All three stared at Tania in stunned silence.
“Those are the two pictures that Evan keeps in the locket he carries with him. He blames himself for their deaths. Especially his sister’s. He thinks that if his father hadn’t gotten him out first, he would have gotten his sister out instead. In other words, he thinks his sister is dead because of him.”
Taylor looked down at Tania with a pained expression. “I didn’t know that.”
“Don’t you see? Evan’s not doing this to be a hero. He’s doing it as a way to find forgiveness. Forgiveness from his sister, for something that was never his fault in the first place. It’s guilt that’s driving him. Not some dream of being a hero.”
Shannon’s eyes began to well. “My God. It all makes sense now,” she said, wiping a tear away. She looked at the others. “Evan’s not just trying to save these children. Deep down he’s trying to save his sister.”
“And that’s why he won’t stop,” added Tania. “Because he can’t.”
Taylor stared at her in silence, unblinking. After a long moment, he sighed and sat down in one of the chairs.
24
Evan startled himself awake. He looked around from the passenger seat of the car and slowly relaxed.
“You okay?”
He peered at Mr. Mayer sitting behind the wheel and nodded. “Just a bad dream.”
“Are you sure you’re up for this, Evan?”
“Yeah.”
Dennis Mayer gave him a sidelong glance. He wasn’t so sure. Evan was much quieter than normal. The attack in Bakersfield had obviously shaken him. Dennis turned his attention back to the long stretch of road ahead of them with the desert on either side extending as far as the eye could see. He wondered if this might be their last rescue mission together.
After several minutes, Dennis tilted his head. “So do we know exactly where we’re going yet?”
“I think so. I’m pretty sure the tunnels are east of the city.”
Dennis frowned, thoughtfully. “I hope we can find them. Vegas is a big city.”
“So are the tunnels,” replied Evan.
The project began in 1986 when Las Vegas became desperate to address one of the city’s most dangerous problems, a problem virtually unknown to most tourists. But for those having been caught in a sudden flash flood, they were well aware that the experience could be absolutely terrifying.
Las Vegas was situated on the floor of the Mojave Desert, running along Nevada’s southern region. Its floor became notoriously deadly when the valley’s parched sands fell victim to unexpected heavy thunderstorms. Aided by mountains on all sides, some flash floods produced walls of water that were over forty feet high and utterly devastating.
The answer was as big as the problem itself: more than two hundred miles of concrete flood tunnels. The tunnels took decades to build and now stretched in virtually every direction deep beneath the glowing lights of downtown Las Vegas, the Entertainment Capital of the World.
Yet these enormous tunnels, the largest civil engineering advancement in the history of the city, didn’t take long to become one of Vegas’ darkest secrets. It was a strange irony given the metropolis’s worldwide reputation and title of Sin City. A title the giant flood tunnels of Las Vegas had only reinforced.
The secret was that the enormous labyrinth became something altogether different to the city’s downtrodden. The tunnels were used as housing for thousands of the city’s destitute, poor, and criminal elements.
Miles of graffiti covered the dirty, concrete walls and intermittent rays of light left the flood tunnels resembling a post-apocalyptic world. Trash and rubble covered much of the ground and, in the main corridors, streams of polluted water trickled past, bound for an unseen outlet.
But within those dark, cold corridors were the people. Living amongst the rats and scorpions were the gray and unkempt faces of souls whom civilization had forgotten or rejected. Most sat on scavenged pieces of foam or cloth, staring into the dark bleakness of a day-by-day existence. An ambitious few managed to set up makeshift tables or perhaps a bookshelf, stocked with old, discarded books.
But it was the sounds that were the worst. For miles, moans and screams echoed ominously through perfectly conductive, four-foot thick walls.
With most police unwilling to enter, there was no safety and no protection. The dank halls resembled modern day catacombs, symbolizing in many ways a very last gasp of humanity.
The other girls were still sleeping. Twelve-year-old Katie Keyes could hear them breathing nearby in the darkness. Her nose had long since adjusted to the musky, almost rotten, smell of the damp concrete around her. Her ears had become even more sensitive. She could hear every sound around her, including the echoes far down the bowels of the other tunnels. From a great distance, the scurrying of people sounded almost identical to the rats moving around her.
At first she had been frightened by the rats constantly moving in and out of their things, even over their cardboard beds. But over time, their presence became almost comforting.
She had been there for almost a month, and the other two girls had been there even longer. Aside from a brief visit every day by one of their captors, the three were all each other had; all they had to try to make sense out of what had happened to them and how they got there. The other two were younger than Katie, both eleven years old. The youngest, Deena, barely talked anymore.
All three girls were from California and Deena was from Bakersfield, like Katie. Brooke was from a small town outside Los Angeles.
None of them really knew what exactly happened, but they all remembered being taken in the same way. A car stopping to ask directions and then a gun pointed at them, telling them to get into the car. Something they no longer talked about. They initially tried to talk about other things. Good things. But now they were sinking. Sinking into an utterly hopeless and fearful existence.
