“Michael!”
“Relax,” I said. “Pass me the first trigger.”
I saw where the triggers fit into the Device. There was an empty rack cradling the bottom of the main sphere. Room for both units to slide into place. I looked up and saw the thin wire snaking out of the top of the outer sphere alongside the fat cables. Easy mistake to make, I thought, thinking that the triggers should be positioned outside the Device, especially when the crates had been illustrated that way. But Bayazidi was a trickster. There was as much disinformation in that journal as there was information.
I flashed my light back to the hatch. The first of the triggers was coming through. I reached up and grabbed it, feeling the magnetic pull. I placed the unit down by my feet and waited there for a moment while the soldier handed me the second trigger. Then I stared back down at the rack that they went into. The wireless router was still attached to the rear trigger which meant that what I was about to do was not without consequences. If I armed the sphere with an accurate targeting system, I was endangering a lot of lives. But if I didn’t do it, I was killing everyone in that square. Either way, it was a gamble.
I hunched down and inserted the first trigger into its rack. It clicked into place like a fresh load into the chamber of a shotgun, smooth as glass despite its age. I reached behind me for the second trigger and slid it gently into place behind the first with a soft click. Then I plugged them into each other. The gyroscopes were installed. If Tesla’s invention was ever going to work, it was going to work now. I took a final look around and quickly checked my iPhone. So far the static charge in the air hadn’t shorted it out, and though the magnetic field had compromised my signal strength, it wasn’t enough to lose the connection. I was still tethered in.
I emptied my backpack and poked my head out of the hatch.
“It’s done,” I said to Meryem.
Meryem returned to the cab of the crane. She had to. It was the only way to check whether the targeting system was actually functioning, which I hoped it was. Because there was no way Azad was going to release the hostages if it wasn’t. I hung my head out of the sphere while they conferred in the crane’s tiny cab. I could see Meryem and the crane operator from my position, the blue glimmer of the computer display casting its glow on them. She smiled as she got out of the cab.
“Thank you, Michael,” she called out to me. “Now get out of the sphere.”
“Not so fast, Meryem.”
“What?”
“Your turn. Let those people go. That was our deal.”
She shrugged.
“I would very much like to let those people go, but I do not think it is time to do this yet,” Meryem said.
“Let those people go, or I cut the cable,” I said.
“All the power in the city of Bodrum runs through that cable. If you cut it, you will die.”
I laughed, ready to duck my head into the sphere if I had to.
“Not the power cable. The trigger cable. Two tiny wires.”
I flicked open the blade of my Swiss knife.
“You want to try me? Let them go.”
Meryem consulted with Faruk. Then she just picked up her walkie-talkie. The next thing I heard was automatic gunfire, people screaming in the square below.
“OK, OK!”
The gunfire stopped. It was chaos in the square below, but I couldn’t tell whether anybody had been hit. Soldiers continued to man the exits.
“Good choice, Michael.”
I watched the ground below me as civilians crowded around the exits, unable to leave. Clearly, Plan A wasn’t going to work. Not that it was much of surprise that Meryem had gone back on her word, but that didn’t change the fact that if I disabled the Device, everybody in that square was as good as dead. Just shows, you can’t trust a terrorist! Time for Plan B.
“Pull him up,” Meryem said, eyeing the soldier on the catwalk above.
The soldier obeyed. He lay down on the catwalk, cantilevering his body outward and extending his hand. Meryem returned to the cab, Faruk watching her from mid-catwalk. It was my moment. Time to make it count. I poked my head and arms outside the hatch and took the soldier’s hand, clamping down on his palm tightly. Then I pulled straight down with all my strength.
Chapter 63
I punched the soldier as he fell past me through the air. A hard-right straight to the jaw. I had hoped to knock him out, not because I was doing him any favors, but because I didn’t want him to scream. To that end, I was successful. After my fist connected squarely with his jaw, I didn’t hear a peep out of him as he plummeted to his death. But I wasn’t done. Faruk was the next order of business.
I pulled myself out of the sphere and took hold of the rail of the jib, vaulting over it. Faruk was still facing Meryem in the cab. The question was, could I get to him before he turned? One way to find out. I leapt ahead, pulling my empty backpack in front of me.
The falling soldier finally screamed, and when he did, Faruk turned. Faruk stared straight at me, the light reflecting off the white keloid scar below his eye in the glare of the crane’s work lights. He seemed pleased to see me. As if he’d been waiting a long while for the opportunity to mix it up. He drew his pistol with a wry grin, but I was close enough to reach ahead with my left hand and force his weapon up by the barrel. I struggled against his massive strength to hold the pistol above me.
“So finally we fight, American.”
“Why don’t we skip that part, and I’ll kill you now.”
“Perhaps next time. I think, now, we fight.”
We were each standing on the two-foot wide catwalk so I knew there wasn’t much room for a dance, or a brawl. At that point, I was wearing my empty backpack like a kangaroo pouch. It didn’t really interfere with my movement, but it wasn’t ideal either. It was going to have be a precision takedown and it was going to have to happen fast. But Faruk was a slippery opponent. I wasn’t counting on his blade.
I didn’t have time to reflect on how much I hated knives, I just reacted. I feinted to my left as he jabbed the black steel combat knife forward. Then I pushed in close. Moving away in a knife fight isn’t a bad idea. But only if you have somewhere to go. I had nowhere. So all I could do was move in closer to eliminate his ability to brandish the weapon. I had to accept that I might get cut. What I wanted to ensure was that I didn’t get killed.
Faruk pulled the gun’s trigger with his other hand. The pistol’s report ripped through the air, superheated gases escaping the chamber, but I didn’t feel the heat. Something hot like that, there’s a lag between touching and feeling. What I did was keep my hold on the gun with my left hand while I grabbed Faruk’s wrist with my right. I didn’t know whether I’d be as quick as the blade. Fortunately, Faruk’s focus was divided. I managed to get ahold of his left wrist and twist the knife away from me.
Then I lowered my body on my left leg and powered up into a groin-busting strike. Faruk gasped as the top of my knee connected with him. It must have pissed him off because he fired the gun again, but we were still in the same position. It would be a stalemate until I could get him to drop one of the weapons and both of us knew it. So I stepped ahead and let him have it. I focused and drove all my weight forward and up in a massive head-butt. His nose crumpled like a paper airplane, blood flooding down his face. It was a testament to Faruk’s tolerance for pain that he was still standing, but he did drop the gun. It tumbled from his hand over the side of the crane.