By the time I got out of the interrogation room, I knew it’d been way too long.
The bastards who had Athena would be gunning it out of LAX as soon as they’d grabbed her. If I looked back, I should have –
But I did not live in retrospect.
I left her, not by fucking choice, but because it was the best case scenario for her.
She was safest around a public area, where cameras were around. If she had gone with me into the interrogation room, there’d be less of a chance of eyes on her. Less eyes meant shit could go downhill fast and I’d have no way of getting to her. It took every ounce of my will power to leave her, but I didn’t decide on arbitraries.
Athena being captured was not arbitrary. It was a direct cause of my actions; my inability to protect her when it counted because I was blindsided. I didn’t foresee that the enemy had the plans ready to be engaged and once such plans were locked, it was too late for me to counterattack.
I strode out of the long hallway, passing the Authorized Access Only sign. There were no guards in sight, or if there were, they were probably called off by my DEA ‘friends’ who wanted to interrogate me in private for the least amount of blowback.
My jacket hid the dried blood that had splattered all over my shirt. I could care less about my appearance, but I didn’t want to stand out either. I passed an old couple who were looking at the departures/arrivals screen. The lady, who was holding on to her husband’s arm, asked, “Son, can you tell me what time Cathay Pacific from Singapore arrives? I forgot my glasses and my husband’s eyes are just as useless.”
I had to go, but I quickly glanced at the screen. “It says fourteen fifty – two fifty five, ma’am.”
“Thank you, my dear. Our daughter’s arriving and she’s bringing her fiancé whom she met in Asia and we’re so excited.” The older man who had a cane on his left arm, harrumphed, “Excited? Dolly, I don’t know what corn you’ve been eating but I sure as shit ain’t happy to hear that Mary is shacking up with a boy she’s met for three weeks.”
While I would have stayed for the conversation, I really had to go. Time was ticking, and it bugged the shit out of me that Liam hasn’t answered my texts. Was the phone signal that crappy here?
Excusing myself from the old couple who were now full-on fighting about the guy their daughter was bringing home, I pressed the green button on my phone.
Ring.
Riinggg.
Dammit.
On the fifth ring, Liam picked up.
“Hey. Two minutes at the United Airlines passenger drop-off.” It was his ops voice. We were both fueled by our military blood. The less words spoken, the faster we could achieve our objectives.
He must’ve scoped out the area because I was standing at the United Airlines checkpoint within a minute.
I recognized the car whizzing past traffic because it was mine and because the person driving it was a lunatic who I was only too happy to call my friend.
My car stopped inches away from the curb and I hopped into the passenger seat.
I spoke up as soon as Liam hit the gas, “Triangulate the area. They can’t be that far. Whoever took her had everything planned. They were waiting for us at arrivals. They’re a bunch of DEA crooks, deep in the pockets of El Padre. I should’ve seen it. Anticipated their moves. I can’t do squat about the past, but we gotta get her back, Liam. There’s no other alternative. We gotta get her back.”
The implication of what could happen to Athena didn’t need to be voiced. Liam and I – we’d seen the depravity of humans, the worst of the worst. We’d been thrown in the deserts of war, in the battlefields where ideologies were lost and the realities of the struggle for survival emerged. Nothing bonded brothers more than braving the horrors of war together. So I didn’t need to tell him that to the men who took Athena, she was merely a casualty. She meant nothing to them and because of that, they could pull the trigger on her without thinking of what a world without her might be like.
Liam rounded the corner and got on the 405 just as his phone started ringing.
He pushed the button and Tony was on the speakerphone.
“You got Webb?” Tony’s question was hurried.
“Yeah,” Liam responded, maneuvering the car to the left as the traffic started to build up on our right.
“I’m here, Tony. Any updates on where she’s at?” She is the only she that mattered.
“Hiya there, boss. Glad you’re out.” Tony sounded off, but I didn’t respond. Now was not the time to be jovial when my girl was somewhere out there, alone and helpless.
“Liam asked me to check the cameras ASAP and because of it, I’m able to tail the kidnappers. Apparently, L.A. hasn’t taken down all the cameras in the intersections because I’m watching these goons drive their SUV recklessly. I’m sending you the live feeds now….” I heard clicking noises and grunts, “Patching you in three, two, one…”
On cue, my phone started showing a live video of a Lincoln Navigator speeding through the 710 freeway. At this time, traffic was moderate so the CalTrans freeway cameras revealed that whoever was driving the vehicle was an expert L.A. driver and he was going to be a dead man soon.
