Cold Shot: A Novel

by Henshaw, Mark

  The cargo trucks were five hundred feet away from the point of impact, well inside the blast radius. The artificial earthquake reached the first cargo truck and lifted all five tons of it off the ground, flipping it end over end. The shock wave struck it faster than the speed of sound, stripping away the tires and metal sides, twisting the frame like rubber, and shattering the bones of the soldiers in the cargo bed before their brains could recognize that anything had happened at all. The second truck followed the first, slamming into what remained of its brother. All of the trucks took flight in a fraction of a second, the soldiers inside killed before the heat of the now-dying fireball ever touched them. The entire convoy came to rest hundreds of feet from where the shock wave had touched them, the trucks twisted and crumpled, lying on their sides.

  Carreño’s car was another three hundred feet ahead—just far enough to spare its passengers. The shock wave hit the vehicle, shattering the windows and driving the air at a few hundred miles an hour, sucking the oxygen from the occupants’ lungs. The town car flipped over onto its side, end over end, until it came to rest on its right side, all four passengers unconscious and bleeding from their noses and ears.

  • • •

  Kyra saw the shock wave for a fraction of a second, barely enough time for her mind to register the sight before it reached her position. It was a perfect circle of distorted air expanding out as it vaporized everything it touched. It passed over the security shack she had penetrated, then the fence, which disappeared into shards smaller than nails. The new shrapnel flew into the woods and cut into the trees microseconds before the shock wave touched them, shredding the smaller ones into splinters and bending the larger ones over until their trunks finally exploded, sending them tumbling into the hillside.

  Behind it, the ground rolled like an ocean wave, a perfect circle of moving earth expanding outward until the flash from the explosion forced Kyra to shut her eyes.

  The shock wave was dying now, slowing down and losing force from the moment of its birth. It expanded into the trees, ripping branches loose into the air. Still it pushed out, spending its energy to rise up the slope. Kyra yelled as she felt it hit, like a giant fist punching her over the entire surface of her body, knocking Jon off her and sending him rolling through the high grass. Her cry was lost in the screaming air, the loudest sound she’d ever heard. She could feel her eardrums vibrate inside her head and without a thought her hands covered her ears, trying to save her hearing. The earth rumbled and the solid wave rolled underneath her, throwing her and Jon into the air.

  CIA Director’s Conference Room

  Cooke stifled a cry of her own as she saw the MOP explode and the screen wash out. She turned away from the monitor, covering her face with her hands. Drescher said nothing, didn’t move.

  They’re dead, she realized. They must be dead. It was the only thought she could keep in her head.

  “Kathy,” Drescher said after a short eternity. He’d never called her by her first name. She looked up. The Ops Center watch officer was pointing at the monitor.

  On the screen, in the separate window in the lower right, Cooke saw two thermal figures, bodies, lying prone on the ground, still.

  Then they started to move and Cooke couldn’t restrain a small cry of hope.

  CAVIM Explosives Factory

  “Jon?” Kyra couldn’t hear her voice over the ringing in her ears. Her balance was shot. The world spun around her and she stumbled forward as she tried to rise, falling onto her hands and knees.

  He was in the high grass behind her, twenty feet away, dragging himself to his feet. He made his way to her side, no small feat. He lifted her to her feet again and she fell against him, unable to keep her balance. He caught her, put her arm around his shoulders, and held her upright.

  They turned and looked at the valley.

  The CAVIM site was gone, erased from the ground, a mushroom cloud reaching into the sky to a height Kyra couldn’t begin to guess. The chemical factory was a crater in the earth, the outbuildings vaporized, the security hub missing, with only a small corner of one charred foundation to mark its previous location. Smaller craters in the ordnance field marked where the shock wave and the fireball had detonated the unexploded ordnance that had littered the ground.

  “There,” she said, pointing, almost having to yell so he could hear her over the ringing in his ears. The convoy was scattered out beyond the crater, Carreño’s town car another football field’s length beyond them. The trucks were on their sides or backs, clearly wrecked beyond repair. “You think it survived?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Trucks weren’t vaporized . . . nuclear . . . nuclear transport caskets can take serious punishment.” He was still trying to catch his breath. “If they put it in one of those . . . might be intact.”

  “Have to find out.” Kyra pushed away from Jon and stumbled forward, her balance returning more slowly than she wanted. She searched through the grass and found the HK, still in working order. The Barrett was the heavier rifle and had traveled less distance in the same direction.

  “Radio’s intact,” she heard Jon call out behind her. She turned his way. The LST-5 had just missed landing on a large rock after being thrown into the air, and Kyra realized for the first time how lucky she and Jon were not to have come down to earth that way. Either of them could have, maybe should have broken backs or bones.

  She reached into her pocket and checked her smartphone. It was still in one piece, courtesy of the MIL-SPEC case holding it. Breathing was coming easier now. “We finish this. We make sure it’s dead, then we get out of here.”

  Jon pointed at the mushroom cloud. “They can see that all the way to Puerto Cabello.” Another pause, another deep breath. “The SEBIN will be coming. If you see anyone down there, run for the truck.”

