by Paul Blades
The engine roared to life. The car rolled backwards for a few moments and then forward in a wide arc, making her lean slightly towards the front passenger door. It slowed for a second or two, went over a little bump and then accelerated quickly, pressing her back in her seat, and leveling off after about 30 seconds. They were on the road.
“Oh god, please help me!” she thought as an icy feeling permeated her veins. “Please! Please!”
CHAPTER TWO
Special Agent Jason Holmes was seething with rage. He had just gotten off the phone with the Deputy Agent in Charge of the New Mexico District. The news he had gotten was not good news at all.
The two agents who had been monitoring Agent Kramer as she made her attempt to infiltrate the Rogues’ New Mexico chapter had lost her. The GPS had indicated that she was in the bar until a little after 2 a.m. The sounds of the bar, the loud music, the crowd, had been coming in perfectly. At exactly 2:07, the GPS indicated that Agent Kramer was on the move. Once they had noted her departure from the bar into the parking lot, the agents had moved their vehicle into position to follow any vehicle which she was in, hoping that she would take them to the Rogues’ secret safehouse which served as the hub of their human trafficking enterprise.
They watched as a motorcycle bearing a woman on the back dressed like Agent Kramer exited the parking lot and headed south. The GPS confirmed that it was her. They followed at a discrete distance. About 10 miles down Route 70, the bike took off down a narrow, dirt trail. The agents followed the bike with some trepidation. The Agent in Charge would not like it if they bottomed out one of the Bureau’s cruisers. They were about 3 miles down the road, it was getting narrower and narrower and more and more rutted as they went on, when they noticed that Agent Kramer was no longer on the move. They knew that there had been no success in finding the Rogues’ safehouse and their hopes rose that this was it. There would be commendations for everyone.
They waited all night. When dawn came, they got out of the car and proceeded on foot. The GPS indicated that Agent Kramer was about two miles away. If there was a house there, they could get a good look at it and then radio in. The local Assistant US Attorney could get a search warrant and they could move in for the kill.
But as they got closer and closer, it was clear that there was no house. They couldn’t figure it out. The GPS said that Agent Kramer was no more than 200 yards from where they stood. They crept up closer and closer. They were starting to get a bad feeling and began to dread that they would find Agent Kramer’s lifeless body. Instead, as they came over a rise, there they were. Agent Kramer’s boots. And the body mike and its wires were circled all around them. They knew they were in deep shit.
It was a little after 10 in the morning. Special Agent Holmes was in the parking lot at the Kansas City International Airport. Carly Walker’s car had been found. A team of local agents were going through it meticulously, gathering stray hairs and other possible DNA evidence, dusting for prints, taking pictures. It was useless with regard to the effort to capture Blackjack Jackson, but there was some comfort in routine. Yesterday DNA evidence had come back from the sporting goods store in western Wisconsin confirming that Jackson had murdered the unfortunate sales clerk and made off with a considerable cache of weapons and cash. A motel owner had recognized his picture. He was probably the only person in all of Wisconsin who had not heard about Jackson’s escape. No TV. No radio.
Another FBI team was at the motel now and they had located evidence that Jackson had almost certainly cut his hair and shaved. That was no surprise. His and presumably the girl’s DNA had been all over the sheets. They had found his empty cans and other detritus and numerous rope fibers. The clerk at the all night convenience store had said that Jackson had bought rope so that was no surprise either.
Holmes had received a number of calls from the chief of the Wisconsin State Police. He hadn’t returned them yet. He doubted if he would. Word had gotten out through the law enforcement grapevine that Jackson had not died in the conflagration at the Wausau clubhouse and Holmes wanted that asshole to squirm for a long time until he decided to release it officially. The chief would have to endure a firestorm of his own. Well, that’s what you get.
Holmes had been thinking positive for the first time since the whole thing began. He now had Jackson’s trail, at least as far as Kansas City. It meant that his hunch was probably right when he guessed that the outlaw would head for New Mexico. But the news of Agent Kramer’s disappearance was a real blow. She had been a protégé of his. He had sent her down there to see if she could get wind of any plans to help Jackson. And now the Rogues had her. What they would do to her was uncertain, but it surely wouldn’t be nice.
Already a flood of agents was pouring into New Mexico from all over the country to put out a dragnet for Agent Holmes. She was the first priority now. That girl Carly was probably already dead or soon to be. Things like this had a way of getting out and as soon as the news of Agent Kramer’s kidnapping became news, Jackson would know that he would have to pass through a virtual sea of FBI agents to get to Mexico. Having the girl with him would be a risk too big to take.
They had raided Ike’s Bar first thing. All they found there were some buttons from her blouse on the floor. They had picked up a few of the well-known Rogues and their girlfriends for questioning but none of them were giving any statements. Ike and his sidekick, Mouse, as he was known, had disappeared. Every cop in New Mexico was pulling in their informants. But they too would get nowhere.
The problem was that Blackjack Jackson was taking on the aura of a cult hero. Already there had sprung up several Blackjack web sites. The Internet was abuzz with him. A guy in Oakland had been picked up for selling Blackjack t-shirts, but they had to let him go. And when word got out that he was still alive and on the loose, Blackjack Jackson would go viral.
