Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel by Mari Carr (desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

“Once we go in, we use Ukrainian. We know she speaks English.”

Jakob nodded once. He would be left out of the communications because he didn’t speak the language, but he could handle it.

“Did you serve?” Maxim asked him.

Jakob twisted in his seat to answer. “Not directly. Intelligence.”

There was a beat of silence as everyone processed that. Leonid repeated Jakob’s words for the driver, who grunted.

Vadisk, Maxim, and Leonid all nodded.

The car turned off the road into a seemingly abandoned residential area. The houses were far apart, the trees and vegetation between them overgrown. The car slowed, and the pre-action silence descended once more.

“My sister is the priority. We get her out safe…alive.” Leonid’s voice was fierce and…scared. Jakob remembered how he’d felt when he knew Annalise was gone. Knew she was in danger.

The driver pulled the car to the side, wheels half on the greenery that made a narrow strip between the edge of the road and the half wall that marked the front boundary of a two-story house that was barely visible through the untrimmed trees that crowded the front lawn.

Vadisk checked his phone and opened his door.

“Wait.”

Everyone looked to Leonid.

He was frowning, looking through the front window. “When we find my sister, I will help her. I have…enemies. And I taught my sister how to fight. Survive. She would not have expected betrayal from a woman, but she will think you are enemies.” He looked from Vadisk to Jakob to Maxim. The driver was frowning back at his boss, who said something quickly to him. The bald man’s eyes widened, and he nodded empathetically.

“Who will she think we are?” Vadisk asked with what might have been resignation in his tone.

“Solntsevskaya Bratva.”

“Layno,” Maxim cursed.

That sounded enough like the Polish word for “shit” that Jakob was fairly certain of the translation. And he heartily agreed with the sentiment.

“When we find her, I will approach Zasha.” With that, Leonid opened his door.

Ten minutes later, rifles had been dispersed to Leonid, Maxim, and the bodyguard. Jakob and Vadisk were unarmed, but he didn’t mind. He was better in hand-to-hand combat.

The fact that Leonid had a weapon would be concerning if they didn’t find his sister alive. In his grief, mistakes might be made.

The house Ava had rented was fifty meters from where they parked. The whole road seemed deserted, no doubt because the city of Teplodar was originally created to provide housing for workers at an atomic thermal power station. However, development of the station was postponed after Chernobyl and completely halted in the nineties.

Using hand signals, Maxim, who had taken point, split them up. Vadisk, Leonid, and the guard were going around the side to find alternate entrances, while Jakob and Maxim were taking the front door.

The two-story white house was blocky in the way of Soviet buildings, and like the houses around it, there were signs of neglect. The overgrown foliage, the rutted gravel driveway that was more weeds than rock. But there was a car parked just in front of the small stoop. Ava was here.

Jakob snuck forward, using the untamed bushes and tall grass in what may have been a well-landscaped yard. Crouching down next to the car, he quietly unscrewed the valve stem and depressed the valve, air whooshing around his fingertip. He could have knifed the tires—he had a long matte black knife in a holder on his back—but if they were wrong and Ava wasn’t here, it would be better to do something that wouldn’t raise the alarm. One flat tire would be enough to slow down her getaway.

Maxim seemed to understand because he watched Jakob, and then nodded.

It felt as if hours had passed, but in reality he knew it was less than two minutes before he and Maxim rose and ran at a crouch around the car and up the front steps. Jakob flattened himself beside the door and gingerly tested the handle. Locked.

Maxim passed Jakob the gun, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a set of lock picks. Forty seconds later, they were in, the door swinging open with a loud, rusty squeal.

But that sound was drowned out by the screams that echoed up from somewhere deep in the house.

Jakob checked the urge to run in, waiting instead for Maxim, who could see into the house, to raise two fingers and do a quick double point. Jakob slid past him, pressing the rifle into his hand even as he drew his knife, holding it in a reverse grip, the blade along his forearm.

The house was far nicer than the outside would have suggested, with pleasant furnishings and clean, if well worn, floors. Jakob didn’t bother to stop and check the rooms. He wasn’t law enforcement, not really, and his training had focused on getting the job done, no matter what it took, and with little to no regard for his own safety.

The scream had been muffled, which meant interior room or the second floor. Vadisk and Leonid passed by an open doorway ahead and on the left. They were being more methodical in their search, but everyone was headed to the stairs.

In a quirk of construction, the foot of the stairs were toward the back of the house, closer to where Vadisk and Leonid were. Maxim was behind him, and when Jakob looked back, he saw Maxim half turned to cover their rear, gun in place with the butt against his shoulder, but the barrel pointed down.

Jakob headed for the stairs, planning to follow Vadisk and Leonid—the bodyguard had taken position in an opening where he could see the stairs and the back of the house.

He passed the opening to a dining room and a small door to an under-stair closet as another scream echoed through the house.

He paused, head swiveling. The sound had come through the small door.

Not upstairs…but down. In a basement.

Jakob raised a hand, forming a fist. Everyone stopped, and he leaned in to the door.

He could just faintly hear voices. One rose in volume,