The Templar Salvation (2010) (30 page)

Chapter 30

T
his is Hawk Command. Pull-back will be in just under thirty minutes.”

The voice of the drone’s controller boomed through Reilly’s wireless earpiece with a clarity that belied the fact that the man with the joystick was sitting comfortably several thousand miles away, in the rolling hills of northern California. His words didn’t come as a surprise. The drone had been circling overhead throughout the night. Its dwell was long, but it wasn’t indefinite—and the bird still had a long flight home.

Reilly frowned. “Copy that,” he responded. “Hang on.” He pulled his eyes off the two small orange blobs on the screen of his laptop and across to the burly commando huddled a few feet away from him and Ertugrul. “How much longer till we go?” he asked, his voice cautiously low.

Captain Musa Keskin of the Turkish Gendarmeria’s Special Forces Unit—the Ozel Jandarma Komando Bolugu—checked his watch and looked up into the night sky. Dawn was close. The sun would have to scale the summit of the big mountain that was facing them before they’d see it, but its glow would suffuse the area long before then. A stocky man, Keskin had a tree stump for a neck and forearms that would have driven Popeye into a jealous tizzy. He gave Reilly an “almost there” nod, then flashed him an open-palmed, five-minute signal before turning and giving his men the same gesture.

Reilly nodded, and looked up into the murky distance. “We’re going in five,” he told the controller.

“Copy that. And good luck,” the voice said. “We’ll be watching.”

Reilly felt a quiver of anxiety. They were there more out of a lack of other options than out of any certainty that they were in the right place. Before the sun had set several hours ago, the drone had picked up a vehicle that matched the description and color of a car that had been reported stolen in Istanbul a day earlier. Just as importantly, it hadn’t spotted any other vehicle in the target area that matched anything on the list Reilly and Ertugrul were given. Because of the terrain, the drone hadn’t been able to get a fix on the car’s license plates in order to confirm things either way, but the vehicle, a black Land Rover Discovery, was parked alongside another SUV in the foothills of the volcano, in an area that wasn’t usually frequented by climbers and in the quadrant that Tess had thought was most likely to be the right one. It wasn’t any kind of confirmation that they had a bead on their target—but it was all they had.

The Vatican bomber—if indeed it was him—had made it tough for them to get a better look. There was no way for a sniper or a spotter to get eyes on whoever was up there. The two SUVs were parked in a small clearing that backed up against a big rock face, which effectively cut off any chance of getting a visual from the back or from most of the sides without risking alerting him to their presence. The only imagery they had to work with was infrared and thermal and coming down to them from thirty thousand feet overhead via the unmanned drone’s operators at Beale Air Force Base.

The clearing’s location had also made things difficult for them. The only way to reach it was up a narrow, winding, rock-strewn mule path that pretty much nuked any chance of sneaking up unannounced. The engine noise of their vehicles would give them away long before they reached it. Reilly, Ertugrul, and the Turkish paramilitary squad had been forced to leave their vehicles—and Tess—almost a mile down the road and hike the rest of the way up. They were now in the cover of a thicket of basswood saplings and wild bush at the edge of a small
yayla
, a couple of hundred feet and slightly downhill from the clearing.

The two orange blobs on Reilly’s screen weren’t moving. Judging by their oblong shapes, they seemed to be lying down, asleep, which was hardly surprising, given the time. A long-distance directional microphone wasn’t picking up any chitchat or snoring. The question was, who were they? Was one of them the target, or were they just a couple of civilians sleeping under the stars? And if one of them was the bomber, who was the other? Simmons? Or the owner of the second SUV? In which case, where was Simmons?

The plan was to go just before sunrise. Use the advantage of having the right gear, the Hawk circling overhead, while knowing that if things didn’t work out as planned, daylight wasn’t far off. Reilly glanced around him. The men of the Ozel Tim were making their final preparations, checking their weapons and adjusting the straps on their night vision goggles. There were sixteen of them altogether—three down the road with Tess, the others, under Keskin’s command, up there with Reilly and Ertugrul. They had all come from the military and were specially trained in anti-guerrilla warfare. They were well equipped and heavily armed, and from what Reilly had seen so far, they seemed to know what they were doing.

Reilly tried to release the knot of tension at the back of his neck. He told himself that things were looking up. If his guy was up there, the son of a bitch was cornered, outnumbered, and seriously outgunned. But he might have a hostage. And, Reilly knew, that kind of thing rarely worked out without some kind of wrinkle.

He caught Keskin’s eye. The burly man nodded, raised a bullhorn, and aimed it at the two SUVs up ahead.

“
Dikkat, dikkat
,” the captain bellowed. Attention, attention
.
“You, up there by the cars,” he called out in Turkish. “This is the Jandarma. You are surrounded. Come out with your hands where we can see them.” He repeated it, then said it again in a heavily accented, broken English.

Reilly peered out into the darkness, then dropped his eyes back to his screen. The ghostly, orangey shapes on it sprang to life. They moved around by the vehicles, merging into each other and splitting up again like molecules in a petri dish. The veins in his neck hardened as he tried to picture what was going on up there. Seconds turned to a minute, then Keskin raised his bullhorn and sounded out his warning again.

The shapes stayed merged for a tense moment, the better part of another minute. Keskin glanced over at Reilly and Ertugrul, his hard features brimming with confidence.

