Page 20 of Tormented Heir

Riley has opened the weapons safe, and the three men are picking and choosing what they want.

“Why not pay them?” Duke asks without turning around.

The men holding Nataliya have made a demand of a million dollars and our latest shipment. Jacob lied and told them that he’s gathering the money. It is buying us time to organize and orchestrate.

“Because there is no way they are letting her go alive, whether we pay them or not,” Jacob says.

“I concur,” I add. “They won’t. She’s seen them. Can identify them. Plus, for some of the men this is personal. They’ll take the money and the shipment and kill her.”

The call we are all waiting on finally comes, almost three hours later.

Jacob answers his phone, listening with a grim face. “Okay. Thank you for this. I am in your debt.” He hangs up and turns to us.

“That was Ilya. Nataliya is being held in a disused warehouse near the old Navy shipyards, close to Hunter’s Point.”

“Who has her?” I ask. “Specifically?”

“They are called Fobos.”

“Come again?” Duke asks.

“It’s a mid-level group who have been increasing their presence in the city. They fucked up one of our transports, so we returned the favor. Then they took out one of our guys, so we took out four of theirs. Thought that was it. We gave them a spanking and a warning and left it at that. This is their revenge.” Jacob rubs his eyes wearily.

“The enemy always gets a vote.” I sigh. It’s the old forgotten adage. One side acts and thinks it has closed the matter out, but the enemy has a say too. And the enemy might not behave in the way you either expect or desire. I don’t say anything in front of our guests, but Jacob taking out four of their men was a mistake. It was disproportionate, but not enough so to put the fear of God in them. You either go for an eye for an eye, or you go scorched earth. An in between measure is always going to risk retribution.

“I’m still stuck on the name,” Duke says.

“It’s a play on the Greek word for fear,” Riley says. “They’re a mix of Greek American, a few Cypriots, as well as our Russian friends. They were run by some kid from Athens, but he got shot. Not by us. Now, they’re run by a Russian kid. When I say kid, I mean wet behind the ears, and too young to really know the implications of what he’s doing. Think he’s only twenty-two. But some of the men in his group used to work with me.”

“Do we know how many are in the group, and how many are holding her?” I ask.

“There are around fifty in total, and we have eyes on at least thirty of them who are not in that warehouse. That leaves twenty unaccounted for, who most likely are in the warehouse,” Jacob says. “But, they might have hired some help too.”

“What’s the building she’s being held in?” I ask. “Do you have a visual?”

Jacob turns his tablet around and shows me on the street map where she is. I take a good look with Duke and Blade. It’s in the old Navy shipyard area. That space is generally being gentrified, but there are still no-go zones.

Where they have her is literally a block away from a new apartment development with gourmet vegan cafes and hipster coffee shops.

“We need to know exactly how many men they have inside that warehouse,” I say. “Is there anyone who can get us intel on that asap? We can’t guess at between two to twenty men.”

I’m as terrified as Jacob is for my little sister, but I’ve gone into that head space I enter when on a mission. I’m calculating, thinking, planning.

“Let me make more calls,” Jacob says.

Two hours later and I’m four buildings down from the warehouse, watching through my night vision goggles. Jacob got the intel, and we can only pray it’s correct. If so, this should be an easy extraction. There are ten men guarding the warehouse and Nataliya. My fear is that they’ve done something to her while holding her. They must know that taking her will bring holy hell raining down on them. They’re damned if they do and damned even if they don’t. So why wouldn’t they? I doubt they are honorable, decent men, or they wouldn’t have taken a kid in the first place.

The sound of a ship’s horn rings out forlorn in the dark night. The foghorn from the bridge follows on its heels.

Four men move around the perimeter of the building.

“Distracted,” Duke murmurs quietly.

He isn’t wrong. Two of them are smoking, one is playing around on his phone, and the fourth is staring out straight ahead. None of them seem particularly aware of their wider surroundings.

They are leanly built, except for the fourth, who is carrying some extra weight. I can see when they turn around that two of them have guns shoved into the waistband of their jeans. The handles poke out of the back and ruck up their shirts. That means at least two of them will have a delay between seeing a threat and reaching for and aiming their weapon. I can’t see the other two’s guns. Maybe they aren’t even armed, although I doubt it.

“Not one fucking semi-automatic or serious firepower amongst them, from what I can see,” Blade says. “This outside part is going to be a cakewalk.”

---