further. He decided to bide his time and play it submissive, and broke off eye contact and lowered his gaze.
He was surprised to find that the wound to the Iranian’s left hand looked like it had been properly tended to. The dressing was neat and tidy, though there were traces of blood seepage on it. Reilly ran a quick mental assessment of what was going on and who he was dealing with and decided the Iranian’s men were probably PKK —militant Kurdish separatists that Iran had funded and armed over the years. They undoubtedly had doctors on tap who had a wealth of experience in dealing with war injuries. They could also travel unchallenged throughout Turkey—being Turks—to lend a friendly fist to someone like the Iranian bomber when needed.
Which wasn’t great news.
Reilly didn’t know how many men the Iranian had co-opted. He’d seen three of them. There had to be more outside.
Not great at all.
“So what’s going on?” the Iranian asked, spreading his arms out theatrically and looking around the room. “One minute you’re settling into your room for a nice, cozy night, then you’re running around the city’s backstreets like headless chickens. What could have possibly triggered this urgent late night get-together?”
A holler came from deep inside the house. The Iranian turned, acknowledged it with a curt reply, then turned to Tess and smiled. A moment later, one of his men appeared through the doorway. He had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and in his hands were a few of the old books.
The Iranian took them from him and studied them for a moment, then he glanced up at Tess, his mouth arced with glee. “More gospels?” He held her gaze for a moment, then asked the man a question. The man’s reply seemed to really impress the Iranian. “A whole room of them?” he said to Tess. His grin broadened. “It sounds to me like your persistence has paid off handsomely.”
Tess didn’t reply.
The Iranian shrugged, rattled off some instructions to the man who’d brought him the books, threw one last glare at Reilly, then left the room. The man raised his Kalashnikov machine gun and held it firmly. He kept oscillating it slowly back and forth from Reilly to the two women while keeping an unblinking watch over them.
Reilly’s instincts flared. He knew this might well be his last opportunity to do something.
One man guarding them.
A gun in the rucksack.
A chance.
He waited until the man’s gaze swung away from him and made his move, pushing himself forward on his hands and knees toward the rucksack.
The move was clumsy.
The guard saw it. He freaked out and yelled at Reilly while charging to intercept him. Reilly saw the man’s booted legs hurtling toward him and heard Tess shriek as he reached out for the rucksack, but he couldn’t get to it fast enough—the guard cut him off with a massive kick to his left midsection. Reilly’s kidneys lit up as he flew back from the impact and rolled over, grunting with pain. The man kept pace with him, crab-stepping after him in a tense crouch while shouting out a torrent of warnings and curses, his gun barrel swinging from Reilly’s face and across to the two women and back.
Reilly came to a stop right by a side table across from the armchair. He was hunched over, groaning with pain, breathing hard. He peered up and, from the corner of his eye, glimpsed the guard looming over him. The man was all wild-eyed and jittery and standing less than two feet from him. Reilly caught his breath for a beat while his hand slithered silently under the side table. He knew he’d only get one chance to get it right, and the downside of getting it wrong was too horrific to imagine.
His fingers groped the floor tiles and found the fallen kitchen knife, the one he’d dropped when he’d been knocked down, the one he’d spotted when he was sprawled on the floor.
The fingers tightened around its handle.
The Iranian’s voice bellowed out questioningly from deep in the house.
The guard turned his attention to the doorway to answer him.
Reilly pounced.
He flipped over with lightning agility, raising his arm and plunging the knife straight down into the man’s booted foot. The blade cleaved right through leather, skin, and bone with a sickening sound, a combination of ripping and suction, and the man howled with pain, the pain that Reilly knew would distract him for a second, maybe two—either way, long enough for Reilly to launch himself at him.
He sprung up and clasped his left hand around the gun’s wood foregrip while swinging a ferocious right elbow straight into the man’s face. Bone and muscle trumped skin and cartilage easily as the guard’s nose imploded in a geyser of blood and the machine gun spat out a wild triple burst that bit through the old carpet and hammered the floor. Reilly pushed harder to make sure he kept the AK-47’s barrel aimed away from the women while he spun around, driving his other elbow into the man’s chest and putting his back to him, using the momentum to try to wrestle the gun out of his grasp just as another one of the Iranian’s men burst through the front door.
The damaged guard wasn’t letting go. He was hanging on to his gun tenaciously, his fingers clasped around it. Reilly saw the second gunman raise his weapon and did two things in quick succession. He flicked his head back, ramming the back of this skull into the guard’s already battered face, and he wrenched the guard around so he was now facing the man in the doorway, pulling his machine gun up as he did. The AK-47’s barrel lined up with the second man a split second before the gun facing back came up far enough, and Reilly squeezed the guard’s fingers against the trigger. Another triple-tap rang out and the man in the doorway staggered backward, dark red puffs erupting from his chest and shoulder.
Reilly saw Tess and the old woman, crouched low on the sofa, Tess with her arm around the woman. His eyes locked with hers.
“Get out,” he yelled to her as he fought with the guard, who still wasn’t letting go of his weapon. “Get out, that way,” he rasped, motioning with his head toward the glass doors that gave on to the backyard.
Tess didn’t move at first—then loud footfalls and shouts echoed from the hallway that led back from the kitchen.
“Go,” Reilly barked again he struggled against the guard’s vise-like grip. “Move.”
He saw Tess and the old woman get up and make for the French doors just as a third gunman emerged from the hall. The Iranian was right behind him. They both had their weapons raised.
The gunman turned and spotted Tess and the old woman just as they reached the garden doors and started fiddling with the doorknob. Reilly saw him shout something and spin his weapon around to face them. With one savage pull, Reilly yanked the Kalashnikov out of the guard’s grip and flung it at the gunman. The machine gun flew across the room, twirling around itself horizontally like a boomerang and clearing the couch before slamming into the gunman’s chest and deflecting the rounds his weapon was spitting out.
Reilly was now running on hyperdrive. There wasn’t a nanosecond to lose if he was going to buy Tess and the old woman enough time to get away. He was no longer thinking or moving consciously. Instincts hewn out of years of training and field work had taken over and were ordering his muscles to move. He felt himself twirl around as if caught in a sudden invisible vortex, felt his fist tighten up and watched it plow into the cheek of the man he was grappling with, then he was already following the flying machine gun across the room before his opponent hit the ground. He saw his legs take two long strides, vault over the couch, and leap at the gunman by the doorway, tackling both him and the Iranian and sending them crashing back against the door frame.
He heard the Iranian shriek with pain as his wounded hand hit the ground, and managed a couple of solid hits on the downed gunman, hurting him badly before the Iranian’s knee came out of the tangle of limbs and pummeled Reilly in the groin. It punched the air out of him. He staggered backward and his head snapped back against the floor. Through jarred vision, he caught a vague glimpse of Tess and the old woman. They had finally managed to pry open the French doors and were rushing out—
—but the Iranian had recovered his weapon and was now scrambling to his feet.
Reilly needed to buy the women a last reprieve.
He lunged forward and intercepted the Iranian, clasping both hands on to the man’s machine gun and shoving against it to slam him into the wall. The Iranian grunted hard as he plowed into it. Reilly had the advantage of two usable hands and pried the AK-47 out of the Iranian’s grip, twisting the machine gun upward as he did and ramming his opponent’s jaw with the butt of its folded metal stock. A spurt of blood spewed out of the Iranian’s mouth and splattered the wall behind him as his wounded hand came up to block another hit.
