Blown Circuit (22 page)

“Now take the keys out of your pocket. Slowly.”

He reached into his right pocket with his good hand.

“Let me see it.”

The guard dangled the key.

“Open the hatch,” I said.

He inserted the key into the stainless-steel lock on the deck floor and lifted the hatch.
 

“Now get in.”

The guard climbed inside. I could see Meryem on the far side of the locker. She was a couple feet away from where the guard had crouched.

“Meryem, you come with me.” I peered down into the locker. “If I hear your voice, I will shoot you,” I said to the guard. “That’s a promise.”

Meryem pulled herself out of the storage locker and I locked the hatch behind her. We were still alone, but I knew that wouldn’t last. I was taking a risk by not killing the guard. He could start screaming and there would be nothing I could do about it. Regardless, I had decided at some point that there were two ways I could conduct a mission. Brutally or ethically. When circumstance allowed, I had decided to choose the latter. The job was difficult enough without worrying about my karma too.
 

“What took you so long?” Meryem asked.

“She made me a sandwich.” I said. “Stay here.”

I jogged up the steps two at a time, quickly reaching the aft second-floor deck. The launch was suspended over the stern by two davit cranes positioned to drop it right behind the swim platform. Of course it was designed to do so when the yacht was stationary, but we would have to make do. There were two cables clipped to the rear stays to prevent the launch from swinging around. I unclipped each of them and eased myself into the launch, pulling the fat controller wire attached to the davit crane with me. Then I hit the green down button on the controller, feeling a jerk as the cables slowly unspooled.

 
It was still dark but, looking up, I could see the enclosed tail rotor of the helicopter and its battened-down top rotor on the deck above. I could also see the guard. Unfortunately, I was fairly certain that he saw me, too.

Chapter 41

T
HE
GUARD
IMMEDIATELY
drew his weapon. He was two decks above me at that point, but it was an easy shot, even in the dark. He seemed to reconsider what he was doing because I saw him speaking into his collar mike. Then there was some kind of response and he ran down the stairwell. I knew it wouldn’t take him long to reach the davit cranes. And if he got there, he could stop my descent. But the launch was descending quickly. I was almost in the water. One of the cables must have unspooled more quickly than the other because the stern now hung much lower than the bow.

Meryem waited under the cover of the lowest deck. I didn’t need to say anything to encourage her. She hopped into the launch as it lowered past, climbing up and over the gunnel. Tactically, it was debatable how much further use Meryem would be. She had led me to the Arm, but whether she had any more useful information was unclear. Ethically, however, it was a no-brainer. There was no way I was going to surrender her to the Green Dragons.

By this point, the guard had reached the deck with the cranes. He grabbed the fat swinging control wire, but not before I felt the launch’s bow hit the water, skipping and jumping sideways in the wake of the yacht. The stern, however, still hung high out of the water. We weren’t going to get away like that.

“Michael? What kind of plan is this?”

“The only one I’ve got. Stay where you are.”

I scrabbled up the deck toward the long mahogany-enclosed stern of the boat, the launch skipping and shuddering below me. The cable was connected to a harness that fed through two round eyes on either side of the stern. The key was the hook on the cable that attached the harness. Detach the harness from the hook and the stern was free.

I climbed toward the rear harness, sea mist spraying in the white water of the propeller wash. Glancing up, I saw that the guard was speaking into his collar mike. Probably awaiting instructions. I made a grab for the cable, trying to loosen the hook. No dice. There was too much tension in the line and the launch was jumping around like a frog in a frying pan. I pulled the strap of the machine gun off my shoulder and shoved the barrel into the open mouth of the hook, levering it up and away from the harness cable. Then I heard the davit cranes start up again, winding up the cable.

“Michael!” Meryem screamed. “Shoot them!”

Not a bad idea, but the barrel of the gun was still caught in the hook. The winches wound quickly this time. The bow of the launch jerked up first. Way up. Meryem tumbled backward and I almost went overboard, but the sudden movement gave me the slack I needed to ease the hook out from under the harness. I levered the hook right out with the barrel of the gun and the cable went flying up.

