Cold Shot (38 page)

“How long?” Feldman asked. The national security adviser sounded desperate.

“Eight hours if we’re very lucky,” Cooke estimated. “Probably less.”

“We’ve got to kill it,” Rostow said. “Gerry, call the SecDef. I want another air strike—”

“Mr. President, I don’t think we can target the warhead precisely enough for an air strike,” Cooke told him. “It would be a very messy operation—”

“I don’t care about the mess!” Rostow yelled. “I’m not going to tell the American people that we had a chance to take out a nuclear warhead in our hemisphere and
missed
!”

“Dan, wait a second,” Feldman said, his voice surprisingly quiet to Cooke’s ears. “She’s probably right—”

“What, you’re listening to her now?” Rostow demanded.

“Yeah, I am,” Feldman said. “This whole thing has been a mess from the start and Kathy’s the one who’s been keeping this disaster from falling completely apart with duct tape and prayer. If she’s got an idea of how to get out of this a little more gracefully than using an F-35 to turn a nuke into a dirty bomb in the middle of Caracas, I think we should hear her out.”

Rostow looked at his adviser, then to the DNI, who nodded. “Fine,” the president said, clearly not thinking so. “What do you suggest?”

“Sir, this is Marcus Holland,” Cooke said, extending her hand toward the analyst. Holland had been sitting in the row of chairs along the Situation Room wall, desperately trying not to be noticed. “He’s one of the analysts who’s been working on our task force since this all began. I think you should take five minutes and listen to what he has to say.”

The president glowered at the young man and Holland tried very hard not to shrink into his chair. “Well?”

USS
Vicksburg

11°22' North 67°49' West

75 miles north of the Venezuelan coast

Vicksburg
had turned to put the wind twenty degrees on the port bow, making the Seahawk pilot’s life a little easier. He hovered the helicopter over the flight deck, the wind minimized to prevent the rotors from producing more lift, and he pushed down on the collective as fast as he dared. Kyra felt the helo’s rubber tires touch down, the pilot killed the engine, and she saw a small group of sailors in coveralls and helmets shuffle out, bent over to keep their heads well below the spinning rotors. They secured the Seahawk, rolled open the doors, and the medical team ran out.

Marisa was stretched out on the helo’s metal floor, Jon leaning over her, his bloody hand pressed against the bloody stain on her shirt. “Gunshot wound to the chest, upper right quadrant,” he yelled as they climbed in and lifted her onto the stretcher. “We treated with Celox for bleeding. She developed a tension pneumothorax and we aspirated with a fourteen-gauge needle and applied a HALO chest seal . . .”

“You treated for shock?” one of the corpsmen yelled.

“Yes!” Jon replied.

The corpsmen lifted the stretcher board and started to run as fast as they could together, two men on either side of her.

Kyra jumped out of the Seahawk, her boots set down on metal and she closed her eyes, tried to suck in a deep breath of Atlantic air, and tasted jet fuel in the small hurricane whipped up by the rotor wash. Jon was running behind the medics and Kyra chased them down.

The corpsmen were yelling at the sailors in the passageways, who flattened themselves against the bulkheads to make room. Kyra lost track of the minutes it took to reach sick bay. Jon tried to follow but one of the corpsmen put a hand to his chest and backed him out. “Out here, sir.”

“No, I—”

“In the passageway or in the brig, sir. Doesn’t matter to me.”

Jon stood still, saying nothing as the corpsman closed the hatch. Kyra looked at her partner but didn’t speak until the metallic echo created by the metal door closing faded into silence. “Is she going to make it?” Kyra asked.

“Blood loss and tension pneumothorax are the primary causes of ninety-three percent of all battlefield deaths,” he said, his voice flat. “I treated those. So it depends on what kind of damage the shot did inside her chest cavity.” He stared at the closed hatch.

“Jon, if you want to stay here until—” Kyra started.

“Mills!” The CIA officers turned their heads to the master chief, who was making his way toward them.

“She was injured during the operation,” Kyra yelled.

“Then who’s your senior officer?”

