Blown Circuit (32 page)

I saw where the triggers fit into the Device. There was an empty rack cradling the bottom of the main sphere. Room for both units to slide into place. I looked up and saw the thin wire snaking out of the top of the outer sphere alongside the fat cables.
Easy mistake to make
, I thought,
thinking that the triggers should be positioned outside the Device, especially when the crates had been illustrated that way
. But Bayazidi was a trickster. There was as much disinformation in that journal as there was information.
 

I flashed my light back to the hatch. The first of the triggers was coming through. I reached up and grabbed it, feeling the magnetic pull. I placed the unit down by my feet and waited there for a moment while the soldier handed me the second trigger. Then I stared back down at the rack that they went into. The wireless router was still attached to the rear trigger which meant that what I was about to do was not without consequences. If I armed the sphere with an accurate targeting system, I was endangering a lot of lives. But if I didn’t do it, I was killing everyone in that square. Either way, it was a gamble.

I hunched down and inserted the first trigger into its rack. It clicked into place like a fresh load into the chamber of a shotgun, smooth as glass despite its age. I reached behind me for the second trigger and slid it gently into place behind the first with a soft click. Then I plugged them into each other. The gyroscopes were installed. If Tesla’s invention was ever going to work, it was going to work now. I took a final look around and quickly checked my iPhone. So far the static charge in the air hadn’t shorted it out, and though the magnetic field had compromised my signal strength, it wasn’t enough to lose the connection. I was still tethered in.

I emptied my backpack and poked my head out of the hatch.

“It’s done,” I said to Meryem.

Meryem returned to the cab of the crane. She had to. It was the only way to check whether the targeting system was actually functioning, which I hoped it was. Because there was no way Azad was going to release the hostages if it wasn’t. I hung my head out of the sphere while they conferred in the crane’s tiny cab. I could see Meryem and the crane operator from my position, the blue glimmer of the computer display casting its glow on them. She smiled as she got out of the cab.

“Thank you, Michael,” she called out to me. “Now get out of the sphere.”

“Not so fast, Meryem.”

“What?”

“Your turn. Let those people go. That was our deal.”

She shrugged.
 

“I would very much like to let those people go, but I do not think it is time to do this yet,” Meryem said.

“Let those people go, or I cut the cable,” I said.

“All the power in the city of Bodrum runs through that cable. If you cut it, you will die.”

I laughed, ready to duck my head into the sphere if I had to.

“Not the power cable. The trigger cable. Two tiny wires.”

I flicked open the blade of my Swiss knife.

“You want to try me? Let them go.”

Meryem consulted with Faruk. Then she just picked up her walkie-talkie. The next thing I heard was automatic gunfire, people screaming in the square below.

“OK, OK!”

The gunfire stopped. It was chaos in the square below, but I couldn’t tell whether anybody had been hit. Soldiers continued to man the exits.

“Good choice, Michael.”

 
I watched the ground below me as civilians crowded around the exits, unable to leave. Clearly, Plan A wasn’t going to work. Not that it was much of surprise that Meryem had gone back on her word, but that didn’t change the fact that if I disabled the Device, everybody in that square was as good as dead. Just shows, you can’t trust a terrorist! Time for Plan B.

“Pull him up,” Meryem said, eyeing the soldier on the catwalk above.

The soldier obeyed. He lay down on the catwalk, cantilevering his body outward and extending his hand. Meryem returned to the cab, Faruk watching her from mid-catwalk. It was my moment. Time to make it count. I poked my head and arms outside the hatch and took the soldier’s hand, clamping down on his palm tightly. Then I pulled straight down with all my strength.

Chapter 63

I
PUNCHED
THE
soldier as he fell past me through the air. A hard-right straight to the jaw. I had hoped to knock him out, not because I was doing him any favors, but because I didn’t want him to scream. To that end, I was successful. After my fist connected squarely with his jaw, I didn’t hear a peep out of him as he plummeted to his death. But I wasn’t done. Faruk was the next order of business.

I pulled myself out of the sphere and took hold of the rail of the jib, vaulting over it. Faruk was still facing Meryem in the cab. The question was, could I get to him before he turned? One way to find out. I leapt ahead, pulling my empty backpack in front of me.

