Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4) Read online

  Boiling Point

  An Ethan Galaal Thriller

  Isaac Hooke

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Get the Next Book

  Isaac Hooke’s Website

  Prologue

  Istanbul, Turkey

  March 2nd 2020

  Local Time - 17:06

  Ethan’s expensive Santoni shoes rapped a crisp, precise drumroll across the flagstones as he entered the third courtyard of the medieval Topkapi Palace. He strode past the dormitories that had once housed the royal pages––Christian boys taken as a form of tax by the emperor––and made a beeline for the Library of Sultan Ahmed III.

  “Death Adder, do you copy?” Ethan said.

  “This is Death Adder, I have you loud and clear, Copperhead,” William Hest’s voice came back through the tiny Bluetooth earbud in Ethan’s left ear. The earbud was so small it actually sat in his ear canal—essentially invisible, unless you knew to look for the super fine, transparent thread that was used to remove it. The clarity and quality of the audio was such that William might just have been striding along right next to Ethan instead of sitting in the back of a blacked-out SUV outside.

  “I’m heading for the library now,” Ethan said quietly. “I’ll update when I have eyes on intel.”

  Ethan wore no visible communication device but under his shirt he had a microphone affixed to his chest. It used bone conductive technology, picking up the slight resonance from his chest whenever he spoke.

  “Copy that, Copperhead,” came the reply in Hest’s heavy Texan drawl. “Enjoy the party.”

  The Diamond Garden Party was an elaborate and ostentatious affair being thrown to celebrate the return of the so-called Spoonmaker’s––or Kasikci––Diamond to its place in the Pavilion of the Conqueror, after an audacious attempted robbery. Istanbul’s elite, as well as celebrities, politicians and wealthy notables from all over had been invited to attend this special garden party.

  Ethan and his small team, however, were not invited. But that didn’t stop him from coming.

  The Library of Sultan Ahmed III was situated in the very center of the third courtyard. Ethan stepped smartly around the ornate, knee-high hedges and made his way along the edge of one of the eleven manicured lawns towards the library. It was a lavishly decorated building like most of the other buildings in the third and fourth courtyards––these being, historically, the private residences of the emperors. Ethan took in the painted tiles, stained-glass windows and the shutters with their mother-of-pearl and ivory inlay.

  What Ethan took note of with the most interest, though, was the armed guard standing by one of the side doors to the library. The man had no weapon visible, but Ethan’s expert glance––coupled with some awful suit tailoring––enabled him to identify that the man was wearing a shoulder-holster concealing some sort of sidearm.

  The guard had not even clocked him yet, despite the racket Ethan’s ridiculously expensive shoes were making on the flagstones.

  Probably not Bordo Bereliler, then, Ethan thought. Just a rent-a-cop drafted in for the night of the big party.

  That would also explain the poor-fitting suit.

  The Bordo Bereliler––the Maroon Berets in English––were the Turk Special Forces. Ethan was a lot happier at the idea of dealing with an off-duty police officer who was just trying to make a few extra bucks than one of Turkey’s best crack troopers.

  Deciding on a course of action, Ethan approached the guard openly. He fixed what he hoped to be an apologetic, embarrassed grin on his face as he drew near.

  “Affedersiniz efendim, ama partiye geri dönmelisiniz. Burada olamazsın,” the man said, holding up a hand and trying to give the obviously wealthy Westerner something between a stern look and a diffident grin.

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan said, “do you speak English? I’m looking for the washrooms. Banyo?”

  The man waved at him again, both hands out from his body and away from the concealed gun he was carrying. “No toilet. Toilet there.” The guard pointed back the way Ethan had come.

  Ethan grabbed the unsuspecting man’s forefinger, yanked him forward and kicked him so hard in the shin that his legs went from under him and he fell to his knees. Still holding the hapless guard’s digit in a vice-like grip, Ethan stepped in and delivered a crushing knee to the man’s sternum. The man wheezed like a split bellows and his eyes bulged. Before he could react, Ethan’s other knee arrived and slammed into his jaw. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

  Ethan released the man’s hand, knelt and quickly deprived him of his weapon. It was a Sarsilmaz SAR9, the newest standard service pistol for the Turkish police force. He worked the slide to eject the chambered 9x19mm Parabellum round, took out the magazine and then removed the slide from the weapon. He tossed the three pieces into three separate ornamental hedges.

  The man began to stir; Ethan dragged him into the cover of the surrounding bushes and duct-taped his mouth and wrists. By the time Ethan secured his hands to his ankles, wrapping them around the crown of a particularly big shrub, the man was already struggling weakly.

  Ethan gave him a controlled knifehand strike to the neck, hitting the carotid sinus at just the right angle and pressure to fool the man’s brain into believing his blood pressure had skyrocketed. The guard blacked out again as his medulla oblongata attempted to compensate.

