7. The Port Recon #2
“I’ll put Dimitry above the container,” I say. “Binoculars and rifle. Nobody’s getting near those doors without him knowing.”
Nikolai doesn’t sit. “The patrol near the dock office is irregular, but not random. They adjust around trucks, not people.”
“Meaning?”
“Cargo movement gives them cover. If women are moved, it will happen when a legitimate truck is already making noise.”
That fits too well.
Janice marks the note beside Solace’s timeline. “Between 0030 and 0200.”
“Likely,” Nikolai says.
Victor’s gaze shifts toward the truck movements Grayson has layered over the port map. “Then let’s not use their window.”
I look at the screen. “Meaning?”
“Meaning Grayson needs to find us a better one. Earlier. Something with legitimate truck noise, but before Meridian starts moving women.”
Grayson leans closer to his screen. “Give me ten minutes and a caffeine-based personality adjustment.”
Felicity’s voice follows, dry and immediate. “He means he’s already looking.”
On the marina feed, Crew’s voice comes through, muffled as he works. “Fuel reserve’s better than expected. Main tanks full, auxiliary tank half. I’m checking battery draw now.”
“Keep talking,” I tell him.
“Always do.”
Jan gives the screen a look. “Not always helpfully.”
Crew laughs once, then disappears lower behind the console.
For a few minutes, the room works around small sounds.
Jax transferring video files. Felicity pulling screenshots into the model.
Grayson muttering about transponder gaps like the yacht personally insulted him.
Victor sorting it all from San Francisco with the calm of a man arranging knives by size.
Nikolai remains near the screen, watching Crew’s feed, but his attention keeps drifting back to the port map.
Jax notices too.
“Your brother’s a good man,” he says.
Nikolai’s gaze shifts to him. Nothing quick. Nothing defensive.
“My brother seeks redemption.”
Jax leans back slightly. “Most of us here do.”
That earns no visible reaction, but Nikolai doesn’t look away.
Jax’s voice stays even. “What do you seek?”
The room doesn’t stop, but something in it narrows.
Crew keeps working on the screen. Dimitry watches the pontoon. Janice’s pen stills over the map, though she doesn’t look up.
Nikolai is silent long enough that another man might fill the space.
Jax doesn’t.
Finally Nikolai says, “An end to this.”
No drama. No performance. No grand speech about justice or vengeance. Just four words, flat enough to tell me he’s carried them for years.
Jax nods once.
He understands.
So do I.
Men like them don’t need to explain what this costs. They know the shape of it already, the way a mission can become a debt, then a habit, then the only direction left.
Crew’s voice breaks through the speakers.
“Steve, engines are clean. Both of them. Whoever maintains this ugly beast knows what they’re doing.”
The room shifts back into motion.
We’ve got no time to stand around admiring emotional breakthroughs. Very inconvenient feelings or terrible scheduling.
I tap the map beside the port exit. “Then we use what we’ve got.”
Nikolai steps closer to the table. Jax does the same.
On the screen, Crew’s hand moves across the wheelhouse controls, one check at a time.
The operation is still forming.
But now every man in the room knows exactly what he’s here to end.
Elysion Hotel, Holland’s Command Suite, Mytilene, Lesbos, Greece. 2045 hours
Grayson finds the window just after dark.
“Not the main transfer window. Not the predictable one between 0030 and 0200 when Meridian usually moves women under the cover of freight traffic. This one sits earlier, tucked between two legitimate truck movements, a customs backlog, and a delayed ferry that drags security attention toward the passenger terminal.”
“Twenty-one hundred to twenty-one-twenty,” Grayson says through Victor’s feed. “Truck noise, camera lag near the private berth, and enough marina traffic that nobody’s watching the waterline too closely.”
“Perfect,” Crew’s voice comes through from the fishing harbor. “Nobody pays attention to ordinary.”
I look at Jax.
“Take Crew the dive kit.”
He nods.
“And the tracker.”
Jax’s mouth twitches. “So, we’re not sinking it this time?”
Janice’s pen stops.
Crew freezes on the marina feed and slowly looks toward his phone.
I keep my voice even. “No.”
Jax’s expression sobers. “Tracker only. Got it.”
Janice looks from me to the screen, then back again.
I don’t explain. Not here. Not now.
But I know that look. She’s heard enough to remember later.
He’s already moving. “On it.”
Twenty minutes later, Crew slips into the water.
He’s wearing a matte-black full-face dive mask with integrated comms and enough tech packed into it to make Grayson briefly jealous.
“Comms check,” I say.
“Clear,” Crew answers.
Jax’s phone feed shows nothing useful at first, just dark water broken by dock lights and the black shapes of moored boats.
Dimitry stays near the pontoon, a lazy silhouette in the shadows, watching foot traffic while pretending to scroll his phone.
Jax keeps moving, filming the harbor like a tourist who hasn’t realized night videos never look as good as people hope.
Crew’s comm clicks once.
“I’m under the pontoon.”
I don’t answer. No point filling his ear with noise.
Jan stands beside me, arms folded, eyes fixed on the screen. The tracker is tiny, magnetic, waterproof, and ugly enough to make Grayson personally offended by its interface. None of that matters if Crew can get it beneath the Ariadne’s swim platform without being seen.
“Ten feet,” Crew murmurs.
The beauty of full-face diving masks.
On the other feed, the private berth comes into view.
The Ariadne is lit softly, all polished surfaces and quiet money. Two crewmen move near the gangway. Economides stands beside them, speaking into his phone.
Then a black van pulls up near the service entrance.
Every person in the command suite goes still.
The side door opens.
Two young women are led out by men in plain clothes. No luggage. No paperwork visible. One of them stumbles, and the other catches her before she falls. They’re moved quickly, not roughly enough to draw attention, not gently enough to suggest choice.
Janice makes a sound under her breath.
I don’t look away from the screen.
“Crew,” I say quietly. “Status.”
“Contact.”
Five seconds pass.
Long enough for one of the women to reach the gangway.
Long enough for every instinct in me to start calculating how fast we could get people there.
Jax’s voice comes through, low and lethal.
“Steve?”
One word. I know what he’s asking.
He’s armed. He has the angle. He could drop the two men at the gangway before either of them knew what was happening. Maybe take Economides alive if the bastard didn’t run. Maybe get both women off the yacht before it cleared the berth.
Maybe.
Crew is still in the water. The extraction vessel isn’t loaded or positioned.
Dimitry is across the marina, not beside Jax.
Solace is locked inside a building across the port, and at least five more women are still trapped beside it in a container with guards close enough to panic and start shooting.
If we hit them now, we save two and risk losing everyone else.
I hate the math.
“No,” I say.
The silence that follows is pure violence held on a leash.
Jax doesn’t argue.
That’s why he’s good.
“Package attached,” Crew says.
On Jax’s feed, the first woman turns enough for him to catch her face before she disappears onto the yacht. The second follows, slower, head down, one hand resting on the visible curve of her stomach.
She’s several months pregnant.
Jax doesn’t react, but the feed steadies for half a second.
Long enough.
“Got their faces,” he says quietly.
The Ariadne pulls away twelve minutes later.
Felicity’s voice comes through, tight and controlled. “Tracker live.”
A blinking dot appears on the map, moving out into the Aegean.
I watch the yacht disappear into the dark with two stolen women aboard and promise myself one thing.
Never again.
The next ship that leaves this port will carry freedom, not chains.