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Nijaz still seemed confused, but Ahmet was starting to show a glimmer of understanding.
“We’re exposed up on this ridge,” Rapp continued. “If I spotted them down there, they sure as hell spotted us up here. What’s your relationship with them? Is it possible they see this as an opportunity to get rid of some of their competition?”
The answer came in the form of a gunshot that echoed off the steep terrain. Both Turks froze, and Rapp was forced to pull them to the ground. Nijaz offered a little confused resistance, but Ahmet went down easily. Too easily.
Rapp dragged him behind a berm as more shots rang out. The muzzle flashes suggested that their opposition consisted of two men about fifty yards to the south. If Rapp hadn’t seen the people they’d left behind, he and his two guides would have walked into an ambush.
Blood bubbled black from Ahmet’s mouth, and his eyes had rolled back in his head. He gripped Rapp’s arm for a moment and then wentcompletely limp. Nijaz had retrieved his pistol and was firing blindly over the low ridge they’d taken refuge behind. Rapp grabbed his wrist and yanked it upward, relieving him of the weapon.
Nijaz shouted something in Turkish that was easy to interpret by the tone and the fact that Ahmet’s name figured in it. Rapp clamped a hand around the smuggler’s throat and slammed him to the earth. “Calm the fuck down! Do you understand me?”
The combination of Rapp’s words and the impact with the rocky ground succeeded in shutting him up.
“Listen to me, Nijaz. What weapons do we—” Another shot rang out, ricocheting off a nearby rock outcropping. Rapp fell silent until the echo died. “What weapons do we have?”
“I don’t—” Nijaz started, but Rapp slapped him across the face. His cover as a soft Canadian lawyer had suddenly turned from asset to liability. What he needed now was respect and obedience. Nothing else.
“What weapons, Nijaz?You have this Sarsilmaz B6. What about spare magazines?”
“Yes,” he stammered. “One.”
“Ahmet?”
“The… The same.”
Rapp moved quicky. If these assholes were committed enough to set up an ambush, they were committed enough to try to go for position. He pulled the pistol from Ahmet’s blood-soaked hip and then searched his pack, coming up with a combat knife and spare mag. When he turned back around, Nijaz was raising up to peer over the top of the berm. Rapp yanked him back just as a shot struck a few inches away and showered them with dust.
“Listen to me, Nijaz. I need you to engage these pricks while I get behind them. Do you understand? Every minute or so, shoot from a random position behind this hill. We need them to think Ahmet’s still alive and I’m just a helpless client.”
“You’re not?”
Rapp ignored the question. “Just do what I say, and we’ll both get out of this alive.”
While the Turk seemed skeptical, he wasn’t prepared to contradict someone who worked for Damian Losa. He reached over one side of the berm and pulled the trigger. Rapp did the same from the other side and then immediately slithered to the west. While he was dressed as a civilian, he’d chosen clothing that blended in with the terrain. Not so important in the celestial light, but critical in the illumination of muzzle flashes.
He made it to some scrub brush about twenty feet from where Nijaz was following instructions with surprising diligence. Rapp remained motionless, watching the return fire and noting that the enemy wasn’t playing their game. It was clear that only one man was shooting now. That meant there was at least one more out there.
But where?
If someone wanted to approach Nijaz’s position, they were almost certain to take the same route Rapp had used to move away. It sloped gently upward, offering high ground, and a combination of bushes and medium-sized boulders provided decent cover.
Action was etched deeply in Rapp’s DNA, but sometimes it was best to take a breath. Combat was often about patience. He switched Ahmet’s knife to his dominant hand and relegated his pistol to the other. Quieter was always better when feasible.
Time passed slowly, as it always did in situations like these, but it allowed him to familiarize himself with the rhythm of the battlefield. Nijaz continued to alternate firing from opposite ends of the berm he was hiding behind, though in a suspiciously predictable way. A shot from the west. Forty-five seconds. A shot from the east. Repeat. Not particularly convincing, but in the heat of the moment, likely good enough.
His opponent was putting forth even less effort—firing from roughly the same position, usually in direct response to Nijaz. Not surprising because the enemy’s position was the stronger of the two. Theberm he was barricaded behind was similar, but higher and shaped like a crescent. Farther back, the terrain fell away into a steep, loose slope that would be impossible to climb quickly or quietly.
Getting to him was going to take some creativity.
A few more minutes passed before Rapp heard the expected crunch of footsteps to his left. He couldn’t risk moving anything but his head, and even then, only with glacial slowness. By the time the man crossed into his line of vision, he was less than ten feet away.
Crouched and holding a pistol in his right hand, he was prioritizing stealth over speed in his attempt to flank Nijaz. It was a reasonable strategy, but one that was going to work against him in this instance. Eventually he’d be attracted to the bush Rapp had taken refuge beneath. Its location and size were impossible to resist.
It was almost time for Nijaz to fire from the east side of the berm and Rapp partially closed his eyes, concerned that the muzzle flash might reflect off them. The approaching man had calculated his opponent’s timing, too, crouching before the landscape was briefly lit. He waited for his comrade to return fire before creeping forward again.
It took only a few seconds for him to reach the bush and dip down behind it, so close that Rapp could hear his breathing and the creak of his boots. Still poorly positioned to get off a reliable shot at Nijaz, he crawled forward, planting a hand only inches from Rapp’s head. Once he’d passed, Rapp abandoned his gun and rose, clamping his empty hand over the man’s mouth and nose, and ramming the knife into the back of his head.
It was a maneuver that Stan Hurley had taught him early in his career at the CIA. The old bastard guaranteed that with careful placement there would be no sound from the victim and no muscle contractions that could cause an inadvertent trigger pull. And while Hurley had been wrong about a lot in life, his advice on the subject of killing was impeccable.
