Dak eased the door open, praying silently the hinges were well-oiled. For some reason, that mattered. He didn't know why. Again, he reminded himself that Bo knew he was there, knew he was coming in.
Upon entering the little foyer, Dak's eyes shot toward the far end of the room where a door led onto the balcony. It was closed, but he could see through the open curtains that no one was out there. He expected to see Nicole in the living room, tied to a chair or something with a gag in her mouth and Bo standing behind her, holding a gun to her head. As he moved into the space where the kitchen and dining area merged, he searched the apartment, but found no sign of either his enemy or Nicole.
"You okay?" Will whispered into the radio. Dak didn't respond.
Something was off.
He continued deeper into the apartment, checking the office, bedroom, and bathroom, before returning to the living room. It was empty.
"No one's here," Dak said into the radio. He kept his weapon ready, but relaxed slightly.
"What do you mean, no one's here?"
"Get in here and see for yourself."
Dak noticed something on the coffee table. A piece of paper sat in the center with a hand-written message splayed across it.
He moved closer and picked up the note as Will burst into the room, his weapon drawn and sweeping the apartment.
Upon realizing Dak was right, he lowered his pistol and eased the door shut. "Where are they? I thought they said to come here."
"They did," Dak answered. Then he held up the note.
"Looks like Bo wants to do this the old-fashioned way."
Seventeen
Ulupelit, Turkey
"Are you sure about this?" Will asked.
Dak shook his head. "No, but what choice do I have? He said come alone. He'll know if I don't."
Will looked out across the rolling hills of Ulupelit, pondering what he should do.
Dak also stared at the landscape. It reminded him of the foothills back home in Tennessee, where his cabin awaited him. He wished more than anything he could take Nicole back there with him, but he'd resigned himself to that being nothing but fantasy. Even if he were able to rescue her, she would never return to Tennessee with him. Her life was here, in Turkey, in the sprawling city of Istanbul.
He didn't blame her. The appeal was undeniable with so much to do, so many cultures mingling in one place. He wondered if he could stay there with her, but that would be denying who he really was. None of that mattered at the moment. He still had the issue of taking out Bo to worry about. "Don't put the cart before the horse," his grandpa always said, using the same cliché the old man must have used a hundred times in his life, and that he likely heard twice as often.
Dak still had the note in his back pocket. It had instructed them to come to this obscure, tiny village, to an old farmhouse at what seemed like a random address. According to the GPS, the address was just up the road—the next driveway on the right.
Will had done as much recon work as he could before they arrived. He looked up satellite images of the farmhouse and barn on his phone to get an idea of what they were heading into.
The house looked abandoned, and the barn actually appeared to be in better condition. Will wondered why, out loud, why Dak's ex-teammate wanted to rendezvous there, when there were plenty of other locations in this part of the country.
The village spread out through the hills. Red terracotta roofs interrupted the forests, along with a few church steeples poking up above the canopy.
It wasn't just the location that concerned Will, nor the fact that Dak had been instructed to come alone. The other part worried him more than anything.
"I don't like the idea of you going in unarmed," Will growled. "You're going to walk in and he will shoot you. Game over, man. You can't trust him."
"I know that," Dak said. "I also know that I don't have a choice. The note was clear. If I show up with someone else or with a weapon, Nicky dies."
"You think playing by his rules is going to change that?" Will considered adding "if she's still alive," but that wouldn't help and it would only anger Dak. For the time being, all he had to go on was hope, and Will knew he couldn't strip that from his friend, even if it meant Dak was walking head first into a firing squad.
"The note said he wants to face me," Dak explained. "Bo may be a lot of things, but he's a warrior. I think he wants to settle this like men."
Will shook his head. "So, what? You're going to duke it out, beat the crap out of each other until one is dead?"
"I don't know what his plan is," Dak admitted. "But I know he has one."
He looked off to the right at a clear, still lake. The water snaked its way through the densely forested hills until it disappeared around a mountain in the distance.
"My parents think I'm a traitor. They think I betrayed my brothers in Iraq. I never got the chance to tell them the truth." He left the words hanging.
"I'll find them and tell them. I mean, if you don't make it out of this alive." Will tried to sound optimistic, but his tone betrayed what he really felt.
"It's okay," Dak said. "Even if Bo is telling the truth, and wants to face me man-to-man, I still only have like a one in three chance of beating him."
"You trying to make me feel better?"
Dak shrugged. "You got to go sometime, right? Everyone dies sooner or later. Better to go down swinging."
Will nodded and sighed. "Yeah. That's what we tell
