Blown Circuit (26 page)

Chapter 49

T
HE
MUZZLE
FLASH
was closer this time. It wasn’t coming from the ceiling anymore. Our pursuers had clearly managed to rappel to the water below and now they were coming to finish us off. More bullets flew. I jumped down, taking cover behind the Unimog as Meryem backed it into position. I could see that it had a pintle hook style trailer hitch; the kind they use in the military. The trailer itself had a lunette loop on the towing arm. Now I needed to connect the two without getting shot.
 

Meryem had already backed up to within a few inches of the lunette loop, but I needed her closer. I motioned her back another couple of inches with the light stick. Stopped her. She was an excellent driver. The pintle hook was bang on with the lunette loop which I spun down onto the barb, before locking the hook like a carabiner. Then I ran forward and dived through the passenger door.

“Go, go, go!”

 
Meryem popped the Unimog into gear and pulled out in a wide turn. More muzzle flashes erupted from the darkness, the rounds echoing like thunder claps in the vast emptiness of the cistern. I shoved the wooden stock of the Kalashnikov into the crook of my shoulder and leaned out the window, laying down an arc of cover fire behind us in the darkness.

We were almost at the tunnel, but the cistern flared to life again, this time with at least four shooters. Then one of them fired a volley of red tracer rounds that lit the place up like the Fourth of July. Meryem stepped on it, double-clutching into second gear, but she missed and went all the way to fourth. The Unimog bogged down, gunfire flaring behind us. She recovered quickly, however, and found second gear and we lurched forward again.
 

Once again, it was pitch black behind us. Then, at least one of the wooden crates back at the stockpile began to burn, smoldering in a halo of orange smoke. It looked like the packing material was on fire or fizzling. One of the tracer rounds had probably ignited it. After that I heard bullets, a lot of bullets, all of them popping like supersonic corn. Regardless of why they had ignited, I knew what was coming next.
 

“Hang on!”

I grabbed the steering wheel and pushed Meryem's head down, below the dash, ducking along with her. We had distance on our side. We had already entered the tunnel. But it didn’t make the explosion any less loud. Or bright. A fireball erupted behind us, flame and fury propelling us forward.

I
DIDN
’
T
KNOW
whether the trailer had lifted off its wheels. It felt like it had as hot flame licked the inside of the tunnel. That was one of the advantages of the pintle-hook trailer-hitch system—it was more secure. The hot flame seared the air, sucking the oxygen out of the space. I could feel the backdraft and I hoped, no, I prayed, that the grenades in the back of the Unimog didn’t suffer a similar fate. I counted one second…two seconds...three seconds as the bright flare of the explosion turned dull, leaving only a ringing in my ears. I looked over at Meryem in the driver’s seat, the glow of the primitive instrument panel on her face.

“Are you all right?” I yelled.

She didn’t answer me, but she was driving, so I knew she was conscious. The tunnel we were driving through was maybe fifteen feet high and just as wide. There were wood support members here and there, but for the most part, it was unreinforced earth, dirt and rocks tumbling down as we motored ahead. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the explosion had destabilized the structure. But there wasn’t much we could do about it.

The good news was that we were no longer traveling down. No, we were traveling up a steady grade. We drove on for what must have been a mile, then two, and then the incline increased to the point that we were laboring up a significant grade. Then we rounded a bend, and an instant later we ran out of road. A pile of rubble filled the tunnel, blocking what looked like an old barnyard gate.
 

Meryem stomped on the brakes hard. We had a lot of weight behind us, and I wasn’t sure we would stop in time, but we did, more or less, the front bumper of the Unimog nosing into the pile of dirt and rubble. I hopped out immediately and popped a rock behind the Unimog’s back tire, pulling the shovel out of the truck bed. I could see that we had been lucky. The trailer was still hot from the blast, scorch marks running up the green metal.
 

