Chapter 24 #3
We studied the blueprints Mamá somehow got ahold of for us.
She didn’t ask why, and we didn’t ask how.
But she pulled through, and our team studied the entire layout for more than an hour.
Josue picked out the best places to put the explosives, so his team gets straight to work when he arrives from the neighboring building.
The minutes feel like hours, but they’re not.
Time ticks away faster than you’d think.
We’re at the thirty-minute mark, and we can’t spend any longer here.
No alarms have gone off, and the cops haven’t arrived.
But the longer we take, the greater the chance we’ll get caught.
Just as I’m about to order everyone out, Josue gives us the second go-ahead.
Alejandro, Joaquin, our guys, and I pour through the gates.
We sprint the quarter mile to our meetup spot.
The guards and other hostages are there, huddled together.
Some are crying. If I had more than a token conscience, I might feel badly for them, but I don’t.
I have more important things on my mind, like getting home to Liesel.
I do a quick headcount like a kindergarten teacher on a field trip. Everyone’s present and accounted for.
“Josué, ahora.” Josue, now.
I give the command, and five seconds later, the night sky erupts in flames like Muano Loa—the world’s largest active volcano.
Sparks of red, orange, and gold rocket upward with a cacophony of shattering glass and exploding bricks that hammers the eardrums despite the earplugs we all put in.
A quarter mile away, and the blasts still rattle your teeth.
There’s nothing salvageable. Not a single damn thing.
It would have been nice to acquire the companies, but there are plenty of others to add to our portfolios.
I give a mental shrug before I order one of my guys to toss a pair of scissors near the hostage group.
We already rounded up their cell phones and smart watches.
They won’t get those back, but if they can figure out how to snip each other’s bindings while their hands are cuffed behind their backs, then they’ll get free before emergency services arrive. We’ll be long gone.
We pile into the SUVs that are a necessary evil for transporting all of us and our gear.
They’re hardly inconspicuous, but they do the job.
We separate, and half of us head straight to the Kutsenkos’ chief German spy.
Alejandro leads the other half to the warehouse where the O’Rourkes keep their illegal inventory.
Sometimes, they send things through Frankfurt.
Other times, it goes through Munich or Berlin.
Most often it goes through smaller cities that are less obvious. We got lucky.
It’s a silent forty-five-minute car ride while we all catch our breath and cool off. It’s not just the balaclavas that overheat us. The bulletproof vests, Kevlar helmets, and the weight of our weapons adds up until it’s nearly stifling.
Better too hot than too dead.
I inhale deeply before the mask and helmet go back on. It took restraint not to wipe the sweat burning my eyes. If I did, I’d smear the paint. So fucking tempting.
Mind over matter.
It’s been drilled into me since I first started training with my uncles, brothers, and cousins at fourteen.
The half dozen men with Joaquin and me spread out.
We’re in a modest neighborhood that’s hardly memorable.
We know the Russian guy’s single. His wife left his ass with the kids about ten years ago.
He shouldn’t have been fucking his secretary.
So utterly cliché. The woman left him once he lost most of his money in the divorce. Sucks to be him.
“I wish Pablo was fucking here.”
With our earpieces in, Joaquin whispers to me on our secure channel. Our cousin’s the one who speaks Russian in the family. It would be fucking useful right now as we surround the property.
“We can always call him. He’s better than any app.”
“I suppose your German will do.”
My older brother elbows me and grins. I give him an internationally crude hand gesture.
When everyone’s in position—Joaquin to my right on the back patio—I give the signal. I swing the mini battering ram into the door, and the door bursts open. I toss the home invasion tool aside, and I storm inside.
We all keep low, crouching as we progress forward. It comes as no surprise when bullets sail over our heads as our target shoots first and hopes to ask questions later. He’s got real bullets, and this time, so do we. I pivot and aim into the living room, taking out his kneecap.
“Hor auf zu heulen wie ein kleines M?dchen, du Dreckskerl.” Stop crying like a little bitch, you piece of shit.
I lunge forward, far closer than he expected.
My fist strikes his left cheekbone, and his head snaps back.
If he were going to live to see tomorrow, he would wake up with whiplash.
