CHAPTER TWENTY
Tuesday, June 27
Hank stood on the patio of the building that was adjacent to Firtash’s home. Checking his watch, he saw that it was two in the morning and they had fifteen minutes before they were going to insert themselves onto the roof.
By all accounts, Firtash had brokered some kind of exchange deal with Belikov that involved Stazi being released to him in exchange for use of his plane and possibly the warehouse. The intel that they’d picked up from his office had enlightened them on what Belikov was looking for and they’d given it to Sam the moment it came in. It was up to him and his team do with it as they saw fit.
The only thing he really cared about was that the man who’d taken Stazi off the street was arrested and charged. It wasn’t going to change the landscape of criminal activity in the city of Chicago, but it could take one more thug off the street. The only real thing that would cause a ripple in what was currently happening was taking Sergey into custody and dismantling his crew, and that was up to Sam and his team.
If they did succeed, it would give everyone a break before the next crew came in. Nature abhorred a vacuum and someone would eventually come in and take over, but having the Bratva off the streets would certainly give Sam and his team a moment to take a breath. Which sometimes was all that was needed in a never-ending battle. He knew that better than most because he’d been in a few over the years.
Checking his tablet, Hank made sure that his men were in place. He was going to run a line from his current location to the patio of Firtash’s home and make his way over the moment that Lucky took down his alarm system. Once he’d made it to the patio, he was going to enter the home through the atrium on the top level. At the same time, both Maddox and Justin were going to enter through the front garden of the home by rappelling down from the building on the east side. Guards were usually stationed on the first level and they needed to be subdued so as not to alert Dmitry. By all accounts, once Stazi had entered the home, Firtash had taken her directly into an interior room on the second floor, which they assumed was the safe room.
Why he’d chosen to do that as opposed to allowing her to stay in one of the guest rooms was a mystery that they hadn’t solved yet. As far as he was concerned, Firtash had snapped and he was going to treat the man and the situation accordingly.
Maybe having Stazi used as a bargaining chip had done something to his tenuous hold on reality. Who knew? Quite frankly, Hank wasn’t going to get an answer in time for it to make a difference. As far as he was concerned, he was dealing with a hostile force and would act accordingly.
Hundreds of snatch and grabs over his career had prepared him for this moment and as long as he didn’t get up in his head about it, he would have Stazi out of there within the hour.
Which was his plan. He’d boxed his emotions the moment he left the SAI offices and knew Lucky and the other team members had done the same thing. It was the only way to succeed and the only option.
Looking through his scope, he made sure there was no movement on the exterior of the home. It appeared the guards hadn’t changed their routine despite Stazi’s presence in the home. Which didn’t make a lot of sense to him because they knew she was engaged. Somewhere in their pea brains, they had to know that he was going to come after her at some point, and why they hadn’t planned for that eventuality was fucking crazy.
Maybe they were operating in an alternate universe that didn’t concern itself with realities outside what their boss had told them about. Clearly, being a soldier in the Bratva meant you never questioned orders.
Which is something he’d seen a lot of during his time spent downrange, and honestly, he’d given up understanding it long ago. Along with martyrs and militants who put women and children into war.
Running his hands over his kit, he mentally listed the supplies he’d packed before they left SAI. In his first few years on the Teams, he been the lead breacher for the platoons he’d been on and was considered an expert on explosives. He’d always kept up with the latest developments and knew what he had in his vest could blow the door on even the most advanced safe rooms. They hadn’t been able to get any specs on what Firtash had put into his home, but they’d assumed they were going to be dealing with the standard structure.
Worst case, the walls were reinforced with sheets of steel, Kevlar, or bullet-resistant fiberglass. If they encountered it, the team was ready. If there was an escape shaft, they hadn’t detected it, but that didn’t mean a thing. His time in the sandbox had taught him all about tunnels, so he never completely counted out the possibility of them existing. The assumption was that the room was constructed with a wood frame structure. Nothing in the plans indicated that there had been substantial structural reinforcement, so what was in front of them was probably easy.
In the end, it didn’t matter because nothing was going to stand between him and Stazi.
