The Templar Salvation (2010)

by Raymond Khoury

  Reilly fought to regain some kind of focus in his mind, to order his frazzled thoughts into some kind of coherent plan. He spotted Ertugrul around thirty yards from him. The legat was flat on his back and wasn’t moving either. Beyond him, Reilly could see a couple of commandos who seemed uninjured and were tending to the wounded. He started toward them, hoping they were in radio contact with their comrades down the hill, the ones who had stayed behind with Tess. Then he remembered his own comm set and instinctively brought his hand up to his ear. His wireless headset was gone, no doubt blown away by the blast. He felt his pockets, but his transmitter wasn’t there either. He paused and dropped his gaze to the ground, scanning the rough soil for it, but quickly decided that was pointless. He’d moved around since the first explosion, and there was little hope of spotting the transmitter in the darkness. He staggered across the clearing again, toward the commandos, and stopped when he got to Ertugrul. A large patch of blood had darkened the soil around the legat’s head, and it didn’t look like he was breathing. He was just staring out into nothing, without blinking. Reilly bent down beside him and put two fingers to his neck. Ertugrul’s carotid artery wasn’t throbbing. He was gone.

  Reilly set his hand on the fallen agent’s shoulder and exhaled heavily. He glanced around through seething eyes, the frustration pinning him down. Then he saw it, shimmering in the flames, a few feet behind Ertugrul’s body: the legat’s earpiece. He got back on his feet and retrieved it, and held it up with trembling fingers that were caked with blood and mud. It seemed intact. He clipped it onto his ear, hoping it was still working, and with a hoarse, faint voice, muttered, “Hawk Command? Come in, Hawk Command.”

  The controller’s voice thundered back. “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened out there? You okay?”

  “I’m okay, but Ertugrul’s dead,” Reilly said. He was back with the legat now, rummaging through his pockets, looking for the dead man’s transmitter and feeling like a vulture. “Others too. It’s bad. Real bad. We’re going to need medevacs. You need to get them here now.”

  “Copy that. Hang on,” the controller said. “I’m handing you over to my CO.”

  “Wait,” Reilly interrupted. “The bird. Is it still here?”

  “Affirmative. Pull back is in seven minutes.”

  Reilly shut his eyes tight, blocking out the carnage around him, trying to keep his mind focused. “The target vehicle. Are you tracking it?”

  “Affirmative. It traveled down the mountain just after the blast. What was that?”

  Reilly knew the explosion would have registered as a big flash on the drone’s infrared sensors, but chose to ignore the question. “And then what? Where did it go?”

  “It reached the detachment at the bottom of the hill and it looks like it crashed into one of the Humvees. One person got out of it. We’re assuming that’s your target, correct?”

  Reilly’s insides tightened. “Then what?”

  “We’re assuming an exchange of gunfire. There was some movement. We’re showing three friendlies down.”

  The tightening turned into a garrote as his mind raced through its cache, trying to remember how many commandos had stayed back with Tess. “Three? You’re sure of that?”

  “Affirmative. Then two figures got back into the target vehicle and it drove off.”

  Two figures. Reilly’s heart flared. “Where is it now?”

  “Hang on.” After a brief moment, the voice came back. “It’s about four clicks south of your position, heading toward a town called Cayirozu.”

  “Keep tracking it as long as you can, I think our target’s got Tess Chaykin with him and—”

  The controller interrupted, his tone distant and robotic. “Pull back’s now in under five—”

  “Stay on them, do you hear me?” Reilly rasped. “Don’t lose them. And get through to the Jandarma’s command and give them their position. I’m going after them.” His fingers found Ertugrul’s transmitter. He pocketed it, took one last look at his dead colleague, then got up again and headed down the hill.

  He knew they’d soon lose sight of the Discovery, once the drone had to bail and head back to its base in Qatar before its fuel ran out. No one at Beale was going to authorize trashing a multimillion-dollar piece of top secret wizardry just to track down Reilly’s target. And even with the best will in the world, it would take a while to get another drone approved and re-tasked. By then, the Discovery would be long gone, taking Tess along with it.