  Ethan left the cover of the bushes and slipped in through the door of the building.

  A minute later he was on the second floor, scrolling through a laptop that had been left brazenly on a desk.

  “Death Adder?” he said.

  “Copy.”

  “Inserting Clipper Chip,” Ethan said.

  He slipped a USB stick into the laptop’s USB port. Instantly a loading bar appeared as the software on the USB sniffed through the laptop’s hard-drive looking for key words that William had programmed it to search for.

  “You’re seeing this?” Ethan asked.

  “Affirmative,” came that drawling Texan reply.

  Ethan’s eyes scanned a few of the documents that popped onto the screen. “Looks like this organization is averaging four-million euros a year in migrant fees… Three and a half to five grand a migrant––a shitload of boats.”

  “And a shitload of trafficked people,” came the sultry, Israeli accent of Bretta Storm.

  Ethan concentrated on the documents. “Looks like these people have ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and Syrian Kurdish fighter groups.”

  “Tut tut,” Bretta said over the comm, “elected officials in bed with the very outlaws they’re telling their people they stand against. And all for a purse of silver. Who would’ve thought, huh?”

&nb
sp; Ethan had to agree with her. It was the same the world over. Everyone was an idealist, until their price was met.

  The laptop screen flickered and reverted back to its home screen.

  “Got all that, Death Adder?” Ethan said, tucking the little USB into the breast pocket of his tuxedo.

  “Copy that, Copperhead, time for you to ditch the party.”

  Ethan made his way back down the stairs, through the magnificence of the main library and back out through the side door. He glanced into the bushes, and confirmed that the guard was still secured there. The man peered back with defiant, angry eyes.

  As Ethan stepped back out into the failing early evening Istanbul light, he heard the sound of a large group of people applauding.

  “Speeches are breaking up,” William’s voice said matter-of-factly through Ethan’s earpiece. Ethan knew that William would have eyes-on the tulip-filled fourth courtyard, using one of the Insitu RQ-21 Blackjack drones that Sam had commandeered for this assignment.

  The blue of the perfect autumn sky was beginning to be suffused with that pale pink light that seemed to be so unique to this part of the world.

  Ethan buttoned the jacket of his tux and started to walk briskly past the Audience Hall, passing into the shadowy canopy of Bab-üs Saadet, the Gate of Felicity, and out into the second courtyard, also known as Divan Square.

  Ethan walked quickly––suspiciously quickly, he knew, and in the opposite direction to where all the other Diamond Party guests were. With any luck though, he would be out of the Imperial Gate and lost in Istanbul’s network of side streets before anybody realized a certain guard wasn’t at his post...

  “Affedersiniz, efendim!” came a shout from behind Ethan.

  Ethan ignored the voice, and continued striding along towards the exit. On his right rose the Tower of Justice, from where the sultans could sit and gaze out over the entire palace complex. He pulled out his phone and pressed it to his ear, pretending to talk into it; trying to embody the air of a wealthy businessman having to take an urgent call.

  “Sir!” came the cry again, in heavily accented English this time.

  “Death Adder, Maelstrom, I’m heading to the exfil point,” Ethan said. “Chances are things are about to get a little… kinetic.”

  Ahead, two more suited guards had just stepped out from the cool blue shadows that pooled under the Gate of Salutations. These men, in addition to their suits, wore disposable medical masks over their noses and mouths. He’d seen the masks more and more often of late, especially at the airport, a precaution against the blossoming COVID-19 virus that was sweeping through this region of the world.

  “Been a while since we’ve had to utilize a good old E and E,” Bretta said, referring to escape and evasion. Ethan could hear the crooked smile in her voice, and imagined the quirk of her lips, the sarcastic, bright blue eyes, the raven hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. “You sure you’re fit enough, Copperhead?”

  Ethan smiled. “What’s the exfil point, three klicks? A twenty says I won’t even be puffing.”

  “Deal,” Bretta said.

  “Bets are off if you don’t do your part playing overwatch though, Maelstrom.”

  “You just worry about getting your ass to the exfil.”

  Ethan approached the two guards, a preoccupied smile on his face, his cell phone still held to his ear. He’d have to move fast. There was still at least one other man behind him.

  “Sir––” the man on the left began.

  Ethan struck him hard in the throat with the edge of his cell phone. The man collapsed like a ragdoll. At the same time, Ethan kicked the remaining guard in the side of the knee, so that the leg buckled. He gave a squawk and Ethan elbowed him hard in the temple.

  Then Ethan was off and running in a full sprint towards the Byzantine church, the Hagia Eirene. There was the sound of a muffled report and a snap. Ethan had been shot at enough times to know that someone had just had a go at him with a nine-mil.

  He cut right, across a lawn, and flashed past the Imperial Mint on his left, heading for a side street that he knew would take him down into the city. Behind him, he could hear shouting and the very definite sound of pursuit. Another couple of cracks sounded and the brickwork ahead of him fragmented, mortar dust billowing as the rounds struck stone.