My hands clenched my phone. No visuals of Athena could be seen. She was either drugged or bound and gagged in the back or both.
“Motherfuckers,” I hissed as I saw the SUV heading for the exit. “They’re heading to the shipyard. Tony, you got eyes on them?”
“Got it, boss.”
“We gotta head for the shipyard by the 710,” I said to Liam. “It’s going to be hell looking for them, but we can’t waste time.” Even with eyes on the SUV, once they were on foot, it would be harder to track them. There were hundreds of thousands of shipping containers in the yard and the longer we were in this fucked up traffic, the more difficult it would be to locate and extract Athena.
“I also have a tracking signal on the cellphone, boss.” Tony’s information gave me hope.
“Whose phone? Athena’s?”
“No boss. Her phone’s been turned off and it’s probably in the trash by now. I’m tracking one of the kidnapper’s signals.”
How the hell was he able to do that?
As if hearing the question in my mind, Tony elaborated. “My co-valedictorian at MIT – she asked me to critique how her latest invention will fare in the real-world scenario. Now’s the best time as any to see if it works.”
I saw Liam shaking his head, then finally breaking his silence, “She owes you a favor.”
Tony responded, “Nah. She gives the best blowies in the biz. I owe her more favors than she could count.”
Liam and I chuckled, it was good to have Tony on our team. There were many excellent IT’s in the country, but it was difficult to find one that you could be comfortable with. Tony, from the beginning, was easy-going yet serious. He was also looking for a new lease in life. I’d never asked him why, but he was excited about moving from gloomy Seattle to sunny San Diego. Last time I saw him he was sporting a darker tan and from the looks of it, the San Diego lifestyle agreed with him.
When I was a SEAL, I never went on missions alone. I always had a team. But as a commanding officer, I got the approving grunts when a mission was successful and the stoic silence when a mission failed. My team seldom failed and even when we did, we took it with a grain of salt, learned our lessons, and moved on.
“We can’t fail.” My voice hung in the air. “We can’t fail her.”
If we failed…for the first time in my life, I’d actually enjoy torturing every single scumbag who’d laid his hands on her and I’d make them plead for Hell.
“We won’t,” Liam assured me, driving to the far right side of the road, preparing to exit. “We’ll get her back, brother. We’ll get her in time.”
I nodded. If there was one person who understood the turmoil raging inside of me, it would be Liam. I didn’t do heart-to-heart talks, but without me saying a word, he could discern how much I valued her. I wasn’t a man of many words. Neither was my dad. When we cared for someone, we showed them rather than talked about it. Athena was pulling me out of the dark cave that I’d shoved myself in and if anyone could see changes in me, it would be Liam.
“Is the signal coming in strong, Tony?” If it was, then we had an eighty percent chance that Athena’s captors were less than three miles away.
“It’s holding, boss.” Tony’s immediate response came through my car’s speakers. “Liam, go through Atlantic. A semi just shit on a Tesla less than half a mile away from you. It hasn’t hit the airwaves yet.”
“Got it.”
“Tony, can you send me the video feeds from LAX? I need to be able to ID the car.”
“It’s a 2015 Lincoln Navigator, black, broken right tail light, big dent on the driver’s side door,” Tony said. “What else do you need, boss?”
“The security recordings, Tony.” I shouldn’t have had to repeat myself. “I need to see what they look like.”
Liam cut in, “Maybe that’s not necessary right now, brother.”
The hairs in the back of my neck started to rise. “What?”
Liam was maneuvering my car between a black sedan and a red Mini Cooper so that he could exit on Atlantic as Tony advised. Traffic was slowing now. Cars were getting wind of the accident up ahead.
“What are you talking about?” I gritted my teeth, my jaw started to get tight. They were trying to shield me from something in the feed. “Is there something I should know about? Aside from my girlfriend being kidnapped while she was under my protection, is there any-fucking-thing I need to know?”
It wasn’t fair to them but screw fairness.
Tony’s chimed in, “You got yourself a girlfriend, boss?”
I wasn’t even going to answer that. I hadn’t asked Athena yet, but the minute her lips touched mine and didn’t let go, she was my girlfriend. And she’d remain alive.
“Send me the feed, Tony.”
“Alright, alright. Just remember you asked, okay?”
In five seconds, my phone pinged and before I could click on play, Liam touched my shoulder. “We’ll get her back.”
I barely shook my head and pressed play.