The falling soldier finally screamed, and when he did, Faruk turned. Faruk stared straight at me, the light reflecting off the white keloid scar below his eye in the glare of the crane’s work lights. He seemed pleased to see me. As if he’d been waiting a long while for the opportunity to mix it up. He drew his pistol with a wry grin, but I was close enough to reach ahead with my left hand and force his weapon up by the barrel. I struggled against his massive strength to hold the pistol above me.

“So finally we fight, American.”

“Why don’t we skip that part, and I’ll kill you now.”

“Perhaps next time. I think, now, we fight.”

We were each standing on the two-foot wide catwalk so I knew there wasn’t much room for a dance, or a brawl. At that point, I was wearing my empty backpack like a kangaroo pouch. It didn’t really interfere with my movement, but it wasn’t ideal either. It was going to have be a precision takedown and it was going to have to happen fast. But Faruk was a slippery opponent. I wasn’t counting on his blade.

I didn’t have time to reflect on how much I hated knives, I just reacted. I feinted to my left as he jabbed the black steel combat knife forward. Then I pushed in close. Moving away in a knife fight isn’t a bad idea. But only if you have somewhere to go. I had nowhere. So all I could do was move in closer to eliminate his ability to brandish the weapon. I had to accept that I might get cut. What I wanted to ensure was that I didn’t get killed.

Faruk pulled the gun’s trigger with his other hand. The pistol’s report ripped through the air, superheated gases escaping the chamber, but I didn’t feel the heat. Something hot like that, there’s a lag between touching and feeling. What I did was keep my hold on the gun with my left hand while I grabbed Faruk’s wrist with my right. I didn’t know whether I’d be as quick as the blade. Fortunately, Faruk’s focus was divided. I managed to get ahold of his left wrist and twist the knife away from me.

Then I lowered my body on my left leg and powered up into a groin-busting strike. Faruk gasped as the top of my knee connected with him. It must have pissed him off because he fired the gun again, but we were still in the same position. It would be a stalemate until I could get him to drop one of the weapons and both of us knew it. So I stepped ahead and let him have it. I focused and drove all my weight forward and up in a massive head-butt. His nose crumpled like a paper airplane, blood flooding down his face. It was a testament to Faruk’s tolerance for pain that he was still standing, but he did drop the gun. It tumbled from his hand over the side of the crane.

By some feat of focus, however, Faruk managed to keep hold of the knife. I immediately grabbed onto his knife hand with my other hand. I was looking for the Valley of Harmony—the fleshy V between the thumb and pointing finger of his hand. When I found it, I used one hand to hold his wrist and the other to pinch down with every ounce of strength I had. The Valley of Harmony is an acupressure point. Pinch it lightly and you can relieve headaches and other ailments. Pinch it like you want to kill the guy and you can inflict a massive amount of pain.

Faruk dropped the knife. I heard it clank down to the catwalk below. I was pretty sure I had him beat at that point. I was already mentally moving on to my next target. But then he tried to strangle me. His lightning-fast hands encircled my neck, threatening to collapse my windpipe. I needed to make a move, any move, but Faruk held me there, starving me of oxygen. He squeezed harder still, a self-satisfied grin on his lips, and once again I saw the metal glinting in his mouth. He had me exactly where he wanted me.
 

It wasn’t like when I had had the garrote around my neck. I reached for his hands, but I couldn’t remove them. He was like a human boa constrictor slowly squeezing the life out of me. I swear that I felt my feet leave the ground as he lifted. My eyes must have been bulging at that point. All I could think was that I wanted to bring him down. I wanted him to crumble so he couldn’t squeeze me anymore.
 

I took a chance and reached for his collarbone, poking my fingers deep into his flesh until I found his clavicle. The long horizontal bone was like a handle. I used it to pull him off balance, getting him to ease up slightly as he recovered, dropping me back down to the catwalk. Then I twisted my hips. My neck stayed where it was, but I retracted my right leg, throwing all my weight into a kick aimed squarely at Faruk’s left kneecap.

