Birth of an Assassin, Books 1-3: Killer Plots and Powerful Characterization (Birth of an Assassin - the series)

by Rik Stone

  Yuri had a garrote concealed under the collar of his denim shirt: a thin wire with wooden pegs at either end. In an instant, he’d leant his massive frame across the bar, whipped the wire over Umut’s head and brought it down around his neck. Criss-crossing his arms and yanking outward, the steel cable sliced through Umut’s jugular. An arterial spray spewed from his neck, dusting the optics on the back wall.

  The blood flow lessened and Yuri released the tension. Umut stepped away, life diminishing. Then his head dropped forward and he fell, his huge bulk thudding heavily, shaking the wooden floorboards, sending glasses and bottles crashing and clattering all around him.

  “Good job there isn’t anyone upstairs,” Mehmet said, the inner trembling subsiding.

  “Okay, get the girls,” Yuri told him.

  “Why didn’t we just do all this when we came for Hannah and Becca?”

  “Because this task is to bring Beyrek’s operation to an end. Becca and Hannah were a debt the general wanted to be certain of paying.”

  Mehmet went to the courtyard, started with Natasha’s room and hurried from door to door, ordering girls out, separating the Soviets from the others. In all, thirty-five girls, fifteen Russians and the rest… The rest looked like they came from all corners of the globe.

  Mehmet gave his attention to the non-Russians and said, “You must leave. Go wherever you want, but don’t show your faces around here again. Your lives are in danger.”

  The girls collected their belongings and left through the main building. Time was limited; they had to hurry. Mehmet got the girls into the bar while Yuri brought in the C4 from somewhere out front and raced about, fixing it to the buildings strategic points.

  “We’ll use their bus to get to the van, but we have to hurry.”

  They regrouped the girls on the dance floor and prepared them for an orderly exit. But suddenly, some lunatic came charging down the stairs. He had a handgun with a wooden shoulder stock tucked in against his body and began firing wildly. All of the henchmen hadn’t left with Beyrek. Yuri had got it wrong.

  Chapter 46

  Yuri was wiring the detonators when the onslaught began and before Mehmet had chance to react, the crazy man had fired three indiscriminate shots. A girl screamed and the flesh on her upper arm tore open. She fell.

  No time to help. The gunman bounced around, face drooping lazily and eyes without life. Mehmet had seen enough of it in Synopi to know he was drugged up to the eyeballs. He staggered across the void and pointed the gun directly at Mehmet, but froze. For some reason he’d forgotten about pulling the trigger.

  Before common sense had chance to prevail, Mehmet withdrew the Welrod, chambered a bullet and fired; he then reset the rotary bolt and fired again. He aimed at the man’s chest, but hit him in the abdomen with both shots. Clutching at the wounds, the gun fell from the gunman’s grip and clattered to the floor. He looked from Mehmet to his stomach, eyes aghast, and then frantically tried plugging the holes with his fingers. Thick blood ran slowly through clasped hands like molten lava drifting down a hillside.

  Mehmet didn’t get pleasure from seeing the man suffer, so he fired at his chest again, but missed and tore a chunk from his bicep. Swivelling with the impact, the wounded man ignored the new wound and clung to his stomach, groaning in agony. Mind panicking at causing such pain, Mehmet was relieved when Yuri pushed him roughly to one side and blasted a hole in the crazy’s forehead. He then gave Mehmet a cryptic look and shook his head.

  Mehmet turned his attention to the stairway. “There could be more,” he said.

  “No, he wasn’t a Russian. We’ve just killed one of Beyrek’s sons. Still, the shots could have been heard from a distance. We have to get going, and we have to do it now! Help get the wounded girl onto the bus.”

  Mehmet and Natasha carried the girl while shepherding the others in front of them. Sitting her in a front seat, they examined her arm. Blood ran freely from the wound.

