Cold Shot: A Novel

by Henshaw, Mark

  • • •

  Kyra stuck her head out just far enough to see, then pulled it back, and another rifle shot struck the cargo truck, hitting metal somewhere she couldn’t identify. “What kind of moron shoots at a nuclear weapon?” she muttered.

  • • •

  Elham heard the approaching vehicles behind him. He didn’t need to hit the target now, he just needed to pin her down until the SEBIN arrived. They would flank her and either flush her out for him to shoot, or they would shoot her themselves. Probably the latter. He didn’t care now.

  He saw the woman stick her head out for an instant and he rushed the shot. He knew it wouldn’t hit her from the moment he jerked the trigger. But she would hear it and stay in place. Time was her enemy now, not his.

  • • •

  The wind finally pushed enough of the smoke aside just as Jon heard the second shot. He saw the man standing at the corner of the town car, a large rifle resting on the upended trunk—

  —and the memory of al-Yusufiah came roaring back into his head. He saw the insurgent on the roof standing by the mortar, ready to drop a shell down the tube when Jon’s own bullet had opened his chest to the sunlight behind. The emotions of the moment came back a second later, the shock and the shame that had taken so very long to suppress broke through, clenching in his gut. It had always been there, right at the edge of his thoughts and he’d fought it down every day.

  And if he shot this man, the new memory would pile onto the old one and he would have two animals he would have to keep in the cage of his mind. He didn’t know if he had the strength to do it.

  And then he heard the low rumble of the other trucks in the distance. In another minute, Kyra would be outnumbered and the SEBIN would kill her.

  Jon closed his eyes and sucked in a lungful of air, then let it go—

  —and held his breath as he felt the wind on his face, blowing right to left, and he shifted the Barrett. He felt calm. Then he pulled on the trigger until the Barrett roared.

  • • •

  The .50-caliber round hit the town car and Elham felt the rush of air push against his chest as the slug punched through the side of the trunk, then the lid and the metal scratched his abdomen as it splayed outward. He fell backward, then scrambled forward, grabbing his Steyr and diving behind the car for cover.

  He looked at the holes in the trunk and saw the downward angle between the two.

  The sniper was back in the hills, hiding in an elevated position. The Iranian soldier had limited cover, only the car, while the American gunman, who had an entire forest, now had the range.

  The odds had just shifted to the other side. Elham didn’t even know where to shoot.

  • • •

  The front and rear windows of the cargo truck both had shattered and Kyra leaned around the warhead crate to look through. She saw the man fall backward, then grab his rifle and throw himself behind the town car. Jon had taken the shot from a half mile away and come within inches of hitting the target. You missed your calling, Jon.

  Kyra heaved herself out of the truck bed, leaned around the corner, raised her HK, and emptied half her magazine at the town car just to let the sniper know she was closer to him than Jon. Then she turned and ran for the next wrecked truck in the convoy.

  • • •

  Jon saw Kyra make her move. Good girl. She ran out of his sight picture and he kept the scope on the man behind the town car. The sniper leaned out, trying to see his own target, and Jon pulled the trigger again. The bullet took a little less than a second to cover the distance before gouging the dirt by the car and the sniper pulled back. Just stay down.

  • • •

  Kyra threw herself behind the last truck and took a second to catch her breath. The vehicles were much closer now. She had less than a minute before the first SEBIN reinforcements would be on-site. The smoke wasn’t as dense now as it had been on her first approach, but it was still heavy enough to obscure her view of the car.

  She pushed herself back onto her feet and sprinted out into the open, running toward the crater. She reached the edge, made her way around it as fast as her tired legs would move, and then ran straight for the tree line.

  • • •

  Jon saw Kyra enter the woods. Time to be going, he thought. He jumped to his feet and slung the Barrett over his shoulder. He stuffed the LST-5 into his pack and then ran down the hill for what he prayed was the last time.

  CIA Director’s Conference Room

  Cooke exhaled hard. “They made it out.”

  “They’re in the woods but they’re not out. That entire stretch of country is about to get overrun,” Drescher replied. He unfolded a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Evasion Chart on the table. “They’re here,” he said, putting his finger down northeast of Morón. “Everything in all four directions is a mess of hills covered by forest. That’ll make a helo extraction problematic . . . but not impossible. But the countryside goes flat and empty east of Morón. If they can get that far a lot of the variables just go away, but they’d have to get through the town to make it happen. The military is probably going to lock that place down.”

  Cooke nodded. They can make it. Someone in the Ops Center was panning the feed, keeping it on Kyra’s thermal image as the woman ran through the forest. “Approved. Get the coordinates for an extraction site ready to deliver. And get the SecDef on the line.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The hills north of the former CAVIM Explosives Factory

  Kyra stumbled and went down in the dirt. She pushed herself up and got her legs moving at full speed again. She had no idea where Jon was or how far it was to the truck. They’d left the truck three miles away. Forty-five minutes if I don’t stop. She wasn’t sure she could keep that up.

  The SEBIN would kill her if they caught her now.

  Kyra ignored the pain in her legs and her lungs, and she ran.

