Mykonos After Midnight

Chapter Twenty-five

Small fishing boats were a normal sight around Stapodia in the pre-dawn hours. At least that’s what Andreas and Kouros were hoping as the little caique squeezed in as close as it could to a tiny cove on the south central side of the island. They jumped into the boot-high water and scrambled across the sand into the shadows of the cliffs as Panayis steered his caique back out to sea. Up close the cliffs looked even more impossible to climb than in the photographs.

“I sure as hell hope that old man knew what he was talking about,” said Kouros.

“Only one way to find out.”

They were dressed head to toe in black camouflage, but the moonlight would give them away to anyone who bothered looking down the cliff face. Once climbing, the weapons in the packs strapped to the small of their backs would do them no better good than the 9mm Heckler amp; Koch USPs holstered to their thighs. They’d be dead in place targets for anyone above them.

It took twenty minutes to find the trail, a narrow ledge snaking back and forth across the cliff face and barely wide enough in some places for more than the soles of their shoes to slide along in parallel while their heels dangled out over the edge. Each man made sure to keep his weight on his rear foot until certain there was a firm place ahead to step.

Fifteen minutes into the climb Kouros whispered, “That dog must have been a fucking Chihuahua to make it up this path.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” whispered Andreas creeping along behind Kouros, his face pressed against the cliff.

A cigarette lighter lit up off to the west, likely on the trail from the church to the lighthouse.

“What time is it?” whispered Kouros

“What difference does it make? We can’t move any faster.”

“I just wanted know how much longer to sunrise.”

“You’ll know it’s here when those guys over there start shooting at us.”

Twenty minutes of more finger-gripping, knuckle-scraping, rock climbing had them close to the top. The path widened and the two men moved more quickly until a section of ledge gave way under Kouros’ front foot, nearly sending him and Andreas who’d grabbed him from behind crashing down to the beach. Both stood quietly for a moment staring down at the sea. Andreas patted Kouros on the shoulder and they resumed the climb, taking care where they stepped.

They reached the top less than fifteen minutes before the first rays of sunlight, but couldn’t move on the lighthouse until they found the sentries. They knew there must be sentries. They crouched low to the ground so not to create a silhouette against the horizon, and scanned for whoever might be up there with them.

Kouros tapped Andreas on the shoulder and pointed one hundred yards to the west. A man with an AK-47 was standing by the top of the path, looking down. Andreas pointed to the cistern one hundred yards north of them. Another man with an AK-47 was behind it facing northwest. He looked to be guarding the front door to the lighthouse, just past the cistern and to the right. Another three minutes passed.

Andreas leaned in and whispered in Kouros’ ear. “In seven minutes the sun comes up and we’ll be lit up like a Christmas tree. It’s now or never. You take the one by the path, I’ll take care of the one by the lighthouse.” He didn’t have to say, “Do it quietly.”A shot would mean the end of Tassos’ life. Hard-asses who kidnapped a cop wouldn’t dare leave him alive to identify them-and take revenge.

Andreas reached into his pack, felt around, and finding what he wanted, gripped it firmly in his right hand. He carefully made his way northeast, away from the cistern, before turning west. He stopped directly in line with the man’s back.

Just keep looking the other way, he prayed.

Andreas slowly worked his way to about forty feet behind the man when the lighthouse door swung open. Andreas dropped to the ground and held his breath. Another man stood in the doorway, blocking most of the little light coming from inside. He said something to the man at the cistern, stepped outside, closed the door, and began pissing next to the doorway.

Goddamnit. Hurry up and finish.

The pissing man said something else, opened the lighthouse door, and disappeared inside just as the first rays of sunlight hit the top of the island.

Andreas pushed up from the ground and started toward the cistern. He could make out Kouros taking out the other sentry. The one at the cistern must have seen the same thing because he was swinging his gun around onto Kouros just as Andreas came up behind him.

Andreas thrust his right hand at the back of the man’s head and just as quickly his hand jerked back at him. But there was no flash of light or sound. Except for the sound of the sentry and his gun crumpling to the ground.

Andreas waved for Kouros to hurry.

He looked at the gun in his hand. The little bugger had worked. It’s what he had Maggie send him, a gift a few years back from a US military liaison assigned to the American embassy in Athens. He’d called it a QSPR, for Quiet Special Purpose Revolver, and said it was developed for use by tunnel rats in the Vietnam War, the brave ones who crawled into dark holes looking for the enemy with nothing but a flashlight, a pistol, and cast iron balls.

The American said it suppressed all the natural consequences of an explosion of gases rushing down a barrel to escape behind the bullet or shotgun pellets they were pushing. Silencers only muffled the effects. The QSPR stopped them cold. No muzzle flash, sound, or shockwaves. Only the faint click of the firing pin.

It was a modified six-round Smith amp; Wesson.44 caliber revolver with a barrel just over an inch long. The trick was in the gun’s ammunition. It trapped the gases inside the cartridge so they never reached the barrel. Each cartridge was made of steel and housed fifteen metal shotgun pellets separated from the gunpowder by a piston-type device. When fired, the piston propelled the pellets out into the barrel and sealed off the end of the cartridge before the gases escaped. The weapon wasn’t all that powerful, but at close range it was deadly.

