“You think he’s nuts, don’t you?” Caleb said.
Virgil chuckled. “I think he’s crazier than a soup sandwich.”
“Me too,” Milo said, passing the Sunagor binoculars to Virgil. “Mad as a box of frogs.”
Ella shrugged her shoulders and leaned forward in the front seat. The cheap vinyl squeaked as she peered up through the windshield and took in the sight of a very tiny Jed Mason in the luxury penthouse. He had made his way up the western side of the eight hundred-foot skyscraper posing as maintenance on a suspended scaffold. It had looked fragile enough when it was on the ground, but now it was dangling off the top of the skyscraper it looked like a toy. She watched it swaying in the hot Turkish breeze and hoped he knew what he was doing.
“Yes,” she said almost in a whisper. “I think he’s totally nuts.”
Zara looked at her. “Why is he nuts?”
Ella and Caleb both turned to Zara at the same time but Ella answered. “Because he risked his life on that stupid contraption, for one thing.”
“How long was he planning this?” Zara said, and then before anyone in the van could answer she said, “Weeks! That’s how long. This job is a big fuckin’ deal to him, Ella — to us all. If that means Jed goes up the Sapphire then he goes up the Sapphire, for fuck’s sake. Besides — he likes playing spiderman.”
“He knows what he’s doing,” Virgil said. “He’s never screwed up a job yet and he’s not going to start today so everyone just chill out.”
“Virgil’s right,” said Caleb.
“As always,” Virgil said. “And not just about Jed either. I’m also right about the Lambo.”
The smile dropped from Caleb’s face. “Like hell, you are!”
Zara looked confused. “Huh?”
“Oh, the V-Man here is advancing an argument that the Aventador has more cajones under the hood than the Veyron.”
Now Ella looked confused. “What?”
“They’re talking about cars,” Milo said.
Zara turned up the aircon. “And Virgil couldn’t be more wrong.”
Virgil put his binoculars on his lap and spun around in his seat. “Hey!”
Caleb raised two palms in a peacemaking gesture but his smile said it all. “It’s just the way it is. My car is faster than Virgil’s…”
“But not my tuned Honda,” Milo said with a smug smile. “As you were.”
Caleb sighed. “As I was saying, my car is faster than Virgil’s and he doesn’t like it because it makes him feel inadequate in the pants department.” He leaned forward and placed his two heavy hands on the young man’s shoulders. “Virgil? Would you like a ride in my Veyron?”
“Fuck off, Caleb.”
Ella Makepeace was enjoying the banter. She was the black sheep of the Raiders, only joining them on occasional jobs when the circumstances demanded it. She had studied psychology and law at Cambridge and was headed for a career in counselling, but all that ended sharply one night when she went to a late night show in the Comedy Store and saw Zack Marvin.
Marvin was a stage hypnotist and conjuror who dabbled in mesmerism, and after a few short minutes, Ella was hooked for life. She spoke with Marvin backstage and a year later she was on the stage, amazing audiences with her own act. Not long after that Zack Marvin’s agent arranged a meeting for her with a television production company called Magikal Productions. Her first TV show was a national success, and the second series went international. Ella Makepeace was a household name.
When she was filming the third series, her old friend Milo Risk got in touch.
He had a favor to ask, and when he told her about it she couldn’t wait to help.
An American-Greek millionaire had fled the United States with his son after losing a custody battle with his wife. The job was simple: get the son back to New York and make a quarter of a million dollars each. Her skills proved invaluable, and she became an unofficial Raider.
Her memory was broken by Zara. “It’s not even that big a deal,” she said. “I could get in that penthouse with my head up my ass.”
Caleb laughed. “But I thought Buddhist monks were suppose to be good?”
“I’m not a Buddhist monk, gunslinger,” she said.
“No?”
“No. And the term is bhikkhuni. I am a woman, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh… I’d noticed.”
This time she turned to face him. “Do you need your ass kicking again?”
At five-foot nothing, a threat like Zara would have made Caleb Jackson roar with laughter, he was, after all, a six-foot-two former US Army Ranger, but Zara Dietrich was a Silat guru. Silat was Malaysia’s martial art and considered one of the most lethal in the world. Like most people who met Zara, Caleb had found out about Silat the hard way.
Virgil turned in his seat. “I’d pay to see you kicking Cal’s ass.”
“Get those binoculars back on the building, nimrod,” Zara said.
Virgil turned back and trained the binoculars on the penthouse. “Shit, they’re approaching the door!” he said.
“You think he can make it?” Ella said.
Caleb, Milo and Zara all answered at the same time: “Yes.”
Virgil continued to train the powerful binoculars up at the penthouse. “Shit, they’re opening the damn door!”
CHAPTER SIX
The door burst open and two men walked into the room. They looked shocked, and clearly weren’t expecting to find an intruder in the property. Without asking any questions, they each made their way toward Jed Mason.
Mason slung the bag containing the asset over his shoulder, took a step back and made a quick study of his opponents. They were built more substantially than the gun safe behind him, and now they were moving toward him with dark expressions on their unshaven faces.
They wore expensive suits — not tailored, but good stuff. One of the men had an undercut hairstyle with shaved sides and the rest pulled back into a jet-black pony tail. The older man’s was a buzzcut — silver stubble all over.
“Sen de kimsin?” said Undercut.
Mason didn’t speak a word of Turkish. “I’m here to collect something.”
“You are English?” the man said.
Mason smiled. “Guilty as charged.”
Buzzcut spoke next, his accent thick and heavy. “What are you doing in here?”
“This is private property,” said Undercut. “Mr Omar said nothing about you.”
They both noticed his gloves and bag at the same time and Undercut said, “Hırsız!”
