by Brent Towns
“Copy.”
“Carlos, copy?”
“Copy.”
“Any sign of the package?”
“Negative.”
“Fuck it,” Kane swore savagely. “I want this whole building swept from top to bottom. Do it now. And let’s get some power on.”
Axe stepped through the study door and looked resignedly at Kane. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, but the look combined with the slight head movement was sufficient to convey the message. Kane knew the outcome, and said into his comms, “Bravo, no sign of the package. She’s not here.”
Brick appeared behind Axe. “Not too fast, Reaper. Come and have a look at this.”
Kane indicated Janssen. “Keep an eye on this asshole, Axe.”
“Can I shoot him?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re no fun.”
Kane followed Brick out into the foyer, and for the first time, noticed the large chandelier. “Who the hell has something like that in their home? I think they have delusions of grandeur.”
“I know what you mean,” the ex-SEAL said as he started up the stairs. “If I had something like that in my house, it would fall on my fucking head.”
“What do you want to show me, anyway?”
“I found something in one of the bedrooms.”
They continued to ascend the grand staircase and turned left at the landing, taking the corridor that veered in that direction until Brick stopped outside a door that stood ajar. “Look at this and tell me what you see.”
Kane ran a well-trained eye over it and picked up what Brick was referring to. “The key is in the lock on the outside.”
“Yes. So that got me thinking. We’d already searched this room once and found nothing. But I thought “stuff it”, and I went to take a closer look.”
He walked through the doorway, and Kane followed. Brick stopped and continued to speak. “I figured that Cara would assume that we’d do anything we could to find her. Turn over every stone. So, I did exactly that.”
He crossed to where a framed picture hung on a wall, reached out and moved it aside. There, scratched into the wall was Cara’s name and her USMC number.
“Son of a bitch,” Kane breathed. “Good work, Brick.”
“That feller we’ve got tied to the seat in the study is he –”
“Janssen.”
“You figure he’ll talk?”
“We’re just about to find out.”
Brick followed Kane back downstairs and into the study. Janssen looked arrogant, sitting on a chair under the watchful eye of two Interpol agents. Axe was nowhere to be seen. “Damn it, Axe, where are you?”
“I’m having another look around.”
“Get back here now. Carlos, you too.”
“Roger that.”
The Team Reaper leader turned to the two Interpol officers and said, “You two out.”
They gave him a confused look, and he repeated his order more forcefully this time. “Out, now.”
“Reaper, what’s going on?” Thurston asked.
“She was here,” he replied and removed his body cam.
“Reaper, I’ve lost your feed.”
Kane looked at Brick who did the same.
“Damn it, Reaper. What is going on? We’ve lost Brick now.”
Axe and Carlos appeared through the doorway, and Kane pointed at his and Brick’s cams. They nodded and removed theirs. Now Thurston was a little more than pissed, and her angry voice came over the comms. “Reaper, what the hell is going on?”
“Reaper Team going off comms.”
“What? Don’t you fucking dare, Reaper One!”
Kane killed the comms and turned to Janssen. He took a picture from his pocket and walked over to the chair. Without saying a word, he raised his right leg and planted a large boot fair in the middle of the drug boss’ chest. The chair and man flipped backward, crashing onto the floor. Kane moved around and dropped a knee into Janssen’s stomach, making him grunt. “Look at the picture, motherfucker. I know she was here. Where is she now?”
Janssen set his jaw firm but said nothing.
Kane slapped him across the face, drawing blood from the corner of his mouth. “Where?”
“Fuck you.”
This time Kane hit him with a closed fist. “Listen, you son of a bitch. I can do this all day.”
Janssen spat blood on the floor and smiled, showing pink teeth. “Fuck you, American.”
The M17 came into Kane’s hand, and he pressed the barrel against the drug boss’ head. “Last chance.”
“Ease up, Reaper,” Brick cautioned him.
Kane ignored him.
“Come on, Reaper, what the fuck, man?” Axe said. “Put the gun away.”
“John,” Carlos joined them. “We will find another way. We’ll find her.”
“Christ! Fuck!” Kane roared, removing the barrel from Janssen’s head, who looked up and smiled at him. Kane’s anger boiled over. The M17 drove forward butt first, and it hit the drug boss between the eyes, snapping the man’s head backward before it lolled forward onto his chest. Kane whirled away and reactivated his comms. “Bravo Four, copy?”
“Copy, Reaper One.”
“I need you to track down every camera within a kilometer of this place and see what you can come up with.”
“What exactly am I looking for, Reaper?”
“I don’t know.”
Chapter 8
Somewhere Over Europe
Cara stared out the window of the Cessna Citation Latitude and down at the water-dotted landscape. It was verdant, and the morning sunlight made the lakes sparkle like jewels in a wonderous crown.
“It is the Masurian Lakes District,” Aleksey Kazan said from behind her. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Cara ignored him and went back to staring straight ahead. They’d been on the plane for the past couple of hours since leaving Antwerp. Kazan had kept her at a warehouse in the city for the best part of twenty-four hours before transferring her to the airport where she was then loaded onto the plane.