  Not what he needed to focus on right now.

  Not with the endless slog down, in near-darkness, along the rock-strewn trail, on legs that could barely hold him up.

  IT TOOK HIM TWENTY MINUTES to reach the clearing where he’d left Tess. The first glimmers of daylight were rising from behind the mountain, painting the area in a soft, golden glow. The sight that greeted him, however, was at great odds with its pastoral setting. Three dead commandos. Three crippled vehicles. And no sign of Tess.

  He leaned against the Humvee where he’d last seen her standing, and caught his breath. He assumed the Turks would have reinforcements on the way by now, but they’d need time to get there. He had to decide what to do. If he stayed there and waited for them, it was likely that he would get embroiled in a jurisdictional tug-of-war and get sidelined. The Turks wouldn’t take kindly to the massacre that had occurred, and they wouldn’t necessarily want an outsider to interfere with their manhunt. Plus there was the language barrier to consider. By the time strings were pulled to try to keep him in the game, precious time would have been lost.

  More importantly, he realized that getting Tess back safely wouldn’t be the Turkish military’s priority. They would be desperate to get their hands on the bomber, that would be their prime objective. Tess’s safety was a distant second. If it ever came down to it and getting their man meant sacrificing Tess, Reilly had no illusions that she wouldn’t be expendable in their eyes. Hell, he’d be expendable too. Not that he’d been particularly effective at keeping Simmons safe either. No, he couldn’t trust anyone else to try to rescue her.

  He had to keep going, on his own. Ahead of the troops.

  Stay on point.

  They were more than welcome to follow in his tracks and swoop in. In fact, he’d call in for backup and invite them in—after she was out of harm’s way.

  He found the pack he’d left in the Humvee and recovered it. It still held his BlackBerry and his wallet. Something on the seat beside it caught his eye: a hastily folded map, next to a flashlight. He recognized the map. When he’d left Tess, she had been trying to lay out the inquisitor’s journey on it now that they knew where the monastery was.

  He opened it up. Sure enough, Tess had marked the monastery’s rough position on it, based on the location of the parked SUVs and on the assumption that Simmons and his abductor had actually found it. She’d then marked possible routes and scribbled notes alongside them, using the contours of the terrain to try to follow the inquisitor’s notes. The route split up into different branches at a couple of locations, and she’d put several question marks along the way. One route, however, had been marked off more solidly and seemed to stand out. It looked like the one she thought was the right one.

  Reilly studied it for a moment, then folded up the map.

  “Clever girl,” he said under his breath. His depleted reservoir of adrenaline had just gotten a small top-up.

  He checked the vehicles, grabbed a canteen full of water, a pair of powerful field binoculars, a handgun, and three full magazines, threw the lot along with his stuff into a field pack, and set off again.

  Chapter 33

  Tess sat quietly in the passenger seat, crippled with dread, as the Discovery cut through the sleepy town. The roads were deserted at that early hour. There were a few signs of life here and there—an old man on a rickety horse-drawn cart lumbering down the side of the road, another man and his son walking across a vineyard—but none of it was really registering in her mind. All she was thinking about and ago
nizing over was what had happened farther up the mountain from where she’d been, who might still be alive, and who might have died. She’d seen him kill up close, she knew how effective he was at it, and no matter how hard she tried to console herself and stay hopeful, the thought that Reilly could be lying somewhere up there, bleeding out—or worse—was tearing her up inside.

  She saw her abductor check his watch, then look ahead again, his mind clearly planning.

  “Are we late for something?” she asked, trying to appear stoic and avoiding the question that was burning inside her.

  He didn’t react for a moment, then turned to her, sphinxlike as ever, and gave her a humorless smile that reeked of pity and condescension. “Did you miss me?”

  She felt her spine tighten up, but made sure nothing in her expression gave it away. She thought of a snappy retort or two that she could hit him with, but she didn’t want to engage with him that way, preferring to keep some kind of barrier between them. Instead, she finally succumbed to her desperate need to know and asked, “What happened up there?”