“I’m presuming that’s not an offer of tea and biscuits then?” Mason said.
The two men looked at each other for a second as they exchanged a few words in Turkish, and then they padded toward him. The man with the shaved head rolled his jacket sleeves up as he got closer. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Just hang on a minute,” Mason said. He took a step toward Buzzcut and examined his suit, rubbing his lapel gently in between in his finger and thumb. “No — sorry. Thought it might be Fielding and Nicholson, but on closer inspection it’s just a pile of shit.”
The man grinned to reveal at least two broken teeth and then swung a violent punch at the Englishman. It was a punch heavy and angry enough to kill, but Mason knew it was coming. He dodged the blow with a millimeter to spare and then brought his elbow up, sharply jabbing the man in the throat and collapsing his windpipe.
Undercut barged into the fray, swinging his fists like a palooka, as Mason’s old boxing instructor would have said.
Mason distracted him with a bolo punch — an undercut-hook combination favored by Sugar Ray Leonard. It struck him hard and knocked him on his heels.
“Army Boxing Champion,” Mason said with a wink. “Did I mention that?”
The man grunted as he regained his balance and searched for a weapon. He snatched up one of the fire irons from the marble hearth and weighed it in his hands. “Istanbul’s dirtiest street fighter,” he said in a thick accent. “Did I mention that?”
“Didn’t have to, mate,” Mason said. “I can smell it from here.”
The man growled with rage and ran toward the intruder. Raising the poker above his head, he swung the poker down hard in a bid to smash it across Mason’s head but the Englishman was faster and slipped to the side.
The poker crashed down on an antique table and smashed a lamp to pieces.
Before he could turn and take a second swing, Mason was on him, pummelling his back with jabs and then swinging another savage uppercut up into his ribcage.
The man turned and fought back, landing a good punch right on Mason’s jaw and nearly knocking him out. He staggered backwards, knocking over a number of Mr Omar’s finest antique ornaments as he went but it still wasn’t enough to arrest his fall.
He went down on his back and crashed into the carpet. Lucky. His skull struck the step leading down to the sunken lounge and for a second he thought he was going to lose consciousness.
A mind-numbing pain coursed through his head. If he went out now he would wake up upside down in a basement with duct tape over his mouth. Milo wasn’t kidding when he’d talked about the last man caught in this apartment. In the Turkish underworld, Omar Dogan was as serious as you got. Waltzing into his private apartment and stealing from his personal safe wasn’t going to end well if you got caught.
Confused by the blow to his skull and the eye-watering punch that put him down in the first place, he now struggled to focus on the men as they padded over to him, one still nursing his bruised throat. They were grinning. They thought they had won.
“I told you this was private property,” said Undercut.
“You should have listened to him,” Buzzcut chimed in casually. He even slipped his hands into his pockets for a few seconds and slouched against one of the interior pillars. “Now we have to kill you and dump your body in a landfill. I’ve got better things to do with my time, believe me.”
Mason shook his head back into focus and got to his feet. He bobbed and weaved as the man stormed toward him, swinging punches left, right and center. One of the men fought back hard, but the Londoner returned fire again, striking the Turkish bodyguard under the chin. The impact forced him back on his heels once again and he threw his hands out for balance.
Seizing the initiative, Mason grabbed one of his hands and forced it back against the top of his forearm until he heard a loud snapping noise. The man howled in agony and collapsed to his knees to nurse the wound and Mason ended the brawl with a hard left, smashing the man in the side of his head and putting him out for the count.
“No flash knockdown for you, lad,” he said.
Buzzcut rejoined the fight but was still struggling to breathe properly from his windpipe punch. He flicked open a switchblade and padded over to where Mason and Undercut had brawled a few moments ago in the center of the plush apartment.
Mason saw the knife. Things were getting out of control. Army boxing champion was one thing, but that didn’t usually involve fighting armed men. He grabbed Buzzcut’s knife hand with his left hand as he piled his right hand up into the guard’s jaw. Holding him tight he was able to put his body between Buzzcut and the knife, and then he brought his hand down hard on his wrist and belted the knife from his grip. He kicked it away with his boot and then brought his elbow up into the man’s throat for the second time.
Buzzcut gasped for air like a freshly landed fish on a jetty.
Mason moved in for the kill. “Is it that you can’t learn, or won’t learn?”
The gasping man was on his knees now, unable to breathe and eyes full of genuine fear.
Mason delivered a catastrophic overhand punch and knocked the man down into the sunken lounge beside his associate. Stepping over the fatally wounded man, Mason moved to the window and talked calmly into the mic. “Milo — I’ve been rumbled and I’m going to need to get out of here ASAP.”
“All right,” Milo said. “We saw. I’m looking at the schematics of the apartment right now. Where are you? I can’t see you anymore.”
“To the east of the study in some kind of recreation room.”
“Okay, I see it. You need to go to your right and you’ll see a corridor. Go to the end and then take the first left. This gets you to the stairs that lead up to the roof.”
Mason followed Milo’s instructions until he reached Omar’s private staircase and ran up the steps to the door. He slammed the panic bar on the inside of the heavy security door and was blinded by the bright Turkish sunshine.
“I’m out!” he said.
“Good stuff, Jed,” Milo said.
Mason raised his hand to block the sun and scanned the sky. “But where the hell is Kat?”
“She’s on her way!” Milo said.
He heard shouting and the sound of men clambering up the steps behind him. “I hope she gets here in about two seconds, Milo, because it looks like I’ve got some more trouble on the way.”
He slung the bag over his shoulder and ran as far from the door as he could, but then more of Omar’s men were on the roof. This time they had knuckle-dusters and scimitars.