Deadly Talent

3. Bölüm

As Cenk was passing by the bank in his car, he suddenly remembered that his mobile phone bill had not been paid yet, and the due date was yesterday. His own bill was fine, but his wife’s bill was four times as much as his, and if his line was switched off, all hell would break loose at home. He immediately pulled his car to a suitable place and entered the bank. In his haste, he had forgotten his gun in the glove compartment. He took a queue number and waited by a wall. There was no place to sit as the bank was packed, but the queue was moving faster than he expected. There were many empty numbers in between. He was two people away from his turn when a gunshot rang out.

“Nobody move! Everybody on the ground, everybody, go, go, go, go!”

Six robbers with balaclavas and balaclavas entered the store and opened fire in the air with semi-automatic weapons. On the one hand, they neutralised the security guards, and on the other hand, they made the people in the bank lie down on the ground right in front of the counter.

“Come on, move, this is a robbery!”

The bandits managed to get the money out of the vault in record time, and it was obvious that they had done their homework. However, when the first bandit came out, their luck changed. Hearing the gunshots, the locals called the police and a team arrived in front of the bank close to the scene.

As the robbers came out, two policemen who had just arrived at the scene got out of their car and started shooting. The first police shot hit the leading robber in the leg, but when his pursuers returned fire, one of the two policemen was killed and the other was firing randomly towards the bank to prevent the robbers from escaping. This blind fire worked and the robbers went in, pulling their wounded friend with them.

As the robbers entered the bank, the sound of sirens outside started to increase rapidly. Within a few minutes, dozens of police vehicles filled the street, even special operations teams arrived quickly.

While the activity outside increased, silence and stress prevailed inside. While the two robbers were talking among themselves, one of them was taking care of the hostages, another one was trying to watch the outside from the edge of the door, and the other robber was taking care of his injured friend. Meanwhile, Cenk was thinking about what he could do without jeopardising the lives of nearly thirty people in the bank, but nothing came to his mind. Right next to him was a woman holding her two small children tightly, right in front of him was a petite businessman with glasses, and to his right was an elderly couple. He was not thinking about himself, but at the slightest move, they could die. Cenk decided to wait.

“What are we going to do, boss? His condition is very bad.”

One of the two talking men came to the wounded man.

“Boss, how do we get him out of here?”

Without answering, his boss pulled his gun from his waist and pressed the trigger on the wounded man’s head. The blood gushing out of the man’s brain splattered on his friend who was taking care of him, but this situation did not anger or frighten the friend of the man who was shot, on the contrary, he seemed to accept the disintegration of his friend’s brain with complete surrender. He stood at the head of his friend whose brain was disintegrated, swayed slightly back and forth and mumbled something like a prayer, all the while bringing his right arm behind his back. This movement of the robber caused only one word to come out of Cenk’s mouth: “Teccal”.

“What are we doing, chief? Are we going in?”

“Yes, Sabri, tell the special team to take position. Are the snipers on the rooftops?”

“Yes, chief, everyone is waiting for your order.”

The chief was giving orders on the one hand and looking at the plans of the bank laid on the team car on the other. Another policeman ran towards the chief with a wireless phone in his hand.

“Bekir Chief Commissar, we have contacted the people inside. They are on the phone.”

The chief commissar immediately snatched the phone from the policeman’s hand.

“Here you go, this is Chief Superintendent Bekir, who am I speaking to?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am, listen to me carefully, here are my requests: I want a helicopter on the roof within fifteen minutes, right now, I want the police vehicles on the street to be withdrawn and not a single police officer to approach the building, including your snipers on the roofs. If you do not do what I say, you will be responsible for the death of the hostages...”

“Hello... Hello... Hello... Are you there? Hello...”

“What happened, chief?”

“He hung up. The bastard says he’ll shoot the hostages if we don’t send a helicopter in fifteen minutes.”

“But, chief, we can’t find a helicopter in that time, even if we wanted to.”

