Then the world around them exploded, tearing Ivan Kovac and the love of his short life into a thousand tiny pieces.
CHAPTER 2
Istanbul, Turkey—Six Months Later
WHEN SHE WAS young, Alexandra Poe had often dreamed of working in a hospital, but this wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind.
The scrubs she wore were half a size too small and her shoes squeaked. And as she worked her way through the corridor, she felt uncomfortable and conspicuous, certain she wasn’t blending in as well as they had hoped she would.
Fortunately, despite its age and current state of disrepair, Yardim Hastanesi was one of the busiest hospitals in all of Istanbul. Alex tried to convince herself that anyone watching—Yusuf Solak’s bodyguards, for example—would see her as nothing more than another woman in hospital green.
Pretending to read the chart in her hands, she made her way to the elevator at the far end of the corridor. The uniformed guard who waited outside its open doors had undoubtedly been paid off by Solak. He was checking the credentials of anyone who attempted to board.
Alex kept her eyes on the chart and acted as if she hadn’t noticed him, but he stopped her just short of stepping inside.
She smiled politely, hoping to disarm him a bit, but he was all business. He snapped his fingers and gestured to the ID card clipped to the lanyard around her neck.
She removed it and handed it to him.
As he studied it, he said in guttural Turkish, “Where are you headed?”
The words came out so quickly that Alex barely understood them.
In the months since she had associated herself with Stonewell International, she had spent her spare time taking crash courses in a multitude of languages. Her instructors had been surprised to discover she was something of a savant. What took most people weeks to learn took Alex only a matter of days, including conversational Turkish, which she had come very close to mastering—although not quite as close as she liked to believe.
“Where are you headed?” the guard repeated impatiently. “Which floor?”
She caught it this time and said, “The radiology lab on four.” Istanbul was a melting pot and the small imperfections in her accent didn’t seem to faze him. She pointed to the ID. “See? I’m an X-ray technician.”
He studied the card again, then handed it back to her without expression and let her pass.
Alex heaved an inward sigh of relief and got on board, where two nurses, a doctor, and three civilians were waiting, none of them happy about the delay.
One of the nurses muttered something unintelligible and hit a button on the panel.
Friendly place.
The doors closed and Alex leaned past her, bypassed the button for the fourth floor and pressed six instead. The elevator car groaned and lurched into motion, a lumbering beast that wasn’t any happier than its occupants. Alex waited patiently as the numbers above the door ticked off their progress.
The car stopped at floors two and five before finally landing on six.
When the doors rolled open, she was the only passenger left, which was just as well considering how crowded it was up here. Several patients lay on gurneys in the hallway, waiting for someone to attend to them. The hospital staffers chatting nearby seemed about as interested in these poor people as weary morgue attendants in a room full of corpses.
“I’m on the target’s floor,” she said quietly. The pen clipped to her breast pocket had an extremely sensitive microphone built into it.
“Good,” Cooper said in her ear. “What’s your ETA?”
“Half a minute, give or take. Deuce, are you in position?”
“Ready whenever you are, kid.”
Alex threaded her way past the gurneys, giving one of the patients a reassuring pat, and moved down the corridor, headed in the direction of Room 633.
Yusuf Solak’s room.
After grabbing a stray wheelchair, she pushed it in front of her as she rounded a corner and found herself in a much less crowded hallway—empty except for two casually dressed but very dangerous-looking men, who immediately eyed her with suspicion.
Solak’s bodyguards. Both were JİT, Turkish Gendarmerie Intelligence, doing a bit of moonlighting on Solak’s dime. Alex knew from the intel that there should be two more men inside the room, and another half dozen in various parts of the building, including the stairwell where Deuce was poised and ready to strike.
She pushed the wheelchair toward the bodyguards, offering a smile. One of them came forward and raised a hand, commanding her to “Halt.”
