Harrison frowned at the greeting. It never failed to irritate him that the man on the other end of the phone, with his deep Southern accent, pronounced the greeting as yellow.
“Good afternoon, Shelby. It’s Harrison.”
The sound of running machinery in the background faded as Shelby stepped someplace quieter. “Good afternoon, Mr. Prescott. What can I do for you?”
“I need room and board for a patient. She’s pregnant and I need to keep her out of any legal entanglements until the baby is born. I think getting her out of town to someplace isolated is the best way to do that.”
Shelby was silent for a moment before responding. “You know I’ll do whatever you want, Mr. Prescott, but those substance abusers are trouble. Between the illegals we got staying here and the product we got stored already, I worry about the druggies. They’re always sneaking around and doing dumb shit. It’s not good for anyone.”
“I hear the concerns you so eloquently stated, Shelby. Do your best to keep her isolated and happy. It should only be a couple of weeks until the baby is born. This one is special. No documentation. You hear what I’m saying?”
Shelby understood. There was no record of this woman’s pregnancy so there wouldn’t be any welfare reports about the mother not taking her to pediatrician appointments after she was born. They’d deliver the baby at his farm or some other remote location and no one would ever know it existed. Regardless of his hate for druggies, Shelby understood this was valuable cargo. “I get it, Mr. Prescott. I won’t let you down, sir.”
“Excellent, Shelby. You know your hard work and loyalty will be rewarded.”
“It always has been, Mr. Prescott. I appreciate it very much.”
“I’m going to give you a phone number for one of my most trusted associates. Her name is Karen. You two can work out the details of getting this woman to the farm.”
“Shouldn't be a problem. We have truckers coming in from the west hauling illegals. I have a man who picks them up along the interstate. He can probably take care of it.”
“Good enough. I don’t need all the details. Just get with Karen and make it happen.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Shelby assured him.
Harrison understood Shelby’s reluctance to take on one of his “druggies.” They were always high-maintenance. He knew the man thought they weren’t worth the trouble, but there were aspects of Harrison's business that Shelby wasn’t privy to. Nor were most of the employees in his extensive network.
Trafficking people for sex wasn’t just about the money the product brought in. Certainly he had a lot of human product, and because of that millions of dollars made its way up the chain to him, but that wasn’t the only gain that trafficking in children netted. It was also about compromising people in positions of power and wealth.
If you had pictures or video of a powerful man having sex with an underage girl, what would that man be willing to do to pay for your silence? The answer was anything you requested.
Harrison had used such footage to gain an advantage in business deals and to have laws passed that favored him and his associates. He used his footage to convince wealthy men to sell him valuable pieces of property at pennies on the dollar, like the island he just bought for two million dollars.
This particular coercive strategy—blackmail in more common terms—was the centerpiece of Harrison’s real estate empire. Some of the most desirable properties in the country had passed through his hands solely on the merit of hidden cameras and underage girls.
Other times, people had come to him, seeking to have someone intentionally compromised for their own personal reasons. For a favor or a fee, Harrison would make that happen. So many men of power were weak and took him up on his invitations. Harrison understood their weakness. He too was a fan of his own product and frequently sampled it under the guise of "quality control".
17
Ty’s Townhouse
It was nearly 11 PM when Cliff tapped on Ty’s door. When he opened it, Ty found Cliff standing there with a carry-on bag and a twelve-pack of Rolling Rock.
“Come in,” Ty said, stepping to the side.
Cliff stepped inside and set the luggage on the floor. “Beer?”
Ty nodded. “Sure. Let me stick the rest of them in the fridge.”
Cliff shrugged. “I’m not sure there’s any point to that. I think we can knock most of these out before they get cold. You get that meeting set up?”
“I did. Come on in and have a seat. The place looks a little lived-in at the moment so excuse the housekeeping.”
“Don’t worry about it, dude. I appreciate you letting me crash here. Normally I would have found a hotel for the night but I wanted to talk about this case some before we have that meeting in the morning.”
