by Jim Heskett
And that was good for Layne because he could barely see. The snow blindness had left his eyes burning and his vision blurry and dotted with stars. It was all he could do to hold on to the back of the snowcat.
He worried more about objects in the road that might catch and drag him off the vehicle as it was moving. He tried his best to leave a few inches of clearance off the ground. After the first ten minutes, he crawled out from underneath the vehicle and clung to the back, like a kid grabbing a car’s bumper to joyride on a skateboard.
The mechanical beast descended the slopes, reaching lower and lower elevations. He could feel the difference in temperature a few thousand feet down the mountain. And, the snowpack became much less dense. After the second hour, the roads looked accessible by car.
Not long after Layne noticed that, the snowcat rolled down to a house on a side road. It came to a stop in the snow. When the hostiles shuffled out of the cab, Layne scrambled underneath it, resting in the thin snow under the giant vehicle.
For a few minutes, the hostiles talked and wandered around the yard in front of this house. Eventually, they went inside, and Layne stayed in place, silent for a couple minutes. He poked his head out and didn’t see anyone lurking. The snowcat had been left under a massive tarp, like a makeshift barn. There were pens nearby for animals, but no creatures wandering around within the fences.
A farm. Why were they at a farm? Layne took out his phone and dropped a pin on his GPS, to record the coordinates for later. His battery life had dwindled deep into the red zone, so he then turned the phone off.
Layne sneaked out from underneath the snowcat. Were they going to stay here? Layne didn't think so. According to Harry, there was a shipment of fresh human cattle due to either leave or arrive today, so Layne assumed the soldiers were needed to guard the pier, or the dock, or the warehouse where this deal would take place.
Layne, crouching, circled the property and scouted for captives. He explored a chicken coop and a small barn for horses, but there were no signs of them anywhere. No cages and nothing that looked like it would be used for human trafficking.
This wasn’t the place. This was a way station.
He retraced his steps and found a large truck around the back. Similar to an Army transport van. This had to be their way down the rest of the mountain. The roads were definitely accessible from this lower elevation, and Layne didn't see any other vehicles nearby.
If they weren’t at the final destination, then Layne would need to hitch another ride. So, he climbed underneath the truck, used his belt to cinch himself to the frame, and waited.
Twenty minutes later, the hostiles poured out of the house. Just as Layne had suspected, they paraded across the yard to the truck. Their weight pushed it down, and Layne had to press his frame against the underside of the vehicle to keep his back from scraping on the snow. If this thing grew hot, he'd be in trouble.
The truck started up and descended the mountain. Another hour went by, maybe two. Layne did everything he could to rest his eyes by keeping them shut. After some time, the soreness began to fade by a few degrees.
He’d spent about two hours underneath the truck by the time it stopped again. Layne opened his eyes and surveyed the vast dirt space of a makeshift parking lot. Big and open, like an unused field.
But the hostiles didn't exit the truck. A moment later, the truck started up again and drove into a darkened space. A barn or machine shed with a large overhead structure, like a gargantuan carport or a garage for RVs. Now, the hostiles did exit the truck, and they marched away from it.
He paused, back aching from the awkward posture of clinging to the underside. After a couple minutes of silence, he had to take a chance.
Layne unhooked himself from the truck, carefully lowering his sore body to the ground. He scooted to the edge of the truck’s belly, stowed behind one of its large wheels. Inside this darkened space, he could see other large trucks and shipping containers. No voices.
Where had they gone?
Shipping containers. There were captives here.
Layne wasted no time. He skirted out from behind the truck wheel and sprinted across the interior of this barn. He went straight for the shipping containers. All of them were sitting open, and every single one was empty.
"What the hell?" He whispered to himself. Where were they?
Before Layne could find an answer to that question, he heard a single footstep behind him. As he turned around and scrambled for his pistol, a bag went over his head. He tried to point the gun and pull the trigger, but a collection of hands forced his arms against his side. Several of them ganged up to keep him in place, and the gun slipped from his grasp.
