The Venetian Judgment Read online

  Dalton replied, with righteous indignation, that the recipient, a three-year-old girl named Asya Hamila—this brought a sidelong look from Mandy, who knew the man was slick, but where did that name come from?—was being brought in by Red Crescent Air Ambulance from an outlying village in Turkey, the name of which he had not been told, that he knew for a fact that all proper arrangements had been duly cleared with Ankara, that this was, after all, a medical emergency, with a child’s life hanging in the balance, and not the time for bureaucratic meddling, and did Little Bird 1 now wish him to throw the donor heart overboard, turn around, and go home, and let the United Nations, the Red Cross, Ankara, Reuters, the Associated Press, and Little Bird 1’s immediate superiors sort out who was to blame for the needless death of an innocent girl?

  More radio silence followed.

  Then, eventually, a rather stiff reply: a decision had been made to allow them to cross Turkish airspace under close escort, to avoid passing over any built-up areas, to stay at least fifty miles away from Ankara, and to land at Atatürk Field in Istanbul, where, if their story checked out, they would receive a police escort to Hastanesi Children’s Hospital, and, if it did not, they would then be invited to enjoy the gracious hospitality of the Turkish Military Police.

  This conversation had taken place approximately three hundred miles back, and little else had been said in the pilot cabin since then. It would be reasonable to describe the atmosphere in the copilot and pilot’s section of the chopper during this period of onrushing travel as “frosty,” while in the stripped-down cargo section the atmosphere, now rich in ouzo fumes and the scent of one of Levka’s Turkish cigarettes, was much more festive.

  Through the windshield, in the formless dark, under a starless sky, the lights of a town could now be seen; the lakeside city of Bandirma, according to the GPS array in the control panel. To the north, beyond the scattered grid of town lights, a vast darkness—the Sea of Marmara, and on the farther side of that, fifty miles over black water, the ancient and storied city of Byzantium, for now just a pale glow on the northwestern horizon, but racing toward them like a verdict. Mandy, watching the lights of Istanbul shimmer in the distance, set her cold coffee down in the holder and clicked on her headset mike, switching the com-net from CREW to PILOT ONLY mode.

  “Micah, darling, may I raise a tiny issue with you, at the risk of seeming to whinge?”

  “Please. You know how I adore your voice.”

  “Do you? Well, that’s lovely. ‘Absolutely peachy,’ as Porter would say. My question is—and I ask this in the full expectation of a wonderfully comforting reply, knowing your remarkable skills, your ineffable tradecraft, your matchless derring-do—just precisely how will our being buggered hourly in a Turkish prison speed our plow? Of course, as you have not had the advantages of an English public school education, being buggered hourly may be a new experience for you and one to which you may take a fancy. But it does seem rather a distraction from our main mission, does it not? Just asking, dear boy.”

  “You’re starting to sound like the Queen Mum, you know?”

  “I could do worse. At least she found great consolation in Tanqueray. I await your reply.”

  “Speed.”

  “Speed?”

  “Speed is what this is all about, Mandy. We have to get inside the decision cycle of whoever is running this operation. Keraklis called Istanbul and mentioned the Subito. He called”—Dalton checked his watch—“at 1854 hours, a little before seven in the evening. It’s now almost two in the morning. Sofouli won’t find Keraklis and the missing chopper until he gets up. Whoever was running Keraklis will be wondering why he hasn’t heard back. But it’s a good bet that he won’t get really concerned about it until the morning. By then, we’ll be right in his face, exactly where he won’t be expecting—”

  “Whoever he is—”

  “Yes. In short, we’ll be inside his decision cycle—”

  That put Mandy over the top.

  “Oh bugger his decision cycle. Couldn’t we have taken a civilian flight? Or do you just like commandeering things?”

