The Forgotten

by David Baldacci

  anyone suspected he was here. But he had no reason to think they didn’t either. He imagined these men lived their lives full of suspicion.

  Just as he did.

  After the bomb went off at Lampert’s house they would have to proceed with caution. Calling off tonight’s shipment might have been tempting for them, but apparently the allure of a mountain of dollars was too much. And the boat was probably already on its way when the Bentley had been blown up.

  So the show went on.

  These folks wore the color-coded clothing of the previous group. As he observed them Mecho concluded that tonight was heavy on drug mules and prostitutes, by far the most profitable. The simple laborers, the ones who silently mowed grass in nice southern suburbs or mutely hefted cartons in warehouses in the Midwest, brought the least amount of money.

  But the profit margins were still excellent, just not off the scale like those associated with the drugs-and-hookers revenue streams.

  The fourth RIB turned and headed back out to the mother ship.

  Mecho turned his attention to the truck in which the eighty people had been placed. The rear door came down and was bolted shut. The back of the truck would be soundproofed, of course. No screams would be heard, though Mecho imagined the prisoners were probably too terrified to utter a sound.

  He hustled to his scooter and climbed aboard. When the truck started off with its two-SUV motorcade, Mecho fell in behind it, keeping about eight hundred yards back. He did not worry about losing the vehicles. He had placed a tracking device on the underbelly of the truck while the first shipment of passengers was arriving on the beach. The guards had made the mistake of moving away from the vehicles to draw nearer to the beach, never thinking that leaving their rear flank exposed would be a problem.

  Yet it was a problem, a big one. But one man’s problem was another man’s opportunity.

  They traveled east for four miles, their route gradually leading away from the Gulf as they did so.

  The destination was not surprising: a warehouse in the middle of a decrepit industrial park. This was far away from the tourist traps and nowhere near the pristine white beaches or the emerald green waters.

  This had the look and stench of the real world. A world where people toiled away for crap wages doing shit work and wondering when their ship was going to come in.

  Mecho understood that very well. He had wondered that very same thing. Only far away from here. A universe away from here, in fact.

  Where is my damn ship?

  Well, maybe it was a RIB with human cattle on it.

  After the truck drove through the open overhead door of the warehouse the door rattled down behind it. One SUV had driven in with the truck. The other had stayed outside. Mecho had a good idea what was happening inside the warehouse.

  It was like U.S. Customs’ processing in a way, and in a way the farthest thing from it. The folks in the truck were being led off, dressed in different clothes, and given certain documentation, a bit to eat, a few ounces of water to drink. They were being told things. Things that would further demoralize their spirits.

  Such as, “You will do exactly as we say.”

  And if you don’t, not only will you die, but your entire family, back in the little village or town or city where we took you from, will die too. No exceptions. Ever.

  The instructions would be given. They would be able to sleep for a bit. They would be segregated according to their ultimate function. The future prostitutes would be given the best accommodations and rations. Their looks and overall health mattered, at least for now; later, they wouldn’t. And then they would be discarded, most drugged beyond rehab, and they’d shuffle away and die alone.

  The drug mules would be given things too, things that would allow their innards to receive more bags of drugs than they would have thought possible. Ten percent of them would suffer ruptures of these bags while they were still inside them. All ten percent would die from it. Heroin or coke pouring into one’s bloodstream in such profound doses is not something the body was built to endure, because nowhere in the evolutionary chain did humans have to adapt to such treatment.

  That was good for humanity, bad for the ten percent.

  The ten percent was known, in the industry, as a reasonable and acceptable cost of business. Indeed, like credit card companies that jack up interest rates to cover losses from hackers and deadbeats, the slavers upped their chattel rates to cover these losses.

  Businesses always passed the costs along, whether they were selling hammers or humans.

  Again, there was nothing Mecho could do to help the eighty people in the warehouse tonight. That was not why he was here.

  He sat on his scooter just outside the gate of the fence that surrounded this industrial park and waited.

  He took a photo out of his pocket. While it was dark and he had killed his scooter light before approaching the warehouse area, Mecho could see, in his mind’s eye, the image of the young woman in the picture he held.

  She looked a lot like Mecho. There was a reason for that.

  Family was family.

  Her name was Rada. In his language her name meant “joyfulness.”

  And she had once possessed it in abundance.

  But no longer. That he knew without knowing it for certain.

  Sometimes Mecho wished that Rada were dead.

  Being alive and doing what she was doing must be worse than being dead.

  He had no idea where in the world she was.

  He had come here to get an idea.

  But that was not all.

  There were other pictures in his jacket pocket. All women. All young.

  These women were not related to him.

  But that did not matter. There was another connection, a strong one. That was enough for him.

  He had no idea where in the world any of them were.

  And it was a big world.

  He needed help.

  Tonight would begin his attempts to find such help.

  An hour went by and the overhead door opened. The SUV zipped out and the door closed once more.

  The second SUV stayed where it was while the first SUV approached the gates. They automatically opened and the SUV sped through them.

  Mecho knew there were four men in the SUV.

  As he started up his scooter to follow them it didn’t matter to him which one of the four would provide the assistance.

  He would work through them all until he got it. To him, they were no longer human. Just like they treated the people in the truck.

  They were there for him to use, in any way he chose, to achieve his goals.

  In a way he was a businessman too.

  Only his incentive, his profit, was not measured in money.

  It was measured in justice.

  It was calculated in revenge.

  And in Mecho’s case, those two things were exactly the same.

  CHAPTER 54

  The hotel was far nicer than the Sierra. And it was right on the water.

  The SUV was parked in the hotel’s garage. The four men had ridden the elevator to the lobby and then gone on to their rooms. They each had their own, a perk of this job. Money obviously was no limitation.

