“Come on, hotshot. Take a guess,” he said.
I shrugged. “In pounds, a 102.5, give or take.”
“More like 104. You’re rusty.”
“Rusty or not, I can’t see myself dragging this gear from here to Istanbul. And a couple of miles down the road from there as well.”
“You tell me where, and it’ll be there.”
“What’s this? You taking a sudden interest in my mission?” I said.
“Let me guess.” Anderson quirked an eyebrow. He tapped his windbreaker over the spot where he’d pocketed the envelope. “If I’m wrong, well, hell, you got a full refund coming.”
“Yeah, right.”
“A C-17 Globemaster. Am I right?”
“Time to go,” I said, shaking my head.
“Not yet.” Roger pulled back his sleeve and read his watch. “Not yet. First we eat.”
“I’ll eat when the mission’s over.”
Roger cracked up when he heard this. “Same old Jake.”
“I keep hearing that. ‘Same old Jake.’ What is that? Like a compliment?”
“A compliment, my ass.” Roger led me over to an improvised kitchenette, meaning a coffeepot, a cupboard filled with canned soup, and a microwave. The coffee was strong and the soup was hot. We ate it standing up. When he was done, Roger tossed his dish into a tub sink and looked at his watch again. “Now it’s time to go. Finish your coffee. You got a plane to catch.”
He locked up. We retraced our steps through the warehouse district and made our way back to the boat. Motoring past the Channel Islands and into the North Sea, Roger switched on the GPS mounted on his instrument console. The readout counted down the distance to the location, which was apparently in the middle of nowhere.
One thousand meters. Five hundred. One hundred. Fifty.
Roger pulled back on the throttle, and we came to a slow stop amid gray and blue swells. Behind us, the Channel Islands were smudges in a sea of haze.
“Nice,” I said, with an undisguised bite of sarcasm in my voice.
“Patience, my son.”
I heard the drone of the airplane five seconds before I saw it. I craned my neck and studied its features as they came into view. Twin turboprops, a high-mounted wing, floats adjacent the engine nacelles, a V-shaped fuselage. Very impressive. The airplane circled once, displaying the lines of a Bombardier 415 amphibious flying boat, painted light gray with only black buzz numbers on its rudder fin. My ride to Istanbul. Excellent.
The flying boat descended, skimmed the water, then sliced across the surface with plumes of spray dancing in its wake. The Bombardier settled into the water and glided toward us, propellers slowing, engines whistling. A hatch opened in the fuselage behind the left wing. Roger advanced the boat’s throttle and guided us to the airplane. A crewman in a white helmet, yellow life vest, and blue overalls waved from the hatch.
“Let’s move,” he shouted.
“Well done, Rog,” I said.
“We aim to please. Now get your ass going,” he replied.
“Thanks.” I snapped off a salute, knowing it would piss him off, and it did.
“Don’t salute me.” He winced. “I was a sergeant, not some candy-ass officer.”
Roger nudged the bow of the boat up against the open hatch of the plane, and I climbed aboard. I turned and gave Rog a thumbs-up. The crewman swung the hatch closed.
“I’m Lauflin,” he said, his accent very German. He led me up a passageway to a cabin aft of the cockpit. He pointed to the man in the left-hand seat. “He’s Darby. Best pilot I know without a license.”
Darby glanced over his shoulder and gave me a nod. “You bring the money?” he shouted. I patted my pocket. “Let’s see it,” he called. “No offense.”
I reached for my stash and peeled off twenty-five hundred dollars. I handed it to Lauflin, and he pointed to the four empty seats in the cabin. “We’re in business. Have a seat.”
He handed me a headset. “Get comfortable. It’s seven hours to Istanbul. We’ve got sandwiches and coffee, and plenty of both. Let me know.”
“Thanks. Think I’ll catch up on some sleep first.”
I took a seat on the far left next to a window. Lauflin strapped into the right-hand seat next to the pilot. The turboprops roared, and the airplane surged forward. I sank into the seat. The flying boat bounced across the water, accelerating until we broke free. The pilot put us in a gradual climb and we turned southwest and back over Amsterdam.
We leveled off. I closed my eyes. Sleep came so fast that I didn’t even have time to dwell on how exhausted I was or how risky it was to go to sleep in the company of two guys I’d never met before and would never see again. Especially after the really great time I’d had dodging bullets in Amsterdam.
When I woke up, we were over water again. The Black Sea. It had to be. The sun was breaking over the horizon, a sliver of pale orange light. My headset had slipped down around my neck. I reset it. “Where are we?” I said.
Darby answered. “We’re an hour out,” was all he said.
“Any chance that coffee’s still hot?”
“We just brewed a new pot.”
I unbuckled. Stood up and stretched. Lauflin turned in his seat and held out a steel thermos. “Sandwich?”
“Thanks.”
There was a cooler between their seats. Lauflin popped it open. The sandwiches were wrapped in tinfoil. He handed me two. “My sister made these. Can’t say with what exactly. But I’ve had worse.”
Some endorsement. I thanked him again and went back to my seat. I ate both sandwiches so fast that the taste eluded me. I sipped my coffee and watched the morning of my fifth day on the job open up below me. I saw fishing boats and a cruise liner.
Morning painted the water emerald green.
We were descending over the Sea of Marmara, south of Istanbul, on the flight path into Nuri Demirağ International Airport. Our flaps squealed. The landing gear whirred, and the wheels clunked into place. We passed over the beach, our shadow spilling across the Turkish coastline.
The pilot eased us onto a runway reserved for planes of lesser size and import than the steady flow of commercial flights coming from all corners of Europe and the Middle East. We landed with little more than a jostle and taxied toward the terminal.
“We’ll get you as close as we can,” Lauflin said, “But you’ll still have a bit of a walk. The tower wasn’t real thrilled with our flight plan.”
“Imagine that,” I said, as the plane came to a halt on the tarmac. I slipped my gun under the seat and stood up. I felt naked without the Walther, but only a fool would have tried to slip a gun past the very suspicious folks in Turkish customs. Besides, the streets of Istanbul were a virtual cesspool of illegal weapons, so arming myself again would be matter of a phone call or two.
Lauflin wasted no time cracking the hatch and dropping a foot ladder to the concrete. There was a maintenance tech and a service truck waiting for them. That struck me as unusual for a plane this size, but then everything was striking me as unusual at this stage of the game.
“Thanks for the lift.” I handed my headset to Lauflin and gave Darby a brief nod.
“Have fun,” he said.
Oh, yeah. A barrel of laughs. I climbed down. The hatch closed behind me.
I walk to the terminal without looking back and followed a group of businessmen inside. I passed through security and entered the line for customs, a bedraggled guy with no luggage. I showed a Canadian passport identifying me as Darrell Swan, a businessman from Toronto, got the usual please-give-me-a-reason-to-stop-you look from the customs agent, and merged with a dozen other travelers into the main terminal.
Things were going well. Or, given my rather cynical view of the world: too well. My internal alarm sounded. Careful, Jake. Watch your six.