[b]West Istanbul[/b]

The airport had received only inaccurate fire since the day before. As the battle raged into its third day, the attackers had chosen to focus their guns on the front in East Istanbul's industrial neighborhoods instead of strategic locations west of the canal. Craters made the tarmac look like the surface of the moon, smoke from fuel fires drifted through onto the sea. Bullet holes and shrapnel had torn through the sides of metal warehouses and hangars, as well as the concrete terminals. Several walls had new doors punched right through them by rockets. Engineers had gotten to work fortifying positions with trucks full of construction equipment: the grand windows of Suleiman International Airport had been boarded up and sandbagged down. Rubble and litter cluttered the floor, blown in by the winds and explosions while mud and soot had been tracked through by soldiers. The elaborate chandeliers that once hung opulently above the main lobby had been brought down by the thunderous shaking of artillery strikes. Their crystals had mysteriously disappeared into the cargo pockets of Armenian troops, much like the expensive wristwatches or the fancy shoes at the airport luxury outlets.

George Yaglian had been pulled from suppression duty, with most of the Turkish snipers vacating their posts the night prior. Now, only occasional pot shots were fired at the dug-in Armenians, and there hadn't been a casualty in a few hours. The Corporal was now a glorified signpost, sitting in an old camping stool in the lobby next to a portable table and a filing cabinet. Troops, freshly arrived from the Greek side of the Bosporus, were filed through the airport before heading the support the East Istanbul fighting positions. Yaglian was to simply check off the platoons that came through and tell them their assignment based on the recommendations of the military intelligence detachment set up in what used to be the airport hotel bar. Every so often, a bespectacled soldier no older than nineteen would deliver a written down list of critically undermanned positions in rough order of precedence. This, coupled with a road map, would mean Yaglian would give directions to the platoon leader and tell him where his men were needed before sending them off.

A queue had developed by midday, with Yaglian trying to process the glut of new arrivals as fast as he could. Pano had been enlisted as a second impromptu clerk who, with his limited Armenian vocabulary, was desperately pantomiming directions to new platoons. Thousands of troops had to be going towards the front in an attempt to stave off the Turks from reclaiming their former capital. From what he could gather from the intelligence detachment courier, it was a bloodbath. In traditional fashion, they had fought to a stalemate. The Istanbul local irregulars were rapidly falling, requiring reinforcement from Armenian and Greek units. A breakthrough near the canal's bridges was feared in the coming hours: explosives had been wired to blow and stem the Turkish onslaught if they ever reached the fighting positions. The primary mission was to hold the line, but it was absolutely critical that West Istanbul was held and the Bosporus was at the very least contested.

"Listen, you're needed at the Sumahat Hotel on the waterside drive north of the bridge. Just take a left at the MP traffic stop on the east bank and head right to the line. It's flag seven on the map, write it down," Yaglian stated duly. He pointed at the colored red marker placed at the hotel's rough position on the map, before shooing them towards the front door and marking down that platoon's number on the roster. He turned his head up to see two figures in lizardstripe battledress, wearing sunglasses and soft covers instead of helmets. Their uniforms, devoid of patches, had no nametapes on them. Simple orange armbands went around their left upper arms.

"Who the hell are you?" Yaglian asked hurriedly. "If you need to see the commander, he's up top."

"Yeah, you'll do," one of them said. He gestured to Pano at the table next to Yaglian and waved him over: "Find about twenty other guys, we're taking your engineers' trucks parked out back."

"Wait, what? I'm a fucking Corporal, I don't have that authority," Yaglian protested to the man, who simply smiled.

"We do. We're National Security Service field agents and you've been tasked for a mission," he said bluntly. From his pocket he produced a document with the NSS seal and a signature from a government official. "This actually goes to your commander."

He handed it to his partner, who went off to find the battalion commander. "My name is Genghis," continued the first NSS agent: a darker man, tall and imposing with a permanent five o'clock shadow and curly black hair. "The one who just went to find your commander is my second in command, Apollo."

Genghis leaned down onto the table and told Yaglian to grab his gear and eat before they headed out. Someone else was called over to replace the two at the tables while Genghis spoke into his backpack radio. A few minutes later, Apollo returned with a gaggle mixed with MI detachments and MPs pulled from random positions. The battalion commander was in tow, holding the piece of paper while protesting that he needed the men at their positions.

"You guys can all drive a truck, right?" Apollo asked, almost casually. He had the lackadaisical air of a university student on vacation in Sevan, as if he enjoyed fast boat races under the influence of vodka on the lake. His posture was slacked and his hair - shaved on the sides but long on top - had been slicked back. One hand rested on his rifle receiver and the other firmly went in his pocket, while his sunglasses were gold-rimmed aviator-types popular with American film stars or African musicians.

A quarter of them shook their heads and were sent off to find someone who could. When the new drivers arrived, confused and packing their kitbags, Genghis motioned for them to form a horseshoe in the lobby. He removed his sunglasses, revealing dark brown eyes, and tucked them into his collar.

