TURKISH DELIGHT by Barry Faulkner (learn to read activity book .txt) 📕

‘Sleep well. There’ll be a man just outside, so don’t wander – just sleep. I have a couple of things to do and then I’ll be back later.’

She shut the door and to be honest I don’t even remember lying on the bed, but the next thing I knew Gold was shaking me awake.

‘Come on, sleeping beauty – time to get planning.’

She had laid out a map of the town on the table. Ajdin had my welfare at heart and had thoughtfully made me a coffee to kick up the adrenalin. I pulled a chair up to the table and sat down.

Gold pointed to an area on the outskirts of the city. ‘Military industrial and warehouse area, the place armaments are stored when in transit, so had that lot of missiles on the ship made it this is where they would be.’

‘They didn’t make it, but by your interest in the place I assume other stuff has?’

‘Tons of it, and all neatly stacked in one warehouse ready to be moved on to whichever terrorist group needs it. It’s a major distribution hub for illegal ordnance, but the trick is that the warehouse is the store for legal ordnance too so it all looks kosher from outside with genuine Turkish military arms orders being delivered and housed there too, all with the correct paperwork.’

 ‘Clever, hiding in plain sight.’

‘Very clever.’

I was getting the picture of where this conversation was going. ‘I just need to take out Eve Rambart. Woodward said to stop the missiles getting to their destination and I’ve done that, the warehouse isn’t my concern. I’ll text Woodward, give him the co-ordinates and he can call in a missile strike on it.’

‘Too late, can’t be done – Erdoğan bought the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile defence system from Putin in 2018 and secured Turkey’s airspace. The missiles and ordnance in that warehouse will be going forward to various terrorist groups and have to be stopped. Any hit has to be done over ground.’

‘Which means us,’ I said, with a degree of resignation.

‘No, not us – you.’

How did I know that was coming?

She continued, ‘If I get caught they know my history, and being ex-Mossad I’d be hung in an hour.’

‘And me?’

‘They’d negotiate, a prisoner swap or something.’ She dismissed the conversation with a wave of her hand. ‘Anyway, we won’t get caught because we don’t have to go in ourselves; we can’t call an air strike but we can get a drone in there – two drones, in fact.’

‘Two? Why two?’ So this was the plan.

‘The warehouse we need to hit has large glass roof skylights; frosted glass so satellites can’t see inside, but just plain glass – no reinforcing steel fibres, just plain glass. It’s an old building, built in the fifties so security wasn’t paramount then. The first drone we send over it is loaded with weights and smashes through the skylight; the second one drops in with an explosive incendiary bomb attached. Our information is that there’s enough explosive in that warehouse to blow the place sky high.’

‘Sounds good, you got the gear in place?’ If it was she had certainly worked hard in the two days she’d been in Turkey.

‘All in the back of the van, two drones and a box of explosive. We hit the warehouse tonight.’

‘Tonight? What about Rambart? I’ve unfinished business there.’

‘You can catch up with her later – what’s important is that those missiles in the warehouse don’t move anywhere else. If they go underground to some terrorist organisation we’ve lost them.’ She gave me a hard look. ‘Lost them until they rain down on some civilian town or hospital somewhere.’

I didn’t argue – she was right, I could kill Rambart at some other time. She picked up a rucksack she’d brought in with her and emptied out the onesies.

We put them on. Showtime!

Showtime was interrupted by the door flying open and two Turkish soldiers with rifles raised rushing in. Taken by surprise, there was nothing we could do except raise our hands as their officer followed them in holding a pistol. He spoke in broken English.

‘What have we here then – English spies? Do you think we don’t know you are here, eh? You think we Turkish are stupid, eh? You think people don’t talk, walls have ears as you English say? People here know what side their bread is buttered, eh Ajdin?’ He smiled at Ajdin who lowered his arms.

Gold said the words slowly with a lot of venom in her voice. ‘You bastard, Ajdin. You fucking bastard.’

The officer laughed, ‘A bastard to you, but a patriot to me. But he also gives me a problem – I am thinking that if a man changes sides once, maybe he will do it again, eh?’ He raised his pistol and shot Ajdin in the forehead.

One of the first lessons you are taught in the security services is that when placed in a situation where the odds are stacked heavily against you, act at the first opportunity. The first opportunity is the first time people’s attention is taken off you. The officer’s action certainly took the soldiers’ attention off us as Ajdin slumped to the floor; they were as surprised as we were, but we had the training and seized the opportunity.

I ducked and launched myself into the first soldier bringing up my right arm forcing his rifle to shoot into the ceiling as I punched with all my force into his stomach with my left fist. Gold had taken out the officer by pushing his elbow against the joint so he couldn’t aim his pistol and kicking his legs from under him with a sweep of her right leg, sending him to the floor and releasing his grip on