by Alana Terry
If u run in2 trouble/discover sumthing, ICE txt me.
The ICE text was Mom’s favorite aspect of the phone. As soon as Hadassah sent a text through the In Case of Emergency list, Mom obtained exact coordinates of her location, then could access a satellite visual as well.
Her phone buzzed again.
Stay 100ft or more bhind him. Hpe u brot ur hairpin. Unscrew end 4 xtra camra.
Mom was always full of surprises. Yup, she texted back. She was gaining on Mr. Lavo now. He dragged his feet; maybe he dreaded his work, or grew lazy, or terribly confident.
Then the man stepped into a champagne colored Mercedes Benz SUV, and Hadassah feared losing him altogether.
Maintaining her thick Yorkshire accent, Hadassah addressed a young man sitting on a motorbike in the taxi station. “Excuse me.”
The young man turned and beamed a smile at her. “How may I help you?”
“Are you a taxi?” she asked. She hoped she could keep this up—English accents were the hardest for her. “I need to follow a man in a car.”
“I can follow a car, young lady, but it’ll cost a little extra. Will he not drive you?”
“He was my boyfriend and he broke my heart, sir.” She turned on the waterworks. “I came all this way and he breaks my heart. I’ve got to talk to him again before I leave.” Deceiving people like this always made her feel ill. “Please.”
“Okay, okay, climb on, young lady.” The young man donned a helmet, masking his whole face.
“I need a helmet.”
“You don’t need one, young lady. I’m a safe driver.”
“How much for yours? I’ll pay you for it.”
“For mine? A lot extra,” he replied.
“I’ll pay it.” Cringing as she gave this promise, she tried to remember how much money she had left in her sock. Probably not enough, but she couldn’t think about that just yet. She wiped fake tears away, took the scarf off, wrapped it tight around her waist and tucked in any strings. When he handed her the helmet, she took out her hairpin and slipped on the helmet. It concealed her face completely. “Follow that car please, sir, but not too closely.”
“Which one?”
“The SUV, the Mercedes GL550, please.”
“Oh, sweet young lady, please tell me he is not your boyfriend.” The young man shook his head. “He is a bad, bad man.”
“I know he’s a bad man! I came all this way and he breaks my heart. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind, so if you please, sir, follow the SUV.”
The young man revved the bike’s engine and then pulled out into traffic. He treated other cars as his personal obstacle course. Hadassah gripped the small handles to her right and left, struggling to keep her balance while her knuckles whitened, and her palms sweat.
“He’s a bad, bad man, young lady,” the driver said again after they crossed Mesurado Bridge and were following the Mercedes north on United Nations Drive. “You don’t need a man like him. You need Jesus. You need Jesus, young lady.”
Hadassah smiled at this remark, although no one but God Almighty, Yeshua Himself, saw the joy on her face. How much could she tell him? She hated lying or staying in character around a brother or sister in the Lord.
But he didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. The rest of the way he continued to preach the gospel to her and his words raced through the breeze to her ears like a cup of cold water under all that hot African sun.
“Slow down,” Hadassah shouted when the SUV turned down a dirt road toward a thin jungle. “Let him have more space. I don’t want him to suspect it’s me.”
The driver complied and widened the gap to 300 yards between the vehicles, then he resumed preaching the gospel to her, explaining how Jesus would bear all of her hurt, heartache and shame. She listened as if this was beautiful background music while she surveyed her surroundings for any sign of a landmark or anomaly. Another vehicle followed the motorbike down this road. Although it relieved her in one way, she made sure to keep her guard up. It could be anyone. He could work for Mr. Lavo.
Augustus Lavo drove his Mercedes another three or four miles before he slowed and turned down a long driveway leading to a warehouse surrounded by a barbed wire fence.
“Drive further,” Hadassah told the motorbike evangelist. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
She looked behind and saw the other car still following. Her nervousness swelled when the motorbike had to swerve around all the bumps and ruts in the road and the car began to catch up.