  “It hasn’t hit the bone,” Mehmet said, “so her life shouldn’t be at risk.” He wasn’t sure if that even meant anything, but he could see that shock had crept in: her teeth chattered, her body shook and she had turned deathly white. Natasha was back in peasant garb after their earlier meeting. Now, she tore the sleeve from her dress, bound the injured girl’s wound and offered up a bottle of brandy she’d snatched on the way out from the bar. Natasha was managing better than he could, so he went back into the club to help Yuri finish the wiring.

  “The gun that idiot had,” Yuri said, pulling the weapon from under the dead man. “A Mauser C-96; it’s a classic.” The flap at the end of the shoulder stock fell open in his hand. Spare ammunition fell out and danced as it bounced on the floor. “Stupid,” he cursed and bent over to pick it up. A boom resounded from the stairwell and a red line of blood striped the back of his denim shirt. Yuri had been shot!

  “Shit!” Mehmet shouted. “There are more of them.” He already had a bullet chambered in the Welrod. The stairwell was dark. He had no target when pointing the weapon and firing, but a groan escaped from the darkness and bodies could be heard scattering away noisily. Somehow, he’d made a hit.

  Yuri had dropped belly-down onto the dance floor and faced Mehmet. “That was lucky,” he said, but there was no smile in his eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” Mehmet asked.

  “Only my pride and a bit of skin. I’m okay,” he said and fired into the dark hollow above the stairway. “Here, this handgun is more powerful than the Welrod. Keep me covered,” he said, handing the weapon over.

  “What about the girls?”

  “Don’t worry about them; they’re safe enough on the bus, just keep the stairway busy.”

  Mehmet shot high into the stairwell as Yuri ran through the main door and outside. Return fire was staggered. Seconds later, Yuri rushed back in at a crouch. He dived behind the bar, called Mehmet over and handed him one of the two Uzi’s he’d brought with him. They both set the guns to auto and sprayed the stairwell with lead. Shards splintered from wood and plaster from the ceiling.

  “Being very careful not to hit me,” Yuri said, “I want you to keep shooting where you’re already shooting – and keep it high.”

  Mehmet did as he was told and Yuri ran as close to the stairs as he could safely get without being shot – by Mehmet. He threw a canister into the darkness and plumes of green smoke erupted from it. The enemy’s weapons responded. Yuri unclipped two hand grenades and threw them into the void. Mehmet stopped firing and ducked for cover and Yuri wasn’t far behind him. The grenades blew – a pause – and the staircase lost its fight to stay upright, creaked and crashed to the ground floor.

  “Right, that should stop them, or at least slow them down. Get out and start the engine. I’ll keep them busy,” said Yuri.

  Mehmet ignited the engine and came back to the storm porch. “Ready!” he yelled.

  Yuri emptied the Uzi into the ceiling, rolled a smoke canister to the fallen staircase and ran.

  “Let’s go,” he said, pulling Mehmet along with him.

  Mehmet asked, “What about the explosives? The gang will find them.”

  “They’ll be too busy thinking of ways to take us out and get the girls back to worry about the club.”

  They climbed aboard the bus, Yuri pushed the gearshift into first and pulled away.

  “Go and keep watch through the back window, Mehmet.”

  When they approached the first bend at the foot of the mountain, Mehmet saw three men and a woman: the same people who had checked the perimeter earlier; one of the men was limping. On sight, they began firing at the bus. Bullets thudded against the robust metal at the back, but the distance was too great for the weapons to cause damage. The gang seemed to realise they weren’t going to stop them and turned their attention to the gorge in the mountainside. A little pointing and what appeared panicked discussion, and they put the weapons down, took out handguns and scrambled up and over the fallen rocks of the fissure. The bus turned the first bend and
began the journey up the mountain.

  “I don’t know how they’ve figured out which way we’re headed, but they’ve started climbing up the cleft in the hillside,” Mehmet told Yuri.

  “It took me nearly a half-hour to get down. We have plenty of time. It’s only a four-minute drive to the van and another two minutes to the summit from there. We’ll be ready and waiting for them.”

  “But what made them choose to make the climb?”

  “If we were headed north to the mainland, they would have no chance of catching us. The only hope they have is if we’re going round the mountain and to the other side of the peninsular. Their decision was a good one. They’ve had military training. We were always taught to make the most of a half-chance rather than walk away with no chance at all.”