The feed was coming from the east side of the arrivals area. Athena was standing with her back towards it. Even from this angle, I could see her tense stance as she looked down at her phone. From the time stamp, it was a two minutes away from when I went with the “DEA.” She stayed at the same spot, good girl, following what I’d whispered to her before I’d left. Another minute passed before two men approached her. Men who weren’t the men that El Padre had originally sent to tail her. No, these men were worse. They didn’t have the air of being new at the job. The way the two men walked and got close to Athena reminded me of how Liam and I would go about a mission. I couldn’t gauge their nationalities, since they wore sunglasses and hats and made a point to not look at the cameras. One of the men, the taller guy, held up something to Athena’s face and within seconds, the other man held onto her tightly while they quickly strode away from the area.
“They drugged her.” My insides chafed, clouding my mind. “They fucking drugged her.”
Liam ciphered, “She wouldn’t have gone willingly. You and I know this. She’d wait for you, brother. They couldn’t have her screaming and kicking while they took her so this was the easiest way to do it.”
My right hand itched to punch something, anything. My left hand wanted to smash everything into pieces. My brain wanted to tear into these motherfuckers who had laid a hand on her. And my body seethed with fury. “When we get there, grab Athena.”
“Turn left on Atlantic and right on 26th. That’s going to get you close enough to the signal. You’re going to have to go on foot so I can give you their exact location since May’s program is so precise, two feet can make a huge difference.”
“Got it,” Liam ascertained, he’d already exited the freeway and was now going by Tony’s instructions. “I’ll switch to earplugs once we’re out of the car.”
Tony had given us these black two-way talk earbuds that bypassed NSA communications. We would be on Bluetooth, but under radar from any other signal around us. Basically no one would be able to hear our conversations unless there was a drone hovering two feet away from us. Mind-boggling.
“I don’t have mine. I’ve got them in my bike,” I supplied. I’d figured I wouldn’t need them when I was driving my car and I had other ways of communicating with Tony. Now wasn’t the time to stew on that.
“It’s okay,” Tony guaranteed. “As long as one of you have it and you’re able to talk to each other, I could talk to you through this.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to will my short-term memory to put what I’d seen in the security feed on the back burner for now. “Thanks Tony.”
“Sure thing, boss.” He added, “About your girlfriend…I think she’s – “
“Don’t finish that sentence if you wanna live,” Liam warned, turning the car to the right and squeezing into the space between two cars.
“Hot,” Tony finished, chuckling. It was nice that he could find humor during an ops, but his eyes were toast once we were done with this.
“She is. I’ll give you a pass on this one, Tony.” I cautioned, “But the next time you say anything about my woman, I’m calling that May lady so she can take your job.”
“Gotcha.”
We got out of the car and started walking. I didn’t have ears on me, so I followed Liam. The streets were unfamiliar, but the feeling of hunting wasn’t. I’d been trained by the best and the best soldiers have trained under me. My veins were infused by adrenaline in three seconds, and in the same amount of time it was gone. Adrenaline was a good kickstarter, but it was never advantageous for ops. All it would do is lead you to make brash, stupid decisions.
Following Liam’s lead, we walked one more block and then we were at the entrance of the shipping yard where business was as usual. The main gate was open and two security personnel were talking to each other. We couldn’t bypass them and even if we could, the security cameras would notify the dock of our presence.
“You sure they’re inside, Tony?” Liam asked, his brown eyes furrowed. He was thinking the same thing I was – there was no way the Navigator would be able to pass through if they didn’t have security clearance which meant that the ports were also on the payroll of Felipe. It wasn’t hard to believe but maybe there was another explanation.
Liam raised a finger, Hold on.
Liam walked to the left and said, “The signal’s not in the shipping yard anymore, but they’re within a one-mile range.”
I gestured with my finger, “Around here?”
“Yeah.” He walked to the small abandoned shed on the side of the road, “Tony? Okay okay. Got it.”
Liam walked and I followed, we were now striding past the shipping yard and we were now entering the heart of the neighborhood where rickety gates and stray dogs surrounded us. I’d seen three of them already and we’d only walked a third of a mile.
On foot, we were faster. But on foot, we were vulnerable. We stood out.
We were two large, Caucasian-looking males with sunglasses on a cloudy day. Our shades served dual purpose – so we could see heat transmission when it was dark (it wasn’t) and for Tony to see what we were seeing and record it.
This neighborhood was densely populated with Latinos. It was evident in the signs outside of the houses and the children playing in the yards. We tried to blend in but we’d lost that battle when one of the teenage kids shouted, “Yo Gringo!” and his friends laughed.
“Are we on the right track?” I asked Liam whose mouth was moving, he was counting the number of houses we were passing by.
