Blown Circuit (27 page)

“I told you my brothers fought in the army and died. I told you my mother died of grief.”

“You told me that they were conscripted. That they died fighting the Kurds on the Iraqi border.”

“On this point, I was not so truthful, Michael. My brothers, like me, were Kurds. They died at the hands of the Turkish Army.”

I didn’t like what I heard. I realized that Meryem had been fundamentally wronged in her past. Whatever I said would not change that. I was dealing with a true-believer.

“I would have thought that was the kind of thing MIT would screen for in their applicants.”

“When my mother died and I left home, I had no paperwork, no identity. The Kurdish people, they helped me with this. They gave me new papers so I could join MIT. Do you know why they did this?”

“You were young and impressionable. Believe me, I know. I’ve been there.”

Meryem smiled.

“Yes, maybe so,” she said. “But this is not the reason.”

“Then what is the reason, Meryem? What’s the reason you’re holding me at gunpoint?”

“You know the man who wrote in Tesla’s journal? The man who hid the Device?”

“Bayazidi,” I said.

 
“This man, Bayazidi, was my grandfather.” Meryem said.

I thought about it. I knew how intelligence organizations worked. I worked for one. They loved to recruit based on need. And a woman in Meryem's position would have had need written all over her. Bayazidi being her grandfather, that was just the icing on the cake. These Kurdish terrorists must have thought they’d hit the lottery with Meryem. When they had recruited her she was a scared teenager. She had matured into the ultimate sleeper agent.
 

“The truck? Did you know it was hidden underground?”

“I knew I was looking for a vehicle, yes. I saw it in the shadows when they were moving their flashlights.”
 

“And the bones? The human remains? Did your grandfather hide those as well?”

“Those people gave their lives so no one among them but one would know the Device’s location. Sacrifices needed to be made.”

“So is that what I am, Meryem? Another sacrifice?”

 
The distant diesel clatter got louder. It was accompanied with a rhythmic squeaking.

“Please, Michael, do not test me. The current Turkish government is the enemy of the Kurds. But there is opposition. There are those who want the Turkish people to live in harmony with my people. But that government will not be allowed to be. Those in power will not allow it.”

“So you want to blow up a city to make a statement? How many innocent people are going to die?”

“I do not intend to blow up a city.”

Not what I was expected her to say, but I went with it.

“Then put the gun down.”

I stepped forward, but Meryem raised a hand. She wasn’t about to let me get any closer.

“Do you know who is on tour in the Mediterranean as we speak?” Meryem said.

“I don’t know, Lady Gaga?”

“Your United States warships,” Meryem said. “I do not intend to blow up a city, Michael. I intend to blow up the American Sixth Fleet.”

Chapter 52

I
WASN
’
T
SURE
that I had heard Meryem correctly. Blowing up the Sixth Fleet was crazier than blowing up New York. How was hitting the American Navy going to change anything? But then I began to see her logic. It might not change anything if the attack came from a terrorist group. But if the attack came from within the Turkish government itself, if she was somehow able to convince them that MIT or the army were responsible, for instance, then there was no way the Americans would let the current government stand. An unprovoked attack of that nature would be an act of war. Those in power would be out. Moderates would take over the Turkish Parliament. It was a plan that might just work. Except for one potential problem.
 

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I said.
 

“What is that?”

“The Tesla Device is an old piece of experimental technology. Even if you could pinpoint the location of the Sixth Fleet, you don’t know whether the weapon will work.”

“It will work, Michael.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we will be silent no longer,” Meryem said.

Which was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. Because it didn’t sound like an answer. It sounded like extremism. And there was no way to argue with it. The distant diesel clatter had grown to a low rumble. It was loud enough that though I could see Meryem's lips move, I couldn’t hear her speak. I raised my hands farther above my head and moved another step toward her, even though it meant walking into the barrel of a gun. Then the wall behind me came crashing down in a billow of dust. It just slammed down in one piece, doors and all, as a huge orange excavator crawled in on its creaky metal tracks, its scratched silver bucket gleaming in the sunlight.

