Dmitry was the first off the first plane with his team following behind him. Anatoly arrived on the second plane and Gabriel on the third. Before they could even get their feet on the ground they were loaded into Land Rovers and headed to the address on the paper that Langston had sent.
Dmitry was quiet on the drive over. In the passenger seat of the truck, he watched the coastal towns as he zipped through them. Clear blue skies, tropical winds, clueless tourists, and seaside homes filled the scenery, but it was all just one big blur. He could only think of one thing and that was his daughter. With every mile that they drove closer into the city, his anxiousness grew. They had a two-hour window on Balthazar, enough time to get to him before he even prepared to make the call, enough time to catch him with his pants down.
The large convoy of trucks filled with men was followed and lead by men on bikes who ripped through the roads in unison, all in sync with the plan. Everyone knew that despite Dmitry’s earlier promise to Langston things were going live in a little over a half an hour.
As they entered the province where the house holding his daughter was, people walking on the sides of the streets or driving on the road looked on at the large convoy in curiosity. It looked like a small army moving through the city, like inevitable trouble was approaching.
“
We’re entering the hot zone. What’s your location?” Liv asked as he talked into his radio and drove the truck carrying Dmitry and three other men in the back.
“
We are approaching in ten,” the man on the radio answered back.
“
Is that our support in the water?” Dmitry asked.
“
Yes, sir. The go fast boats were able to get there a little faster than us,” Liv said, checking his rearview mirrors to make sure his men were still behind him.
“
Good. I want to make sure that they are out of the boats, in the water and up on that beach behind his villa before we arrive,” Dmitry said, checking his watch. They were making good time.
“
Sir, I would still recommend that you allow us to secure the area before you enter,” Liv said, looking over at his boss.
Dmitry pulled down his aviator shades and looked at Liv with a narrowed gaze. “My daughter doesn’t have anyone to secure her. Now if she can stand to be with that man for a week alone at five years old, then I don’t think that I need a team to secure the perimeter before I come on site,” he said, making his point.
“
Yes, sir,” Liv said, pushing his foot down on the accelerator.
As they passed a couple of police cars, the officers pulled over to the side of the road and let the fleet pass uninterrupted. Dmitry had made a call to his contacts prior to leaving Prague to let them know that he was coming to their country to get his daughter, and Langston had called from Langley and asked for cooperation from the locals. Both requests had been received well and officers in the vicinity busied themselves with things to do on the opposite side of town. Balthazar’s community was going to be a ghost town for the next hour. It would be more than enough time to complete the op.
***
Balthazar hung up the phone and circled the name on the list. Even without Upheil, he had managed to secure a buyer for Anya. All he had to do was get the money from Dmitry, confuse the drop and steal the girl in order to resale her to a very interesting gentleman in Cape Town, not far from his home in South Africa. It would be a perfect way to make a few more million on the girl without going too far out of his way. Standing up from the table, he walked over to Anya who was still huddled up in the corner of the communication’s room and gave her another bag of chips.
“
Eat up,” he said, throwing the food on the ground by her foot. “Today is your lucky day. I found you a new daddy.”
Anya looked up confused. Instantly, her mouth flew open and tears flooded her big blue eyes. “I don’t want a new daddy,” she cried. “I want my daddy. You said if he paid then I could go home.”
“
Well, this will just have to do,” he said with a smirk. “We can’t always get what we want.”
Anya began to sob inconsolably as she rocked in the corner. Sniffling, she wiped her snot and tears on her arm and held her teddy bear close to her chest. “I want my daddy,” she cried. “Please!”
“
Shut your fucking mouth!” Balthazar said, hitting the table. “I assure you that your little antics will have to stop when you get to your new home. Otherwise, there is no telling what will happen to you. Why the boogey man just might eat you right up, swallow you whole,” he said, narrowing his beady eyes on her. Pushing his glasses up his crooked nose, he pushed up his shirt sleeve and checked his watch. It was time to call Sven and tell him to get ready.
Walking out of the room, he went to a lock box and retrieved an untraceable drop phone to make the call. He dialed the number and poured himself a cup of coffee while he ran over his note for the call to Dmitry that would take place in just a couple of hours.
He had figured out a masterful plan to get half the money wired to a ghost account he used for the company. He would simply withdraw the money and put it into another ghost account until he got to South Africa where he would make a full withdrawal. The other half of the money would be in cash when Dmitry came to pick up Anya. He would have him leave the truck with the cash at the park about ten minutes from his house and then drive ten minutes in the opposite direction to the point that he would tell him the girl would be. However, when he got there, he would find that the girl waiting on him was not his daughter at all, but a lookalike he had managed to steal a week before the abduction.
As far as the cash was concerned, he would have one of his men go through a tunnel that cut through a mountains. Certain that Dmitry would have someone trailing the truck to get the money back, when they entered into the tunnel, Dmitry’s men would not be ready for four look-alike trucks to provide a diversion. And when the trucks came out they would all be going in different directions. Dmitry’s men would have no choice but to follow one or all of the trucks depending on how many men he had trailing it. However, the real truck would not leave the tunnel. During the diversion, it would go into a service worker’s area and stop to be unloaded by some of his other men – one of which would be him.
After that he could hightail it back to the house, pick up the girl, get on the plane and head to South Africa to make his final sell before he and Sven made their last preparations to head to start their new life in the Dubai. The plan would be tricky but if pulled off, there would be no trace of him anywhere.
