It was like a red rag to Reilly.
He turned the machine gun on its end and, using the gun’s folding metal stock as a battering ram, hammered the Iranian’s hand to the wall.
The Iranian let out an elemental howl as the gun’s metal stock pulverized the bones and tore apart the tendons in his hand. The excruciating pain caused his knees to buckle and he just rag-dolled to the floor, his eyes shut tight. Reilly felt his veins popping with bloodlust. He brought the gun back up, lining it up to pound the Iranian’s head this time, knowing the blow would crush the man’s skull and possibly end his life there and then—
—but before he could bring it down, something hard hit him from behind, battering him at the base of his neck and cutting off the power supply to his arms.
One of the other gunmen was back on his feet.
As Reilly tumbled to the ground, he saw that it was actually worse than that. Two of them were back up, the guard whose face he’d wrecked and the gunman who’d appeared with the Iranian.
The rest was a blur of fists, elbows, and kicks, raining down on him from all sides. With every blow, he felt his strength seep away, felt the blood from his cuts cloud his vision and choke his throat, felt the breath fighting to find its way into his lungs, felt his fingers and hands go numb from the lack of circulation. The last thing he saw was the Iranian’s face, glaring down at him fiercely through a fog of rabid sneers, his entire face just dripping with venom—then a final kick to the face cut out all the light and dumped him into a painless sleep.
Chapter 59
RHODES, GREECE
Endaxi, tower. Clear takeoff, runway two five, wilco. Request maintain fifteen hundred feet to alpha to take a good look at your beautiful island, Niner Mike Alpha.”
“Fifteen hundred feet to alpha is approved. Enjoy the view.”
Steyl smiled and throttled forward. “Roger. Efkharisto poli.”
He nursed the Cessna Conquest off the runway and into the early morning sky. It felt good to be airborne again. He had been getting antsy, sitting idle at Rhodes’s Diagoras International Airport, refueled and ready, unable to venture far from his aircraft while he waited for Zahed’s signal. He’d been fast asleep when the call had finally come in, late into the night. Then he’d gone back to sleep for a few hours before setting off at first light.
He was flying southwest, headed for another island—a much smaller one this time, the island of Kassos, his official destination. It was in the opposite direction to where he needed to end up, but it was the most suitable foil, given that its tiny airport didn’t have a control tower and that procedures had to be followed rigorously if he didn’t want to raise anyone’s suspicion. Which he wouldn’t. Finding holes in the procedures, no matter how rigorous, was second nature to Steyl. He knew what he was doing, probably better than anyone in the business.
He reached the approved altitude in less than a minute and radioed the tower again, and was instructed to switch over to the approach controller’s frequency. He did so, got cleared to stay at fifteen hundred feet all the way to Kassos, and was told to switch over again, this time to Athens Information, for the rest of his journey. Which he did. But he also did something else. He switched off his transponder. Without it, the plane’s transponder code, altitude, and registration wouldn’t appear on the tower’s radar. It would only show an anonymous blip.
He kept up the pretense and stayed on his announced heading for another minute while gently descending to an altitude of five hundred feet. He contacted the tower again, but got nothing back. Which made him smile. They couldn’t hear him. He was out of radio contact—which also meant he was outside the radar’s sweep.
He could now go anywhere he liked, undisturbed.
He banked left to head south and passed the southwestern tip of Rhodes. He maintained that heading for another ten kilometers over open water, then pulled the plane sharply around to a northeasterly heading, toward his real destination: a remote location just under three hundred miles away, deep inside Turkey.
The visibility that low was lousy. A light wind and high barometric pressure had generated a light mist that squatted ominously over the water. Steyl couldn’t see Rhodes anymore because of it, which was good. It meant no one could see him from land. His only remaining risk was being spotted by a ship. So he switched on his weather radar, which would show any vessels ahead of him. He’d have plenty of time to skirt around any that happened to crop up and continue on his stealthy voyage.
At low altitude, he’d get there in a little over an hour. He didn’t plan on spending more than a few minutes on the ground, so the round trip would take around two and a half hours, total. Which was fine for a low-altitude, sightseeing trip to a small island that didn’t have a control tower. He wouldn’t be missed.
He checked his watch, then pulled out his satphone and called Zahed. He informed him of his progress, then settled back and took in the view as the Conquest’s twin turboprops reeled in the Turkish coast. If all went well, he anticipated parting company with the Iranian by the end of the day. He’d then head back to his villa in Malta, where he would lie on his sundeck with a cold beer in his hand and figure out how to spend his latest chunk of easy money.
ZAHED WAITED ON THE EDGE of the salt lake and watched as the sun tore itself from the far side of the water’s pristine, flat surface.
By mid-morning, it would look like an infinite expanse of white under a radiant blue dome. Right now, the low sun was bathing it with a crisp, bronze-like wash. It looked like a dull metal sheet that stretched out from right under his feet all the way to the horizon. Another insane landscape, he thought. He’d seen more of them in the last few days than he thought possible. The entire cursed region seemed to him like it had been cut and pasted from another planet. He took comfort from the thought that he’d soon be out of it. Back into comfortable, familiar, earthly settings. Back home. Where he’d be feted for achieving the impossible.
For bringing back his prize.
The early morning air was still and cool and reeked of salt. It helped with his dizziness, but not with his throat, which felt as parched as the dry lands that were spread out before him. He was also shivering. He’d lost a lot of blood, and despite the painkillers, he was still hurting badly. The shakes were also getting worse. He needed medical attention, and soon. He knew his hand was bad. He knew it might never work properly again, knew he might lose it altogether. Either way, it would have to wait. He had to get out of there, fast. The American woman had managed to escape. She would have alerted the Turks. His hand was a huge price to pay, but it was still cheap when compared to his freedom and, quite probably, his life.
His phone beeped. He reached for it and turned to face the opposite direction and concentrate on the horizon. It wasn’t long before he spotted the tiny dot, streaking in low and fast, the low sun glinting off its windshield. He confirmed to Steyl that everything was clear, then gave his men a nod and took a step back for a wider view. The engines of two SUVs, which were parked a hundred meters apart, one behind the other, rumbled to life. Then their lights and their flashers came on, two distinct sets of red and yellow beacons against a perfectly flat copper backdrop.
Zahed watched the plane line up along the axis made by the two SUVs and studied the makeshift runway beyond them. It looked perfect. Dry and hard, flat as a football field, not a ripple as far as the eye could see. The lake’s name, Tuz Golu, simply meant “salt lake.” Which is what it was. A massive, six-hundred-square-mile pool of shallow, saline water that dried up and turned into a gargantuan bed of salt every summer. Two-thirds of the salt that ended up on dining tables across Turkey came from there, but the mines and processing plants that made it happen were farther north or on the other side of the lake. The area Steyl had chosen was, as the pilot had predicted, deserted. It was also less than an hour’s drive from Konya. Yet more feathers in the pilot’s peacock tail of a cap. And yet more confirmation for Zahed that he had chosen well.