The side of my foot connected with his knee and I heard it blow out. It shattered backwards, bones and cartilage smashing until it drooped inward on itself. The result was immediate. Nobody can take that amount of pain without showing it. The body just doesn’t have the resources. Faruk immediately had to take all his weight on his right leg, and as he did, he loosened his grip on my neck a little more. I could barely breathe, but I could still kick, so I retracted my leg again and powered into his other knee.

I heard the same crack of cartilage and bone, and this time he collapsed onto both broken knees, releasing his grasp entirely. I gasped, sucking in the fresh air. There was only one move left. Gravity. I retracted my right leg and aimed for his midsection in a massive side kick. I aimed for his torso, because I wanted to move all of him, his entire body off the catwalk. And it worked. Faruk crumpled backward, under the rail and off the crane.
 

But even as Faruk plummeted to his death, my problems were far from over. Because when I looked up from the catwalk, I was once again staring down the barrel of a gun.

Chapter 64

M
ERYEM
'
S
GAZE
WAS
almost as hard as the black steel of her pistol. She aimed her SIG at me in a two-handed stance, the crane operator already descending the ladder behind her. My palm hurt where it had gripped the barrel of Faruk’s pistol. I was sure that I had a nasty burn that would swell and blister later.
 

“You should not have done that,” Meryem said.

“Like you said, I didn’t have much of a choice.”

I heard the thump of Faruk’s body as it hit the courtyard floor below.
 

“It was you on the ship that exploded, wasn’t it?” I said.

“Yes,” Meryem said. “It was me on the Green Dragon ship. The Dragons asked us to destroy it. To cement our partnership.”

“Why? Why did they want to blow that boat up?”

“Perhaps to destroy evidence. Perhaps to destroy you.”

“What evidence?” I asked. “That tuning fork thing? I saw it, you know.”

Meryem just smiled.

“The Dragons were using you all along,” I said. “They were using you to find the Device.”

“Maybe so. But who possesses the Device now?”

It was then that I understood why the crane operator was descending the ladder. Because somebody else was coming up. Azad. He smiled at me piggishly as his head came up through the ladder well, his eyes level with mine.

“Your husband?” I asked.

“Colleague only,” she said. “The henna party, this was for you. Please understand that I am sorry for many things I have done. But they were necessary. Everything was necessary.”
 

Azad sat in the operator’s chair and pecked away at the laptop keyboard. After that, I knew that I was out of time because the rush of the wind was drowned out by a long sibilant groan. The buzz of the sphere gradually overtook the crane. The buzz was soft at first, but grew louder like a million electric hornets were protecting their nest. And then the sphere began to glow.

“Hands up, Michael,” Meryem said. “It is over.”

Not if I could help it. It was obvious that Azad was going to fire the Device. The targeting mechanism was installed. Given that I had already seen the sphere fire once, I knew that the directed-energy beam would vaporize whatever it hit. I was still wearing the empty backpack in front of me like a kangaroo pouch. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to like what happened next. I wasn’t going to like it at all.

But I did what I had to do. I sprung forward like a cheetah. Then Meryem fired the SIG from twelve feet. It was an easy shot for her, aimed at my center mass, like she had been taught. But I didn’t cringe from the bullet. I held my backpack in front of me and ran into it instead. It was a 9mm round and it hurt when it hit. It felt as though I had gotten hit with a sledgehammer. I felt the ceramic plates in my pack shatter and absorb the impact. I felt the Kevlar lining of the backpack flex. But I didn’t feel my ribs break. I got lucky there. The shot didn’t knock me down. It only knocked the wind out of me. But I could still function. I had to.
 

Meryem was puzzled. I saw that. She had put a 9mm soft-nose slug in my center mass, but I was still up. I took advantage of that puzzlement. I took one big step forward and raised my left arm in a swift block deflecting the SIG skyward. Then I twisted my hip and hauled back with my right arm delivering a devastating straight-arm punch to Meryem's face. I hit her on the nose. I was pretty sure that I’d broken it, but I figured we were about even because she’d buried me. But I wasn’t done. I grappled Meryem's gun hand with my left, twisting her wrist around the way it wasn’t meant to go. I’m pretty sure I had almost snapped off her finger in the trigger guard, but the move had the desired effect. She dropped the gun.