He grunted and pulled and tried to wrestle free, but there were too many of them. Soon, he was lifted off the ground and hog-tied when a restraint lashed his legs together. He felt his body tilting and then many hands passing him along.
He couldn’t see, but he knew they were dragging him in the direction of those shipping containers.
46
Serena knocked on the door to the room at the Sandman Lodge, three quick raps of her knuckles. Her heart pounded although she wasn’t sure why.
Harry stood behind her, arms crossed, breath whistling in and out of his nose. A moment later, a rail-thin woman Serena had never seen before opened the door. Her eyes were like little marbles inside a skeleton’s eye sockets.
“Come in,” the woman said, and then ushered Serena and Harry inside. Serena entered to find two hotel rooms, joined by a door, occupied by a half dozen analysts, with Daphne Kurek overseeing them.
“What’s this?” Serena said.
“Got a few on loan from the NSA,” Daphne said. Then, she lowered her voice and leaned closer to Serena. “Plus CIA, but not officially, so I’m not even supposed to tell you about that.”
Serena pursed her lips and opted to stay quiet. For all of Daphne’s penny-pinching and complaining about the team’s lack of budget, she could find it when she needed it. Arranging for this room and all these people must have cost a fair chunk of change.
“RCMP?” Serena said.
Daphne shook her head. “No Mounties. This is a very low-key and covert op we’re running.”
“We don’t have permission to be here.”
Daphne pursed her lips and gave no reply, which essentially confirmed Serena’s suspicions.
Harry raised a hand and waved at an analyst sitting on the bed, crossed-legged, hunched over a laptop. “Hey, Ethan.”
The older man with a bald head and thick glasses waved at Harry. “Hey, K-Books. Welcome to the party. Grab a donut from the dresser, but don’t touch the creme-filled. The last one there is mine.”
“Do you think I’m some kind of monster?” Harry said. “I would never steal the last creme-filled.”
Daphne cleared her throat. “We’re trying to find out where the shipment is coming from. Or where it’s going to.”
Harry held up his phone. “No problem. I’m on it.”
Serena and Daphne both cocked their heads and stared at him. “You what?” Serena said.
“I cloned Layne’s phone three days ago while he was out snooping and I had nothing better to do. I’ve got him on GPS. He’s currently somewhere south of here, on a southbound line of movement.”
Daphne crossed the room and gawked at his phone, beaming. “Harry Boukadakis, you’re a damn genius.”
“Well,” he said, blushing, “I had a feeling we might get separated. Problem is, his phone battery is almost dead so we won’t have a line on him for much longer.”
Daphne pointed to a laptop and Harry logged in. After all the info had transferred over to the laptop, Daphne output the video to a television, and they watched the little blinking dot crawling south along an invisible route, across some water.
In another couple minutes, the dot rounded a land mass, only a short distance northwest of Vancouver.
“How far south is that from here?” Serena said as an itch formed
in the back of her brain.
“About thirty miles,” Harry said.
Serena snapped her fingers. “Keats or Bowen.”
“What?” Daphne said.
“That’s either Keats Island or Bowen Island. Looks like Keats, which is smaller, and would make more sense to work as a hub for a trafficking organization. It’s heavily forested and has only a handful of full-time residents. It’s a play place for vacationing students and elderly retirees. You could easily move human cargo in and out by boat from a place like that.”
The little dot of Layne’s GPS signal stopped at the south end of the island. It quivered for a moment and then stilled.
“What’s happening?” Daphne asked.
“Don’t know,” Harry said. “Either they’ve stopped, or the signal died, and we’re only getting an echo of the last known location.”
Serena squinted at the map. She’d been to the little island almost a decade ago. Freshman year of college spring break trip to Vancouver, and they’d spent only a single day actually on Keats. But she knew how easy it would be to conceal all sorts of activity there. The whole of the island boasted only two or three established roads. The rest was covered with trees, which would make it hard for drone or satellite surveillance to find a good angle.
