The Templar Salvation (2010)

van.

He sprinted down the access road, clambered over one of the barriers, and cut across a parched grassland to reach the main road. He glanced back and saw Reilly rushing after him, and thought about pulling out his gun and taking a shot, then decided against it. Instead, he kept moving, snaking through the stalled cars, hurdling over another barrier, and tearing across another bit of grassland, then over a farther barrier to reach the south parkway that was flowing with cars.

He looked back. Reilly was closing in. He turned and sized up the oncoming cars. He spotted a white sedan with a single occupant coming toward him, and stepped into the middle of the road, his hands held out high and wide, waving them as if calling out for help. He calculated that the priest’s cassock he was wearing would help— which it did, as the car slowed right down and pulled in close to the barrier. A couple of cars behind it slid to a halt, tires and horns shrieking. Zahed ignored them. He just approached the driver with a sheepish, friendly look on his face. The driver, a slight, balding man, started to open his window. It had barely slid down a few inches when Zahed’s hand darted in and wrenched the door open, then he reached in and released the hapless driver’s seat belt, grabbed him, and yanked him out of his car in one ferocious move. He flung him onto the asphalt as if he were unloading a duffel bag, sending him tumbling across the lane divider and causing an oncoming truck to swerve away to avoid flattening him. Zahed didn’t notice. He was already behind the wheel of the human skittle’s Ford Mondeo and streaking away down the open road.

REILLY LEAPT OVER THE LAST BARRIER and reached the commotion on the main road with the tailgate of Zahed’s stolen car barely still in view. Gasping for breath, he saw the stunned bald man talking animatedly with the drivers of a couple of cars that had stopped. They were blocking one of the lanes and causing a ripple effect of irate shouts and horns behind them.

Can’t let him get away. Not again.

He rushed up to the men, pointing at the lead car with manic urgency. “Is this your car?” he asked one of the men. “Is this yours?”

The bald man and one of the others eyed him suspiciously and took a step back, shaking their heads to indicate that it wasn’t, but the third, a strong-boned man with a thick neck and craggy, leathery skin, stood his ground and started spitting out a tirade of angry words in Turkish while waving his hands defiantly.

I don’t have time for this.

Reilly shrugged, reached behind his back, and pulled out his handgun. He held it up, his other arm also raised, the gun and his palm facing the man appeasingly.

“Calm down, will you?” Reilly ordered them. “You want this guy to get away? Is that what you want?”

The bald man looked like he was about to say something, but the hot-headed bruiser wasn’t impressed. He resumed his tirade, clearly berating Reilly and back-slapping the air to show he wasn’t impressed by the artillery.

Screw this, Reilly frowned as he brought the gun down and fired three shots at the ground by the man’s feet. The man leapt back like he’d just stepped on a snake. “Your keys,” Reilly shouted, pointing at the car again and shoving the heated muzzle into Mongo’s face. “Give me your goddamn car keys, you understand me?”

The big guy’s face crinkled with confusion, then he held out his hand with the car keys in it. Reilly snatched them from him and spat out a grudging “Thank you” as he darted over to the car, a station wagon of nondescript provenance. He slid behind the wheel, avoided gagging from the stench of a mound of stale cigarette butts that clogged an ashtray in the dashboard, and tore off in pursuit of his target.

The first mile or so flew by with barely any other cars to overtake as a result of the choke point Reilly had left behind. He spotted a white dot in the far distance, and the sight energized him further, though there wasn’t much more he could wrangle out of the car’s engine. He was blowing past an old, overloaded bus when a ring from the inside of his jacket startled him. While he kept one hand gripped on the wheel, his other dove into his pocket and fished the BlackBerry out.

Nick Aparo’s ebullient voice boomed down his ear canal, as clear as if he were calling from another car beside him and not from Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. “Hey, what’s going on? Your European vacation getting any better yet, Clark?”

Some vague connection to an old Chevy Chase movie flashed across Reilly’s frazzled mind, but he was too focused on reeling in the white tailgate for it to register.

“I can’t talk now,” he said, breathless, his eyes locked dead ahead.

“You’ll want to hear this, Clarkie,” Aparo insisted, still oblivious to what his partner was going through. “It’s about your mystery man. We got a hit.”

Chapter 21

Later,” Reilly fired back. “I need you to call Ertugrul for me, right now. Tell him I’m driving down the waterfront in a station wagon”—he glanced at the steering wheel that, helpfully, had a name and not some obscure logo on it—”a blue Kia, and our target’s in a white sedan just ahead of me and we’re heading”— he glanced out quickly to get a read of the sun’s position and did a quick mental jam to figure out his heading —”south, I think, along the waterfront.”

True to form, Aparo’s tone went from jovial to dead serious as if a hypnotist had just snapped his fingers. “What target? The bomber?”

“Yes,” Reilly blurted. “Just make the damn call, will you?”

Aparo’s tone morphed into manic. “Hang on, I’m dialing him on another line. What’s the asshole driving?”

“I’m not sure, I didn’t get a good look at it. But he won’t be hard to spot, not at the speed he’s going.”

“All right, hang on, it’s ringing.”

Reilly hit the loudspeaker button and chucked the phone onto the car seat next to him as he shot past the stalled traffic in the opposite direction at a dizzying speed. The road snaked left and right slightly while maintaining a broadly straight heading, and Reilly’s pulse spiked as he saw the white sedan swerve far to the left to try to get past a slow-moving and packed dolmu share-taxi that had been trundling down the lane divider. He finally managed it, but the lumbering minivan had delayed him, and the son of a bitch was now within reach. Reilly hit his lights and mashed the horn and swept past the dolmu without delay, gaining precious ground on the white sedan, which he could now distinguish as a Ford.

His fingers tightened against the wheel, feeling their quarry’s neck within their grasp, while up ahead, the first of two bridges across the Golden Horn came into view. Reilly gained more distance on the Mondeo as it slowed slightly to ride a cloverleaf ramp system, and within seconds, he was tailing the bomber across the Ataturk Bridge. It was old, more of a causeway than a bridge really, given that it sat on concrete piers and had two lanes in each direction, with a narrow pedestrian sidewalk on either edge. There was a lot more traffic on it, which slowed the Mondeo down and allowed Reilly to reel him right in and tuck in behind him as the bomber ducked and weaved and bullied his way past the hapless Turkish drivers.

“I’m right behind him now, we’re going across a bridge,” he yelled, leaning sideways, in the direction of the BlackBerry, as he swerved around a slower car. “I can see an old tower on the other side, to the right, looks like something from an old castle.”

“Got it,” Aparo’s voice squawked back, muffled against the seat now. “Ertugrul’s passing it on to some local cop he’s with. You stay on him, buddy.”

It’s happening too fast, Reilly thought. They’re not going to be able to help. I have to do this alone.

“That’s the Galata Tower,” Aparo came back, as breathless as his partner. “They’ve got a handle on where you are. Hang tight.”

Reilly kept his foot jammed and charged ahead, now within yards of the Mondeo’s tailgate—and kept going, ramming the white car, hard, watching it fishtail left and right before it resumed its straight heading.

He floored the pedal again and went in for another hit.