by Sacchi Green
She could see that Ash was trying hard to wait a little longer now, let them have a bit more peace, but there were things that needed to be asked, information they had to have.
When Ash did speak, her tone was mild. “I’m hoping you folks can help us out so we can rescue some more. Do any of you know where more girls are being held?”
Edie shrugged. “They drag us around from place to rundown place, but we don’t know where we’re going or where we’ve been, and we don’t stay together long. I was in one place, a motel, where girls got their own rooms and the Johns came to us, ten or a dozen a night. That was mostly for the youngest girls, jailbait. We each had ‘owners,’ and some of them had several girls, like a herd. Once you don’t look so young you get sold, and maybe moved along to wherever there are party scenes.” Her voice had been steady, but now it wavered. “And if you don’t bring in enough cash that way, you…you get sold for the truck stop trade.”
“Edie…” Cleo could hardly speak for the rage building inside her. She saw the same reaction on Ash’s face. “How long…”
“Maybe two years. I couldn’t tell.” Edie had control of herself again. “I was drunk most of the time, but now I’m not. Not for months. I never did the drugs, and when Chiu came along I was ready to try to escape, no matter what.”
Chiu, looking shaken by her call, returned in time to hear most of that. She put an arm around Edie’s shoulder, and glared at first Cleo and then Ash. “Ease up, will you? She’s been through enough. They’ve all been through enough.”
“They,” not “we.” That confirmed that Chiu had been an infiltrator, as she’d said. How would she have coped if she’d been dragged all the way to a gangbang? Had she been already? Cleo sure as hell wasn’t going to ask.
Jana stepped in then and started sending the girls one by one to the restroom to clean up before she drove them to the shelter. Cleo and Ash moved into the office to start planning the next campaign with Mags and Val, and Twelve, if she wasn’t too immersed in the depths of the digital universe.
Chiu followed them as though she belonged with the rescuers rather than the rescued, which seemed only natural. “There’s something else, too,” she said, moving into the doorway, where she suddenly stopped. She was staring at the back of Twelve’s blonde head. Twelve swung around in her chair, stared back, and recovered first.
“Hey, Chiu,” she said coolly.
“Hey, T. You involved in all this?”
Twelve just nodded and turned back to her computer.
“You know each other?” Mags looked from one to the other with interest. “You do look kind of familiar… Chiu, is it? Maybe you’ve been in my bar. Do you and Twelve know each other from MIT?”
“Yeah,” Chiu said, and seemed to be searching for what to say next.
Twelve swung around again. “Last I heard, you were doing a master’s in social work at BU. How’s that working out?”
“Um, fine. Okay. One more year to go.” She looked around to see the others gaping at her. “You might as well know. I’m doing my thesis on sex trafficking, so I have more than one motive for being mixed up in all this.”
Val set down her foaming glass and stared. “Tiger? I mean, Chiu? That was you under all that makeup? I thought you looked familiar!”
“Hey, Drummer,” Chiu said. “Still doing that body percussion scene?”
“Um, not so much. Once in a while.”
Mags began to grin. “Small world, isn’t it? Every lesbian in Boston gets to the same parties sooner or later.”
“Sounds like the parties have gone up a few notches while I’ve been away,” Cleo said. “Getting beat on by a jazz drummer! Cool!”
Ash’s face was unreadable, even to Cleo, until she felt a tapping along her back in a rhythm that could easily be from a classic jazz piece. Ash was still so expressionless that no one but Cleo would have noticed the faint ghost of a smile.
Jana was listening from the doorway by then. “Not to interrupt this party, but we have strategies to discuss. At least one of these girls needs psychological intervention, and I think I can arrange for that privately. But Huan doesn’t speak much English, and isn’t in the country legally. We’ll be running up against the same problems again and again, especially if we try to take on the massage parlors.”
Chiu had found a stool to sit on, but now she stood up. “I’ve been working on that with some friends, building up a support network before we try any actual liberation actions. It’s…kind of nebulous, still, and dangerous in its way—getting involved in anything illegal, going to jail, could kill our plans for careers—but some of us, even law and medical students, are willing to take that risk.”