“That would be me,” Jon said. There was no emotion in his voice.

“You’ve got a message from Langley,” LeJeune yelled back. “Looks like you might be getting back in the air pretty quick.”

Palacio de Miraflores

Caracas, Venezuela

Avila had never tasted better rum. His predecessor gave him the bottle of Black 33 after choosing him for the presidency. With the Bolivarians counting the votes, the election had been a formality staged for the benefit of foreign observers. Avila had always intended to break open this particular bottle on his last day in office and share it with whomever he chose to follow him. Now that seemed more unlikely by the hour.

He looked past his desk at the far window. Light smoke was wafting up past the gates and for a minute he wondered whether the mushroom cloud from Morón hadn’t reached Caracas.
Idiot,
he called himself. He had enough reasons to worry without making up stupidities like that. The mobs were clashing outside, held back only by each other and the army now. He’d given the order to open fire on the masses if they came over the fence to Miraflores, but he didn’t know whether the soldiers outside would obey. Other men in his position had learned that military loyalty had its limits and Avila realized that he didn’t know exactly what those limits were. He had never been a soldier, not like Comandante Chávez or Bolívar himself. Avila didn’t know how these soldiers thought, not really, but he did know that every coup in his country’s history had come from the army. He couldn’t trust his protectors any more than he could trust the rioters outside. His only consolation was that the army wouldn’t execute him on sight. If they turned, they would need him to make public statements to preserve order once the government fell. Avila
was
the government. His closer associates were just functionaries whose loyalty he was sure extended only so far as the benefits he could provide them. That had been a mistake, to surround himself with so many bootlickers. Dissent was not to be tolerated in the end, but letting his subordinates actually speak their minds on occasion might have earned him a bit of real loyalty to be tapped when he needed it.

Too late now for it.
God was cruel that way sometimes, letting His favored children learn lessons only after those lessons would have been useful. Avila poured another shot and set the glass on the desk.

The door to the office opened and his secretary stepped inside. “Señor Presidente, there is a call for you—” the aide started.

“I’m not taking any calls!” Avila yelled.

“I think you should take this one, sir,” the aide persisted.

Avila looked up at the functionary, surprised at the young man’s insistence. He was unused to his subordinates countering anything he had to say. “And why is that?”

The aide looked terrified, whether of Avila’s response or the caller’s identity, the
presidente
couldn’t tell. “It’s the president of the United States.”

Avila gaped at the man for a moment. His hand snaked out from under the desk, hesitated, then he touched the speaker button. “This is Presidente Diego Avila of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” he announced.

“President Avila, this is President Daniel Rostow of the United States of America,” came the reply. Some unseen translator on the other end repeated the words in Spanish.

Pleasantries seemed pointless. “You have committed an act of war against my country, President Rostow—” Avila started.

“True,” Rostow replied, which left the Venezuelan surprised. “But the
Almirante Brión
fired on the USS
Vicksburg
before that. And you violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean before that. So why don’t we just forgo any little games of trying to prove who provoked who, shall we?”

“What do you want, Mr. President?” Avila replied, trying to control his tone. The alcohol was making it difficult not to slur his words.

“As you are aware, I ordered the destruction of the explosives factory at CAVIM. I am also prepared to order the destruction of the other sites involved in your proliferation program at Ciudad Bolívar, at Aragua, and Monagas. B-2 bombers carrying similar ordnance that you cannot detect with your air-defense network are already en route to those sites with orders to attack if I don’t recall them in the next few hours.” Avila hoped that was an outright lie but had no way of knowing. “We also know that the warhead you’ve been developing is en route to Caracas as we speak. I’m prepared to destroy it by any means necessary in the next few minutes if you don’t agree to terms.”

