Assignment- 13th Princess Page 18

  He had the Beretta—and his hand slid to the comforting reassurance of its grip—but it was outclassed by the automatic rifles he had seen in the soldiers’ hands.

  Brains, gall, and luck were the only weapons that would count for him now.

  There came a sudden crash.

  He checked his limping stride, peered from among the grape vines. There were muffled shouts. Nothing else happened for a moment, then the dark figures of men appeared among the trees around the building, and Durell threw himself flat against clods and weeds. The impact jolted a grunt out of him, and he cursed, wondered how much longer he could last on that leg.

  He waited.

  Crisp shouts cut the twilight; the tread of boots came down near the vineyard. Scraps of Turkish came to him: someone had broken out of the house.

  The search moved away, and he rose shakily, took a deep breath, looked right and left.

  Momentarily he was exposed, a hobbling figure crossing a space of lawn behind the house. But his luck held. Then he was beside the wall, bent awkwardly below the windows as he moved past. Birds settling for the night in lemon trees made a high-pitched racket. The green fragrance of a vegetable garden came from somewhere.

  He was in the grip of a pulse-pounding urgency.

  Someone had escaped, and Prince Tahir would be in a towering rage. If he still held Sheik Zeid, the little emir’s life span might be measured in minutes.

  Then a hand touched Durell’s shoulder, and the hair went stiff at the nape of his neck. He spun, nearly going down on the weak leg as he reached for his Beretta.

  “Easy!” came a stiff whisper.

  And out of the shivering leaves of a dusty shrub rose the drawn face of Patrick McNamara.

  “He was going to kill me—Sheik Zeid, too.” Blood dried around a gash on McNamara’s cheek, where he had gone through a window.

  “Zeid’s still in there?”

  “I’m afraid so.” McNamara looked scared. “You have transportation?”

  “We can’t leave him.”

  “You think I want to? But there isn’t a prayer of springing him.”

  Durell did not care for McNamara’s attitude. But he guessed he could trust him after all, if Prince Tahir’s men were after him. “There’s a chance,” he said. “I’ve got the princess.”

  McNamara’s face changed in the dim light, and some of the fear went out of it. A bit of color returned. “Where is she?” he asked.

  “What about last night, in the cistern?”

  “Self-defense, Cajun. They would have killed me if I had run out of there like you told me to.”

  “How did you get out, then?”

  “I found your way out. I knew you weren’t harmed—I hadn’t kicked you hard enough. Is all forgiven?”

  “I can use you,” Durell said for a reply. “Do you have a weapon?”

  McNamara showed his chopped .45. “My baby. I got it back from the dope who was guarding me.”

  Durell twisted, pointed out the dark bulge of a hill that rose from the right rear quadrant of the estate. “Princess Ayla is in the top tunnel. There’s a staircase cut in a low rock face, beginning about halfway up.”

  “She’s alone?”

  Durell nodded. “She’ll be glad to see you.”

  “What about that Israeli babe? I thought you were inseparable.”

  “She’s somewhere around here. Look out for her. Tell Princess Ayla we will pick her up in a helicopter shortly.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “Just have her waiting on top.”

  “Yo. I’ll snatch a flashlight from one of the choppers on my way.”

  “Take care.”

  The big man pushed out of the snagging shrubbery, bent double, and darted into the gathering darkness. Durell quickly surveyed the area, saw that the soldiers had returned from their search for McNamara and were resting by the road that ran in front of the house. Apparently McNamara didn’t count for that much and could be left to the wilderness for the moment.

  He hobbled painfully along the side of the house, hoping to make the front door without being seen. Then, as he passed a window, a muffled snarl of angry voices caught his ear. He looked inside, saw Prince Tahir. One of his men stretched a shining red cord between his fists and strode across the room to where two others held Sheik Zeid.

  They were preparing to strangle him.

  Chapter 22

  Durell lurched for the door, a scant two yards away, drove through, and found the lethal cord already looped around the sheik’s neck.

  Everything stopped.

  The room was full of stares.