I walked up to the pile of rubble in front of the Unimog. Obviously, there had been a tunnel collapse, but only a partial one. Behind the dirt and rock was the wooden gate, huge and arched and old. It was big enough to allow a vehicle through, but I had no idea where it would bring us, because though the Unimog’s headlights revealed gaps in the wood, there was no daylight shining through. Whatever was on the other side of the gate, it wasn’t necessarily any better than what was on our side.

Only one way to find out. I climbed the dirt pile, and started to dig. It was the only way to free the crossbar that held the door in place. I threw the shovel into the dirt, moving it aside as quickly as I could. The first few shovelfuls of dirt were unremarkable. Then I hit something. Something hard. I thought it was just a rock at first, so I levered under it with the blade of my shovel to toss it aside. Except it wasn’t a rock. It was a skull. A human skull, bleached white and picked clean. I had no idea what it was doing there, but I could tell that it had been buried for a long time. I set it aside. I was as respectful as I could be, under the circumstances, but I was also quick. I didn’t want to end up dead too.

I thrust my shovel into the ground again. This time I hit something else. Looked like a collarbone. I shoveled it aside. Somebody had been buried in the dirt. Correct that. More than one somebody. With the next thrust of my shovel, I hit another skull.

“Meryem,” I said.

“Yes, Michael?”

“You see what I’m finding here?”

I glanced back at her. She looked sad, vulnerable.

“Keep digging, Michael.”

I could have sworn I had heard her voice tremble. I kept digging and the bones kept coming. Clearly, I had hit upon a grave. I dug two more skulls out of the dirt and rubble before the wooden crossbar was half exposed. Then I heard a rapid staccato pop!! Loud, but not overbearing. It was gunfire, which meant that whoever was after us was still coming. A rock and more dirt fell from the ceiling of the tunnel above. I redoubled my efforts with the shovel.

I dug up more bones. A few femurs, a hand, a spine, but I managed to expose the wooden crossbar. It was held in place by two large iron U-bolts. I kicked the wooden bar from one end, slowly moving it all the way through the U-bolt. But the door didn’t exactly swing open. It didn’t move at all. It was all I could do to stick the shovel in the crack between the doors and lever them apart, because on the other side of the doors was more dirt.

Another shot reverberated through the tunnel, this one closer than the last. Bones crunched beneath my feet, the gritty earth lodging in my fingernails, as I rocked the big door back and forth. But I knew I was making progress. Slowly but steadily, I opened a big enough gap between the doors for me to stand between them.

There was more earth on the other side of the doors, but when I stabbed it with the shovel, the blade went through it more easily than I had expected. I speared the shovel into the dirt again and it went in even easier than before. On the third try, the shovel cut through the dirt like butter. I knew right then that my luck had changed. It was almost too good to be true. Because when I twisted the shaft of the shovel and wiggled it back and forth, a finger of light shone through. I could see blue sky. We were out.
 

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Meryem!” I called out.

I turned and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Chapter 50

M
ERYEM
AIMED
THE
barrel of the AK-47 squarely at my head. The machine gun didn’t bother me as much as the grenade she held in her other hand. But most disturbing was the smartphone she clutched alongside the grenade. Because the fact that she possessed the phone told me that Meryem was not what she seemed.

She stared down at the bones beneath my feet.

“These are my people,” Meryem said.

“These are bones,” I replied. “They haven’t been people for a long time.”

“These are the Kurdish people who gave their lives to hide the Device. I am a Kurd. I am sorry for not being honest with you about this, but it’s time you learned the truth, Michael.”

Not good
, I thought.
Not good at all
. I knew that Meryem was Turkish. But I had dismissed Kate’s notion that Meryem might be Kurdish because Kate was a liar. Of course, sometimes liars told the truth.
 

“My people died in this place long ago so the Device could be hidden and not found. They knew they would not see their families again and they accepted it. They hid these weapons and built this tunnel. They sacrificed themselves so we might one day have a homeland. But the location of this place was lost. Now that you have helped me find it again, my people will not have died in vain.”

 
Meryem stepped forward, keeping the AK-47 leveled at me. The bandolier fit nicely over her shoulders, causing her breasts to swell where it cut between them over her damp T-shirt. I laughed to myself. Not only had I read the situation wrong, I had been betrayed.
 