  “I’ll try. But if we get separated, take the truck and head for some town that’s not on fire. Try to find a way to reach Mari or HQ.”

  “I’ll be watching,” he said.

  Kyra began to make her way down the hillside, still unsteady on her feet.

  Jon exhaled, then reached down and picked up the Barrett. It was heavy in his hands.

  CIA Director’s Conference Room

  “What are they doing?” Cooke asked. One of the thermal figures on the screen—Kyra, she guessed, judging by the smaller size—was walking away from the other. Jon laid himself prone on the ground.

  “Going down to check out the blast site?” Drescher guessed. He panned the satellite image away from the blast crater until he found the wrecked convoy trucks. “The nuke might’ve survived.”

  Don’t get killed. Don’t get caught. Bring home the intel. The words ran through her mind, a cruel reminder that she had put the two officers in harm’s way. Now Kyra was trying to bring home the intel and Jon wasn’t trying to stop her. He must think the nuke survived too, Cooke told herself.

  “Get me the SecDef,” she ordered. It took Drescher five minutes to comply with the order.

  “I’m a little busy, Kathy,” the SecDef replied.

  “We think the nuke might have survived,” she told him. “I assume you’re watching the live feed?”

  “We are.”

  “One of our officers is approaching the crash site from the northwest. I know both members of the team personally. She wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t both think there was a chance the warhead is intact,” she advised.

  “If that’s true, we might have to bomb the site again,” the SecDef told her. “Truman can hit the site within the hour.”

  “The SEBIN will probably have people on-site within a few minutes. If you do that, there will be casualties.”

  “There were already casualties,” the SecDef replied. “I don’t think that’ll stop the president. But I’ll see if we can get some boots on the ground instead . . . secure the perimeter and maybe retrieve any nuclear mater
ial. Not likely, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “I want those personnel retrieval assets ASAP.”

  “Has Rostow approved?”

  “No. But if my people find out whether the bomb is dead, that’ll tell you whether you have to hit the site again.”

  “Works for me,” the SecDef conceded. “Okay, it’s a go. I’ll get permission later. But your people have to pull back to some other checkpoint. I’ll order Vicksburg to launch as soon as that happens.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Cooke said. She hung up the phone. They’re coming, Jon.

  CAVIM Explosives Factory

  Her balance was better, the ringing in her ears quieter now, and Kyra began to jog down the hill, then run as she felt more steady on her feet. She reached the bottom and sprinted as hard as she could to the edge of the site where the fence had once stood. There was no building to provide cover, but she supposed the same was true for any survivors, and she saw none. She moved forward, walking into the compound, the HK raised to her shoulder.

  Charred earth crunched under her boots and she saw little fires everywhere, the surviving debris burning where it fell. The smoke was settling, creating a fog that limited her vision to a few dozen feet. She made her way past the broken foundation of the security hub and walked east, stepping over the blackened gravel that lay in clumps on the ground. A quarter mile to the north, she reached the edge of the crater where the chemical factory had stood. The bowl in the earth was at least thirty feet deep to the bottom and she couldn’t judge the distance across . . . well over a hundred feet at least. She prayed that the fireball had eaten whatever chemicals had been stored inside the building, or that any surviving nuclear material was now a thousand feet above her head and getting blown out to sea.

  I hope that reprocessing center was somewhere else.

  Kyra made her way around the rim to the opposite side and raised the rifle to her shoulder.

  She finally saw the convoy through the smoke. Kyra ran as quickly as she could without destroying her aim. She saw no motion, no movement, no survivors. She reached the first truck, which was resting on its back, tires missing and burning fluids spread around the crushed front. She moved around to the back, looked under the metal floor that had become the ceiling of the cargo bed. There were soldiers inside and she tried to suppress the urge to vomit that surged up from her stomach. This time she failed and she spewed her breakfast onto the ground.

  Do the job, she ordered herself. Kyra forced her mouth closed and moved to the next truck.

  This one had fared no better than the first. Its frame was twisted and the cab rested on its side at an oblique angle to the bed. Kyra raised her rifle again, her hands shaky, and she stepped around the front. She saw the driver inside through the shattered windshield. He was a bloody mass, his head resting on the passenger door.

  The canvas cover over the back was shredded open. Inside were the crushed bodies of a dozen men, twisted at angles her mind refused to believe.

  Of course it’ll be in the last one, she thought. It made sense that it would be in the truck closest to Carreño’s car.

  • • •

  Elham opened his eyes and still couldn’t see. The blood from the gash on his head was running over his eyes and he reached up and wiped it away with his hand. Still blurry, he looked around.

  The car was on its side, driver’s side pointing to the sky. Ahmadi was beneath him, still belted in, unconscious. In the front, neither Carreño nor the driver was moving and he couldn’t tell from this angle whether they were living or dead. The front windshield was entirely opaque, the glass spiderwebbed from a thousand fractures. The side windows were gone and the soldier felt a slight breeze run down into the cab, carrying the smell of smoke and dust with it.

  Nothing felt broken, though most of his body felt bruised, so Elham reached down and unlocked the seat belt, grabbing the leather handle to stop himself from falling on Ahmadi. He climbed out of the shattered window, his body quietly protesting, and he pulled himself out and dropped to the ground. He smelled gasoline. The fuel tank was certainly ruptured. One bit of flaming debris falling from the sky could turn the car into a pyre with everyone inside.

