Chapter Sixteen
Sadik was the fastest, with Sam and Tom following just behind. All three of them ran down the northern tunnel. It was the quickest three miles Sam had run in a long time. His breathing was hard and his chest burned from the effort. They’d run the entire trip without stopping. On two occasions, Sam had considered resting for a moment, only to hear the sound of shotguns being fired at them from behind. The spread of shotgun pellets were still a long way off from hitting them, but it was a good incentive to keep moving.
Sam turned the corner and the tunnel came to an end. The wall in front had been sealed with some sort of mortar long ago. He quickly studied the dead end, shining his flashlight in all directions, looking for any other ways out. There were none.
Sadik looked like he was about to collapse with exhaustion. His face was flushed and he was unable to speak because of the effort being used to keep breathing. Behind them, another shotgun fired. It was getting closer.
Tom took up a firing stance, aiming his Glock down the tunnel. “I guess we’re back to square one. We’re going to have to fight our way out.”
“Forget it,” Sam said, removing his dive knife and stabbing at the wall. “Give me a hand to break through this wall.”
The soft, volcanic rock broke away and crumbled with each movement. It had been cemented up using a mixture of mortar made from volcanic rock and lime to make cement-like glue. Sam pried at the mortar that held a large stone in the wall. It was made using ground up pumice and lime, making it brittle and weak. The stone came free easily enough and Sam pulled it out. Tom threw his weight into the wall, and tried to pull out another stone using his bare hands. The wall started to move under his strength.
Behind them, another shot fired. A few pellets embedded themselves on the wall about ten feet away. Sam dropped his knife and started kicking the wall. Tom joined in, too, while Sadik fumbled away pulling at the remaining stones.
Another shot fired loudly.
It sounded like it was less than a hundred feet away. Sam turned and fired three rounds from his Glock down the tunnel, giving his attackers the tiniest of pauses. When they fired again, Tom ran toward the wall, putting all two hundred and sixty pounds of his weight into it. The entire wall shook and began to fragment. He hit it again, and more stone and mortar fell to the floor. Sam joined him on the third attempt, and both men fell through the wall.
It opened into the dining room of a cave hotel. The walls showed the classic stone formation found throughout Gerome. At least fifteen people were eating dinner, and stood up at their intrusion. A waiter still held a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice.
“Sorry,” Sam said, as he glanced at the waiter.
The room was suddenly filled with the reports of multiple shotguns being fired. Tom fired several shots back into the opening he’d just created. He yelled, “Everybody out!”
Pandemonium engulfed the quiet restaurant as people fled. Sam emptied the remaining rounds from his Glock into the opening. He looked at Sadik and Tom. “Let’s go.”
They ran up a series of stone steps, passing four levels before reaching the ground floor and entrance to the hotel. Two waiters blocked their exit. Tom pushed through the two waiters who tried to stop them, sending them flying onto their backs. He didn’t apologize. Instead he kept running. They pushed through the large glass doors, and ran out into a world right out of the mind of Walt Disney when he conjured up Disneyland.
The Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia appeared magical as they were lit up with thousands of fluorescent lights. The ancient stone towers looked perfectly suited for a fantasy ride in the Magical Kingdom. But this was no one's fantasy, and the ride they were on was starting to no longer be any fun.
Sam heard more shots being fired. The shotguns sounded like they had been replaced by handguns. He hoped his pursuers hadn’t spotted them yet, and were just firing into the air to get his attention. A moment later several bullets whirred through the air next to his head — okay, they got it all right.
Tom fired back while Sam was still trying to work out where the shots were coming from. The report of multiple shots went quiet, and Sam spotted two men falling down a set of stone stairs about forty or fifty feet away.
He turned to Tom and smiled. “Nice shooting.”
Tom loaded another magazine. “Thanks.”
Sam swept the landscape in a single glance. A series of stone stairs and walkways mingled around the brightly lit and colorful Fairy Chimneys through heights ranging from thirty to a hundred and twenty feet. Florescent lights lit up various aspects with deep blues, purples, greens and reds. A tall man with a barreled chest ran out of the Aria Cave Hotel, where they’d just left, holding a shotgun. He fired straight toward them. Sam and Tom ducked.
Sam heard the loud click of the pump-action ejecting the spent round and chambering a fresh one, over the sound of bystanders and tourists fleeing. It was instantly followed by the massive report of the weapon firing again and the soft volcanic rock above their heads was splintered into a thousand pieces.
Sam and Tom stood up simultaneously and sent two rounds each into the man’s chest. His vacant eyes looked at his shotgun, unable to accept his fate, before rolling down the stairs — dead before he struck the pavement below.
“Sadik’s run off without us!” Sam said.
Tom shrugged. “Can you blame him? We nearly got him killed. He’s got a better chance of hiding without us.”
“You’re right, let’s go.”
They followed the pathway in a northerly direction. It meandered around several Fairy Chimneys, changing its height by more than fifty feet and crossing the valley multiple times, through a series of small tunnels and caves.
Each time they thought they’d gotten away from their pursuers, a new barrage of shots would fire at them from the south. They took it in turns to fire back, doing so only when one of them spotted a clear shot. They were both down to the last few rounds of their magazines. Sam had one more magazine left, and Tom was completely out. They would only risk a shot if they knew they could hit someone.
Sam and Tom were extremely fit. They were also driven with the primal will to survive. Adrenaline surged through their bodies giving them additional strength and endurance. The reports from gunshots were getting further away.
It took twenty minutes to reach the top of the hill, where the Goreme Yolu road met the end of the Gereme National Park — and more importantly, the last of their protective cover. Sam was breathing hard. It had been a long time since he’d been forced to run so hard for so long. He studied the landscape. It became a mostly leveled plain, with minimal camouflage and even less protective cover. Across the road, and about three hundred feet away, some people were setting up a hot air balloon in a field.
A shot was fired somewhere behind them and its bullet went so wide they had no idea where it landed. The sound was all the encouragement Sam needed to keep moving. “Come on. Let’s see what we can find over there!”
He made it several steps on to Goreme Yolu and a taxi pulled out in front of them. Its tires screeched as the driver came to halt just beside them. The yellow taxi, a Karsan V-1, smelled heavily of brake fluid and burnt tires, as though its driver had been driving it hard. The driver was honking the horn madly. At the end of the path behind them two men started to shoot. Sam ran around the taxi and ducked down below the driver’s door.
The driver wound the window down. It was Sadik. “Get in!”
Sam and Tom didn’t need to be told twice. Sam opened the front door and slipped inside. Tom climbed into the back seat simultaneously.
“Drive!” Sam yelled.
Sadik shoved his foot on the pedal and the taxi accelerated hard. Sam emptied his rounds into his attackers, until the Glocks’s firing pin struck an empty chamber. Thirty seconds later, the taxi had disappeared out of their attacker’s reach and the shots finally went quiet.