“No clue as to how Africa became one of the four corners of the earth?” Mai asked.
“Not a bloody thing. So we can’t anticipate where the next Horseman will be.”
“Look into the past,” Kenzie spoke up. “In my job, my old job, the answers were always buried back in time. You just have to know where to look.”
Lauren chipped in then. “I’ll try that.”
Drake fought the plunge and sway of the truck. “How far to Çanakkale?”
“Entering the outskirts now. Doesn’t look too big. I can see the sea.”
“Oh, you win.” Drake remembered a game from when he was a kid.
“I saw it first,” Dahl said with a smile in his voice.
“Yeah, we used to play that too.”
The truck pulled over, and pretty soon the rear doors were opening outward. The team jumped out and took in amazing lungfuls of fresh air. Alicia complained she felt ill and Kenzie pretended to faint in the English manner. This perked Alicia right up. Drake found himself staring hard and staring in amazement.
“By ’eck,” he muttered on purpose. “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
Dahl was too gobstruck to comment.
An enormous wooden horse stood before them, somehow familiar, brooding over a small square surrounded by buildings. Rope seemed to bind its legs and was strung around its head. Drake thought it appeared armored and majestic, a proud manmade animal.
“What the hell?”
Crowds flocked around it, staring and posing and taking pictures.
Lauren spoke via the comms. “I guess you just found the Troy horse.”
Smyth guffawed. “It’s far from a toy.”
“No Troy. You know? Brad Pitt?”
Alicia almost broke her neck, glancing in all directions. “What? Where?”
“Whoa.” Kenzie laughed. “I’ve seen vipers strike slower.”
Alicia was still scrutinizing the area. “Where, Lauren? Is he in the horse?”
The New Yorker let out a chuckle. “Well, he was once. Remember the modern movie—Troy? Well, after filming they left the horse right where you stand, in Çanakkale.”
“Bollocks.” Alicia vented. “I thought all my Christmases had come at once.” She shook her head.
Drake cleared his throat. “I’m still here, love.”
“Oh yeah. Great.”
“And don’t worry, if Brad Pitt jumps out of the arse-end of that horse and tries to kidnap you, I’ll save you.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
Lauren’s voice cut across their chatter like the hard descent of a samurai sword. “Incoming, guys! Multiple enemies. Approaching Çanakkale right now. They must be linked into the comms as we are. Move!”
“See that?” Drake pointed at the fortress. “Call the chopper. If we can climb the castle and defend ourselves, it can take us from there.”
Hayden cast a glance back toward the outskirts of Çanakkale. “If we can defend a castle, in a tourist city, against six Special Forces teams.”
Dahl hefted the box. “Only one way to find out.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Instinctively, they moved toward the coastal path, knowing it would wind around toward the town’s impressive fort. Lauren elicited very little information from the blasts of comms chatter and Drake heard even less from the various team overseers, but the general consensus was that they were all closing in fast.
The path led past many white-fronted buildings: houses, shops and restaurants facing the Hellespont’s rippling blue waters. Cars stood parked to the left and beyond them, several small boats, with the high, sand-colored fort walls towering above all. Tourist coaches passed by, grumbling slowly through the narrow streets. Horns honked. Locals gathered outside a popular coffee shop, smoking and talking. The team hurried as fast as they could without attracting suspicion.
Not easy when wearing combat gear, but purposely for this mission they wore all black and could remove and conceal those items that might attract attention. Still, a group moving as they were turned heads and Drake saw more than one phone flipped open.
“Call the damn chopper in fast,” he said. “We’ve run out of land and bloody time here.”
“On its way. Ten-fifteen minutes out.”
An age in combat, he knew. Some of the other Special Forces teams would have no qualms about raising hell in the city, confident of their orders and ability to escape, knowing the authorities would usually put a terrorist spin on any intensely threatening situation.
Sand-colored walls rose sharply right in front of them. The fort of Çanakkale had two rounded, sea-facing castle walls and a central keep and, beyond that, a sweeping arm of battlements that ran downhill back toward the sea. Drake followed the line of the first curving wall, wondering what lay at the conjunction of this and its sister. Hayden paused ahead and glanced back.
“We go up.”
A brave decision but one Drake agreed with. To go up meant they’d be stuck in the fort, defending from a high position but exposed, trapped. To continue meant they had other options besides running into the sea: they could hide in the city, find a car, potentially go to ground or split up for a while.
But Hayden’s option kept them at the head of the game. There were other Horsemen out there. The chopper would find them easier. Their skills were better employed in a tactical battle.
Rough walls gave way to an arched entrance and then a set of winding stairs. Hayden went first, followed by Dahl and Kenzie, then the others. Smyth brought up the rear. Darkness made a mantle for their eyes, hanging thick and impenetrable until they became used to it. Still, up they went, climbing the stairs and heading back to the light. Drake tried to filter all the relevant information to his brain and make sense of it.
Hannibal. The Horseman of War. The Order of the Last Judgment and their blueprint to make a better world for those that survived. The governments of the world should be working together on this, but ruthless, greedy individuals wanted the spoils and the knowledge for themselves.
The four corners of the earth? How did that work? And what the hell was coming next?
“Interestingly…” Lauren’s voice crackled through the comms at that moment. “Çanakkale is situated on two continents and was one of the launching points for Gallipoli. Now, the Russians have entered the town and so have the Israelis. Don’t know where. Local police chatter is rife, though. Some of the citizens must have reported you and are now calling in the new arrivals. It won’t be long before the Turks call in their own elite forces.”
Drake shook his head. Bollocks.
“We’ll be long gone by then.” Hayden moved cautiously into the light above. “Ten minutes guys. C’mon.”
The mid-morning sunshine beat down on the wide-open, sparse area of land almost at the top of the tower. The tower’s circular top lip jutted up another eight feet above their heads, but this was as high as they went without getting inside. Broken battlements lay all about, projecting like ragged fingers, and a dusty path bordered a series of low mounds off to the right. Drake saw a plethora of defensible positions and breathed a little easier.
“We’re here,” Hayden said to Lauren. “Tell the helo to prepare for a hot pick up.”
“Hotter than you think,” Smyth said.
The entire team stared downward.
“Not down,” Smyth said. “Up. Up.”
Above the castle, the town still littered the hills. Houses stood overlooking the battlements and walls stretched high and thick toward them. It was across these walls that a team of four men ran, faces covered, guns fully exposed.
Drake recognized the style. “Fuck, that’s trouble. SAS.”