Hunting in Istanbul, Part 2

Inside the mansion.

"Hey! Is this a blackout or what?"

"Go check. Hurry."

"You bitches aren't getting away with this!"

"Aaaah! Please, save us!"

"Waaah—please send us home!"

"I said shut up!"

Thud! Thud-thud-thud!

Blows and screams chased one another through the dark. I gave the noise a wide berth and eased toward the outer side of the house.

The intel put the IS operatives at roughly ten. That many was no reason to bother with a gun—and besides, it would be a problem if I damaged valuable merchandise.

Figures were coming down the stairs with their phone lights on. I held the invisibility and waited. The moment they passed in front of me, I swung a fist stacked with strength enhancement and a steel skin buff.

Thud!

"Guh!"

Caught flat-footed, the man who took it in the gut clutched his abdomen and folded.

"What the—?"

Startled, the other rubbed at his eyes as if something were caught in them.

"What is this haze…"

It wasn't true invisibility, and the strange bend of light it left behind looked like dust. The instant he rubbed his eyes—

Bzzzzzt—

Electricity leapt from my palm into his chest and seared through him.

"Ghhhhh—!!!"

Briefly cooked, his body dropped straight to the floor. Only then did the first one get his wind back and try, in a panic, to push himself up—only to take a soccer kick under the jaw and black out on the spot.

Thud!

I laid an extra ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Sleep spell over the unconscious pair. On men already out, the effect was a hundred percent. I dragged the deeply sleeping bodies aside, bound them with cable ties, and headed up.

Two left.

In the blacked-out house the rattled ones dragged the women they'd beaten into the confinement room and shoved them inside. They weren't moving as a group. They were splitting up, and I didn't waste the opening. I handled the ones who peeled off the same way—close under stealth, beat them down, sear them with electricity until they dropped, put them to sleep, then bind them with cable ties. The work went on.

By the time the men gathered in the living room sensed that something was wrong, more than two-thirds of them were already down.

"Shit. What the hell is going on?"

"Hold on. Something's off. Not one of the guys who went out has come back."

"Goddamn it."

They drew pistols, each covering a direction, and went on alert. One checked whether anyone had come in from outside. Another hid behind a pillar and watched the stairs. Another swept a phone light around, hunting an enemy he couldn't even see.

Among them, the one I'd collided with coming out of the club spoke with fear all over his face.

"Shouldn't we be calling this in upstairs?"

"Call it in, my ass. What are you gonna say? That a ghost showed up? We need to know what it is before we call anyone."

"Then what do we do, sitting here?"

"First we bring the recruits. We find out what's going on together with them."

"We all go."

The three lined up and edged forward, each watching a different way, until they stopped in front of a room.

"Key."

"Wait. Here."

The one who took the key worked the lock in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a hurry.

Click.

He undid it, opened the door, and the scene inside met his eyes: a comrade on the floor, wrists bound behind his back.

"Taer!"

The startled man started toward him—

"Damn."

—and his foot hit a floor stripped of friction. It shot straight out from under him.

Crash!

As he fell, the pistol in his hand went off.

Bang!

No one was hit, fortunately, but the gunshot made the others yell.

"What was that!"

"Ah, shit!"

The instant every eye went to the fallen man and the bound comrade, a fist slammed into one belly.

Thud!

"Guhk!"

A flash burst in front of the turning man's eyes.

"Agh! My eyes!"

While he squeezed them shut and flailed, a fist cracked his jaw. His comrades clutched their guts and went down; one was flung clear and slammed into a wall. Even so, the man on the floor still couldn't get up, thrashing where he'd fallen. In his hurry, every jerk of his arms and legs only sent him slipping again across a floor turned to a sheet of ice. Soon an arm skidded out, his chin hit the boards, and with a groan the strength left his whole body.

The voice at his ear was the last thing he heard. Then his mind went somewhere else.

Clearing the mansion took less than ten minutes. I made one circuit to be sure no one was left, turned over every room, and called in the slaves waiting outside. They sorted what I'd caught.

Category three was so large because five of the kidnapped women had been sorted into it. They'd been abducted themselves, yes—but I'd learned they'd talked other men and women into being taken, to save their own skins. Mostly through social media: set a meeting, draw the target out, and IS operatives would show up and grab them.

