I had been hit.
Chapter 58
I was fairly certain that the bullet had hit the backpack, but not me. I rolled off the edge of the parapet and down to the walkway three feet below on the other side. Kate was waiting for me.
“What took you so long?”
“I stopped for a burger and Coke.”
The bullets continued to fly, but we were well hidden behind the rock wall. I checked myself over, pulling off my pack. I was unscathed. It was the pack that had taken two bullets. Not into the rear panel, but side to side, clean shots straight through. Better it, than me. I surveyed the courtyard below us. The bullet fire was muted on the rampart, but that was because another noise dominated the darkness — the heavy rumbling of generators.
There were three of them: big orange boxes on trailers, the type of thing that got pulled to construction sites to provide portable power. The generators sat in the pool of light directly below the crane, but I sensed that there was a problem because I also saw a group of people arguing. I recognized Meryem and Faruk and two of the soldiers from the boat. But they weren’t alone. There was also a guy with a receding hairline wearing a suit. Unfortunately, I recognized him as well. It was Azad, Meryem's irritable groom. I signaled Kate silently and we moved down a stone staircase and through the darkness. Azad was speaking, his lips moving angrily. It sounded like Turkish, but we had to get closer before I could make anything out.
“Speak English,” Faruk said. “I do not want the men to understand.”
“You promised me this evening. What is taking so long?” Azad said.
“The targeting codes. They need to be entered,” Meryem replied.
“I want this machine working,” Azad said.
“It would be working if we had flown it back to the tower,” Meryem said. “The Device was to be operated from the minaret in Aphrodisias.”
“There is no time. It will work here as well. It has an eight-thousand-mile range. That is nearly thirteen thousand kilometers. A few hundred kilometers makes no difference.”
“You need patience, Azad.”
“We cannot afford patience,” Azad said. “The fleet is moving. Our observers will not be able to accurately pinpoint the ships’ locations forever.”
“They are almost done, I promise you,” Faruk said.
“Show me,” Azad commanded.
I signaled Kate, indicating that we should return to the castle wall and circle around. We were undetected now, but I knew we wouldn’t be for long. Sooner or later the guards on the boat would report our skirmish. I didn’t think that they would be quick about it because it reflected poorly on them, and they would try to salvage the situation, but eventually they would report it. And at that point security would tighten like a noose.
We retreated to the castle wall and up another set of stairs, following the rampart around the perimeter of the fortress toward the base of the crane. In the past, the rampart had been used to attack the enemy. Now we were the enemy, using it as a highway into the heart of the castle. We passed a couple guards positioned on the courtyard floor below us and soon reached the base of the construction crane. Being on the rampart, we had a second advantage which was height. The base of the crane was probably eighty feet away and fifteen feet down, but we could see everything. It was a perfect vantage.
Tesla’s metallic sphere hung from the jib arm of the crane, a fat yellow power cord running out of the top of it and straight down to the courtyard below. Interestingly, the power cord bypassed the generators entirely. Instead, it ran right over the edge of the castle wall as though it was tied into the city supply. Maybe the generators were a backup, or supplemental. Not far from them, the triggers sat on the castle floor.
Three men I had never seen before huddled over the triggers. The men weren’t in uniform. They looked more like tech guys, Kurdish hackers. The men had daisy-chained the triggers together in a series with a network of wires coming out of one end. Those wires had then been piggybacked up the fat cable to the sphere. But what was more interesting was the input on the other end. They had what looked like a wireless router tied into the rear trigger. One of the men held a laptop computer. Kate bent closer to me.
“The first real computer wasn’t even built until after Tesla’s death,” Kate whispered. “What are they doing?”
I didn’t know for certain. But I had a theory.
“Tesla may not have designed the Device to be used with a computer, but it doesn’t mean the Soviets didn’t build it that way. It would be an add-on to the targeting system. Like a laser scope on an old revolver.”
“That was still the early fifties,” Kate said.
“These guys knew they’d be working with very old technology. Bayazidi might have even left them the schematics. They put together a team that’s figured out how to target this thing,” I replied.
I watched the cogs in the trigger turn. The triggers were connected to both a router and an external power source, but I could already see a number of issues. For one, the power source looked hacked — they had a common plug-in transformer, like the kind you would use to charge your phone, powering the electric motor in the trigger. For another, the titanium frames of the triggers were not meant to be self-supporting. They would be lying on their sides if not propped up by the crates. From what I knew of him, I was sure that Tesla would have devised a better design than that.
“Do you know the guy with the balding head?” Kate asked.
“Azad,” I replied. “He tried to slice my neck open with a bottle.”
“He’s PKK,” Kate said. “Top of the food chain. Rarely sighted, but when he is, something big happens. Always.”
Meryem and Azad were arguing. They had reverted to Turkish, presumably because they were angry, and it was loud. I kept picking out a Turkish word — Akdeniz — I had heard the gulet captain use it. It was the Turkish word for the Mediterranean Sea. I pulled off my backpack and took out my iPhone, which I was happy to have in my possession again. It was small enough that the bullets had left it unscathed. I could see their laptop computer operating right there on the wireless network in front of me. I launched a password cracking app, but I wasn’t confident that I could break their encryption locally, so I did what I had been wanting to do for a while. I messaged Langley directly. With any luck, they could tether in.
Then I saw Meryem glance up at the castle wall. It was just a quick glance, and her eyes fell quickly back to Azad. I briefly wondered whether their impending marriage was real. If every one of her moves all along had been calculated, tactical. I heard Azad say, “Akdeniz,” again, this time with finality, and Meryem hit a key on the laptop.
The screen on the laptop cycled to blue, but there was no sound, no countdown, no indication of anything. I glanced around the castle, dropping my phone into the front pocket of my T-shirt. The soldier on the courtyard floor a hundred feet to our right lit a cigarette, the orange ember glowing in the night. I saw nothing to my left but the steep stone staircase leading down from the rampart. All the action was down with Meryem and Azad at the triggers. Then everything changed.
It started with a great groaning sound, a sibilant yawn like everything was winding down. The floodlights at the base of the tower dimmed, the lights of the surrounding city dimmed, everything went black, and it stayed that way for three…four…five seconds, and then boom!