Trident's First Gleaming

by Stephen Templin

  “We could try to lose them, but on these country dirt roads, we’re more likely to lose ourselves in a dead end that isn’t on the GPS. If you have an idea of how to get out of this, now would be a good time to let me know.”

  Sonny didn’t respond.

  The sky became lighter as they sped down the northeast side of the mountain. With a rocky terrain to their left and a hundred-meter plunge to their right, there was no room for a missed turn. A medium-sized pickup truck and sedan attacked from behind, rifles blazing. The truck rammed into the back of the van, pushing it toward the cliff. The van’s wheels spun in loose gravel as it slid toward the edge of the drop-off. Somehow, Sonny kept the van on the road. Chris fired at the AQ driver but struck wide.

  The truck came in again to ram them, but this time, Sonny swerved into the left lane and slammed on the brakes. The AQ truck passed on the right, but the sedan rear-ended Chris and Sonny. Chris lost his balance and bumped his head on the windshield.

  “Aagh!” He regained his firing position and stitched up the driver in the sedan. Another one down.

  Chris glanced out the front of the van to see where the AQ truck was. Sonny sped up and pressed the front right corner of his bumper into the left rear corner of the truck, just behind its tire. Then he turned hard into the truck. Its rear tires lost control and slid. The more the driver accelerated, the more he spun out and lost traction, until Sonny pushed him off the cliff, narrowly turning away before the van went over with them.

  A large truck tried the same technique on the van from behind. Chris plugged the driver with one shot, and Sonny sped into a curve in the road. The large truck continued forward, soaring off the cliff. Chris felt his heart rise to his throat as if it followed AQ down the plunge.

  When they reached the road at the bottom of the mountain, Chris counted four AQ vehicles still behind them. Sonny sped through a small farming community while Chris faced their rear, exchanging fire with the enemy.

  Chris turned around to see how close they were to the border. They’d already reached the straightaway to the Kasab Border Station. Ahead, one lane was open, and two others were barricaded. A car sat idling in the open lane. Sonny stomped on the accelerator and punched through the nearest barricaded lane.

  Chris faced the rear again. AQ came directly behind, shooting everything in its path, including the border station. Soon a Turkish border patrol SUV pulled out and pursued AQ. Shooting broke out between them, and minutes later, the chase spilled into the town of Yayladagi. Turkish police seemed prepared for trouble and joined in the chase.

  An AQ rifle sprayed in Chris’s direction, and the air around him lit up with a snap-crackle-pop. Chris ducked.

  Sonny cursed. “Shoot these monkeys!”

  Chris tried to regain a firing position. “Turkish border patrol and police in my background. Don’t have a clear shot.” Al Qaeda continued shooting at everything in front of and behind them. Rounds punched through the dash and the windshield of the van. Wind roared through a hole in the glass the size of a horse’s patootie. He couldn’t shoot, but he could navigate. He took the GPS out of his thigh pocket and turned it on.

  Abruptly, Sonny turned wildly to the left, throwing Chris into the passenger door. One of the hubcaps rolled off behind the van.

  A beat-up white truck cut them off, then, and Sonny whipped around it, causing an oncoming car to squeal to a stop. The road dipped then rose, and all four tires caught air. When the van came down, its bumper scraped the road, shooting sparks into the air. Its engine whined.

  “I need some directions here!” Sonny spat out the words.

  The GPS finished calculating their location. “At the next street, turn right,” Chris said.

  Sonny tried to slow down for the turn, but he was still going too fast and ended up in the opposite lane, scraping a parked car. Sonny stomped on the accelerator, and the engine roared. The van tugged forward.

  Chris looked behind—AQ was still there.

  “Did we lose them?” Sonny asked.

  “Nope. Still on us.”

  Chris turned to the front and saw an elderly woman crossing the street. Sonny drove around her. Chris turned behind to see if she made it across the street, but AQ drove through her like a plastic doll. There was no time for silent prayers or emotion for her.

  “At the next street, turn right.”

  “You’re taking us in a circle,” Sonny growled.

