Page 1 of Captured By the Pakhan

Chapter 1

Raven

Route 9N, Upstate New York, 12:41 AM

"I'm just saying it's a hell of a lot of trouble for a photograph."

Reyes has been chewing on that point for the past eleven miles. I let him get to the end of the sentence before I answer, a man who's been talking that long usually runs out of road on his own.

"It's not a photograph. It's a face." I don't look up from the tablet. " One that we don’t know right now. Right now, we've got four attacks over the past eleven months, and nothing to put in front of a judge but a nickname. You get me a face, I get you a name. We get a name, I can get you everything he's ever signed right down to his first drivers permit."

"And what if the intel is wrong? What if this isn’t the right place?"

"Then we search the entirety of that house –quietly, quickly– and find nothing worth finding."

The truck hits a seam in the asphalt and everybody's teeth click as we’re jolted against gravity. There are six of us crammed in the back, incognito is the name of the game tonight, black clothes from head-to-toe, bullet proof vests overtop. Every one of us sweating beneath the thick composit of the vests because the heater's stuck on.

Foster's voice comes through the earpiece from the vehicle following behind. "Twenty-two minutes out."

"Copy that."

I thumb the tablet awake again and put the map up where they can all see it. "Let’s look at what we know one more time. In Baltimore, October of last year his group hit a container yard, nothing was taken, four guards were found dead, all of them on somebody’s payroll. In Newark in February, similar trend. Then the Kowalczyk plant in March, and then Pittsburgh eight weeks ago. Four hits, four cities, no territory claimed, no tribute demanded, nobody standing up afterward to say that was us. Just bodies dropped and left to be found without a calling card."

"Which is the part that doesn't make any sense," Perry says. “Why bother?”

“Mercy killings?”

“Retribution perhaps.”

Several of the men spout off various theories, and I wait for them to settle before I continue.

"That's the same part that makes it interesting." I zoom the map out until all four pins fit on one screen and the shape of the locations stops being four dots showing them the way they line-up. "You hit a rival to take his corner. You hit a port to control moving product through it. But nobody hits four cities in four states and then goes home."

"Unless he's not taking corners."

My thoughts exactly. I look up at Perry, he’s twenty-nine and I've had him assigned to me for six weeks and each week I see a little more potential.

"Unless he's not taking corners," I agree.

Louis snorts from the bench across from me. He's got his balaclava rolled up on his forehead like a fisherman's cap, a bowing knife in his hand, he's been cleaning the blade for the last ten minutes. An anxiety behavior pre-infultration I assume.

"Or he's a Russian with a grudge like any other, and we're building him a personality because it's more fun than simply doing paperwork."

"Then he's a Russian with a grudge,” I chide. “Either way, I'd still like to know his face. Serial murder is still a crime in this country."

"The Hellhound." Louis says, chewing on the name the way you'd say a kid's nickname. "Somebody had to have made that up in a holding cell bidding for a plea deal."

"Ya well, you can bet that somebody didn't come home from work," I say. "So either it's nothing, or it's the only true thing we’ve ever been told about this guy. Either way we're going to find out, and I'd rather find out with my mouth shut, unseen, and unheard if you chatter boxes don’t mind."

The stale tone does exactly what I want it to. Reyes looks at his boots. Louis goes back to the knife, Perry examines his hands, and the rest of the truck goes quiet enough that I can hear the tires change pitch when we come off the state highway onto the side streets.

I've had this team for six weeks. Four of them were assigned to me, which is a polite way of saying somebody upstairs looked at my roster and deemed it necessary to add to it. Two of them, Foster and Perry, I'd take anywhere. The other four spend a lot of energy on the arithmetic of my rank versus my gender, and at this point I’ve stopped spending any energy at all on theirs.

My mentor's motto runs through my head for the hundredth time. ‘You get what you get. You run what you're given.’

"Comms quiet from the fence line," I say. "Channel two, callsigns and directives only. Perry, you're on the box. Reyes and Ortiz clear the ground floor ahead of the rest, Louis and Boyd take the east wing, I’ll take the office and the upper floor. Nobody opens a drawer they don’t put back exactly as it was. Nobody moves a chair. If it's got a lens on it, assume it's live even after Perry says it isn't. Be cautious, be vigilant."

"And if somebody's home?" Ortiz asks.