“We should arrive in Belarus in about thirty minutes. Once there, you will be kept with the other girls and then taken to market.”
“Like I’m some piece of meat?” Cara sneered.
“A valuable piece of meat, my dear.”
“Don’t fucking “My dear” me.”
The plane flew on, and as Kazan had said, thirty minutes later, it touched down smoothly on an airfield on the outskirts of Homyel’ in the south of Belarus.
When they disembarked, there were two SUVs waiting for them. Cara looked around at the well-kept hangars, the beautifully maintained tarmac, and the high-security fencing, and concluded that the airfield was privately-owned. She was placed in the first SUV, and Kazan joined her. They were driven through the busy city where the SUVs stopped outside a large building built in the Socialist Classicism style after World War Two, on the banks of the River Sozh.
From there, Cara was taken from the vehicle and escorted through automatic, sliding-glass doors into a grand foyer. It was obviously a hotel but one with a difference. The establishment had armed guards in the public areas, carrying AK-104s.
The small group walked over to a reception counter, and Kazan was greeted by a middle-aged man wearing glasses. “Good morning, Mr. Kazan. Your usual room is available, sir.”
“Thank you, Ivan,” Kazan said.
“How many nights will you be with us this time, sir?”
“Just the one. We leave for the Ukraine tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Will you require any room service? Or …,” he looked at Cara. “… have you brought your own?”
Kazan smiled. “Send me Mischa. I have time for a little entertainment tonight. Maybe even dinner.”
“I’ll have your table set.”
“Thank you.”
Ivan passed over an electronic room key which Kazan placed in his pocket. Crossing the polished red granite floor toward a ban
k of two elevators, he noticed Cara taking in her surroundings and chuckled. “Do not worry about trying to escape. This hotel is unbelievably secure. All the armed guards are ex-Russian military. Ivan was once a Spetsnaz officer. The security system is one of the best, which is why I, and many others like me, stay here.”
“You mean assholes?”
Kazan shook his head. “All I’m trying to do is be civil to you. But you keep throwing it back into my face.”
“What’s civil about trafficking women?”
“Suit yourself.”
“My people will come for you. For me,” Cara hissed.
Kazan shrugged. “Maybe.”
“And Kane will kill you.”
A smile returned to his face. “Who is this Kane? Is he some kind of super-hero?”
When Cara answered, it wasn’t what he expected. “He’s no super-hero. He’s the “Reaper”.”
Antwerp Belgium
The SUV rocketed towards the airport where a plane waited. Through his comms, Kane heard Thurston say, “You should arrive in Homyel’ in two and a half to three hours. That’ll put the time at just after eighteen hundred. You’ll go in with as little noise as possible. Understood?”
“We’ll do our best, Ma’am,” Kane said, trying to reassure her. “What do we know about the hotel and Kazan?”
A breakthrough had come earlier in the afternoon when Swift managed to ascertain what had happened to Cara. Although he couldn’t work out who they were looking for. He reached out to Interpol who in turn went through several channels until a hit came back through British Military Intelligence.
The name BMI threw back at them was Aleksey Kazan. A well-known European people trafficker and arms dealer.
“Kazan usually travels with an entourage of four. All ex-military. He’s worth a lot of money thanks to his business. Last year, he sold two hundred million dollars’ worth of arms to the rebels in Sierra Leone for their little coup attempt. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He also has a pipeline across Europe through which he runs girls and then sells them by auction. Interpol and British Military Intelligence have heard whispers that there is an auction coming up, but they can’t be certain where it will be held.”
“Surely they would have some sort of indication of the location because of previous ones.”
“That’s just it, he moves them around. France, Germany, Lithuania. Never in the same place twice in a row.”
“So, we have to hope that they’re still at the hotel when we arrive,” Kane surmised.
“That’s about it,” Thurston said.
“OK. What can you tell us about the hotel?”
“That is something else. It was built just after the Second World War. But since then, it’s been updated. Slick should be able to get you past all the electronic stuff, but it’s the guards you’ll need to worry about. All are heavily-armed and very well-trained.”
“We sure don’t pick the easy ones, do we?”
“No,” Thurston agreed. “By the way, how are your team’s parachuting skills?”
Kane’s blood ran cold. He had a feeling that things were about to get a whole lot worse. “Why?”
“The only way to get you into the building is from the top. It’s only about ten floors up, but you’ll still have to hit it.”
Fuck!
“Are you still there, Reaper?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Look, I know it’s not ideal, but if you go in from below, you’ll be up against it from the start.”
“Just say we pull this off. What is our exfil plan?”
“There will be a dark blue BMW across the street from the hotel. The keys will be under the sun visor, and it will be unlocked. You get Cara, get in, and drive away.”
“What time do we jump?”
“Twenty-two hundred.”
“If we get there at eighteen hundred, and we jump at twenty-two hundred, what are we doing for the intervening four hours?”
“Circles. I’ll call you back before you go.”
Thurston signed off, and Kane let out a long sigh. “Fuck me.”
