Politika pp-1

by Tom Clancy

  Bashkir gave him a stiff, almost imperceptible little nod.

  “There is a great deal of work ahead of us, then,” he said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ANKARA, TURKEY FEBRUARY 7, 2000

  The sun from the office window warm against his face, Namik Ghazi sat relaxing with his hands linked behind his head, his feet crossed under his desk, and a shiny silver tray on the blotter in front of him. On the tray was his morning glass of spiced wine, a glazed ceramic bowl filled with mixed olives, and an elaborately folded cloth napkin. The olives were cured in oil and imported from Greece. Better than the Spanish varieties, and far superior to those grown here in his own country. They had been delivered just yesterday, and though the shipping had cost him an arm and a leg, he had no regrets. Had not the ancients believed the olive to be a gift of the gods, a preventor of disease, a preserver of youth and virility? Was it not the fruit that grew from the branches of peace? Give him a constant supply, and the occasional tender attentions of his wife and mistress, and he could live out the final third of his life a happy man. Members of his American and European complement at Uplink’s Near Eastern ground station often chided him for his breakfast preferences, but what did they know? It was his belief that their colonial heritage got in the way of their maturation as human beings. Nothing really against them, of course. He was a benevolent manager. He tolerated most of them, liked a few, and called a small handful close friends. Arthur and Elaine Steiner, for instance, had been invited over to his home quite often before Gordian snatched them away for the Russian enterprise. But even that dear couple… well, gourmands they weren’t.

  Aya, but the Westerners loved to judge. As if their tastes in eating, drinking, and loving were based on some empirical standard. Did he ever comment on their ungodly consumption of sizzled pork flesh with their morning eggs? Their relish of bloody, ground-up cows for lunch and dinner? The vulgar fashions of their women… What perverse mind had conceived of pants on the female form? Aya, aya, Westerners. How presumptuous for them to think they could write the encompassing definition of worldly pleasure. His day began and ended with olives and wine, and nearly everything else in between was toil and struggle!

  Releasing a wistful sigh, Ghazi unmeshed his fingers, leaned forward, and gingerly plucked an olive from the bowl. He slipped it into his mouth and chewed, closing his eyes with delight as its flavor poured over his tongue.

  That was when his intercom beeped.

  He ignored it.

  It beeped again, refusing to leave him be.

  He frowned, pressed the flashing button.

  “Yes, what is it?” he said grumpily, spitting the olive pit into his napkin.

  “Ibrahim Bayar is on the line, sir,” his secretary said. As always her voice was pleasant and even. How could he have been so brusque with her?

  “I’ll take it, Riza, thank you.” He lifted the receiver, suddenly curious. The head of Sword’s regional security force had been assigned to the Politika affair by Blackburn himself. What could be up? “Gün aydin, Ibrahim. Have you made any progress finding the black sheep?”

  “Better than mere progress,” Ibrahim said. “We have found the hiding place of at least one of the terrorists. Perhaps even the woman.”

  Ghazi’s heart galloped. “Where?”

  “A Kurdish sanctuary outside Derinkuyu. I’m in a village inn right now. The Hanedan. I’ll give you the rest of the details later.”

  “Will you need additional men?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. Send me three teams, and be sure Tokat’s is among them. This may be difficult.”

  “I’ll get on it right away,” Ghazi said. “And Ibrahim?”

  “Yes?”

  Ghazi moistened his lips.

  “Have great care, my friend and brother.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  CAPPADOCIA, SOUTHEASTERN TURKEY FEBRUARY 9, 2000

  Even before the hittites settled the region four thousand years ago, Bronze-age troglodytes were tunneling into the strange volcanic domes, knobs, cones, spires, and furrowed massif ridges of Cappadocia, digging a network of subterranean communities whose rooms and passages extended for miles beneath the chalky tufa, providing separate housing for hundreds of people at a time. Living quarters were equipped with bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens, as well as shrines, water cisterns, stables, storage areas, workshops, and wine cellars. There were public hospitals, churches, and internment grounds. Entries, ledges, balconies, staircases and pillars; frescoes and sculptures; even furnishings such as tables, chairs, benches, and sleeping platforms were carved whole out of the firm yet malleable stone. Tiny slots in the walls between individual dwellings allowed communication throughout daily routines, and provided an efficient civil alarm system in periods of emergency.