Just as he said, “Ten,” I saw it –
The 2015 Lincoln Navigator. Parked inconspicously inside the garage of a dilapidated house.
My fists clenched. The fighter in me struggling to be contained. My woman was in there. They drugged her.
My hands had robbed enemies of their breath, but I never enjoyed it. A part of my soul was hollowed out for them.
My guns had aimed and fired and done their purpose, but I still twitched when a man fell down.
But this time – my innocent detail was caught in the crossfire and they took her. She was innocuous, defenseless, and completely vulnerable and I put her in that situation.
I eyed the house and I didn’t see any security cameras. This must have been a last-minute contract to extract and drop off the target. Felipe had claws all over the world, but from what I’d learned about him, he didn’t usually hire Nordic thugs. No, he liked them to speak his language and be of the same Colombian heritage, if not, be of Central or Southern American.
Liam was now standing ten feet away, signaling that he saw movement.
I quickened my steps and rounded the south side where Liam was standing. A small door was slightly opened and Liam entered first.
Inside the house, we saw a small table that would collapse with a light nudge, two cans of Pepsi were smashed and a big bag of Cheetos was emptied.
That’s your last meal, motherfuckers.
The sound of the TV was loud from the kitchen, and my left hand itched to pull the trigger from the glock that I’d pulled out when we entered the property. I had to rein myself in, they would suffer from my hands, not from the end of a barrel.
Liam skirted the corner while I surveyed the surroundings for weapons. The dumb ones left their guns out of arms’ reach. The smarter ones never let their weapons disengaged from their firing arm.
I didn’t see any guns lying around.
I didn’t see the men lying around.
The Spanish music was the only sound that could be heard.
They knew we were here.
It wasn’t a funny feeling, it was a fact.
Men like the ones who took Athena were mercenaries. They could hear the change in the air from a mile away. When you’ve lived your life in stakeouts, you become accustomed to listening to every single thing that moved around you.
Liam lifted his hand, to the left.
I nodded and readied myself, there was nothing I wouldn’t give to have Athena back. These men had her at their mercy. They’d be at my mercy before the day ended.
One, two, three, four quick steps.
A Samsung flatscreen TV was atop a rolling grocery cart.
There weren’t any pictures on the walls, but red and blue crocheted blankets were thrown across a large couch.
A couch where two men were sitting at and playing cards, as if they were just lounging around and having a Poker Night.
I treaded carefully, it would take three moves to cut off the air from both of these guys. Liam would get to them faster since he was closer, but I wanted to get the satisfaction of hurting the men who drugged Athena.
Liam put his arms around the smaller guy’s head and kept him in a headlock while I moved to the side of the blonde and pressed the cold metal to his temple. “Move and your brains will be coating these rusty floors.”
Liam spoke, “Put your guns on the table.”
I’d expected a fight, but the Colt semi-automatics were thrown on the small tables, atop the cards.
“Your number three and four too. And your knives,” I said, there was no way in hell that they only carried two.
A Mateba autorevolver and a Remington RP 9 clattered on the table, and the taller guy, who I’d gauge to be in his early 30s said, “I don’t carry knives.”
“Bullshit.”
I moved so I could see his face, brown eyes that didn’t break contact with my stare when I called him out and a shifty smile that would make breaking his jaw more enjoyable, showed on his face. “I hate knives.”
The shorter black-haired man had the nerve to laugh. “Yeah. Sven doesn’t even use them to cut steak.”
“Shut up.” Liam nudged his gun to the head of the other guy.
“She’s not here.” Sven, the man who drugged Athena, remarked.
I pushed my gun to the soft area on the side of his head, knowing that it would be painful. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Sven replied, nonchalance in his demeanor. He wasn’t invested in this case. Hired guns only wanted the payout and this must have been a walk in the park for him. Pick up a defenseless girl at the airport. Drop her off somewhere. Wash your hands and boom, thousands of dollars later, move on to the next job.
“When did you get the orders?” Liam asked.
“This morning,” Sven, who was obviously the leader between the two, answered. “Listen I got no issues with you and the girl. We’re leaving in a few. Just waiting for our money and we gotta go.”
Interrogation wasn’t difficult when the subjects didn’t really care about the outcome. They didn’t care what happened to her. They weren’t ordered to keep her or torture her. And their carefree attitude towards kidnapping her just made me want to crack their skulls and snap their bones one by one. But we needed to get information from them. They were our only leads.
“How much did you get paid for picking her up?” I asked, my teeth grinding between breaths.
“Eighty five, starting offer…” the shorter guy supplied. “Easy money.”