“Pull off here and let him pass.” Hadassah unintentionally left aside the English accent and resumed her Brooklyn accent.
He braked to a stop and waited for the car to pass. The car sped past and bumped all the way down the road until it was out of sight. Hadassah sighed and stepped off the back of the bike.
“You can leave me here.” Her smile jittered even more than her arms as she handed him his helmet. “Here. And thanks for telling me about Jesus. I love Him too.”
He gave her an incredulous stare. “Augustus Lavo is a bad, bad man.”
“He’s exactly the man I need to find.”
“Please think again. My cousin Andrew works for him, and he has cut himself off from the family ever since. I worry for you, young lady. Here is my card with my phone number if you need a lift back to the city. My name is Joseph Blessing.”
“Thank you, Mr. Blessing. Here is 150. I wish I had more to give you.”
“It’s more than I would have asked for. Do you need me to stay and wait for you?”
“No, thank you, Mr. Blessing. That would make it more dangerous for me.”
“You aren’t here because he broke your heart, are you? You are here to help bring him to justice.”
She nodded.
He smiled at her. “Your voice changed when we got here, that is how I knew. Don’t worry, I am not angry, I understand now. I will pray for you. He is a bad man.”
She turned toward the bushes. “God bless you, Joseph Blessing. You have been a blessing to me.”
“Wait,” he called out to her. “I will give you something.” He reached into his small saddle bag. “Bug spray for the mosquitoes. Do you have a flashlight?”
“I have a flashlight, but I could use the bug spray.”
“Take this bottle of water too. And may God go before you and His angels surround you.”
She smiled back. “Thanks.” The sound of a car driving down the road shook her into watchfulness. Hadassah slipped behind the undergrowth for cover just in time.
Chapter 4: Evidence
IT WAS A BLACK AUDI bumping down the dirt road. It stopped at the motorbike and the man at the wheel leaned out the window. “Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing down this road?”
“I’m a taxi driver,” Joseph Blessing told the him. “I was looking for a house.”
“There are no houses out here. And your bike stinks.”
“I will move in a minute, sir, as soon as I find my directions to the house.”
“No one comes down this road unless they do it on purpose,” the man snarled. “Were you traveling alone?”
“Yes, sir,” Joseph replied. “As I said, I was looking for a fare. I took a wrong turn.”
“Go along, then.”
After Joseph Blessing turned his bike and left, the Audi drove back toward the warehouse.
Hadassah chewed the side of her tongue until she saw the dust settle. She stood up, wrapped the scarf about her belly under her shirt to hide its bright color and to mask her girlish figure, then she crept along the undergrowth parallel to the road, careful not to make a sound. Crouching behind bushes and discarded slabs of corrugated metal, it took her almost forty-five minutes to cover the mile toward the warehouse. The sun, oppressive with its heat, arched toward mid-afternoon.
When she reached the edge of the clearing, she crouched behind a sheet of rusted corrugated metal. The holes in the metal provided a direct line of sight. Barbed wire lined the top of the chain-link fence
all around the warehouse, but the fence didn’t surround the entire building. In the gaps ran two lines of barbed wire. This would deter most people—not many seventeen-year olds had the benefit of a mom who had been a spy with the Mossad.
Eva Michelman had been trained by some of the best in the industry, and she passed the training along to her daughter beginning the morning after Hadassah’s Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Or at least their version of the Bat Mitzvah ceremony, now that they followed Yeshua Ha’Mashiach. Getting past barbed wire was one of the first lessons.
“Notice the gaps between the barbs,” Mom had said when they practiced behind an abandoned industrial park in New Jersey. “There’s a lot of space between these barbs if you know what to do with it. That’s why I gave you the hair pin for your Bat Mitzvah gift.”
Hadassah still remembered Mom’s grin that day, less suppressed than usual, and the smile she gave in return before climbing back and forth through barbed wire until sunset.
