Veil of the Goddess (12 page)

"Buck up,” Zack advised. “We're innocent of any drug charges. They'll have to let us go."

Ivy didn't think so. Her time in Iraq had made her painfully aware of how little it takes to become a suspect, and how difficult it is for the system to let go once it has you in its grip. And the Turkish system definitely had Zack and Ivy in its grip now.

The soldiers bypassed the World War II vintage jeep she and Zack had noticed when they entered Simak and led them to a panel truck with bars in the windows.

"They must have sent for this the minute we walked into town,” Zack whispered as the soldiers patted him down, took his commando knife, and then shoved them aboard. “Because it sure wasn't here when we arrived."

The rear hatch closed with a solid clang and the three soldiers headed for the comfort of the cab.

Moments later, the engine fired up and the truck slowly gathered speed as it left the cobbled roads of Simak and hit the rough asphalt pavement of the Turkish highway.

"Okay, Mr. Plan-man, it's time for you to come up with something to get us out of this.” Ivy shut her eyes and watched the distant glow of the old temple fade from the horizon.

They'd jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. She didn't know whether the soldiers would turn them over to the CIA for torture, or handle the torture themselves, but it didn't really matter. Unless she and Zack figured something out in the next couple of hours, their lifespan would become measured in minutes and in pain rather than in years.

"If we ever needed a key, now would be the time,” Zack said. “Although I don't suppose they would have let us bring the Cross along."

"Don't joke about this stuff.” Ivy sat on the floor, trying to hold on as the truck made its way through hairpin switchbacks and splashed through small mountain streams that either hadn't ever been bridged or where bridges had long since been washed away.

"Why? Is something worse going to happen to me?"

A tear glistened in one of Ivy's eyes and he instantly felt like a complete heel for his response.

"Sorry."

"It's all right. I'm just scared."

After fighting the Foundation, the Iraqi insurgents, the CIA, the Kurdish militia, some crazed Orthodox monks, and now the Turkish Army, Zack couldn't blame her for being scared.

He took off his belt and looked at the buckle. Unfortunately the belt was of the military variety, with no tongue he could yank off to pick the lock. Still, it was metal. He smashed the buckle against the truck floor until the little roller piece came out. It would make the world's worst lock-pick, but he couldn't just sit and do nothing.

Ivy noticed his feeble efforts just about the time the truck hit an especially large bump and the buckle bit slipped out of his hand and vanished into the dust behind them.

"Damn.” Now he was still locked in and his pants would fall down.

"What are you doing?"

"What I'm
trying
to do is take advantage of skills learned in my misspent youth and pick the lock to this place. What I'm
actually
doing is banging up the knuckles on one hand and holding my pants up with my other."

She perked up. “You know how to pick locks?"

"If I had the picks I had back in south Dallas, I'd have this door opened in twenty seconds."

"Really? What kind of tools do you need?"

"Ideally? Professional locksmith quality picks would be perfect. In a pinch, a couple of nice hunks of spring steel would do the job. I've proven a one-inch-long round piece of tin won't do the job, though."

"Oh. Turn your back for a minute."

Zack started to ask her if she'd gone crazy, then decided not to bother. Given what was going to happen to them when they reached the Army interrogation center, insanity might be the best way out for both of them.

He did as she asked, and stared out the barred window at the back of the truck.

"Okay, here."

She handed him her bra.

The fabric still held the warmth from her breasts and carried the scent of clean woman.

His brain instantly went into short-circuit mode. “Listen, I like you and everything, but I don't think this is the—"

"The underwire, idiot. It's made out of springy steel."

Smooth work
, he assured himself. Not only had he missed the obvious, Ivy probably thought he suffered from delusions.

He turned away again, mostly to hide the flush on his face. He used a sharp edge from the carcass of his smashed belt buckle to slice the two thin wires out of Ivy's bra and handed the ruined bit of fabric back to her.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Put it on. It's better than nothing.” For him if not for her. He didn't have time to think about Ivy's breasts unbound.