Since that’s not happening, he’ll just have to survive the ensuing pain.
I drag him to the dining room chair Joaquin pulls out for him.
My brother holds our prisoner’s head in place, so he has no choice but to look at me.
I keep a healthy distance, so he can’t spit in my face.
I launch my interrogation in German. Joaquin can’t understand me, but we’ve played these roles so many times that we don’t need verbal cues to know how to work together.
“Why did Maks take Gunter Schlossberg?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You and your goons took Gunter Schlossberg from his office nearly a week ago. You sent his daughter body parts. Why?”
The guy tries to ignore me. I kick him in the shin of his wounded leg. He howls with pain.
“Don’t make me ask things more than once.”
I withdraw my knife from my pocket and embed it in the bullet hole in the guy’s leg.
It matches Joaquin’s knife that I know is tucked away in his right pocket.
We’ve carried ours since we each turned twelve.
It’s that fucked-up tradition among the Four Families.
We may have played sports together, but once each of us turned twelve, we got a knife.
We’d go from being teammates to enemies every week.
Now we’re still enemies and almost never teammates.
“I haven’t spoken to Maks in a couple weeks. I haven’t had a reason to.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t give you orders months ago. My patience wears thin.”
My brother grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks back as hard as he can. The Russian’s neck arches as he screeches in pain. I slam my fist into the guy’s nose. Blood gushes, and I give him another kick in the shin for good measure.
There’s something he isn’t telling us; however, doubt creeps into my mind that he doesn’t know anything about Gunter. He may know something about Liesel or me. I exchange a glance with Joaquin. I suspect he feels the same way.
“You have a couple of choices. You can speak now without us coercing you, or we can slowly hack you into pieces that could go down the garbage disposal without a problem. Which do you think is the better choice?”
The man chokes from the blood pooling in his mouth—shitty postnasal drip. It’s a good thing I’m standing to the side because he spits a wad of gunk before he speaks.
“Just kill me.”
“Oh, that’s not a choice. That’s definitely happening, so you don’t get to count that as an option. Either tell us what we want to know, or we’ll coerce you with a few friendly nudges.”
I put my knife to his left earlobe. Joaquin lets go of the Russian’s head and steps around the chair to stand parallel to me.
He fishes out his knife and flicks it open.
Before the man can suspect what’ll happen next, Joaquin has his arm turned and slices diagonally three times on the guy’s inner wrist. They aren’t deep enough to kill him, not even over time, but they are enough to make a mess.
“You can either tell me what we want to know, or you’ll die looking like Van Gogh.”
I use my knife to carve a chunk off his earlobe before I pry his mouth open.
“Do you want to eat your own flesh, or do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
True fear enters his eyes, and the defiance dwindles.
Stupidly, it still outweighs common sense.
I don’t think he believes I’d make him into a cannibal, certainly not one who would eat a chunk of his own flesh, but I’ve been known to do some fucked-up shit in my life.
There’s a first time for everything. I’m certain he’s figured out we’re los Diaz. He knows our reputation.
“I’d speak up because right now I can’t hear you.”
The only thing we hear are his howls of pain. I curl my lip in disgust.
“Stop being a pussy. This doesn’t even hurt that much. Not compared to what it’ll feel like if you keep refusing to admit what you know about Gunter Schlossberg.”
“I know nothing. I swear.”
My brother and I take turns as we work our captive over for the next fifteen minutes, but we’re just getting his denials.
Joaquin and I stand off to the side, letting him rest for moment.
When we decide the fucker’s break is over, I kick the guy in the huevos—eggs is a way more fitting term than balls or nuts. That definitely wakes him up.
I press the tip of my knife just below the man’s eyeball again.
This time I do it a lot harder. It’s enough for him to take me seriously.
Joaquin returns to his position behind the guy.
He puts his knife to the top of our captive’s hairline.
He angles the blade to make the Russian understand the threat.
I grab hold of his wrist, prepared to slice it like my brother did to the other one.
But for now, I don’t move the blade’s tip away from the man’s face.
“Maybe I should do exactly what you did to Gunter. Maybe I should hack off your entire ear and pop out your eyeball. Maybe—rather than slitting your wrists—my brother should just hack off your hand.”