Zach grabs her wrist. “You are not expendable.”
“Then I better not get shot.”
Before either of them can say anything more, she heaves herself upward and pulls both her scabby knees up onto the hot stone.
She inches down the golden slope of the dome. In the main courtyard below, the helicopter sits only about fifty feet away, just at the base of the hexagonal tower. On the left, half a dozen teenagers are still doing target practice. At least they’re facing the other wall, except for German Jamal, who is drilling them. A few more Hashashin, older guys, are hanging out around the Toyota beside the helicopter, joshing as the one in the black T-shirt rinses it off with a hose and a bucket of suds.
Penny loops her feet onto the outside wall and begins to climb down.
Ouch ouch ouch.
Her muscles haven’t forgiven her for yesterday. Penny sets her teeth and hooks her toes into the cracks between the crumbly blocks of stone. She can only hold her fingers in one spot for a few seconds before they start to burn.
Laughter across the courtyard.
Penny freezes halfway down the wall, legs cramping, stone grit like cracker crumbs under her fingernails.
One stray glance and she’s dead.
The guy in the black T-shirt spritzes water at his buddies. They laugh like kids around a sprinkler.
Penny inches another foot down the wall. Muscles she didn’t know she had are twanging in her back.
The guy in the black T-shirt turns the hose on a white cat dozing in the sun. A yowl, more laughter. Assholes.
Penny lets go.
She hits the ground with a small billow of yellow dust.
Out of sight.
She crouches in the dusty shade beneath a parked tank, shaking slightly, every muscle throbbing, too-tight leggings cutting into her knees. Sweat stings like poison ivy in her cuts.
Gasoline reeks in the dry heat, even across the courtyard.
Connor drops down beside her, panting slightly and pasty with stone dust.
Penny squints up at the empty wall. “Where’s Zach?”
“Your guy is smarter than he looks.”
“Help!” Zach’s voice bellows from inside the library, with the theatrical resonance of an operatic tenor. “Help! GUARDS!”
The Hashashin doing target practice don’t turn. Of course not—they’re wearing earguards. But the ones by the Toyota run inside.
Penny looks back up at the wall just in time to see Zach land.
Connor hisses, “Go!”
And she runs.
For the first three seconds, it’s way too easy.
The sun blazes like a spotlight. Connor runs steadily to her left. Zach barrels forward on her right, pulling slightly ahead. Faster, faster, and they’re halfway across the dusty stone.
Jamal’s astonished voice cries, “Zach?”
“Go!” howls Connor, and shoves Penny forward.
Zach hoists himself into the front seat of the helicopter. “Penny, run!”
The firing squad turns in disarray. Jamal is screaming orders; he’s grabbed a rifle. Four Hashashin are running toward them.
They’ll never make it to the helicopter.
Penny grabs the bucket of suds and swings it wide.
Soapy water splashes the Hashashin in the eyes.
Jamal howls, firing blindly.
Connor screams, “Run!”
Penny’s got one foot up on the helicopter.
A drum roll of cracking gunshots.
Penny cries, “Connor!”
Dust explodes like fireworks around her feet. Connor’s sure hands shove her up to safety. She turns to help him follow.
His face is ashen. Blood streaks down his right hand, his gun knocked out of reach.
Penny grabs his left arm and helps haul him up. They collapse together into the narrow pilot’s seat.
“Get down behind the windshield!” cries Zach from the gunner’s seat. “It’s bulletproof!”
A hailstorm of bullets against glass. Penny fights the instinct to duck.
Connor is panting as if he just finished a marathon. The cotton of his right sleeve is soaking red to the elbow. He grimaces, lip curling up over his gums.
“Oh my God.” Penny presses her scarf to his arm, trying to stanch the blood.
Zach howls, “Take us up!”
Jamal and the four soaked, running Hashashin are fifty feet away. They veer toward the right. Without even a door to shut, there will be no protection against their bullets.
Connor grits his teeth. “It’s gonna take a minute to get off the ground!” The lines across his forehead are deep with pain.
“Buy time!” Penny screams to Zach.