"I am Genghis, of the National Security Service," he announced. "And the man who got you is Apollo. You have been recruited for a special mission, shouldn't take too long at all. Before you know it, we're going to drop you back here at your units and be off. We have eleven trucks we're driving to the former Ottoman treasury on the front in East Istanbul, and an eleventh with breaching gear. Once we get there, we'll tell you the rest of the story. Ready? Let's go."

Yaglian, standing to the side of the formation, was taken aback by the curt briefing. For someone used to lengthy and thorough operation orders, the secrecy was unnerving. What was the NSS doing in Istanbul? What was the treasury doing as a target? Why were they going to the front? They were hardly infantry units, just a bunch of spooks and cops who were securing an airport. The NSS agents seemed far too out of their league, sporting cut down and customized battle rifles using new red dot sights and shortened shotguns mounted to the bayonet lug. At the door, Apollo dropped an olive green aviator's bag and unzipped it, revealing strips of orange fabric. "Put these around your left arm," he instructed.

They liberated the engineer trucks, hurriedly tossing gear and crates out into the parking lot. They were told these would be returned later, after the mission was complete. A two man team manned each vehicle, Yaglian and Pano filing in behind the NSS's lead truck decked, once again, with an orange cloth draped over the front. The convoy got onto the road, following the lead of Genghis and Apollo: they drove quickly through the rubble-strewn streets of Istanbul, right past destroyed buildings and knocked-out cars. As they passed onto the main city round, driving onto a roundabout, Pano shouted: "Look!"

A Turkish fighter-bomber had crashed into the thirty-story-tall Sultanate National Bank building, setting it ablaze about an hour earlier. Nobody was there to attend to the fire, emergency services long since preoccupied with other emergencies in other parts of town. The building belched acrid black smoke and its north facade had slid down onto the ground. In its courtyard, Greek soldiers helped Istanbul security forces drape civilian casualties in white bedsheets. Men, women, and children were all lined up in the park beside the highway as the Armenian convoy moved by. The killings were indiscriminate, effected by a shower of steel rain and high explosive force. People cared, of course, but it was the very nature of war that these civilians would die. Maybe they weren't evacuated in time, but that was not for Yaglian to debate. Shit happens, and he kept his mind off of it.

The financial district once controlled the wealth of the Ottoman Empire but now laid in ruins. Banks, regulatory agencies, and corporate headquarters alike had been shelled by Ottoman preparatory fires before the invasion. As yet another vice of the war, Armenian soldiers assigned to internal security looted the shops and stole from the wealthy apartments nearby. Yaglian couldn't blame them: after years of being kicked in the teeth by Ottoman hegemony, it was good to finally get revenge. Undoubtedly, the military legal system would ignore the looting despite it being on books as illegal: there would soon be hundreds of Armenian girlfriends getting gifts of fine jewelry from the farthest reaches of Istanbul's trade. The convoy drove past, caring not for their behavior. They put into high gear and sped out down the cleared highway, civilian vehicles having been cleared by armored elements days ago. An artillery strike on a nearby park being used as a hospital nearly blew a brick through Yaglian's cabin - it bounced off the truck's hood and left a sizeable dent - but they continued unabated.

The Bosporus Bridge was riddled with bulletholes and chunks blown away by explosions, but remained structurally intact. This was, in fact, one of two bridges that crossed the Bosporus Strait: the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge further north had already been blown by Armenian engineers when the Turks broke through the front lines and began to close in on the O-2 highway. Now, the First Bridge, as it was known, provided the only land route into West Istanbul. Air assault or airborne operations west of the Bosporus were prohibited by thick emplacements of antiaircraft artillery and roving patrols of local guardsmen. It was a race to the First Bridge that the Ottomans were in danger of losing. Yaglian and his truck crossed over, were directed forward by a military policeman waving a red flag, and continued into increasingly wartorn Istanbul. The treasury was only a few minutes east, located in a clearing surrounded by tall residential complexes separated by tight alleys. The Armenians drove their trucks over a former park and through a hole in the brick wall, before following Genghis's lead to the truck loading docks in the rear. The ten trucks idled for a moment before Apollo sprang out of the lead vehicle to direct them around and face the way they came for a speedy exit.

"Gather up! Gather up! Horseshoe formation around Genghis!" Apollo yelled over the distressingly-close gunfire and explosions. Genghis stepped out of his truck and onto the ground, slinging his rifle over his back and withdrawing blueprints from his cargo pocket. A plane flew overhead, released its bombs, and took off upward over them. The drivers assembled around Genghis, first few ranks kneeling, all unsure of what was going on. They were support personnel, not infantry.

"Alright, we're getting to the fun part," Genghis proclaimed with a sly grin, combing through his dark beard. "Has anyone here ever robbed a bank before?"