  Mehmet sat back and thought about what Yuri had told him earlier; the crazed man was one of Beyrek’s sons. He smiled. Without realising it, he’d delivered his biggest blow against his enemy to date.

  The mountain road occasionally levelled out, but in the main it was steep and made the truck labour. Yuri dropped into lower gears until he could go no further down. Pine-clad ridges swelled from the mountainside and obscured the sky. From the side window, distant views of hills unfolded as bumped ridges, like a multitude of knuckles.

  They got to the van, in more like ten minutes than four, and moved the girls across from the bus. Mehmet told them to sit tight, but what else could they do, packed in like sardines the way they were? They all seemed afraid, except for Natasha. She appeared to have come to terms with the situation and had taken control. She sat with an arm around the injured girl while calming the others.

  “Is she all right?” Mehmet asked and got a nod in response.

  Yuri moved the bus back to block the road and then he and Mehmet clambered up to the summit, dropped onto their bellies and scoped the progress of the gang through the sights of the Dragunovs. The foe negotiated rocks like soldiers on manoeuvre.

  “Look,” Yuri said, “the woman is leading the field and she’s predictable. Watch the way she bobs her head and checks the surroundings.”

  He told Mehmet to leave the rifle and gather up the small-arms simulators and Chinese Crackers (fireworks).

  “When I open fire, I want you to get down into the fissure and wait.”

  Yuri took a decent-sized rock, positioned it in front of where he lay, rested the rifle’s barrel on it and pressed his eye to the scope. Mehmet raised himself to a squat in readiness as Yuri squeezed the trigger and the Dragunov spat out its venom. The woman had raised her head as Yuri said she would and the bullet lifted her skullcap, a plume of blood cresting away with the bone.

  The men with her ducked into cover, Mehmet took it as a cue and scurried down the side of the fissure until he was within fifty metres of where they were hidden.

  Determination renewed, the men restarted their ascent, pushed the woman aside and scaled the rock-fall. If he’d had a rifle, and if he could shoot, Mehmet could probably have hit one from where he sat. But he didn’t have a rifle and, well… He brushed the thought aside. As they closed the gap, he took two Chinese Crackers and lit the fuses using the attached striker boards. Tentatively, he tossed them to the other side of the gap. The blue touch paper burnt and the crackers exploded at short intervals.

  There were ten separate noise units in each cracker and the men spun towards the cacophony, firing a few shots in response. Mehmet had no idea what Yuri could see from up top, but it became apparent when the Dragunov sang and a bullet whumped into one of the men. Another turned his attention back to the mountaintop, but hadn’t taken proper cover and was thrown in the air when a bullet walloped into his chest.

  The last man standing made a run for it and two more shots echoed out. As a slug exploded his shoulder, he spun and the other bullet smacked into the side of his head. The body tumbled over broken granite and came to rest on a clump of rocks like a rag doll.

  As Mehmet climbed back up the gorge, an explosion rang out from beyond the turning where they’d started their ascent up the mountain. Dust rose and petered out.

  “What was that?” he asked breathlessly on reaching Yuri.

  “The Kurds from Turgutkoy… They’ve blown the link to the Asparan Road, the main trunk road into mainland Mugla. The idea is to confuse Beyrek’s people when they arrive, make them think we’ve headed north.”

  Yuri got back on his belly and balanced the rifle on the rock.

  “What are you shooting at now?” Mehmet asked.

  “The explosives. What else?” he said, shaking his head.

  “Oh.” He’d forgotten about that. “So you target one of the explosives?”

  “I’ve centred the wiring in a box on top of the porch. It has a spring-loaded device. When I knock the rock from the top of it, the spring will be released and the explosive will be detonated. The delay is set in milliseconds, so we won’t need to hang around long to see it blow.”

  Mehmet picked up the field glasses and focused so he could clearly see the box and the rock nesting on it. The muzzle flashed in the shadows of the pine, but the rock was merely chipped and barely moved.

