Viper: A Thriller (12 page)

Avery turned and snapped the Glock up in
front of him after clearing the holster at his right hip. He leveled the sights,
broke the trigger with 5.5lbs of pressure from the pad of his right index
finger, and sent a searing hot round of .40 caliber S&W ammunition coring
thirty-five feet through the air at 1,230 feet per second into the human shaped
silhouette target hanging from the winch. The discharged brass arced through
the air, to the right, and clattered against the floor, joining over two dozen more
spent shell casings.

Recovering from
the recoil, Avery reacquired aim and hit the trigger again. He continued firing
until he’d emptied the Glock’s magazine. Within the close confines of the bay’s
reinforced baffles, the concussion of the shots exploded through the plugs in his
ears. He felt traces of the corrosive smoke in his nose and throat, despite the
range’s ventilation system.

But he was most
conscious of the dull aching sensation in his right shoulder, deep within the
mass of his deltoid, from holding his extended arm up, and the discomfort was
sufficient to hinder his fast draw by a second and inhibit his aim. T
he slightest,
imperceptible movement of the barrel was enough to completely divert the
bullet’s path.

Avery pressed
the automatic target retrieval system’s recall button, and the rail-mounted
target travelled down the length of the lane and stopped in front of him. He
examined his groupings. His last three shots were slightly left off-center of
the circle in the silhouette’s torso, but he was doing better, after learning
how he’d need to adjust his stance and aim, and he’d already improved over two
days ago.

Contrary to
movies and TV shows, you can’t take hits to the shoulder, and suck it up and
brush it off. The shoulder was filled with nerve endings, blood vessels, and a complex
and vulnerable ball-in-socket joint, and it took a long time to heal.

Avery cleared and
holstered his weapon, and collected his things before exiting the range through
the airlock. He worked his jaw, trying to push air through his Eustachian tubes
to clear the clogged, stuffy feeling in his ears.

After eating a
fast meal of protein bars, bananas, and bottled water, he changed into shorts
and a t-shirt, threw on a backpack loaded with weight plates, and headed
outside.
He
ran at a measured pace through the wet grass and the misting rain pouring from
the gray gloom overhead, along the way passing the rows of mammoth airplane
hangars and a USAF C-130 Hercules just in from Tampa Bay.

After the Panama debriefing, Avery had gone straight
to his bunk, closed his eyes, and went instantly to sleep. When he woke up
twelve hours later, he felt recovered from the post-combat fatigue and
adrenaline hangover, but the pain had become even more prevalent in his
shoulder and across his upper back.

Still too sore to work out in the gym, since nearly
any exercise with weights put stress on the shoulders, Avery passed the time however
he could over the next three days, while waiting to hear from Culler that they
had a lead—something, anything—on the Viper’s trail.

But there was nothing.

So Avery passed the time the only way he knew how;
training and preparing. He obsessively read everything the Colombians had on
the Viper, even though the details and insight were sparse, and then he read it
again. There were dry factual details dissecting past Viper operations, and
analysis laced with speculation, nothing that offered any insight into her
psychological makeup or provided clues on how or where to find her. Avery still
had little idea of who he was really facing.

He grew restless quickly, his body craving some type
of physical activity.

So he put in time on the firing range.

And he ran.

The thin air and humidity that came with the region’s
8,300 foot elevation made running all the more grueling, but it was already
going better than yesterday’s run, so he pushed himself a little harder, enough
to feel the burn in his lungs and the strain in his thighs. He’d always hated
PT in Colombia’s tropical climate, even back then as a twenty-four year old
soldier, and it hadn’t become any easier with age.

Maybe he possessed a sadomasochist streak, but Avery liked
to push his body under less than optimal conditions. He thought forcing himself
through a run while deprived of sleep or in the freezing rain was a good system
of enforcing strict discipline. Habituated comfort quickly lent itself to
laziness and complacency, which was to be avoided at all costs.

 A squad of Colombian soldiers ran past him in
formation, with full combat gear, making it look depressingly easy. The gap
quickly expanded between the young troops and Avery. He tried picking up the
pace to keep up, and failed miserably.

He soon experienced grinding aches behind his knees
with each step, and he gasped and sucked air into his lungs like he couldn’t
get enough, while sweat drenched his shirt. The humidity and high elevation made
him feel twenty pounds heavier and slow. Even with his mind a thousand miles
away, it was difficult to ignore the immense physical discomfort.

He was halfway through his third mile, pushing himself
much harder than he normally needed to after only three miles. He began to wonder
if he’d even make it to a fourth. Back home, five, six miles would be
considered a light run with little exertion.

 A shadow fell across the ground beside him. He turned
his head and saw Aguilar coming up beside him in a relaxed jog.

“Fuck, you look like you’re about to drop dead.”

Avery looked at him and extended an upright middle
finger.

“I don’t know what the docs told you, but I can’t
imagine they okayed you for this kind of activity.”

“Maybe not, but sitting inside going over the same
shit through my head all day isn’t going to do me any good either,” Avery
replied between gasps for air. Finally, he stopped running and fell into a
walk, panting for air as his heart pounded against his chest. He accepted the
water bottle Aguilar tossed to him, guzzled its contents, and poured the rest
over his face.

“You’re letting Moreno get to you?” Aguilar asked.

“Not really. I’ve dealt with her kind before.”

“Castillo?”

“Yeah,” Avery said. “I never had to worry about my
teammates from 75
^th
stabbing me in the back; never entered my head.
I always could count on some guy in the next chalk I didn’t even know to lay
his life down for me, because he knew I’d do the same for him, because we were
both Rangers. It was the single absolute I could always count on. It’s what
kept us sane in shitholes like Afghanistan.”