Katie didn’t know what time it was. None of them did. Sometimes it was light outside when the men showed up with food.
Now she was awake. Awoken by a strange dream. It was not like her other dreams of home, which always ended in tears when she woke in the darkness to realize where she really was. This one was different. Instead of seeing her school or her family, she saw something else. A face. A boy’s face, not too much older than she was. Maybe in high school.
She couldn’t see anything in the blackness, but she could feel her heart still racing. She groped around for her thin blanket and pulled it around her shoulders, trying to decide whether she should tell the other girls. After all, it was just a dream and down here it was hard for them to have hope. But the boy’s face seemed so real. And it was what he said that caused her to suddenly wake up. He said something about heaven…and that he was coming.
25
Amara Seng sat inside the dark interior of his Mercedes Benz S550. He watched silently, from the Northeast corner of the Excalibur Hotel, as dozens of people crossed over the West Tropicana Avenue causeway. His dark eyes darted absently from person to person as he listened to the ringing on the phone.
With darker than average skin, a wide nose, and short, straight black hair, his Asian features were unmistakable. And while he could pass for American born, it was his strong accent that gave away his status as a relatively recent immigrant. He had been in the States for just over five years now, and what he lacked in naturalization, he made up for in ruthless ambition.
Seng had grown up in the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, surviving on little more than his wits and a raw desire to live. By the age of eleven, he had seen it all. Virtually every dark side of humanity the mind could imagine. A world that shaped him into the very definition of a survivor. Seng endured by understanding the world around him for what it was: a world of desire and resources. No matter what it was, everything could be broken down into resources. Whether it was drugs, food, fuel, or a place to sleep, it was all about the value one could extract from any item. Any item, including human beings.
To
Seng, it was easy. For one person to win, someone else had to lose. The world was not fair, and because of that, winners were simply the ones who did what needed to be done to ensure they didn’t lose.
Seng glanced briefly at the phone just before the call was answered. Both phones were disposables, used to call only one number. And this was it.
“Susaday.”
Seng grinned slightly with tight lips. It was a code of sorts to let him know the conversation was safe, but in all of his dealings with the man, Seng had never heard the word pronounced correctly. He scanned the dark parking lot around him. “Susaday.”
“We ready?”
Seng nodded. “I bring them tonight.”
“Perfect,” the voice responded. “How many?”
“Two.”
“See you in three hours.”
The call ended and Seng glanced back at the console. Sixteen seconds. Not nearly long enough for a trace. Tonight he’d lose the phone on the freeway anyway.
He started the car again and gazed out over its black hood. Trafficking in Vegas was rampant, but it usually involved prostitutes or runaways. Anyone could do that. Enticing emotionally lost girls into a better life took almost no effort at all, especially when you didn’t have to make good on your promises.
What Seng offered was something entirely different. Most traffickers dealt with whatever product they could get. But some buyers had better, more expensive taste. They didn’t want girls strung out on drugs or booze. And that’s what Seng provided: young, clean, and educated. Which meant a much higher price per head.
Seng’s merchandise was also taken from richer neighborhoods, which provided two big advantages. Kids in richer neighborhoods were typically clean and rarely had serious health problems. But more importantly, they were weak. Spoiled their whole lives, the well-off kids had no fight in them. Instead, they had become brainwashed with a sense of entitlement or self-worth, a life spent receiving everything they wanted simply by asking. Their will was the easiest to break.
However, Seng had a problem. He couldn’t deliver all three tonight as planned. The last one wasn’t coming around. While most broke easily after two weeks in pitch blackness, this older one wasn’t. She was still resisting inside. Fighting. And Seng had a reputation to protect. He couldn’t deliver something that wasn’t going to cooperate. He’d seen it before. Every so often, there was a resister. One who either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be broken in the limited amount of time that he had. The last thing he wanted to do was to hold on to these resisters too long. The longer he had them, the harder they made it, until something slipped. Until someone discovered Seng’s operation, no matter how careful he was.
And Seng was careful. The other sellers in Vegas were sloppy. Damaged goods meant a certain type of seller. Never very sophisticated and usually as high as the product they were moving. Not Seng. He knew there were teams of law enforcement out there, searching for people just like him. Trafficking was too widespread to ever stop but that didn’t mean the authorities would stop looking, or stop trying to end it.
It’s why Seng kept his operation small. Just a few at a time. Hold them, break them, and move them. It was a business.
In another year, Seng would move on to another city before anyone got too close. And his ruthless efficiency meant he had to do something about his current problem. The older girl had to go. Getting rid of resisters was not hard to do. Not in three thousand square miles of desert.
Katie lay quietly on her cardboard bed, listening to the two other girls breathe while they slept. She would wait a little longer.