When she did, he unceremoniously grabbed her by the elbow, shoved her against the nearest wall, and ran his hands along her sides and up and down her legs, coming perilously close to a molestation charge. She half expected him to order her to drop trou, but she was spared the indignity as he turned her around and decided instead to concentrate on her bra.
When he was done pawing her breasts, he took hold of her arm again and shoved her back toward the wheelchair.
“She’s clean,” he said to his partner. “Let her through.”
The partner nodded and stepped aside, offering her a crude grin as he gestured toward the open doorway to Room 633. She could feel his gaze on her as she passed, no doubt studying her ass, and she hoped he stuck around long enough to let her wipe away that grin with a well-placed fist.
She was greeted at the doorway by another bodyguard, this one smaller than his colleagues but no less dangerous. “Who are you?” he said.
No trouble with comprehension this time.
“Enise,” she told him. “From radiology. Mr. Karga is due for an X-ray.”
As a security precaution, Solak had been admitted under the name Nazim Karga, his occupation listed as importer-exporter. What the hospital didn’t know was that “Mr. Karga” exported terror, in many different forms. The network he commanded was responsible for a number of attacks on US and European targets, and had ties to the Taliban and several Islamist splinter groups in Iran, placing him on a number of wanted lists around the world.
As a result, Stonewell International, which specialized in fugitive retrieval, had been commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security to do a little exporting of its own. And because Alex was female and half Persian, allowing her to easily infiltrate the facility, she and her team had been tasked with grabbing Solak from his hospital bed and putting him on the next available transport out of the country.
Despite mixed feelings about her association with Stonewell, Alex had no misgivings whatsoever about the target. Slugs like Solak set her teeth on edge, and she was all too happy to be part of this acquisition.
The guy in the doorway frowned at her. “We weren’t told about any X-rays.”
“It’s right here on the chart.” Alex showed it to him.
He took it from her and flipped impatiently through the pages that had been expertly forged by Stonewell’s Photoshop whizzes.
“This is indecipherable,” he said. “What are all these numbers and abbreviations?”
“Things I spent many years in school to learn.” She pointed to a line on the top page. “There it is, right there. AP and lateral CSRX, two o’clock.” She checked her watch. “And if we don’t hurry, he’ll be late.”
“Who ordered this?”
She pointed again. “That’s there, too. Doctor Hasan.”
Hasan was one of three doctors who had been caring for Solak since his heart bypass a week earlier, and as far as Alex knew, he hadn’t ordered a damn thing. But it would take the guards a while to figure this out, and all she needed was to get inside Solak’s room. Once Deuce did his thing, the rest should fall into place.
That was the theory, at least.
The bodyguard sighed impatiently, handed back the chart, then gestured Alex through the doorway.
Bingo.
Another bodyguard seated in a chair near a curtained-off bed rose to his feet as the smaller one pointed at Alex. “Watch her.”
Alex
stood there looking as submissive as possible as he pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed. Glancing at the bed curtain, she could feel the adrenaline starting to pump through her veins.
Her target was only feet away.
She said, “Is it all right to prep the patient while you call?”
She had raised her voice a bit, to make sure Cooper and Deuce could hear her. It was their signal to begin phase two of the operation—distract and snatch.
“Stay still,” the second man said and took a step toward her. He looked as though he wanted to smack her around a little just for the fun of it, but before he could turn that thought into action, the piercing scream of a fire alarm blasted through the hallway, courtesy of Cooper.
The two men exchanged startled looks, the first lowering his phone as the second one planted a hand on Alex’s chest, and shoved her into a nearby chair. “Don’t move.”
“But we can’t stay here,” she said, feigning concern. “We need to evacuate.”
“Don’t move or I’ll hurt you.”
Alex tried to look appropriately terrified and stayed put.
Right on schedule, the radio on the smaller man’s hip squawked. “Intruder on three. Northwest stairwell.”
Deuce.
The two bodyguards exchanged another glance as the smaller one ripped the walkie free from his belt and hit the call button. “How many?”
