State of Attack (20 page)

The guy on his left came to within an arm’s reach, holding what looked like a Beretta handgun out in front of him like a real amateur instead of tucking it in close to the waist. Tom figured he’d let them know he was serious. Besides, Lester’s slap had shaken him out of the malaise he’d been in since the attempt on his father’s life, which he may never recover from.

He turned ninety degrees and used his left hand to grab the gun-held wrist and jerked the man down and forwards. He hit the unsuspecting guy in the throat with the V between his splayed thumb and forefinger, causing his victim to gag and collapse. Tom knelt down and snatched the handgun from the guy’s limp fingers, the whole incident taking less than two seconds.

Raising himself up and levelling the weapon, he saw the other Turks staring at him, their hard faces registering either shock or bemusement. But the baba’s face was as unreadable as hieroglyphics on a stone wall. None of the gangsters had been fast enough to react and draw their weapons, which Tom had banked on, figuring they weren’t the types to practise manoeuvres to the degree necessary to be lodged in long-term muscle memory.

There followed a full ten seconds of silence before the baba said, “Put gun down. The door behind you is unlocked. My men will drive you away as I said. You have my word.”

Your word isn’t worth rabbit shit, Tom thought. But then he remembered that the Turkish mafia, despite their despicable traits, had a peculiar code of honour, and if a baba gave his word, it meant it could be relied on. He placed the handgun down on the floor near the guy he’d sent there, who was breathing now like an asthmatic.

“Sure, but the next one of your men to stick a snub nose in my neck will get his broken. Are we clear?”

Chapter 50

Tom had been bundled out of the SUV at some unknown side street in Ankara, a place lined with dumpsters overflowing with the waste from fast-food takeouts. For the first couple of minutes he’d heard the baba talking to his crew via the earpiece. He didn’t speak Turkish so he’d been anxious to send the recording to Crane as soon he’d gotten back to the hotel.

He’d arrived back forty minutes later after catching a cab to three blocks away. Lester had been waiting for him in the room, watching some local soap opera on TV. Tom had sent the recorded Turkish conversations to Crane via the secure satphone that the CIA had provided for him.

When the phone rang less than twenty minutes later Tom snatched it up from the low-slung table he was sitting beside, as Lester seemed to turn off the soap reluctantly. He put it on speaker.

“We got something,” Crane said. “And it fits. The Israelis nearly got that sonofabitch Ibrahim in Gaza, heading out to the harbour area. The baba said something about their worries being over once they got a call from Marseilles, so you don’t have to be Einstein to work out Ibrahim could be going across the Med. But that’s an underlined could be. And Tom, you need to get outta there now. He don’t trust you. He made a call and they know that we’re after Ibrahim. You need to get to the safe house. Pronto.”

“Who did he speak with? Tom asked.

“We don’t know. But a Turk in MIT told your father about the baba so that’s who my money’s on.”

“What’s his name?”

“Hassam Habib. But it coulda been anyone in MIT. Coulda been a MIT asset. Now get to the safe house, then I’ll get you and Lester outta there.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Tom said, putting down the satphone onto the table and looking at Lester. “Whatcha think?”

“That Habib’s a louse, that’s for damn sure.”

“Could be, but we’d better split up and meet at the safe house.”

Lester nodded.

Tom walked over to a mahogany dresser and picked up the items he’d handed to Lester in the taxi, weighing the SIG in his hand. “Hold onto it,” he said, gesturing to Lester with it. “I’ll make me feel better. The cellphone, too. It’s got a CIA guy called Donaldson at the embassy and Crane on speed dial.”

Lester shook his head. “No way, man.”

“Lester, just take the SIG. I got you into this, but it’s personal for me. And don’t shoot anybody with it. Just scare them off. This ain’t Iraq.”

Chapter 51

Lester arrived at the safe house twenty-five minutes later, an apartment above a closed grocery store, with a side door. As Tom had the key, he knocked and waited, feeling a little conspicuous. The streetlights were intermittent and he turned and checked out the immediate area, seeing an alley leading out of the darkness some twenty yards down. There were a few local men buying cigarettes from a late-night newsstand to the left, but other than a young guy riding a moped bareheaded, the place was quiet.