The problem was that the hook had hung up on the sight of the gun, yanking me upward with it. I let go of the gun and dropped straight back down as the stern of the launch swung around in the yacht’s wake. It was all I could do to hold on. We were now being pulled by the bow. The yacht was our tow truck and we were the broken-down car, our stern bouncing along in its wake.

 
I climbed toward the bow, but the cable was still wound tighter than a Gibson guitar. There was no way I would be able to loosen it, so I did the next best thing and choked the launch’s engine. Then I turned the key. The launch roared to life and I pulled the throttle all the way back. Full reverse. Not a lot of competition between a twenty-two-foot runabout and a hundred-and-sixty-five-foot yacht. There was, however, a lot of strain on the cable. The launch’s prop bit in, pulling the slack out of the crane’s winch. The cable sung as we unspooled it backward, reversing from the mothership, blue water pouring over the stern of the boat.
 

And that’s when the first bullet flew.

It whizzed by, three feet to my right, taking a chunk out of the mahogany. Kate stood on the upper deck of the yacht beside two guards, guns drawn, but my overall plan was working. We were getting farther away from the yacht. Waves of water sloshed over the transom soaking us as we fled backward.
 

Another bullet flew.
 

“Keep your head down,” I shouted over the rev of the engine.

Then we stopped. The cable from the crane had unspooled completely. We were a hundred feet from the boat. I gunned the engine backward. The big yacht kept going forward. At least two submachine guns tracked us from above. Things were not looking promising. Then we got lucky. The yacht hit a big roller head on. I knew because we had drifted far enough out into the wake for me to see the Fox’s bow. She dipped low into the big roller’s trough and, as a result, the stern went up, pulling us with it.

“Hang on!”

And that’s when the Fox’s stern slapped back down again. The cable slackened and we slapped down with it, but the wave kept rolling through. It swamped us, breaking right over our bow. Both Meryem and I held on to the steering wheel as the launch’s entire cockpit filled with water. Which was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Because, suddenly, we weren’t a boat. We were a bucket being dragged through the sea.

It was the eyebolt in the bow that went. I heard a horrible crack, and then it ripped right out of the mahogany. Then I heard the cable warble and looked up as the wave passed over us to see the cable fly back at the Fox. It hit her middeck with a crashing twang. We were half-submerged at that point, but thanks to the scuppers, the engine was still running, so I flipped us back into neutral and then forward, carving a big turn as we pulled away, water gradually draining from the cockpit.

“You ready to bail?” I asked.

Meryem nodded.
 

“Me too,” I said. “Hang on.”

Chapter 42

I
CARVED
AN
abrupt turn, banking high to encourage the flow of water out of the cockpit. It worked, saltwater streamed over the gunnel, but we weren’t out of the woods yet. Waves were coming at us from every direction and the sea was peppered with gunfire behind us. I turned the boat abruptly again, this time banking high in the opposite direction. More water left the boat, and as it got emptier, we got faster. I continued to zigzag like that, as randomly as I could, doing my best to make us as difficult to hit as possible.
 

The big rollers were good cover because they made us invisible while we were in their troughs, but I had to be careful to hit them exactly right to avoid flipping the boat. A forty-five degree angle of attack seemed to do the trick, except the waves and the bullets weren’t our only concern. They were readying the helicopter. Its top rotor had already begun to turn.

I focused my eyes ahead. The launch’s bow was seriously chewed up where the eyebolt had broken free. But we were still afloat. And the sun had begun to rise. If we could get far enough away from the Fox, we could begin making our way to land.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” I asked.

“Bodrum Peninsula.”

“Is there a torture chamber around here? A dungeon? Somewhere where in medieval times prisoners would be interrogated, maybe put to death?”

“Bodrum Castle,” Meryem said. “Its dungeon is very famous for such things.”

“That’s good news,” I said.

“Good news? Why?”

“Because if we can get there our problems may be solved.”

I glanced behind us. The helicopter, a silver Eurocopter judging by the enclosed tail rotor housing, was already aloft, speeding low over the rolling sea toward us.

“Search the boat,” I said. “We need a weapon.”