One of the most important things they had in their favor was that Firtash didn’t want to see her harmed. By all accounts, there was no reason to believe they were going to walk into a situation where she had a gun to her head and they were going to have to make a kill shot to separate her from her captor.
Truth was, in their world, this was as easy as ops got, but that didn’t mean things couldn’t go sideways in a blink of an eye. Either way, he was prepared.
***
“Alarm system disabled,” Lucky said into their mics.
“Two minutes to final pass of drone,” Brandon added.
Hank confirmed the security of his lead line while Brandon made a final check of the heat signatures in the home. The drone would fly completely around the home, capturing both photographic images and thermal images. They would then be fed to the team’s tablets.
While he waited for the images to show up, he looked up into the inky-black sky and thought about the conversation he’d had with Stazi as they’d driven to work. It was one of those mundane conversations that couples had about plans for the weekend and what they were going to do for dinner.
Nothing earth-shattering. But heartbreaking if he couldn’t manage a thousand more. Every day they were together strengthened the fabric of their relationship and bound them together. And he wanted it to keep happening until they couldn’t imagine a day apart. That’s how intimately he wanted their lives interwoven.
A humid breeze brushed across his face and for a second he swore he picked up the scent of Stazi. Lowering his head, he closed his eyes and let the memory of her lemony scent surround him. “I’m coming, Staz. Hold on for a bit longer,” Hearing a low beep in his mic, he looked down at his tablet and saw the images that Brandon’s drone was capturing. They had three large heat signatures on the first floor and none on the second or third. Which fit with their assumption that Dmitry had taken Stazi into the safe room. Heat-signatures often didn’t read through the walls of a safe room, so it wasn’t an immediate concern that nothing was detected.
He studied each image as it came up and saw nothing that was going to change their plan. “Let’s do this,” Hank commanded quietly.
“Roger that,” Jason and Maddox replied simultaneously.
They were all going to rappel in and enter the home roughly at the same time, so the occupants wouldn’t have time to warn one another of the invasion. Letting the slack out of his rope, Hank stood on the ledge and pushed away. Making it within a foot of his insertion point, he repeated the process and swung his body wide so he could land on the roof of Firtash’s home. Missing the first time, he swung back to the wall, did it again, and arced wider, allowing him to create enough velocity that he swung perfectly and landed quietly on the roof. After untying the rope from his waist, he coiled it and set it next to the skylight. All he had to do now was free-climb a couple of feet down to the atrium and find a way in.
Looking over the side of the home, he confirmed he was in the right place and shimmied off the roof and slowly down the side until his feet hit the glass roof. He moved carefully along the steel frame and searched for the best place to cut an opening.
The wind picked up and he felt it cool his sweat-soaked body. He heard a crack and knew he had to find a way in before his two-hundred-plus weight cracked the glass. Dropping his night-vision goggles, he saw that the lower panels were open and said a silent thank-you to whoever was responsible. He flattened himself against the roof, slowly slid down the angle, and caught his feet in the open window. Once he had a foothold, he moved himself as carefully as he could inside and dropped to his feet.
After tightening his kit, he lifted his goggles off and noticed some ambient light coming from the hallway. He opened the sliding glass door that separated the home from the greenhouse and walked inside. There were sounds of a skirmish and Hank knew his men were taking care of Firtash’s bodyguards. He drew his gun and moved down the stairs toward the second floor. They were all to meet there and then figure out a way to either open the panic room or get Dmitry to release Stazi on his own.
Because they didn’t know his current mental state, they couldn’t predict how he was going to act when he discovered they were there to take Stazi. He hit the bottom of the stairs and saw Maddox and Jason standing back-to-back. “Clear?” Hank asked quietly.
“No one on the second floor,” Jason responded. “We’re assuming the entrance to the safe room is behind a set of bookcases in the master bedroom. Based on the drawing of the home, it’s the only place that it could be.”
“Are you picking up any signals?” Hank asked into his mic.
“Nothing,” Lucky responded. “I have one of my people hacking into the database of the phone company to see if we can come up with a number for the landline that we believe is inside the room. The records of the home indicate a fifth number listed for the address and we’re assuming it’s for the phone inside the safe room.”