“Machine gun doesn’t work without the engine!”
“So use your pistol!” Cradling his right hand, Connor stretches out his left and flicks a couple of switches.
Nothing happens.
“It’s stuck in the fucking seat belt!” Zach tries to wrestles the Walther out. “Jesus fucking—”
“Zach, hurry!” screams Penny.
“We’ve got the fuel!” Frantic, left hand shaking, Connor tries again. Rattle-snap. “Why isn’t it working?”
The Hashashin are twenty feet away.
The windshield is starting to fracture.
Bulletproof glass is only reinforced with polycarbonate. Shoot it enough, and it’s just funny-looking shards.
Jamal howls as the Hashashin fan toward the open sides of the helicopter.
And in that moment, Penny realizes.
They’re going to die.
33
* * *
DUST AND AIR
Gun raised, Jamal meets Penny’s eyes. He aims and screams—
Nothing that she can hear.
The rising, high-pitched chain-saw buzz of two engines makes Penny’s teeth vibrate in her jaw.
A sputtering round of explosions from the helicopter’s machine gun.
Zach gives a whoop of triumph.
All five Hashashin are flat on the ground. Jamal was closest. Penny can see his limp flesh and wispy beard smoking by a puddle of red-laced gray. There’s nothing left of his face. She feels like she’s going to throw up.
Connor is struggling with the controls.
“Your hand!” she cries. “You can’t drive!”
“I got the foot pedals and the cyclic!” Connor loops his right shoulder through one of the safety straps and grabs the joystick that rises from the floor. “But you’re gonna have to steer the collective grip!”
Penny hooks her left arm through the other safety strap and clicks the seat belt around both of them. Squashed up against Connor, she can feel his chest shudder as he hyperventilates. Her eyes race across the control panel. Two large, flickering screens. What looks like a tiny, old-fashioned computer. Dials. Meters. Levers. Switches. Flashing lights. Buttons, dozens of them, enough to give a DJ a heart attack.
“The what?”
“The collective! That one!” Even with his mouth two inches away, she can hardly make out Connor’s words over the screaming engines.
Penny wraps her sweaty hand around the large, button-studded, heat-sticky joystick-looking lever on her left. Through the windshield, she can see about two dozen armed Hashashin pounding toward them from the arched doorways around the courtyard. “What does it do?”
“Cyclic steers us backwards, forwards, sideways. Collective takes us up!” He jerks the rotors into life. They warm up sleepily, like an old ceiling fan. Whup-whup-whup. Connor digs a neatly folded Kleenex out of his pocket. “Grab the headset—hold it up so we can both hear! Stuff this in your other ear!”
The rotor blades are huge—they must be at least twenty feet apiece. Each quickening rotation slashes shadows across the cockpit like an accelerating strobe light.
Even through the tissue and the headset, Penny hears a rattle of machine-gun fire from the front, as Zach blasts the approaching Hashashin. The survivors stagger backward in the dusty blast of air
as the rotors spin into high speed.
“Now?” Penny shouts.
Connor’s left hand skims over the controls. “When I say go, pull up!”
“They’re getting in the tank!” Zach’s voice crackles back through the headset.
“Hold fire!” screams Connor. “We have to take off!” He grabs the cyclic. “Penny, go!”
Penny yanks up the collective grip.
The cockpit takes a sharp, nauseating stutter. It feels like being in a Ferris wheel pod in a high wind.
Then the helicopter lurches up into the free air. Wind rushes through the cockpit, getting colder as the ground falls away. They soar higher, up above the hexagonal tower, higher and higher, until Mor Samuel monastery is no more than a golden sandcastle beneath them.
Penny hears herself scream, “We did it!”
Connor’s grin reaches almost to his ears.
“Woo hoo!” crackles through the headphones. Zach sounds as jubilant as Penny’s ever heard him.
Penny spots a flash like a firework in the tiny courtyard. Half a dozen bright dots soar above the hexagonal tower, zinging up toward them. “What’s that?”
“Pull up!” bellows Connor. He jerks the cyclic sideways. Penny yanks up on the collective grip.