It had been three minutes and the phone rang without picking up at his house in Geneva. Hanging up, he quickly dialed again. “Sven, now is not the time for you to be out shopping. I told you not to leave the fucking house,” he said, when he got the voicemail. “I’ll call back in ten minutes. If you don’t answer soon, you’ll be looking for a new life partner.” Hanging up the phone, he slammed it on the counter and cursed under his breath. “Fucking Germans,” he said, turning back around to look over the talking points again.
***
A guard on the edge of the property towards the south perimeter by the beach stood over the lookout smoking a cigarette and enjoying the view. The calm waters of the Mediterranean Sea had him in a trance and all he wanted to do at the moment was go and take a swim. He watched a boat with a huge yellow sail slowly glide by as he flipped through his cell phone and sent a text to his girlfriend, whom he hadn’t seen in over a week because he had taken this gig. It had been a high-stress situation since the first extraction but since Manon had been clipped things were calming down for everyone. Besides, there was no need for him to be on high alert off a fucking cliff by a beach. And Balthazar wasn’t even going to make the call for the next two hours. He had plenty of time to relax before things kicked into high gear.
Moving the strap of his weapon on his arm, he flicked his butt over the ledge and bent down to tie his shoe. As he was about to stand up, he heard a strange noise below. Quickly standing up, he pointed his gun and braced his foot to look over the ledge, but just as he did so, someone caught his foot and pulled him over. Down the cliff, he fell over twenty feet passing frog men coming up the side in wet suits and guns. His body hit the ground with a thud, breaking his neck and cracking his spine.
“Foxtrot to Tango, amphibious has arrived,” the man said into the radio as he and his team scaled up the ledge to the back of the villa.
“Copy that,” Liv said, nodding at Dmitry.
As quickly as they could move, the fifteen trucks of men pulled down the street that Anya was being held on flanking the house on both sides. Men on the bikes drove quickly up on the property while the men in the trucks jumped out, weapons pointed and immediately broke off into small units and surrounded the perimeter of the villa.
Dmitry was one of the first men out. Walking right up to the door, he pulled his breeching shot gun off his back and blew the lock off. Kicking the door off the hinges, he and his men stormed inside.
***
Balthazar put down his coffee mug and grabbed his paper. Clueless to what was happening around him, he was about to head back into the make shift communications room when one of his men came barreling into the kitchen.
“We’re under attack!” was all that the man could get out before the house was stormed.
Balthazar quickly ducked down as his men ran passed him. Immediately, gunshots rang out. The sound of semi-automatic and automatic weapons exchanging fire around the house deafened him as he made his way to Anya, who was screaming and crying in the room next to him. He dove into the room and locked the door, grabbing the girl to use as a shield.
He could hear the distinct sound of bodies dropping right outside of the door. Russian voices speaking in Russian dialects only moved through the house. Bullets rang through the air and into the walls around him. He snatched the girl up by her arm. Putting the gun to Anya’s head, he looked around for an escape route, but the room that he was in had no windows, no access to the attic and no doors to the adjacent room.
Grabbing the AK-47 beside the table, he pointed it up in the air and began to shoot in circles up at the ceiling until enough of it collapsed for him to get up into the clearing. He quickly pulled over the desk he had used to make the calls and stood up on it, throwing Anya up in the hole first and then pulling himself up into the attic.
Dmitry, Anatoly and Liv cleared each room, one by one, until they got to the communications room.
“She has to be in there,” Dmitry said, knocking on the wall. “Bullets will go right through. No one shoot.” Bracing himself on one leg, he gave a swift powerful kick to the door, knocking it off its hinges. The desk blocked the way in, but he was able to stick his head into the room. No one was in there. Growling, he pushed the door in until it broke apart and then he pushed the desk out of the way.
Liv looked up and quietly pointed at the gaping ceiling. “He’s in the attic,” Liv whispered to Dmitry.
Dmitry looked up only a few feet above him and grabbed the table. With no more than a step, he was up in the hole with his weapon. He had turned the light on at the end of the scope and used it to look around in the darkness. He could see nothing.
“He’s got to be up there,” Liv whispered up to Dmitry.
“So does she,” Dmitry said pissed. Braving the possibility of bullets whizzing his way, he slung his weapon over his back and pulled his body up in the hole, breaking more boards as he forced his large frame up in the rafters.
“It won’t support his weight,” Liv said as Anatoly walked into the room.
Anatoly looked up in the hole and jumped up on the table to join his father. “Secure the perimeter, find Manon, kill everyone else running around here and get ready for extraction,” he said before he disappeared up into the attic.
Liv got on the radio. “Has anyone found Manon?”
“Affirmative,” one of Dmitry’s men said, who was out in the garage. “She’s dead sir.”
“I told you not to harm her!” Liv screamed into the radio.
“And we didn’t, sir. This bitch was dead before we got here. Rigor mortis has already set in,” the man said, bending down over the woman. He looked at the entry wound to her frontal lobe and turned his nose up. “She was shot in the head. It’s not pretty.”
Liv shook his head and cursed. “Fuck,” he said, taking his hand off the radio. “Fine,” he told the man quickly. “Bag her and load her up. We have to take her with us. Dmitry’s orders.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said standing up. He looked around the garage and pointed at one of his men. “We don’t have any body bags, so grab that tarp over there. We’ll roll her up in that.”