  The staccato chitter of birds came from the lemon trees. Then something else—the clatter of soldiers’ boots. Durell’s slamming entry had aroused them, but he’d had no choice in the matter. He kept his hand away from his gun as they tumbled in behind him. He held the eyes of Prince Tahir’s livid face momentarily, its twisted lips skinned back warningly from long teeth. He felt rifle muzzles against his back as he regarded Sheik Zeid. The emir’s sensitive brown eyes showed no fear, only an offended sense of dignity.

  Prince Tahir recovered his composure and said: “If you came to save His Highness, I’m afraid you are a bit late.”

  “I’d say I was right on time.”

  “But you seem to have forgotten your weapon.”

  “I don’t need a gun.”

  “Oh?” The prince’s mouth twisted into a condescending smile. “You have no authority, no arresting power. You are too clever to suppose that I would surrender if you did. What—?”

  “All I want is the release of His Highness.” Durell’s tone was blunt. “The Turkish authorities can take care of you.” He noted the sullen blue lump his blow that morning had raised on the prince’s chin.

  “It will be too late for them to stop me by the time they find out.”

  It was the kind of answer Durell had hoped for, since he hadn’t been sure whether the government was in on Tahir’s conspiracy. “Your plans won’t work,” he said. “Not without the document of regency.”

  “I have that.”

  Durell swung baffled eyes at Sheik Zeid. The emir nodded sad affirmation, and said: “But I don’t know how. . . .”

  Prince Tahir’s high voice sneered. “This is no gamble, you see. I win—you are dead. Both of you will be eliminated. The silken cord used by my ancestors is reserved for persons of high birth, however. You, Mr. Durell, will be shot.”

  “What about Princess Ayla? You won’t get anywhere without her, will you?”

  “She must be in the vicinity.”

  “I have her.”

  “Do you? We will find her after we have disposed of you.”

  “Think again. I left her in the custody of Dara Allon— remember the Israeli intelligence agent?”

  Red spots of fury flickered in Prince Tahir’s eyes. “You are lying!” he shouted.

  Durell kept his face bland. “Miss Allon will kill her, if I don’t return in”—he made a show of reading his wrist-watch—“ten minutes.” It was a bluff, but its credibility was written all over Tahir’s lean face. “Do you doubt that Miss Allon would do it?” he goaded.

  Prince Tahir looked around at his men, seeming briefly at a loss. But their blank faces showed no reassurance, and Durell suspected they didn’t even understand English. Then his murderous gaze came back to Durell, faltered, steadied with decision. “No. I won’t believe it. You are desperate, trying to deceive me. . . ."

  He stopped in midsentence.

  Durell was holding out Princess Ayla’s bracelet.

  “Ah. Ah, well.” Prince Tahir looked stunned.

  “Time’s running,” Durell said.

  “Very well. You may take Sheik Zeid, but you will never get away from here alive.” His voice took on a burring edge. “Once you pick up Princess Ayla, you must cross several kilometers of open country. You will be exposed and vulnerable. I can wait a bit longer.” He gave a Turkish command, and the silken cord was taken fr
om the emir’s neck.

  “You’re checked out on helicopters, aren’t you?” Durell asked Sheik Zeid when they were outside.

  “I have flown almost everything.”

  “Good.” Durell led the way to one of the aircraft “Prince Tahir won’t be expecting this. We’ll have to make it quick, or he might have a change of heart. Get in and start it up.”

  Sheik Zeid looked dubious. “I won’t leave without Princess Ayla,” he said.

  “We’ll pick her up on top of that hill over there.” Durell pointed through the gloom. Night had filled the land now and left only the pale golden snows of Erciyes Dagi suspended above the darkness. The first stars seemed an arm’s reach away in the dry, clear air. Durell’s burning thigh made his leg a stiff, alien weight to be dragged into the helicopter with him. His jaw muscles trembled, holding back the pain. A raw urgency rubbed his vitals as Sheik Zeid went methodically through a preflight checklist.

  “Forget that,” Durell spat. “Get this thing in the air.”

