Blown Circuit (15 page)

The bulb didn’t throw much light, but it was enough to see that she was still skeptical. I flipped open the blade on my knife and scored a deep cut in the rubber, arcing the knife up and around until I had cut out an oval piece. It fell into my hands revealing the original brick of the minaret behind it. The rubber was old and friable, but it still had some bounce to it. It wasn’t going to tell me where it had come from, but in the right hands it might give a technical-analysis team some idea of when it had been put there and why. I shoved the sample deep into my pocket. Then I heard a low drone.

It was an aircraft. A big one by the sound of it, and it was getting nearer. I glanced at Meryem. There was no need to say anything. We both hurried down the spiral stairs, the drone of the aircraft growing louder by the moment. When we finally reached the bottom of the stairs, I thrust the door open and slipped outside the mosque. An enormous military aircraft had touched down to the east, its four giant propellers beating the air as it headed toward us.

That the disused gravel road was actually a runway was now starkly obvious. The plane was of Russian design. I recognized it as a turboprop-powered Antonov An-70 in military gray. I was pretty sure that the plane’s arrival was not a positive development. The runway alone could have accounted for the reason that the area had been redacted on the satellite map, but I suspected more. I suspected that our friends back at Aphrodisias had passed on word of our arrival. It looked like forces inside the Turkish government were protecting their retrofitted minaret.
 

“Are you expecting anyone?” I asked.

Meryem shook her head. “I was not informed that we would be contacted.”

“Well, somebody knows how to make an entrance.”

It was then that I heard a click. I turned to see a bearded man standing in the courtyard. It was the mullah from the mosque. And he held an AK-47 in hand, his fingers still grasping the newly inserted clip.

Chapter 27

T
HE
MULLAH
HELD
us at bay with the machine gun as the giant plane taxied to a stop directly in front of us. A folding staircase was lowered from the cabin door and four soldiers descended from the aircraft. Our options were clear enough. Stay exactly where we were or get sprayed with bullets. After all, an AK-47 is an old, but effective weapon. Though it was introduced into service by the Soviet Army way back in 1947, it could still fire ten rounds per second, and at 7.62 mm they were relatively large rounds. So though the mullah may have been a peaceful enough guy, we’d already been up his minaret uninvited. I didn’t want to test his patience again.
 

I reconsidered my decision, however, when the soldiers arrived. because they didn’t bother to greet us. Instead, they merely shoved their weapons into our chests. They carried Heckler & Koch HK33s, which were compact, efficient assault rifles, and it was four against none. If Meryem still had her weapon, she certainly didn’t reveal it. Two of the soldiers forced our hands onto our heads, while the other two took up the rear. Meryem and I simply shuffled forward as they shouted at us in Turkish. I didn’t understand their words, but the soldiers’ meaning was clear. March or die.
 

The propeller wash almost blew us backward as we approached the high-winged cargo plane, its huge counter-rotating prop-fans flattening the surrounding vegetation. The ladder-like stairs leading to the fuselage door weren’t wide enough to drag us up two abreast, so they isolated us, one of the soldiers going up in front and one behind. I glanced behind me and saw that the mullah had pushed the motorcycle around to the front of the mosque. I didn’t know what he was planning on doing with it and I didn’t get a chance to find out. Instead, they prodded me into the plane.

It was huge inside the fuselage. Room for at least three hundred soldiers and a whole lot of cargo. If I was a betting man, I’d have bet that whoever had tasked that particular plane was looking for something big. A final soldier entered carrying my backpack and Meryem's go-bag and the steps were raised and the fuselage door was closed. Then the cockpit door opened and a squat, wide man stalked toward us.
 

 
I recognized him immediately. The waxy, crescent-shaped scar under his left eye made him hard to forget. It was the sailor from the ship that had blown up in the harbor. He said two words in Turkish, followed by another two in thickly accented English, apparently for my benefit.

“Hood them.”

A thick black hood was dropped over my head from behind. The hood blocked out not only the light, but most of the breathable air as well. They cuffed us, hands behind our backs, and then patted us down, confiscating the journal and my Swiss Army knife and whatever else I had in my pockets. They left my watch and didn’t bother to check my shoes, so they didn’t get the few emergency bills that I had tucked aside. I don’t know what they got from Meryem.