  Ethan followed a narrow curving alleyway until he emerged into Gülhane Park. The sound of echoing, slapping footfalls and the furious chatter of Turkish voices followed him. He pelted through the park before turning south onto Tayahatun Street, then turned right onto Yerebatan Avenue.

  “Could do with some directions, Death Adder,” Ethan hissed, as he flashed past a vendor selling corn on the cob.

  “Take the next left fork down Bezciler Street, past the Iranian consulate,” William replied.

  Ethan had a brief mental vision of the former Task Force 78 team member, William Hest, bent over his laptop in the back of the rented SUV, watching Ethan’s GPS tracker move along the Istanbul streets. He almost envied him.

  The snapping whirr of another supersonic round passing close by made Ethan pick up the pace. He leapt over a bench, dodged past a couple of dogs fighting one another and sprinted on, his breath coming hard and fast.

  “All right, next left,” William told him, “then run till you hit the Bazaar.”

  “The Grand Bazaar?”

  “Affirmative, Copperhead.”

  “Negative, Death Adder. Do you know how easy it’ll be to spot someone in a three-thousand-euro tuxedo in there at this time of day? The vendors will be packing up. I’ll be a goddamn mugger’s wet-dream!”

  “You got a better idea?” William asked with a dryness only achievable by a Texan.

  Ethan puffed out his cheeks. “No,” he said, and plunged left into the heaving throng of Istanbul’s most famous market.

  The official closing time for the Grand Bazaar was six o’clock but, what with the 250,000 to 400,000 daily visitors and the money they were so enthusiastic on parting with, many of the four-thousand shops were only too happy to stay open a little later.

  Ethan wended his way as carefully and quickly as he could through the masses. Here too was evidence of the growing paranoia and fear surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak; plenty of people wearing masks and diligently applying hand-sanitizer every few yards. Ethan tried his hardest not to barge into any Turks––the last thing he needed was to get hauled into a fight by some irate local––but tourists, being a meek lot on the whole, were another matter.

  Ethan bulled his way through the center of a large group of South Koreans, sending one man crashing through a coffee table nearby.

  He didn’t stop to apologize. The sound of Turkish cursing and barked commands coming from behind him told him that his pursuers weren’t far behind. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed this: three men, each one with the steely-eyed, determined look of the professional soldier about them. One man had his hand tucked haphazardly into the inside of his jacket, obviously concealing a pistol.

  So the Turkish Special Forces have made an appearance after all.

  A cry from up ahead caught Ethan’s attention. A scared-looking security guard was yelling at Ethan. He looked no older than nineteen. One hand was out in the universally accepted signal to stop, the other rested on the butt of a Girsan Yavuz 16––the Turkish variant of the Beretta 92–– sat in a holster on his hip.

  Ethan, utilizing about as much technique as a man hitting someone over the head with a brick, shoulder-charged into the slight young man, without so much as breaking stride. The security guard flew backwards, smashing through the window of a rug merchant’s shop. Shattering glass cascaded down like a sheet of diamonds. A few people screamed, but by that time Ethan had already located an exit and dashed through it, back out into the street.

  “How far am I from Ordu Avenue?” Ethan gasped, sprinting past the Beyazit Mosque, sending a flock of the ubiquitous Istanbul pigeons flying from his path.

  “Take a right at the end
of Çadircilar Avenue––the street you’re on––and you’re on it. If you’re on foot, you’re ten minutes away from the exfil point.”

  “You sound a little out of breath there, Copperhead,” Bretta’s voice taunted through the earpiece.

  “Bet’s still on, I might lose ‘em.”

  “Still got time for things to go tango uniform,” Bretta replied.

  Ethan ignored her. Tango uniform referred to things going tits-up––the position dead bodies tended to face. “I’m coming down Ordu now. You got a visual on me?”

  “Negative,” Bretta said, “As soon as you make it past the Beyazit University stop I can cover the last half klick along Ordu until you get to Gençtürk Avenue where Death Adder will be waiting.”

  “Copy that,” Ethan said.

  As he continued up the street, making his way through the bustling foot traffic, Ethan saw an opportunity to shake his hunters. A courier had left his motorcycle, a Yamaha XT660R, idling by the curb, while he dashed into a nearby shop with a package.

  Ethan swerved to the left, threw his leg over the bike and screwed the throttle. The Yamaha mounted the curb before Ethan was fully in control and fishtailed up the sidewalk until he managed to point it onto the road.

  Leaving shouts of furious outrage and the stink of scorched tires behind him, Ethan looked in his mirror and saw one of the suited guards that had been chasing him talking energetically into a mic at his wrist.

  Then his view of the man was cut off by a navy blue Volkswagen sedan screeching out of a side alley, almost taking out him and his newly acquired motorcycle.