“You think I don’t know that Sabri! The guy wouldn’t let me talk... Get me the internal affairs immediately, maybe they can organise a helicopter from the forestry ministry or the municipality. The guy also asked us to clear the street, of course we can’t do that, but at least let’s send some vehicles to the back of the street, I think that will satisfy them.”

“What happened, did they leave?

“A few vehicles have left, boss, but the vast majority are still there and they don’t seem to be leaving.”

“Uh-huh uh-huh!” The boss’s smile had a tone of anger rather than joy.

“So they think we’re joking, huh? Let’s show them we’re serious.” The man turned to where the hostages were. After carefully observing the hostages for a while, he gestured to the woman holding her two children tightly. One of the robbers went to her and started to grab her and pull her. Although the woman tried to hold on to her children and not let go, the man was very strong. He dragged her away from the hostages.

“Please, please don’t do this! For God’s sake, don’t!”

“Wait a minute.” The guns suddenly turned towards Cenk.

“Look, killing that woman will do you no good...”

“Shut up and sit down, nobody asked your opinion.”

“If you kill those women you’ll only piss off the police.”

“You were told to ‘shut up’!” One of the men hit Cenk on the head with the semi-automatic gun he was holding, but Cenk did not have any tremor. The man raised his gun again and was about to shoot him when Cenk calmly said, “I am a police officer”. The men looked at each other in surprise. Cenk continued.

“If you let the woman go and take me, you will give the message you want,” he said, and then he took out his ID card from his pocket with slow movements and showed it to the men.

The man whom the robbers called “Boss” took the ID card, looked at it and laughed this time.

“Alright, have it your way. Kill this brave boy in front of the police, I’m sure his friends will recognise him immediately.”

The robber holding the woman made a nod of approval, then took Cenk by the shoulder and took him to the second floor. He went to the window of the office upstairs, dismantled the bomb device they had just placed there and opened the window, but took care to keep the curtain closed. It was not difficult for him to guess that snipers were watching him.

He brought Cenk to the edge of the window, about ten centimetres away from him. Before firing, he leaned into the victim’s ear and said:

“Goodbye, arsehole, I’m about to blow your brains out in front of the cops on the street...”. But before the man could finish, Cenk threw himself into the space in front of him and grabbed the signboard just below the window, grabbing the man behind him by the head with his feet and dragging him along with him. Now the two men were hanging down from the second floor window. While Cenk was holding on to the signboard on the one hand, on the other hand, he was trying not to drop the man whose head he squeezed between his knees. As soon as they turned round, a sharp snapping sound came from the robber’s head. The man’s neck was broken and his semi-automatic gun fell on the street.

Meanwhile, the policemen on the street were watching in amazement.

“Chief, this is... This is... Cenk!”

The chief replied without lowering the binoculars in his eyes.

“I know, I know, but I don’t know what that i***t is doing there!”

Cenk managed to pull himself up with difficulty, without dropping the corpse he had squeezed between his feet in the meantime. When he entered the window again, he took off the robber’s mask. He looked like a clean-faced man who had just stepped into manhood. He took the gun from the man’s waist, then took off his clothes and put them on himself, the clothes were a little tight, but he would endure it. He also put the balaclava on his face. When he took off the man’s black T-shirt, he saw satanic tattoos etched on his chest. Right above his heart; he saw a face with two upper two molars sticking out of his mouth, with eyebrows formed by two adjacent crescents inverted over his angry fierce gaze, and a dagger passing through the middle of these eyebrows, looking like a third tooth coming out of the mouth. Cenk remembered this symbol.

“Teccal!”

A gunshot was heard from above.

“He finally finished him off.”

Faces turned in that direction with the footsteps coming down the stairs.

“Hurry up, what were you doing up there all that time...”

The man coming down the stairs made a throat-cutting gesture with his hand, but after a few seconds of hesitation the men below started shooting at the man in the middle of the stairs.