  Over the centuries of Roman occupation, diverse groups of ethnic tribesmen, and then early Christians — including, it is believed, Paul the Apostle — found refuge from persecution in this hive-like underground megalopolis. Later it sheltered reclusive monastic orders from the brutalities of Mongol, Arab, and Ottoman invaders. In recent decades, isolated portions of it — the equivalent of contemporary neighborhoods, towns, and belt cities — have been excavated by archaeologists and in a few cases opened to tourists. Some parts of the complex remain either undiscovered or known only to local peasant populations. A few were occupied by Kurds streaming northward from Iraq in the wake of the Gulf War, and to this day function as hidden strongholds for Kurdish militia bands at violent odds with the governments of Turkey and its international allies… including, for a variety of reasons, the United States.

  For that, Ibrahim thought as he spurred his horse forward over the rugged slopes, if for no other reason, the man-made caves south of Derinkuyu would have been an ideal hideaway for Gilea Nastik and her cousin Korut Zelva after the Times Square bombing. There were many Kurdish sympathizers in these isolated regions, hillmen who tended to be suspicious of anyone they didn’t know, and who would resent intrusions into local affairs by outsiders. Even those who were politically neutral would have nothing to do with the group that had come hunting for the terrorists.

  And since he was Roger Gordian’s man on the spot in this isolated territory, Ibrahim worried that if any local tribesmen spotted his riding party, the butchers were almost certain to be alerted.

  He rode at a steady gallop, the muscular, sweat-slick sides of his steed rippling like oil beneath his stirrups. The sun was plunging solidly down on his shoulders, giving a bleached-out shimmer to the terrain… a wasteland so stark and craggy that nothing on wheels — not ATVs, not even Sword’s small fleet of fast-attack vehicles — could have traversed it.

  There were stretches here that seemed to exist in a still pocket of eternity, Ibrahim mused. Stretches where change was resisted at an elemental level, where roads and telephone lines came to the end of their reach, and large distances were traveled on horseback or not at all. The land did not compromise; you adapted or you were defeated.

  Ibrahim rode on, his hands loosely gripping the reins. The neck of his horse rose and fell, rose and fell, with an easy, swaying sort of rhythm. To his left and right, the hooves of his teammates’ mounts slapped the ground, beating up little clods of pebbles and ashy soil. The men wore lightweight dun-colored fatigues and carried VVRS M16 rifles fitted with M234 RAG kinetic-energy projectile launchers. They had gas masks and protective goggles strapped around their necks.

  Perhaps a kilometer distant, Ibrahim could see a huge arch-backed formation pushing up from the surrounding terrain. The honeycomb tiers of openings on its high rock walls had once led to the lodgings of a caravansary. There traveling merchants would come to a temporary halt in their routes, bringing supplies to the cities beneath the ground, descending from the upper chambers through long stepped passages.

  Now, Ibrahim knew, the passages would be filled with scorpions — human scorpions as well as the traditional ones. And the mission of his team was to flush out their hiding pl
ace, and capture the deadliest of the creatures, without killing any of them. The quarry, however, would show no such compunction. Given a chance, they would slaughter him and every one of his men, leave them to rot on the barren earth.

  Well, no struggle was ever fair to all sides. Ibrahim and his brothers-in-arms knew the job they had to do, and would try as well as they could to get it done. The rest was up to Allah.

  The lair of the scorpion ahead of them, they clipped along through the desert silence.