After thirty seconds, he turned and walked to the alley, squatting down behind an upturned cardboard box. The alley stretched out of eyeshot behind him, the walls on either side housing shuttered-up stores, with similar residential accommodation above. He lent his shoulder against the brick wall, realizing how tired he was. He’d been travelling for almost twenty-four hours without sleep and still hadn’t slept since he’d been here, unable to doze off while Tom had been meeting with the baba. As a jarhead he’d been able to stay awake for a couple of days, but that was twenty years ago and he had the odd ache that he hadn’t noticed until a year back.

Within seconds, Lester’s eyelids were fluttering, his head bobbing like that of a wading bird. After struggling to keep just one eye open, he fell asleep.

The sound of a revving car engine woke him. He shuddered from the cold and realized his back was slumped against the wall, such that he was looking at the blackened wall opposite. He shook his head, stood up and felt for the SIG and then his wallet. Satisfied, he peered around the wall just as a black SUV pulled away.

He didn’t know if the car held Tom; he had no way of knowing. Even if it did, he couldn’t risk shooting at it. Besides it could have run-flat tyres and a bullet-resistant windshield. But he still had the wits to pull out Tom’s cellphone and just managed to take a photo of the registration before the car sped away. He checked the speed dial and sent it to Crane, with a short message stating what had happened.

Half an hour later and with no sign of Tom he knew he’d screwed up. He didn’t know whether their cover story had been compromised, or if the bug Tom had planted had been detected. After a momentary and uncharacteristic sense of panic, he sensed his desire for violence spiking.

Just under three-hundred miles away and two hours later, Ibrahim heard someone knock on the cabin door.

“I’m busy,” he said.

“Radio,” a voice said.

Ibrahim recognized the voice as the captain’s, but there was no joy in it. He stood up and walked out, seeing the surprise on the man’s face at his long hair and beard. But the captain didn’t comment upon it. Ibrahim followed him to the wheelhouse, where the captain handed him the small handset attached by a coiled cable to the black receiver. Ibrahim gestured with his head towards the wooden sliding door and the captain lurched out.

The Turk on the other end spoke Arabic. He said that an American had been taken in Ankara after sniffing around. He said that the American hadn’t admitted anything as yet, but he would, of that there was no doubt. Ibrahim chastised him for saying that over an unsecure line and flung the handset down.

The baba would’ve only lifted the American if he’d deemed that he was a threat, and the baba had a reputation for being an astute man. Taking into account the Mossad operative and now this, anything was possible, Ibrahim thought.

He knew that they would reach Marseilles by daybreak. He wondered if the American was CIA. And just the possibility of that meant he’d have to use the 3D printer before he reached the French coast.

Chapter 52

Tom had been taken to a basement that smelt of wet hay and manure. The damp seemed to lie like a blanket over him, making him shiver intermittently. Blinking open his eyes, he saw that his immediate vicinity was still empty, save for a stained floor mattress and a hurricane lamp giving off a yellow glow. His body was sore and felt bloated from his head to his toes.

He was naked and had been worked over to the point that he’d blacked out. He’d been ordered to strip in the SUV. He’d refused, but a whack in the groin and a cocked handgun couldn’t be argued with. His clothes had been burned in some remote spot, he suspected.

Lying with his cheek against the bare concrete floor, he could guess what would happen during the next session. They’d drive nails into his hands and feet, ripping tissue and shattering bones. They’d use drills and blowtorches and acid, just as Lester had said. They’d break him.

He felt a swelling under his left eye, a gash dripping blood above it. His kidneys ached as if he’d drunk a bottle of Jack the day before. He figured he had red welts around his neck where he’d been half strangled, and bloody lesions on his back where they’d whipped him with split bamboo.

But it was just the torturer’s’ starter course; a sadistic aperitif. He knew torture got progressively worse in order to make the mind shift – to build anxiety and fear even when it wasn’t happening, so that somehow the time in between became as bad as the physical act itself.

Move, Tom, he thought. Drag your sorry ass up and move.