“Kill that bastard!”

Cenk managed to throw himself behind the tables at the bottom of the stairs with a momentary reflex. The first thing he did as soon as he landed on the ground was to check his clothes, if he had been shot and had not realised it, he could have bled to death.

‘How did they realise it was me? No casualties anyway!’

Cenk immediately returned fire, but he was not very successful against four people. After firing for a while, he collapsed and waited. Bullets were flying from the top of his head, but after all, they had no bullet problems. Cenk looked at the lunch box in front of the steel table he leaned his back against ‘Are there still people who use these in this day and age?

The fire had stopped. The men had probably got over the first moment’s panic and were surrounding him. Cenk wanted to see what they were doing. ‘I wonder if it is a good idea to take the head out and look at it. Three bowls stacked on top of each other served as a mirror. One of the men had left his place and was moving to his left side with very confident and slow steps. Jumping out of his seat, Cenk shot the man in the throat within a second and took shelter in his trench again. At the same moment, the rain of fire accelerated again and soon it stopped like a knife.

“End of the road mate!”

One of the men took advantage of the confusion to crawl up to him and put his gun to his head.

“You’re going to get hurt!”

“You think so!

Before the robber could press the trigger, he collapsed to the ground with a mass of blood flying out of his head. At the same time, dozens of special team police officers poured into the bank without realising where they had come from. Shouting, gunshots and screams. When Cenk looked up, he saw all the robbers lying dead on the floor and the police had everything under control.

When he came out, the street was full of police and ambulance vehicles. After convincing the paramedics that he was fine, he walked towards the two men next to the minibus with official licence plates. In front was a tall, rather thin man in a yellow coat, who, despite his middle age, still had traces of youthful acne on his face. Behind him was a short, rather dark-skinned man in a dark suit who was obviously close to retirement. The man’s jacket was too small for his size.

“Hey Cenk, do you have a hole anywhere?” The man in the yellow coat was in a good mood.

“Get out of my head, Sabri! I can’t deal with you.”

“I hoped you would fall when I saw you in the window, but it wasn’t meant to be, next time!”

Sabri’s taunts were getting annoying. Cenk was preparing to give a harsh response, but he was dissuaded by the angry voice of his superior.

“Are you crazy, son! What were you doing there, what happened inside?”

“Sir, I had a job at the bank, they tried to rob the bank at that time...”

Sabri intervened,

“The smart guys waited for the dumbest cop to rob them.”

“You animal!” Cenk walked towards him but his supervisor had already intervened.

“OK, leave him, you go on!” Cenk briefly told the incident; his arrival at the bank, leaving his gun in the car, being taken hostage and what happened upstairs.

“A crisis could only be managed this badly, if it wasn’t for your uncle, I wouldn’t even have made you a watchman.” These words angered Cenk.

“What did you want me to do, Bekir Chief Commissar! I was a hostage there, I still fought and saved a woman’s life, you saw what happened up there, isn’t that something to be admired?”

“Yes, it would have been admirable if you had given us information about the people inside from the window and just stayed there instead of doing heroic tricks by replacing that man after finishing him. You jeopardised your life and the lives of the hostages.” The Commissioner put both hands over his face in anger, then continued.

“You’re an i***t, the man you tried to replace was about 5’7” and half your size. You think you can fool them with a mask and a t-shirt!”

Sabri burst into laughter. “Son, why don’t you go to the police morale night(!)”

Cenk was very angry, but he was angry with himself, not with them. He was angry that he could not even think of such a simple thing. Meanwhile, they started to evacuate the hostages. Cenk smiled when he looked at the mother and her children, she was really scared, right behind her was a petite businessman with glasses, he looked stoic, just ahead of him was an elderly couple being examined by paramedics, they were still smiling despite all they had been through. None of the hostages had suffered a bloody nose and Cenk believed that he had a share in this.

***