  “Shit, should have used a smaller rock,” Yuri exclaimed, his aim hovering before settling for another shot. He fired again and this time struck centre mass and pulverised the rock. The spring sprung and a series of explosions reverberated in a glorious display. Rows of rooms fell like dominoes. One after another, segments blew until they all merged into a single explosion and a dust plume rose above the debris.

  But then a final, gigantic blast rocked the ground as far as the top of the mountain. When the dust finally settled, they could see the results: what once was a club was now a crater.

  “That was a far bigger explosion than it should have been, Mehmet. Maybe Beyrek is into arms dealing on top of everything else. The biggest of the bangs came from underground. There must have been a cellar filled with something very volatile.”

  They tossed the Dragunovs down the slope and returned to the vehicles. Yuri said the bus would be easily moved by Beyrek, so thought to send it off the road, hopefully causing a distraction. He wedged a stone on the accelerator pedal, spun the engine into life and put it into reverse. He jumped out as it moved, but the truck veered to the wrong side of the road and stalled, running into the granite wall. He got back in and started it up. After going through the same routine, the truck left the intended side of the road and tumbled through young pine trees, stopping halfway down when running into bigger woods.

  “Time is of the essence,” Yuri said and took the wheel. “We need to get back to the gulet and away. It won’t take Beyrek’s people long to realise the destruction of the road going north was a ruse. The bus will hold their interest, but not for long. Move!”

  Tyres kicked stones against the underside of the van as Yuri went straight into second gear and floored the accelerator. Fifteen girls cramped into a small Transit van didn’t equate to comfortable conditions. One of them, with what was beginning to look like a serious injury, was a worry. She had bled heavily and was as white as death. Her almost unconscious body nestled against Natasha and while the other girls were physically unscathed, they were distressed enough to cause panic should anything go wrong.

  “What do you think, Natasha?” asked Mehmet, leaning over to where the girls sat in the front passenger seats.

  “Something needs to be done to stop the bleeding or she might die, but she’s out of it now because she drank so much of the brandy.”

  Mehmet was totally out of his depth. “What’s her name?” was all he could think of saying.

  “Olga,” Natasha replied.

  In the meantime, Yuri threw them about without concern as he sped, plummeting down the hill back to Turgutkoy. Natasha kept both arms firmly wrapped around Olga.

  Chapter 47

  Beyrek sat upstairs on the open veranda of his mansion-like home staring between the islands and beyond to Marmaris. He was at a loss as to how this could have h
appened. Out of the blue, an attack on the club and he’d lost his youngest son – and much more beside. How? Who? Well, he had ideas, but… Gizem broke his concentration when she came in from the lounge and sat on the wicker chair next to him, the sour look on her face reflecting how he felt himself.

  “And how many millions has this cost us?” she asked.

  How could she be like that with her youngest dead? Beyrek was hard headed enough, he knew, but a response like that… Not enough of him left to bury and all she could think about was the money. What a bitch, but now her attitude had him thinking about the money. He had to admit that eight million lire worth of explosive was a hell of a lot to lose. Semtex had been stashed in the cellar waiting to make payment for the next shipment of heroin. Now they would have to ask the Russians for more and it would be down to him and Gizem to take the financial burden… And the Russian girls had been taken. Shit, the Russian girls; they alone were worth a fortune.

  A cool tingle traced a line up his spine as he thought over the possible consequences. There was a lot more than money at stake here; he could lose the drugs trade – and the trafficking. The Russians didn’t suffer fools gladly and they might think that’s what he’d been – a fool. Why? Because he’d left his son in charge and with Nabokovski knowing that Eren was an addict…

  Money, she asks now; how much money? He shook his head gravely.

  “Well, do you want to share?”

  He sighed. “About eight million and you know it will be us who has to pay for a new batch of Semtex, don’t you?”

  “Why do you think I’m looking so bitter? You don’t think I’m fretting over that fucked-up son of ours, do you? He was finished with me when he started getting out of his head on heroin. Once a man is hooked on that stuff, he might as well be dead.” She stopped, pondered. “Eight million, you say?” And now her grief became palpable.

  “That’s what I said.”