Then he did exactly the wrong thing.
He waved her toward him.
Kyra clenched her fists to give the nervous energy somewhere to go. She held her poker face and she cocked her head at him a bit as her mind tore the situation down. It took a bare fraction of a second.
You don’t know me, she thought. They had never met. She wasn’t the asset’s handler. A paranoid asset, worried for his safety, should have been skeptical of a stranger arriving at an isolated meeting site. She could be a random tourist, however unlikely that was at this hour in this dark place, or, more likely, Venezuelan security, so the proper response was to act like he was ignoring her as he would any random person he met on the street. The burden should be hers to give him a prearranged signal to confirm both her identity and that she was clean of surveillance. He should then respond with a signal of his own. The asset had violated that simple protocol.
Nervous? It was the only logical reason to have done what he did. The man was an experienced SEBIN officer, a trained professional. But he’d forgotten his training.
Why are you nervous? There were two possibilities. He suspected surveillance, in which case he knew to give her a signal. Or he had confirmed surveillance, in which case he shouldn’t have even come. Both assumed he really was a traitor in danger of prison or execution if he was caught.
Of course, if he wasn’t in danger, then he would be nervous for a different reason entirely.
You’re here, amigo. No signal. Nervous.
SEBIN was here. But he still wanted her to walk onto the bridge.
He wasn’t afraid he would be caught. He was afraid she wouldn’t be. Afraid that the endgame of an operation in which he had a stake would fail.
Then Kyra saw it all, as clearly as though it had already happened.
El Presidente owned the courts. The conviction of an arrested CIA case officer on charges real and imagined would be a given. The would-be tyrant would use her to extort apologies and concessions from the US. He would make the detention public and drag out the story for weeks, months if he could. Humiliate her, the Agency, the United States. He would claim that her arrest was proof that the US wanted to overthrow him, maybe assassinate him, all to build him up in the eyes of allies here and abroad. He would declare every American at the embassy persona non grata and throw them out of Venezuela as retribution. And when all that was finished, expelling her from the country along with her colleagues would not be a given. He would keep her like a dusty old war trophy on display more to rankle enemies — no, the enemy — than for allies to admire.
Like the North Koreans kept the USS Pueblo in Wonsan Harbor, SEBIN would keep Kyra Stryker in Los Teques prison.
The asset froze in midwave. He had realized his error.
Six blocks to the nearest safe house.
Kyra ran.
SEBIN raid teams exploded from the dark. Men in black balaclavas, helmets and armor, heavy boots, with sidearms and carbines, all yelling in Spanish. Three teams, maybe six men each, had taken positions at both sides of the bridge in the trees where the darkness gave them almost perfect cover. One fire team erupted up from the bridge midpoint itself, where the soldiers had lain in a space under the dirty grates. There would be more, probably spotters in nearby buildings, maybe on the rooftops. Kyra would have been trapped from the moment she set foot on the bridge.
The first team, the group that had been hiding under the bridge crawlspace, was trying to climb out through the grates. The bridge was narrow and their gear was bulky. It would take them thirty seconds to get to the shore.
The second team was on the other side of the river, twenty meters away. They were already on the bridge, but the team climbing up from the crawlway would block them off. Team two wouldn’t be in play for almost a full minute.
The third team on her side of bridge was at the bottom of the embankment, just above the canal and behind the trees only ten meters away, but they had to climb through the brush that covered the earthen wall to reach her. It would take three seconds for the closest soldier to reach the top of the embankment, which was already too late. Kyra would be almost thirty meters away.
She was already running at full speed and no soldier encumbered by a rifle and other gear was going to catch her. She aimed for an alleyway to her left and prayed that another team wasn’t waiting in the dark.
She turned the corner and she saw no light at the other end. No light, no SEBIN, she realized. No exit. Kyra tried to stop, skidded on the slick, dirty concrete, and knew she was going to hit the wall. She put her arms up to soften the impact. Her body hit the wall. She pushed away and made her legs move again.
The second alley was another ten meters away. Kyra covered the distance in three seconds. She reached the opening and then saw the man in black gear standing behind the corner begin to raise his weapon. Kyra was still moving at full speed and couldn’t have stopped on his order if she’d wanted to. She raised an arm, put a palm-heel strike into his throat at full speed and the contact sent her tumbling to the wet ground. The soldier got the worst of it. Her momentum and the slick concrete were enough to take him off his feet. He flipped over and landed on his back, breaking ribs on both sides, snapping a collarbone and tearing his rotator cuff. It would be months before he would be able to raise his weapon again.
The sound of several sharp cracks cut through the noise of the autopista traffic. “Idiota!” someone shouted. Kyra sprinted into the darkness, praying that she didn’t trip on garbage or a homeless man or some other detritus.
She heard footfalls behind her, at least a half dozen she thought, but she didn’t turn her head to see. Judging by the sound, they were entering the alley as she was leaving it.
Kyra slowed just a bit as she came out of the alleyway. It was past midnight and the sidewalk largely empty of pedestrians. She turned right and kept running, not sure of her next waypoint. El Museo de los Niños was north of her position, maybe two hundred meters. Kyra set course for it and accelerated back to her full speed. Her breathing was now ragged, her heart pounding as hard as she had ever felt it. Only one arm was swinging like it should.
She reached the museo. It was an strange building, modern South American architecture, a thousand odd angles surrounded by trees and kiosks and signs. Plenty of places for a fugitive to break visual contact with her pursuers. She sprinted around the building. The footfalls behind her were more distant now, almost getting lost in the street noise of the cars still on the road. A siren sounded somewhere and she wondered whether it was meant for her. The raid teams would be screaming over encrypted radios for support. The target had escaped the net and vehicles were certain to enter the equation at some point if the chase went on long enough. She had to keep them guessing about her direction.
Kyra ran through the complex, obstacles and handrails rushing past so quickly that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to turn fast enough to avoid one if she saw it too late as she came around a corner. She passed the museum proper and raced out onto the street.
Four blocks to the safe house.
She needed to get enough distance between herself and the raid teams so no one would see her enter the safe house, or it wouldn’t be safe for long. She turned right onto the Avenida Bolívar. It was an eight-lane freeway lined by trees on both sides with a concrete median running down the center. It was also well lit, which would give away her position once the raid teams came out of the alley. She needed to be on the other side of the street when that happened. Traffic was light at this early hour, in that it wasn’t a complete wall of gridlocked cars.