S
itting on a park bench down the street from the entrance to the Basilica, I wanted to punch myself for being so damned myopically tunnel-focused on my vendetta against the Russians. How on earth I hadn’t made the connection between Aaron’s team and the thumb drive mission was beyond me. I mean, how many Israeli James Bonds could there be running around Turkey?
Aaron hadn’t shown up, giving the mission to Shoshana as a singleton. At least he wasn’t with her. I watched her purchase a ticket, and made the call to Jennifer.
She said, “Shoshana? Really? I just assumed you’d cleared them from this.”
Okay, rub it in.
“Well, I didn’t, and this isn’t a coincidence. She’s going after the thumb drive.”
“Pike, there’s a security guard leaning on the pinpoint location. I mean leaning right on the thumb drive. I can’t get it right now. I need a diversion.”
I watched Shoshana get swallowed in the darkness of the Cistern. “She’s coming down. She’ll be at your location in seconds.”
“What do you want me to do? She’s going to recognize me, but I can’t abandon this position. She’ll get the drive.”
“Get out. Leave Retro. Let him execute. He’s an unknown.”
She said, “He’s supposed to be my security. My interference in case of trouble. Who’ll back him up?”
“Nobody. Move. We’re out of time.”
“Okay, okay, I’m off. Retro has the ball.”
“Put your phone in radio mode—break, break, Retro, this is Pike, radio check.”
“I got you, and I got the ball. I can’t stand here forever, though.”
“Understood, we’ll take it one piece at a time. If—”
“Jennifer’s coming back down.”
Huh?
“Pike, this is Koko. Shoshana must have sprinted. The path for the entire Cistern is basically a U shape, but there’s a single ribbon off of it leading to the Medusa heads. I was going up the stairs and saw her. If I tried to reach the main path to leave the Cistern, she’d have seen me for sure.”
I stood up and began walking to the entrance. “So now what are you going to do? She’s coming right toward you.”
“I’ll try to hide between the columns. She’ll fixate on the location of the drive, and I’ll be twenty meters away, over by the head on its side.”
I said, “Stand by,” and paid for a ticket. I started down, saying, “I’m coming in.”
“Pike, she’s going to recognize you as well.”
“I know. I’m thinking that’s not such a bad thing.”
I reached the bottom of the stairs and took a moment to get my bearings in the gloom, wondering if a dragon was going to slide out from between the columns. I followed the crowd but moved slowly, letting them pass me while keeping inside their bubble.
I scanned for Shoshana through the people flitting about and saw her leaning against the rail, peering intently at a narrow sidewalk shooting off of the primary concrete path.
Must be the path Jennifer said goes to the gorgon heads.
I said, “I got the target. She’s looking hard. How’s your heat state?”
Retro said, “I’m okay. There are enough people around here that I’m not standing out. Yet. But I need this fucking rent-a-cop to move.”
Jennifer said, “I’m good. I’m on the far side, next to the sideways head. I can hang out here for a while.”
I saw Shoshana raise a phone and start to talk. From the expression, I knew she was talking to Aaron. Knew she was aware of our presence, and was now coordinating how to skin the cat with us in play. I said, “Jennifer, you’re busted. She’s spotted you. I don’t know how, but she has.”
The Israeli hung up and began to rapidly move down the path, keeping the crowd in between her and the offshoot that led to the stone heads and the thumb drive. I followed, uneasy about what she was going to do.
We looped around, now headed on the final leg of the U toward the exit. I wondered what her plan was, running through my head what I would do in her shoes. I saw a café to the front and questioned if she was going to hide in there, although I had no idea what she could execute if she did.
She held up about fifty meters from the café and the stairwell to the exit, next to a little concrete platform jutting out from the main path. It had a lower railing and a placard announcing something. I could see people leaning over the lower railing, staring into the water.
I watched her closely, and she settled in with an eye to the path coming from the stone heads and my team. Luckily, I had already gone past her position because I was forced to stay with a crowd to remain undetected. I was now between her and the exit, and she was focused on the path to the stone heads, away from me. She pulled out her phone and began to talk. I saw her face harden at whatever was said. She hung up, and in that instant, I knew what Aaron had ordered. He was going all in, and was going to have her interdict Jennifer for the drive.
Shoshana was preparing for an ambush.
I considered my options, wondering if this damn thumb drive was worth the problem. I could call the team off and just go over to her, telling her the thumb drive was hers for the taking. I had half a mind to do that anyway. The whole scheme of stealing the drive from an ally didn’t sit well to begin with.