“Just one. Big guy. He took out Terzi on two and he’s headed this way.”
The smaller one turned to the guard eyeballing Alex and shouted over the blare of the fire alarm. “Go. Now. Take Burakgazi and Yilmaz with you.”
“What about her?”
“She’s a woman. Leave her to me. Now go!”
The second one nodded and darted into the hall. Alex heard him shouting instructions to the other two men, as the one who’d stayed behind shot forward and grabbed her by the throat.
“You think we’re stupid? You think we weren’t expecting this?”
One can dream, Alex thought, then jammed the edge of the chart into his forearm, knocking his hand free.
As he stumbled back, she jumped to her feet, grabbed him by the collar, then kneed him in the balls and shoved him into the nearest wall. He reached for the gun on his hip as he fell to the floor, but before he could raise it, Alex kicked the weapon from his hand and moved in. She swung a right hook into his jaw and snapped his head to the side, knocking him out cold.
With no time to waste, Alex wheeled around and grabbed the bed curtain, wondering why Solak hadn’t uttered a word of alarm during any of this. Could he be that far gone? But as soon as she pulled the curtain aside, she got her answer.
The bed was empty.
Shit.
She checked the bathroom and found it empty, too, but wasn’t surprised. The twerp on the floor was right. They weren’t stupid. This room was a decoy. They had Solak stashed somewhere else, maybe even another floor, and that was where the other three bodyguards were headed.
Chastising herself for her own stupidity, Alex darted into the hallway. The three men had a head start, but couldn’t have gotten too far.
“Deuce, Cooper, do you read me?”
They both answered in the affirmative, then Cooper said, “I heard the tussle. You okay?”
“Fine, except they pulled a bait and switch. Solak’s not here. We’re gonna have to improvise.”
“So what else is new?” Deuce said. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”
“Three hostiles. Maybe more. They should be headed in Solak’s direction.”
“I’m on the fifth-floor landing. No sign of activity in here.”
“Nothing on the CCTV cams, either,” Cooper said, “but there’re a couple dead feeds on your floor, Alex. They must’ve cut ‘em. They’re probably still around there somewhere.”
“Roger,” she said. “I’m checking it out now.”
The fire alarm continued to ring as Alex rounded a corner to find the main corridor flooded with staff and patients in the middle of a full-scale evac. In hospitals this size, building-wide evacuations were unwieldy and impractical, so the alarms were often localized, affecting only the floors closest to the potential threat. Unfortunately, that didn’t help Alex. What they’d hoped would be a distraction was now an obstacle, and an already crowded hallway was twice as packed now, a sea of bodies in motion, all wanting to get the hell out of there.
She quickly scanned the crowd and saw nothing out of the ordinary—an orderly helping a child in a walker, a nurse pushing an elderly gray-haired woman in a wheelchair, several staffers rolling gurneys carrying patients still attached to IV drips. There was a sense of organized urgency as they all worked their way down the corridor.
Then Alex spotted him, the bodyguard who had leered at her, disappearing down an intersecting hallway at the far end. Picking up her pace, she threaded her way through the crowd, which was akin to traveling the I-695 beltway during rush hour back home.
But as she neared the nurse and the old woman in the wheelchair, something out of the ordinary registered at the periphery of her vision—a bulge in the nurse’s scrubs at the small of her back. Either she was hiding a tail or that bulge was a holster and gun.
Alex fell back slightly, nearly bumped into a moving gurney, and stared intently at the old woman in the wheelchair.
The gray hair was a wig.
Son of a bitch. Solak.
“Deuce,” she said quietly, hoping she could be heard over the sound of the alarm, “you’d better get your ass up to six. I’ve spotted the target.”
“I’m right behind you. And speaking of asses, did anybody mention those scrubs you’re wearing look a little small?”
Alex grimaced. “Thanks for reminding me. The target’s in the wheelchair about two meters ahead, dressed like an old woman, and the nurse pushing him is sporting an SOB holster and weapon.”