The feeling was still there. The memory of her dream and her pounding heart, which hadn’t slowed. She prayed that it was true. She didn’t know how much longer she could go on. Her mind had already slipped into the bad place that the other girls were in, but she’d caught herself. She couldn’t let herself go there again. If she did, she wasn’t sure if she could get back out.
Poor Deena. Katie wasn’t sure if she would ever come out. Every time their captors came to bring them food and remove the bucket, there was enough light for Katie to see the other girls’ faces. Both were dirty and chalk white, but Brooke still had a look in her eyes, showing at least part of her was still there. But not Deena.
If Deena were still in there somewhere, maybe Katie’s dream would help her. She hoped so.
Katie wondered how much longer she had. How much longer until she too gave up like the others? They may have given up sooner, but no one could last forever. However, Katie had something neither Brooke nor Deena had. The image of her incredible father. His strong face and intense eyes that she would always remember.
She blinked in the darkness, suddenly trying to figure out exactly how long she had been here. It was getting harder. How many days? Her father had been gone for over two years. He died when she was ten.
A wave of anxiety washed over her. Oh no. If she couldn’t remember how long she’d been down here, she couldn’t remember how long her father had been gone!
Wait. How many times had the men come down with food? They came once a day. She had kept track in the beginning but eventually gave up. She remembered the number twenty, so that meant, like, a month? Maybe more.
Her anxiety eased and her thoughts slowly returned to her father. Two and a half years. He’d only been gone for two and a half.
He was so strong. He was retired from the Army. What was the word her mother always teased him with? Intense. He was intense. But he knew it and would even laugh about it sometimes when they both ganged up on him. He wasn’t mean. He was just intense and strong. He never gave up on anything. Now, over two years later, any bad memories had faded, leaving only happy ones. She missed him so much. Her mother too, but deep down, even when she didn’t like his rules, she had always been a daddy’s girl. And it was he who she thought about most.
Katie heard Brooke stir on her own piece of cardboard. After waiting a few minutes, she finally called to her companion in a whispered voice.
“Brooke, are you awake?”
“Yes.”
Katie scampered toward her in the darkness. “I have something to tell you.”
Her heart was beating even faster now. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something inside made her sure that she was right. She was leaving tonight.
It never occurred to Katie that it might be for a very different reason.
26
“Are you sure?”
Evan stood on the edge of an off-ramp from the 215 Freeway, staring out at the skyline of Las Vegas. Only a slight gleam of light could still be seen as the sun prepared for its final drop behind the barren mountains. The giant city and its brilliant lights were clearly visible in the distance.
“Yes.”
Dennis Mayer followed Evan’s gaze out across the valley toward the cityscape. “This is the right direction?”
Evan nodded. “This is what I saw. It’s just ahead, I think.” He pointed downhill. “Down there.”
“Okay,” Dennis shrugged. It all seemed rather uncertain to him. But why start doubting the kid now? Besides, even if they made a couple of missteps, they had some time. They were here now, and whether it was today or tomorrow or even the next day, Evan was sure she was here and alive. They just had to start looking.
“Let’s go,” he said, speaking over his shoulder while heading back to the car. He stopped by the door, waiting, until Evan finally turned and joined him.
“We have to hurry.”
“Why? What is it?”
“I have a strange feeling that something is about to happen.”
The opening was huge, like a giant gaping mouth emerging from under the earth. In the bright beams of their flashlights, it looked like a monster stretching its long neck to swallow them whole.
And it could. The entrance was at least eight feet wide by nearly five feet high. Garbage and debris lay around them, as if the monster had suddenly vomited at their feet. Two different broken shopping carts and dozens of
tattered scraps of clothing all greeted them ominously, scattered among the rubble and graffiti as far into the mouth as they could see.
“Good God.” Dennis stepped over a small mound of trash and peered deeper into the darkness. “In here?”
Evan nodded quietly. He was staring down the rectangular tube with more than trepidation. It was pure fear.
“You’re really sure about this?”
“She’s in there…somewhere.”
Dennis stepped back carefully. He then climbed up the steep dirt embankment and peered over the top. They were still at least three miles from downtown. How far did these things go? With a shake of his head, he slid back down and returned to the entrance, where Evan was waiting.
“Do you know where inside?”
Evan closed his eyes. He tried to retrace what he had seen. “Mostly. But there are a lot of these tunnels, all in different directions. I didn’t see the whole path, but I tried to remember what I could see.” He shined the beam of his flashlight down the tunnel. It illuminated less than a hundred feet in.
“It’s kind of complicated. Like a maze.”
Dennis reached under his jacket and fingered his gun reassuringly. This was not a good idea. Anyone could be waiting inside these tunnels. Not to mention that once inside with their lights, Dennis and Evan would be visible to others long before they could see them. And anyone hiding in there sure as hell wasn’t looking for friends.
“How far in is she?”
Evan shrugged. He wasn’t very good with distances. “I don’t know. Maybe a mile.”
“A mile?!”
“Maybe less. I’m not exactly sure.”
The Unexpected Hero Page 10