  * * *

  The porter at the Hanedan hotel had left the village at dawn, barely ahead of the strangers who had arrived over the past two days. He took little-known shortcuts between the slopes of the forbidding moonscape, driving his animal relentlessly toward the humped shelf of land that served as the main access to the underground hideout. Other rabbit holes existed through which men could enter and leave the chambers, but most led to passages that had become blocked, or collapsed, over hundreds of years.

  Korut would have positioned the bulk of his sentries at the shelf, and they needed to be warned. Aya, they did, and fast.

  The young hotel worker shot a glance back over his shoulder, saw the armed riders and their horses as small advancing dots at his rear, corkscrews of desert dust winding into the air above them. He did not know who had sent them on their manhunt; in truth, it was of no matter to him or his fellow villagers. Some weeks ago Gilea and Korut had returned to Derinkuyu, needing shelter and protection, and they had gotten it. Gilea and Korut were linked to his people through blood and clan lines, and had their allegiance to a soul.

  He would not fail. He would get to them before the interlopers, tell them of the advancing threat, even if it meant running his horse to the ground.

  Nothing his relatives could have done — nothing — would prevent him from aiding in their escape.

  Korut snapped a full 30-round magazine into his Kalashnikov AKMS, slung the assault rifle over his shoulder, and ran down the corridor, his footsteps thudding flatly off its pocked and pitted stone floor. Minutes ago, an anxious voice had shouted to him through the slot in his wall, alerting him to a raid. Strangers were coming across the waste. Less than a klick to the south, and getting closer by the second. They had ridden out of the village that morning, a mixed group consisting of Turks, Americans, and Europeans.

  It was a stroke of good fortune that Gilea had already departed, leaving him behind to train and recruit new operatives. By now, she would have made her rendezvous with the minisubmarine in Amasra, on the northern coast, and be halfway across the Black Sea to her destination.

  He did not think his pursuers were CIA or Interpol. They would have come with helicopters, even planes, but not on horseback. Whatever its multinational composition, this force was commanded by men who knew the land, using inbred native tactics. Could it be the mysterious organization he’d had been informed about, the same one that had sent a team into Roma’s office in New York?

  There was no way to be sure, and ultimately what was the difference? They had sought him out, they had located him, they were coming for him.

  Korut only prayed he could make them live to regret it.

  * * *

  Ibrahim saw the sun heliographing off the automatic weapons on the bluff even before they released their first volleys. He glanced up at the shooters poised in the cave openings, their rifles kicking against their arms, rattling out bursts of fire.

  He jerked back on the reins of his horse, rearing it to a halt, simultaneously bringing his hand up and down in a slicing gesture. The other men pulled alongside him, their mounts snorting and whinnying, jets of dirt fanning over their hooves as Parabellums sprinkled the ground up ahead. At the distance from which they were being fired, the guns would be inaccurate, barely within range of their targets. Still, the terrorists held the high ground. And they had been ready, clearly informed of the Sword team’s approach.

  It wasn’t the best thing that could have happened. Nor was it the worst, in Ibrahim’s estimate. He’d hoped to have surprise on his side, but had considered the eventuality that it might turn against him. And had familiarized himself with the lay of the land, making sure he had a few tricks of his own up his sleeve.

  He turned to the American at his right.

  “Take your men around the front, Mark,” he said. “I’ll bring my team to where our man is sure to try wriggling from his nest.”

  Mark’s blue eyes regarded him from under his sunburned brow. Then he nodded, signaled to the dozen men behind him.

  As their horses thundered toward the rock shelf in an arrow-straight line, Ibrahim broke to his left with the other half of the team, leading them there as quickly as his mare could carry him.

  * * *

  Racing up to the foot of the bluff, the American-led Sword team instantly lifted the RAG launchers — weapons with a range of forty to sixty yards — to their shoulders and took aim through their built-in sights. Rounds snapped down at them from the defenders on the ledges, close enough now to present a deadly threat. Mark saw one of his men go tumbling off his saddle, clutching at his throat, blood spraying between his fingers. Another man fell to the dust, crimson petals blossoming on his desert tunic. Beside him, one of the horses was raked across the chest and collapsed in a writhing heap, its legs giving out all at once, throwing its stunned rider several yards through the air. The screech of pain that issued from the dying animal sounded horribly, sickeningly human.