Aguilar shrugged. “I won’t lose sleep over Castillo. I
would have taken a bullet for him any other time, but there in the stairwell he
wasn’t going to hesitate to kill me. He made his own choices. Someone like that
should have never made it this far in the army. The system failed him, and us,
by letting him slip through.”

Aguilar had been close with Jon Castillo, and Avery
knew it was hitting him harder than he let on. Aguilar had served in
Afghanistan with Castillo, after all, and he’d been to his wedding five years
ago, and held his newborn baby in his arms. Looking down the barrel of a gun in
Castillo’s hand, and pulling his own trigger with his sights over Castillo,
must have gone against every instinct in Aguilar’s body.

“What are you going to do?” Aguilar asked.

Avery didn’t need to stay around any longer, and he’d
briefly entertained the thought of heading back home. Soon CIA’s regional
stations, FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Security Council would be brought
into the loop, and there’d be little room for Avery.

But Avery knew he wasn’t going to walk away from this.
Kashani, an old enemy who had already killed three of his friends in Libya, was
arming a terrorist with one of the world’s deadliest weapon systems. He cared
little about Moreno, but he thought that maybe she could lead him to Kashani.

“You know I’m going with you,” Aguilar said.

“Huh?” Avery frowned. “And where the hell do you think
I’m going?”

Aguilar smiled. “You’re easier to read than you think
you are. You’re going after her, aren’t you?” 

Avery allowed his silence to answer for him.

“I thought so. My team couldn’t have pulled off Phoenix
without your help, and Phoenix is the catalyst for all this. The Viper is the
unfortunate product of my country’s internal conflict. She’s my responsibility.
I’m not going to let some gringo fight our battles for us.”

“Look, Felix, I appreciate it, but I’m better off on
my own. I really am.”

Avery didn’t say it, but he thought he would have
stood a better chance of bringing Pablo Muňoz out alive if he’d gone in
solo.

But Aguilar wasn’t buying it.

 “Bullshit. You can’t face her alone, not in the shape
you’re in. Look at you. You can barely run, and I’m willing to bet that
shoulder isn’t doing much for your shooting. I know you’ve been putting a lot
of time on the range, more than you need to.”

Avery sighed. He knew Aguilar was right, and Avery’s
options for reliable support were limited. After Panama, he wasn’t about to
trust another local CIA station. He doubted Culler would be able to get SAD assets
over here—CIA’s paramilitary units were all focused in Afghanistan/Pakistan,
the Middle East, and Africa. DEA was good and could provide solid leads and
intelligence, but DEA was a law enforcement agency, had to work with local
agencies, and couldn’t take the quick action necessary for an effective
counterterrorism op.

 And after Aguilar double tapped Castillo without
flinching, Avery had no doubt that he could trust the Colombian with his life.
That was sentiment Avery presently shared with nobody else in the country, sentiment
he only shared with a handful of people, and at least two of them had still
managed to stab him in the back.

Avery knew he couldn’t do any better than having
Aguilar watching his six. Aside from his loyalty and dedication, he also knew
Aguilar was a pro.

Colombia’s Special Forces Brigade had the finest spec
ops troops on the continent. They regularly win the main events in the two-week
long, SOUTHCOM-sponsored Fuerzas Commando, an annual and highly secretive competition
among South American special operations and counterterrorism units in fields
ranging from physical fitness, to marksmanship, to assaulting and emergency
responses. Colombian Special Forces were also highly sought after by West
African and other Latin American governments to train their counternarcotics
and counterinsurgency troops. They also trained regularly with the troops at
Fort Benning, where most of them breezed through the Ranger Course. Due to
their cross-training, Avery and Aguilar were familiar with each other’s
fighting styles and tactics, and could therefore function cohesively.

“What do you know about the Viper?” Avery asked. “You
ever come up against her before?”

 As a hunter of terrorists, he never bought into the
mystique or hype that often grew around the bin Ladens or Abu Nidals or Jackals
of the world. They were simply criminals and murderers on a large scale, and
their motivation, cause, and ideology didn’t matter.

“I know little more than you do. But I’ve operated
against many terrorists to come out of the FARC camps or trained by the Cubans
at Camp Mantanzas. They were extremely well trained, competent and dangerous.
We hit a jungle camp once, just over the border in Ecuador, where intelligence
had spotted Moreno and her brother. There was no sign of them when we attacked,
but we found ANIC’s source hanging from a tree, draped in his intestines, full
of bullet holes and knives. Radio intercepts later indicated we missed the
Morenos by eleven hours.”

“The source. Was he one of Daniel’s?”

“Yeah,” Aguilar said. “Another of the Deep Sting
agents.”

“Muňoz wasn’t the only one?”

“There were several. But Muňoz lasted the
longest.” 

“You think Moreno is as dangerous as Daniel makes her
out to be?”

“I think you wouldn’t ask that question if you didn’t
already think that she was,” Aguilar replied. “Her track record speaks for
itself. You saw her in action in Panama. She has you worried, doesn’t she?”

Avery didn’t answer.

“ Look at the enormous risks she took in Panama just
to get a shot at you, and no offense, but you’re nothing special. You’re not a
politically or strategically important target as far as the Central High
Command is concerned. She’s confident, skilled, completely fanatical, and not
afraid to take risks.”

Avery agreed with Aguilar’s reasoning, but he thought
that his assessment also indicated how unbalanced Arianna Moreno was. Terrorists
weren’t known to make things personal. It simply wasn’t worth the risk of
potentially compromising the entire cell or organization to settle a personal
grudge, and Aguilar was right about Avery’s lack of value as a target for
assassination. If Moreno was successful in killing him, nobody in Washington or
Langley would give a shit, but knocking a couple civilian airliners out of the
sky over American cities would sure get a reaction and have an impact on government
policy and American life for decades to come.