Caspian quickly looked behind his shoulder and, after confirming they weren’t being followed by another group of passengers, he made his move.
As he walked past the policeman, he pivoted hard to his left and rammed his shoulder into the officer, slamming him against the wall. Before the man could react, Caspian grabbed his wrist, bent it, and forced the officer to spin around. Caspian hooked an arm around the man’s throat, dropped his weight, and yanked the cop back while tightening the choke, cutting off the blood to his brain. Caspian applied as much pressure as he could to the carotid artery while shifting his hips to the right to break the officer’s balance. The man struggled, elbows flailing, but Caspian kept his stance wide, absorbing the blows. Two seconds later, the policeman went limp in his arms and Caspian began to drag him toward the supply closet. Liesel was already there and opened the door for him.
Liesel figured out what Caspian wanted to do the moment he looked at her. When she saw him spin the officer around, she rushed past him and pulled open the supply closet door. She turned on the lights. The spacewas a small windowless room of roughly ten by twelve feet. The interior was packed with mops, buckets, cleaning products, and a shelf stacked with paper towels and several boxes of rubber gloves. There was also a supply cart, a partial roll of duct tape, and four spare janitor uniforms.
Behind her, Caspian was dragging the unconscious police officer toward the supply closet. Liesel grabbed the duct tape, and as soon as Caspian pulled the officer into the room, she closed the door and covered the officer’s mouth with a large piece of tape, pressing it flush against his cheeks. She then taped his ankles and wrists.
“The cleaners must have taken their ID badges with them,” Caspian said, already pulling on one of the blue coveralls.
Liesel showed him the downed officer’s access badge. “This will have to do,” she said, pocketing it.
She pulled the officer’s pistol from its holster. It was a Yavuz 16, a Turkish pistol developed from the Beretta 92FS. She checked that there was a round in the chamber, then handed the gun to Caspian along with two spare magazines. She then slipped into one of the coveralls, tucking her hair beneath a faded blue cap, and grabbed a clipboard from the cleaning cart. Caspian wheeled the cart in front of them, and as they were about to leave the closet, the officer stirred. The man blinked twice. Though the tape over his mouth muffled any sound, he groaned faintly and began to twitch.
Liesel leaned over him. “You want me to keep the light on?” she asked. “Is that what you’re saying? No problem.”
The officer blinked again, his face a mixture of confusion and helpless rage.
Liesel closed the door and, along with Caspian, stepped into the hallway. They exited the hall a few seconds later and entered the open space of the hangar. A uniformed officer who was standing with two passengers midway between Caspian and Liesel and the rows of plastic chairs looked up from a tablet and gave them a quick once-over. Seeing only two cleaners with a cart, he turned his attention back to his device.
“Another minute or so and he’ll go investigate what’s taking us so long,” she said.
Liesel spotted the gray double door the janitors had used to access the hangar. Reaching it, she saw a red light blinking on the keypad. Next to it was an electronic scanner. If the officer they’d left behind in the supply closet was a backup from another division and not permanently assigned to the airport, his badge might not unlock the door, and it might be game over for her and Caspian. She pulled the access badge from her pocket, then swiped it into the reader, aware that the officer holding the tablet was staring at them.
She held her breath.
The red light turned green. Liesel pushed the door and held it as Caspian maneuvered the cart inside. The door led to a softly lit warehouse where the ceiling stretched three stories high. From the look of it, the space was used to temporarily store cargo awaiting transit or inspection. Half a dozen forklifts were parked next to stacks of wrapped pallets close to a shuttered loading dock. A large corner office stood to the left, walled in by plexiglass panels that allowed whoever was inside to see what was happening on the floor. There was nobody inside, and the warehouse looked to be deserted.
“Let’s leave the cart here,” Liesel said. “Keep watch while I go search for keys.”
Caspian replied by giving her a thumbs-up, but she was already jogging toward the corner office.
The office had several desks, all of them cluttered with staples, plastic binders, and maintenance checklists. Liesel yanked open the top drawer of the desk closest to her only to find a bunch of loose pens, a few receipts, and a forgotten sandwich in a wax wrapper. She didn’t fare any better with the second or third drawers. Then her eyes caught something. She had missed it at first because of the poor lighting, but a key rack was bolted to the far wall next to an old ticking clock. There were three sets of vehicle keys labeled in smudged black marker.
She snatched the three sets of keys and was about to head back to Caspian when the overhead lights of the warehouse powered on, flooding the entire space in white.
Then, in the open doorway of the office, a uniformed security guard had his eyes locked on her. And he had a radio in his hand, which was already halfway to his mouth.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Istanbul Airport
Arnavutköy District, Turkey
Caspian spotted the uniformed security guard as soon as the man entered the warehouse through a side door near the loading dock. While the guard’s footsteps looked unhurried, Caspian was already on the move, intending to intercept the guard before he could surprise Liesel or switch on the lights.
He’d already traveled five long strides when he heard the click of the double door’s electronic lock disengaging. He froze.
Should he cut off the security guard or neutralize whoever was about to enter? His decision, made within half a second, was based on probability. If it was a police officer coming through those doors, odds were high he’d be armed. The guard likely wasn’t. Or at least Caspian hoped he wasn’t. It was better to gamble on the softer target—a threat he knew Liesel could handle—and keep the most dangerous threat in his line of sight.
Caspian turned sharply and hustled back to his earlier position in the shadows along the wall. He flattened his back against the wall just as the double door swung open and two uniformed police officers stepped inside. Caspian’s eyes went straight to their hands.
No weapons.
That alone told him what he needed to know. They hadn’t found the bound officer in the supply closet yet. If they had, or if they thought for a second that they were walking into danger, their sidearms would have already been out. Instead, they moved with no urgency whatsoever.
And then the lights came on.
Caspian cursed under his breath. The damn guard had ruined everything. If the warehouse had remained dark, the officers would have likely passed through without noticing him or Liesel at all. Now, the entire dynamic had shifted. Caspian looked toward the office window just in time to see Liesel kick a radio out of the security guard’s hand. But the startled movement hadn’t just drawn his attention, the two police officers had seen it too.