  He ignored her for a beat, then said, “I had to improvise.”

  His smugness was driving her nuts. She felt like grabbing his head and pounding it repeatedly against the steering wheel, and she found a snippet of pleasure in picturing herself doing it. She ran through a couple of wild moves in her mind—yanking the steering wheel from him and forcing the car off the road, waiting for a slow turn and leaping out the door—but decided against them. They wouldn’t work. She resigned herself to the idea that she needed to bide her time and hope for a more promising opening to present itself.

  She calmed herself and asked, “And Jed?”

  He looked at her curiously. “You ask about him, and not about your boyfriend? Despite everything Reilly did to get you back?”

  She really didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he could toy with her emotions like that, but she had to know. “Are they still alive?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. It was pretty dark up there. But you shouldn’t worry too much about them. Think more about yourself, and about what you can do to stay alive.” He paused, then added, “You can start by telling me how they found me.”

  Tess froze, conflicting thoughts colliding in her mind. She couldn’t put off answering for too long, so she said, “I don’t know,” realizing how unconvincing she sounded even before the words had left her mouth.

  Her abductor slid a knowing look her way, then reached into his waistband and pulled out a handgun. He swung it across until it settled against her cheek. “Please. Your boyfriend’s leading the charge and you’re not exactly a wallflower. So I’ll ask you one last time: How did you find me?”

  The steel muzzle was pressing uncomfortably against her jaw. “We … we guessed.” She thought the pause, and his inevitable retort, would buy her time.

  “You guessed?”

  “Well, an educated guess, really. We looked at the probable route the Templars took from Constantinople, what side of the mountain they’d most likely have been on when they stumbled on the monastery. Then we studied detailed topographic maps of that area and applied the inquisitor’s notes from the Registry to them. And we got lucky.”

  “It’s a big mountain,” the man pressed. “How did you pinpoint our position?”

  “They used a satellite,” she lied. “They fed it details of recently stolen cars from the Istanbul police.” She hoped he already knew what she had only recently learned from Reilly about the difference between the loitering capabilities of a satellite and a drone. If he did, and if he bought her lie, maybe he wouldn’t worry that a drone could still be up there tracking them.

  The man pondered her words for a beat, then pulled his gun back and tucked it away. He focused ahead, and at the next curve, he slowed the car and pulled over by a thicket of pine trees.

  He parked under the cover of the trees, then took the key out of the ignition. “Wait here,” he told her.

  She watched him get out and walk to the edge of the shaded area. He then just stood there and looked up into the sky, in the direction of the mountain.

  ZAHED SURVEYED THE SKY OVERHEAD, looking for the dark spot that would confirm his suspicions.

  She was good, he had to give her that. Able to finesse the truth to try to keep some kind of an advantage. But this was his field of expertise, not hers. And given their requirements and the urgency involved, and the realities of what was quickly achievable, he knew they were far more likely to be using an unmanned surveillance drone than a satellite.

  Sure enough, he soon spotted it, a tiny dot hovering silently high up in the virgin dawn sky, keeping track of his movements. It was circling at high altitude, but given that it had the wingspan of a 737, it wasn’t exactly invisible. He scowled as he stared at it, studying its trajectory. Evading it would be very tricky—even more so with a prisoner in tow.

  Then he saw something he hadn’t expected. The drone entered into a long, banking maneuver before gliding away in an easterly direction, back toward the mountain. He tracked it until he couldn’t see it anymore, then scanned the rest of the sky, looking for another dot.

  He didn’t see one.

  Zahed smiled inwardly. The drone must have reached the limit of its loiter, and it seemed to him like they hadn’t anticipated needing a replacement to continue its mission. He stayed there for another ten minutes, at the edge of the canopy of the trees, scrutinizing the sky, making sure another drone didn’t show up. Once he was reasonably confident that there wouldn’t be one, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the call button twice, redialing the last number he had called. It was a number he had taken off Sully’s phone.

