The Vengeance of the Tau (20 page)

It would take eleven minutes for them all to reach their positions. No one would make a move until everyone was ready. The elevators and stairwells all had to be covered. So, too, the hotel’s service basement, rear area, and lobby. If the initial strike team failed, the idea was to create a circle that could be gradually tightened until the target was caught within it. They had used the method before, but never with this many men, and it had never taken long to close the circle even on those occasions.

The operation began with nothing more than subtle nods. The men checked their watches and dispersed.

Billy Boy Griggs had the driver pull over a block from the Büyük Efes. Behind him he could hear the Twins stirring, whispering between themselves again. Jesus, these guys scared him. …

Billy knew all the stories, all the legends, about the pair. How they had killed their way through a hundred guards to slay the sultan of a small Arab country. How they had protected a charge who had hired them from attack by two dozen mercenaries armed with the best weapons available; killed them all, was the story. How they had already laid to rest an even dozen previously indestructible operatives who had finally crossed the line that required the Twins to be summoned.

The same line that Blaine McCracken had crossed.

Billy heard the back door open, but didn’t turn around to watch the Twins exit.

“We won’t be long,” they said in unison.

The leader of the German team dispersing through the hotel was also its oldest member, twice as old as most of the rest. He had the same crew cut he had worn before his hair had turned white, and he had been fortunate enough to keep most of it. He had also kept the same rigid walk, arms swaying robotically by his side. None of the other team members had ever worked with him before and didn’t even know his name. But he was the one who had assembled them and had eyed them stealthily when they entered the hotel.

The leader stepped through the lobby, studying the positions his men had taken up on this level. One glance was all they gave up to him. Good. They were excellent men, each and every one. The German ducked into an alcove and pulled back his sleeve. The watch revealed was scarred and scratched from constant usage, inconsistent with his finely tailored suit. It was a soldier’s watch and had been since his father had given it to him as a boy.

The paradox was symbolic. It had been a long time since he had mounted an active mission. He had grown accustomed to the shadows, but now the light beckoned him once more. So much depended on his success tonight. Everything.

In three minutes his entire team would be in position. It would be time to move.

The German emerged from the alcove, too late to see the identical twins enter the hotel.

Independently of one another, the Twins picked out the presence of the men in the lobby instantly. It was a feeling that alerted them at first. Then their eyes swept the area, stopping at each of the well-dressed men at their posts.

The little man had said nothing about a force protecting McCracken. Could it be that these had come here for the same purpose they had? Fools. Did they really think that ordinary men, no matter how strong in number, could eliminate someone like McCracken? A hundred men posted in a hundred different places meant one man to kill a hundred times.

No matter what they were here for, these men would now inevitably prove an obstacle. They added not only complications, but also unpredictability to what was about to transpire. If four were posted in the lobby, three or four times that many would be scattered at strategic points throughout the hotel. In position already, they would move on McCracken before the Twins could possibly do the same. Alerted, he would be doubly dangerous and prepared. Their best hope was to eliminate these obstacles before they became an impediment. A change in plans, yes, but one that was clearly necessary.

The eyes of the German with the crew cut were glued to his old watch. Tucked back in the isolated lobby alcove, he lowered his mouth toward his lapel microphone.

“We move in one minute. All teams report.”

“Team One in position. All clear.”

“Team Two in position. All clear.”

“Team Three in position. All clear.”

“Team Four in position. All clear.”

“Team Five in position. All clear.”

The German waited. No reply filtered back through his earpiece.

“Team Six, come in.”

Silence.

“Team Six, are you there? … Team Six, can you hear me?”

An equipment malfunction was probably to blame. He’d have to check on it.

“Team One,” he said to the three men on the target’s floor, the initial strike group. “Report status.”

“No movement. Target inside.”

Team Six was one of two posted in the lobby. The German recalled the layout in his mind. They were right out in the open, responsible for the elevators. He could send Team Five to check on them or he could simply let the plan go forward and check on them himself when time allowed.

“Thirty seconds,” he told them all. “On my mark.”

Inside his room, something snapped Blaine McCracken awake. He bolted upright in bed, shoulders board-stiff and neck hackles rising.

Had it been a dream?

No, there had been a sound, barely discernible to all but the long-trained mind.

He slid off the bed quietly and moved for his gun.

Team One approached the door slowly. Two of the three members took posts on either side and waited while the third angled straight for it. From beneath his coat he pulled a sawed-off shotgun loaded with a single antipersonnel round. Obtaining swift entry was of paramount importance here. Explosives took too long to plant and were too iffy to work with. The round was a much better choice, especially in this instance. Once they were inside, surprise on their side and their target too stunned to respond, the rest would take care of itself.

The third member of the team nodded and leveled his weapon. He waited until the other two had covered their ears before pulling the trigger.

The door exploded inward, the entire area around the latch reduced to splinters. The two members on either side of it crashed through the door’s remnants with pistols drawn.

They had just registered the fact that the room was empty, and were turning toward the final team member, when a figure whirled toward them. The first man caught a glimpse of a dark beard before a rock-hard fist impacted on the bridge of his nose and plunged him into blackness. The second swung the figure’s way and tried to right his weapon. Before he could fire it, though, something tore it from his hand and slammed him backward into the wall. His breath fled him in a rush that left him no air to scream with when the final blow smashed into his face.

McCracken watched the final man slump down the wall and backed out into the corridor. One of his own private security provisions in hotels like this was to insist on two rooms across from each other. Then he would purposely leave a trail of phone calls and even room service deliveries that his contact at the hotel would route through the dummy room. It was like setting a trap, Blaine right across the hall in case anyone took the bait. Better to have your enemies reveal themselves than remain obscured, had always been his thinking. And this time, once again, it had paid off.