  “Yes. You are right,” the tense man replied.

  Just as the first muted whine of the turbine sang from the machine, there came across the empty darkness a flat, slapping echo.

  Both faces snapped toward the hill where Princess Ayla was to have waited.

  “Someone is shooting up there,” Durell said.

  “My God!” Sheik Zeid blurted.

  As if released by a spring, men tumbled out of the house. There was another shot, and some darted in the direction of the firing. Others, visible in the low light flung from windows, dropped to a knee and swung their weapons toward the revving helicopter. Just as it leaped into the air, Durell glimpsed the orange wink of muzzle blasts and tried to make himself smaller. The thump of slugs came to him through the ship’s shuddering frame. A burst stippled the windscreen and scattered flakes of plexiglass. Then the hill came up fast and black, and the blood pounded at his temples like the clapper of an alarm gong.

  No one waited on top.

  He could not guess what had happened in the cave, but there was no time to wonder.

  He’d have to go in and find out.

  “Don’t land,” he shouted over the scream of the turbine. “Hover low, so I can jump. Then beat it.” He found a flashlight between the seats, looked back, saw lights of Tahir’s men as they scrambled through the vineyard toward the hill.

  “I said I would not leave without Princess Ayla.” Sheik Zeid glared stubbornly through the radiance of cockpit lighting, hands and feet delicately working the helicopter’s controls.

  “You must save yourself for your country, Your Highness. It comes first.”

  Durell tumbled out, hit the ground, sucked in a breath as sharp pains stabbed from his thigh into his groin. The angry light of electric torches danced up the slope toward him. Sheik Zeid’s indecision was evident in the momentary hesitation of the aircraft. The men below paused to fire, and slugs thumped and drummed and whined. Durell scrambled on all fours for the immediate safety of the tunnel entrance.

  Somehow spared, the helicopter lifted and dashed toward the eastern horizon, a dying shrill and fading wink of navigation lights beyond harm’s reach.

  The night was icy against a film of sweat that shone on Durell’s fevered cheeks. He held the Beretta out, slipped inside the tunnel, flattened himself against the rough stone wall. A moment passed as he waited with suppressed breath. There was a scent of guano, a cold aura of violence.

  When nothing happened, he thumbed the light.

  Dara lay on her back, her smudged linen skirt askew around her long thighs.

  Her temple was streaked with blood.

  He shook her. “Dara?” He swung the light into the chapel area, saw no one.

  A moan escaped her delicate lips as he probed the wound. A bullet had creased her scalp. He thought she would be all right. She must have come in here and stumbled on McNamara—or perhaps followed him and got the worst of it. But why wasn’t McNamara still here, waiting for him?

  Durell could not wait for Dara to revive, and he could not leave her to Prince Tahir’s mercy. He must try to carry her. Balancing on his good leg, he hoisted her onto his shoulder and limped toward the rear of the tunnel, beyond the chapel. She was not a small woman, and the strain was tremendous in his weakened condition.

  An opening behind the chapel’s altar took him into a refectory with table and benches carved from the stone, then into a soot-encrusted kitchen with baking ovens, fireplaces, and storage pits for wines and fats that must have been last used centuries ago. He stepped carefully around a shallow pit where monks had trampled grapes and a vat into which the juice had flowed.

  He kept going, his breath sounding in hard bursts against the eerie silence. The tunnel descended abruptly, and he almost lost his footing. Dara stirred on his shoulder, moaned. He stopped, sat her against a wall.

  “It’s me,” he said. He held her cheeks between thumb and forefinger. Her lips were slack and a sprinkling of small freckles stood out on her wan cheeks.

  He slapped her, not too hard.

  Her eyes opened; a light of recognition came into her irises when she saw Durell. “Oh, what a headache,” she breathed.

  “I should have known better than to trust you.”

  “You didn’t. Not really. You just used me. I wasn’t supposed to get here first, was I?”

  “Can you walk?”

  She rose, steadied herself against the wall. “I’m a bit wobbly. Where’s McNamara?”