“If they were just regular civilians up there, they would have shouted back,” he told them. “I think it’s your man.”

“The question is, who’s up there with him?” Reilly asked. “Is it Simmons or an accomplice?”

“Either way, he can have us believe it’s a hostage,” Ertugrul noted. Addressing the captain, he asked, “How do you want to play this?”

“We’ll give them another minute or so, no more. Then we’ll hit them with stun grenades and go in.” He turned to one of his men and fired off some crisp words in Turkish. The man nodded and slipped away quietly, gesturing to his men to get ready.

Reilly turned to his screen. The figures were still one, still in the same position, behind the Discovery. Then they started moving, gliding around the back of the car—then they detached. One of them remained behind the SUV, the other stopped momentarily, then headed out. Into open ground.

Reilly raised his night vision binoculars as clipped shouts burst out around him. He saw a lone figure appear behind the Discovery, a pale green silhouette in a sea of black. He squinted to allow his focus to adjust. The figure now definitely looked like it was a man. He was walking toward them, slowly, his gait reluctant. Reilly flicked a glance down at his screen. The other orange blob was still behind the Discovery, but it had edged to the very back of the car.

“Who is it?” Ertugrul asked as he also tracked the man’s approach through infrared binoculars.

“Not sure yet,” Reilly replied, his eyes locked on the figure.

The man started down the narrow path that led to them. The lenses’ 3.5 magnification range now allowed for a clear ID. His face came into view, the long hair, the athletic build.

“Hold your fire,” Reilly hissed. “It’s Simmons.”

A few brief commands in Turkish bounced down the line of paramilitaries. Simmons was now barely fifty yards away, and Reilly could see him more clearly. He was wearing a windbreaker and had his arms behind his back, and as he swung around to have a look behind him, Reilly could see that they were heavily tied with duct tape. He also had a side strip of tape around his mouth.

The other blob was still huddled behind the Discovery.

Simmons was about thirty yards away when Keskin barked another order. A half dozen men in camouflage fatigues, black balaclavas, and night vision goggles surged from behind trees and boulders and converged on him. They grabbed hold of him and hustled him back to safety.

Reilly kept his eyes lasered on Simmons. The archaeologist seemed totally distressed, in a panic even, twisting around, shaking his head sideways, struggling against the commandos, a muffled, high-pitched wail coming from behind the tape.

A loud siren started blaring inside Reilly’s head.

Why is he struggling like that? Why isn’t he jumping for joy?

Then his gaze dropped to the thin windbreaker Simmons was wearing, how it was zipped all the way up, how it seemed much puffier than he’d have expected it would be on that ripped kitesurfer’s torso.

Oh shit
.

A rush of blood flooded his brain and he bolted up, waving wildly, shouting out at the top of his lungs, “No, get away from hi—”

And Simmons blew up.

Chapter 31

T
he night went bright with a flash of searing light that obliterated everything from view a nanosecond before the blast wave hit Reilly. It punched the wind out of him and wrenched him off his feet, flinging him back into the gravel-strewn ground. In the blink of an eye, all of his sensory inputs were shut down and he was plunged into a dark and silent bubble.

It wasn’t the small belt charge.

That one would have only killed Simmons and wouldn’t have hurt anyone else unless they happened to be lying on top of him.

No, this was entirely different.

This was thirty-odd pounds of plastic explosive strapped around the archaeologist’s waist. A proper, full-bore suicide bomber’s rig. And the effect was devastating.

As he stirred to consciousness, Reilly felt as if his ears had been turned inside out. He couldn’t hear anything apart from his own ragged breathing, and he felt heavy-headed and unbalanced, as if he were lost deep underwater and couldn’t tell which way was up. His eyes were having trouble focusing, but from the vague shapes drifting into view, he figured that he was on his back. He tried to move his arms and legs, but they wouldn’t respond at first. He gritted his teeth and found the strength to roll slowly onto his right side, wanting to check and make sure none of his limbs were missing, but not wanting to discover that wasn’t the case. He lifted his hands and saw that at least they were both still there. His hand settled on the handgun in his holster for a split second before he realized the weapon was burning hot and quickly pulled it back.

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked out.

The mountain had turned into a vision of Hell.

The trees around him were ablaze, spewing acrid black smoke, which stuck uncomfortably in his throat. Screams and moans reverberated around him. Through the haze, he glimpsed strewn body parts littering the scree—an arm, a leg sticking out of a stray boot. Injured commandos were sprawled on the ground, cradling their wounds, calling out for help. The explosion had shredded Simmons’s body to bits before ripping through the commandos who were escorting him back to safety. Every bone in his body, even his wristwatch and his belt buckle—it had all been smashed into superheated shrapnel that burst out and sliced through any flesh that stood in its way.

Reilly’s eyes roamed around the carnage and the chaos, then fell on a couple of bodies on fire by the trees, the air thickening with the sickly smell of their burning flesh. One of them was still alive, moving slowly in a flaming death-crawl. Then he spotted Ertugrul, closer to him, a dozen yards or so to his left. He was on the ground, sitting up, motionless and soundless, looking over at Reilly with a shocked, confused stare, his right hand on his cheek, his fingers inching their way up toward a big hole in his skull, a shrapnel wound that was spewing blood.