  “Even inside the EU, they ask for papers at the airports. Which travel documents would you have used? The Pearson passports, which, by the time we got to Athens, would have set off alarms all over the airport? Our personal papers, which would kick off triggers back in Langley. Or would we just tell them we were CIA agents on a goodwill tour to Turkey? You know how well we’re getting along with Turkey these days. You heard Keraklis talking to someone at Ataköy Marina about the Subito. That boat’s a crime scene, supposedly the scene of Kiki Lujac’s murder, and I want to go over it before they put it somewhere we’ll never find it—”

  “We don’t know the Subito is at this marina—”

  “And we don’t know it isn’t, but if we stay inside the decision cycle—”

  “If you use that phrase again, Micah, I swear I will strike you. We will also be inside a Turkish prison, as I have pointed out—”

  “No, we won’t.”

  “No? Now I’m all aflutter. Why not, pray tell?”

  “We’re going to lose our escort.”

  Mandy gave him one of her raised-eyebrow looks, but since it was quite dim in the cabin and he couldn’t see her face, he was able to survive it.

  “Oh goody,” she said. “I just knew you’d have a plan. How are you going to lose our little friends? Really?”

  “Do you want to know? Really?”

  “No, not really. Well, yes . . . yes, I do.”

  Dalton told her straight out, and since then she had been, for her, unnaturally silent. Now, with the lights of Bandirma under their feet and the black void of the Sea of Marmara eating up the rest of the forward universe, the time for acting was growing very short.

  Dalton got on the CREW com-net to Levka.

  “Levka, how are you doing back there?”

  His voice came back, a little oversprightly but coherent.

  “I am good, boss. I have machine gun working, if you like?”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Found oil can in locker. Also big box of 7.62. You want I shoot up a Turk soldier for you? I never liked Turk soldiers.”

  “Not right now. What else is back there?”

  “Hard to say. All the medical stuff is ripped out. Rest is all tied down. Looks like maybe life raft, flares, blankets, gas cans—junk, boss, only junk.”

  “But it’s all tied down, nothing loose?”

  “No, boss. All tight”—Including Levka, he thought but did not add.

  “Okay. For now, what I want is for you to buckle up. I mean, strap in real solid. You follow?”

  Levka was silent for a moment while he worked out the implications.

  “Okeydokey, boss,” he said, cinching his straps in and stuffing the ouzo bottle into a zippered pocket. “I follow. We are going for ride?”

  “We are,” said Dalton. Then he looked across at Mandy, checked out her straps and his, checked them both again, gave Mandy a look that said Brace yourself, and then clicked the com-set to open.

  “Escort Six Actual, this is Medevac, come back.”

  “Medevac, this is Escort Six.”

  “Six, I’m looking at my starboard engine temperature readout and it’s saying I’m running at over red line. This may be an instrument malfunction since all my other parameters are nominal. Can you drop back and take a heat signature off my starboard engine?”

  A pause.

  “No, we cannot, Medevac. We are not equipped. Do you have redundant sensors?”

  No infrared detection on board.

  “Negative. This old bird is very tired. Taped together. Our avionics are ten years old. Do you have night vision capabilities?”

  A pause.

  “Negative. We are on approach to Atatürk. ETA, thirty minutes. Do you need to turn back and try for Bandirma?”

  And no NVGs.

  “Negative, Six. This heart is too urgent. We have to try for Atatürk. Can you drop b
ack and see if I’m losing coolant?”

  More silence.

  Six Actual was a wary flyer. Young but smart.

  “Yes, Medevac. We will drop back and do a visual on your starboard engine housing. Please hold your course and maintain altitude.”

  “Roger that. Appreciate it, Six.”

  The three choppers flew level for another few seconds, and then the Little Bird flared up slightly and dropped back, gaining altitude but losing speed. At the same time, taking his mind off the game, the pilot of the port Little Bird chopper let his ride drift a few degrees farther away. Dalton had his hand on the collective, waiting for his moment.

  “Medevac, this is Escort Six. I am in your slipstream and cannot see any coolant leakage. Repeat, you are not losing—”

  Dalton hit a flip-top button marked EMERGENCY FUEL DUMP. The multifunction display indicator started to flash bright red with the warning STARBOARD AUXILIARY FUEL DUMP. There was a hissing sound, and a vapor cloud of JP-6 fuel began to stream out from the starboard auxiliary tank, a teardrop-shaped bolt-on clamped to a stub wing.

