by Smith, Skye
The girls were being pushed into a big black Merc. He was too far behind to get to them before the doors closed. Besides, there were three men with them, and another in the car. He bee-lined it to the little Gypsy. He would follow them until they stopped and then watch what was going down.
The big Merc spun some gravel and made enemies of the vendors who scrabbled to cover their wares from the dust. The little Gypsy slotted in tight behind it. There was lots of moon still, so Will didn't bother with headlights. He kept varying the distance between him and the big car. If they suspected he was following them, they could leave him in the dust with no problem. That car had over two hundred horses, compared to his fifty.
The Merc went east to the highway and then crossed the Chapora river and turned west again along the river towards the sea. Will almost lost them at one crossroad, but luckily he saw their tail lights across a rice paddy and got back on their track. The Merc turned into a driveway so he stopped short of it and got out to follow on foot. There was a footpath that ran along a shallow dyke separating the rice paddies, and he took it.
The Merc's brake lights flashed and in the brightness of the moon there was an outline of a large building. Some kind of warehouse or garage. He doubled back to the Gypsy, put it in four wheel drive and bumped across the dry rice paddy until he could see the building clearly. The irrigation ditch then blocked his way but there was a thicket of bamboo growing along the ditch and he hid the Gypsy out of sight behind it.
As quietly as he could he grabbed his tool belt out from under the driver's seat, and with it, the bush knife that he used for coconuts. It took him less than five minutes to follow the natural cover of the land and arrive about fifty yards from the Merc. There was no one around the car, At this end of the building there were two doors. One for machinery and one for people. They must keep machinery inside.
For a half an hour he stayed still and just watched. It was tough to do, because what he really wanted to do was break the effing door down. They could be doing anything to the girls inside while he waited out here.
Eventually the skyline to the east began to lightening up. An hour to sunrise. There was no guard, no patrols. He snuck closer to the building and then moved into the shadow of the building and started to walk around it to check the perimeter. From what he could see in the poor light, it was an old building completely built of wood, even the roof.
A light was glinting ahead and he snuck up on it. It turned out to be a crack between two planks that allowed him to see in. Through the crack, it looked like the entire back of the building was one room. Inside were dozens of children sleeping on thin straw mats, punctuated by the occasional blonde head. He didn't know what was going down here, but one thing was clear. It wasn't legal.
At the end of the building he cautiously looked around the corner. There was a highway bus parked behind the building with its door and windows closed. There was no sign of a guard or a driver. The back of the building faced north so it was in complete shadow.
He walked calmly, stopping and starting, pretending he was smoking a cigarette until he was across the back. Hopefully if anyone was looking from the bus they would assume he belonged. There was a big double door at this end, but it was secured with planks nailed across it. It looked like it hadn't been used as a door for years.
After finishing his perimeter sweep, he ended up back at the same bush near the Merc. Obviously everyone was asleep. Now what? He really had no idea other than to stay close to the girls, so he bedded down where he was. The bugs were a nuisance, but absolutely nothing compared to the bugs in the Arctic. Only once did he shift positions, and that to catch the warming rays of the rising sun on his chilly body.
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA'S AURA - Goa to Nepal by Skye Smith
Chapter 6 - The Barn of Tears, Goa
I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God's creation, woman, the object of our lust. - Mahatma Gandhi
Maya was still worried about Marique. She kept checking her pulse and her breathing, which was difficult because her hands were banded together with those click nylon bands that they use to hold computer wires together in an office building. All around her there were children, smelly children, abused and scared children. There were also some very pale-skinned women with blonde hair that kept to themselves and spoke some weird language.
At first, when she and Marique had been pushed into this big room, one of them had come over and spoken to her. When she didn't speak the language the girl wandered back to her friends. At the time she thought that perhaps the woman had been asking for water, so she poured both their drugged water bottles out so that no thirsty person would drink them. It was a mistake, for it would have still been useful for washing.
The sun was getting brighter outside, and she could see all the cracks in the roofing. This place would leak like a sieve in the rain. Her friend was stirring, waking, calling for water. The only water bottles she could see were with the anemic-looking blondes across the room, so she walked over to beg for some water.
Luckily one of the girls spoke some English. They were from Moldova, a country which Maya had never heard of before. She couldn't even place the rough location in her memory of the map of Europe.
"How dey get you?" the girl asked.
"At a party. They put drugs in our drinks."
"You are stoopid then," she said and passed her a water bottle.
It was sealed and did not leak. She thanked her and took it back to Marique. Water was like a miracle cure to her friend. Unfortunately that meant she was full of questions such as where, who, when, and what are they doing with us? None of which Maya could answer. "Maybe they would know," she said and pointed to the Moldovan women.
Of course, Marique knew exactly where Moldova was. Maya was surprised it wasn't one of her languages. Euros all think they are so superior just because they know geography and speak many languages.