I saw Liam’s jaw tighten, he was also getting affected by this. Athena was good to him, she was always laughing with him and now she was gone.
“Eighty five hundred?” I questioned. A couple of hours for skilled assassins like them wouldn’t make sense.
“We’re not cheap,” short dude snickered. “130K on dropoff.”
Fuck, shit. Fuck.
They wanted her. Badly. Even for a man like El Padre, 130K would be on the high end for snatching a girl.
“Where is she?” Liam’s voice held an edgy quality. He was losing patience.
“Look-” Sven’s smug expression was the last straw.
I smashed the butt of my gun to his head and delivered a punch that made him spit red as he screamed, “Fuck!”
My mind was now operating on primal need. The need to find her. And this questioning wasn’t leading to anywhere. I patched my phone to call Tony.
“Tony.”
“Yes boss?” Tony’s voice was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.
I put my phone up for Tony to take pictures of the two men who took Athena.
“Get everything on these two. Trace their locations for the last three months and tie in unsolved murders to them if they’re within the perimeters at the times of the murder.”
The shorter man cussed out loud. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Nana will be fucking pissed if I go behind bars.”
Sven said, “Be quiet. He’s bluffing.” The blood flowing from his mouth that was now staining his white shirt wasn’t tamping down anytime soon.
Tony echoed, “Two months ago, New York. Congressman Dunne was gunned down, no suspects were arrrested. Twelve days ago, Sarasota real estate magnet died of unnatural causes. No suspects. Airline cameras and Enterprise rental car cameras show these two within the area at the time of their deaths, boss.”
Sven sat up straighter. “We don’t know where she’s at.”
His assessing stare and the way he was trying to control the situation was hilarious. He thought I was joking. Did I look like a man who joked on a daily basis?
“But I know where they’re taking her.” The added statement implied that he was willing to barter.
I wasn’t going to give him shit. Salvatore would have a field day with him and his partner.
“Where?” I demanded, “I might just let you guys go.”
Sven said, “I know you won’t, but I’ll give you details on where they’re taking her if you give us five minutes head start.”
No way.
Liam was already alerting Salvatore. I didn’t have to confirm it, but from the way Liam kept looking at his phone, I knew Salvatore’s crew were either here or were already on their way.
“You’re not in the position to give orders but I’ll think about it,” I said, readying my fist to throw another punch in case he thought lying was one of my favorite traits.
Sven was quiet, probably weighing his options then he started talking, “When we arrived here, there were two guys ready to take her. I’m not very good in Spanish, but after the wire transfer was complete, I heard one of the guys say Miami.”
Miami? It would make sense since Felipe loved it there.
Liam inserted, “Why are you guys still here?”
The shorter dude answered, “They jacked up our car. Before those hoodlums left, I think they did something to our car so we’re waiting for one of my friends to pick us up.”
Wasn’t this a comedy? If Athena wasn’t missing, I’d find this hilarious somehow.
But not right now.
“Did you hear anything else?” I inquired. They weren’t involved in the whole El Padre scheme of things, but they were still hired killers and I couldn’t let them loose. “Do you have any connection with them now?”
“No. Everything was a one-time transaction. Through texts.” Sven spouted off his phone number while wiping the side of his face with his shirt. The bleeding had now slowed. “Are we allowed to go?”
“Tony, you got that?” I asked Tony. He’d be tracing those texts and forage any intel from them.
Liam gestured, his fingers circling in the air, Salvatore was here. As much as I wanted to deliver justice for Athena, these men were at the bottom of the totem pole. But they still saw her as an ATM and I couldn’t live with that.
“You can go do your shit in the bathroom,” I said, my mind was already working on how to get to Miami. I doubt that they’re anywhere near Miami right now if they didn’t take a plane. The roads would be our best chance to get her back.
Sven’s head bobbed, “Yeah?”
“After that, you gotta deal with the consquences of all the crimes that you’ve committed. It’s time to pay up,” Liam said, as he finished tying the hands of the shorter guy with a small blanket. The men weren’t going to be able to escape.
The house was surrounded by the FBI.
I hoped Salvatore remembered these high-profile captures we’d done for him because I needed him to be on my side when shit hit the ceiling and splattered the walls of what was morally right and wrong.
For Athena, I would cross over to the side where everything was murky and gray, where it wasn’t a choice to be good or bad.
I’d been raised to do what was right and find the justice in it.
Even when it came to Caterina, I chose what was best for my job and my country even when my heart was left in splinters.
But for Athena…I would break all the rules.
To get to her.
To have her back in my arms.
Because I loved her…that much.