Thieves Stealing from Thieves: Chapter 3 – Stealing and Rescuing

Chapter 3 – Stealing and Rescuing

“Given that Suzuki and Kelly picked the jobs last time, can I pick the job this time?” Al asks, to which everyone shrugs and agrees to let him.

He looks at the map, watches some jobs disappear, others appear, and doesn’t press anything until Kelly says to pick something, and he immediately picks a kidnapping criminals and rescue sex slaves operation with a secondary objective to collect any information, weapons, and hidden cash that the criminals may have.

“It’s a simple job with no question of the virtue in completing it. I think we need it after the job we just did,” Al says.

“Agreed, brother. There is no greater task for men of honor like us than to protect and save the weak and needy, brother,” Suzuki says with a rare smile.

Al smiles back and looks at Kelly and me.

“You don’t have to ask me about choosing this job. I’m all for it,” Kelly says.

“Same with me,” I say.

Al accepts the job and the help that the Hydra Roundtable will give us, and we go out to the location where we’re meant to be. The four of us stay in a house of a friend of the Hydra Roundtable, one that has a view of the seemingly normal Mediterranean marketplace in a city where this human trafficking ring is taking place. We sit around having home-cooked meals from Al, who said he was taught these recipes by his nonna.

“Your nonna knows how to cook better than that first bar restaurant we ate at if this is what her cooking tastes like,” Suzuki says.

“My nonna’s cooking is even better. No one cooks like her, not even my mom or dad,” Al says.

Al has a look on him as if his eyes are entranced by old memories, before he looks back up at us. Later in the day, as Al watches the neighborhood, we hear something going on down there, and Al runs down to the market with his mask on and rifle in his hands.

Running after him with one of my pistols in hand and mask on my face, I ask him, “What are you doing? We could get the cops called on us!”

“People need our help. I’m not going to let them suffer!” Al says.

Al and I go to the source of the noise and find a group of three robbers trying to rob a family-owned cheese and wine store.

“How about you put your hands up instead, drop your weapons, and get the Hell out of here?!” Al says to the robbers.

The robbers argue with him and don’t comply, so we shoot them dead. The store owners thank us, tell us that we should get out of here, and they’ll take care of this. Just as Kelly and Suzuki catch up to us and ask us what happened, Al and I tell them that the situation is taken care of and to go back to the house. We put our weapons and masks back in the house, Al goes back to watching the neighborhood, and Kelly and Suzuki go back to talking about whose culture is better while joking about their own.

Sitting next to Al, I ask, “Is this your neighborhood?”

“No. It just reminds me of my own,” Al says.

“Is that why you had to help its people?”

“I don’t need an excuse to help people who deserve it. It’s what I was taught, not only as a man of honor, but also from my family and faith.”

“What about the people we’re supposed to help? If we had the cops called on us, that could’ve made our job to rescue others harder.”

“I don’t really think about the wider picture. It’s always changing and based on what others and I view it as. I just keep my eyes and mind on the here and now. If God wants us to accomplish a task, then we’ll do it, but if he wants us to do something now, and we don’t because we think it might hinder our goals, then it’s held against us, and those who needed the help will suffer or die.”

“Huh. I never really thought of it like that.”

“I know you want to make a difference in the world as penance for your previous life. It’s written all over your face and the way you act. Just remember that we can only do so much in a day and that little actions add up to big ones.”

“I’ll do my best to remember. Thanks, Al.”

“You’re welcome, brother.”

Al and I go on to talk about our neighborhoods, families, and the kinds of food we can make. We also talk about the possibilities of having families after we’re done with Hydra Roundtable, and both of us agree that we’re married to this job of robbing and killing until God takes our lives in a different direction.

Al looks at me and says, “I think you’d make a good family man.”

“What makes you say that?” I ask.

“You look happy when we’re all talking and joking with one another.”

“If you say so. I think it goes without saying you’d be a good family man as well, given how ready you are to charge into danger for others.”

“Yeah. Both of my families think that, and this new family as well.”

“You consider the four of us a family?”

“What makes a family is two or more people who look out for one another and would put their lives on the line for one another. That’s us, is it not?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

We finish relaxing, and then the four of us go out in the dead of night, masks on and weapons in weapon bags that conceal them. We meet a local contact arranged by the Hydra Roundtable in the backroom of a nearby bar, a woman who “trains” and sells the women. We sit with her and ask where the “goods” are. The mistress is scantily dressed in a long pink see-through dress and red high heels. As she finishes her drink, she taps her feet on the floor and smiles at us. Getting the message, we finish our transaction. Al cuts the woman’s throat, and Kelly, Suzuki, and I quietly kill everyone else in the backroom with our knives, lock the backroom door, and block it with the bodies of the dead.

“That’s the only thing trash like you is good for,” Kelly says to the dead bodies.

“Remember to be as quiet as possible. We don’t want the roaches scurrying away. Alright, let’s get this done,” I say.

The four of us take our silenced guns out of our bags, find the door to the underground, and wander its winding tunnels with a map that we got from the Hydra Roundtable. If we didn’t have the map, we could wander these tunnels for hours since they all look the same with all the dirt, concrete, and lanterns that barely light them up. In our wanderings, we shoot down various guards and buyers who aren’t on our list to take in alive.

“These tunnels are a bit too tight. If we have to shoot someone ahead of us, the people around and behind them will notice,” I say.

“We’ll just have to deal with it when it happens,” Suzuki says.

“Remember. We deal with problems one at a time, Cowboy,” Al says.

“Roger, Cappuccino.”