And how easy it would be to lose Layne forever in the density of the forest.
“What’s our timeline looking like?” Serena asked Daphne.
Daphne crossed her arms and tugged at her lip, pausing a few seconds before she replied. “It’s slim, whatever it is. We have this team for the day, and that’s it. But, if the intel is true that there’s something happening today, then that’s all we need.”
“Strike team?” Serena asked.
Daphne shook her head. “Not without something more firm. It was hard enough to get the resources I’ve accumulated so far.”
Serena grimaced but held her tongue. With a simple phone call, Control could get the local FBI field office to bend over backward to arrange a space for her. But, when it came to bringing in the guys with the big guns, those channels were locked down tighter than the White House bunker. Daphne’s ways sometimes mystified Serena.
“I’m working on it,” Daphne said, eying her.
“Understood, Control,” Serena said, but in truth, she didn’t understand. She wanted to go. She wanted to jump into action and get out there to assist Layne. He was taking all the risk. Maybe it had been a stupid move to latch himself to the back of a snowcat and jump headfirst into danger, but at least it was something. All this subterfuge and these clandestine meetings were the opposite of Serena’s style.
Harry’s attention switched over to a second computer, and he changed the map to a black and white view.
“Whoa,” he said.
“What is it?” Serena asked.
“How many full-time residents did you say?”
Serena scratched her chin. “I don’t know. Fifty, or a hundred, maybe. Not many at all.”
“Is this the island’s tourist season?”
“I doubt it. It’s mid-winter. There shouldn’t be a lot of activity.”
Harry pointed at various areas on the map, colored with white blotches. Dozens or hundreds of these areas. “Well, I don’t know if this is people, or what exactly I see yet, but there’s a whole lot of something on this island.”
The look on Harry’s face told her everything she needed to know.
Serena snatched her coat and her backpack and then headed out the door.
47
The shipping container finally ceased its movement, and Layne rolled across the hard metal surface. Hands bound with metal cuffs, duct tape across his mouth. After everything his body had been through over the last few days, he couldn’t think of a part of him that wasn’t bruised or sore or exhausted.
But none of that mattered. He wasn’t done yet.
Layne had found nothing of consequence in the shipping container aside from him and a chair that bumped into him every few minutes, depending on which way the container leaned. He couldn’t see the outside, and he’d only found a small collection of holes for breathing. Shafts of lights beaming down from ceiling to floor.
Judging by the motion, he’d been at sea. Maybe for an hour, so if they were stopping, that probably meant they’d aimed for one of the islands in Howe Sound. He wasn’t familiar enough with the area to name them all. Given their priorities, he suspected they would stop at one of the smaller ones. For a human trafficking operation, you’d need a place large enough for ships, but small enough to conduct business with few eyes nearby. The perfect combination of access and privacy.
Footsteps shifted outside the container. In total darkness, Layne pushed his way along the inside until he felt the edge of the wooden chair. Even with his hands cuffed at the wrist, he could still grip it.
Layne stood to his full height, holding the chair above his head until it bumped into the ceiling of the shipping container.
Outside, the locks switched, and he readied himself to swing the chair at the first person he saw. He would have to be quick and precise and use every ounce of power available.
The door lifted open, and a wave of sunlight blinded him. His eyes, still wounded from the snow blindness, slammed shut. Paralyzed by the surprise of it, swinging the chair wasn’t even an option. The power of the outside light even made him sway on his feet, and he had to steady himself.
When Layne could open his eyes again, he blinked a few times as his sight adjusted to the level of brightness. First, at the edges, he noted a couple of machine guns pointed at him. One on either side. And then, in the middle, he laid eyes upon a round, blue-eyed Asian man. The area beyond them was a blur of blues and greens and other vague shapes.
"Hello, Z,” Layne said.
Zinan Watanabe smiled and cocked his head. "Why don't you put that chair down, Layne Parrish?"