“What is it?” Brick asked from the driver’s seat.
“You don’t want to know.”
Homyel’ Belarus
The man’s complacency had cost him his life. He’d thought that Cara, being a woman, wasn’t a threat. He’d found out the hard way when his neck had snapped like a dry twig. It was a mistake he’d never make again.
Cara leaned over the corpse and removed the handgun from its shoulder holster. It was an MP- 443 Grach. She checked the loads and then made her way towards the door. Kazan had gone out somewhere, leaving her with only the one guard. Opening the door, she slipped out into the hallway. Looking around, Cara saw the security camera immediately, its light flashing red indicating that it was operating.
“No going back now,” she muttered to herself and began moving quickly along the luxurious carpet of the hallway toward the far stairs. Suddenly the stairwell door opened and a figure appeared. It was one of Kazan’s bodyguards.
“Hey!” he shouted and went for his sidearm.
Cara brought the Grach up and put two bullets in the man’s chest, moving toward him without hesitation as the sound of the gunshots rolled along the hallway with a deafening roar. She knew that the noise would have alerted someone and stepped over the fallen guard and into the stairwell.
They would be coming for her now, Cara was sure. The echo of voices and footsteps wafted up from below, and she waited until she could see them then leaned out into the void. The Grach bucked in Cara’s hands and, compared to the hallway, the sound was a hundred times worse. Without the acoustic properties of the carpet to absorb the sound, the bare concrete bounced the sound from wall to wall. Her ears rang, making her wince. All noise from below was drowned out. Her way down was blocked, so the only choice seemed to be going back through the hallway and into the room, then maybe climb over the balcony.
She opened the door and saw two men armed with AK-74s coming towards her. “Shit!” she cursed and slammed the door. Cara started up the stairs. It seemed to be the final option. The roof! And hope like hell there was a way down.
She took the stairs two at a time and soon reached the landing at the exit onto the roof. Cara tried the door and pushed. It swung open, and she rushed out onto the rooftop, glad to be out of the confinement of the stairwell. Apart from a couple of large air-conditioning units, the roof was bare.
Cara ran to the nearest ledge and peered over the side. Her head spun at the vertical drop. She stepped back and ran to another ledge. It was the same. So too the third and fourth.
Tears of frustration sprang into her eyes. There was no way down. Whirling about, she ran back towards the stairwell door and had just about reached it when it opened. Kazan, along with several armed men, stepped out onto the roof. By the look on his face, he wasn’t impressed with her antics.
“There is nowhere for you to go,” he told her. He pointed at the Grach. “Give me the gun.”
Cara hesitated. “If you give me the gun, I’m willing to overlook the fact that you have killed some of my men. If not, then I guess you can work out what will happen.”
With shoulders slumped in resignation, Cara dropped the Grach to the rooftop. Live to fight another day.
“Good. Now we are leaving.”
Surprise registered on Cara’s face. “Why?”
“It would seem that we are to have visitors, and I would rather not be here when they arrive.”
A flicker of hope crossed her face. “What visitors? Is it my team?”
“You don’t need to worry about that. All that should concern you is the auction the day after tomorrow. Now, let’s go.”
Team Reaper C-17
Somewhere Above Homyel’ Belarus
“Two minutes to jump!”
C-17 pilot Jack Skipper’s voice filled the headset fitted snugly over Kane’s ears. Upon hearing the call, he looked across at the loadmaster, Ken H
ellier, who confirmed the message with hand signals. Kane pressed the talk button for his comms and said, “Time to go, people.”
They all stood up and shuffled toward the rear of the plane. Each one was fully-clad in black; fatigues, parachutes and tactical vests. The ramp began to lower with a whir. All Kane could think about was the conversation he’d had with Thurston just thirty minutes ago which had opened with, “They know you’re coming.”
“Jesus H Christ, how?” Kane had breathed into his comms.
“A leak from Interpol. It’s plugged now, but we’re not sure how much they know.”
“That’s just fucking great. We can say goodbye to Cara. They will have moved her by now for sure.”
“We don’t know that. But even if she’s not, we may be able to get a lead on where the next auction is. I’ll let Slick loose and have him see what he can turn up. At the moment, all we’re seeing is a security team at a high level of readiness.”
“There goes our quiet infil.”
“Yes, I suggest you pack accordingly. But try not to let it get out of hand. The extract will still be the same.”
“Copy that.”
“I’ll be in touch before you jump.”
“Copy. Reaper One out.”
Now they were about to leap from the plane at ten thousand feet, and Thurston still hadn’t checked in.
“One minute!”
“Reaper One, this is Bravo, copy?”
“Copy, Bravo.”
“As you suspected, they moved Cara. Slick was able to back through the security feed. The good news is that she’s still alive.”
“Was he able to track them at all?”
“Negative. He should be able to find them eventually, but …”
“It could take a while,” Reaper finished for her.
“That’s affirmative.”
“Nothing like live intel,” Kane said.
“Roger that,” Thurston said. “It’s your call. The rooftop is clear, and once you touch down, Slick can take over the security feed and talk you through it if need be.”