I
DOVE
TO
the side, but Meryem didn’t waver. She kept me covered from the front as the big excavator crawled toward us. A second gunman, hanging off the cab of the excavator, covered me from behind. Clearly, I was rapidly losing control of the situation. Whatever my previous assumptions regarding Meryem, it was now evident that she was a much bigger problem than I had anticipated.
 

My point about the Tesla Device not necessarily functioning as advertised was probably wishful thinking. If the CIA tech team feared it enough to produce that simulation of New York being flattened, I was a believer. So were the Green Dragons, MIT, and now, apparently, the Kurds. I kept my hands raised above my head as I considered my options. The problem was, I wasn’t seeing many.

Thy guy hanging off the excavator jumped down and herded me into the corner of the barn. It was the soldier with the chipped tooth from the yacht—the one I had made eat his shirt. He grinned at me, but I didn’t smile back. No need to encourage him. The entire barn now consisted of two walls, standing only because they were nailed to the buried doors leading into the tunnel. The excavator’s big shovel lowered with a hiss of its hydraulic boom and I saw that it was Faruk in the operator’s cage. Meryem pointed him to the pile of dirt in front of the barn doors and the mechanical shovel began to move the earth aside.

It took only one bucketful for me to realize that I was in even more trouble than I had previously thought. The big bucket picked up a quarter of the dirt in the pile in one scoop. Whatever their plan was, they’d be done quickly, which meant that they’d soon need to deal with me. Faruk dumped the dirt near the eastern wall and swung back for another load. I counted off the seconds in my head. The first shovelful had taken him roughly twenty seconds to move. At that rate, I had maybe a minute before I needed to act.

Meryem covered me from the front, the guard from behind, as I watched the big bucket swing back toward the dirt pile. Hydraulics buzzing, the excavator’s boom hummed toward its target smoothly and efficiently. But then it kept going. It swung past the pile and came to an abrupt stop two feet away from me, digging down and taking a big bite out of the earth. Within seconds there was a three-foot-deep hole beside me. You didn’t need to be a genius to see what he was doing.

Faruk was digging my grave.

Faruk dumped the earth from the bucket, and then came back for a second bite, the big shovel digging deep. Then he paused his shovel for a moment and shouted something in Turkish at Meryem. Meryem shouted back. I thought I recognized one of the words. A word I had heard before.
 

Kale
.

The shovel started working again, but I had my opening. I looked Meryem in the eye. Her AK remained sternly leveled at me.

“This isn’t you, Meryem. Are you going to stand by and watch them do this?”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I didn’t get it.

“No, Michael. I will not stand by. Fools and civilians stand by. I will finish my family’s work.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Faruk manipulated the excavator. He swung the shovel up and over us this time, dumping it near the opposite wall. This was it. Action time. I took another step toward Meryem. Another step toward the barrel of her gun.

“Do not come a step closer,” she said.

It was all about the timing now. It would be a careful ballet. I waited for the shovel to swing back behind me. I needed cover. Cover from the rear. The bucket was a big piece of steel and while it was behind me, it would shield me, but it wouldn’t take care of my problem on its own, I needed to work to do that.
 

It’s counterintuitive, but the closer you get to your opponent’s gun, the more you increase your likelihood of survival. It’s because in close, if your opponent is within your reach, you can make a difference. And I was close to Meryem, just a few feet away. But I took her advice, I didn’t take a step closer. She did, though. She took a half step forward, steadying herself. And that split second when her left foot was off the ground spelled one word: opportunity. A walking human is more precariously balanced than most people realize. I swept in with my right foot and snapped out with my left arm, sweeping the barrel of the Kalashnikov up. I knew I risked a nasty burn from the gun as I took hold of its barrel, just as I risked being shot in the back by my favorite guard. The move was fluid, focused, and smooth. The barrel of the gun went up and Meryem went down.

I yanked the weapon from her as she fell on her back, pulling it off her shoulder and into my hands. An instant later her throat was beneath my foot. I could have broken her windpipe if I needed to, and she knew it. She breathed heavily, wheezing, dirt on her neck. I felt sorry for her. I had liked Meryem. I had liked her a lot. But I didn’t like what she was planning on doing, and I didn’t like that I still had a machine gun trained on my back. I turned. Chip-Tooth had me in his sights. I had Meryem, but I couldn’t say that he looked worried.
 