Val asked, “Including Jian? You’re still together?”
“Yes, and yes.” Chiu’s response was abrupt. “You know Jian. She’d like to just steal a bus, crash through some fences, load up all the captive Asian girls even if they had to be picked up and carried—especially if they had to be picked up and carried—and roar off into the sunset. The problem is getting someplace set up beyond the sunset to take them. We’ve got a committee set up for fundraising, and a liaison with an organization being set up for helping sex-trafficked Asians, but that’s as far as we’ve got.”
“We haven’t come anywhere near that far.” Val shook her head. “We can help get ’em out, though, if you can take them in afterward.”
Jana moved on into the room. “We can’t do everything on our own, Ash. We’ll have to outsource some of it.”
Ash nodded, somewhat to Cleo’s surprise. “Chiu, if we can make a successful raid on someplace where the massage parlor girls are held, can your group take charge of them afterward?”
“Whatever it takes,” Chiu said grimly, then flashed a wide grin. “As long as we get in on the action! Maybe it’ll distract Jian from wanting to tear me limb from limb.”
“You’re on.” Ash was in full lieutenant mode now. Cleo inwardly cheered. “As soon as we identify a location, we’ll strike, so let’s get going.”
“Oh,” Chiu said. “I got distracted. Huan told me that most of the Chinese immigrant women in the business around here are stowed in a cold, rat-infested warehouse kind of place. They can hear airplanes coming low overhead. Must be out near Logan Airport.”
Cleo caught Ash’s eye. Bingo. That warehouse.
Chapter 10
Ash and Cleo met with Chiu’s friends in an empty classroom at MIT. Ash could see that some, especially Jian, weren’t happy about working with non-Asian strangers. She didn’t blame them. Most were what Chiu had termed ABCs, American Born Chinese, and college students or young professionals. They’d been planning their own heroic crusade as a kind of tribute to their roots.
Jian was clearly their leader, not the damn-the-torpedoes hothead Chiu had claimed, but certainly forceful. According to Chiu, she’d been on the women’s basketball team as an undergrad at MIT, and with that tall, athletic build and fierce, don’t-fuck-with-me face, Ash was sure Jian could pass as a man if she wanted to, even with her long black hair. Ash was also sure Jian was antagonistic to what she considered to be intruders.
Chiu introduced Ash and Cleo, but didn’t name any of the dozen or so others beside Jian. Ash understood the need for discretion. As Chiu had said, any of them working toward careers in law, medicine, or pretty much any profession risked a great deal if they got involved in anything legally questionable.
Jian, not even trying to suppress a scowl, started off with, “Let’s get to the point here. What’s your pitch?”
Ash ignored the condescending tone. “We rescue sex-trafficked women,” she said bluntly. “I’ve been told that you have an interest in doing that, but if we’re not all on the same page, there’s no point in this discussion.” She looked coolly around the room, meeting each pair of eyes. There were a few nods in response.
“That,” Jian said, “depen
ds on what you can do for us. And what you want from us.”
“A fair question. We’ve managed already to free almost a dozen girls. Not all that much progress, but a start. With remote tracking devices, we’ve located several places where more are imprisoned. Our next target is a much bigger project, possibly more than we can handle without help. We’ve identified a warehouse where we believe women trafficked from Asia are being held, but we’re faced with a language barrier.”
“So that’s where we come in?” Jian’s gaze swept the room. “How many of us were made to learn some Mandarin as kids?” Most hands were raised. “How many of us remember much?” Many hands went down, amid ripples of laughter. “More to the point,” Jian went on, “How many of us besides Chiu know any Cantonese?”
Half a dozen hands twitched uncertainly upward and slowly lowered.
“C’mon,” Chiu said. “You bunch from the classes I’ve been giving know enough by now to get by in a case like this. And any of the rest of you wanting to help sex-trafficked women from China had better join my classes, too, even if you don’t have any intention of working in social services for immigrants.” The half-dozen hands moved upward again with more confidence.
