The Templar Salvation

Chapter 32

Just getting up onto his feet was a titanic effort. Reilly felt like a boxer who’d been knocked down one time too many and could do nothing else but hug the canvas and ride out the count. But he couldn’t stay down. Not while Tess was out there.

He managed to push himself upright. All around him, small fires were blazing, lighting up a macabre tableaux of suffering. The acrid stench of death shrouded the scorched earth near him. Keskin was still there, by his feet. The beefy commando wasn’t moving anymore.

Reilly fought to regain some kind of focus in his mind, to order his frazzled thoughts into some kind of coherent plan. He spotted Ertugrul around thirty yards from him. The legat was flat on his back and wasn’t moving either. Beyond him, Reilly could see a couple of commandos who seemed uninjured and were tending to the wounded. He started toward them, hoping they were in radio contact with their comrades down the hill, the ones who had stayed behind with Tess. Then he remembered his own comm set and instinctively brought his hand up to his ear. His wireless headset was gone, no doubt blown away by the blast. He felt his pockets, but his transmitter wasn’t there either. He paused and dropped his gaze to the ground, scanning the rough soil for it, but quickly decided that was pointless. He’d moved around since the first explosion, and there was little hope of spotting the transmitter in the darkness. He staggered across the clearing again, toward the commandos, and stopped when he got to Ertugrul. A large patch of blood had darkened the soil around the legat’s head, and it didn’t look like he was breathing. He was just staring out into nothing, without blinking. Reilly bent down beside him and put two fingers to his neck. Ertugrul’s carotid artery wasn’t throbbing. He was gone.

Reilly set his hand on the fallen agent’s shoulder and exhaled heavily. He glanced around through seething eyes, the frustration pinning him down. Then he saw it, shimmering in the flames, a few feet behind Ertugrul’s body: the legat’s earpiece. He got back on his feet and retrieved it, and held it up with trembling fingers that were caked with blood and mud. It seemed intact. He clipped it onto his ear, hoping it was still working, and with a hoarse, faint voice, muttered, “Hawk Command? Come in, Hawk Command.”

The controller’s voice thundered back. “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened out there? You okay?”

“I’m okay, but Ertugrul’s dead,” Reilly said. He was back with the legat now, rummaging through his pockets, looking for the dead man’s transmitter and feeling like a vulture. “Others too. It’s bad. Real bad. We’re going to need medevacs. You need to get them here now.”

“Copy that. Hang on,” the controller said. “I’m handing you over to my CO.”

“Wait,” Reilly interrupted. “The bird. Is it still here?”

“Affirmative. Pull back is in seven minutes.”

Reilly shut his eyes tight, blocking out the carnage around him, trying to keep his mind focused. “The target vehicle. Are you tracking it?”

“Affirmative. It traveled down the mountain just after the blast. What was that?”

Reilly knew the explosion would have registered as a big flash on the drone’s infrared sensors, but chose to ignore the question. “And then what? Where did it go?”

“It reached the detachment at the bottom of the hill and it looks like it crashed into one of the Humvees. One person got out of it. We’re assuming that’s your target, correct?”

Reilly’s insides tightened. “Then what?”

“We’re assuming an exchange of gunfire. There was some movement. We’re showing three friendlies down.”

The tightening turned into a garrote as his mind raced through its cache, trying to remember how many commandos had stayed back with Tess. “Three? You’re sure of that?”

“Affirmative. Then two figures got back into the target vehicle and it drove off.”

Two figures. Reilly’s heart flared. “Where is it now?”

“Hang on.” After a brief moment, the voice came back. “It’s about four clicks south of your position, heading toward a town called Cayirozu.”

“Keep tracking it as long as you can, I think our target’s got Tess Chaykin with him and—”

The controller interrupted, his tone distant and robotic. “Pull back’s now in under five—”

“Stay on them, do you hear me?” Reilly rasped. “Don’t lose them. And get through to the Jandarma’s command and give them their position. I’m going after them.” His fingers found Ertugrul’s transmitter. He pocketed it, took one last look at his dead colleague, then got up again and headed down the hill.

He knew they’d soon lose sight of the Discovery, once the drone had to bail and head back to its base in Qatar before its fuel ran out. No one at Beale was going to authorize trashing a multimillion-dollar piece of top secret wizardry just to track down Reilly’s target. And even with the best will in the world, it would take a while to get another drone approved and re-tasked. By then, the Discovery would be long gone, taking Tess along with it.

Not what he needed to focus on right now.

Not with the endless slog down, in near-darkness, along the rock-strewn trail, on legs that could barely hold him up.

IT TOOK HIM TWENTY MINUTES to reach the clearing where he’d left Tess. The first glimmers of daylight were rising from behind the mountain, painting the area in a soft, golden glow. The sight that greeted him, however, was at great odds with its pastoral setting. Three dead commandos. Three crippled vehicles. And no sign of Tess.

He leaned against the Humvee where he’d last seen her standing, and caught his breath. He assumed the Turks would have reinforcements on the way by now, but they’d need time to get there. He had to decide what to do. If he stayed there and waited for them, it was likely that he would get embroiled in a jurisdictional tug-of-war and get sidelined. The Turks wouldn’t take kindly to the massacre that had occurred, and they wouldn’t necessarily want an outsider to interfere with their manhunt. Plus there was the language barrier to consider. By the time strings were pulled to try to keep him in the game, precious time would have been lost.

More importantly, he realized that getting Tess back safely wouldn’t be the Turkish military’s priority. They would be desperate to get their hands on the bomber, that would be their prime objective. Tess’s safety was a distant second. If it ever came down to it and getting their man meant sacrificing Tess, Reilly had no illusions that she wouldn’t be expendable in their eyes. Hell, he’d be expendable too. Not that he’d been particularly effective at keeping Simmons safe either. No, he couldn’t trust anyone else to try to rescue her.

He had to keep going, on his own. Ahead of the troops.

Stay on point.

They were more than welcome to follow in his tracks and swoop in. In fact, he’d call in for backup and invite them in—after she was out of harm’s way.

He found the pack he’d left in the Humvee and recovered it. It still held his BlackBerry and his wallet. Something on the seat beside it caught his eye: a hastily folded map, next to a flashlight. He recognized the map. When he’d left Tess, she had been trying to lay out the inquisitor’s journey on it now that they knew where the monastery was.

He opened it up. Sure enough, Tess had marked the monastery’s rough position on it, based on the location of the parked SUVs and on the assumption that Simmons and his abductor had actually found it. She’d then marked possible routes and scribbled notes alongside them, using the contours of the terrain to try to follow the inquisitor’s notes. The route split up into different branches at a couple of locations, and she’d put several question marks along the way. One route, however, had been marked off more solidly and seemed to stand out. It looked like the one she thought was the right one.

Reilly studied it for a moment, then folded up the map.

“Clever girl,” he said under his breath. His depleted reservoir of adrenaline had just gotten a small top-up.

He checked the vehicles, grabbed a canteen full of water, a pair of powerful field binoculars, a handgun, and three full magazines, threw the lot along with his stuff into a field pack, and set off again.