Page 11 of Gilded

LUKA

T he chopper creeps up on the target compound in Papua, Indonesia, and I watch the thermal imager to identify our marks.

“We’ve got at least two dozen or more inside,” I say into my headset for the other men to hear. “Two guards at each entrance. At least one adult inside.”

Tonight’s target is a holding facility where the victims, all boys under the age of twelve, will be farmed out for indentured servitude and sexual slavery at a fifty-fifty ratio.

Similar to the hell where I lived and met the rest of my team over a decade ago.

Men I killed for then. Men who have killed for me since.

“Copy” comes from my four team members in the back, Diallo, Roux, Xavi, and Malachi. Echoed by our pilot, Swag, and followed by the backup chopper holding our second pilot, Jairo.

I pull out the picture of Senator Reynolds’s son, Justin—eight years old, blonde, missing a front tooth in his third-grade school picture.

A novel, high-value commodity slated for sale to a twisted Asian kazillionaire, whose destiny will be determined at another time. Tonight, we have other fates to seal.

I hand the photo to Xavi, who passes it around.

We’ve all memorized the kid’s face, but it’s important to stay fresh.

Swag hovers above the ground a mile from the compound in the middle of nowhere as the five of us fast-rope to the ground, secure our night vision, and head toward the single small building.

At the shack, we split up. Diallo and Roux take the front, Xavi and Malachi take the back, and I press C4 to the side door.

I hear the chink-chink, chink-chink of silenced gunfire. Then “Clear front” comes through my earbud only a second before chink-chink , chink-chink , “Clear back.”

I light the fuse, turn away, and cover my ears. By the time it blows, the guys are there, following me in.

The minute I pass through the door, I’m unexpectedly greeted by the butt of a rifle.

My head snaps sideways and pain explodes in my head, even as I swing that direction with my own rifle, catching the man in the gut and bending him in half.

Warmth slides down the side of my face, and my mind blinks like it’s shorting out.

That’s when the guard gets in one more punch to my face.

Fury gives me the strength to pull my Glock from my thigh holster and double-tap his brain.

Malachi neutralizes the second guard and turns toward me. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” The word stabs my brain, and I taste blood. The smell of the space boomerangs me back to my childhood, a sickening combination of filth and fear.

I stumble through the next phase with the others, pulling Gatorade and cookies out of our packs for the terrified kids.

The treats and a few hugs calm them down quickly. I blink blood from my eye as I tilt each child’s face toward mine, searching for Justin.

“Got him,” Xavi says from across the room.

“Go,” I tell him.

Xavi and Malachi run to the chopper with Justin, and as they lift off, Swag radios Jairo to come in.

I move to one of the boys, who can’t stop crying. Probably the youngest. Maybe six or seven, the same age I was when I was brought to a place just like this.

I hug the boy with reassurances in my less than perfect Indonesian. “Kamu baik-baik saja. Kamu sudah aman sekarang.”

I open the cookie package and Gatorade bottle for him, and he’s so hungry it’s gone within sixty seconds. I can’t wait to get my sights on Tabuni, the trafficking mogul who owns and runs this camp.

Jairo lands, and Diallo, Roux, and I hurry the kids out of the prison and into the chopper. Within twenty minutes, we meet with our highly vetted safety source in the region and transfer the boys to the waiting van that will take them to uncorrupted authorities and get them home.

Then, Jairo flies Diallo, Roux, and me toward Jakarta, where Tabuni resides in a compound only slightly less secure than Tarik’s.

My intel tells me Tabuni just returned from a meeting with his kidnappers in Thailand.

His wife and sons stayed behind to visit family, so everyone at the house now is someone who needs to be eliminated.

If Tabuni had no children, I would kill his wife as well. She has as much freedom to choose as Malia. But as a boy who lost his mother young, I’m letting Tabuni’s wife live for the kids.

Jairo signals the drop location, and Diallo, Roux, and I activate the bombs, tap fists, and drop the trio of explosives on Tabuni’s compound.

The chopper banks hard to escape the blast zone, and we’re miles out when we’re treated to a front-row seat as evil is eradicated from the earth.

I climb into the front with Jairo, breathing deep to ease the adrenaline tingling along my limbs. We’re quiet, basking in a successful mission. I close my eyes and rest my head, which is throbbing, against the seat.

“Put something on that,” Jairo says. “I’m gonna kill you if you get blood on my chopper.”

“It’s my chopper.”

“I’ll still kill you.”

Roux tosses me a roll of gauze from the first aid bag in the back, and I ball it up to add pressure to wherever it hurts most.

“Am I going to have to fuck up the other side of your face so your OCD is happy?”

“Funny.” I have a compulsion for symmetry, and yeah, this is probably going to bug the shit out of me until I heal.

“I did a little digging,” Jairo says.

I sigh and roll my eyes, sure this is about Malia.

He’s been vocal about his disapproval of me using her to get to Tarik.

But while Tarik may have dumped all my men in the work camp as kids, he didn’t kill their entire family to steal them like he did mine.

I have a darker, more profound hatred for the man.

“Probably not the best time. I’ve only got half a brain functioning.”

“That’s not new.”

I crack a bottle of Gatorade and drink without stopping until it’s gone.

“She’s a ghost.” Typical of Jairo to just talk, regardless of whether or not I want to listen. But these men are my family. My brothers. I would never dismiss their ideas, the same way they would never dismiss mine.

“I can’t locate her birth certificate or her Social Security number,” he says. “Not as Malia Eros or Malia Tarik, and there is no record of Tarik’s wife ever giving birth. I’ve scoured the backgrounds of his known whores—still nothing.”

“Maybe she was born overseas.”

Jairo shakes his head. “Something’s off.”

I bounce the empty Gatorade bottle against my leg. “We can’t be the only ones who want to hurt him. His daughter would be a prime target.”

“He’d have to care about her for that to be a problem. We’re talking about Tarik here. And if he does care about her—which I highly doubt—why put her in a high-profile position like the director of his charity?”

“He has a billion reasons to put her out there.”

“She has no medical history, no travel history other than her trips to visit charities, no driver’s license.

They don’t have a shell setup for her as the director of the charity either.

No fake apartment, fake address, or fake phone number.

She doesn’t have a personal bank account.

She’s never received a paycheck. Hell, she doesn’t even have an Amazon account.

A girl with no Amazon account? That’s a fuckin’ unicorn. ”

I would laugh, but that would probably make my head explode.

“She doesn’t have a phone I can find, and there’s no internet usage or landline calls that would fit a woman her age. She doesn’t have any streaming accounts or music accounts either.”

“Jesus Christ. Did you check out her underwear drawer too?”

“Sounds like you’ve got that covered.”

“Ha.”

“With that kind of environment, living with those men, I don’t see a lot of mobility for her. My point being that the choices and consequences you love to talk about may not be available to her.”

I shake my head. “She has access to wealth, and that wealth creates choices. She also has access to some of the most powerful people in the state, if not the world, at those galas. She has choices.”

My phone buzzes, and I pull it from my pocket and glance at the text message on WhatsApp. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Simms wants to meet.”

“Since when does Simms have your phone number?”

“Since he’s got access to the country’s best intel, I guess.”