Charles Taylor - First Salvo

“Why are we waiting out here?” she inquired.

Cobb pointed at Lassiter, who was still surveying the docks through his binoculars. “After you’ve been in this business long enough, you tend not to trust anyone or anything but yourself. That’s where we’re supposed to fuel.” He pointed straight ahead to the pier, easily identified by the Sirkeci railroad station looming over it. “The Turks expect us. Our own people spent hours explaining how we’d be in a Soviet boat with an American flag. But anything can happen. An old philosopher friend of ours, Bernie Ryng, once said, ‘Never trust a soul and you’ll live to tell someone else the same thing.’”

“Do you believe that?” Verra asked.

“Absolutely.” He did not mention that Ryng, the perennial bachelor, had also said that there was no place for women in their business, that you saved them only for when you needed them.

“Do you trust me?” she asked him.

Cobb looked down. She waited calmly for his answer, her eyes never leaving his. Even Ryng would allow him an occasional lapse. “Yes. I trust you, but I also had an alternate plan if you turned on me.” He shrugged. “We’ll never know if it would have worked, will we?”

“I don’t know you, but I trusted you,” she whispered. “And you brought me out of there.”

Cobb smiled. “That statement from the great Ryng did not include every single person on the face of this earth. You may always trust me. If you ever meet the great Ryng, please trust him too. And,” he gestured toward Lassiter, “that is a man I trust, so you can stick with him also.”

“Just the three of you?” She smiled. “Only three men in the whole wide world?”

“There are others, some old friends of mine.”

“Will I get to meet them?”

“I don’t know if I want to share the likes of them with you.” Now what the hell did he mean by that? She didn’t belong to him, and he didn’t belong to her. “Yes. I hope you will,” he concluded.

The boat rocked in the gentle wavelets created by the heavy flow of traffic off the Golden Horn. Wafting across the harbor were a variety of aromas similar to those that had fascinated Cobb in so many other seaports. Each one was different, each had its own special appeal.

Lassiter dropped his binoculars and gestured for Cobb to come up with him. “Here, sweep those docks starting about a hundred yards to the left of our pier. Then go to the right, up to about the Galata Bridge.”

Cobb closed his eyes. He squeezed them tight, then opened them, pressed against the lenses. They adjusted quickly. He first saw what he expected, a variety of craft tied to various piers, trucks outside warehouses, stacks of goods on pallets. Wait a second — fire trucks, wisps of smoke here and there, uniforms. Must be military . Not a lot of smoke, not enough to cause concern, but nevertheless, he could locate at least three distinct spots where light smoke was driven to the north before it rose far into the sky.

“What do you make of it?” Lassiter asked.

“If there was much of a fire in any of those locations, they’re pretty much out now or they never amounted to much to begin with. Looks safe enough to me now.”

“Yeah. It does to me too. But how often do you have that many fires all near the same spot, namely the one we want to refuel at?”

Cobb knew Lassiter wasn’t looking for an opinion. “Not every day, Cap’n.”

“We’re gonna’ ease in. I want everybody ready, but I don’t want them to look like we’re going to sack Turkey either. I never trust anybody.”

Cobb jerked his head in Keradin’s direction. “What about him?”

“Looks fine to me.” The general was leaning against one of the mast stanchions, his arms folded casually, attempting to look as dignified as a man could chained to a mast in his underwear. “He’ll make people think we mean business. And if we have Russian problems up there, he’ll either keep away unfriendly fire or draw it — one or the other.”

Cobb again looked through the binoculars. This time he had a better view of some armed craft similar to their own. At first he thought they were tied up to the piers, but now he could tell they were idling nearby, the exhaust from their engines clearer now at this range. “What do you make of those gunboats in there?”

“Turkish patrol craft. Built right here in yards in the city. They’re pretty well armed, and as fast as this, but they keep them pretty close to home, I’m told. Guard the capital city, that sort of thing.”

“They’re sure as hell not tied up.”

“Here, let me take a look.” Lassiter studied them through the glasses. “All the more reason to be careful. They must be waiting for something.”

They were now no more than a hundred yards off the pier.

They could see line handlers waiting for them to come alongside. “Yeah,” Lassiter’s face was grim as he sniffed the smoke in the air. “Perhaps they’re screwing with us.”

“Perhaps.” Both men were standing easy now as the hydrofoil idled slowly along the piers, far enough away to make room for a fireboat directing a stream into one of the warehouses. Cobb watched army regulars stack their weapons and move in to assist the firemen. Maybe this was the right time , he thought. Wait until everyone’s having the time of his life being a volunteer fireman, then move in .

“What the hell?” Lassiter recognized the sound at the same time Cobb did. It was a rushing noise, a splitting of the air for just an instant by something moving at high speed. Then the warehouse in front of them erupted. A section of the roof peeled back as if an invisible fist had punched it straight up in the air. It tottered precariously for an instant, held by a gust of wind, then tumbled backward onto the street, crushing soldiers and firefighters alike. The outward force of the explosion sent flames, until now unseen, gushing out along the ground. It was like a colossal flamethrower, and everything in its path was ignited — vehicles, firemen, soldiers, and surrounding buildings.

A second and then a third blast followed in rapid succession. In less than thirty seconds, the building was leveled. Their bos’n had already rammed his throttle forward. As their boat leaped ahead parallel to the piers, they were showered with sparks. Simultaneously, two other buildings were hit by similar blasts.

“Son of a bitch, look!” Cobb shouted. Lassiter’s eyes strained in the direction of his pointing finger. He saw the flash half a mile beyond Seraglio Point, then the telltale stream of flame. “Missiles — that’s what they’re using.” Lassiter saw the white wakes of the oncoming craft before he could pick out the boats themselves. “What—”

“Missile boats. Small ones. They’re great little weapons for something like this, aren’t they? High speed, fast attack in and out. Unload your weapons and get away as fast as you can. I guess they don’t like the idea of our taking Keradin with us. But I wonder how they figured out where we took him. Why here? Why wait until here?”

“Simple,” Lassiter explained. “They intercept a couple of our plain-language radio reports. Use their satellite photography. Check with headquarters in Yalta about that fast little boat that seemed to be going balls-to-the-wall toward the Bosporus, and find out that none Yalta knows of is supposed to be doing same. Then they start checking fleet lists. Do you want me to go on?”

“How dumb of me to ask.”

The roar of engines came to their ears now as a squadron of boats bore down on the docks. Cobb could see their deck guns now, spouting flame as they poured small-caliber fire into the waterfront. Missiles from farther out continued to pass overhead, striking deeper into the city.