Not one to leave a job unfinished, and still pissed about the window of his truck, he turned back and saw their four Harleys, mostly old, heavily-chromed, chopped-down, street hogs standing in the next aisle. Two were 750s, one was a 500, and one was a big old monster with so many modifications that Bob couldn’t tell what it started out as. The Desert Eagle held a nine-round magazine, which meant he had eight shots left; so, he stepped closer and fired two quick ones into the circular chrome plates that covered their carburetors. That should do it, he thought. Those hogs were now dead pigs, and the only place they were going was to the shop for an engine rebuild.
As he turned and headed back to his truck, he realized the loud cannon shots from the Desert Eagle were certain to draw some unwanted official company. Time to go. Using his shirt tail, he wiped his fingerprints off the grip and trigger of the now empty automatic and tossed it under the Tahoe, well out of the biker’s reach. As he passed Lem, he tapped his bad leg with the toe of his boot. The biker groaned again as Bob said, “Next time, try Chapel Hill, or give the Dookies over in Durham a try, because you’re way out of your league down here. If I ever see you again in Fayetteville, you won’t even limp away. You got that?”
He retrieved his computer case, and opened the driver side door of the Ford 150, knowing it was time to vanish. Brushing the broken glass off his seat, he started the engine and quickly backed out of the parking space, not particularly caring if any arms, legs, or random biker body parts were in the way. The parking lot’s lone exit was at the far end. As he got closer, he could see the gate was down and the shed manned. He pulled up to the window, he reached up for his parking ticket, which he always tucked behind the visor, and handed it to the attendant with two twenty-dollar bills. As the old guy in the booth ran the ticket, he kept glancing nervously to his left, staring into the dark parking lot.
“Say,” the attendant finally asked, “you didn’t hear no gunshots back there, did you?”
Bob turned, followed the attendant’s eyes, and shrugged. “You know, I suppose that’s what it could have been. There’s a bunch of bikers back there on Harleys, so I gave them a wide berth.”
“Yeah, I wish I could,” the attendant replied nervously as he handed Bob his change and stamped parking receipt, still not sure.
“If I were you, I’d call the cops and let them handle it,” Bob advised as he drove away into the night. He didn’t want this, but every now and then it was nice to know you still got it. After twelve years in the Army, he’d had enough fighting and killing to fill several lifetimes. What he wanted now more than anything else was dull, boring, peace and quiet. After all, that’s why he moved back down to North Carolina in the first place.
CHAPTER TWO
Southern Turkey
The only time Professor Henry Stimson Shaw felt this hot, filthy, and utterly exhausted was during those two miserable years he spent in the goddamned Marine Corps. The first word might change depending on his mood, but it would always be a three-word phrase. He spent most of his first year at Parris Island, South Carolina, and most of the second trudging around Anbar Province in western Iraq with a seventy-pound pack on his back. Somehow, he managed to survive both, before the Marines threw him out, but he was only nineteen back then. He was thirty-five now, and he should have known better than to try a long trip in the desert in the brutal heat of summer. Been there, done that. The next time he decided to turn traitor, he’d wait until winter.
Shaw was his usual rude, brash self when he snuck out of his hotel in Sanliafa, Turkey, at 4:30 a.m. that morning. And why not? The air was cool and pleasant. By noon, the temperature would rise to well over 120 degrees out on the desert floor, broiling away the last of his snarky arrogance; and the worst of the day was yet to come. What did they call it? A dry heat? That was a joke, Shaw cursed. It wasn’t that he hadn’t made previous academic research trips to Turkey, but he’d stayed in the high plains and mountains of eastern Turkey, not in the southern desert where the summer sun could fry a man’s brain. Shaw was daring the desert heat in a dangerous attempt to sneak south into northern Syria and join the ranks of ISIS. His obsession was to find the Caliph and fight at his side in the battle around Raqqah. Insane? No doubt about it, he laughed at himself.
