones she didn’t know.

She pressed a button on the screen and started recording.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

Marisa watched as the heat signature in the shape of a man entered the frame, walking south at a slow pace. She checked the clock.
Ten minutes since entry.
“Arrowhead, Quiver,” she announced. “One hostile moving your way. He’s in no hurry. You’ve got maybe five minutes until he reaches your position. Time to start packing up.”

“Roger that.”

The secure phone on Marisa’s desk began to ring. She let it go to voice mail. It rang again. Finally she picked up the receiver. “This is Mills.”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

She’d only been recording the camera network feed for ten minutes, but a quick check showed that the tablet’s storage was filling up fast.
Thirty-two cameras . . . ten minutes per camera . . . three hundred twenty minutes . . . five hours twenty minutes of total footage.
She wouldn’t be able to record more than a few minutes more before the computer ran out of space to store the feed.

Kyra waited another three minutes, then closed down the recording app, unplugged the cable, and began to retrieve her gear.

•    •    •

The southern fence and the signs warning of unexploded ordnance were less than a hundred feet away now. Carreño wondered whether anyone had ever been so foolish as to ignore the warnings and climb the fence. Bored men did like to drink after all. Booze and machismo were a bad combination.

The work sheds were behind him now. The only buildings between here and the end were a storage shack that held nothing important and the small security annex, little more than a relay point for the camera network.

He looked over at the security building, squinting.

The padlock hung from the latch. Was it open? He couldn’t tell from this distance. Carreño frowned and moved toward the building.

U.S. Embassy

Caracas, Venezuela

Marisa looked at the telephone receiver in her hand in disbelief. She grabbed the mouse, zoomed the picture on her screen out, widening the angle of the satellite feed. Soldiers were rushing out of the CAVIM chemical factory, more from other buildings, running for trucks, jeeps, any vehicle that would move. “Oh, no . . .” Then she saw movement near the facility’s southern end. She narrowed the picture again. One man was walking directly to the security hub.

CAVIM Explosives Factory

Her gear was packed. Kyra slipped the satchel strap over her head.

“Arrowhead, Quiver. Hostile inbound on your front door, ETA ten seconds, and you’re going to have a lot more behind him in two minutes. Do you have another exit?”

“Negative,” Kyra advised.

“You have to get out now,” Marisa ordered. “When you do, run for the fence.”

“What’s—”

“Don’t ask, just do it.”

“Roger that.”

•    •    •

The padlock
was
open. He looked at the base of the door . . . no light streamed out. Someone had left the door unsecured after leaving.
Incompetents,
Carreño thought. He pulled the padlock out of the latch, ready to secure the door again.

Best to be sure,
he thought after a moment.

He tossed his cigarro onto the gravel, replaced the padlock, and pushed the door open. It swung into darkness; he stepped inside and went blind, his eyes seeing only the dark until the lights from the server rack began to focus. He touched the light switch on the wall to his right. The room went bright, blinding him again just as he saw something in the corner of his eye—

The elbow hit Carreño hard enough that he spewed blood on the wall as his head snapped to the right. He stumbled off balance, then turned back toward his attacker. He swung wild, the vision in his left eye blurry from the strike. He missed, but the swing gave him time to pull the pistol from his belt holster under his coat. His attacker was an unfocused blur but at this distance he hardly had to aim—

•    •    •

Kyra’s own vision was taking too long to adjust to the light, was still blurry, but she saw the intruder go for his belt and then there was a gun in his right hand. She struck out with her left, hitting his gun with her palm and driving away from her body, then grabbing it with her hand to control the weapon. She leaned in, putting her weight behind her arm, driving the pistol toward the ground. She struck forward, driving her right forearm into the man’s throat, compressing his windpipe, and he began to gag. Then she dropped her arm, grabbing the rear of the pistol with both hands, and twisted it to the side.

•    •    •

Carreño felt the gun being torn from his fingers. Panicked, he pulled the trigger.

•    •    •

The gun jerked in Kyra’s hand, shooting off to her right, and she went deaf, her ears ringing from the shot. The man jumped back, trying to rip the gun away from her. Kyra ran forward with him and swung her hands to the right, moving the gun to the side. She kicked forward and caught him between the legs, giving him a blow to the testicles that threatened to lift him off the ground. She threw another punch, this one with her left hand that caught him square in the nose, drawing blood again and forcing his eyes to shut from the pain. Kyra twisted the gun hard, this time finally pulling the weapon from his hand before he could fire.

•    •    •

The Venezuelan threw his head up, catching Kyra just under the jaw with his skull and knocking her back. She couldn’t keep her hand on the gun. It hit the server rack, then the floor, but she couldn’t see it. The man charged forward, blind, hoping to knock her on her back. He was coming in low, trying to put his shoulder in her stomach and fold her in half. She’d have no leverage and he’d have her on the floor.

Kyra rolled backward under him. She grabbed his shirt with both hands as she went down and brought her legs up, putting her feet on his stomach. He was out of control now. He’d thought to tackle her, but now he was flying forward with Kyra fully underneath him. She pushed up with her legs; the man went airborne over her, and smashed into the wall behind.

Kyra twisted on the ground, pushing herself back to her feet. The SEBIN officer behind her made it onto his feet a second after she did. The second was all she needed.

•    •    •

Carreño forced his eyes open as he dragged himself to his feet. His vision was sharper now. His attacker—

—was a woman. He was getting thrashed by a woman.