“You
estadounidenses
have dictated terms to South America long enough!” Avila yelled into the phone. “You will not give me orders like a dog sitting at your table—”

“Listen to me very carefully, sir.” Rostow cut him off again. “There is no scenario in which you keep your nuclear facilities and that warhead. You are close enough to my country that the U.S. Navy can continue the blockade of your country indefinitely and I have the United Nations’ blessing to do so. Your neighbors have sealed their borders. If this continues, I will seek sanctions against your economy. The only thing that will enter your ports will be food and medicine. Nothing, and I do mean
nothing,
will be allowed to come back out. We will strangle you. North Korea will look like an open freeway compared to how much cargo will be allowed to transit your country. Your own people are rioting against you. I doubt they’ll love you more when your economy implodes and your country has a history of coups and revolutions. Do you really think that you’re immune?”

Rostow stopped for a moment and let the threat sink in before continuing. “But you can avoid all of that. Agree to terms and none of that will happen. I won’t try to topple your government. You could probably even blame this mess on your predecessors and I might be persuaded to say a few good words about how cooperative you’ve been in coming clean about the illegal programs that started before you came to office.”

Avila took several deep breaths, then fell back in his chair, considering Rostow’s words. He sipped at the rum, thinking, then shifted the phone, pressing it against his shoulder with his head as he took up the bottle and began to screw the cap back on. “And what are your terms?” he asked carefully.

“I have only three,” Rostow told him. “First, you open up your nuclear sites to the International Atomic Energy Agency for inspection and dismantling. Second, you deliver the warhead in the next three hours to a site that I will designate and give it up to a U.S. Special Forces team.”

“And number three?”

Rostow told him.

Avila set the rum on the desk and pushed it away a few inches. “I do these things and you end your blockade immediately?”

“Your coasts will be cleared within twenty-four hours.”

Avila frowned. “My friends will not like this.”

“You’ll still be in Miraflores to hear their complaints. Are we agreed?”

“Sí.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, Señor Presidente,” Rostow said. “I look forward to an amicable resolution of this matter. And if you choose to deviate from this plan in the least degree, I promise you will regret it.” The line went dead.

Avila hung up the phone, stared at the last dregs in his glass, and swallowed them. Perhaps Comandante Chávez was still pleading his case in heaven after all. He looked up. The secretary was still there, almost trying to hide behind the door. “Please bring me a radio. I need to talk to Señor Ahmadi.”

White House Situation Room

Rostow cradled the phone. “That felt good,” he said.

“Nice job,” the DNI agreed. “Your voice had just the right tone of nasty.”

“Cooke’s idea plays to my strengths,” Rostow said.

Maracay, Aragua, Venezuela

130 kilometers southwest of Caracas

“Is he with you?” Avila asked without preamble.

“Sí,”
Carreño said.

“Where are you?!” Avila demanded.

Carreño shifted the radio handset away from his ear slightly to save his hearing. “We have just passed north of Maracay. We will be in Caracas in ninety minutes, maybe less if you can clear the roads.”

“And you are with the cargo?”

“No,” Carreño admitted. His driver had been killing the jeep trying to catch up with the convoy after the fiasco in Morón and still hadn’t managed to close the distance. “The truck driver reports that his convoy is just east of La Victoria. I’ve told them not to stop and expect to rejoin them within the hour.” He looked out of the passenger window at Maracay. The sun was setting behind the jeep and darkness had settled over the city enough that he could see fires burning in the
centros.
They’re rioting here too,
he realized. Was there any part of the country that this madness hadn’t touched?

“Good. I want you to take the cargo and our friends directly to the airport,” Avila said. “If they ask any questions, tell them that we will be flying them out of the country after they arrive.”

Carreño rocked back in his seat at that news.
What are you playing at?
Fly them where?
he thought. The Americans had established a no-fly zone, cutting off the north and east. The Colombians were denying overflight to the west, the Brazilians to the south.
Guyana?
he thought. “You’re certain that’s wise?” he asked carefully.

“You understand what we must do?”

“I’m not certain what options you are considering,” Carreño said after a moment’s thought. He pressed the handset against his ear to keep Avila’s voice from leaking out. Ahmadi and Elham were in the backseat and he was sure he didn’t want them to hear whatever the
presidente
was about to say. He wasn’t certain how much Spanish they understood.