* * * * *
The bus driver had been sleeping on the long bench seat at the back of the bus. Now that he was woken by the dawn, he needed to pee before he could go back to sleep. He unlocked and opened the bus door and stepped down to the ground right into a full Nelson hold. With his chin pressed into his throat, he could not scream for help. He was unconscious in seconds. He had his pee, mind you.
Will dragged the driver back into the bus and used the duct tape from his tool belt to bind ankles, wrists, and mouth. After searching the man and finding his wallet and his ID, he searched the map locker beside the driver's seat.
By laying everything out on the floor, and using his headlight to read by, he figured out that there were two other warehouses like this one used to transport children from Nepal to Trivandrum. He ripped out the locations from a log book and tore the pertinent areas from the map.
It was warmer and more comfortable inside the bus so he locked the door and set up a watch of the cars parked in the front. Every ten minutes or so a new car was arriving. He kept a count of the cars and men. When after a half hour there was no new cars, so he went to work on the plan he had hatched while he had waited.
* * * * *
Maya was wrong to think that all the other western women were Moldovan. Marique came back from talking with the Moldavians and she was leading three worse for wear English women. Their party miniskirts were filthy, their blouses torn, and they stank of vomit. They said that they had been kidnapped from the full moon party a few days before, and had already been used a few times by the Russian men.
"Russians?" Maya asked. "How do you know they are Russians?"
"They told us. They said if we made any trouble they would slit our throats because the Russian Mafia doesn't like troublemakers."
Their conversation was ended at that point when the door of the big room opened and three men stepped through. "Here we go again," one of the English girls said in tears. "Time to pay off some bribes by letting some
local politician hump us."
The man in the middle was a well dressed local with a military look and a large mustache. He walked directly to them and started to touch them in private places. When he groped Maya she felt suddenly ill from the acrid smell of charred toast. "That one," he said pointing to Marique.
"No, she is still ill," Maya called out. "I'll go in her place."
The local nodded in agreement. He didn't want a girl that was ill, and he certainly didn't want any of the ones that smelled of vomit. He walked away. One of the Russians grabbed at Maya and flicked open a switchblade knife. At his touch she almost swooned from the darkness she felt, but luckily he was fast to cut her wrist band and then let go of her. She quick stepped forward in the trail of the local so that the Russian wouldn't touch her again.
"Make it good, you," the other Russian told her. "He is a very important man to us. He controls half the police in Goa."
She followed the local jefe through the heavy steel door that secured this large room, and then down a short hallway of smaller rooms. The jefe turned and went through a doorway and she followed him quickly, anything to keep the Russian's hands off her. The jefe told her to turn the key, and she did. The room smelled musty and old. It had a single bed with a foam mattress, and a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. He told her to get undressed and then bend over the bed. He already had his pants halfway down his legs.
"I need some kisses to put me in the mood," she said softly. "You will have a lot more fun if I am in the mood." She put her palms together in prayer fashion and bowed her head demurely to him in the way of Indian women. His mustache curled up with his smile and he opened his arms to invite her close.
She stood tall on her toes and pushed her hands in an opening lotus under his neck, and he almost instantly fell away from her and collapsed in a lifeless heap on the bed. The bed had creaked alarmingly so she made some sexual sounding moans and words, and then set about searching his suit jacket pockets.
His wallet contained a police badge, and a few hundred dollars in rupee notes. She took half the money and stuffed it in the little pocket of her sundress. In an envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket she found a thick wad of large rupee notes. While she thought about maybe taking that money too, she bounced her bum rhythmically on the bed and made some more loud moaning noises.
No, she decided, shaking from raw nervous energy, and put the envelope back in his pocket. The Russians had probably given it to him, and they would look for it and notice it gone. He had a tiny pistol in an underarm holster and she covered it up again immediately and started on his trouser pockets.
Keys, change, a comb, a tiny Swiss army knife. She slipped the knife into her own pocket. Her hands were now visibly shaking. Not knowing what else to do, she bounced and moaned a few more times, and then she screamed bloody murder. Before anyone could knock on it, she leaped to the door and unlocked it and threw it open. The two Russians in the hall snickered at her, and then wondered why she was still dressed, and then one of them pushed her aside and walked into the dank little room.
"He was humping me, and suddenly he put a hand to his chest and gasped and then just collapsed," she told him. The other Russian looked in over her head and blocked her way out. They jabbered at each other in a bitchy sounding language.
The Russian in the room did the same search that Maya had just completed, only he pocketed both the envelope and the pistol. He yelled something at the man in the hall, who started walking away immediately, then he pushed Maya out of the room and said, "Back to the big room with you, go."
She walked quickly to stay ahead of him so he wouldn't grab her. When they reached the big steel door he took a big old-fashioned key from his pocket and unlocked it, and pushed her ahead of him into the big room filled with children and young women.