  CIA Director’s Conference Room

  “What’s the word, Kathy?” the SecDef asked. The encryption on the secure line created a slight hiss in between his words.

  “My people were at the site but the MOP didn’t get them. They’re on the move. I need Vicksburg on standby to execute that personnel recovery mission.”

  “Yeah, we saw one of them recon the blast site. If she can confirm whether we got the nuke, she’ll be my new best friend. I’ve cut the orders to Vicksburg. Captain Riley has a helo on standby. All he needs is the extraction site.”

  “My people have a nice spot all picked out, but we don’t have a way to contact our officers and give them the coordinates. If we make contact, we’ll direct them to the location, but if not, your people might have to make this up as they go.”

  The former CAVIM Explosives Factory

  “Get me out of here,” Ahmadi ordered. His voice was shaking.

  “Are you hurt?” Elham asked.

  “Nothing serious, I think.”

  The troop transports rumbled in through the dust clouds, kicking up some dust of their own, and slid to a stop in the loose dirt. Soldiers began to disembark, jumping from the back, and discipline died as they saw the crater for the first time. Curses and prayers to God Almighty went up until Elham cut them off. “Get over here,” he ordered, ignoring the fact that he had no authority over the locals. “We have casualties.”

  The soldiers slung their weapons and pushed the car back onto its tires, drawing groans from the occupants. Elham opened the doors and a medic moved in to check the men over. “Is the weapon intact?” Ahmadi asked weakly.

  “I don’t know,” Elham said. “I haven’t checked it. The truck that was carrying it is destroyed, but the transport crate is durable. There is a chance.”

  “Good. Inspect it, then have it loaded in another one of these trucks as soon as possible. We have to move it before the Americans try again,” Ahmadi ordered, then began
coughing hard. “I heard shooting?”

  “The American spy, the woman, came down from the hills to see their work. She reached the back of the weapon transport by the time I was able to get out of the car,” Elham told him. “I tried to stop her, but the sniper was in the hills again and gave her cover. She fled on foot, that way.” He pointed north.

  “How long since she ran?” Carreño asked. His sense of time was sketchy.

  “Four or five minutes. Not long,” Elham said.

  Carreño pulled himself out of the car and turned to the gawking soldiers, still staring at the burning crater. “Find them!”

  USS Vicksburg

  11°22' North 67°49' West

  75 miles north of the Venezuelan coast

  “Permission to come on the bridge,” Marisa announced.

  Riley frowned at the voice, turned, and recognized the speaker. “Granted,” he said. The station chief stepped through the hatch and approached the captain, who was standing over the Electronic Chart Display. He offered her a piece of paper as she came near. Marisa took it and skimmed it over.

  “Orders straight from the SecDef. You just got your helo, Miss Mills,” Riley said. “We’re at Ready Thirty right now. Pilots will be briefed on the mission in ten minutes if you want to be there.”

  “I want to go,” Marisa told him.

  “I figured you would. So did your director. The orders allow it, so get suited up. Just stay out of the crew’s way.”

  It was only her dignity that kept Marisa from running off the bridge.

  The former CAVIM Explosives Factory

  Elham had seen other men frightened like Ahmadi was now. The Americans called it the “thousand-yard stare,” the blank face of a man who had faced death for the first time and realized that he was no one special, that he could die today as easily as anyone else. Men like him were accustomed to the soft life with all the amenities they could want. Such men gave no thought to their own mortality. Now the Americans had come within meters of killing him and Ahmadi’s mind was refusing to process the event.

  Elham had no sympathy for the man at all. The law of the harvest, he thought. You have always made men like me reap what you have sown. Now the Americans are making you reap your own works.

  “Señor!” he heard one of the SEBIN soldiers yell. Elham turned and saw the uniformed officer run up to Carreño. “As you ordered, we are setting up roadblocks on all the nearby highways, ten-kilometer radius. They will be in place in ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes,” Carreño repeated with disgust.

  “How long since the woman fled?” Ahmadi asked. The fear in his voice had vanished now, replaced by fury.

  Elham checked his watch. “Almost forty minutes.”

  The hills north of the former CAVIM Explosives Factory

  Kyra dragged herself over the last ridge. Her legs had forced her to slow down almost ten minutes before and were finally starting to give out. She had heard no dogs, no soldiers behind her. Helicopters had overflown the forest at a low altitude, each one sending a new shot of adrenaline through her system, but there was no way they could see through the dense canopy overhead. But she couldn’t push herself much farther and even the adrenaline wasn’t enough to keep her going now.

  She jumped down the leeward side of the ridge, letting gravity pull her through the dirt and loose leaves on the forest floor. The truck was at the bottom. She came to rest by the front bumper and let herself lie on her back for a minute, sucking air into her lungs.

  The foliage she and Jon had put up to cover the vehicle had been removed and Kyra felt panic rise in her throat, thinking the SEBIN had found the truck. Then she saw Jon standing by the driver’s-side door. She couldn’t speak, her lungs still heaving too hard and fast.

  “Good to see you too,” he said, tossing her own words back at her. Jon reached down and helped Kyra to her feet. She leaned on him until she was able to crawl into the truck. Jon took his place in the driver’s seat, fired up the engine, and the rear tires spewed dirt.