They had shackled him, of course, hand and foot, with chains and heavy padlocks rather than plasticuffs. He was gagged with black masking tape. But his hands were in front of him and the chains weren’t attached to the wall by a metal loop, or to an immovable object like a support beam, so at least he had options.

No, scratch that, he thought. I’ve got one option.

He brought his knees up and turned over onto his front. Gritting his teeth, he pushed off the floor with his hands as if he was doing a starter push up. In the kneeling position now, he lifted out his arms in front of him to steady himself and, wobbling a little at first, raised himself off the floor. Immediately he felt lightheaded, his muscles drained of energy. He was fettered, for sure, but he wasn’t in a straightjacket.

The door to the basement was, Tom estimated, about three inches thick. He’d only been able to glimpse it when he’d been dragged down the flight of flagstone steps hours before. But even then he’d known that that amount of steel was just about blast proof, let alone hammer proof, and he had neither the means nor the expertise to pick the lock. He would wait behind it. There was nothing else to be done. His plan was simple. And simple was best.

Before his last lapse into unconsciousness he had methodically counted every second between the guard’s visits. To the best of his ability and over a period of two hours, he’d estimated that the guard came to check on him at regular thirty minute intervals. Now, however, he didn’t know if the guard had just been, was about to arrive, or whether it was midterm. But what he did know was that his only way out was via the guard.

About twenty minutes later, Tom was beginning to feel nauseous from standing upright. But then he heard the unmistakable sound of boots on the steps, the guard’s boots. He favoured a Heckler & Koch HK45 handgun, Tom had noticed previously. He had it positioned high on the hip in a plastic holster, which meant the Turk might even be an ex-operative. That, together with the fact that unlike the other men of the Turkish mafia Tom had met, the guy didn’t seem to get off on all the violence. He seemed calm and professional, which also meant that he was far more dangerous than the rest.

Tom heard the key in the lock and drew in a deep, silent breath. As the door was swung open to perhaps a foot and a half he waited for a split second for the guard to follow through before shoulder barging it just behind the handle. The door snapped shut, pinning the guard to the adjoining wall. The guard, seemingly temporarily stunned, made a sound like a distressed seal. By the time Tom swivelled around the door to confront him, the man was bending forwards a little, his right hand going for the plastic holster.

Tom drew his shackled hands back over his left shoulder and struck the guard on the temple with the chains around his wrists. He twisted his body to add momentum as best he could, but in retrospect it wasn’t necessary. The guard sparked out. The speed of his hands coupled with the weight of the chain had caused the other side of the guard’s head to bounce off the wall with a disconcerting crack before he’d collapsed to the floor, as if his leg muscles had turned to gelatine. Although, in truth, Tom didn’t know whether it was the temple blow or the collision with the jagged stone wall that had caused the blackout.

Not that it mattered much, he thought, as he knelt down beside the guard and did his best, given his constraints, to rifle through the man’s pockets. Finding the keys in the left pocket of the guy’s pants and opening the padlock that’d fastened the chain on his legs, he had a notion that things had gone too easily. Maybe the Turkish mafia were used to people becoming compliant simply due the nature of the environment they were held in, or maybe it was the mafia’s reputation for brutality. Maybe it was a combination of both, he thought.

After Tom had unlocked the second padlock by holding the end of the key between his teeth and had let the chain around his wrists slide to the floor and curl up like a snake, he was torn between thinking the mafia were sloppy and thinking they’d just never dealt with a guy like him before. But when in doubt be vigilant, he told himself, although his brain had already gone into DS paranoia mode. He ripped the tape from his mouth and took in five deep, audible breaths.

Freed of his shackles, he clothed himself in the guard’s charcoal-grey suit and laced up the leather shoes. Next he pulled out the guard’s HK handgun and checked the clip.

He didn’t know what lay beyond the door, but whatever or whoever it was, if it stood in his way, he’d resolved to kill it.

Chapter 53

At the top of the stairs Tom had passed through an unlocked wooden door. The sparsely-lit corridor appeared to be empty and he moved as quietly as he could over the concrete floor. He held up the hurricane lamp that had been his only source of light in the basement, but after twenty paces or more he froze.