We were seated side by side on the metal floor, our backs to the fuselage. The entire plane rotated in a tight circle, and then I heard the prop-fans roar in preparation for takeoff. Soon after, we were airborne, and I felt the fuselage grow cold as we climbed to our cruising altitude. But we didn’t stay up there for long. In total, the flight lasted a little more than forty minutes. I’m pretty good with time and I was careful to keep track of it in my head. With a cruise speed of about four hundred knots and accounting for takeoff and landing, I figured we had flown somewhere within a three-hundred-kilometer radius—about a hundred and eighty-five miles—in a southerly direction if my internal compass could be trusted.

When we landed three-quarters of an hour after taking off, I was expecting to at least see the light of day, but the ordeal didn’t end there. Hoods on, we were led down the stairs into the dry, hot sun. I was pretty sure they wanted us to arrive in one piece, but I couldn’t discount that there might be a little rough play along the way. It would only take one small shove for me to tumble down the stairs like a rag doll. It didn’t happen, though. I made it to the bottom of the stairs. Then I heard a vehicle arrive.
 

By the clatter of its diesel engine and the hum of its off-road tires, I knew it was some kind of truck. By the time they shoved us into the back jump seats, I was convinced it was a Land Rover Defender, probably the 130. The ride was cramped and rough, but mercifully short. We couldn’t have covered more than a couple miles before the vehicle skidded to a halt and we were pulled out again into the hot sun.

The difference now was that I smelled salt water. I felt it in the air, too, a cool mist blowing in off the gently lapping sea. We were led down a wooden dock that creaked beneath us. It felt as if I was walking the plank, but I was beginning to have more faith in my captors than that. If they had wanted me dead, they would have shot me already. No, I was a prize. They were bringing me somewhere, probably for interrogation. I heard Meryem behind me, the soft soles of her sneakers out of sequence with the noisier jackboots. She was staying remarkably quiet. Either she knew what was coming or she was part of it.

After close to a hundred yards, we stopped, and I heard the guy in front of me get into some kind of boat. It must have been a small one, because his weight was enough to displace the hull, creating a splash of water. A hand grabbed me by the belt and I stepped forward and down. My right foot landed on a soft sponson so I knew I was getting into an inflatable boat. Maybe a Zodiac, maybe something else, but I expected the deck wouldn’t be more than a foot and a half below the sponson and I planned my step accordingly.
 

I found the fiberglass deck and a firm hand pushed me down. Meryem was loaded in beside me, and then a noisy two-stroke outboard started up, over-revving in reverse before it was plunked into forward gear with a grinding thump. It was pleasant out, warm and calm, and I almost could have enjoyed the journey if not for the bag on my head and the gun in my gut.

Chapter 28

T
HE
RIDE
DIDN
'
T
last for long. I heard the motor rev down to a gentle putter before our bow hit what felt like a bigger boat, the sound of the lapping sea audible on the larger hull. Then our flex-cuffs were cut and we were led up a short ladder, again at gunpoint. I could tell right away that it was a nice boat. The rails of the ladder were made from large-diameter steel tubing, not iron, and the rungs were grooved wood, probably teak. Once I was up on deck, the impression that I had boarded a yacht and not some sort of working boat was confirmed.
 

Instead of diesel and cigarettes, I smelled potpourri and furniture polish. I was led up two flights of stairs. It was a strange sensation, being pushed around blind, but I went with it because action without knowledge was useless. I needed to know who I was fighting before I struck, and right then I was in the dark, both literally and figuratively. We walked inside a cabin door and the cooler air immediately hit me. Not only was the cabin air-conditioned, but I smelled rich leather and felt a tightly woven plush carpet beneath my feet.