"You're a strange man, Captain."

"You don't know the half of it."

The underwires were a bit slender and flimsy for the size of the lock he was dealing with, but he had time. Zack managed to get the truck's rear hatch opened within a couple of minutes.

It would have been smart to wait until they slowed for something, but Zack had a sneaking suspicion that even on this old truck, an open door would signal an alarm. At least they weren't on a freeway. The truck's top speed going up through the Turkish mountains couldn't have been more than twenty-five kilometers an hour and they weren't going top speed right then. “Jump,” he ordered.

Ivy leapt off the truck and he followed as soon as she was clear.

The ground came up and hit him hard but he managed to protect his head. Still the impact had him seeing stars.

"Come on, we've got to move.” Ivy must have landed better than he had. She was dragging him off the road before he recovered.

"Where to?"

"Back to Simak. Back to the Cross."

"The entire Turkish Army is going to be looking for us now."

"Everyone in the world is looking for us. Why should the Turkish Army be different? Besides, would you want to abandon the Cross after all we've been through?"

"It didn't hurt anyone when the Kurds left it in Mosul for seven hundred years."

Ivy shook her head angrily. “That was
before
the Foundation came looking for it. They aren't going to give up, Zack. It might take them a few months, but our hiding place isn't perfect."

Unfortunately, she was right. “We'd better stay off the road, then. Because I have a feeling we're about to have company. A lot of company."

The distance that they'd covered in less than an hour in the Army paddy wagon took close to twenty-four hours to retrace on foot.

The Turkish Army had plenty of experience tracking small bands of Kurdish guerillas in the area and used that experience to hunt for Ivy and Zack. Their low-flying helicopters and the ambushes they set up on fords and bridges crossing the fast-moving mountain streams were bad enough.

The dogs were worse.

Three times, she and Zack waded miles in impossible streams, climbed out on low-hanging trees, and tried to escape the scent-sniffing animals. Each time, the lead they gained was temporary. The Turks knew those tricks. Zack's urban background was no help at all, and Ivy's small-town Pennsylvania upbringing wasn't much better. Nobody had used tracking dogs in her neighborhood since it had been a stop on the Underground Railroad a century-and-a-half earlier.

Every muscle in her body complained, wanted to surrender and get this over. But surrender was no option. If they'd gone peacefully to Batman, maybe they could have persuaded the Turkish authorities that they were no threat. It wasn't likely, but it had been possible. With their breakout, they'd given up that option. If they were captured, the Turkish Army would be so certain they'd found drug smugglers that she and Zack would spend the rest of their lives in some Turkish prison—unless the Turks handed them over to the CIA.

"How hard would it have been for me to grab a GPS before I bailed out of my tank?” Zack complained. “I don't even know where we are any more. For all I know, we passed Simak hours ago."

Her second sight didn't help, either. But Ivy was pretty sure they hadn't gone far enough.

"It doesn't matter. The longer we stay free, the wider the Turks will have to spread their net and the more likely they'll be to miss us."

He grabbed her arm as she stumbled over a rock, then froze.

"What?"

"I smell someone."

Ivy couldn't smell anything other than herself. She'd had that wonderful bath, but one thing they'd forgotten to buy had been deodorant. It was an error she swore she'd never repeat."

"That's me, you idiot. I smell like a horse."

"I don't—"

"Stop, please."

The coffee shop owner's son stepped from behind a tree. “No more talking. I have found you when the others couldn't."

She couldn't see his cocky grin, but she could hear it in his voice. She relaxed, inhaled, prepared to launch herself at the latest threat.

The hard ratchet of a shotgun cartridge being seated stopped her. The sound came from behind her. They were surrounded.

"If you think you're going to get a reward, don't count on it,” Zack warned.

"The talking is dangerous. You must shut up. You will please to follow me. We have kilometers to walk."

Ivy looked toward Zack but didn't see any inspiration there. “Guess we have no choice."

"Talking is bad,” the kid repeated. “The Turks have sensors. Hear long distances."