  “Ahead, somewhere. We’re under the hill, trying to catch up. What happened?”

  Dara shook her head to clear her mind, and her short, golden hair shimmered in the light of his electric torch. “I saw you come out of here and head for the house,” she said. “I thought you might have Princess Ayla hidden here—”

  “So you came to kill her,” Durell supplied.

  “I didn’t want to.” She hung her head. “It was the only way to put an end to the threat, once and for all.” She looked about, dejection showing on her face. “Apparently McNamara arrived at the same moment I did. The princess ran—down in here, somewhere. He must have followed her.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  She leaned against him. Her heartbeat came through his shirtfront, strong and frightened. “Oh, Sam—I’m so glad you’re here. I’ll follow orders, I promise.”

  The sounds of Tahir’s men came from the cave’s upper reaches. Durell handed her pistol to her. “Come on,” he said.

  They followed the tunnel past a turning and came upon a big stone disc that stood on edge in a slot in the wall. Durell ran his hands over its rim, testing for a grip.

  “What is that?” Dara asked.

  “A door of sorts. Let’s see if we can roll it across the tunnel behind us.” He heaved with Dara’s help, but he could not get much thrust from his bad leg, and the thick wheel refused to budge.

  He heard footsteps, voices. “Forget it,” he said.

  They turned into an endless series of descending burrows. He kept his Beretta in a loose, ready grasp. The tunnel leveled, widened, became a series of living quarters, kitchens, storage bins. Tight crawlways spanned out everywhere, linking one complex to the next. The place smelled of damp and dust, nothing human.

  He had heard of such underground cities, begun as early as the Second and Third Centuries, when early Christians fled to the barren Melendiz hills to avoid persecution by pagan Romans. They had been enlarged through the ages and eventually held thousands of villagers in safety when invaders razed the countryside. In places they were seven layers deep and extended for miles.

  Whether by design or intuition, Princess Ayla had chosen well when she came to hide at the house of Dr. Kose. If danger threatened, she could flee to these caves just as the villagers of old had done.

  He wondered if they would ever find her.

  As he moved further into the mute complex, he was awed and somewhat apprehensive. It would be easy to become hopelessly lost down here, or fal
l into one of the wind shafts that kept the air so remarkably fresh.

  He considered the lead that McNamara had and decided the man could not be far ahead. But then Tahir was not far behind.

  At that moment the strained tones of a woman’s voice echoed from an opening on the right.

  Princess Ayla.

  McNamara’s reply came back, a harsh rebuttal, to judge by the inflection. Durell could not make it out. Quickly, he slid into the tunnel from which the sounds had come. His eyes found the wavering glow of a flashlight’s reflection on pale stone. He stopped Dara with an outthrust hand.

  McNamara’s voice came again. “You blew everything. And you could have had it all, if you’d had the guts to take it.”

  Princess Ayla’s voice quavered: “I couldn’t go through with it. I—I couldn’t.”

  Durell felt Dara’s fingernails sink into his bicep, heard her angry whisper. “So. She was in on the plot. And you shielded her!”

  “Just listen for a minute,” he hissed. He crept closer.

  McNamara was speaking now. “You ran out on us. Now your father has double-crossed me, and the only thing for me to do is go back with Sheik Zeid as if nothing had happened.” He paused and added: “But I can’t leave you alive to tell him how I was on Tahir’s side. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “If you kill me, Sheik Zeid will know anyway,” Princess Ayla retorted.

  “You’re wrong. The Israeli dame will take that rap— she’s dead, so she can’t very well deny it.”

  A sob. “Please. . . .”

  “We could have had a really good thing.”

  “Don’t. . . .”

  Durell slipped into the room and faced McNamara. “Hold it.”

  McNamara froze and, by the light of his torch, took in Durell and the Beretta leveled at him. The glow of the flashlights clashed, filled the room with cold, white radiance, etched shadows in the grainy walls. McNamara was only a vague form as Durell stared above his beam. To one side, Princess Ayla was stiff and gleaming, fingers over her lips. Durell had the advantage. McNamara’s body was turned toward her.