Reaching the holding cells where both the people we need to free and to kidnap should be, we find it heavily guarded. To our disgust, some of the buyers are “testing” the “products”, and some of the bosses are forcing them to dance and do depraved acts for the pleasure of themselves and the buyers. We take cover and consider our options.

“Are we still going to be sneaky or is it time to get wild?” Kelly asks.

“They may eventually find out we’re here when they notice the room lacking as many people as it once did,” Suzuki says.

“Let’s take it one step at a time. We still have the element of surprise, and at least we have corners and shadows to hide in here,” I say.

I then direct Suzuki and Kelly to take one side of the room, while Al and I take the other. We use our knives to pull in nearby guards and buyers when they get close to us, hide their bodies, and move forward together when the coast is clear. Eventually, we find that there isn’t enough convenient cover to hide behind, so we use our silenced weapons to start clearing the room one after the other. The sound of the suppressed gunfire and bodies dropping catches the attention of the prisoners, who call out for us to help them, and the remaining guards and buyers notice us as well.

“Now it’s time to get crazy, Rosebud,” I say.

“Alleluia,” Rosebud says as she takes out her other submachine gun and dual-wields them.

With her, Suzuki dual-wields his revolvers, and Al attaches a short shotgun to the underbarrel of his rifle. We rush forward, taking out one guard after another. The buyers and bosses are now either fighting back with guns of their own or running away, and we deal with them properly, making sure that none escape alive, except for the ones we need. For the ones we need alive, we shoot their legs and hands so they can’t escape, fight back, or kill themselves in desperation. By the end, we start freeing the prisoners, who unfortunately start beating on the people we need alive, so Suzuki and Kelly have to hold them back and explain why they’re alive.

“Will they get the justice they deserve?” one of the slaves asks.

“Will they suffer?” another asks.

“Let me rip out one of their eyes, like how they did to me!”

“I want to pull out this one’s teeth just like how she did the same to my brother before having her way with him!”

“I promise you they’ll get what they deserve. We’re the real good guys. They’ll either get it legally or illegally,” Kelly says.

Seemingly satisfied with this answer, the slaves back off, some even offering their help. While looking in the office for information, I find files on the locations to which the slaves were meant to go, such as Slav clubs, porn shoots, a casino on the Golden Coast, and a Satanist church of all places. There’s no correlation between any of these places other than their godlessness. Hmm. Maybe I’ll think of one when I leave.

Continuing to follow the map we were given, we leave the tunnels and exit out of the basement of an Israeli church. Huh. It takes me a second to keep walking after the initial shock of seeing where we exited. Outside, a few ambulances and cop trucks aligned with the Hydra Roundtable take away the people we needed to kidnap and the rescue. They’re also here to take any weapons or caches of cash in the tunnels for us.

“We got it from here, fellas. Good work,” a police officer says before him and squads of officers go into the tunnels we were in.

“Godspeed, officers,” Al says.

Suzuki salutes the officers, and Kelly waves at them. My friends and I go back to the Hydra Roundtable hideout and are rewarded even more than the last job. Yet again, we go out to celebrate. This time, I bring my friends to my house. I prepare dinner for everyone, and they seem to enjoy it well enough, not as much as Al’s cooking, but well enough. We put on the news to see if they’ll talk about what we did, and sure enough, they do, leaving our part out of it, giving all the credit to the police force.

“Ah, I’d like at least a little credit,” Kelly says.

“Like what? You want them to say a bunch of gun-wielding masked vigilantes saved the innocent and punished the guilty?” I ask.

“Yes!”

“It would sound like the pulp novels and radio broadcasts I’ve been listening to,” Al says.

“Nevertheless, the purpose of our job is to get paid, kill those who deserve it, and save those who deserve better. We did what we had to and got rewarded accordingly, and I, for one, am more than satisfied,” Suzuki says.

“Alright, alright. I was joking. You didn’t need to sound so much like a high and mighty,” Kelly says.

“A man of honor always must be on his best behavior in terms of his actions and his words.”

“True that, brother,” Al says as he clinks glasses with Suzuki.

“I wish they talked more about what they found in the tunnels. Sure, we got all the good stuff, but the implications of where the tunnels are should be big news,” I say.

“It’ll be big news for the Vorfahren who’ll say they are proven right,” Kelly says.

“I’m sure the Israeli mafia and country have people in power and influence who will lessen the bad image they are being given,” Suzuki says.

“I’m sure they will,” Al and I say in unison.

Al then says, “You have a nice two-story house here in the suburbs. The garden outside is nice as well.”

“Yeah. I got a house out here because I was tired of being in the city, and I do some gardening in my spare time. It makes for better-tasting vegetables and fruits,” I say.

“Speaking of better-tasting food, I ought to teach you how to cook.”

“That’s true. I could teach you some recipes as well,” Suzuki says.

“What? I thought you said my food was good.”

“Eh, Al’s nonna’s recipes are noticeably better. I’m sorry to say it,” Kelly says.

“If we didn’t care about you, we wouldn’t mention our want for you to improve with better cooking,” Suzuki says.

“He’s right. We’ll all get together to cook and share meals all day,” Al says.

“You can count me in!” Kelly says.

I like the idea, but can’t help but feel a bit put down because my food isn’t viewed as good as Al’s, but then again, they are right. How can anyone compete with a Mediterranean grandma’s cooking that’s been passed down for generations? If anything, I’m glad that Al, Kelly, and Suzuki are offering to see me outside of our job to cook and hang out like normal friends rather than work associates. It’s truly a blessing from God.