It was working.
He gained ground with every stride as his quarry scampered across a track of loose gravel before traversing diagonally down a steep hillside to reach a broad, grassy ridge. By now, Sully had fallen behind Simmons by about ten yards or so—and when he twisted around for another glance, Zahed was close enough to see the fear in his eyes. The sight gave him a boost of adrenaline that lit up his legs like an afterburner and soon brought the guide within reach.
He tackled his first target in a steeply angled scree bowl. They rolled down the slope, with Zahed’s arms clutched around Sully’s neck. He kept them in place until they reached the bottom of the slope, where Zahed adjusted the positions of his hands quickly—grabbing hold of Sully’s head with a tight, clawed grip—then twisted them around in one savage wrench to snap the guide’s neck. It gave way instantly in a loud crack of bone and cartilage, his head sagging to one side as his lifeless body toppled to the ground.
Zahed didn’t waste any time. He gave Sully’s pockets a quick frisk, found the guide’s phone, and stuffed it in his own pack. He also took the man’s keys and his wallet. Then he glanced around, saw an outcropping of rocks a dozen or so yards away, and grabbed hold of the dead man’s ankles and dragged him over to a position where he wouldn’t be easily spotted. The precious seconds would put more distance between him and Simmons, but he was confident he would still reach him in time, and given that he still had a lot of unfinished business in Turkey, it was best not to leave dead bodies lying too far out in the open.
Then he resumed his chase.
Simmons was a small silhouette in the distance by then, but it was enough. Zahed wasn’t in that much of a rush to catch up with him. They were still hours from where they’d left the cars, and the faster they got down there, the better, as far as he was concerned. He just needed to keep Simmons in sight and motivate him to keep going as fast as he could, which he managed to do by stalking him from a safe enough distance.
After about an hour of doing this, Zahed felt it was time to pounce. Simmons had slowed down and was moving awkwardly, and the Iranian guessed what he was up to.
He caught up with him by a narrow scree col and the head of a valley. Simmons saw him appear and stopped running. He was bent over with the tool in his hand, sawing desperately at the bomb belt, trying to cut it off.
Zahed just stood there and watched him from about ten yards away, breathing in deeply, slowing his heart rate back down, wiping his brow.
Simmons looked up, panting. His hand’s movements quickened as he sawed more frantically.
It wasn’t working. The cloth was too strong.
“I wouldn’t bother,” Zahed yelled out to him. “It’s made of sailcloth. Kevlar sailcloth. You can’t cut through it. Not with that, anyway.”
Simmons glared over at him, sweat streaking down his face, fear glistening in his eyes. He collapsed onto his knees, his hands working harder still, desperately trying to cut through the fabric.
“Besides,” Zahed said as he pulled out his phone and glanced at it, “guess what?” He held the phone face-front at Simmons, knowing the archaeologist was too far away to read its screen, but enjoying the taunt. “I’ve got a signal again.”
Simmons looked at him, breathless, his face contorted in exhaustion and despair.
“It’s up to you,” Zahed called out. “You want to live? Or are you ready to pack it all in?”
Simmons shut his eyes and didn’t move for an agonizing moment. Then, without looking up, he let the knife tumble out of his hand. It clinked against the scree. He didn’t move, didn’t look up. He just stayed there, immobile, slumped, his head drooped, his chin tucked in against his chest, his arms tightening around his waist, his entire body trembling.
“That’s a good boy,” Zahed said as he walked right up to him. He stood there, like a bullfighter looming over his downed prize—then he flicked his hand out and gave Simmons a ferocious backhanded slap that lifted the archaeologist off the ground and sent him plowing into the gravel.
Chapter 30
This 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.