Great. With her big mouth, Ivy had probably been leading the Turkish Army around like a dog pulling on a leash.

She forced herself to follow the kid as he climbed higher into the mountains.

Another of their captors sidled up to her after they'd walked a few minutes. “Take,” he whispered. He nudged something into her ribs. That it brushed against her boobs might have been an accident. She didn't think so.

She resisted the urge to hit him. Whoever the kid was with, they weren't going to turn her over to the Army. For now, at least, they were the best option she and Zack had. She forced herself to remain calm and took the hard object he'd shoved into her boob.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but a plastic bottle filled with water and a handful of dried apricots were better than a feast. It had been hours since they'd left the last stream and her throat was about as parched as the mountains.

She drank deeply, then passed the water bottle over to Zack.

He nodded his thanks and she realized that she could see his gesture. Darkness was graying into dawn.

"Hurry,” the kid urged.

The fiery aurora of the sun barely peaked over the horizon when the kid dropped out of sight in front of her.

She stopped abruptly, but the guy behind her, the one with the shotgun, shoved her, hard.

Her feet slid out from under her and she scooted down a steep, but fortunately not too deep, hole on her rear.

"Talk now,” the young Kurd announced as she landed with something of a splat—and Zack fell on top of her. “This cave is safe."

She inhaled and understood why he knew about such a perfect hiding place. Black bricks of hashish, hundreds of them, lined the stone walls of a cave which was partly natural but that showed the marks of human expansion.

"We seem stuck spending our lives underground,” Zack complained.

"The last time we were safe was in that cave in Iraq. I'm not going to kick."

"So, kid, you and your buddies are in the hashish business,” Zack observed. “I guess you showing us this means you aren't going to turn us over to the Army. But what are your plans?"

"I am Cejno. A man, not a kid,” the kid reported. “My friends and I, we sell such hashish to the Americans in Iraq. Good soldiers like a smoke sometimes. It's,” he wrinkled his forehead, clearly looking for the right words, and settled on, “it's the
prime shit
."

The kid with the shotgun, and Ivy could now see that all five of the men who'd found them were teenagers, toked up a small pipe and proceeded to enjoy some of that
prime shit
.

"Congratulations on your entrepreneurial zeal,” Zack said.

"Thank you.” Cejno didn't seem to hear Zack's irony. “But we are looking for the business expansions. More markets for our product."

"And you think we might be able to help you with that?"

Cejno nodded soberly. “Rich tourists, maybe American. Maybe English or German because the Army is looking for Americans. Such tourists can travel places a poor Kurdish man would be a questionable. No? And here are you, looking for a truck. It is meant to be."

Ivy sank to the stone floor. She'd thought things were already as bad as they could get. Getting drafted into an amateur drug smuggling operation was the one complication she hadn't envisioned.

"What do
we
get out of it?” Zack demanded.

"You escape the Army. Very important, no? And you are looking for this certain truck. A truck can be found. You need papers? We have a friend provides papers. You need much money? Once we reach Istanbul and hand the hashish over to our friend there, he does pay you for the driving. Of course, you will also have a pleasant native guide to help you with your travels through historical Turkey."

"Can we decide in a few hours?” Ivy asked. “We need sleep."

Cejno grinned. “Sleep. Sure. Feel free to slip into something comfortable. My friends and myself will avert our eyes, surely, if you wish to wear less."

Surely not.

"I'm
not
going to slip into something comfortable but I do need rest. I can't remember the last time I got more than a couple of hours of sleep."

Cejno said something in Kurdish and the kid with the shotgun rummaged around in a box and came up with a couple of blankets.

"Here, sleep. We cannot move until it is night again, anyway."

Ivy thought about asking for something to eat first, but her head hit the blanket before she came up with the words.

Twelve hours of sleep should have helped.

They didn't.

Ivy groaned softly as she tried to stretch the kinks out of her muscles.

Eight young Kurds were playing some sort of game that involved slapping cards on a makeshift table and roaring at each other.