The mate tried to give the money back but Danny wouldn't take it. Finally he dropped the bills and they scattered over the deck.
Boston had already gotten the raft into the water. Sorina Viorica was standing nearby, watching the bills flutter away in the wind but saying nothing.
"No — you cannot. No."
"I'm taking the raft," Danny told him.
The mate shook his head.
Enough, thought Danny. He pulled out his pistol.
The Indian moved back, shocked.
"I'm sorry, but I'm taking the raft," Danny told him. "There is no F-ing way we're swimming. Sorina, Boston — go."
The Romanian took hold of one of the ropes and climbed over the rail. Boston followed. The Indian mate continued to stare at Danny, his eyes wide with surprise.
"Thanks for your help," Danny told him, reaching over and grabbing the line. "We appreciate it."
He tucked the pistol into his belt and started down. He hadn't had a chance to put his gloves back on, and the wet rope cut into his palms. After a few feet he considered dropping but stuck with it, hands burning. He felt a hand on his leg and lowered himself into the raft, which bobbed beneath his weight but remained afloat.
"Did you shoot him?" asked Sorina as Danny settled in.
"No, I didn't shoot him."
"You cannot corrupt everyone," she told him.
"I didn't want to corrupt him. I just didn't want you to freeze to death in the water."
Boston started the small outboard at the stern of the raft. The high-pitched sound was so loud, the sides of Danny's head began to vibrate.
Istanbul straddled the Bosporus, its eastern and western precincts connected by bridges and ferries. The train station where they were headed was on the eastern bank. Boston circled to the north, crossing behind the tanker and then heading toward the shore. But as they approached, blue lights appeared on the highway above the water. A police car flashed southward. A moment later another one came north, then pulled off the road almost directly opposite them.
Boston cut the engine. "What do you think, Cap?"
It was unlikely that they were waiting for them, but Danny didn't want to take any chances.
"Let's land on the other side," he said.
"You got it, Cap."
Boston spun the boat around, starting out slowly and then picking up speed. A large cruise ship sat docked to the north on Danny's right as they came across, its deck and cabins a yellow glow against the pale black of the night.
"Bring it into that marina?" Boston asked, leaning forward and shouting in Danny's ear.
"No. Somebody might be watching in there. Go up the shoreline a bit, to my right. That way." Danny pointed.
"Probably have some sort of security near that cruise ship."
"Don't get that close. The marina will probably have somebody there too. We want to be in the middle."
Boston found a clump of rocks near what looked like an abandoned field, but that Danny realized was a park when they were about five yards from shore. Despite the cold, a pair of teenage lovers huddled together on one of the benches, oblivious not only to the boat but to the rest of the world.
Sorina hopped out as the raft began to slide sideways back toward the water. Danny jumped out behind her, trotting forward and grabbing her arm.
"I'm not running away," she said. Though she kept her voice soft, she managed to make it sound like a hawk's warning hiss.
"I didn't think you were," Danny told her.
"You don't have to lie, Captain. It doesn't suit you."
Boston, ruck over his back, joined them. By now the two teenagers had broken their embrace and stared at them as they walked past.
"We have to get across," said Danny. "There's a bridge this way."
They began walking, Sorina and Danny in the lead, Boston trailing nonchalantly, the pack over his shoulder. The area mixed small apartment buildings with clusters of commercial buildings in between. They picked their way uphill, following a side street that veered away from their destination, then found themselves in a tangle of streets that were so narrow they would barely rate as alleys back home. A taxi passed on the boulevard just as they reached it. Danny started to hail it, then remembered he hadn't gotten any local money yet. It was too late anyway — the driver was already past.
"This way," he said, pointing to the left.
He checked his watch. It was 2105—five minutes past nine. They were supposed to call at 2130.
A block later he spotted a bank. Stoner had given him a credit card to use for a cash advance or whatever incidentals he needed; Danny slipped his hand into his pocket to make sure it was still there.
"Let's see if there's an ATM," he told the others, nudging Sorina toward the street.
Sorina hesitated.
"They have cameras in the machines," she said. "I don't want to get close."
"Right." He hadn't thought of that. "You stay here with Boston."
Inside the bank's vestibule, he slid the card into the machine and began punching the PIN number. Just as he hit Enter he realized he'd used his PIN, not the one Stoner had given him. He cursed himself, then waited for the machine to tell him he had made a mistake.
The screen stayed blank. It seemed to have eaten his card.
Be patient, he told himself, stifling the urge to punch the machine. Just be patient.
Finally the card spit out. Ignoring the Turkish words on the screen, since he had no idea what they said, Danny put the card back into the machine and typed the right PIN. A few seconds later a screen came up, again in Turkish, asking how much money he wanted.
Fortunately, the numbers were familiar. He pressed the largest denomination: a thousand liras.
Boston and Sorina started walking as soon as they saw him come out. Danny trotted to catch up. He suddenly felt cold — the vestibule had been heated.
"Look for a taxi," he told Boston when he got close. "We're behind on time."
Zen banked the Flighthawk northward, skirting the Moldovan border by less than ten feet. There was no way to gauge where the line would have been on the ground, much less in the air, and he knew that the Moldovan air defense radar couldn't spot the Flighthawk if it flew right in front of the dish. But Colonel Bastian would know, and the mission tapes would reveal the incursion. And that's what counted.
The Romanian forces had just boarded their helicopters a few miles to the southeast. Zen could see them on his sitrep or God's eye-view radar — little bumblebees starting in his direction.
"Force Bravo is en route," he told Dog. "Roger that."
"Any sign of our Russian friends?" "Negative."
"Hopefully, they got that out of their system yesterday," said Zen. "Or maybe they fired the only missiles they had."
The soldiers gave Stoner an AK-47 and four magazine boxes of ammunition. He checked them, then sat on the bench next to Colonel Brasov as the helicopter — an Aerospatiale Puma — skimmed over the ground at treetop level toward Moldova.
The wound in his leg had been a dull, low-level pain, pushed to the back of his consciousness over the past few days. Now the pain spiked, as if provoked by the geography.
Colonel Brasov clapped him on the back. "We are a few miles from the border, Mr. Stoner," he said. "Now would be a good time to find out where we are going."
Stoner glanced at his watch. "It should only be a minute or two."
There was a flood of traffic ahead, cars, buses, and people descending from the tourist area along Istiklal Caddessi. Danny, Boston, and Sorina had walked for nearly fifteen minutes without seeing a cab.