When he landed at the Ankara airport in central Turkey four days previously, he was met in the International Arrivals terminal by his Turkish guide, Galip Terzi, who had been his driver on previous trips. Terzi had an old Turkish-made Fiat, which was just large enough for Shaw’s suitcase, a box of research books, and his papers. As soon as his things were stowed in the trunk, they drove away and headed toward a string of Azari and Kurdish villages in southeast Turkey. Those displaced minorities were Shaw’s area of study, and he had made precisely this same trip three times before. That should have satisfied the Turkish Immigration and Customs clerks. After all, his passport, visa, and government permits were all legitimate and in proper order. This time, however, there seemed to be double the usual number of uniformed officials in the arrivals hall, who spent an inordinate amount of time grilling him and every other foreigner, scrutinizing their documents and searching their luggage. Worse still, the interrogations were performed under the watchful eyes of a dozen stout, scowling, secret police agents, who were easy to spot in their cheap, baggy suits and ugly ties.
Obviously, the Turks had ramped-up their security with the war against ISIS going on across the border in Syria. Too little, too late, Shaw concluded with a self-satisfied smile as they let him pass through. He was dressed in blue jeans, top-of-the-line Vasque hiking boots, an open-collared polo shirt, a Carolina Panthers baseball hat, and Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses; the Turkish secret police would peg him for one more stupid American, not some adventurer trying to sneak south into Syria to join ISIS.
As Galip sped away from the airport, he handed Shaw a Walther PPK automatic, possession of which would get them both locked up for a long time. Shaw tucked it inside his jacket with his old Marine Corps Ka-Bar knife, turned in his seat, and looked out the rear window. He saw a boxy, Turkish-made sedan following them, speeding to catch up. The two men in the front seat had almost identical black hair, thick black mustaches, and cheap suits, like the men inside. Obviously, they were agents of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı, or MİT, because no one else would buy a hideous car like that except the government. Shaw doubted they’d singled him out. If they had, there would be more than just one car following him. With the ongoing battles with ISIS in the south, tense border spats with the Russians in the north, and the decades-old war with the Kurds in the east, the Turks were nailing the doors shut all along their borders. Foreigners heading anywhere but west toward the Roman and Christian ruins along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, immediately drew their attention.
As the sun set on the third day, he and Terzi finally reached the town of Sanliurfa in south-central Turkey, where his traveling costume and plans were about to take a radical shift to the left. At 4:30 the next morning he left his suitcase, his books and papers, and $1,000 in cash with Terzi in the hotel, tossed a small rucksack over his shoulder, and slipped out the rear door. In the dark alley behind the hotel, a grizzled old Turkmeni driver in a Toyota pickup truck was waiting for him, as arranged. As they had done the previous two nights, the two MIT agents split up when he checked into the hotel. One was now asleep on a couch in the lobby, while the other was doing the same in the driver’s seat of their car parked out front. Watching or not, the old man quickly shoved Shaw and his backpack in a smuggler’s compartment under a pile of vegetables in the rear bed of the truck, and drove out of town.
Raqqah lay far to the south in Syria on the Euphrates River. Rather than take Highway 6 straight down, the old man set off on a series of ancient smuggler trails that snaked through the hills and rocky desert. By the time the sun came up, they were twenty miles from Sanliurfa and the two sleeping MIT agents, so the old man pulled off the road and dug Shaw out from unde
r the veggies. The American was fluent in Arabic, which worked almost anywhere in the Middle East, but not with this guy. He was an ancient Turkmeni with wrinkled, tobacco-brown skin, a hawk nose, and a full, white beard. He only spoke Turkmen and an antiquated form of Anatolian Turkish found in the remote mountain villages much further east. Shaw knew bits and pieces of Kurmanji, Armenian, Azari, and even some Bedawi. When he tried them on the driver, all he got in return was another blank stare.
The driver stood in front of Shaw, hands on hips, and studied the young American from head to foot. From his expression, he wasn’t pleased with what he saw. Shaw still wore his blue jeans, but he had left his American shirt and hiking boots in the hotel and put on a flowing, peasant-style dishdasha coverall, sandals, and dark Ray-Ban sunglasses. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough. There was a pile of rags in the back of the truck. The old man reached inside and pulled out a long, filthy strip of cloth, which he shook up and down, producing an appalling cloud of dirt and dust. Shaw realized it was a shemagh or keffiyeh, the traditional three-and-a-half-foot-long Arab scarf, and the old man intended to wrap it around the American’s head, which pleased him to no end. Once upon a time, the scarf may have been white, but now it was a splotchy-brown. Before he could stop him, the old man began wrapping the long, filthy piece of cloth around Shaw’s head.