“Fuck!” Holmes exclaimed when he clicked off of his Blackberry. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” He scanned the parking lot. There had to be 3 thousand cars there. Somewhere out in the world was a guy, or a gal, who was going to come back to Kansas City and find his or her car missing. Until then, they wouldn’t know what kind of car Jackson was driving. The one good thing though was that there were only 3 or 4 good routes to New Mexico from the Kansas City area. Of course, Holmes’ hunch about New Mexico could be wrong, but the only good thing about Agent Kramer’s disappearance was that it tended to confirm it. Maybe the Rogues would want to do a deal, Jackson for Agent Holmes. It was tempting to think about, but the upper echelons of the Agency would never go for it.
Just then a weary traveler carrying a suitcase and a briefcase came stumbling up to them.
“Are you guys cops?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Holmes replied.
He put down his load wearily. “I think somebody stole my car,” he said.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The building that the local Rogues used for their safehouse, some 65 miles southwest of Albuquerque, was an old mansion that had once served as the hacienda for a bustling cattle ranch. Years ago there had been a broad, spring fed, sweetwater creek that ran lazily through the slightly undulating flatlands and emptied into a shallow but broad lake. There had been just enough rain to maintain the scrub on which the cattle fed. The ranch had hosted 20 or so rancheros every spring to oversee the calving and the branding. There had been a large bunkhouse, a chow hall, a complete stable with a large corral for the many horses necessary for the running of the ranch and a forge for the blacksmith.
In the winter of 1885, a category 3 earthquake had hit the area early one morning. It had shaken the hacienda to its foundation. The cattle had stampeded. Part of the stable had collapsed. But more importantly for the survival of the ranch, the earthquake had caused the flow from the spring to shift underground. By the end of the day, the creek was completely dry. The water in the lake lasted until early spring. The cattle were all sold off and the ranch abandoned.
The out buildings had gone quickly, fa
lling into rapid disrepair until they eventually fell of their own accord. The hacienda, two stories high, a magnificent building constructed to the exacting specifications of the baronial owner, had been made of sterner stuff.
In 1919, with the coming of prohibition, an enterprising local gangster had converted the place into a speakeasy and a whorehouse. A drill rig had been brought in and they were able to dig deep and tap into the groundwater some 200’ down. A generator was rigged for electricity. The place was about 10 miles out from the nearest paved road, what became known as Route 85, today Interstate 25, so a primitive bulldozer was brought in to scrape out an adequate dirt pathway so that the local hoi polloi could have easy motor vehicle access to the place. The county sheriff had been paid off, the county aldermen all got a share of the profits and occasional gratis use of the whores. There was live music and dancing and gambling with a large, gaudy roulette wheel and a craps table. The place changed hands several times with local gangs vying for control of it. It was a veritable gold mine.
When prohibition ended, the place died out quick. Operations were moved to the nearest crossroads, a small town called Belen, and the hacienda again fell into disuse. In 1948, the Belen operation was permanently shut down due to the accession of a reform ticket which ousted the then current stock of corrupt aldermen and the sheriff.
In 1971, Deke Peterson, the then president of the Rogues’ Alamogordo chapter, rediscovered the place while out one afternoon on his Harley. The gang started using it about a year later as a transshipment point for loads of Mexican weed brought up from Juarez. In the nineties, when cocaine got big, they used it for that too. A short airstrip was added. And then, when the big money started accumulating on the other side of the border with the various Mexican gangs, and demand grew for the pale skin of young, beautiful gringas as trophies of success, the place became the central gathering point for the various strays and runaways that came into the Rogues’ hands as well as such other desirable females that fell into their clutches.
Good looking, youthful, brown skinned girls were shipped the other way to populate brutal, gang run brothels in Los Cruces and Albuquerque and places north, east and west.
The existence of the place was well known, in theory at least. Members of the club came into specific knowledge of it only on a need to know basis. No law enforcement agency had been able to discover it. It served as one of the percs of higher office in the club and a brace of girls were usually kept out there for convenient use. There was little concern that the girls might reveal the location of the hideaway to anyone. They were all brought out there blindfolded, bound and gagged and when the club officers became tired of them, or more appealing replacements found, they were sold off to one of the several Mexican gangs they dealt with and never heard from again.
On the morning that Special Agent Holmes was celebrating the discovery of the identity of the car that Blackjack Jackson was now driving, Agent Linda Kramer was ruing the chance she had taken in infiltrating the well-known Rogues hangout the night before. Her wrists bore tight leather bracelets and were hooked behind her back. Her ankles, bearing similar confinements, were locked together and secured to her wrists by an 18” long chain. A thick leather gag filled her mouth and she was in complete darkness. On all sides of her were the steel bars to a 4’ high, 3’x 3’ cage. And, she was naked.
It had been quite a while since the men had stuffed her into it. Enough hours so that the need to urinate had become, if not pressing, a more than conscious need. She had gotten a mere glimpse of her neighbors, two frightened, naked young girls bound much like she was. Once she had been secured, the men left and put out the light. After that, the only sign of the other girls’ presence was their occasional sob or groan of unhappiness.
