Kate and I continued down the street to the waterfront, where we turned left toward the castle. The castle was still closed to the public, but there was activity inside, the sun setting as the construction crane swung slowly around.
“They’re in there,” Kate said.
“Not only there.”
I flicked my chin down the promenade. I recognized another one of the soldiers from the yacht standing guard outside the castle gates. He was trying to seem casual but he was on duty. Fortunately, we weren’t the only ones on the promenade. We turned down a dock running between two polished gulets. A woman in a worn yellow dinghy plastered with stickers advertising ice cream idled there, exchanging ice-cream sandwiches from a cooler for a handful of coins.
“We need to verify the target,” I said.
“How do you want to do that?” Kate asked.
“We ask her for a ride.”
Kate pulled out her damp polyurethane-sheathed iPhone and typed in a phrase, holding it out to the woman. The app translated, speaking the words.
“Başka bir tekneye bizi gezdirir?”
It was as simple as that. Kate and I took a seat on either side of the ice-cream cooler and within a few minutes we were staring at the low, sleek waterline of the Turquoise Fox. A soldier appeared on the deck above as the ice-cream lady dropped us off on the swim deck. I thought I recognized him in the final rays of the fast setting sun. Not Chip-Tooth, but another of the original four who had hauled Meryem and me onto the plane. His dark eyes met mine and I hoped that Kate had a plan. Instead, I discovered that she had a gun. As the old lady in the ice-cream skiff pulled away, Kate pulled out her Glock, neatly placing a bullet between the soldier’s eyes.
It was a clean shot. Center mass may be what they teach you in training, but aiming for the chest does no good when your target is guarded by the rail of a ship. No, Kate took the headshot dropping him fast. The gun was loud, but not so loud that it couldn’t be written off as coming from the noisy two-stroke skiff as it rattled away.
“You think we’re alone?” Kate asked.
“Nobody’s that lucky,” I replied.
“A girl can dream.”
“Tell me something,” I said. “You were MI6. Half-American, sure, but half-British too. Why do you shoot a Glock?”
“You really want to know?” she said.
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“Same reason my iPhone’s in a waterproof case. The Glock fires reliably underwater,” Kate said. “Never know when that might come in handy.”
I nodded and followed her up the aft stairs. I have to say that after my experience with Meryem, I liked having Kate there, up in front of me where I could see her. It meant that she couldn’t stab me in the back.
Chapter 56
The fox sat in the dark shadow of Bodrum castle. She was moored eighty feet off the base of the sea cliff, the old fortress towering above. I picked up the fallen guard’s HK33 and checked that the mag was loaded and a bullet was chambered. Music carried over the sea, the scent of freshly roasted lamb in the air as I continued down the outer corridor two steps in front of Kate. I took point only because not trusting your partner is tactically limiting. One of us needed to be in control and, at that juncture, I decided it was better to risk a bullet in the back than to walk into an ambush.
The door to the salon was propped open with a shiny chrome latch. I entered cautiously, covering the room in a fast, sweeping arc. A soccer game was playing on the television, but the cabin was empty. As I made my way farther in, checking behind the bar, Kate covered me from the rear. The Heckler and Koch felt lighter in my hands than the clunkier AK-47, but either gun would have done. Regarding my choice of weapons, I was a pragmatist. Some very determined men and women intended to blow up a significant portion of the American Navy and I intended to do everything in my power to stop them.
The salon was clear, nobody behind the bar, nobody anywhere else. Somebody had just been there, however, as was evidenced by the condensation ring left by a glass on the bar. I nodded to Kate to cover the corridor leading back to the galley and cabins and glanced back at the television. Something was wrong there. The feed had switched from the soccer game to a six-way split-screen security-camera view. There were camera angles covering the swim deck, the bow, the stern, each stairwell and, of course, the salon. That’s when I dived down. Because I had just noticed the camera in the ceiling.
It was hidden in a brass can light that protruded below the others. I motioned Kate down, behind the couch, but I suspected that we were too late. The screen cycled again. A satellite map with a target on it came into view. The target was exactly as Meryem had promised — the United States Sixth Fleet. The view zoomed over an open-water image of the ships before cutting to a low-angle, live video feed of the USS Mount Whitney command ship taken from sea level. The feed was captioned with GPS coordinates of the Mount Whitney’s vector. I didn’t know where Meryem's people had gotten the satellite imagery or the live video from, but I couldn’t ask for better verification of the target than that.
I heard footfalls on the bridge above. Boots, and lots of them. Clearly, we had been seen. I motioned Kate out, but she shook her head and marched forward. She reached behind the bar and threw me my backpack, and then strode forward several more steps and swung open a hinged leather ottoman. Kate reached inside the ottoman’s storage area and tossed me a crossbow and a coil of rope.
“New plan,” she said.
Kate pulled out a similar rig for herself and we slipped unseen onto the deck. There was a ladder on the outer cabin wall that led up, past the enclosed bridge, onto the open flying bridge above. I climbed, arm over arm after Kate, the guards now audible searching the salon below. I could see little but shadows by the time I threw myself over the rail onto the flying bridge — except the crane. The crane standing on the castle above was lit like a Christmas tree. A silver sphere hung from the crane. I recognized it at once. It was the same silver sphere that we had towed through the tunnel, and now it dangled from the crane’s long arm. A cable hung below the sphere like a tail and men were at work on the jib arm of the crane above. Meryem and her crew were preparing to fire the Tesla Device at the Sixth Fleet.
I heard shouting from below and I closed the gate separating the flybridge from the steep stairwell. It wasn’t much of a defense, but it was better than nothing. Kate rigged the crossbows with two explosive bolts. I had seen that type of equipment before. The bolt would hit its target with a small explosive charge, giving it just enough power to penetrate the surface and deploy a grappling mechanism. After the bolt was set, the user could tighten the rope and zip-line across to the target.
There was only one problem with Kate’s plan. The castle wall was high, really high. We were moored so close to the base of it that it absolutely towered over us. There was no way we were going zip-line up a two-hundred-foot wall, but Kate didn’t seem concerned. She fired her bow. Not horizontally across to the castle wall, but vertically, almost to the top of it. I heard a little pop when the crossbow bolt hit, and then she pulled the slack out of her line, looping it through her climbing harness.
“You coming?” she asked.
“After you.”
Kate pulled the line tight through her harness, stepped up onto the rail, and let go, swinging across the sea like a pendulum. I didn’t wait for Kate to hit the wall. I aimed my crossbow high, just as she had done and depressed the trigger. The bolt sailed far and true, finding its target with a reassuring pop. But instead of cinching up the line, I ducked because a bullet had just cracked through the night. Then a big crewcut head appeared just above the low half-door that separated the bridge from the stairwell.