Ash let her stern expression soften. “Any of that is more than we have going for us, and we have plenty going against us already.” She searched for a diplomatic way to approach her next point.
Cleo stepped up and did it for her. “Let’s face it, what we look like, who we are, won’t inspire confidence in these women. They won’t trust us. I mean, look at me!” She ran a hand over her red hair and skin already fading from lack of desert sun. “Would you trust this face if you were new to the country and had been treated like hell ever since you got here?” In a quick shift of mood she flashed a wide grin, and quite a few women smiled in response.
“Yes, exactly,” Ash said. “But what we do have going for us is experience, and some special tactics we’ve found to be very successful.”
Jian opened her mouth, but another woman spoke first. She looked more likely to play football than basketball. “About those tactics.” Her expression was frankly suspicious. “Care to elaborate on those?” There were scattered mutterings of agreement around the room.
“No.” Ash was firm. “Not at this stage of negotiations.” Chiu must have told them a thing or two. Or maybe Twelve had posted the video of their most recent escapade already. Let them wonder.
Jian took back control of the discussion. “Why not just give us the location of this warehouse and let us handle it all?”
For an instant Ash felt the heat of Jian’s glare, and responded with steely composure. “If you can guarantee that you’ll succeed, we’ll consider that. Let’s keep in mind that freeing and then supporting these women is what matters, not who gets the credit for it.”
Suddenly Jian laughed. “All right then, we’re all on the same page.” She scanned her group. “Anybody else have questions? No? How about we discuss this privately for a few minutes, if you two don’t mind.” She nodded toward Ash and Cleo. “There’s a nice courtyard outside where you can wait. We won’t be long.”
In the small courtyard, Cleo paced back and forth while Ash looked thoughtfully up at the window of the room they’d left.
Cleo stopped beside her. “What’s your impression? What do you think they’ll do?”
“I think,” Ash said, still looking toward the window, “they’ll go along with whatever Jian decides.”
It was Chiu who came to deliver the message. “Jian won’t commit to anything yet, but six of us will agree to meet with your group tomorrow at your headquarters—the Galaxy Bar, isn’t it? —for further discussion, and all the others will go along with whatever’s decided.”
Ash and Cleo walked back across the Charles River on the Massachusetts Avenue bridge. At the midpoint, Ash slowed and said, “What did you think?”
“I think we’re in luck, if they’ll sign on. That they’re smart goes without saying, coming from MIT, and there were even a couple of them toting Harvard bags. I used to think all MIT girls were head-in-the-clouds rocket scientist types, but this bunch looks athletic, too. With them on our side we could work wonders. I mean, even more wonders.”
“Just don’t forget that they’re on their own side, above all,” Ash warned.
“That’s just what we need, though. We don’t know how to handle the massage parlor deals, don’t speak the right languages, don’t know how to cope with the legal aspects of undocumented sex slaves. These guys may not have everything figured out yet, but they’ve got a head start on it, while we’ve got a head start on the action front. We join together for one or two escapades, and then they take over their mission and we keep on with ours.” She shook her head. “But who knew MIT had a women’s basketball team?”
Jian joined Ash in the “war room” well before the others arrived. Ash took advantage of the time to make it clear that the two of them would be consulting on tactics and strategy on an equal footing if they decided to work together.
Jian had questions, though. “What’s all this crap Chiu says about you and some crazy tricks?”
“Like tipping over vans? Lifting girls when I’m nowhere near them? Don’t ask me to explain how it works, because I can’t. But it does work.” She did the bar stool flipping thing, and then made the heavy desk hover two feet in the air. Pens and papers slid off. She had to set the desk down before she could pick them up. “Drat, I keep trying to figure out how to multitask, but so far, no luck.”
Jian’s eyes narrowed. “I could maybe believe somebody invented an anti-grav device, or some kind of ray that could exert invisible force. I’m no physicist, just a mathematician. But what you seem to be doing…”
Ash shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t understand it either. Something happened to me over in the desert, and now I can do these things. Maybe it won’t last, but while it does, if you want my help, you’ve got it.”