  “The Turkish border patrol and cops want al Qaeda more than they want us. I’m giving the cops what they want.”

  Sonny turned right. He avoided hitting any more parked cars but did lose another hubcap. The van picked up speed and caught air again. When the van came down on its bumper, the bumper fell off and crunched under the van’s wheels.

  Al Qaeda fired a barrage of lead, and smoke rose from the engine. “What’s that?” Chris asked.

  “Trouble.”

  “Turn right again.”

  At the next road, Sonny did as Chris instructed. They’d driven 180-degrees and were heading south to Syria, but now more law enforcement converged on al Qaeda and were shooting at them without any love.

  “Another right,” Chris said.

  Sonny turned the steering wheel, and they traveled down the same streets again, continuing in the clockwise direction. The police presence continued to grow. AQ must’ve seen the writing on the wall because they finally stopped shooting at Chris and Sonny and broke off from the deadly circle. The border patrol and police ignored Chris and Sonny, going after AQ instead.

  “See?” Chris laughed, and Sonny joined in.

  Then their smoking van came to an unexpected stop. “This van was becoming an eyesore anyway,” Sonny said.

  “I’m gonna need some new wheels.”

  Sonny looked down at his poncho. “I need some clothes.”

  “Enjoy your shopping spree.”

  “Enjoy your donkey-killing spree.”

  Chris concealed his HK416 in the travel duffel, exited the van carrying the bag on his shoulder, and walked swiftly away from the vehicle so no one would connect him with the bullet-riddled van. He looked down at his GPS and touched the tracking icon. While it began calculating Switchblade Whisper’s coordinates in relation to him, he looked up from the monitor and noticed a taxi heading their way, so he flagged it down. When he turned back to see if Sonny wanted to share the ride, he was gone. For a moment, he wondered if Sonny was real, but there was no way those bullets and RPGs were anything but.

  The taxi stopped next to the curb, and Chris hopped in. The GPS unit showed the Switchblade Whisper on the move, heading on a northerly route about an hour ahead of him. Chris didn’t know many Turkish words, so he told the driver in English to head north on the highway, but the man didn’t understand. He tried Arabic. The driver understood Chris that time. Chris looked around to see if anyone noticed him leaving in the taxi. At the moment, no one seemed to be following him.

  He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes for the first time in what felt like ages. Hannah’s face permeated his mind. Where are you, Hannah? He didn’t want to believe that she was dead, but so much time had passed, the likelihood became more difficult to dispel. She had trusted him to help her, and he was determined to follow through on his promise.

  Jim Bob had said he thought she was probably hunting down the Switchblade Whisper, and if she was still alive and free, Chris’s guess was the same. If the Chinese were transporting the Switchblade Whisper by vehicle, as Chris had surmised, they might drive the whole way to China, but driving would take too much time, and they’d have to risk customs and immigration inspections at multiple border crossings. Maybe the Chinese planned to link up with a ship. Going by sea would still require considerable time to reach China, and if that was their plan, they probably would’ve already sailed from Syria rather than drive out of their way to Turkey. It seemed flying out of Turkey was the most probable method of extraction.

  He forced his eyes open and leaned toward the dri
ver.

  “Keep heading north,” Chris told the man in Arabic. “There’s a little something extra in it for you if you hurry.

  At the mention of a bonus, the driver smashed the accelerator down to the floor, and the taxi punched forward. Chris fell in and out of a light combat sleep along the way—his senses were ready to wake him at the sign of anything unusual. Just north of Iskenderun, the sun glistened off the ocean to his left. On the edges of his consciousness, he and Hannah ran barefoot and carefree on the ocean-cooled sand.

  Chris awoke as the taxi stopped in front of a three-story building decorated with faience panels at the main entrance and capped with a triangular roof. He checked his GPS to figure out exactly where he and the Switchblade Whisper were. According to the GPS, Chris was at the Adana gar, a railroad station in the city of Adana, but the Switchblade Whisper had continued north on the highway, and now he was only half an hour behind it, but the clock was ticking, and he was losing the time he’d gained.