But by the time Kouros reached him, Andreas had switched to the other gun in his pack, the noisier and far more lethal Heckler amp; Koch MP5K submachine gun. Kouros was carrying the same.

Temi had said the door on this side of the lighthouse was the only way in or out, just inside were stairs straight ahead leading up to the light, and off to the right at the bottom of the stairs was a room. That was it.

They listened by the door. Not a sound. Andreas pointed toward the room on the right.

Kouros nodded.

Andreas tapped him twice on the back and yanked open the door. Kouros was off like a sprinter to the crack of a starter’s pistol. By the time Andreas swung in behind him, two men with shotguns sitting on chairs next to a body tied naked to a cross at their feet had bullets in their brains.

A man across from them with an AK-47, tried to fire but Andreas drew a circle around the man’s center of mass and ran the string up through the top of his head.

A fourth man cowered in the corner by the feet of the body on the cross, a lit blowtorch in one hand. He dropped the torch and put up his hands. Kouros put a round in the man’s knee.

“Whoops, it slipped,” said Kouros.

The man screamed in pain. Kouros walked over, grabbed him by his throat, and dragged him to the doorway. “Any more friends around?”

The man kept screaming.

Kouros smacked him across the face with the back of his hand and pointed the machine gun at the man’s other knee. “Shall we try for two?”

“No, no, just us and the four outside.”

“Four?” said Andreas.

“The others must be down by the church. I’ll be right back.” Kouros opened the door, peeked outside, and crept out.

Andreas picked up the still burning blowtorch and motioned the hobbling man out into the other room. He told him to sit on the steps leading up to the light with his hands on the back of his head.

“Please don’t hurt me with that.”

“You mean this?” Andreas brought the flame close enough to the top of the man’s head to singe his hair.

At the odor the man screamed.

Andreas turned off the torch, snapped a handcuff on one wrist, pulled the open cuff over the railing and cuffed the other wrist. “Not yet.”

***

Andreas kneeled down next to the body on the cross, bent his head close to the man’s face, and said softly, “Tassos.” He waited. He heard nothing. He tried again. He prayed.

It seemed like forever before he heard a struggling, “Andreas…Andreas…is that you?”

“Shhhhh, my friend. We’re going home.” He sliced the ropes binding Tassos’ arms and legs to the cross, ripped the shirts off the two men Kouros had killed, and carefully covered his friend with them.

Tassos tried to speak. Andreas leaned down and said, “Rest easy, buddy, the helicopter will be here for you soon.”

“It wasn’t the pain…It was the helplessness. I knew they could kill me. I knew they would kill me. But I made them drag it out…I would be in control of my own death.”

“You’re going to be fine, don’t worry.” Andreas ran outside the lighthouse and pulled a military communicator from his backpack. “This is Kaldis, we have the kidnap victim and he’s alive. Get that medevac chopper in here STAT. Officer down.”

Andreas saw Kouros double-timing it toward him across the plateau.

“What happened?”

“Real brave guys. As soon as they heard all the fireworks they must have run the other way. They took off in the boat before I could get a shot at them or the boat.”

“The coast guard will deal with them. They’re out there waiting for them.”

“How’s Tassos? I called for the helicopter before I went after those last two fuckers.”

“I just called it in again. Not good. I keep forgetting how old he is. Where the hell is that goddamned chopper?”

“They were at the airport waiting for the call. Every cop in the Cyclades, coast guard included, respects that old bastard. Trust me, they’re coming as fast as they can.”

As if on cue they heard the chopper coming in from the north. The pilot brought it in as close to the lighthouse as he could and before the rotors had stopped a doctor from Mykonos’ private clinic was racing toward them.

“Where’s Tassos?”

“Inside.”

Kouros watched the doctor run to the door. “See, I told you a lot of people like that old bastard.” Kouros coughed and sniffled.

“You did well, buddy. Tassos would be proud of you.”

“He damn well better be, I used the crazy American Bowie knife he gave me for my birthday on that sentry.”

Andreas put his arm over Kouros’ shoulder and led him back into the lighthouse.

“I think we should pray,” said Andreas.

“I already am.”

***

The doctor called it critical that they get Tassos to Athens immediately. He had extensive burns on his body and was in shock.

Andreas and Kouros helped get Tassos into the helicopter, then helped the coast guard carry the dead down to the beach for transfer by boat to Syros. As the coast guard carried the last of the bodies out of the lighthouse the man cuffed to the railing kept screaming at a coast guard lieutenant, “What about me? You have to arrest me. I’m one of the kidnappers. I’m the one who tortured him. You must take me with you.”

The lieutenant treated the screaming man as if he didn’t exist, and just before leaving the lighthouse whispered something to Andreas.

Andreas stared at the handcuffed man. “So, you really did all those things you just said?”

“No, no, I just wanted them to get me out of here.”