“Peachy, just peachy,” Shaw muttered to himself as the old Turkmeni finished. He tried in vain to tuck Shaw’s shoulder-length, wispy blond hair under the scarf, but for every strand he managed to push under the keffiyeh, another fell out. Finally, he gave up and wrapped the scarf around one more time, covering Shaw’s forehead down to the eyebrows. No doubt the old bastard would have covered his nose and mouth too, completely smothering him, if Shaw let him, which he didn’t. Instead, he finally pushed him away. The old man pointed at him, cursing and threatening, but Shaw was adamant. He was already dying of the heat, and covering the rest of his face would completely do him in.
Scarf or no scarf, the old man then pointed to the filthy, rough-wool kaftan lying on the car seat. It was the standard peasant outer garment, and he must have thought it would let Shaw blend with the locals. Him? Blend in with them? If that was the plan, it was hopeless from the start. Shaw relented and put the kaftan on, but the old man wasn’t finished. He cornered Shaw against the truck and began rubbing a greasy, brown cocoa stain into the pale skin on his face, neck, and hands. Like the shemagh and the kaftan, this skin dye was a joke, Shaw thought. His eyes were a bright, riveting blue. If he took off the dark Ray-Bans, he’d be marked as a foreigner for sure, so the best he could hope was that the border guards wouldn’t look too closely. If they did, he hoped there wouldn’t be too many of them.
Before the old man came up with any other big ideas, Shaw jumped into the passenger seat and closed the door. The old man gave up, started the truck, and resumed the trek down the rutted cart path. They hadn’t gone a hundred yards before a sharp upholstery spring started jabbing Shaw in the ass every time they hit a rock or pothole, and choking clouds of dust blew in the window. He pulled out his handkerchief and tried to find the last clean spot. As he did, the old man chuckled and turned his face away. He pressed a finger against the side of his nose and with a hacking snort, he cleared his nose by blowing snot through the open window. He then wiped his nose on the sleeve of the kaftan and turned back toward the American with a toothy, mocking grin, which Shaw interpreted to mean, “Handkerchief? I don’t need no stinking handkerchief!” Shaw looked back at him, nodded, turned toward his own open window, and did the same, turning back to the old goat and flipping him the bird. The old man’s face broke into a toothy grin and the two men laughed at each other.
When Professor Henry Shaw decided to make this trip, he hadn’t been hit with a stupid stick. He had a plan. First, he converted to a virulent brand of Wahhabi Islam six months before. Of course, anyone who really knew him knew the only thing Henry Shaw believed in was Henry Shaw. This trip was a carefully calculated means to a much-desired end for him — reaching Raqqah and speaking to the Caliph, the leader of ISIS would give Henry Shaw instant credibility in left-wing political circles. He had contrived the perfect angle so that once he met the Caliph, he would permit Shaw to join his frontline fighters. That was how he would build his own radical resume. Maybe they’d even let him cut off some heads. That would be the ultimate, and allow him to put a long knife to the throat of the Head of the Sociology Department. Then they wouldn’t ignore him, not at Blue Ridge College and not at the University of Chicago. He would be the poster boy for radical causes, and they would never ignore him again.
As the old man settled in and concentrated on the road, Shaw pretended to do the same. He slipped his hand inside the rucksack. Shielding it with his other arm, he pulled out the Walther PPK 7.65 semi-automatic pistol and hid it in the abundant folds of his keffiyeh. A few minutes later, he reached into the pack again and found the handle of his old Marine Corps Ka-Bar knife and made it quickly disappear up his left sleeve. He might be a PhD sociology professor, Shaw thought with a thin smile, but some old Marine Corps preferences died harder than others, like the pleasure he got from hurting people and killing them.