  “Why are we stopping here?”

  “I can’t go farther today,” the driver said.

  Chris argued with him, but the driver refused, so he paid him and got out of the car. He checked for Turkish authorities on his six but saw none. He smelled bad, but a Turkish woman stared hungrily at him, and he realized he didn’t look nearly as ragged as he thought he did—or he smelled like a kebab. She had two small children and more luggage than she could handle. He wanted to take a minute to help her with her luggage, but he didn’t have time to spare.

  Then he hailed a new taxi, and the driver gave him a discount to take him over five hundred klicks northwest, passing Ankara, Turkey’s capitol. He looked down at the GPS. The SW symbol stopped moving at the Esenboga International Airport. Panic churned in his belly. If the Chinese boarded a plane, he’d lose them, and he still didn’t know where Hannah was.

  15

  _______

  For several minutes, the Switchblade Whisper remained stationary about a klick northeast of the main terminal. Chris directed the cab driver toward its location, but the main road diverged away from the Switchblade Whisper. There didn’t seem to be a public road between Chris and his destination, so when the taxi reached a private road leading to the northeast, he told the driver to take it.

  At the end of the road was a shipping company and a parking lot filled with a fleet of trucks and trailers. Now Chris was within three hundred meters of the Switchblade Whisper.

  “Stop in front of the office building,” he commanded.

  When the taxi came to a rest, Chris paid the fare and jumped out. He wanted to run but didn’t want to attract attention, so he swiftly walked instead. He crossed the shipping fleet parking lot and found another road that appeared to lead toward the target and followed it until he arrived within a hundred meters of his destination. Only a private airplane hangar stood between him and the Switchblade Whisper.

  The noise of nearly half a dozen AKs opened fire, then at least a full dozen rattled off.

  Where are you, Hannah?

  He ran the length of the hangar, unzipped his travel duffel, and pulled out his HK416. Turning the corner, he discovered a small runway that seemed connected to the larger runway. He took cover behind a plane and some SUVs just as six Chinese fired north at a dozen Arabs, some from inside vehicles and others on foot.

  Chris scanned their faces for anyone he might recognize.

  Professor Mordet.

  Chris’s soul shuddered. Although he knew that good was more powerful than evil, he couldn’t shake the funk of fear the man’s presence conjured.

  Truckloads of reinforcements, roughly thirty men, arrived next. Chris didn’t know if the reinforcements were from Turkey’s local bad guys, al Qaeda, or someone else entirely.

  It appeared that the plane belonged to the Chinese, and they were attempting to fly the Switchblade Whisper out on it. As the Chinese fought to board the airplane, Mordet’s men fought to stop them. Even though Mordet’s men outnumbered the Chinese, the Chinese held their ground, battling for their lives.

  Standing beside the hangar, Chris was too close to see if there was a sniper on top of the building, and the situation was unfolding too fast for him to do a detailed recon of the area. His gaze darted around, landing on an SUV whose tailpipes emitted thick exhaust fumes. The SUV’s location corresponded with the location of the Switchblade Whisper icon on Chris’s GPS.

  When the fighting increased in intensity, he’d use the distraction to break cover and run behind the Chinese to the SUV. He hoped the two groups would be too busy combatting each other to notice him. Or if they did notice him, they’d have a difficult time breaking engagement to chase him. Nerves gripped his body. It would be risky, but letting the Chinese or Mordet get away on a plane with the Switchblade Whisper was unacceptable. He’d never be able to track them once they were airborne. If he was going to make a move, now was the time.

  As soon as Chris sprang forward into action, his nerves settled. More often than not, it was the waiting before the action that caused him the most anxiety. Chris approached the SUV, and a Chinese driver with cropped hair became visible through the tinted windows. The vehicle’s electronic locks clicked. Continuing forward, Chris brought his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The SUV window blew out, and Chris’s bullets pinned the occupant to the interior. His rifle only emitted the noise of compressed air, blanketed by the chatter of the AKs. Another Chinese man sprang up inside the rear of the SUV. Chris blasted him through the glass.

