The Venezuelan’s neck flushed noticeably, but his face froze in a cold fury. He sat himself very carefully down behind the damaged desk again.
‘Have you spoken to Caracas?’ asked Musso, all but ignoring the gross umbrage taken by Salas at his remark.
‘Si,’ the General said, deciding in the end not to respond to the insult. ‘I am authorised to offer safe passage to all Americans in Cuba. We, in turn, will accept custodianship of the unaffected region of Cuba until the Cuban Government reasserts itself.’
Musso snorted. ‘We want more than just safe passage out of Cuban waters. It wouldn’t do to have one of your submarines taking pot shots at us as we try to sail out of the neighbourhood. We want a guarantee of safe passage out of the Caribbean and Atlantic as well.’
Salas narrowed his eyes. His lips turned white and his nostrils flared again. ‘You are pushing your luck, General Musso,’ he said with a tightly clenched jaw.
‘No,’ Musso corrected him. ‘You are pushing yours.’
* * * *
‘Tell the President that it is not a bluff, Mr Shapiro,’ said Franks. ‘Tell him we are deadly serious. The rules have changed. Hell, there are no rules anymore – not when he feels free to fire on our civilians whenever it suits him… I don’t give a damn that they deny it. That’s one of the things that’s changed: I don’t have to give a damn anymore. Just tell him.’
Ritchie stood quietly in the underground command centre, listening to Franks as he talked on the phone to the American Ambassador in Venezuela. Now, there’s a job I’m glad I didn’t get stuck with, he thought.
Many of the screens in the room were blank, the workstations unmanned. Just behind Franks, a navy commander silently updated the positions of three Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines in the south Atlantic, moving their pins on an old-fashioned paper map. All three were well within striking distance of Caracas. One of them, the Tennessee, had only just responded to flash traffic, having been silent since 14 March. There were two other boomers lurking somewhere in the Atlantic right then as well, but they had flatly refused Franks’s request to put some bite into Musso’s bluff, citing the launch protocol, line and verse. Only the President of the United States, using the correct and verified launch codes…
It didn’t matter. They really only needed the ordnance of one Ohio-class submarine.
Franks appeared to be listening to some long and winding passage of dialogue from Ambassador Shapiro but then cut him off. ‘Look. I can see this is getting us nowhere, Mr Ambassador. Can I suggest you take cover, sir? Franks out.’ He hung up and turned to Ritchie. ‘Do it.’
The admiral picked up a phone. He had expected his voice to sound shaky but it was remarkably steady. ‘This is Ritchie,’ he said. ‘Patch me through to the Tennessee.’
* * * *
General Alano Salas nodded and hung up his phone. ‘It is not acceptable,’ he told Musso. ‘You impugn our honour with the very suggestion. To promise that we will not attack you as you flee, to imply that we would even consider such a thing, is to traduce our national reputation. Our very manhood.’
Musso would have snorted in derision but he was haunted by the awful sight of that C-5 spilling its precious human cargo into the night. So many children, hundreds of them. Their deaths had been confirmed by the light of dawn. It was a sight so gruesome he would never be free of it. What terror must have attended their last moments on earth? If he had been wearing a side-arm, the general’s brains would probably be dripping down the wall behind him right now.
‘Do not talk to me of your honour,’ he said, slowly and carefully enunciating each word. ‘I have seen your honour and it is a poor ragged fucking thing, which barely hides the crude ugliness of your intentions and deeds. The lowest of my Marines could not wipe his ass clean with your honour, General Salas. It would not be worth the effort of the rubbing. Now, I suggest you stop fucking everyone around and agree to what is a very reasonable request.’ Musso looked at his watch. ‘Time is running out.’
Salas regarded him with lidded eyes, a snake sizing up a scorpion for its dinner, weighing up the risks. ‘And how long do you imagine that the civilians we are holding, some four thousand of them, I believe, how long do you think they will survive in any… cross-fire?’
Musso sneered openly. ‘Those people are in your care, General,’ he replied, ‘and I would warn you to have a care for their safety. You, and every man under your command, will be held personally responsible for their fate. You keep telling me that things have changed, and you are right. There will be no diplomatic solution to this question, no Security Council meetings, no backroom deals – if you hurt them you will be hunted down. Your men will be hunted down. And your country will be laid to waste.’
‘I think you overestimate yourself, General Musso. You are not the power you once were.’
‘No. We’re not,’ said Musso. ‘We’re something infinitely worse now.’
* * * *
‘Active track, package inbound,’ a staff officer announced. ‘One minute to impact.’