But crossing barbed wire here would have to wait for cover of darkness.
After observing the fence, Hadassah noticed the trash cans—huge metal barrels overflowing with flies. That was one thing Mom always said: people incriminate themselves by carelessly discarding evidence. Hadassah needed a picture of those barrels and the trash inside.
She counted the four armed guards outside the warehouse covering two entrances: the west-facing front and the side facing north. She assumed there would be four more guards on the south and east. They carried shotguns. Old ones. Must have been from the 1940’s by the look of them.
The phone buzzed in her pocket and she nearly jumped out of her skin. At least she had turned the ringer off. The text was from Mom.
Txt me ICE.
She sent off the text, wondering what Mom would say when she saw the satellite footage.
The next time her phone buzzed, it didn’t scare Hadassah quite so much; the incessant buzzing of the flies drowned out a lot of noise.
I see warehouse via sat. Where r u?
Hidden. East North East, Hadassah texted.
Glad. Stay hidden. Here’s the sat visual.
When Hadassah opened the 3D satellite image, it matched her suspicion: eight guards total along the perimeter. She zoomed in on the holographic image and memorized all the details she saw.
Take pics of trash barrels, Mom sent.
I know, Mom. But she constrained herself from texting it.
Hadassah took out her hair pin and unscrewed the tiny, pen-shaped camera. The specs she read etched into the side of the camera declared its high resolution. Exactly what she needed for these shots.
The first photos she sent were of the compound with the guards out front. As she uploaded these photos onto her phone, the sound of a baby crying from inside the warehouse cut through the thick afternoon air. Then she heard another. And another. Their sad chorus grew louder and louder until it drowned out the sound of the flies. Hadassah guessed there were well over fifty babies by the sound; their swelling cries tugged at every gram of her heart and made her belly feel like water. Guards milled about restlessly in the noise. Then all eight of them gathered at the north entrance of the building and moved toward the front gate, further and further from the warehouse.
As soon as the photos of the outside of the warehouse were delivered, Hadassah used her phone to record a video of the babies crying. It was so loud. Can u hear? she texted along with the video. Mom answered within a minute.
Loud & clear.
With the guards congregated at the front gate, Hadassah saw a possible route to the trash barrels. The brush covered her from their view, and one of the bushes beside the fence and next to the barrels protruded through the chain-links enough to conceal her activity. Or at least she hoped. She looked again at the surroundings. All clear.
Jogging along in a crouched position, she was careful not to make noise above the hum of the flies, though the crying from the warehouse still drowned out even that.
As she drew closer to the trash barrels, the smell overpowered her. The Water Side Market also had an intense human smell, but it had been mixed with spices. There was no spice here. Her stomach of steel lurched. Did baby diapers fill these barrels? Holding her sleeve across her face, she peered over the edge. She gagged and blinked; the stench stung her eyes and the back of her throat. Soiled diapers, both cloth and disposable, filled the barrels to the brim, and none of them were folded to conceal the contents. The sight of the flies masked almost everything else, except the maggots. She also saw a few old bottles and some dirty clothes.
Heady from both the heat and the stench, Hadassah crouched low again, praying. She held her nose shut, hoping this would keep the rising bile down. How could she bring herself to stand? She prayed for grace, for strength, for a temporary absence of the sense of smell. Gotta do this fast. She took a deep breath through her mouth and held it. Click. Click. Click. In the end she took six pictures, including one with the warehouse in the background.
With a constant eye on the guards, she crept back to the hiding place under the corrugated metal, where she downloaded the pictures to her phone. As she waited for each download, Hadassah realized she’d have to see the inside of the warehouse, even though she didn’t want to after the sight of those barrels. And how would she take pictures? All the windows of the place hung fifteen feet or more off the ground. While formulating her plan, she spied several small holes where the wall was rusted away. All of those holes were big enough to fit the camera through—assuming the holes penetrated to the other side. She’d wait until dark to see if any light came through.