But I knew I couldn’t do that.
I keyed the radio. “What’s your status?”
Jennifer said, “I’m still holding.”
Retro said, “Barney Fife is still here.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Get ready. I’m going to give you your diversion. When the cop leaves, get the drive and haul ass out of here.”
I began moving toward Shoshana, making sure she was still focused on the path coming up. Her face was hard, thinking through the attack plan on Jennifer. Retro said, “What’s that mean, Pike? What about the Israeli?”
I whispered, “Get ready. Ten seconds.”
Jennifer said, “What are you going to do?”
Closing the distance to a meter, I slipped to the rear of a family, getting me directly behind Shoshana, not saying a word in response. I waited a beat for the family to clear, leaving me exposed. She sensed my presence just as I struck, hooking an arm under her leg and flipping her over the rail to the water a meter below.
She slapped her hands onto the rail, attempting to stop the rotation, but it did no good. She snarled and I saw her eyes lock onto mine, the recognition flashing through her.
She splashed into the black liquid and people began to shout. I immediately leaned over the rail in a show of helping the poor tourist who’d fallen in, shouting into my earpiece, “Execute, execute, execute.”
Retro said, “Security guard is headed your way. I’m in.”
Leaning over, my hand held out to the swimming “tourist,” I whispered, “You got about twenty seconds.”
Shoshana thrashed around in the water, then slapped an arm over the low railing. She looked up at me with pure hatred. I said, “Sorry. Come on. I’ll help you out.”
She grabbed my hand and I heard, “Jackpot. Moving to exfil.”
I hoisted her up with other tourists now joining to help. We got her onto the deck and she stared at me with smoldering anger, still not talking.
I said, “It had to be done. You know it.”
I saw her eyes flash to the crowd, fixating on something behind me. I made the mistake of turning, fearing a threat from Aaron or another partner of hers. Instead, I saw Jennifer and Retro speed-walking away. Before I could turn back, she hooked my leg and flipped me to the ground, my back hammering the concrete. I rolled right and she straddled my waist, driving a spear hand straight into my throat, hitting it hard enough to bruise my larynx but stopping short of killing me.
She said, “Next time I won’t hold back. Leave well enough alone.”
She sprang off of me and began to run, following Jennifer and Retro. I rolled onto my knees, hacking and holding my damaged esophagus. I coughed out, “She’s coming. I say again, she’s coming.”
Y
uri began to grow anxious. He could see Kristov outside of the exit, just beyond the vendor selling bracelets, and he’d watched scores of people leave the Cistern, but hadn’t seen the woman. Considering she was one of the first ones in, and should have moved straight to retrieve the thumb drive, he didn’t understand how she hadn’t come out yet. Too many others had leisurely roamed the Cistern and were now moving on to other tourist destinations.
He said, “Are you sure she couldn’t have come back out the entrance?”
Kristov said, “No. They wouldn’t let her, and anyway, that’s very poor tradecraft. She would have had to make an excuse to do so. Why would she do that? Why raise a signature when she could just exit like a tourist?”
“Maybe she made us. Maybe she knows I’m here.”
Kristov started to respond when Yuri saw her, the head bobbing in the reticle of his scope. Ripe for the taking.
He cut off the conversation, saying, “I have the target. Preparing to engage.”
Kristov said, “You have the man? Caucasian with a mustache, dressed in old clothes.”
He panned the scope and found the other American. “Yes. I have him as well.”
“Pick your target. One of them has it. I can’t search both. You need to put the correct one down.”
Yuri cursed. The plan had been based on the single Israeli coming out. Now he had two targets. Which to shoot?
He settled on the woman, his bloodlust rising to a fever pitch. He wanted to kill her.
Needed
to kill her.
“I’m taking the girl.”
Kristov said, “Wait, wait. They’re moving to you, and the man is digging into his pocket. Give it a moment.”
Yuri watched the action from one hundred meters away, his finger subconsciously taking up the slack in the trigger. Wanting to see the plume of red over the bitch who had killed his men. The man held out something, showing the girl as they rapidly moved away from the Cistern exit.
He cursed again, the mission taking priority over his desire for revenge. He shifted focus, settling the reticle on the man, compensating for the range with the mil-dots in his scope.
He said, “I see the drive in the man’s hand. Shooter ready.”
Kristov said, “Send it.”
He gently pulled back on the trigger and felt it break. There was a soft clap, and the weapon cycled. The recoil was negligible, and the target remained in view of the scope. In the split second between the trigger breaking the plane of no return and the subsonic round exiting the barrel, an unknown woman tackled the man from behind, grabbing his hair and jerking him off of his feet.