He looked around the room slowly, looking for any mischief. When he had finished his quick survey and was preparing to leave the room, Maya said to him, "That guy got me really horny. Do you want to finish the job?" She put her hands together like she was praying. "Please."
An evil smirk curled his mouth and she went to him and reached up as if to caress his cheeks. He still had the smirk as he dropped flaccid to the floor. The children nearest them leaped backwards away from the body. Maya stepped over him to the door, took the key out of the other side, closed it and locked it from the inside.
Marique was at her side now, and Maya used the pocket knife to cut her wrist bands. Together they searched the Russian. Now they had two knives, two pistols and two envelopes of rupees. "We 'ave to get out of 'ere before they come back," Marique stated the obvious. She stepped quickly over and around the children between her and the double doors at the far end of the building.
Maya didn't follow her. Instead she made for the English girls and handed them one of the knives so they could free themselves. "Cut all the bands" she ordered them, "and find one of these kids that speaks English." Only then did she join Marique at the double doors. They were nailed shut. Merde.
"Maybe the window," said Marique pointing up to a grimy pain of glass just above their heads.
"Lift me up," said a small girl at their feet. "I will see."
Maya was so happy to find one of the children that spoke English that she immediately told the girl to stay by her side no matter what happened. The little one nodded in understanding. Marique lifted her up and she rattled at something.
"There are bars," the little one said and then used the bars to pull her head higher to look out. "Let me down, let me down," she yelled in a panic, and then yelled at the two blond women to get away from the door. She must have yelled the same thing to the other children around them, because they all ran away from the heavy, nailed shut, double doors.
And then the double doors shrieked like a dozen women screaming, as they were wrenched from the wall of the building and daylight streamed in through the gaping hole where they used to hang.
* * * * *
With no other cars arriving, and everyone inside, and no guard outside, Will was free to work on releasing the women and children. There was a rusty length of tow chain in one of the compartments under the bus and he ran it from the bumper, back to the biggest beam that was holding the double doors shut. When it was in place, he started the bus as quietly as he could, without revving the engine, and then crawled the bus forward to take up the slack in the chain.
He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone had come to investigate the noise. No one, so he hit the gas pedal and popped the clutch. The bus leaped forward and stalled, but it had done the job. The big double door had been ripped from the wall and had taken the door frame with it. He restarted the bus and left it running to warm up the motor, then he jumped down and ran through the thick haze of dust and into the gaping dusty hole he had made in the end of the building.
Marique ran up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Maya and a little girl were right behind her, and Maya handed him the two pistols. Not bothering to ask questions that could just as well wait for later, he accepted the strange gift and slotted both pistols into his tool belt. Hard jail time if he were caught by the police with these, was his first thought, but soon he was more interested in the stream of children and young women coming through the dust towards him.
"You 'ave got to get us away from 'ere," said Marique as she unfurled her arms from around his neck and kissed his cheek while she was doing so. "All of us. "
"Get them in the bus, then, and be quick," he said. He could hear some pounding, like fists on a door, and some men’s voices from inside the building.
"I locked them out," Maya said, "The connecting door is metal and looks strong."
"On the bus," he told her and then went to see for himself. He lifted the larger of the two pistols out of his belt and gave it a quick check. Standard issue military Glock. Good. Simple and effective. He cocked it and walked through the dust, and through the children still making their way out of the building and ran softly to th
e metal door that Maya had told him about.
The door should hold them for a few minutes, he thought. What he needed was a lot of diversions. He gathered a heap of the old matting that the children had been using to sleep on, and then lit it with his Zippo lighter. The mats were dry and old and caught fire quickly and smoked like a Greek bar.
After pulling more and more mats together, he watched for a second to make sure that the smoky fire was traveling along them, and therefore along the inner wall. Satisfied he ran back outside. He could hear the men's voices now yelling a fire warning from inside the building.
As he sprinted to the other end of the building, he looked and evaluated each of the parked cars as he approached them. There was the big brother version of his own little Gypsy parked closest to the main doors. He leaped into it. No key. But also no fancy civilian theft gismos like steering and transmission locks. He wrenched the steering wheel hard over, put it in neutral, and then jumped down and put his back into pushing it.
It rolled slowly into place against the main doors. There wasn't time, and he didn't have the strength to put it tight against the doors, so they could still be opened a crack. As he pulled the hand brake on, and put it back into gear, he looked around for something, anything to jam into the space between the side of the full- sized jeep and the door that he had seen men use.
The only thing he saw was the back seat. It took him a moment to release the catches, fold the thing up and waltz it out of the jeep and let it drop into place to block the door. He looked at his work. Good enough. It took him seconds to sprint back to the bus. Everyone was loaded. Maya was sitting in the driver's seat trying to figure out how to drive the thing, but she got out of his way as he leaped up the steps.
"Go to the back of the bus. The driver is there wrapped in duct tape. Rip the tape off his lips. Only his lips, just so he doesn't suffocate."