  He couldn’t see the CAVIM site behind him for the smoke and dirt in the air. The convoy was a series of shattered wrecks. Fires were burning everywhere and all of the outbuildings were gone. He uttered a silent prayer that was as much a plea as an accusation leveled against Allah. His men had been in the back of one of the cargo trucks. His entire unit . . . dead now, surely. All good men who had deserved better than to die at the hands of some pilot whom they’d never had the chance to fight.

  What did the Americans hit us with? he wondered. Not a nuclear weapon. They wouldn’t have survived that. He’d heard about some of the larger thermobaric bombs the Americans had, the Mother Of All Bombs and such monsters as that. They’d used one of those, surely.

  Then Elham saw movement. His eyes didn’t want to focus, but he forced them, and he saw her . . . a woman in cargo pants and a T-shirt, with a rifle raised to her shoulder, moving behind the nearest five-ton cargo truck.

  The truck that had carried the warhead.

  Elham stumbled around to the back of the car. The trunk was crumpled and hanging partially open a few inches. The car’s frame had bent, cracking the trunk’s door loose. He grabbed it, pulled, and grunted as it moved a few inches. He pulled again, then looked.

  The Steyr’s case was there, still in one piece, but too large to pull through the narrow opening. Elham put his boot against the rear bumper, braced himself, then pulled on the trunk door again. It slid a few more inches in the dirt.

  • • •

  The scene at the last truck was little different from the others except that some of the bodies of the SEBIN soldiers had been thrown out of the vehicle onto the ground. She stepped around them, looking at the bodies. There were no survivors. The convoy had been too close to the point of impact.

  The last truck was lying on its side. There were no bodies inside this one, to her relief. She stepped inside the back, her foot coming down on the canvas cover that had been the roof and was now the floor. She reached into her pants pocket, pulled out the Maglite, and turned it on.

  The metal crate was four feet square, intact, but dented on all sides with holes punched through it in several places from debris or sharp corners of the truck bed as far as she could tell. Kyra pointed the light inside the largest gouge in the metal she could find and looked in.

  The light played over a large green cone, still secured inside its thick metal box.

  Kyra stared at the device. How many kilotons? she wondered. A hundred? Five hundred? A megaton or more? Fission or fusion? Uranium or plutonium core? What design?

  It survived, she thought. That was what mattered.

  The enemy still had a warhead.

  The crate was far too large and too heavy for her to move by hand and the cargo truck was destroyed.

  Then she heard the first sounds in the distance, the rumbling of vehicles. She checked her watch. It had been almost thirty minutes since the bombing. The SEBIN in Puerto Cabello had seen the mushroom cloud, maybe even heard the explosion. They had tried to call the factory and gotten no answer. Now they were coming. They would secure the warhead, load it onto another truck, drive it away, and the United States would never find it again until Avila or Ahmadi was ready to reveal it.

  Can’t let them just have it, she thought. She needed to buy time. Jon could hold the SEBIN off with the Barrett for a while, but they’d eventually find him, flank him, and that would be that.

  Kyra stared at the crate as she heard the truck getting closer. Then she reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and checked the battery charge . . . 72 percent. She set the HK down, reached into the crate, and wedged the phone inside behind some of the foam padding lining the edges, out of sight. She shined
the light inside and looked for it. Satisfied that it wouldn’t be easily spotted, she turned off the Maglite and put it back in her pocket, then grabbed the HK and backed out of the truck.

  • • •

  The bullet hit the truck’s metal bumper, missing her head by six inches and Kyra heard the supersonic crack as it passed by her ear. She jerked away from the sound, her heart hammering in her ribs. She dove behind the truck again, rolled to a crouch, and raised the HK. There was no second shot. She looked up at the bumper.

  The bullet had passed through it, tearing a hole and splaying the thin metal skin open like the peel of an orange. She stared at it, eyes wide, then swept the rifle over the space in front of her, every sense hyperactive, looking for the threat. Whatever caliber the weapon that had fired that shot, it was too large to be a sidearm or a carbine. It was big . . . Sniper rifle? Like the Barrett.

  • • •

  Elham muttered and slid the Steyr’s bolt forward. It should’ve been an easy kill, the distance to the target less than a hundred meters, but the world was still spinning too much and he’d missed the shot. Now the target had taken cover and was aware that she was being observed. That always made the second shot harder. He chambered the second round and put his eye behind the scope again.

  • • •

  The smoke was covering the field of fire and Jon couldn’t see much. The breeze was picking up and starting to blow some of the dark cloud away, creating holes in the smog, and he could see parts of the wrecked convoy.

  He heard the deep, low snap of the rifle shot. That wasn’t an AK, he knew. Someone in the valley had a bigger rifle than that. He held the scope on the wreckage, looking for a target. The wind shifted the smoke and he finally saw Kyra crouched behind the farthest truck. He swept the Barrett left and saw the dim outline of the town car another hundred yards away.

  “C’mon,” he muttered. He couldn’t see a target.