Then I saw why. Actually, I heard it first. A hydraulic hum. After that I caught a flash of silver out of my eye. I knew what was happening, but I wasn’t fast enough. The giant bucket of the excavator hit me like a tank. And like a tank there was no arguing with it, no negotiation. It clipped me hard on the side of the head and sent me tumbling into the freshly dug hole below.

I landed on my back in the dirt. It must have been six feet down, maybe eight, I was woozy so it was hard to tell. But I wasn’t unconscious, not yet. And I still had the gun. I fired a burst upward to keep the others away. But, as it happened, the others weren’t the problem. It was the dirt. Because the excavator raised its boom and slowly dumped a fresh bucket of loose dry soil on top of me. I remember thinking that I should leap up, but I just couldn’t pull it together. I thought I heard the word
kale
again and after that, my world turned dark.

Chapter 53

E
VERYTHING
WAS
BLACK
. I wasn’t dreaming, but I knew I wasn’t awake either. I was in some kind of protoconscious state, a place where there was no life, but no death. A place of suspended animation. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t even know who I was. All I knew was that I was thinking about a man. The man looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He was just an older man having dinner with a younger woman. Dating a younger woman. A woman less than half his age. The woman was familiar, but somehow not right. She had dark auburn hair and good teeth and a radiant smile. It definitely wasn’t the woman the man was supposed to be with—I knew that.
 

Then my focus shifted. I needed to get out. Out of what, I wasn’t sure.
A blanket
, I thought.
A black wool blanket that went on and on and never stopped. A black wool blanket that was gritty and hard and filled my mouth. A blanket of dirt.

It was then that I came to. I knew that I wasn’t under a blanket. My head hurt and my eyes were closed. I tried to open my eyes, but quickly closed them again. There was dirt everywhere. My arms were in front of my face, elbows together, my chin tucked into my neck. I moved the ends of my fingers, feeling the gritty soil. I remembered that the man in my dream was my father. The woman was Kate. I was sure of it. And then I realized a terrifying fact. I had been buried alive.

I gasped. There was air in front of my mouth. Not dirt. So that meant that there was an air pocket there. Maybe not a big one, but an air pocket. I felt my claustrophobia kick in. The panic. The fear. But I fought it. I willed myself to remain calm. I moved my fingers again, soil all around them. But I felt something else. Something hard and metallic. I knew what it was. It was the machine gun’s trigger. I pulled the trigger back and the earth shook around me. More dirt fell, the rifle’s muted report shaking the earth. But the falling dirt made my air pocket smaller, not bigger. I tried to move my shoulders. I got a little movement, but not much. It was the same with my legs. It felt as though I was trying to swim in concrete.
 

My breathing became labored. There just wasn’t enough air. From the lay of the trigger guard, it felt like the barrel of the rifle was pointed above my head at about a sixty-degree angle. I didn’t know whether I could shoot my way out. I figured the gun would jam eventually, but I had to try. I hit the trigger again. It worked after a fashion. I was able to increase the size of the air pocket above me. But at the same time, the more dirt the bullets moved, the more dirt fell on top of me. It told me that the earth was loosely packed. It was the only way to explain why I was still alive.

But my luck didn’t hold. My air pocket, which had been getting bigger, began to get smaller again. Loose, friable dirt rained down on me. I knew that the gun would jam soon. AK-47s were known for their reliability, but no weapon could continue to fire from six feet under the ground. If I was lucky, it would jam. If I was unlucky, the barrel would blow up in my face.

There was dirt all around my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I reached up with my left hand to clear the dirt away. Then I fired with my right hand and tried the swimming motion again. The dirt was even looser. I reached down and cleared my mouth. But I was running out of air, I could feel my lungs burn with the desperate need to begin hyperventilating. I fired the gun again and reached up. More dirt fell, but it was too much to clear away. I was down to the tiniest of air pockets. I closed my eyes and mouth and tried to control my breathing. I put my hand over my nose, pushing the dirt away, but it did no good. I was going to die down there.