Over the howling whir of the engines, the explosions sound like no more than a series of faint Rice Krispies pops.
Then, one bright blur explodes two feet from the left side of the helicopter. The blast of hot air scalds Penny’s leg as Connor swerves the helicopter to the left. She drags up on the collective, and the helicopter rattles up another couple hundred feet.
“Hover!” Zach’s voice shreds through the headphones.
“What?” yells Penny.
“Are you nuts?” Connor pitches the helicopter into a leftward lunge to duck another volley of bright fire. “We gotta get out of here!”
“Hover!” growls Zach. Penny can hear a series of electronic beeps through the headphones. “I’m gonna Hellfire those bastards!”
A blast barely misses the propellers.
“Target the tank!” yells Connor.
Penny hears a clank of metal below the left-hand side of the cockpit as Zach initializes the launch.
The helicopter lurches backward as the Hellfire missile blasts down toward the tank.
She sees tiny figures fan out around the courtyard, racing for shelter.
Not fast enough.
Even from a thousand feet up, Penny feels the blast resound in her skull.
A circle of fire and black smoke blooms where the tank used to be.
Zach whoops. “Score one for the good guys!”
“Celebrate later,” shouts Connor. “Let’s get out of here!”
Suddenly, Penny feels the Apache swerve backward again as a second Hellfire roars down.
A second later the library dome implodes.
Connor looks confused; sweat runs down his neck. “What the hell are you doing?”
“That’s for our Embassy!” screams Zach.
“That’s enough,” yells Connor. “We might need the rockets later!”
“It’s kill or be killed!” Zach fires one of the smaller rockets. Then another, then another, then another, pummeling the old monks’ quarters. Acrid gray and black smoke streaks upward.
“Zach, no,” Penny yells, coughing as the fumes reach her. “The monks. There could be hostages inside!”
Zach stops. She can hear him breathing raggedly. But it’s too late. One of the rockets must have hit the munitions storeroom. The huge white blast rocks the helicopter. With a terrible scraping boom, the golden hexagonal tower collapses in a rock fall of shattered stone.
Connor slams forward on the cyclic. The seat belt digs into Penny’s stomach as the helicopter roars out over the dry yellow plain. Wind eddies around her. This seat was only meant for one person—what if the buckle isn’t strong enough to hold? The speedometer spins up over 180 miles per hour.
“Get a grip,” Connor shouts to Zach. “You think the Turkish air force didn’t notice your little show? The Syrians? The Russians? They’ll blow us out of the sky!”
“Just radio air-traffic control!” Zach’s voice crackles.
Connor rolls his eyes. “And say what?”
“Say we’re Americans.”
“Hi, we’re a couple of CIA illegals and a girl everybody knows is dead. We just stole a helicopter and blew up a monastery. Everyone in DC’s gonna say they never heard of us. But don’t shoot us down, guys, okay?” Connor turns to Penny. “We’re gonna dive.”
Penny’s teeth are rattling in her jaw. “Die?”
“Dive!”
They plummet toward an olive grove.
“Pull up, pull up! Jesus!” Connor is panting. “Try for a hundred feet! Stay below the peak of the hill!”
For a few minutes, they roller-coaster up and down, over dry fields and dry riverbeds. None of them has the breath to speak.
“We’re back in Turkish airspace,” yells Connor. “At least now there’s only one air force that can shoot us down.”
Over the roar of the engine, Penny can just make out Zach’s “Now what?”
“I turned off the transponder,” Connor shouts. “Our best chance is to keep off the radar. Fly as low as possible over deserted areas and pray to God some farmer doesn’t spot us.”
“How much fuel do we have?” Penny asks. Her throat is getting hoarse with all the shouting.
“In theory, we can go almost three hours. But if anybody’s radar picks us up—”
“Then what?”
Connor shakes his head. “The Turks take down Russian bombers.” The wind flattens his hair against his scalp. “If they clock us, we’re dead.”
“We have to tell the whole world we’re alive,” says Penny. “But first we’ve got to get somewhere safe—somewhere public.”
