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“Can I take out the guard at the gate?” Landon asked.

“Yes,” Kostya replied.

“I’m going to get into position so I can blow the gate,” Nolan said.

“Good,” Kostya said.

Why was I stuck learning how to be a tracker? I wanted to play with silly putty.

“Got him,” Landon said quietly.

“Everybody to the gate,” Kostya ordered.

By the time Ryker got to the gate, Nolan had blown the lock with the C-4, and it was open. They went in.

Two men came out from the south side of the building, one from the north, and one from the front, all of them shooting wildly.

Each SEAL took no more than two shots, and the men were all dead. Ryker heard a woman screaming from the top floor. Kostya motioned for Linc and Ryker to follow him into the front of the house. “Landon to the south. Nolan to the north.”

By the time they cleared all of the rooms on the first floor and made it up to the bedrooms on the second floor, everything made sense. The man, who was known as Kaan Polat, was tied face down, spread-eagle on the bed, with a small Caucasian woman with red hair, in thigh-high leather boots and a black leather bustier, holding a whip.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Ryker swore. “We don’t have time for this shit.” He strode over to Kaan and grabbed his head up by his hair to check out his eyes. “Jesus Christ, he’s higher than a kite. Kostya, he’s not going to be any use to us.” Ryker opened his fist and let Kaan’s head drop back down onto the mattress. Then he looked at his watch. “We’ve got sixteen more minutes before Kraken is due to show up.”

“Do you speak English?” he asked the woman.

She shook her head.

Ryker tried a phrase in Arabic, and she shook her head.

Kostya tried a phrase in Russian, and she shook her head.

Finally, she started talking. “She’s Polish,” Kostya said. “I don’t speak the language, but I recognize it. At least now I understand why he has so few guards. He’d have to really trust these men if he’s willing to get his kink on around them. But Jesus, I thought he was here to clean up the mess that his brothers had made. Some mafia leader,” Kostya said disgustedly. “The accountant was the only one with brains in the fucking family.” He activated his mic. “Landon, Nolan, Linc, go clean up the bodies in the courtyard. Do whatever you can to make it look like a bloodbath didn’t just happen. Ryker, you clean up this mess here, and see what you can do to get Kaan sitting upright in a chair downstairs.”

Yeah, that’ll be easy.

Ryker felt his gut clench as he looked over at the little dominatrix. He started undoing the tie on Kaan’s right ankle, then motioned for her to do the same on his left. She caught on real quick, and they had the man untied. Ryker looked around the room and spotted some clothes. He pointed at them as he propped Kaan into a seated position. The woman went over to the pile and brought them over. Ryker made it clear to her that she needed to help him get Kaan dressed. As soon as they were done, she went and cowered in the corner.

In no time Ryker had the man over his shoulder, drooling on the front of his body armor as he took the steps two at a time downstairs. He’d found a big padded chair for the man to slump into, but he had no idea what Kostya had planned.

“Kostya,” Ryker spoke into his mic. “I have Kaan upright in a chair downstairs. Now what?”

“Is he conscious?”

“Barely. He mumbled something to me in Turkish, then called me a bastard in English, then he started drooling on himself again.”

“Well, that’s something. Go see if you can find a kitchen or bathroom or something and pour some water on the dumb bastard. Just a little bit of coherency would be a good thing.”

“Gotcha.”

Ryker left the drooling mess and went to the kitchen that he’d scoped out earlier. He found bottles of water in the refrigerator and brought out three. He knew that having the drugged-out idiot drenched in water was not going to help their plan to have him talk to Kraken Elite, so Ryker hauled the fucker out of the chair and laid him down on the dining room table.

Kaan yelled at him in Turkish.

“English, you asshole,” Ryker growled. He positioned the man’s head over the edge of the table and poured water onto his face. Not so it would go up his nose, just so it would wake him up.

Kaan shook his head and jabbered some more in Turkish.

“English, motherfucker! If you want to save your nephew, speak in English!”