His PhD was in the people and cultures of the Arab Middle East, a subject he became interested in while he served in Iraq. Nothing much stuck to him back then, other than too many beers, too many bar fights, and a Bad Conduct Discharge. What the hell! He thought the Marine Corps had a better sense of humor than that. After all, the guy he decked was Army, albeit a Captain. After they booted him out, he worked construction for six months, quickly deciding that college might be easier. He enrolled at UCLA and gravitated to sociology, because it was easy and because there were twice as many girls as guys. He then focused on the Middle East, because he could fake it. Sociology professors were so left-wing ideologically that it was child’s play to game them and tell them what they wanted to hear. In graduate school it was even easier, because they thought he was one of them. He focused on “the troubled national minorities in eastern and southern Turkey,” which meant the Armenians and Kurds, because no one else was even remotely interested in them. Better still, he discovered there were hundreds of wealthy emigres from those two nationalities living in Los Angeles, which gave him access to a wide variety of private loans and grants, to some great parties in Brentwood, and to all the coke he could snort. Scamming the system and telling people what they wanted to hear had become second nature to him by then. So after an equally soft Master’s Degree at Harvard, he was ready to take on the most dominant paragon in the field, the University of Chicago, where he ran into a politically incorrect wall.
Shaw had already made a half-dozen research trips to the region. He knew the history, the people, all the angles, the jargon, the politically correct phrases, and had the cold conscience of a hitman. Still, his lectures and research papers were dismissed by the “Gods of East 59th Street” as “simplistic in their approach,” “inadequate in their treatment,” “tied to an unfortunate Western cultural bias,” and “sadly lacking in groundbreaking insights.” Shaw, on the other hand, thought his work was brilliant. After all, he had parroted back to them every buzz word, invented statistic, and bit of useless data he could make up to reach the conclusions they wanted. It was brilliant! Who were those old phonies to say it was “inadequate?”
Unfortunately, within the rarefied atmosphere of American academia, sociology had drifted further and further to the left, from merely liberal through “progressive” to the unabashedly radical. Reality meant nothing to them, and he knew the comments from the Chicago faculty on his work had nothing to do with his research, his findings, or anything he could possibly put on paper. What they meant was that his hair was too blond, his eyes too blue, and his skin too white. He could never be politically correct enough, anti-Western enough, or anti-American enough to appease the dominant clique now running the department with an iron fist. To be accepted into their inner circle meant he had arrived. To be rejected and
sent packing with their labels and whispers hanging over him completely derailed his well-planned academic career. He found himself blacklisted from faculty openings at even mid-rank universities, stuck on a treadmill of non-tenured positions at backwater start-ups.
His most recent stop was at Blue Ridge College in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he attempted to teach wealthy prep-school kids whose daddies couldn’t get them admitted anywhere else. Most of them thought those exotic-sounding countries in the Middle East were fiction, while Hogwarts was real. Those were his day students. His night students, on the other hand, were mostly soldiers from nearby Fort Bragg. At least they had seen the Third World “up close and personal,” and knew firsthand the damage the American military machine was doing around the world. He enjoyed teaching them, because they wanted to learn. The last and most painful group he had to put up with were the Arab students. They were young, angry, rude, and arrogant. All they wanted was to stretch their American student visas into the next century and never return home to the Middle East if they could avoid it. They read nothing, studied nothing, and spent their time in the basement of the Student Union arguing Arab politics and resenting his attempts to teach them anything about the Middle East. They took one look at his courses and flocked to them, expecting effortless A’s. When he actually made them work, they ran to the department head, screaming discrimination. Inadequate results? Simplistic? Tied to an unfortunate Western perspective? Not quite radical enough? The Dons at Chicago would soon see what radical was!
This trip was being funded by a three-year UNESCO research grant titled, “Disruptions in the Patriarchal Ethnocentric Cultures of the Azari, Armenian, and Kurdish Peoples in Eastern Anatolia and the Armenian Highlands of East-Central Turkey.” The subject was pure bullshit of course, but sufficiently obscure that only a handful of other academics who were also “gaming” the system would understand. However, that wasn’t why he made this trip. The arrogant, culturally ignorant UNESCO bureaucrats in Paris who doled out their lucrative research grants were easy marks. Make it sufficiently complicated and obtuse, and they swallowed it whole. But two months ago, he realized the time had come for him to step up his game and do something dramatic if he didn’t want to spend the rest of his days in academic Siberia. He’d go to Syria and join ISIS. He’d take his place on the front lines outside Raqqah, its political capital and wartime headquarters, and UNESCO was footing the bill.
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 2