Ritchie watched the centre-left screen, which showed a view of Caracas from the roof of the American Embassy. The Venezuelan capital sat high up in a valley of the Cordillera de la Costa Central, separated from the shores of the Caribbean by a ten- to twelve-mile stretch of national park. On a linked display, the ocean could be seen in a wide-angle shot sourced from the international airport, which lay on the water’s edge in the smaller city of Maiquetia, a short distance away. The image looked benign, a pleasant scene of blue water and a few plodding boats. Ritchie wondered if there were people down by the water, taking in the fresh air. He didn’t recall Caracas being famous for any beaches. The embassy had reported that the streets of the capital were not overly crowded, although there was a heavy and obvious military presence. But there was none of the violence and chaos that was rampant throughout so much of South America, or Europe for that matter.
Nobody in the command centre spoke. Ritchie could hear the blood rushing through his own head. It seemed perverse that he had just unleashed a nuclear warhead. It could not be real.
At 0706 hours a second sunrise blossomed over Maiquetia. On the satellite feed, three bright flashes, one at a time, flared up, twenty miles offshore.
‘All weapons delivered, Admiral.’
* * * *
The Venezuelan general looked ill as he put down the phone.
‘S-s-afe passage out of the region is… assured, General Musso,’ he said. ‘But this isn’t over. My government assures me that this isn’t over.’
‘It’d better be over,’ Musso replied, rising from his seat. ‘The next time it won’t be warning shots. Good day.’
* * * *
49
16TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS
Caitlin wormed her way through the crawl-space, feeling nauseous and claustrophobic. The attic was a constricted geometric tangle of wooden beams, hundreds of years old, rendered into opalescent green by her borrowed night-vision goggles. She’d had three days to recover since her liberation from the cell, but at least two of those days she had spent on the move with Rolland and his small team, creeping through hostile territory, backtracking through a year’s worth of surveillance of Bilal Baumer. Tight spaces had never bothered her before, but her heart felt as though it was being squeezed by a giant rubber band. Yet another symptom of her physical decay.
And so it came to this, as always. Caitlin Monroe, on her own, inching carefully towards her prey in the dark.
She’d reached the little access panel after an hour of snaking through the roof spaces along the line of tenements, ending up here at the four-storey house where Baumer and his companions were holed up. Her watch read 2.13 am, and although she could hear the rumble of a great battle in the distance, and even sense it vibrating up through the structure of the four-storey house, down below her, all seemed quiet. She had no idea what Baumer and his men were doing down there. Chances were, it was just a lay-up point, a place to re
group before escaping the city.
Caitlin adjusted her headset and hit the push-to-talk button on the secure digital radio. ‘In position,’ she reported quietly.
Rolland’s voice came back in a brief crackle. ‘No discernible movement inside. One guard at the front door. Sniper has him marked.’
‘I’m going in.’
She cut the connection and carefully lifted the wooden panel, just a crack, giving her access to a hallway on the top floor. By threading through a thin black fibre-optic wire plugged into a hand-held display, she was able to recon the hallway. It was clear.
Caitlin removed the hatch and took a length of rope from the heavy utility belt she wore over her black coveralls. Then, tying it to a beam, she rappelled down silently and took a moment to orient herself, imagining Rolland’s floor plans overlaid onto the glowing green setting in front of her. A narrow corridor leading to a stairwell. Two doors on the left, both closed.
A silenced handgun and a fighting knife appeared in her hands.
She glided over to the first door and inserted the fibre-optic wire through the old keyhole. The room appeared to be deserted. She turned the knob. Hinges creaked horribly and she sidestepped, bringing up the pistol. For two minutes she stood, ready to cut down anyone who appeared, but there was nobody inside.
She moved on and repeated the routine. This time her pulse accelerated, as the optic display unit showed her a low-light amplified image of a man, crouched in the corner of the room, pointing a pistol at the door.
A large Caucasian male, with head and arm wounds field-dressed using torn bed sheets, if she was not mistaken. He seemed to be straining to hear any sound that might give away the position of someone in the corridor. Caitlin checked her exposure. Crouched low as she was, off to the side of the door, she was safely out of his line of fire. He was aiming for the centre mass of anyone who walked through the door.
Fuck.
With no idea who he was, or what he was doing there, the man was a complication she did not need. There was no going in and taking him down, though. This guy was primed for trouble.
She took a moment to examine him in the display screen again. He had a good firing position and held the gun as though it were an extension of his body. He didn’t look nervous, self-conscious, or likely to hesitate if he needed to shoot.
He was clean-shaven, and wearing the sort of vest she’d often seen on press photographers. The image was not sharp, unfortunately, but in his pockets, she thought she could make out a notepad, some pens and possibly a small dictaphone, the sort of thing that took little micro-cassettes. If only she could’ve seen the back of his vest, there might have been an identifying logo or something. A lot of reporters used reflective tape to spell out TRESS’ or the acronym of their media affiliates on their backs. Caitlin always thought that just made them easier targets, but journalists were weird. They had some fucked-up ideas.
She had to come to a decision quickly.
The man was almost certainly not part of the group downstairs. He was trapped in the room, doubtless due to their unexpected arrival. There was probably no way of getting in there without him firing off half a mag at the door.
