Crescent Dawn

The Israeli tanker steamed into the mouth of the Bosphorus, hugging close to the Asian shoreline. When the Golden Horn slipped into view across the strait, the tanker’s pilot reduced power.

“Now is the time,” he said to Maria.

The swift current of the Bosphorus, flowing south from the Black Sea, quickly slowed the large vessel to a crawl. Maria gathered several men along the starboard flank and lowered a steel accommodation ladder over the side. The yacht cruised up immediately and held station off the foot of the stairs.

“Secure the prisoners and then get the rest of the men off,” she ordered one of the Janissaries, then stepped onto the lowered stairway.

She made her way down the metal steps, then was helped aboard the yacht by a waiting crewman. Climbing up to the wheelhouse, she was met by her two Iraqi hired thugs. Even in the predawn darkness, the one named Farzad was wearing his trademark sunglasses.

“You have made the preparations in Greece?” she asked them.

“Yes,” Farzad replied. “We can make a quiet entry through Thios. A secure covered berth has been reserved for the Sultana , and transportation has been arranged for you to Athens. Your return flight to Istanbul is booked in three days.”

Maria nodded as they watched the remaining Janissaries climb down the stairway and hop onto the yacht. The guards watching the tanker crew had been quietly pulled, and the door to the mess room chained shut.

On the bridge of the Dayan , the pilot watched the last of the Janissaries step off, then he signaled the yacht that he was changing course. As the Sultana temporarily slipped away from the tanker’s side, the pilot increased the engine’s revolutions to half speed and eased the bow toward the west. Taking a bearing toward the Süleymaniye Mosque, he programmed the automatic pilot and then engaged it.

He was about to step off the bridge when he noticed a flashing on the console. Glancing at the warning light, he simply shook his head.

“Nothing I can do about that now,” he muttered, then scrambled down to the stairwell and leaped to the waiting yacht, leaving the massive Dayan to her own devices.

69

The Bullet spewed a rooster tail of white water from its stern as it tore into the entrance of the Bosphorus Strait. A few early-rising fishermen stared in awe at the hybrid submersible /speedboat as it zipped by in the gloomy light of dawn.

Pitt was sca

“Kind of has a familiar profile to her,” he remarked to Giordino.

As the Italian yacht powered south under speed, the two vessels raced by each other quickly, passing just a short distance apart.

“That’s Celik’s yacht, all right,” Giordino confirmed.

“Leaving the scene of the crime, most likely.”

“Probably an indication that there’s not a whole lot of time left on the clock,” Giordino replied, eyeing Pitt with a cautionary gaze.

Pitt said nothing, shoving aside the suicidal nature of approaching the bomb ship while he formulated a plan to stop it.

“That must be her up ahead.”

It was Lazlo, raising an arm and pointing off the port bow. Two miles ahead, they could see the stern of a large tanker disappearing behind a rise on the western shoreline.

“They’re sending her into the Golden Horn,” Pitt said, any doubt about the tanker’s mission fully erased.

The watery heart of Istanbul for over two thousand years, the famed harbor is surrounded by some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city. Directed at the Süleymaniye Mosque, situated just two blocks from the waterfront, the tanker’s detonation would not only shatter the historic structure, but devastate the half million people who lived within a mile of the impact zone.

But the pilotless Dayan wasn’t there yet. It had just narrowly missed colliding with an early-morning ferry when the Bullet approached from behind. Pitt noticed the ferryboat’s captain shaking a fist and angrily tooting his horn at the tanker, oblivious to the fact that its wheelhouse was empty.

“No sign of anyone aboard,” Giordino said, craning his neck at the tanker’s high deck and superstructure.

Pitt throttled around the Dayan ’s port flank, looking for a means of access, then shot around the tanker’s bow to her starboard side. Giordino quickly pointed to the stairs extending off the rear flank.

“Beats climbing a rope,” Giordino said.

Pitt guided the submersible close alongside the lowered steps.

“The helm’s yours, Al,” he said. “Stick around… but not too close.”

“You sure you want to go aboard?”

Pitt nodded with a firm eye.

“Lazlo,” he said, turning toward the commando. “With your expertise, we’ll take a crack at defusing the explosives. If that fails, I’ll try to get her turned toward the Sea of Marmara, and then we can bail out.”

“Don’t do any u

“I’ll dial you up on cha

“I’ll keep my ears on,” Giordino replied.

Pitt crept along the port pontoon until reaching the lowered stairs, easily grabbing its handrail and pulling himself on. Lazlo followed right on his heels. Pitt raced to the top of the stairs, then leaped onto the tanker, gazing ahead at the huge forward deck. He immediately saw the two large steel cutouts that Green had described, housing the mixture of explosives materials.

“Give us time,” he said to himself as Lazlo followed him at a sprint toward the storage tanks. “Just give us time.”

70

The janissary approached Maria tentatively, reluctant to intrude on her conversation with the yacht’s captain. Noticing him gradually encroach on her space, she finally turned and snapped at him.

“What is it?”

“Miss Celik, the boat we just passed traveling in the opposite direction? I… I believe it may be the same vessel used by the intruders at the Kirte port facility.”

Maria’s jaw dropped, but only for a moment. Wheeling around, she peered out the back window, just catching a glimpse of the Bullet as it rounded the bluff into the Golden Horn.

Turning back to the yacht’s captain, her eyes blazed with fury.

“Turn us around at once,” she bellowed. “We’re going back.”

Pitt barely knew where to start. The forward port hold was like a rat’s maze at eye level. Six-foot-high pallets filled with heavy bags of ANFO were stacked everywhere, loaded in apparent haste. Somewhere in the middle were hidden the powerful stores of HMX. And attached to that, Pitt hoped, would be a readily apparent fuze and blasting cap.

Pitt had told Lazlo that they had five minutes to locate and defuse the explosives. Lazlo was simultaneously searching the starboard hold, after having given Pitt an on-the-fly explanation of what to look for. Half the allotted time had already been expended by the time Pitt had worked his way to the center of the hold and discovered dozens of blocks of the plastic explosive stacked in several wooden bins. With the seconds ticking by loudly in his head, Pitt hastily opened the bins one by one, tossing the explosives aside when no visible fuze was found inside. It wasn’t until he reached the last bin that he found an electric timer wired to a small blasting cap pressed into a block of the plastic explosive. With a hopeful nod, he quickly yanked the mechanism from the HMX, then retraced his steps through the maze.

Five minutes had already elapsed when he climbed the ladder out of the hold and stepped onto the deck. Lazlo was just climbing out of the starboard hold and sprinted over to Pitt, carrying a pair of timers in his hand. Pitt held up his timer and blasting cap, handing it to Lazlo.