“Get a new phone?” I asked.

“The telephone is not your concern, Michael. Dig.”

I dug. A basic tunnel to the outside was beginning to take shape.

“So you want to tell me who you’re working with?”

“No. I would like you to dig.”

I stayed quiet only because Meryem made a call and I wanted to listen to what she had to say. The conversation was very brief and in Turkish. I couldn’t make out much of it, but I managed to pick out the word,
kale
. A second later she hung up. Then she pulled the pin on the grenade.

“What are you planning on doing with that?” I asked.

“Please, Michael. Enough questions. Dig the hole.”

The tunnel in the dirt was bigger now. Big enough that I could see through it. I was looking into some kind of dilapidated, roofless structure, the blue sky visible above. I was happy to be getting out of there, but for whatever reason, Meryem considered me the enemy.
Azad
, I thought. The whole situation with that guy had never sat well with me. That’s why I had asked her about him again on the gulet. But she had told me that he was just a job and I had believed her. Or was it simply that I had believed her kiss? I needed to buy time. Lucky for me, she had her hands full. Literally. Mobile phone, grenade, and machine gun. Not a great combination.

I heard more gunfire from farther down the tunnel. It was loud this time which meant it was close. I turned back and Meryem smiled sadly. Then she tossed the grenade. Not at me, but backward, above the truck and through the tunnel. It was a decent throw. But she had to turn away from me to lob it. And I used that precious fraction of a second to burrow my way into the hole I had dug.
 

I didn’t think Meryem would shoot, and even if she did, I was now behind the barn door and surrounded by earth. But I knew that I didn’t have much time to get through the dirt pile and out into the open. And the tunnel was tighter than I had anticipated. There was a pause followed by a thunderous shock wave, after which I felt the hard barrel of a gun jam into the small of my back. I had been quick, but not quick enough.

“I was just leaving,” I said.

I couldn’t see Meryem, but I could feel her behind me.

“The grenade was to stop your friend Kate.”

“Kate is no friend of mine.”

“Maybe so, Michael. But your allegiances do not matter now. Now we do what must be done.”

There was no sense arguing with an armed woman, so I pulled myself out into the daylight. Meryem wriggled through the tunnel after me. She kept the AK aimed squarely at me, but I still believed I knew her. I believed that I could get through to her. That bit of arrogance proved to be my first mistake. But my much larger error, was to think that I knew Meryem at all.

Chapter 51

I
ROLLED
DOWN
the pile of dirt to find myself crouched inside what remained of an old barn built into the hillside. There were four walls, the roof long since caved in to the dirt floor below, weathered ceramic tiles crunched beneath my feet. Aging agricultural implements took up the space on the left of me, and there was nothing to my right. The wall opposite the pile of dirt consisted of another set of barn doors even more gray and weathered than the ones I had just climbed through. I pulled what I thought was a pebble from my ear, but when I looked at it more carefully, I saw that it was a tiny bone. Not my own, but almost as unnerving.

“Raise your hands, Michael Chase,” Meryem said.

I turned to see that she was carefully keeping me covered with the rifle as she scrabbled through the hole in the dirt.

“Meryem, enough with this crap. We’re on the same side here.”

She slid to the bottom of the pile, ten feet away from me, the barrel of her rifle carefully trained on my center mass.

“We were never on the same side, it is time you understood this.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I don’t have any kind of deal with Kate.”

“Maybe you do not. Maybe you do. I don’t care.”

“What are you trying to do here?”

“Hands on your head. I won’t say it again.”

“Or what?”

She lowered the barrel of the gun and shot the ground at my feet. Dirt flew and I did as I was told. I put my hands on my head. I was beginning to doubt my plan to reason with her. Then I heard the distant rattling of a diesel engine. I figured we were probably by a road.

“You want to tell me what’s up?”

She looked at me warily, her long, dark hair slightly mussed, well-defined arms straining against the weight of the weapon.