  CIA Director’s Conference Room

  Cooke kept her eyes on the imagery feed and watched Kyra reach the truck and Jon help her in. They weren’t even close to safe, but they were no longer on foot and hope began to rise in her heart.

  “Cell network still down?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Drescher said. “I don’t think Avila is going to do us any favors. The Pentagon is watching this too. They’ll have to guide the helo in once our people stop moving.”

  The hills north of the former CAVIM Explosives Factory

  The roads through the hills were all unpaved, barely depressions in the underbrush. Jon kept the truck going as fast as he dared, but the trails were narrow and uneven.

  “Think we can make it to Highway Three?” Kyra asked. “Head north and we could put some road between us and Morón.”

  “I’d bet money the SEBIN are throwing up roadblocks everywhere,” he said.

  “Jon, I left my smartphone with the warhead,” Kyra told him.

  He reeled at that bit of news. “So they can track it . . . smart.”

  “So where do we go now?”

  “Someplace high,” Jon said. “These PRC handhelds only have a four-mile range, and without the antenna, the LST-5 is only good for line of sight. So we need to find someplace high up where we can get power and splice an antenna.”

  “Where?”

  “Good question,” he said.

  Avenida Falcón, southeast of the former

  CAVIM Explosives Factory

  Sargento Javier Oliveira leaned against the jeep and shifted his rifle so he could scratch his face. The humidity was making his neck itch and the asphalt under his boots and his green uniform were both soaking up the sunlight, making it impossible for him and the other five men in his unit to stay cool. He wouldn’t have had patience for this duty even if it had been cool with an Atlantic breeze running past. The ocean was only a few kilometers to the north. A week ago the women had been coming out in numbers, but the riots had forced the beaches to close, leaving Oliveira and his unit to swelter in the barracks on base when they weren’t out on the streets, trying to keep the rioters and looters from running free. The ones protesting Presidente Avila were bad enough. The ones supporting the presidente were worse, thinking themselves agents of the law and free to do Oliveira’s job for him and pummel anyone they thought was an enemy of the state.

  Then the Americans had bombed that explosives factory to dust. Oliveira had seen the mushroom cloud from the base and for a few moments had thought the United States had used a nuclear weapon against his country. He’d crossed himself and started to say his final prayers, but he realized after a few seconds that there had been no flash of light and no electromagnetic pulse. Whatever bomb they’d dropped had been enormous, but it wasn’t nuclear and Oliveira knew he would live.

  Then the orders had come to establish roadblocks and detain any Caucasians who approached. Rumors had been spreading among the other troops for days that there were CIA spies hiding in the hills. Oliveira hadn’t believed it until the bombing.

  He gritted his teeth and spit. They wouldn’t come by this station. There were no cars on the highway now, no doubt the result of the other roadblocks in both directions cutting off any traffic that would otherwise pass through. This intersection was the connection where the Avenida Falcón met the single paved road that ran into the now-destroyed factory complex and any Americans surely wouldn’t be coming down that street. Oliveira wasn’t the smartest of soldiers but he understood maps and math. These hills were hundreds of miles square. The chances that they would pass by here—

  Oliveira cocked his head as he heard the vehicle for the first time. It was a large engine, running fast, like someone had the accelerator mashed to the floor, and it was getting louder. He looked down the road and saw nothing, then checked behind him. Avenida Falcón w
as empty, the entrance road to the destroyed factory was empty. The other men scanned the roads and checked their rifles as they muttered to themselves. Then where—?

  The truck screamed out of the woods, coming off some small trail through the trees that they hadn’t been able to see from their station. Its tires hit the asphalt a hundred meters away and the driver cranked the wheel hard, turning south, and immediately accelerated in a straight line away from the roadblock. Two of the other men raised their rifles and fired a few rounds, but hit nothing.

  Oliveira ran for the cab of his jeep and turned on the radio.

  • • •

  “Six men, two jeeps.” Kyra turned her head back and looked at Jon. “The turnoff to Highway One is a half mile down on the left.”

  Jon shook his head. “There’ll be more of those jeeps on the big roads.” He looked left into the town. Black smoke was rising in columns from three points in the town. The riots had reached Morón.

  “If we stop, we might not be able to get moving again,” Kyra warned. “Someone spots us when we’re on foot and we’re done.”

  “Maybe,” Jon conceded. “But we won’t last long out here on the roads. We can outrun some jeeps but we can’t outrun their radios. They’ll coordinate on us and drive us until we run out of gas or road.” He turned left onto the first side street into Morón.

  The former CAVIM Explosives Factory

  The forklift had finally arrived but couldn’t reach the warhead crate inside the wrecked cargo truck where it had settled. Elham had stood by watching as five soldiers managed to drag it out, with Carreño cursing their incompetence from start to finish. When it was finally in the open, the forklift driver got the metal tines underneath and the soldiers had strapped it on. Loading it onto one of the new trucks was going slowly.

  “Malditos!” Carreño muttered under his breath. “We should have been gone twenty minutes ago. The Americans could put another bomb down on us anytime now.”

  You should have been in the truck when they hit us the first time, Elham thought.