The gun was removed from my back and a set of fumbling fingers untied the base of my hood. I squinted my eyes as it was ripped off, trying to give my pupils a chance to adjust to the light, but there was no need. Instead of a Klieg light bearing down on me, pleasantly diffused sunlight filtered through the cabin windows. My initial suspicions were confirmed. I wasn’t standing in some kind of torture chamber. I was in the grand salon of a yacht, a big one, judging by her thirty-foot beam, and most likely somewhere in the Mediterranean given the turquoise waters and the rough cliffs not a hundred yards away.
 

W
ITH
ITS
SUPPLE
leather couches and discreet recessed lighting, the yacht looked more like a billionaire’s living room than any boat I’d ever been on. If it wasn't for the rake of the tinted windows, I could have been in a modern loft in the city. Except I wasn’t, as was evidenced by my sour sailor friend from the freighter. He gestured with his index finger and two soldiers, each carrying their automatic rifles, covered either exit.
 

“How are your ribs?” I asked the sailor. “That little kick I gave you back on the ship looked like it might have hurt.”

My sailor friend just grinned. Then he stepped forward and fired a big punch right into my gut. I took the punch, not because I didn’t see it coming. I knew it was coming. I took the punch because sometimes there’s value in playing the fool. Fighting is as much psychology as it is muscle. I wanted the sailor to be confident. I wanted him to underestimate me. That’s not to say that the punch didn’t hurt. It hurt badly enough that as soon as it landed, I began to seriously reconsider my strategy.

Meryem stood a few feet away from me, soldiers at either doorway, their weapons raised. I couldn’t imagine that they’d be rewarded for shooting bullets through the Italian leather sofas, but I was sure that they’d do it just the same. The sailor shook out his fist and pulled out a handgun pointing it directly at me. It was a mean-looking silver automatic and though I didn’t recognize the type, I could read the brand name engraved in clear script on the side of the barrel. It said
Kanuni S
. Probably Turkish. Definitely lethal.
 

“Who are you?” the sailor asked in thickly accented English.

“I am MIT. He is my asset. You are interfering with a sanctioned intelligence operation,” Meryem said.

The sailor looked at Meryem, a pained expression on his face.
 

“Did I ask you to speak? I know who you are. I am asking this man. Who are you?” he said again.

“I’m him,” I said.

“Who?”

“The guy who’s going to kick your ass,” I replied.

“Really?” the sailor smirked.

“I told you, he is my asset,” Meryem said.

“I think the better question is, who are
you
?” I said.

“Ask your friend,” the sailor said. “She knows who I am.”

Meryem shrugged, but didn’t try to hide that she knew him.

“He is Colonel Faruk, 105th Artillery Regiment, Corlu.”

“You know him?”

“He made the papers once. A scandal. He is not an honest man.”

Faruk’s nostrils flared. She had gotten to him. He raised his gun hand ever so slightly. Not so much a voluntary action as an involuntary one. I saw what he was going to do. I took the risk. I raised my hand too. I brought it up a little higher. A little closer to where it needed to go.
 

“The charges were dropped.”

“They shouldn’t have been,” Meryem said defiantly.

And wham! Faruk raised his hand and twisted his hip into a powerful pistol-whipping slap. It would have connected nicely. Right with Meryem's jaw. Probably would have put her in the hospital, at least for observation. But it didn’t connect because I caught his thick wrist with my left hand, smoothly turning my entire body around and reversing his motion into a fluid wrist throw. It was an aikido move I’d picked up. The Japanese name for it was a
tenkan
and it did the trick. One moment Faruk was going to hit the lady, and the next, I had him on the ground, his wrist palmed firmly in my hand, his pistol drooping uselessly below it.

Faruk muttered in pain. That, at least, I understood. I’d been in his position several times before while training in the dojo. It hurt like hell. But he was immobilized. There was no way he was getting up out of that one. The soldiers moved in with their assault rifles, pointing them straight at me. They screamed in Turkish as I considered my options. I could take Faruk’s pistol, but it would probably get me shot. Besides, now wasn’t the time for heroics. I needed to know what these guys wanted.

So I released Faruk from the hold. He took a step back and smiled a big open-mouth smile. His teeth weren’t bad, but I saw his dental work. Shiny metal fillings. They gave him a hard look, a look of a life spent in the military.