Cliff took a seat on the couch and handed Ty a beer, taking one for himself. He left the rest of them setting on the coffee table beside a worn copy of Tactical Life magazine. Ty dropped into the recliner, the only other place to sit besides the couch. He popped open his beer and sat on the edge of the seat, elbows on knees.
“How was the flight?”
Cliff took a long pull of his beer, then ran a hand over his short hair. “Brother, they’re all the same these days. I spend so much time in the air I lose track of where I’m going sometimes. That’s the biggest suck of the job. My wife and kids probably forget what I look like sometimes. It's almost as bad as deployment but not quite.”
“Are there people within DKI you could delegate some of this to?”
“Probably. I admit it’s an obsession and probably not a healthy one, but I’m not ready to let go of it. There’ll be a day when I can but I’m not there yet. I've got demons waiting on me too, man. I know the minute I slow down those demons and I are going to have a face-to-face. I don't know how that'll go.”
Ty knew all about demons. If Cliff's brutal work schedule kept them at bay, he understood why he did it. Exhaustion was preferable to torture any day. “I’m surprised you came to town. I figured this was something we could do over videoconferencing or something.”
Cliff shook his head. “You can exchange information—data—over a conference call but you can’t get a feel for things that way. This is something I need to get a feel for. I need to see the players and interact with them. Sometimes that feeling tells you as much as the actual data does.”
Ty settled into the recliner and took a sip of his beer. “You think this might be legit?”
Cliff shrugged. “DKI saves thousands of kids a year from all over the world. I’m not talking about ‘saving’ in some imaginary, philosophical sense. I’m talking about hands-on, physically picking up kids from shitty situations and carrying them out the door into the light of day. Actual no-bullshit rescues from enslavement and brutality.”
“That’s insane,” Ty said. “When I first read that on your website it was hard to comprehend. That doesn't seem like the world we live in.”
“It's not the world most of us live in, but it's the world for twenty million people. The ones we save are only a drop in the bucket, Ty. We could rescue that many every day and not end world trafficking. It’s too big. The three biggest criminal enterprises in the world are drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and human trafficking. Human trafficking just replaced arms trafficking as the second-largest criminal enterprise in the world. Eventually, it will overtake drugs too and become the largest."
"Why is human trafficking overtaking those other crimes? People are still using drugs. Weapons are still moving around the world."
Cliff was getting amped. His passion was evident. He took a long pull of his beer before answering. "It's harsh, man, but criminals have figured out you can only sell a drug once and then it’s gone. A single human can be sold all day, every day, and you can still sell them again tomorrow. They’re a perpetual income source.”
“That’s fucking sick.”
Cliff held up his beer in a symbolic toast of acknowledgment. “Hell yeah it is, but w
e’re always a little behind the curve. Law enforcement and DKI both. We’re responding to tips and intelligence, chasing down leads. We’re rescuing people, mostly kids, but we’re not catching the people behind it. Most of those who get arrested are low-level thugs and middle-men. They’re not the masterminds, not the real traffickers. We’re getting the kidnappers and the guards, the brokers and the pimps, that’s all. This doesn't stop until we start pulling those big snakes out of their holes and hacking off their heads.”
“Are you able to identify the traffickers? I mean, are there people out there who you know are trading in humans but you can’t get to them?” That would make sense to Ty. It was like terrorism. Sometimes the government knew who the masterminds and planners were but they couldn't get to them.
Cliff drained his beer and slid the empty bottle into the carton. He opened a second and gestured toward Ty, but Ty waved him off. He hadn’t finished his first.
“It’s a crazy thing. The logistics of human trafficking are so large that it takes vast amounts of money and infrastructure to deal in people. Unlike weapons and drugs, humans need food and sanitation, and sometimes medical treatment. All that costs money. We know there are big people behind it with deep pockets. Some of them are cartel bosses hiding behind armies and third-world governments. They’re practically untouchable. But some of them are hiding in plain sight in our country. The evidence supports it, but we can’t identify them. They’re hidden behind too many layers. That’s why I’m here in person. Anytime I can start peeling up an edge to look beneath it, that's what I'm going to do.”
