Rrinkers

Chapter 14

With hands shaking and heart racing, the anxiety took over Thanat. But he didn't let it show. He had just found out that his system was compromised from an outside network. "What happened?" The passive aggressiveness could be heard in the question he asked to one of his junior security men.

"I don't know...I-I was working and then we got a glitch for a few minutes but-but I didn't think anything of it-."

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

The young man laid dead on the ground, shot three times in the chest: Thanat's usual killing style. George, Thanat's right hand man and an expert in many things, came running over to him.

"What did you do that for?"

"Don't ask questions or you'll be next."

George swallowed the lump in his throat and got ready to clean the dead body. This is what he was reduced to: cleaning up Thanat's messes. The truth is, George didn't want this life. He didn't want to be partnered with a killer. But due to his expertise in technology and business, Thanat picked him as a target. Now, George had to swear allegiance to Thanat or his whole family would suffer. How he wished he could be back in Russia, in his home, with his beautiful wife and young daughter. Thanat took all that from him and to protect his family, he had to obey. There was nothing he could do.

"What do you want me to do?" George asked. He needed to help Thanat because Thanat said if his plan failed, everyone would suffer the same fate, including all the families of those that worked for him. He was smart because threatening families gave his men a lot of motivation to work hard. Obsessively hard.

"Clean this mess and make sure a security breach does not happen again. Not even for one second." Thanat spoke in his thick Russian accent and walked away smoothly. While he was walking away, he added, "If this does happen again, consider it your family's end."

Son of a bitch!

After disposing of the dead body in a bin, George went to speak with all the men who worked on the security for Thanat's warehouse and drug operation. He spent a few hours with them, telling them how to make sure a network breach didn't happen and he made sure to cover all his bases like his world depended on it because when his family was threatened, his world did depend on it.

Meanwhile, in the Rrinkers second floor, there were three agents hugging and congratulating each other. After one month of unsuccessful network monitoring, they were finally able to break through Thanat's system and download some information about his operation.

"We did it!" Elijah said, man hugging Mark, the agent that he usually fought with.

"We freaking did it! Let's go!" Mark embraced him back. It felt surreal to finally be able to get real work done after so many days of being futile.

Jenna also took off her headset and joined the celebrations. "We just got so much information in that five minute breach...I think we might have enough to catch that SOB."

"Valencia is going to be so happy, for the first time in history."

They all laughed at the idea of their boss praising them for all the great work they did. Who knew that Thanat would slip up and because of that little coding mistake, allow them to bypass the firewalls and get into the warehouse system.

"Once the data downloads, we're going to give it to Valencia, Tyler, Lucas, and San. We can look at it but they're the ones that will decide if it's enough to move on."

"Sounds like a plan," Elijah replied, and Mark shook his head in agreement.

They were on a roll to catch the notorious drug dealer that was terrorizing their city, and they couldn't be more excited. This is what they lived for. To help others and to stop crime. It's what they were born to do.