TURKISH DELIGHT Barry Faulkner (i love reading txt) 📖

the pistol which she took and shot him in the back of the head in one move. I turned my attention to the second soldier, who wasn’t sure what to do and was bringing his rifle round to bear on Gold as my straight hand chop hit the back of his neck with such force it broke with an audible crack and both he and his rifle fell to the floor.

We stood and looked at each other.

‘Time we were out of here,’ I said. We gathered our own guns and I looked carefully outside. At the far side of the compound two security men were hurrying toward us.

‘You drive,’ said Gold as we ran out to the van. ‘Same way out as we came in, there’s no other exit.’

I turned the key and thankfully she started first time. We moved off and I turned towards the main house. The security men were now in front of us and although well-armed they waved us through; thankfully they hadn’t ‘turned’.

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CHAPTER 15

We left the compound and took the road back into the city; odds were the military would think we had fled the other way, away from the city, and concentrate any search that way. The main city of Antakya is a very built-up modern place – the capital of Hatay province – and very busy on its own accord as well as a busy tourist centre in the season. It was busy with the evening social traffic building up as Gold directed me to a multilevel car park near the centre, I took a ticket from the machine and drove to the top deck.

‘Reverse into the parking space,’ Gold said.

I was beginning to see her plan.

‘You’re going to launch the drones from here.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Ajdin know the plan? They might be expecting drones.’

‘No, he didn’t know anything about the drones until we picked them up this morning – and I’ve been with him since then.’

That was good news. The car park was quite busy with people parking up before going out for a meal or social event. We slipped into the back of the van and squeezed between the two drones and their payloads; the two of us sitting in the front on full view might raise somebody’s suspicions, so better off in the back out of sight. The car parks have security patrols and the last thing we wanted was a tap on the window from them. The drones were not military, I’d worked with enough military drones in the past to see that, but they looked substantial; they’d better be to fly with the payload they’d be carrying.

‘How are you getting out of here?’I asked.

‘Going to book into a cheap hotel for a day and then get a flight back to Cyprus.’

‘I’ve got an SBS boat coming in for me on the shore at one o’clock if you want to join me?’

‘No, my Cypriot passport would have been registered when I flew in and if I don’t fly back out at some time my cover would be blown. You never know when I might want to come back.’

I don’t think I’d ever want to come back, but I could see the sense in what she was saying. Looked like I was going to make the journey to meet Jones alone.

We snoozed and relaxed until the car park had been quiet for a while; one patrol had driven slowly by but the lone occupant seemed more interested in singing along with his radio; loudly and out of tune. It was now just past nine and getting quite dark. Looking from the back through the front windscreen I could see the city lit up like all major cities at night, twinkling lights stretching away into the distance.

Gold checked her watch. ‘Right let’s get this done then.’

I pushed open the back doors – not totally open as I’d parked about two feet from the car park side wall; any further and I’d be out into the narrow access road between the parking bays and be noticed.

Gold lifted one of the drones to the back of the van by the doors and hooked on a heavy solid steel tube; this, she hoped, would be enough to smash through the warehouse skylight. I just hoped the drone was powerful enough to lift it. It was, and soon Gold had the four blades whirring and the drone lifting from the van out over the car park wall and away. We looked at the controller screen that showed view from the drone camera, the city beneath it.

‘Does it know where the warehouse is?’ I asked, thinking it might be programmed.

‘No, I have to guide it.’

‘Do you know where the warehouse is from here?’ I asked, knowing full well that Gold doesn’t leave things to chance.

She nodded her head. ‘Look towards two o’clock about a mile and half away.’

I did so.

‘See the red flashing lights?’

I could just about see them through the brown polluted air that hung over the city; they were on top of a tall building that stood out above most of the others around it, I couldn’t make out much detail from this distance except the red flashing lights on its roof.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the warehouse.’

It took a minute or so for the drone to get there and the control screen gave a clear picture of the military compound below that circled round the warehouse. Figures that looked like ants were moving around, and rectangle shapes that I took to be lorries were parked beside it. I watched the screen as Gold moved the drone over the warehouse. The roof was a single slanting one and had three wide skylight windows. She positioned the drone over the middle one about twenty feet above it, which should let gravity accelerate the falling drone and