They entered the villa through a narrow attic dormer. The process of slowly easing it open in full sight of the courtyard below was a slow, nerve-racking procedure. Especially when a nest of sparrows disturbed by their manipulation erupted into a brief agitated squawking. For the next few minutes the men lay flattened against the roof tiles, still warm from the sun.
Instantly the guards looked up, contemplating the half-dozen circling sparrows silhouetted against the nebulous gleam of the moon. After what seemed endless minutes, they went back to their gossip and cigarettes.
I'm getting too old for this, Carey thought, sweat beading on his brow. His cheek was jammed tightly to the smooth clay tile, his heart pounded. But when he glanced over and caught Ant's wink and smile, he remembered his heart had pounded as violently at eighteen. And the sight of Luger's cheerful face, slightly blackened, convinced him some things never change. Luger was enjoying himself. Luger had always been the nerveless one, while Carey and Ant and Mac had sky-rocketed through a mission high on adrenaline.
Right now Carey had enough adrenaline pumping into his body to keep him awake for a month. He signaled he'd go through the dormer window first. Servants had slept under the dusty eaves in past decades, but the attic was empty now, except for the distinctive pink beam of light crossing the large space six inches above the floor. Ant's smile was smug as they stepped over the colored line of protection without marring its perfect symmetry.
The floor immediately below the attic contained small rooms. They paused, listening carefully, and realized from the unmistakable sounds of snoring that the rooms contained sleeping men. Rifat had at least two platoons of guards in residence. They moved on with great care, each covering a door with his weapon as they went down the carpeted hall to the stairway.
They paused at the top of the stairwell, weapons poised up and down the staircase, knowing when they descended to the second floor they would be on the level of active guard operation. They also had to pass the living area before reaching Rifat. If that wasn't daunting enough, even if their mission was successful, they would have to return the entire distance they'd traveled in order to escape back across on their wire. Rifat had chosen his villa well. Solid walls buttressed him on two sides, while the third side overlooked a steep drop into a Roman temple complex: The only point of access was the street side, which they'd used for entry.
Carey led the way down the stairs, one cautious step at a time. At the bottom, he eased his head around the corner of the wall just enough to survey the second floor hall. The lengthy corridor was elegantly appointed with Kazak carpets loomed to order, their distinctive red-dye weft enhanced by the bold dragon pattern popular in that region. The original beechwood paneling had darkened over the last four hundred years to a sepia shade brightened by the addition of several large, gilded mirrors.
Although the hall was luxuriously appointed, the interior space was spare and uncluttered. By design, Carey presumed. Rifat chose not to impair his line of fire with large potted plants or console tables that would divert his guards from their target.
As if on cue, a guard walked into the apex of the juncture where the north-south corridor met the east-west length. Carey watched the man turn in a loose military rotation, then disappear out of sight.
Okay. They had to get by him and whomever else was patrolling that wing. And there was nothing to do but move forward and see what they found when they got there. Silently, Carey signaled the position of the guard, took a deep breath, then stepped out onto the carpet. There was no point in moving slowly in the wide open spaces of the corridor; there was more safety in speed. Carey sprinted down the muted softness of the dragon-patterned rug. Ant and Luger were right behind him, their weapons poised to fire.
The view of the next corridor reminded Carey of a military base. A guard station was situated halfway down the hall, two armed guards were seated at a table adjacent to a solid steel door, no doubt the entrance to Rifat's private quarters. It explained the relative laxness of security in other portions of the mansion. The outer perimeter was protected by an electronic surveillance beam, and guards patrolled the street entrance and courtyard. Rifat lived behind a coded entry door defended by two armed men. Four, Carey corrected himself, as two more appeared from what must have been a guard room to the left. Shit. Maybe there were ten more in there.
Measuring the distance to the door with his eyes, he turned back to Ant and Luger. Speaking for the first time since they'd reached their rendezvous, he murmured, “There's four I can see. I'm going to try and draw some of them down this way. You two target the ones at the desk. Wish me luck. I know about twenty words in Turkish.” And unfortunately, he thought, most of them were only appropriate in the boudoir.
Raising his voice sufficiently to reach the guards but not carry to the floor above, Carey delivered rapid fire guttural phrases having to do with one's heritage.
Without hesitation two guards ran toward him, their weapons raised. Stepping out into the corridor, Carey fired at them with two well-placed controlled bursts. Even before they began falling, Ant and Luger had squeezed off their own rounds. The two men at the desk lifted slightly from their chairs before their bodies were thrown into the wall. Even though the men were shot with silenced weapons, it didn't mean noise was eliminated. The impact sent the guards flying backwards as if they were rag dolls.
The distinctive muffled sound of the rounds hitting home was followed by a noisy disturbance as the two guards in the corridor fell heavily to the floor, and the men at the desk collapsed with a tumbling clatter of chairs. They knew the sounds would be heard by whomever was behind the steel door, so they raced forward to drag the bodies out of sight. In seconds the four guards had been unceremoniously dumped in the small alcove that had apparently served as a locker room. Then they waited.
The wait wasn't long.
The steel door opened, and two men stepped through it, their weapons drawn. One man turned to glance into the alcove only inches from Carey, who was crouched behind the door. The other guard stood in the open doorway, holding the heavy plated steel with one hand and his weapon with the other.
As the first man walked into Carey's range, he seized the man's collar and twisting hard, pulled him down. The swift hauling motion dragged his throat onto Carey's knife. The second man never had time to digest what was happening, because Ant came up off the floor under the table and finished him just as neatly.
Carey was on the wrong side of the door to see what was happening but he observed Luger's signal, “One coming.” He'd take him. And although the man came out in crisp military style with his weapon aimed and someone behind him for backup, Luger shot them both before they were over the threshold.
Now was the time to attack.
Ant went in first because he was closest, followed swiftly by Carey and Luger, and the thirty-round magazines of their guns rippled across the chests of the two guards reaching for the phone on the table in front of them. Out of the corner of his eye, Carey caught a glimpse of movement and, swiveling, shot the last guard with a burst between the eyes.
It took only an exchange of glances for each man to know what to do. They cleared away the bodies, stacking them in the alcove and closing the steel door in the event it was timed to an alarm, they reloaded and proceeded to their next barrier.
They knew they had only minutes at their disposal. Ant began setting his plastique on the lock of the second steel door to Rifat's inner sanctum. The explosion was a muffled sound, the lock disintegrated. They rushed through the door into a plush foyer carpeted in an unusual yellow ground kilim and walled in a glittering succession of mirrors.
Absolute silence greeted them.