Then they could pay for it.

The category-four women I blindfolded, gathered, and locked in a room for now. No point getting tangled any deeper than I had to. Categories one through three I kept separate, already in hand.

While the sorting finished, I had the slaves search the house. Sure enough, this place had a secret storeroom too. Being in the city, it didn't have booby traps the way the last one had. Inside were the pistols and machine guns they used, and homemade bombs. Explosive vests were there as well, laid in for terror work. And, as expected, drugs were piled in one corner. The urban safe houses handled kidnappings, but they also ran narcotics deals.

The quantity looked to be about thirty kilos.

I took all of it—drugs, explosives, firearms. Then I went ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through the phones they'd been carrying and started gathering information.

Downtown Istanbul. A corner of the American embassy.

At a knock on the door, Jackson, the CIA officer seated at his desk, answered.

Knock, knock, knock.

"Come in."

The door opened. The one who entered was Emir, a fellow CIA officer stationed in Türkiye.

"Intelligence that came over from the Turkish police yesterday."

"Ah. That? The thing they found in a residential neighborhood?"

"Yes."

"Let me see."

Jackson took the papers and scanned them fast.

A few days earlier, Istanbul police had stumbled on women held captive in a house in the old city's residential quarter. An anonymous report of gunfire had brought them out, and an officer who stepped inside without much thought found, in a locked room, women with their eyes covered and their hands bound. The police sealed the area at once and began a search. The investigation confirmed the women had been kidnapped by some organization, and reading the circumstances front to back, IS was named as the group behind it.

"That anonymous tipster?"

"It came in from a pay phone. No cameras nearby, no witnesses, so confirmation looks difficult."

"Then. Any other leads out of the house?"

"It appears roughly ten members were staying there. There seem to have been more abductees besides them. Everyone vanished except the women who were locked up. Judging from the testimony and the evidence, the disappearance looks to have been about two days ago."

"So what is this? You're saying the IS bastards left behind the women they'd gone to the trouble of kidnapping, and all of them just walked away?"

"It doesn't seem that way."

"Then. You said there's no sign of a firefight here either?"

"Correct. Though some traces of a struggle were found."

"No sign of a gunfight—just traces that look like a brawl? Does that make any sense? What, did a ninja come through?"

"We did find what looks like a stray gunshot, but nothing you could call an engagement."

"Damn it. I don't get it. Anyway, contact the Turkish government and get every related report and investigative record. No—that won't be enough. We'll investigate it ourselves. I'll reach out to the National Intelligence Organization."

The height of it had passed, but the CIA was still tracking IS's principal bases and personnel. They were still following the group's kidnapping of travelers and its recruitment of volunteers across Europe and the Middle East. For a while they hadn't caught the trail and had half forgotten about it. Then, out of nowhere, one of the bastards' hideouts had turned up.

Jackson felt a strange déjà vu about this case. IS operatives, gone all at once. He turned on his computer and opened a report shared not long ago—a document out of the CIA's Syria branch.

"Something going on with these IS bastards lately?"

The law office handled things smoothly enough. Two days after the request, word came that they'd found suitable properties. I got into the Lincoln and looked the listings over, and while I was going through them, Aphago set about matching them against Gaia's terrain.

"This one should do nicely. From here, you leave the imperial road partway along and climb just a little."

The place Aphago chose was a villa on a lakeshore in northeastern Istanbul. It had stood empty quite a while; dust lay pale over everything. The lot was wide, and the road up to the villa was screened by trees and a hill. The rear was closed off by the lake, so the ground was hard to approach except through the entrance.

"I like this one. Let's lease it."

The lawyer answered with a smile across his whole face.

"Shall we? Then I'll prepare this one."

"But we'll need a name on the contract."

"Don't worry. I've already registered a simple business entity. I opened it as e-commerce, since that's easy to register. No problem, I trust?"

"Good. Let's do it that way. Once the contract's done, look into a cleaning service and a renovation contractor as well."

"I will."

"The perimeter wall needs repair, and we'll want a guard post at the entrance. Hire the security staff along with it."

"Understood."

I left the errands to him and signed the papers he'd brought.

After Cairo in Egypt, and Damascus in Syria, a foothold was in place in Istanbul.