Agent Kramer knew that she was miles and miles from nowhere. She had lost her GPS transponder when they had removed her boots. She was deep in the basement of the building they had brought her to. The only sounds she could make were muted, dull moans or groans, and she knew that there was no one to hear them but her unfortunate companions.
She had tried pulling and twisting at her bonds for a long time, well beyond the point where she had confirmed to herself that they were inescapable. It was a part of her training. If captured, continue attempting all available means of escape except when under direct supervision or threatened with immediate, disabling violence, or where the safety of a civilian hostage might be at stake. But eventually she became convinced not only that her efforts would be unavailing but also that continued struggle would convert her dark feelings of fear to ones of unbridled, panicked terror. She needed her sanity. She needed to be able to think straight. Somehow, she would be saved, or she would escape. She had to keep that faith at all times. That was survival lesson number 2.
But that was in books. This was not a training exercise. The men who had kidnapped her had dark designs for her. They could never let her go. That was clear. Her only hope was escape. But was it realistic to think that she would be able to mount an escape from ruthless men who had made a science of making women their helpless prisoners? Not one woman had ever come forward with the tale of her kidnapping by the Rogues. Not one. Which meant that the women who did manage to somehow get free spent the rest of their lives in abject fear of retribution from them or the men to whom they had been sold. Or, none ever escaped.
A coldness crept over her. “Don’t give up hope! Don’t give up hope!” she said to herself again and again. But the chains that held her bound were so implacable, the probability that the men would do her grievous harm so high, that the repetition of those words seemed but a hollow gesture.
She had never been so frightened in her life.
Last night had been a harrowing, hellacious, degrading ordeal and she cowered now, in shame, for what the men made her do.
She had come out of her stupor just as they were putting the gag in her mouth. It took her a second to figure out what had happened, but only a second. By the time though that she began to twist and turn her already bound body, shrieking into her gag, an effort that produced only what sounded like a desperate whine, it was too late. One man held her shoulders down while the other took hold of her legs and pushed them back until they touched her bound hands. A moment later and they were affixed together.
There was no chance at all at resistance as they picked her up and dumped her unceremoniously in the tool box. When the lid slammed closed, she was in absolute darkness. She tried to keep making noise in case someone might hear her, but it was clear that none of her raging howls for help, muffled as they were, would escape her little prison.
The truck bounced a little as it rode on the unpaved rocks and dirt in the backyard of the tavern. When the ride smoothed out, she knew she was in the parking lot proper. She sensed the truck making a right, turning north. She knew that the two men from the local agency who were monitoring her, her backup, were sitting in their car just a few hundred feet up the road. Her screaming got louder as she approximated the truck passing them. She banged her head on the side of the steel box as hard as she could until it hurt. She called out in her mind, “I’m here! I’m here!”
It was then that she realized that she had lost her boots. As far as the agents would know, she was still in the bar. And that was when she began to get frightened. She was on her own.
The ride took a long time. She kept squirming and twisting at her bonds, but to no avail. Her head was woozy from the booze she had consumed and the blow to her chin. Her arms and legs felt rubbery. After a while, she gave up and lay there still and quiet.
She knew that they were probably heading for the safehouse. She had already found out more about it than dozens of other officers over many years. It was north of the bar they had just come from. She tried to keep track of the turns they made and how long it took them to get to each one. They had made a left after about forty minutes or so of driving. Then they had driven more or less west for about an hour. Then the truck went through some twists and turn
s and she lost track of their direction. About a half hour after that, the truck left the road and started down a bumpy trail.
The truck had slowed and they travelled on the uneven road for a long time. It made several curves. And then the truck came to a halt. She heard the engine turn off. Her stomach twisted and her body ran cold. They were there.
She heard the gate to the flatbed fall and felt the truck dip a little as the men hopped up onto it. She heard the lock being freed above her. Right now was when she should have been coiled, ready to spring at her captors the moment the lid was lifted. She remembered that from one of her lectures. It wasn’t going to happen though because she had never accomplished the first step, freeing herself from her bonds.
The lid popped open and she heard one of the men’s voices. “Come on, baby. Time to come out and play.”
The other fellow laughed. “Yeah, fun time’s about to begin. We’re going to get to know you real good before the night’s out.”
He reached down and took hold of her long, blond hair to pull her up so they could get a hold on her. It came off in his hand.
“Whoa!” he blurted out. “What’s this?”
“That’s part of her disguise,” the other man said. “She was supposed to be under cover. That’s a hair extension.”
“Deceitful bitch, ain’t she?”
“Don’t worry,” the second one said. “All will be revealed.” They both laughed again.
The first man snuck his hand down in the box and this time took hold of her real hair, which was blond all right, but went down only to the middle of her neck, a businesslike cut for an up and coming professional. There was plenty enough to grab.
She shrieked as he yanked on her blond growth, arching her body up. The other man reached in and took hold of her arms. He held her there while the first man scooted around and took hold of her bent knees. The men both ‘ooomphed!’ as they took her out. They dropped her on the flatbed. She groaned as she landed. Her breasts were naked from her torn shirt and they scraped on the dusty, rough steel.