  “Fire!” Mark shouted. “Hit the bastards hard!”

  In a tightly coordinated fusillade, his remaining teammates released the ring-shaped energy grenades from their tubes, sent them spinning toward the cave entrances at five thousand revolutions per minute, spirals of propellant trailing behind. The gyro-stabilized airfoil projectiles flew upward with flat, dead-on trajectories, slamming into the men on the rock ledges, hurling them off their feet with yelps of agony and confusion. Soft rubber O rings fitted around the grenades gave way on impact, pouring CS1 tear gas into the cave entrances.

  Satisfied that the opening wave of his strike had had its desired effect, Mark barked out another command. In response, his men pulled their gas masks down over their faces, dismounted their horses, and began scrambling up the slope, their boot heels scuffing over the arid soil, triggering off a near-continuous volley of VVRS rounds as they ascended.

  The tear gas-blinded men above them thrashed atop the overhanging ledges, screaming, seized by convulsive, wracking coughs. Some stumbled blindly for several seconds, arms pinwheeling for balance, and then tripped off their feet and dropped earthward. Others tried to retreat, groping, crawling on hands and knees, helpless, unable to use their weapons, barely able to find the cave openings in their pain and disorientation.

  Reaching the ledges, the Sword team hastily reloaded their airfoil launchers and fired another salvo of RAG/CS grenades into the cave mouths.

  Then, clouds of gas swirling in the dimness ahead of them, they went storming into the tunnels to mop up what was left of the resistance.

  * * *

  Korut dashed toward the stairs rising toward the fallback exit, the dim electric lights on the walls throwing tiger stripes of shadow across his features. He could hear the screams and stricken gasps of his fellows echoing in the shaft behind him, but there was nothing he could do for them now. He had thought that even with half their number in Russia, they would be able to fend off attackers unfamiliar with the terrain. But the men that had come after him were hardly performing like outsiders. Who were they? How had they discovered the underground complex?

  He would have to figure it out. Have to send word to Gilea about what had happened here today. But all that was for later. Unless he made off right away, he wouldn’t be able to do anything at all. For her, or for himself.

  He slipped into the narrow stairwell and bounded toward the surface, taking the steps two at a time, his gun held out at the ready. He could see daylight splashing into the chamber from above, could hear the frightened whinnying o
f his horse in its stable.

  He reached the top of the stairs, turned a jutting corner, plunged into the stable. Though cross-tied in its stall, the horse pawed the ground with its hooves in a jittery little dance, obviously rattled by the sounds of combat down below.

  Korut pulled the saddle blanket off its steel wall peg, then the saddle, and tossed both of them over the beast. He tightened the girth quickly, praying that he’d gotten it secure. Then he shoved his foot into the stirrup, hefted himself onto the horse’s back, yanked the reins so the animal turned toward the stable exit, and dug his heels deep into its sides.

  The horse bridled for only a moment. Then, with a shrill, startled neigh, it left the stable, bolting into the glare of the undiluted desert sun.

  * * *

  Ibrahim’s team had been told about the stable, had had its precise location mapped out for them by a local merchant who had valued their U.S. currency above tribal loyalty. And after splitting off from Mark’s group, he and his men had gone to wait outside the rim of rock that formed its entrance, knowing Korut would try using it as an escape route if he eluded the frontal assault.

  He caught sight of them as soon as he emerged from the cave, sitting astride their horses in a loose semicircle, their weapons trained in his direction.

  “Pigs,” he rasped, realizing he’d been trapped. “Fucking pigs.”

  He raised his weapon to fire it, thinking he would take down as many of his enemies as he possibly could, but a RAG projectile smashed into his midsection before his finger had even curled around the trigger, bouncing him from the saddle, sending him crashing to the ground in an agonized ball, his knees drawn up, his hands wrapped around his stomach.