“The NATO Summit in Istanbul starts tonight!” shouts Zach.
“We’ve got about five hundred and fifty miles in us,” Connor yells back. He turns to Penny. “I say we head straight for Istanbul!”
Penny quickly calculates. “That’s eight hundred miles.”
“So we get as close as we can and nab some ground transport.” Connor suddenly notices the Apache’s trajectory. “Penny, watch it! We’re getting over the line of sight!”
Penny slowly lowers the collective grip. The helicopter rattles down toward the parched earth. Connor holds his wounded hand above his head; a slower trickle of blood runs down his wrist.
Penny reaches out. “Your hand—”
Connor looks almost green. “Can’t do anything until we land.”
Even racing at 180 miles an hour, the rushing air feels oven hot. The relentless glare of the sun and the strobing shadows of the rotors are giving Penny a fierce headache. It’s harder than it looks to hold the helicopter at a steady height. The machine is fighting her. Ten feet up they zag, then lurch ten feet down again.
“Don’t trim our toenails!”
“I’m not doing it on purpose!”
“Relax your grip!” Connor shouts.
“What are you talking about?” Penny yells back. “I’ve never been so relaxed!”
Connor cracks a smile.
They’re low enough that Penny can make out individual goats and the odd scrubby tree. The sun has a killing Midas touch: dry golden plants, dry golden fields, dry golden dust in the curling wind, dry golden stones of ruined huts that could have been abandoned fifty years ago or five hundred or five.
The miles blur. Hills bubble and recede into the dust. Farms and villages appear in the distance, and Connor veers around them. Penny tries to concentrate on nothing but the vibrating collective grip, and keeping the helicopter from bucking. The scream of the motors and roar of the rotors drown out all thought.
The smell of the air changes—something fresh and alive.
“What’s that river?” Connor shouts.
Penny checks the monitor. “Fırat Nehri.” Her heart does a strange lu
rch. Last time she heard that name was in Archaeology class in Ann Arbor, with fourteen inches of snow on the windowsill. “The Euphrates!”
Sharp cliffs plunge into bright water that glints and tumbles below the helicopter. The river stretches out into pale greens on the sloping opposite bank. Goats graze among the rocks. Penny feels a pang of longing as it vanishes.
Soon they’re in the mountains. Penny lets the helicopter fly as low between the jagged rocks as she dares. Connor maneuvers them through the valleys, swaying to dodge the occasional grove of pines. Glancing at Connor, Penny notices that his milky skin is blistered red with sunburn, even up the part in his hair. She can feel her nose and cheeks starting to sting.
But it’s not just sun. It’s dust.
Churned up by the propellers, it fills the cracks in the windshield. Grit blasts their eyes, burning, blinding.
“Take us up!” Connor coughs. “We’ll brownout!”
“We can’t take the hill,” chokes Zach. “Radar will pick us up if we go that high!”
“It’s that or crash!”
They climb up to nine hundred feet, over the hill.
Clear lines of sight radiate in every direction. They’re horribly exposed.
As soon as they’re over the peak, Penny yanks them down. They can’t have been visible on the radar for more than forty-five seconds. “You think they spotted us?”
Connor makes a face. “We’ll find out.”
They fly on. Once in a while, Zach’s voice crackles through the earphones, prompting them ever farther north and west, into a pale volcanic landscape hollowed by the wind into lunar curves. They loop southwest around the foothills of Mount Erciyes. The mountain shrinks behind them as they speed over farms and dry valleys.
“No sign of any company.” Connor looks at the monitor. “We should be safe for now.”
Zach’s faint, distorted voice scratches in Penny’s ear: “We’re coming up on Cappadocia!”
She shouts back, “Almost halfway.” She feels Connor gasp. “What?” She follows his gaze to the radar screen. Fear twists in her stomach. “What are those dots?”
Connor grimaces. “Say hello to the Turkish air force.”
“Just tell them who we are!” screams Zach through the earphones. “They can’t murder American diplomats in cold blood.”
Liar's Candle Page 20