The downloads seemed to be taking forever.
Twilight grew, and small streams of light filtered through those rusted holes in the warehouse. While waiting for the right moment to come, she sent off more photos.
The cries of the babies increased as if calling to her for help.
I may have enough – Mom texted back – Any more and we’ll def have the police &army there tonight.
I’m going to take pics of inside warehouse – she sent to Mom – Tell me current satellite on guards.
Darkness deepened. She filled her mind with various exit strategies to avoid thinking about anything else.
Her phone finally buzzed again.
The guards r all @ the gate. If u go, go now.
Using her hair pin, Hadassah fastened the lower string of barbed wire to the ground while she held up the top wire and slipped through without a snag. As soon as she stood again she looked for the guards—still at the gate, still unaware of her. She crouched low, like a lioness, and ran. When she reached the warehouse, she knelt on one knee, ready to sprint away if need be. The clamorous crying still masked any sound she made.
Threading the camera a quarter-inch into the hole, she angled it left and right, snapping picture after picture. She debated downloading the photos while sitting beside the warehouse but had taken so many risks already. Still, she needed to glance inside the building in case the photos didn’t catch the right evidence. Pressing her face against the rusted wall, she peered through the hole.
Her eyes confirmed what her ears and nose observed: babies throughout the warehouse, anywhere from fifty to seventy of them—some with diapers, some without—were all screaming, confined in shabby cribs. Some of the cribs had two or three children apiece. She couldn’t tell which one of them was Ariella in all that confusion.
But there was Mr. Lavo, stripped down to a white tank-top, which looked out of place with the silk pants of his suit. He chewed a thick cigar between his big teeth and thick lips as he paced the floor and typed into his phone. Even with the warehouse as big as it was, Hadassah could smell the smoke off his rancid cigar. And he never once looked at a child, but he dropped bottles into a few of the cribs as he walked by. She caught herself scraping the tips of her fingers with her thumbnail. Instead of succumbing to nervousness, Hadassah took two more pictures, this time holding the camera to her line of sight.
Turning toward
the night and running back to the barbed wire, she tried to remember how many photos she had taken. How much memory did she have left? And how much battery? The pen camera couldn’t have a battery anything like the phone.
She retrieved the hair pin and raced to her refuge under the rusted metal. The rustling sounds in the jungle and screams of monkeys in the distance, some of them louder than the crying babies, began to disturb her. Fear started to pulse within her. Mosquitoes hummed their high-pitched song, perhaps even singing about the malaria they carried. She debated using the spray.
It was hard to calm her breathing and heart rate while watching the photos upload. The bottled water Joseph Blessing gave her was warmer than her body temperature and did little more than saturate her parched tongue and make her empty stomach queasy.
The devices were taking longer than ever.
A blinking orange light on the pen-shaped camera told her the battery was running low. The thought mission failure crossed her mind, and she tried to shoo it away like the many mosquitoes surrounding her. One text to Mom and she could have a helicopter extraction. Instead, she unwrapped the scarf from around her waist and used it to wipe the sweat streaming down her forehead.
When she saw the uploaded photos, she knew she didn’t dare blow her cover. These little ones needed help, and she had that help in the palm of her hand. She needed to send the pictures.
Hadassah hid her phone under her arm to mask its light. Those footfalls, too heavy and clumsy to be an animal, were now accompanied by voices. There were two of them. At least she hadn’t used the odoriferous bug spray yet, even though the mosquitoes increased by the minute.
“It was a man, Dez, I swear it,” one of the men told the other.
“You sure you saw someone ’ere?” Dez asked.
“I ain’t lyin’. I tell you I seen a man,” the first guard answered. “He slipped through the barbed wire.”
“You’ve been awful jittery today. Remember what Lavo told us. One of us is gonna take the fall tonight. You better be right, Mr. Blessing, or you better watch your back.”