Chapter 23: Eyes on Target
The rooftop was cold, even with the thermal blanket Santos had brought.
He'd been in position for six hours, watching the Dogs of Hell warehouse through binoculars that had seen better decades. Below, Hell's Kitchen went about its business—pedestrians, delivery trucks, the occasional police cruiser rolling through without stopping.
The warehouse sat on the corner of 48th and 10th, wedged between a tire shop and a building that had been condemned three years ago and never torn down. From Santos's position on the roof of an apartment building two blocks east, he could see the main entrance, the loading dock, and most of the parking area where a half-dozen motorcycles clustered like chrome insects.
"Shift change," he murmured into the radio Wire had built. "Two guards coming out, two going in. That's consistent with yesterday."
Sarah's voice crackled back from the surveillance van parked on 47th Street. "Copy. I'm showing the same pattern on the audio feed. They're not professionals—same conversations, same complaints about the cold."
"Amateurs make mistakes."
"That's what we're counting on."
The surveillance had begun thirty-six hours ago. Santos took the rooftop shifts, using his cop training to watch without being seen. Sarah handled the technical side—parabolic microphones, signal intercepts, the kind of electronic eavesdropping that would have been illegal when she worked for legitimate agencies.
"Good thing we're not a legitimate agency."
A black panel van pulled into the warehouse parking lot at 11:47 AM—earlier than the usual delivery schedule. Santos adjusted his binoculars, trying to get a look at the driver.
"Unscheduled vehicle. Black van, no markings."
"I see it." Sarah's voice was tense. "Running the plates now... stolen two weeks ago from a rental lot in Newark. This might be a buyer."
The van's rear doors opened. Two men in leather jackets—Dogs colors, Santos noted—emerged carrying a large duffel bag. They disappeared into the warehouse through a side entrance.
"Delivery or pickup?"
"Unknown. Give me a minute."
Santos waited, counting his breaths the way he'd learned during long stakeouts in his NYPD days. The cold seeped through his clothes, but he ignored it. This was what he'd been trained for. What he'd been built for, before Reilly and Doyle had torn it all away.
"Three years of guarding groceries. Now I'm doing real police work again."
Sarah's voice came back, sharper now. "I intercepted a phone call. The van is here to transport victims to a 'processing facility' in Jersey. They're moving the current batch in seventy-two hours."
Santos's stomach dropped. "Seventy-two hours?"
"That's the window. After that, the women currently in that building disappear into the trafficking network. International buyers, offshore operations—once they leave this warehouse, we'll never find them."
The math was simple and brutal. Three days. If they weren't ready to strike in three days, the people they'd come to save would be gone forever.
"Marcus needs to know."
"Sending the data packet now."
Back at the warehouse, I received Sarah's update while Bear and I were reviewing the cardboard model of the target building.
The model had taken four hours to build—shoe boxes cut and painted to approximate the warehouse structure, with toothpicks marking guard positions and string indicating sight lines. It was crude but effective, the kind of low-tech planning tool that worked when you didn't have access to military-grade simulation software.
"Seventy-two hours," I said, reading the message on Wire's secure tablet. "The window just shrank."
Bear looked up from the model. "We're not ready. Surveillance isn't complete, we don't have the interior layout—"
"We'll have to work with what we have." I turned to Wire. "Can you get the comms gear operational by tomorrow night?"
"Tomorrow night? I was planning for—" He caught himself, took a breath. The anxiety was there, but he was learning to work through it. "Yes. I can do it. I'll need to skip some testing protocols, but it'll work."
"Elena?"
"Medical supplies are ready. I can prep the van for transport within an hour."
I studied the cardboard model, trying to see the angles we'd been missing. The main entrance was too exposed—any assault through the front would turn into a bloodbath. The loading dock offered better options, but we still didn't know what was inside.
"Bear, can you work with the surveillance data to estimate interior layout?"
"Working on it." He was already flipping through his notebook, cross-referencing Santos's observations with standard warehouse floor plans. "Commercial building, two stories, approximately eight thousand square feet. If they're holding victims, they need a secure area away from windows—probably interior rooms on the second floor or basement level."
"Basement access?"
"Service entrance on the north side. Santos spotted it yesterday—padlocked, but not guarded."
The pieces were coming together, even with the compressed timeline. Not perfect, but workable.
"That's all we ever get. Workable. Perfect is for people who have the luxury of time."
Sarah's voice came through the radio again. "Second day of surveillance complete. We've identified the full guard rotation—eight minimum at night, twelve during day shift. The 10 PM shift change is our best window. They're sloppy during transitions, more interested in getting inside than watching their perimeter."
"Copy. Maintain surveillance through tomorrow morning, then extract. We brief the full team tomorrow afternoon."
"Understood." A pause. "Marcus? These women... some of them have been in there for weeks. When we go in, they might not be... ready to be rescued."
"I know." I'd seen trafficking victims in my previous life. The damage wasn't just physical. "We'll do what we can."
I ended the transmission and turned back to the model.
Forty-eight hours until we moved. Forty-eight hours to turn five broken people into a rescue team.
"No pressure."
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