  After two rings, a drowsy voice picked up.

  Zahed’s tone went all gregarious. “Abdulkerim? Good morning. Ali Sharafi here. Suleyman’s client. We spoke last night?”

  The man he’d called—Abdulkerim, Sully’s uncle, the expert the guide had wanted to contact when they were up by the ruins of the monastery—had clearly been asleep. After a quiet moment, Zahed’s words seemed to have registered. “Yes, good morning to you,” the man blurted into the Iranian’s ear. His voice trailed off, obviously surprised by the early call and still foggy-headed.

  “I’m sorry to be calling you this early,” Zahed continued, “but our plans changed and we got here a bit earlier than expected. I was hoping we could meet sooner than agreed, perhaps in the next hour or so? You know, get an early start. Our time here is unfortunately limited, so the sooner we get going, the better, really.”

  Abdulkerim cleared his throat audibly and said, “Of course, of course. It’s not a problem. Earlier will be better anyway. Less sun.”

  “That’s great,” Zahed said. “We’ll see you soon. And thanks for being so accommodating.”

  He took note of where and when they would meet up and ended the call, satisfied with the outcome. He approached the car and glanced through the rear windshield. He could see the silhouette of Tess’s head from behind. His mood darkened. There was something else he needed to do.

  He opened the Discovery’s rear hatch, picked something out of it, and slammed it shut again. Then he went around to Tess’s door and swung it open.

  “Get out,” he told her.

  Tess stared at him for a beat, a look of surprise on her face, then climbed out. She stood there in front of him, in silence. He just looked at her without saying a word—then, with lightning agility, his hand flew up and struck her with a vicious, backhanded slap.

  Her head twisted sideways violently under the impact and she fell to the ground. She stayed down, motionless, her head turned away, saying nothing. After a moment, she pushed herself back onto her feet and, brushing the soil off her hands, turned back to face him. Her eyes were tearful, but defiant. Her cheek was seared red, the imprint of his hand and fingers clearly visible on it.

  “Don’t lie to me again,” he told her. “Understood?”

  She didn’t react. He raised his hand
menacingly again, ready to swing again. She didn’t flinch, but this time she nodded faintly.

  He lifted up his other hand. In it was a wide canvas belt.

  He held it out to her and said, “I’m going to need you to put this on.”

  Chapter 34

  Reilly was moving fast, as fast as his tired legs could carry him. He was finding it a bit easier, now that the steep, uneven trail down the mountain had given way to a flatter and smoother dirt road. Still, he was barely managing to stay on his feet. The nearest town, a small cluster of houses at the base of the volcano, was still half a mile away. He needed to find some kind of transportation that would give his muscles a rest if he didn’t want his body to shut down in protest at the appalling treatment it was getting. And he had to do it fast.

  The drone, he knew, was long gone.

  Every second counted.

  He cleared a low ridge and spotted something moving a couple of hundred yards ahead. Someone, riding something. The sight gave him a small boost. As he closed in on it, Reilly saw that it was an old man sitting astride a haggard-looking horse. The scrawny animal had two huge straw baskets slung on either side of its rump and was trudging ahead lazily, oblivious to the fleet of flies that were circling it.

  Reilly picked up his pace and shouted, “Hey,” waving his arms frantically. He saw the man turn his head nonchalantly, without slowing down. “Hey,” he shouted again, and again, and this time, the man pulled on the reins and the horse stopped.

  “Your horse,” Reilly told him, pointing and gesturing wildly, his panting making him sound even more incoherent to the confused local. “I need your horse.”

  The man’s weathered face suddenly tensed up as his eyes fell on the weapon in Reilly’s waistband. But instead of going all fearful and panicky, he started shouting at Reilly, seemingly berating him for his affront. Young or old, strong or frail, the men Reilly was encountering didn’t seem to be easily cowed. Reilly shook his head and spread his arms out calmingly, doing his best to get the man to ease back.