He switched channels to reach only his team.
“Ray, Tom, Saul—give me two minutes, then light them up. I’m going to flank.”
He didn’t wait for a response.
There was a loading door on the south side of the warehouse, obscured by stacked pallets. Brendan slipped through and into the night. The sound of gunfire was constant now, punctuated by shouts and the low growl of engines.
He moved through the shadows the way he had been trained to: silent, purposeful, lethal.
Using shipping containers and abandoned equipment for cover, he circled wide. Within ninety seconds, he was behind Stanton’s position.
There. Curt Stanton himself, barking orders into a radio. He was older than his file photo suggested, gray at his temples, scars on his hands from his military days. Next to him, Clifton McMillan hunched behind a laptop, frantically typing, probably trying to wipe servers remotely. Eight other shooters were spread out in a loose perimeter, all focused on the warehouse, confident no one could get behind them.
Arrogant. Fatal.
Brendan waited for his moment.
Then Raymond, Tom, and Saul opened up with everything they had, forcing Stanton’s men to duck and focus forward.
Brendan opened fire.
The first three went down before anyone realized there was a threat from behind. The fourth turned, bringing his rifle around, but Brendan was already on him. The rest fell in rapid succession as the ambush folded in on itself.
Stanton realized what was happening too late. He spun, bringing up a pistol, but Brendan kicked it from his hand and drove him to the ground. McMillan tried to run. Tom emerged from the warehouse and leveled him with a brutal hit that sent him sprawling.
Within thirty seconds, it was over.
The last two shooters threw down their weapons and raised their hands.
Brendan pressed his knee into Stanton’s back, zip-tying his wrists with brutal efficiency.
“You made a mistake,” he said quietly. “You put children up for sale. One of them was mine.”
Stanton tried to twist around, his eyes widening as he recognized Brendan’s face.
“Castro. Listen, man, I didn’t know she was yours, or that you’d find out—”
Brendan leaned close.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re done.”
FBI tactical rolled up minutes later, taking custody of the suspects. EMTs rushed in to treat the children. Brendan watched as they were loaded into ambulances, each one receiving immediate care. Some were physically injured. All of them were damaged in ways that would take years to heal.
“We’ve got a problem,” Raymond said, approaching Brendan as the chaos settled into organized activity. “Sylvia Castro. The FBI team went to arrest her, but she’s gone. Her house is empty. Looks like she ran right after the attempt on Emma failed.”
Brendan had expected this. Sylvia was smart enough to know that once her buyers didn’t get their merchandise, her life was over. She’d have a go-bag, emergency funds, probably a fake passport.
But she had made one critical error.
She had underestimated how far Brendan would go to find her.
The arrest of Curt Stanton and Clifton McMillan made national news within hours. The FBI held a press conference, carefully avoiding any mention of DEVGRU’s involvement. The official story was that a joint FBI–Naval Criminal Investigative Service operation had taken down a trafficking ring targeting military families. Seventeen children recovered. Multiple suspects in custody. Servers seized containing evidence of a network spanning three countries.
What the news didn’t report was that during transport, Stanton and McMillan had both attempted to assault federal officers. The attempts had been unsuccessful. Both men were now in the ICU with injuries that suggested they had fallen down several flights of stairs. The fact that they had been in a single-story building at the time was conveniently omitted from the official reports.
Brendan didn’t care about the politics.
He sat in a debriefing room at Dam Neck, watching through one-way glass as FBI agents questioned one of the buyers who had been stupid enough to show up to collect a purchase and had walked straight into a sting operation instead. The man was talking now, giving names, payment records, locations of other operations.
“You did good work,” Sharon said, entering the room with two cups of coffee. She handed one to Brendan. “Those kids are alive because of you.”
“They’re traumatized because I didn’t figure it out sooner.”
“You couldn’t have known. Sylvia was careful. She covered her tracks.”
“Not carefully enough.”
Brendan sipped the coffee, barely tasting it.
“What about Emma’s case? Can we track where the auction buyers were?”
“FBI Cyber has that information. Several were arrested in coordinated raids this morning, but the money trail leads to offshore accounts. It’ll take months to unravel fully.”
“I’m not interested in the money. I’m interested in Sylvia.”
Sharon was quiet for a moment.
“Officially, there’s a warrant out for her arrest. Interpol has been notified. Every airport, train station, and border crossing has her photo. She won’t get far. But unofficially, she had a twelve-hour head start before we got organized. Someone with resources and planning could disappear in that time.”
Brendan set down his coffee.
“I’m taking leave.”
“Brendan—”
“Two weeks. Personal time. I’ve got the days saved up.”
Sharon studied him carefully.
“You know that if you do something off the books, I can’t protect you. Not even from this.”
“I understand.”