Layne took stock of his situation and decided that a chair versus machine guns wasn't much of a fair fight. Plus, he couldn’t see well enough to spot the backup guards or anything else beyond his ten-foot cone of vision. So, he did set the chair down.
Z pointed at it. "Have a seat, please."
Layne obliged. The edges of his sight started to filter in a little better, and he could see wood under Z’s feet. A dock.
“Been a long way getting here,” Z said.
Somewhat surprisingly, Z’s speech glistened with a southern accent, like he should sip from a jug of moonshine as he talked. The round man withdrew a small package of honey roasted peanuts from his pocket, he bit off the tip of the package with his teeth, then spit it onto the dock below him. Z tilted his head back and took half the contents into his mouth. “You’re not allergic to peanuts, are you?”
Layne’s shook his head as his vision continued to filter in, and he could see he was still on a boat. The boat was docked, with an expanse of green trees on land. Definitely an island. He still didn't know which island, but he had a strong suspicion it was one of the smaller land masses in Howe Sound.
A few other shipping containers populated the boat. Some of Z's henchmen were now opening those containers, walking around with clipboards, doing other tasks related to loading and unloading. Layne could spot a half dozen of these guys, maybe a few more. Most of them were either not armed, or only carried smaller sidearm pistols. The heavy hitters seemed to be front and center on the dock with Layne and Z.
From one of those containers emerged a string of six children, aged about twelve to sixteen. Four Asian kids and two Caucasians. Their faces were dour and eyes squinting after days or weeks in darkness. All six of them wore handcuffs, and the restraints were tethered together with one long rope.
The henchmen led them by the tether off the boat and onto the far end of the dock.
The children cried and moaned, their eyes meekly searching around for rescue. Layne's heart constricted at the sight of them. Teenagers ripped from their homes and families.
Then, the heartbreak quickly bled int
o anger as Layne pictured their fate.
One of the teens, a tall and spindly Caucasian boy, met Layne’s eyes. Layne saw something in his expression, a glint of hope.
“My name is Terran Carswell,” the kid shouted at Layne. “I was kidnapped in Spain. My parents are Robert and Tiffany, and they live in Columbus, Ohio. When you see them, please—”
The kid wasn’t allowed to finish his sentence because one of the guards smacked him in the mouth with the butt of his rifle. Terran fell to his knees, spitting blood. Then, they whisked him back to his feet and forced him to resume his march along the dock.
Layne resisted the urge to lash out, remembering the weapons trained on him. Instead, he glared at Z. "You're a monster."
Z, still smiling and chewing his peanuts, said, "I'm a businessman. I can see how you might confuse the two, though. I understand you met my ex-wife, Victoria. If you want to see a monster, that's your best bet." He shuddered in a comedically dramatic way.
“This is funny to you.”
Z shrugged. “Not particularly. But, luckily for both of us, her corpse is on its way back to her family in Knoxville. I figured it was the least I could do for them. As much as I despised Vicki, I always had a soft spot for her folks.”
"So this is the game? You buy and sell children?"
Z's smile did fade a little this time. "I buy and sell what the market wants. In my life, I've imported and exported a great many things. It turns out that, these days, people are an awfully rich commodity to trade. Young people, especially.”
"Your men saw me at the SMRC. They could have killed us, but they let us escape into the woods. Why?"
For a moment, Z looked genuinely confused, then he drew in a breath and chuckled. But, he opted not to respond to the question.
“Did you kill Rudy Costello and Grant Paluski?”
Z shook his head, his eyes narrowed. “Nope. That wasn’t me.”
Layne wasn’t sure if he believed that line, and he didn’t know if it made any difference, either way. After everything that had happened over the last week, only one thing mattered: stopping this man from trafficking in human cargo. Whatever he did, or whatever his reasons, Layne could stop a great evil today. He had an opportunity to right previous mistakes and make a difference in the lives of actual innocents.