“Why? Don’t you like it here? It seems rather cozy. How long have you been here? Wait, let me guess. About a day?”

“I just got here.”

Kouros picked up the blowtorch. “You think you’re pretty good with this I bet. A specialist, huh?”

“I’m not telling you anything. And you can’t do anything to me but arrest me, you’re cops.”

Andreas laughed. “Not any more, Cinderella. Right now we’re just friends of the fellow you were using this on.” He took the torch from Kouros.

The man screamed, “Help, help!”

Andreas laughed. “You and your now very dead buddies picked the perfect spot. Yell as loud as you like. No one will hear you. You’re all ours.”

The man kept screaming.

Kouros took the torch away from Andreas and used it to knock the man out.

***

The man awoke stark naked and tied to the cross. Andreas crouched by his head and Kouros stood by his feet.

“So nice of you to join us,” said Andreas.

The man started to scream.

“Shhhh,” said Andreas. “You’ll have plenty of time to do that if you don’t cooperate.” He pointed at Kouros who promptly pulled an over-sized, double-blade knife out of a sheath on his side.

“If you look closely you’ll see the blood of one of your late buddies still on it.”

Andreas waited until the man’s eyes had returned to somewhat normal size.

“So, I have a proposition for you. And it’s a very simple one. I have four questions to ask you. For each one you answer to my satisfaction my friend will cut one cord binding you to the cross. For each one you do not, he first cuts off one testicle, then the other, then your penis and then either an eye or an ear depending on how he feels at the time. Then I ask the same questions over again and we keep cutting away until you answer them all…or you die…but that will take a while. So, shall we begin?”

Andreas never had to ask the second question.

***

Andreas and Kouros were standing outside the lighthouse looking west toward Mykonos. “You do know that if we let him live he’ll do what he did to Tassos to someone else,” said Kouros.

“Yeah, I thought about that. Thought about it real hard. Thought about leaving him in there tied to the cross with the door open so that the animals could get to him. Also thought about just tossing him off the cliff.”

Andreas kicked at the dirt. “But do you know why I’m not going to do any of that?”

“Please don’t give me a lecture on taking the moral highroad after what we’ve just seen.”

Andreas gestured no. “Here’s my thinking. If there is anything in this world that will motivate Tassos to get better, it will be knowing that the sick bastard who did all that to him was still breathing.”

Kouros smiled. “Okay, I’ll take that as an acceptable answer.”

“Hey, don’t lose heart, Yianni. We still have to figure out what we’re going to do about the guy who’s really behind what happened to Tassos.”

“Yeah, mister blowtorch did get real chatty.”

“I don’t think he realized how much he was telling us when he said his only order was to find where a ‘briefcase’ was hidden.”

Kouros drew in and let out a deep breath. “I feel it’s my fault they did what they did to Tassos. If I hadn’t hidden what they wanted he could have told them where it was. He really didn’t know.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re probably the only reason he’s still alive. If Tassos knew where it was he’d likely have told them and they’d have killed him as soon as they had it. No way they would let him live.”

Kouros nodded. “Thanks.”

“No need to say that. It’s true.”

“So what are we going to do about the Albanian mob? They’re obviously working with Sergey.”

“Quite a risk they took siding with a stranger against a cop as important as Tassos. This must have meant one hell of a big payday for them.”

“It will get them run off the island,” said Kouros.

“You really think so? For sure it will turn the heat up high enough to nail the others involved in snatching Tassos on Syros, but more than that, I doubt it. Albanians are a convenient scapegoat for a lot of problems on Mykonos. It’s too easy to blame them for hotel-room thefts during tourist season, private home break-ins during the off-season, and car thefts year-round. If we get rid of all the Albanian bad guys, whom are the Mykonians going to have left to blame? Their druggie nephews? No one wants to hear that. They prefer the excuse, ‘Albanians did it. Or the Pakistanis, or the Tsigani. Anybody but us.’”

“What really pisses me off is that with so many locals and cops knowing who’s behind most of that shit, why haven’t they been arrested? It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out how to catch them.”

“No, just an honest cop doing his job.”

“The truly bad guys on this island probably think they can get away with just about anything,” said Kouros.

Andreas waved his finger. “Except kidnapping a cop.”

“So, what are we going to do about mister blowtorch’s Albanian mob boss? He said that’s who ordered him to torture Tassos. Want to go shake his tree?” Kouros waved his knife.

“I doubt we’ll get him to admit he ordered the torture of a cop. And once ‘mister blowtorch’ is safely in jail he’ll clam up and deny everything he told us. We’ve got to get a direct angle on Sergey and the only way I see for doing that is by finding out who the hell is bankrolling him.”

“He’s certainly not going to tell us.”

“Wish we could use your Bowie knife on him.”

“Which reminds me,” said Kouros. “We better get the prisoner down to the coast guard. They won’t wait for us forever.”

Andreas smiled. “Don’t worry about it, they’ll wait.”

“How do you know that?”

“That lieutenant whispered something to me just before he left us alone with the prisoner.”

“What was it?”

“‘Take your time, Tassos is my godfather.’”