Jian looked the desk over closely, then tried lifting it from one end, her muscles bunching, her face contorted into a fierce grimace. She got that end several inches off the floor—which was a good deal farther than Ash could have without extra power—and managed to set it back down gently. “Oo-kay then,” Jian said. “Whatever works.”
Chiu and the others from their group arrived, as well as Mags and Jana and Val. The room was so crowded that Ash and Cleo perched on the desk. Twelve, coming last, hunched on the floor in a corner with her open laptop.
After first-name-only introductions, Ash laid out a tentative plan. “We’re pretty sure we know where a lot of the massage parlor girls are kept, and Jian and Chiu have friends who’ve already been planning ways to help those girls, so we’re thinking of combining forces for at least one attack. We hope to be able to rescue more than we have before, and we’ll have several vans, trucks, whatever—” she looked over at Jian, who nodded, “—to make room for them. Cleo’s drawn a rough map of the warehouse we’ll be attacking and the neighborhood around it. Everybody should look it over.”
Chiu had gleaned more information about the warehouse from Huan, so Cleo knew roughly what it was like inside, where the girls were kept, and where any guards and keepers were likely to be. Everyone who could fit leaned over the map spread on the desk. Then Jana, who had stayed close to the door, said, “This sounds like a great idea. I’ve said before that at some point we’d need to outsource some of the work. I was thinking more of getting the police involved, if we could do it anonymously, but having Jian and Chiu’s group take on the most legally complicated part would be a big relief.”
“The police?” Two or three voices were raised at once.
“Yes.” Ash was emphatic. “It has to come to that, eventually. I’ve known it all along. It’s their job, after all. For that matter, stopping us from what we’re doing is their job, too. We can accomplish things outside the law better than they can inside it, but pu
blic awareness and legal crackdowns are the only things that can have a widespread effect.”
Some muted grumbling began, but then Twelve piped up. “The cops saw the video I posted this morning and are already getting involved.” She turned her laptop so the others could see the screen. The motel they’d raided was shown, with several police cars and two ambulances, and three scruffy-looking men in handcuffs.
Twelve shifted from the news clip to her own video showing the place while they’d been there, with the men tied together on the ground, the vans in skewed positions or tipped over, and even the running girls, but no shots of the rescuers except one bit where Mags’s elbow showed at the edge of the frame. Twelve’s clickbait line this time was, “The Shadow Hand Strikes Again! More Sex Slaves Freed!” A white flag showing an outspread black hand had been photoshopped into the picture.
The map was abandoned while everyone had a good look at the video. Meanwhile, Cleo backed Ash into a corner. “You let her do this, too?”
“We can’t hide forever. And we can’t accomplish much with just a few rescues at a time. Like Chiu, I’m willing to take the risk. But…” she looked up at Jian, who had come charging over to them, “Twelve won’t be doing any filming of the warehouse raid. Too many lives involved to risk identification.”
“You think you can stop her?” Jian barely suppressed her rage.
“I can take her cameras away. Even from a distance. But I think she’ll give them up voluntarily.”
Twelve appeared suddenly at Ash’s side. “I know, I know, I won’t film it. We really need to get our brand out there in the world, though, make our cause go viral. More viral, that is. What’s already out there is being shared and reshared all over the place. It’s great! But I understand why we can’t film things this time.” She looked up at Jian, her stance as challenging as it could be while she was clutching her laptop to her chest. “Look, Jian, I know what you think. I am a little crazy, but not that crazy!” She turned away, took a determined step or two, then turned back. “Ash, I forgot to tell you, but the cops raided that house down by Foxboro, too, after I posted that video. Of course there was nothing much there by then, but at least there won’t be anymore parties in that area for a while. We’re good-guy terrorists, scaring the bad guys by our acts of disruption! Social Justice Terrorists…I might use that line.” Then she was gone, out the door, taking her laptop with her.