  The man who had ridden shotgun in the SUV reached his room on the fifteenth floor and opened the door with his key card. He slipped off his jacket, revealing his holstered Glock nine. He made a beeline for the minibar and mixed a gin and tonic, then went to the window and gazed out over the Gulf. He took a long breath and slipped a cigarette from his pocket and lit up.

  It was a nonsmoking room but he apparently didn’t care.

  Thirty minutes later there was a knock at the door. Not his hotel room door, but the one connecting the room next to his. One of the other men was staying in that room.

  He walked over to it. “Donny?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Call from the boss, we got to roll,” replied Donny.

  “S
hit.”

  “Got something for you,” said Donny.

  He opened the door.

  The blow hit him so hard it lifted him off his feet and he flew backward and landed on the soft bed, his nose broken and his consciousness gone.

  Donny stood there with a gun barrel held against his right temple. Mecho was behind him.

  “Please, man, don’t kill me,” moaned Donny.

  Mecho shoved him into the room and closed the door behind him. A ferocious blow to Don- ny’s head dropped him to the floor.

  When he awoke later he was tied to the bed along with his colleague, who was now awake as well. The two men looked at each other.

  Mecho stood over them looking down. He duct-taped their mouths, pulled their pants and underwear down, and held the knife pointed at their privates.

  When he cut him there, Donny screamed, but it was a nearly soundless one with the duct tape across his mouth.

  The next instant Mecho slammed the knife straight into his chest so hard that the point came out the man’s back and stuck into the mattress.

  Donny’s mouth sagged open as he died.

  The other man looked in panic at his dead colleague.

  Mecho took off the other man’s duct tape.

  The man braced for the strike of the knife, but Mecho just looked at him.

  The man glanced at dead Donny. “Why did you kill him? He’d tell you anything you wanted to know.”

  “I killed him,” said Mecho, “because I could.”

  “What do you want to know?” the other man said, his voice panicky.

  Mecho sat on the bed next to him. “What is your name?” he asked quietly.

  “Joe.”

  “Where are you from, Joe?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “What is this New Jersey?”

  “It’s a state. Of the United States.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  Joe hesitated, but Mecho pointed his blade at his chest and Joe said, “Wife and two little girls.” “In New Jersey?”

  Joe nodded, his eyes filling with tears.

  “And you want to see them again?”

  “Yes,” Joe gasped. “More than anything.”

  “And the people from the boats?”

  Joe’s chest heaved more and he sobbed. “It’s just a job.”

  “They have family too.”

  “I just do it for the money, I swear to sweet Jesus. It’s the only reason. I got nothing against those people.”

  “They have people they love and who love them.”

  “Just a damn job. That’s all,” moaned Joe.

  Mecho took out the photo of Rada and held it in front of Joe. “Do you recognize this person? Her name is Rada.”

  Joe’s eyes were so filled with tears that he could barely see.

  “I... I don’t know.”

  Mecho gripped him around the neck and jerked him upward as he thrust the picture closer. “Do you know her?”

  “I... I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  “Her name is Rada.”

  “I don’t know any of their names. We don’t get names.”

  “She is a beautiful woman. About a month ago she came through here. Were you here then?”

  Joe started to nod, sensing perhaps that if he had valuable intelligence it would keep him alive. “Wait a minute, yeah, I think I do remember her. Right, a month ago. Yeah, Rada.”

  “Rada,” repeated Mecho. “One month ago.”

  “You want to find her, right? Maybe I can help.”

  “One month ago,” said Mecho again. “Rada. She is beautiful.”

  “Absolutely,” said Joe. “A real looker. I can help you. If you untie me—”

  Mecho slammed the blade into Joe’s chest and drove it in up to the hilt. Joe gave a shudder and joined Donny in the land of the dead.

  Mecho stared down at him. “Rada has been gone for one year.” He fingered the photo. “And this is not a picture of Rada.”

  He looked at dead Donny.

  “And your friend already told me all I needed to know back in his room.”

  He pulled his knife free and some pent-up arterial blood squirted from the wound. With the heart no longer beating and zero blood pressure, there would not be any more significant blood loss.

  Mecho said, “So you can see that I have no further need of your assistance. I perhaps forgot to mention that. Forgive me, Joe. I’m sure your family in this New Jersey place will mourn you.” He stood, wiped the blade off on the sheets,

  and stared down at the two men.

  For the money. Just for the money.

  They did not know the names. They never knew the names.

  But I know their names.

  I know them all.

  CHAPTER 55

  Puller sat in his room at the Gull Coast staring at the wall. Sadie was curled up at the end of his bed. The dog had drunk so much water that she had peed in the Tahoe. Puller had cleaned that up and then walked her before coming up to his room.

  It was four a.m. and he had not yet been to sleep.

  There were many items swirling through his mind.

  At four-thirty he closed his eyes and willed himself to rest for three hours.

  When he woke at half past seven he felt like he’d slept for a full eight hours.

  He showered and dressed, walked Sadie, and then fed her with food he had taken from Cookie’s. He walked the dog again to let her do her business and then went out to eat breakfast, leaving Sadie back in the thankfully air-conditioned room. He knew he would have to make other arrangements for the dog, but that was not at the top of his priority list right now.

  He walked two blocks to the waterfront and found a small diner with a fifties retro interior and ordered the biggest breakfast it offered. In deference to the heat outside—the temperature was already in the eighties—he had water with ice in lieu of coffee.

  Fully fueled, he left the diner and walked down the street.

  “Did you get enough to eat?”

  He turned and saw her standing by a mailbox.

  Julie Carson was not in uniform. She had on jeans, sandals, and a green sleeveless blouse.

  She didn’t look like the one-star that she was. She looked like a tourist. A very fit, attractive tourist.

  Puller walked over to her.