  Little Bird 1 was right in the cone of the fuel spraying out from the Blackhawk’s slipstream. The pilot’s reaction was quick but not quick enough.

  “Medevac, this is Escort Six. You are losing fluid! I am in your stream, and you are losing coolant. Repeat, you are—”

  But it wasn’t coolant. It was high-octane aviation fuel, and it promptly did what JP-6 likes to do: it found a hot spark in the Little Bird’s engine, there was a red flash, a blooming white light. Little Bird 1 caught fire and, a moment later, blew itself to pieces.

  The concussion wave hit the tail boom, knocking the Blackhawk forward and into a yaw. Dalton, fighting to regain control, hit the com-set and radioed Little Bird 2.

  “Escort Two, I am losing power. Repeat, I am losing—”

  The com-set speaker crackled into life with a frantic burst of cross talk in Turkish as the pilot of Little Bird 2 radioed the news of the midair explosion to his base, wherever the hell that was. Right now, as what was left of Little Bird 1 was raining molten steel and burned body parts down onto the town of Bandirma, the pilot of Little Bird 2 was not thinking about the United Nations Blackhawk at all.

  Dalton, seizing the moment, cut the radio off abruptly, at the same time that he turned off all the exterior airframe lights, including the rotor-hub strobes and the navigation lights under the nose and tail boom.

  He hit the collective and shoved the Blackhawk into a controlled shallow dive, checking his parameters. He shut off FUEL DUMP, waited two seconds for the flow to tail off.

  Then he pressed CHAFF/FLARE.

  A spray of shredded aluminum foil and four red Very lights popped out of the flare pod and rocketed backward into the vapor cloud of fuel that was still drifting in the atmosphere behind them. In a moment, another blue-white light blossomed, illuminating the sky, followed by a dimly felt concussive boom. They heard a burst of panicky Turkish from Little Bird 2 on the com-set, a brief, terrified shout cut off abruptly.

  Mandy, twisting to look through the side window, saw Little Bird 2, a thousand feet above them, watched it veer sharply up and to the south, trying to avoid flying into the second fireball burning in the cold night sky.

  Dalton, knowing that the pilot of Little Bird 2 would get his nerve and his bearings back in a moment, kept the Blackhawk in a steep descent, right at the operational limits. The altimeter display was winding backward, the two RPM indicators were well into the red zone, and the PARAMETER alert was going off, a deafening klaxon wail.

  Mandy watched the surface of the Sea of Marmara coming at them, glanced over at Dalton, whose tight face was locked and grim as he fought the collective and watched the control indicators. The rotor vibration was intense, shaking the airframe brutally, with things rattling around the floor of the cockpit, and the engines were shrieking.

  At a thousand feet, Dalton pulled back on the stick, finally leveling the laboring chopper out at less than two hundred feet above the surface of the sea. They were still running dark, although the glow of her twin turbines would have been faintly visible against the water. The rotor wash was kicking up spray, and the windshield was streaming.

  Dalton slowed the shuddering old machine to a near hover, looked out his side window, then through the glass overhead. He saw a faint strobe blinking far above them, the other Little Bird, circling aimlessly, probably on the radio calling in his position and scrambling a rescue chopper.

  Mandy broke the short silence.

  “Did you know that was going to happen?”

  Dalton looked over at her.

  “Yes, Mandy, I did.”

  Mandy looked away.

  “Those poor kids.”

  “Yes,” said Dalton. “And that’s what we do. You understand that?”

  She flared back at him.

  “Yes. I started this, didn’t I? I shot a dead man in the back of the head a few hours ago, so I imagine I can handle this.”

  Dalton held her look for a moment, and then got on the CREW net.

  “Levka, you okay?”

  Levka had lost his bottle of ouzo in the dive. It was rolling around the floor of the cabin, and he was trying to retrieve it. He jerked back in his straps and hit the squawk button.

  “Yeah, boss. Okeydokey.”

  “I’m going to hover here for sixty seconds. I want you to open the bay door, pop that life raft into the water, and dump everything we have back there into the raft. You copy that?”