Ty shook his head. “I believe you, man, but this is crazy stuff. It almost sounds like some fake conspiracy bullshit off the internet. If I didn’t know it was true, I’d have a hard time believing it.”
“I think that’s the intention, Ty,” Cliff said with utter seriousness. “I think there are people out there spending money to get every crazy pedophilia ring rumor dismissed as a hoax. That kind of disinformation campaign makes it harder to find the truth when we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s happening out there.”
The two talked half the night. They finished Cliff’s beer then tore into Ty’s fridge and drank a few more. Both of them knew that drinking wasn’t the answer. While it didn’t fix anything, didn’t solve problems, it was an opportunity for the men to bond. They’d known each other for several months now and had spent a lot of time together, but they were still relative strangers. An employee and an employer.
That was changing though. Cliff’s operators, his DKI door-kickers, were more than employees to him. They were more than friends. They were an extension of himself and that was the level of bond he sought to build. They became a unit, just as they’d all been during their time in the military, although now their mission was different. Some might even say that the mission was more critical than ever.
18
Abingdon, Virginia
Cliff's morning routine was similar to Ty's. He was a training masochist. Just because he’d stayed up late drinking didn’t mean he could skip his morning workout. Ty was up and making noise by 6 AM, just as he’d promised he’d do when they called it a night.
“Ughhh,” Cliff groaned from the couch. “Please don’t tell me it’s morning already.”
“It is. Coffee is on and I thought you might want to join me for a run. We’re meeting Whitt and Baxter at a donut place later so I figure we need to be proactive about burning some calories.”
Cliff agreed and in thirty minutes the two were out the door in running clothes. They hit the sidewalk and did about two miles down shaded brick streets. Around them, commuters were zipping to work. Contractors rattled by in pickups with racks of ladders and dangling extension cords. Landscapers mowed lawns and city workers emptied garbage cans. After a few turns, the pair hit the Creeper Trail, already thick with the “silver sneaker” crowd.
On that first section of trail, still in the town limits, ancient oaks and maples laced together to form a canopy over the broad path. A neighborhood of expensive golf course homes ran along the left side of the trail. Women in bright synthetic tops and yoga pants speed-walked with jogging strollers, their infants smiling at the bouncy ride. An ancient man on a bicycle, there every single day, rolled by stoically with a nod of greeting. Ty thought his name was Lawrence.
“This is nice,” Cliff said when they finally got past the most congested section of the trail and began descending into deep forest.
“Different than Arizona trails?” Ty asked sarcastically.
“Well, I haven’t seen a rattler or scorpion yet.”
“Here it’s copperheads and black widows, but there’s so much traffic you’re not likely to see one. The bigger threat is cougars.”
“Really?” Cliff asked. “This close to town?”
Ty nodded. “Yeah, that neighborhood is full of them. They’ll be out here walking the trail by 9 AM, once they get their kids off to school.”
Cliff uttered a fake laugh. “If you’ve got enough wind for lousy jokes, we’re not pushing hard enough.” With that, Cliff ducked his head, shifted into overdrive, and pulled away. This was no longer a jog. It was a flat-out run.
Ty groaned. “Me and my big mouth.”
He picked up the pace and they tore through another mile and a half at a sprinting pace before they reached a trailside bench, erected in memory of a deceased trail supporter.
“Stop...here,” Ty gasped.
He expected Cliff to give him some grief about slowing down but Cliff didn’t have the wind for it. The two walked in circles, catching their breath and letting their muscles wind down.
Cliff checked his watch. “Do we need to head back?”
“I guess so. From my house to this bench and back is around eight miles. I’ve logged it before. And we’ve been running downhill for the last mile so now we have to run back up.”