She decided to leave him in place.
He disappeared from the screen as she withdrew the fibre-optic wire. For thirty seconds she crouched, waiting, but no sound or movement came from within. That was actually kind of impressive. This guy was no amateur – but he was not necessarily an ally either.
She began to edge away, eventually making the stairs, where she stood, adjusting herself to the sounds, to the feel of the house. It felt like an inhabited dwelling, but that wasn’t down to any bullshit sixth sense. She already knew the lower floors were occupied. What she didn’t know was where her targets were holed up.
She listened, willing her nausea to recede to the edge of her consciousness, breathing as she had been taught, to settle her nervous system.
She could hear the angry rumble of battle. A jet aircraft shrieking low to the west.
The creaking and settling of the building as the ground underneath moved fractionally in response to the pounding of high explosives and the grinding of heavy armour through streets no more than a mile away.
A radio, playing Arabic music.
Snoring. Some muttering, but not conversational – probably someone talking in their sleep.
The clink of china cups or glasses.
Quiet laughter.
And then a ringing in her ears, which had been constant for two weeks. Her pulse and heartbeat. The silent advance of the tumour that was eating her from the inside out.
Caitlin floated down the stairs, using a technique she had studied under the Ninjutsu master Harunaka Hoshino, who had trained her to cross a nightingale floor with a minimum of noise. There was no way to eliminate the singing of the boards, but Hoshino taught her to quieten its chirping. The stairs of the old French residence were no challenge after that.
She paused on the second last step. The house was dark, the power grid having failed long ago, but with her NVGs she could make out a weak, fluttering light emanating from under two of the four doors on this floor. She stilled herself, becoming as stonelike as a human being could, and opening all of her senses wide to let the world rush in.
She smelt old food. Meat gone cold. And coffee.
A body shifted and rolled over on the floor nearby, lifting up slightly, and settling back down with a light thump.
A sheet or blanket rustled.
A wind-up clock ticked.
In one of the lighted rooms a page turned.
Every hair on Caitlin’s body bristled, in an ancient autonomic response to danger – a hangover from her animal ancestors.
She glided down the hallway to the door behind which she knew at least one man was awake and reading. Again, she settled into stillness and allowed the life of the building – just a soft heartbeat and a murmured breath here, at this dead hour – to flow into her.
Another page turned and she heard mumbling in Arabic from the same room: ‘O ye who believe! When ye meet the Unbelievers in hostile array, never turn your backs on them. If any do turn his back to them on such a day - unless it be in a stratagem of war, or to retreat to his own troops - he draws on himself the wrath of Allah and his abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed.’
Caitlin visualised the small room on the other side of the door. A single bedroom, probably given to a child in happier days. A window overlooking the street behind. No connecting doors to either room beside it.
She examined the handle. An old-fashioned brass knob without a keyhole. There could be a latch on the other side, but of that she could not be certain.
There was only one thing for it. Caitlin sheathed her fighting knife. Powered down and raised her night-vision goggles. And waited.
The mumbling and page turning continued.
She stood, motionless, for six minutes until her opportunity arrived – another jet, roaring close overhead within a mile. As the whining howl reached its maximum intensity, she calmly reached out, opened the door, got a sight picture of one man-young and shirtless, sitting up in a small bed, leaning against a pillow, reading, and then looking up at her, all innocence and dawning bewilderment as the assassin raised a hand-tooled, frequency-shifting silenced pistol and squeezed the trigger twice.
Two muted clacks, almost like a stapler, and the subsonic.300 Whisper rounds left the muzzle of the weapon at about 980 feet per second, slowing only fractionally as they entered his brainpan and scattered the contents all over the room.
She swept the space automatically, but already knew it to be empty. A quick puff to blow out his candle, after which she pulled the door closed and turned down towards the next lighted room.
This one was silent. No muttering. No page turning. Again she waited.
Closer to the stairwell this time she could hear at least three voices down on the ground floor. Two spoke in rapid-fire Arabic; one was slower, polished, but heavily accented. Lacan.
Okay, that was a bitch. She’d been hoping to find him in bed, but filtering out his voice, she did determine that Baumer’s German accent was not part of that conversation, which was the only talking in the house at the moment.
Caitlin returned to her vigil at the door. The flutter of a light leaking out told her there was a candle inside. She concentrated, leaning her ear to the wooden panelling, and waiting. After three minutes she was rewarded with a brief snore.
No jet fighters conveniently appeared to cover the sounds of murder this time. But when the voices downstairs rose and broke into laughter, she was able to repeat her actions of a few minutes earlier. Coolly opening the door, lining up a head shot, and double-tapping her victim – a slightly overweight, balding man who had fallen asleep with a pair of headphones plugged into an iPod. His body shuddered violently as the 250-grain bullets shredded his neocortex. Dousing this second candle, she plunged the floor back into darkness before refitting the NVGs.
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