  “Everything? Also luggage of miss?”

  Dear Saint Boris, not the ouzo!

  “No. Not the damned luggage. And not the camouflage tarp. But everything else!”

  Dalton held the machine in hover. Through the boards, they could feel Levka dragging cargo to the open bay, and they could hear the splash as matériel hit the waves. The open door let in a cold, wet wind and the smell of diesel oil and dead fish. Dalton and Mandy spent the minute trying to see where Little Bird 2 was—so far, still circling at six thousand feet, judging from the position of the blinking strobe on its belly.

  Down at this level, they could make out the hulls of freighters crowding the entrance to the Bosphorus, a constellation of navigation lights blinking on the horizon, their black masts silhouetted against the low-mounded glimmering of Istanbul. Levka was back on the headset radio.

  “All okay, boss. Now what?”

  “You keep one of the flares?”

  Levka swore to himself.

  “No, boss, sorry. You say dump everything!”

  “Got a match?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Still got some of that ouzo left?”

  “Ouzo, boss?”

  “I can smell it up here. Grab a bottle, stick a rag in it, light the rag, and toss it into the raft. Do it!”

  Levka, sighing, did what he was told. The bottle, fire flickering at its neck, tumbled into the raft, shattering into licking blue flames just as Dalton put the chopper into a forward glide, skimming the top of the waves. They were a hundred feet away when the flare box went up. And then the ammunition belts cooked off, a fireworks display that could be seen on the shoreline a mile behind them. It lasted a few moments, and then, as the raft burned and deflated, winked out, there was nothing but darkness.

  Dalton was hoping that brief flare-up against the black plain of open water would be taken as the UN Medevac chopper crashing. The water depth off the coast of Bandirma was over six hundred feet, and the bottom was littered with iron wrecks from Gallipoli and two world wars, so any sonar scan would be pretty inconclusive.

  Dalton lined the nose of the Blackhawk up on the misty lights of Istanbul and pushed the collective forward. The chopper picked up speed, its wheels just brushing the waves.

  “Levka?”

  “Yes, boss?”

  “You know Istanbul?”

  “Pretty okay. I know good whorehouse in Aksaray—”

  “I need to put this machine down somewhere out of
sight. If the military don’t buy the idea that we crashed off Bandirma, they’ll tear the town up looking for this chopper. And they’ll find it sooner or later. On the GPS charts, there’s open land on the east side of Atatürk Field—”

  “Yes. Is soccer stadium. Across from airport parking lot. Next to that is sewage place. Big open field, but no good to hide chopper. Too much people all around.”

  “Okay, I’m open to suggestions.”

  Levka gave it some thought while they swooped in toward the lights of the city. The mist on the water coated the windshield. Freighters and tankers and container hulks were all around them now, some of them close enough for the rows of porthole lights and the rust on the hulls to be seen as they ghosted past them, most of them moored in the shallow waters, showing only navigation lights. The rotors churned up the water as they drifted over it, sending a large circular fan of ripples outward, dragging it along behind them like a white lace net on a black velvet tablecloth.

  “Micah,” said Mandy during the pause, “there’s only one place where a helicopter won’t stand out and that’s at an airport. Is there another one around, maybe a small private one?”

  Dalton hit a few buttons on the GPS chart screen and a list came up, along with lats and longs and bearings from their position.

  “There’s another big public one on the Asian side, at Sabiha Gökçen . . . There’s a little one, Samandira, looks like mainly private planes. Not used much, according to the data file, but it’s a long way east of our position—twenty miles, anyway—and it’s seven miles inland. Over a lot of towns and villages. Levka, you copying?”

  “Yes, boss?”

  “You know a private airport on the Arab side of Istanbul east of the Bosphorus, seven miles inland, called Samandira?”

  “No, boss. But is private field? On Asia side of Bosphorus? Not on Europe side?”

  “Yes, looks like it.”

  “We have money?”

  “We have money.”

  “Then Asia Istanbullus have good word for this. Vermek is word.”

  “Vermek? What does it mean?”