Cliff used the tail of his shirt to mop his face. “Damn, it’s humid here. Like running in the sauna.”
Ty laughed. “Try this run in the afternoon and we’ll talk. This is nothing. Things get tropical as the day heats up. Good old Southern humidity.”
The two jogged back to town at a more leisurely pace, breaking it up with occasional sprints. They arrived at Ty’s house with just enough time to take showers before heading out to The Golden Donut to meet Agent Baxter and Lieutenant Whitt. They rode together in Ty’s truck, leaving Cliff’s rental at the townhouse.
Pulling into the parking lot, Ty was surprised to see that he’d beaten Lieutenant Whitt to the popular breakfast spot. “I think we’re early.”
“Well surely we’re not going to wait outside when there are coffee and donuts in there,” Cliff said, his tone implying that would be sheer lunacy.
They headed inside. The smell was heavenly and each man allowed himself two pastries and a large coffee. Ty went for toasted coconut and a chocolate eclair. Cliff went for a chocolate donut and an apple fritter. They’d just found a table and were gorging on sugar like hyenas on a carcass when Baxter and Whitt showed up.
Ty spotted them immediately because he’d been able to secure the best table in the house. They were in a spot where they were facing all entrances to the small restaurant. Ty threw up a sticky hand in greeting. In a few minutes, the new arrivals joined them at their table with their own coffee and donuts. Ty and Cliff stood, wiping their hands on napkins.
“Agent Baxter,” said Ty, “this is my employer, Cliff Mathis.”
The two shook hands, then Cliff shook the lieutenant’s hand. “Good to see you again, Lieutenant Whitt.”
“Likewise,” the lieutenant replied.
Baxter and Whitt took seats across from Ty and Cliff.
“You’re a brave woman,” Cliff pointed out, gesturing to Whitt’s decision to eat powdered sugar donuts while wearing a black suit.
The lieutenant shrugged. “Funny how we all lose our senses when you put donuts in front of us.”
Ty gestured at the empty wax paper o
n the table in front of him. “The same happened here but I ate the evidence already. Utter disregard for diet and common sense.”
Already done with his pastries, high on a buzz of endorphins, caffeine, and sugar, Cliff got right to business. “So I had one of my researchers jump in on the notes Ty sent me.” He looked at Agent Baxter. “We have people who do some of the same things you do at the FBI—forensic accounting, financial investigation, following corporate trails—that kind of thing. We’re not burdened with all the same levels of bureaucracy though. We are a dynamic organization and can move pretty quickly on some things.”
“Complete opposite of the FBI,” Agent Baxter agreed.
“Acknowledged,” Cliff continued. “And while there’s obviously no smoking gun at this point, the layers of corporate obfuscation around this chain of clinics is consistent with ownership that doesn’t want to be identified. That could be for hiding money or it could be something more. When you couple those facts to the story that your informant relayed, I think it warrants further attention.”
Baxter and Whitt looked at each other as if deciding who should respond. Whitt, her face and jacket covered in powdered sugar, yielded the floor with a wave of her hand.
“Any recommendations?” Baxter asked.
“I’d like to meet this confidential informant of yours immediately,” Cliff replied without hesitation. “In fact, why don’t you call her up right now and see if she’ll talk to us? That doesn’t give her time to practice her story or develop an angle. She’ll be a little off-guard and that can work to our advantage.”
Whitt wiped her mouth with her napkin, then brushed at her jacket but it only made the problem worse. “I can do that. She’s on disability so she doesn’t have to work, but I don’t know what her childcare situation is like.”
“Do it,” Cliff urged.
This was one of the things Ty liked about Cliff. There was no BS or dragging feet, no “let’s set up another meeting”. To hell with that. Cliff ran on one hundred percent all the time with his goal being to accomplish as much from each interaction as he possibly could. There was no point in patting each other on the back and commiserating about the evils they all knew existed in the world. Cliff didn't want validation, he wanted progress.
Child With No Name Page 8