Killing the assailants would have been excessive, unnecessary. Disabling them, albeit violently, was sufficient. McCracken stowed the unconscious frame of the third man, the one who had fired the round, inside the room before heading off.

He moved back into the corridor and stopped briefly at the fire alarm. The three men wouldn’t be alone. Pulling the alarm would provide him with a reasonable cushion of chaos to aid his flight. But it would also render the elevators inoperative, and that would narrow his options.

Blaine continued on down the corridor. Since it was the middle of the day, few of the rooms along it were occupied, and the explosion had gone largely unnoticed. A maid was screaming in Turkish from behind the cover of her cart. A scant number of people were milling about. McCracken slid past them all and reached the elevator bank. The up arrow on one flashed, the down arrow on another a second after.

Blaine rushed for the stairs.

“Team Two, what’s going on?” the German leader said into his lapel mike.

“Team One has been neutralized.”

“
What?
Say again, please.”

“Team One has been neutralized. We’re in the room. No sign of target. All members of Team One are down. We must have just missed the target back at the elevator.”

“Close from the top. All teams, please acknowledge. Close from the top!”

“Damn!” the leader muttered in exasperation, as the acknowledgments filled his ear.

What had gone wrong? The better question was what hadn’t? He had reached the lobby to find that Team Six was missing from their posts, equipment failure not to blame at all for their failure to report. Where were they? His first thought was that McCracken had somehow crossed them up and was down there. But then, with the Go signal given, he had heard the blast, then the confused shrieks that followed. McCracken had crossed them up, all right, in a different and equally effective way.

“Team Two, where are—”

“Jesus,” the leader heard in his earpiece, the voice recognized as that of one of the members of Team Two.

“What is—”

The staccato bursts of gunfire followed, then screams. Finally there was laughter, filling the microphone of one of his men before drifting off into a dying echo.

Chapter 19

THE TWINS WERE ENJOYING
themselves. Eliminating the two men they had initially seen posted in the lobby had been as easy as brushing up against them. It looked totally innocent, including the moment they jammed the blades deep into the men’s backs. The blades were custom-fitted with detachable handles. Once pulled free and with the blade wedged deep, a simple hand across the back covered all trace of the wound. To anyone looking, the sight was that of a friend helping a drunken companion. The Twins had mastered this method to the point where they could even make it seem as if the corpse were walking.

They deposited the bodies in the men’s room down an empty corridor; left them on the toilets with their pants down to discourage anyone from checking. Then they bolted back out toward the lobby. By this point, an agitated man with a crew cut was nervously scanning the lobby. The leader, they guessed, and they were moving toward him when one of the Twins noticed him cock his head downward and speak into his lapel. Whatever the rest of his men were here for was well under way. They could take care of this man later. Right now they had to reach McCracken. They walked casually to the elevator and boarded it.

They emerged on McCracken’s floor seconds before two more members of the group led by the man with the crew cut appeared. By the time this pair turned, it was much too late. Without a word of coordination, each of the Twins chose a target and blasted away at it, keeping the bullets going well after the killshots. When it was over, they swung down opposite sides of the hallway firing at anything that moved. The lucky guests made it back into their rooms. The unlucky ones ended up sprawled on the hallway carpet, life pouring from them.

They exchanged glances when they reached McCracken’s room, not at all surprised by what they saw. One of the Twins pushed the door open and saw the unconscious frames of three more well-dressed men resting against the wall. The Twins entered the room and cut their throats as they lay there.

Back in the corridor, they broke off in opposite directions. What little the element of surprise might have done for them was gone; the presence of the other party had seen to that. Their primary objective at this point was to locate McCracken before he could leave the building. One of the Twins headed left down the hall, the other right. They would descend on opposite sides of the building, certain that McCracken would be somewhere beneath one of them. Not exactly the way they had planned things, but close enough. And, of course, there was also the possibility that the team, now seven members smaller, might find McCracken for them.

Save time that way. Maybe even allow them to complete the kill together.

McCracken bolted down the stairwell from the seventh floor to the fifth, burst through the doors, and headed toward another exit sign. Since he had no idea of the enemy’s number or position, the first order of business was to confuse them. His escape route through the hotel had to leave them thinking he was still inside, even that they might be closing in. It took longer but was infinitely more effective.

The one thing the hotel assistant manager had been unable to provide for him yet was a gun, so he had stripped a submachine gun from one of the men he had downed. Not his favorite weapon, under the circumstances. He’d much prefer a pistol, something he could conceal easily by his side. With no jacket to conceal the submachine gun, if he had to enter the lobby all eyes would be drawn to him.

By now, hotel officials would be converging on the site of the apparent explosion upstairs. It would be up to the assistant manager to square things once the investigation deepened. McCracken entered a second stairwell cautiously and began to thunder down the remaining floors.

His plan at this point was to bypass the lobby altogether. With any luck at all, these stairs would lead to the shopping and entertainment level contained beneath it. A garage was even possible, though his concern for Melissa’s state of mind had distracted him from making a thorough reconnaissance of the Büyük Efes.

McCracken was swinging over the railing to the staircase leading down from the lobby level when he heard the heavy footsteps charging upward. A single voice spoke rapidly, stopped, and then spoke again. Whoever was approaching must have had a microphone pinned to his lapel, just as the men he had dropped in the room above had. And the language, the language was …

German!

But who were these men? And what had brought them to Izmir on Blaine’s trail?

The man’s shape came within reach. He had his finger on the trigger of a submachine gun and managed to squeeze it just as McCracken pushed off the railing and threw his legs up into the barrel. The bullets stitched a ricocheting barrage against the concrete. The noise stung Blaine’s ears. He grabbed the German’s head and the man responded by butting him just over the eyebrows.