“Like the machine gun you dropped into the sea?”

“Yeah. Exactly like that.”

I glanced down at the left console and saw a red fire extinguisher clamped there. I bent down and unclasped it, feeling its weight in my hand. There was a second extinguisher tacked to the bulkhead of the boat.

“Pass me that one too!”
 

Meryem climbed forward and tossed me the second extinguisher. She didn’t look happy about it. She looked like she was losing faith. Regardless, I caught it and dropped it on the seat beside me. I didn’t know how much time we had. The helicopter was getting louder, its rotor wash thundering down. It was a Eurocopter. Probably a C-135. Not a giant machine, but a hell of a lot faster than our boat. A
gulet
was heeled in the wind in the distance. The traditional Turkish sailboat was a good seventy feet long, sunlight sparkling off her polished wooden deck. In the rising sun, she looked like a pirate ship before us. The moment I took my eyes off her, the bullets began to fly.

“Hit the deck,” I shouted.

I cut the wheel hard, powering the boat around. I was worried. Given that I hadn’t helped her, Kate now viewed me as a threat. And threats needed to be eliminated. Fortunately, though the bow of the boat flapped like an open box of crackers in the wind, we still had our maneuverability. But though we could dodge and dart through the waves, we were ultimately going to lose simply because there was nowhere to go. Not against a helicopter.
 

The Eurocopter came back around, strafing us again. I dived low, but both the stern and the deck took a beating. It wouldn’t be long before both the boat and our bodies would be riddled with holes. I cut the wheel hard to starboard, pulling a tight doughnut in the opposite direction to the one I had just gone. But this time I saw the water flooding the hull as we hauled over. There was little time.

The Eurocopter came around for a third pass. It lined itself up with us and I tried something new. Instead of dodging and darting, I headed directly for the helicopter. The pilot slowed two hundred feet out and we were face to face. The pilot rotated the bird a little to give the gunman a better angle. The shooter leaned out the door, one foot on the skid. From the squareness of his build I was pretty sure I was looking at Faruk. I continued to throttle forward, closing the gap.
 

The helicopter was in a perfect profile, thirty feet in the air, fifty feet off our bow, point-blank range. The pilot had fallen for the bait. The rising sun was in the shooter’s eyes. I stood and waved my arms in surrender. It gave Faruk pause. And that’s when I reached behind me and took hold of the fire extinguisher.
 

The top rotor was a tempting target, but it was the tail rotor that I wanted. That was the blade that kept the helicopter under control. And that was where I lobbed the fire extinguisher with all my strength. When it hit at first it seemed as if I had missed entirely. There was only a metallic clunk. Then a grind. And then all hell broke loose. The rear rotor housing buckled and the chopper started to spin. As the helicopter went round and round and the gunner went round and round, dizzily spraying lead as he spun down in a thunderous crash. Water exploded in a wave of white and the bird floated there for a brief moment before slowly filling with water and sinking into the sea.

I was pretty sure I saw Faruk swimming away from the sinking helicopter, but I didn’t stick around to greet him. Instead, I pushed the bullet-ridden launch forward to the hills of the Lycian Coast beyond.

Chapter 43

W
E
DIDN
’
T
STAY
in the launch. The Fox may have been a large yacht, but she was no slouch. There was a good chance she could catch up with our damaged boat. So we decided to abandon ship. The trick was abandoning the launch in such a way that they wouldn’t come after us.

Of course, abandoning ship also meant that we needed a ride. Fortunately, the closer we got to Bodrum, the more sailing ships we saw. Ideally, we wanted a ship without a radio, but I knew that was probably a pipe dream, so I looked for the next best thing—a gulet, not too fancy, but not too rough—a boat that might help a backpacker out. I found what we needed as we rounded a dry, rocky point, the Fox four or five miles behind us.

She was a solid gulet. An all-wooden boat, but without the sheen of the typical tourist vessel. She was moored in a small barren cove, but she was pulling anchor, and most importantly, she looked like her captain could use the money. I pulled up beside her, hailing her captain as he minded the anchor well. Meryem did the talking. Then the captain turned to me.