French police car sirens are quite unique, featuring a prolonged, two-tone alternation, unlike the single, high-pitched, sinusoidal sirens of American sirens.
People in a certain large Eastern country are likely familiar with both types of sirens, as police cars and fire trucks there use American sirens, while ambulances use European sirens.
Hearing the distant sirens approaching, Frank whispered, "We should retreat."
"Done." Jack used his phone to take a picture of a body with a star and moon tattooed on the base of its right hand. It was the Albanian-speaking individual hiding behind the stairs.
"No body found, no signs of digging in the back garden, and no signs of being locked up in the second-floor bedroom." Brian's expression brightened slightly, at least not as dark as before.
"Let's go, I should be able to find their whereabouts." Jack put away his phone and glanced around to confirm there was no obvious evidence. It was clear there was no time to dispose of the body, so he'd leave it to the French police.
"What do you mean they're not there?" Castle, who had been anxiously waiting in the safe house, saw the three men return empty-handed, his voice trembling.
"Volkov committed suicide, and the two girls are missing. They must have been evacuated beforehand." Frank slumped against the sofa, not even bothering to clean the blood off his body.
Seeing Castle tearing at his hair in agony again, Jack felt he should offer some advice to prevent him from following his father's footsteps.
"Although Volkov didn't reveal Alexis and Kim's whereabouts before he died, I have a rough idea of what he did."
He realized that the militants, in addition to Russians and Arabs, also included several Albanian speakers, and he knew this was likely a crossover from "Taken."
Combined with the part where Sarah, after being released, tearfully complained to her mother about the medical examination, it seemed likely that Volkov had no intention of releasing the two girls, especially Alexis, from the beginning.
Unfortunately, they hadn't anticipated Volkov's potential for such a back-up plan. Their attack on the villa was too swift, leaving no one alive.
It's hard to imagine the psychological trauma Frank had inflicted on Volkov, as he prepared to inflict a lifetime of pain even in death, even if he couldn't kill him himself.
As the three stared in astonishment, Jack parroted a series of awkward pronunciations into the phone, words he himself didn't understand.
"Yes, that's roughly what it says. It should be Albanian. Help me find an expert. I need to know what dialect they speak. I've also sent you a tattoo design to help identify the gang."
After hanging up, he reached out to Frank. "Jubal will respond soon. Give me Volkov's phone."
The old man's phone was a hassle. It didn't use fingerprint or facial recognition, but a password lock. But that didn't bother Justine, who was far away on the West Coast.
After connecting the phone to Jack's laptop via an adapter, she remotely decrypted and copied all the information on the phone in less than half an hour.
They worked until dawn, and Jack woke Frank and Brian. Cassel hadn't slept at all, but since he wouldn't be of much help later, no one forced him to shut down this time.
"Volkov has a few Albanians under his command. Judging by their dialect and tattoos, and the call logs and messages on his phone, the girls were handed over to a gang of gangsters from Tropoja.
It was probably yesterday afternoon, around the same time we killed four of his men in the woods."
Albania was the peculiar little country a certain "Tongliao rat spirit" had described, famous for its bunker-covered bunkers. Before the corrupt upper class sold out the country, this small Balkan nation consistently ranked among the poorest in Europe.
Tropoja is located in the northernmost part of Albania, in a mountainous area among the poorest of the impoverished country.
"The boss of this Albanian mafia is Mark Ocha. They specialize in human trafficking, targeting young women. Their typical practice is to traffic women from their own country and the former Yugoslavia to Western Europe.
They pretend to be nannies, but in reality, they force them into drug addiction and manipulate them into various erotic trades.
They've gradually shifted their focus to single women traveling to Paris, believing it's more cost-effective and avoids the risks and costs of smuggling."
The information Jack was referring to came from the DGSE and DGSI, the French Directorate-General for External Security and Directorate-General for Homeland Security. These two agencies are somewhat like the CIA and FBI in the US, but their conflicts are much more intense.
He had a deep memory of the Taken series, especially the first one. Under his guidance, Justin hacked directly into the databases of these two intelligence agencies and retrieved the relevant information in just half an evening.
Upon hearing this, Cassel's eyes lit up with despair.
"How much time do we have?" Frank asked, his teeth clenched.
Jack checked the time. "72 hours at most. Almost 14 hours have already passed. The good news is they don't keep beautiful, innocent girls; they'll resell them.
Judging from the current situation, Alexis and Kim shouldn't suffer any torture before reaching the rightful buyers."
"God bless Alexis, she still hasn't had a boyfriend." Cassel's heart dropped, and he covered his face, nearly bursting into tears.
Brian, by contrast, had a more complicated expression. If his ex-wife hadn't divorced him and remarried a wealthy man, his daughter wouldn't be living the life she currently does, attending a strict religious school.
Of course, there were no ifs and there was no point dwelling on it. Even if the girls had been insulted, they should find a way to rescue them as soon as possible.
Jack marked an address on his computer. "The 10th arrondissement, rue de la Paix, is where this gang is hiding in a residential building. I can't find a photo of the gang leader, Marc Ocha. We can't do what we did last night."
"I have some connections in France, leave it to me," Brian said, starting to get up, but Jack held him down. "It's best not to do that."
"I don't know if your connections in France are reliable, but if they're so brazenly kidnapping tourists in Paris, they can't be without support.
This human trafficking industry has existed since the Cold War. From Albanians, Romanians, North African immigrants, to today's Russian mafia, it wouldn't have been possible without the tacit approval of the upper echelons. You know more about this than I do."
Jack wasn't sure if Brian understood this, but he hadn't forgotten the allusions to the French upper class in the original show.
Even without the movie "Taken," the disgusting events that occurred after the Eastern European upheaval in the past would have been circulated online, and there were even comics depicting the events.
That's all for now. I'll go back to sleep and then I'll go back to coding. My head is still a little swollen.
(End of this chapter)