“Let’s also assume he’s got video and knows we’re here,” Hank said as he ran his hand along the bookcases.
“Once we see what kind of door we’re dealing with, I’ll know what I have to blow it open with,” Maddox said as he began taking things out of his vest.
“We may have to torch the lock if we’re dealing with a Kevlar lining. The last thing we want to do is have the blast move inside the room,” Justin said as he kept watch.
Hank felt a handle and pressed it. The case moved. Slipping his hands in between the shelves, he moved his arms in opposite directions and pushed the case apart to reveal the door of the safe room. “Any luck on the number?” Hank said into his mic.
“Getting close,” Lucky responded. “Hold on for a minute. We’re almost there.”
Running his hand along the steel door, Hank spoke quietly. “Almost there, honey. We’ll have you out before you know it.”
He checked his watch and shook his head. “Let’s go in. It’s been long enough and we need to get her out of there.”
“Go ahead,” Lucky said into her mic. “We tried the fifth number that was listed for the house and no one answered.”
“Brandon, send the drone up for another pass over the street and house. We don’t want any surprises while we get her out of here.”
“Sending it up,” Brandon confirmed. “I have the front door secured and we have no movement on the streets.”
“Roger that,” Hank responded. “Maddox, you want to do it, or should I?”
“I’ll do it, boss. You want your hands free so you can get her out of there as soon as you can.”
“Roger that,” Hank responded.
Maddox took his C4 putty out and started pressing a strip along the edge of the door. “This should be enough of a blast to open the door, but not enough to break all the glass windows on the other side of the house.”
“Yeah, let’s not have CPD crawling up our asses while we’re trying to exfil,” Jason said as he checked the images coming from the drone.
Applying a fuse, Maddox gave both men a smile. “Stand clear.”
Hank took a step back along with Jason and waited while Maddox lit the fuse. All three men stood a foot away from the door and waited for the blast. The next thirty seconds were going to tell them if they’d gotten their intel correct and Stazi was, in fact, behind the doors.
The sound of the blast filled the room as the men bent their heads down. When the smoke cleared, they stepped up and discovered the door was blown off its hinges enough that they could pry it open. Working together, they pulled the door away from the frame and stepped inside the room.
Pushing ahead of his men, Hank walked toward Stazi, who was lying in the corner of the room. “Honey, we came to take you home.” As he got closer, he saw that her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving. “Fuck,” he huffed out. Instantly on his knees, he placed his finger on her neck and prayed he was going to find a pulse. He held his breath and waited to feel her blood pulse. “Thank God.” It was there, faint and steady. “They must’ve drugged her; Jason, come and take a look.” The guy was a hell of a medic and having him double check her stats would make him feel better.
Jason lifted Stazi’s eyelids one at a time. “Yeah, they gave her something.” He raised her arm and counted quietly. “Let’s get her checked out and make sure her heart is okay. I don’t like the skipped beats.”
Hank lifted her gently and held her close against his chest. Looking down into her face, he felt his own heart skip several times. Where the hell was Firtash and why did he lock Stazi in this room by herself after he drugged her up? “Let Brandon know we’re coming through the front door and heading to the hospital.”
“Roger that,” Jason replied.
“What the hell?” Maddox said as he kicked a carpet away from the floor. He bent down, pushed his hand against a large square of flooring, and watched it slide open. “Firtash must’ve left through here. It’s a staircase leading to a tunnel.”
“You guys check it out while Brandon drives us over to the hospital,” Hank said as he moved out of the room. As much as he wanted to find Firtash and question him, he had something far more important to do and that was making sure Stazi was going to be okay.
As he walked down the stairs to meet Brandon at the front door, he formed a plan for what he was going to do to Firtash the moment he got his hands on him.
All the danger that Stazi had been in lay squarely in his hands and that wasn’t something he was going to let go because, despite all the precautions he’d put in place, she was still harmed. Kissing her head, he inhaled her scent and felt his emotions clog his throat. Tightening his hold, he strode through the front door and decided he was going to make whoever was responsible for harming Stazi pay.