He saw the round strike, but instead of splitting his head it hit the man in the shoulder. The pair tumbled to the ground, falling behind a row of trash cans, the woman’s upper torso the only thing in view.
He centered the weapon and squeezed again, the round’s impact lost. He saw Kristov arrive, attempting to get the drive, blocking a further engagement. The woman who had tackled the man drove the palm of her hand into Kristov’s nose, and Yuri saw him recoil in pain. He cracked another round, feeling the slight recoil and seeing the plastic puff out once again.
The woman rolled, the bullet missing, and the bitch who had killed Dmitri entered the fray, jumping on Kristov, grabbing his arm, and rotating it in a direction it was not intended to go.
Yuri flipped the selector switch to automatic and squeezed the trigger, peppering the impact zone with rounds, not caring if Kristov was one of those hit.
• • •
I bounced onto the sidewalk at a dead run, racing to the tangle of people on the ground. Praying that Shoshana hadn’t been so pissed that she’d force Retro to hurt her. Or worse, that she’d harmed him.
For some dumb reason, I genuinely liked her, and I didn’t want to escalate this little Easter-egg hunt into harm on either side. It just wasn’t worth it.
I closed on the tangled mass and saw a third man behind a garbage can, nose bloodied and Jennifer on him cranking his arm in a debilitating joint lock. I was close enough to hear it pop, and definitely close enough to hear him scream.
What the fuck?
Shoshana ducked behind the cans, holding her arms over her head, then I saw the dust kicking off of the brick wall. Retro sat up, his expression a daze, his shoulder a mass of red. The realization hit home, and time slowed, like the final step off of a high dive.
Bullets. Someone’s shooting.
I heard nothing. No crack of rounds, no pop of gunfire. But it was real, and my mind began computing the means of escape at the speed of light. How to get into the kill zone and rescue all three without being hit.
I knew it was impossible. I bore down on them, waiting on the slugs to tear into my flesh, the people around the scene gaping at the tussle, unaware of the death floating in the air. Absurdly, the movie
Unforgiven
flashed in my head, as it had numerous times in combat before.
In the climactic scene, when Clint Eastwood was asked how he knew whom to kill first, because a gunfighter always knew, he’d said he was just lucky. Then he’d said, “But I’ve always been lucky.”
That scene raced once more in my head as I slid into the vortex. Praying that I would be lucky yet again.
I rammed into Shoshana, ducking low behind the cans. She whipped around, trying to strike me. I parried the blow and said, “Get Retro on his feet.”
I turned without a word and hammered the guy Jennifer held, striking him right above the nose and bouncing his skull against the stone. I felt a round impact the wall next to my head and ducked, slamming Jennifer into the pavement behind the cans, out of view from the sniper.
I screamed, “Forward! Get around the building.”
The garbage cans worked fine for concealment, but offered no protection. Eventually, a lucky round was going to come through and hit one of us. It was counterintuitive, but our closest cover was running into the gunfire, and I knew by the lack of noise the killer was shooting subsonic, which meant the bullets were coming out in an arc, hell and gone from a flat, supersonic round. Any change in distance would give us an edge, as it would force him to compensate his hold for a kill.
Shoshana had Retro to his knees and I threw him over my shoulder, hearing him bellow he could run. I had no time to triage him and didn’t want to find out if he was wrong. I told him to shut up, and heaved to my feet in a fireman’s carry. I nudged Jennifer in the ass and I took off at a shambling trot, rounding the building with the brick chipping around me.
We got to the back side, surrounded by stone cover, and I dropped Retro unceremoniously in the dirt. He groaned from the impact, and I began checking him out, relieved to see an in-and-out flesh wound to the shoulder. Nothing else. He’d have some serious recovery time, but he wouldn’t die within the next few minutes.
I told Jennifer to put pressure on the wound and began running exfil through my mind. I turned to Shoshana, saying, “Where’s your vehicle?”
She said, “I’m out of here,” and began to stand. I grabbed her wrist and twisted, bringing her to her knees.
“You’re going nowhere. You want to fight and we’ll spend our time wrestling until the cops show up, but I promise when I go to jail you’ll go to the hospital. Or the morgue. We leave
together
. I can’t get my man out without your help. Understand?”
She saw the truth in my eyes. She said, “Let go of my arm.”
I did so and she got on her phone. She spoke in Hebrew for a moment, then hung up.
She said, “Follow me.”