  Two hisses of air came from behind, and then two bullets whipped past him.

  Somebody got the drop on me.

  Neither of the shots seemed to have hit him, but it was possible he was too jacked up on adrenaline to notice. The source of the rounds was too quiet for the 7.62 mm enemy rounds; it sounded more like friendly fire from a sound-suppressed weapon. Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted someone advancing toward him, rifle aimed forward and shooting.

  Hannah! Her shots dropped a Chinese shooter who’d been aiming at him. Then she hurried toward the SUV.

  Chris reached through the busted driver’s-side window and opened the door. Then he unceremoniously dumped the driver on the tarmac before scooting over the console and taking his place in the passenger seat—he was primed for more shooting. The key already rested in the ignition, and the engine was running, ready to go.

  Hannah hopped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. In the back of the SUV, something bulky lay hidden under a blanket. Chris crawled into the back to make sure the Switchblade Whisper was indeed where the GPS showed it to be. He lifted the blanket and saw the piece of wing and black box—the Switchblade Whisper.

  “It’s here.” Then he shoved the bullet-riddled Chinese body out of the vehicle.

  A hole blasted through the windshield, the bullet just missing him. Hannah shifted into drive and burned rubber. Chris returned to the passenger seat. The wind whistled through the hole in the windshield.

  “You know your way out of here?” he asked.

  “No.” She drove south. “You?”

  “Not yet.” He examined his GPS and spotted an exit in the southeast corner of the runway. He pointed out the window. “There.”

  She veered southeast and departed the runway.

  “Turn right.”

  She cranked on the steering wheel, and the SUV squealed around the corner.

  “Take the left fork.”

  Hannah swung the SUV left. The road cut straight through wide-open farmland for half a klick.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said.

  “Did you miss me?”

  He pointed to a street on the right, directing her. “I did. I was worried, but I hoped that if I found the Switchblade Whisper, I’d find you.”

  She turned down a long farm road, picking up speed easily. “I went back to the mountain to search for you, but the place had turned into a war zone. I was afraid something happened to you, but I figured you’d stay with t
he mission and track down the Switchblade Whisper, too.”

  Chris looked behind to see if the Chinese or Mordet were following them, but they weren’t. He exhaled in relief. “I was lucky to meet you in Iraq,” he said softly. “And I was lucky you walked into my church in Dallas.”

  She grinned. “Was it luck?”

  He checked his GPS to see how close they were to the nearest US embassy. “I still hope we can put the world on pause someday.”

  She smiled and pressed harder on the accelerator. “Me, too.”

  The road they were on curved widely to the west then connected to the main artery, Ozal Boulevard, south of the airport. There was still no sign of the enemy behind them.

  “I can navigate to the Embassy in Ankara,” he said. “We’ll see if they can transport us out of here with the Switchblade Whisper.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “How’d you track it?” he asked. “I had the GPS.”

  She pulled out a tracker similar to the one Chris had taken from Victor. “On the mountain, when I carried the wing, I planted my own tracking device. She paused for a moment and glanced over at Chris. Her eyes mellowed. “I told Jim Bob and Victor to wait for you, you know. But they wouldn’t. Then back at the resort, they invited me to their room, but the whole situation made gave me an uneasy feeling, so I told them I had to use the restroom first. Instead of going to the restroom, I bugged out.”

  “Like a true ninja.”

  She tilted her head at Chris’s GPS. “How’d you get that?”

  Chris explained his trek down the mountain and back to the yacht, where he found Wolf murdered.

  “Those bastards,” she blurted out. “Wolf was a good friend, and he saved my bacon more than once. Tell me you killed them both. Tell me you killed those bastards!”

  Remembering what he’d done to Victor and Jim Bob brought no remorse or joy. “I killed them both.”

  “Good.”

  They passed the gecekondos, condos constructed hastily on the edge of Ankara, and after half an hour, they reached the heart of the city and passed mosques and government buildings until they reached the turnoff to the embassy. They pulled into the entrance and stopped in front of a large black security gate that remained closed.