“Naughty nurses with guns. Be still my heart.”
“One of the hostiles is running point around the corner,” Alex continued, “but I don’t have a position on the others, so watch your back.”
The crowd had nearly stopped moving now, slowed by a bottleneck at the end of the hall.
“Roger that,” Deuce said. “We’ve got a pathology lab to our right, and if the BPs are more reliable than our intel, there should be a small freight elevator at the rear of the lab. Cooper, can you be ready to party in two?”
“I’ll be there,” Cooper told him.
“Okay, Alex, I’ve got your flank. Make your move and make it smooth.”
“Roger,” she said, then weaved past another gurney and a tight group of patients and positioned herself directly behind the nurse pushing the wheelchair, almost close enough to spoon. After a quick look around, she reached forward, slipped her hand under the nurse’s scrub top, and lo and behold, discovered the woman wasn’t hiding a tail.
Alex grabbed the grip of the weapon. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be carrying this in here.”
As the nurse started to react, Alex ripped the weapon free and jammed her heel into the back of the woman’s left knee. The joint buckled and the nurse went down with a grunt. Alex sidestepped the fall and yanked the wig off Solak’s head, shoving the nose of the pistol—a SIG Pro SP—into his upper back. “Get up.”
Someone nearby screamed and heads swiveled in their direction. Grabbing hold of Solak’s hospital gown, Alex yanked him to his feet, knowing that if the other bodyguards hadn’t already been closing in, they would be now. She shoved him toward a door about three meters to her right, marked PATHOLOGY AND LABORATORY MEDICINE.
She felt a sudden rush of movement behind her as a hand grabbed for her shoulder. But before it could fully connect, its owner grunted and hit the floor.
“Go! Go!” Deuce said, taking his place beside her.
They slammed through the door, pushing Solak in front of them, and worked their way through a maze of tables and microscopes and machines and racks of test tubes filled with blood. Alex
scanned the lab and spotted a set of elevator doors down a short hallway at the rear of the room.
“At least something’s going right,” she murmured, nudging Solak in that direction.
Behind them, two more bodyguards burst into the lab—Alex’s friends from the hall outside Solak’s room. She heard the sharp cough of a suppressor and glass shattered nearby. Deuce whipped around and raised his own weapon, returning fire.
One of the bodyguards went down as the other—the grinner—dove for safety behind a lab table, and then came up firing on the other side.
Bullets whizzed past Alex’s head as she shoved Solak to the floor, then crouched and spun, squeezing off two quick rounds. The SIG wasn’t silenced and the shots echoed loudly. One went stray, but the other hit its mark, the slug ripping through the grinner’s shoulder in a burst of blood. He grunted in pain and slammed backward into a rack of test tubes, and they toppled over and shattered around him, splattering a dozen or more blood specimens across the linoleum.
Alex grabbed a handful of Solak’s gown and yanked him to his feet. “Hurry it up.”
As they shoved him toward the elevator again, Solak spoke for the first time. In English, no less. “You realize this will all come to nothing. You risk your life for what?”
“A chance to put you on a plane to nowhere,” Alex said.
“You’re American, yes? Private contractors?”
Neither Alex nor Deuce responded. Reaching the elevator, Alex pressed the down button, hoping this one was faster than the beast she rode in earlier.
“Why else would you be here?” Solak went on. “It is obvious you haven’t yet received word.”
Deuce frowned. “About what?”
“I have negotiated terms with your government just this morning. I am no longer a wanted man. Not by the United States, at least.”
Deuce snorted. “Nice try, dipshit. At least you get points for creativity.”
“You doubt me,” he said. “And that is understandable. But be warned that if you harm me, there will be reprisals.”
“Too bad you didn’t warn that busload of kids you killed in London,” Alex told him and looked at Deuce. “Are you buying this bullshit?”
Takedown (An Alexandra Poe Thriller) Page 2