Human Trafficking
I brought the slaves in as well. I kept Maximus at my side and set the rest of the IS slaves to hauling off the men we had knocked senseless and put to sleep.
We bound the captives' arms and legs all over again, jammed socks into their mouths, and stacked them in the basement. The men who had been guarding the mansion, Moreno's personal subordinates, and the extra ones we had lured in with Moreno's phone — we took every last one of them alive. Once the count climbed past thirty, the basement floor was nothing but bodies laid out side by side.
The Moreno family was said to number over a hundred, but the ones who could actually be summoned on the spot came to about this many. The rest were minding the establishments, or had already slipped away to nearby cities and other countries on business. We had caught, more or less, everyone worth catching.
Before we crossed over to Gaia, I dragged Moreno, Giovanni, and the other ranking officers out and began the interrogation. In moments like this, what a man is made to see matters, and on that score Maximus's brutal face did its share of the work. Not that the face was the real point. It was the monstrous strength, and the ruthlessness — the way he, without a flicker of hesitation and right in front of them, tore the bones out of a living man's arms and legs and folded a spine back the wrong way.
Once I had turned a few of them into examples, neither properly dead nor properly alive, the rest volunteered everything they knew.
Who was guarding Moreno's brothels in Naples, and how many.
Where the refugee girls brought over from Sicily were being held.
Which bank kept Moreno's secret accounts, and how much sat in them.
The Naples city councilors and senior police Moreno greased to keep the business alive — names, and the rest of it.
I sorted the useful pieces into rough order and checked the money in Moreno's accounts. In a nominee account there was more than ten million euros. His fingerprint would have let me transfer it on the spot, but I left it where it was. Slipping a trace would take other preparations first, and until those were in place, it was money I couldn't touch.
I locked them back underground, got behind the wheel, and pulled out of the mansion.
The first stop was the port of Naples — an old warehouse at the far end of the cargo pier. I left the car nearby and walked in with the slaves at my back. Crates from every corner of the world were stacked to the rafters. Threading between them, I came to a small iron door, and I started toward the big man standing guard in front of it. He looked me over with open suspicion.
"Giovanni said he'd call ahead."
"You're that Chinese guy?"
Before we set out, I had taken Giovanni's phone and placed the call in his voice.
"A customer's coming in from China to look at the goods. Have them ready, and show him everything he asks to see. All of it."
"Then who do you think I am?"
He glared at me and the men behind me for a moment. The warning had already reached him, so he didn't ask anything more. He turned, and opened the door that had been shut.
"Follow me in."
We went in after him. On the other side of the door, hard-faced crewmen stood glaring at us.
"Weapons out. Put them up here."
At a time like this, a little compromise is better than claiming you have nothing. Each of us drew the pistol from his belt and set it on the table the big man had indicated. Only Maximus, who had no idea how to use a gun, took the man's stare without a flicker.
"This friend's body is the weapon. Tell me to hand it over and I'd have to pull his heart out."
The crewmen gave Maximus one long look, then patted me and the slaves down, searching for anything we might still be carrying. When they were satisfied, they started leading us farther in.
We walked down to the second basement level. At the bottom of the stairs a long corridor ran away from us, doors lined up along both sides. The place had plainly been a warehouse once, and then been rebuilt. The doors set into the temporary walls on either side had small glass panes, so you could see inside.
Beyond the glass, in a space barely wide enough to turn around, more than ten girls sat hunched with their knees pulled to their chests. Grimy faces. Bodies worn down to nothing. Girls who looked no older than their mid-teens filled every room. The man guiding us spoke as if he were walking a buyer through merchandise.
"Ten to twelve a room, give or take. A hundred and seven in all. Word was you were mainly after teens. You know how it is — teens cost more."
"How much?"
"Buy the lot and I'll set you at ten thousand euros a head. Like I said, teens jump a lot depending on the quality."
"How many did you say, total?"
"Teens only, fifty-eight. Five hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Take them, put them to work, and you'll have your money back inside a year with plenty left over. Am I right?"
"No. Not the kids."
"Not the kids? I thought you wanted minors. If you mean adults, that's forty-nine. I can let that side go cheaper. Course, that's only if you're buying in bulk..."
"Not the women. Your people. The ones from your outfit who are standing here."
"The hell are you talking about? How many of us, you're asking?"
"You're what I came for."
"What?"
A chill ran down the man's spine. His hand dropped fast for the pistol at his waist — but Maximus was faster. He stepped in, and his fist crashed into the man's face. The crewman never finished drawing. He flew backward and slammed into the floor.
In that same breath another man had his gun out and fired at Maximus. The rounds struck him in the side and the shoulder. They punched through the cloth and stopped there, glancing off skin that never broke. A body already wrapped in overlapping armor vests had nothing to fear from a pistol.
"What?!"
While the man was still gaping, Maximus was on him. He wrenched the wrist around, turning the muzzle aside, and with the other hand seized the man by the torso and heaved him up.
"Guh—!"
He lifted him as lightly as a grown man lifts a child, and drove him straight into the floor. The impact knocked the breath out of him in a choked grunt.
Two more of the crew yanked their guns free, meaning to shoot Maximus, but I was faster. The shotgun came out of my pocket, and I blew both of them off their feet — pump, blast, pump, blast. Not lead. Riot-control rubber rounds slammed into chests and bellies. Rubber or not, the shock was no different from a baseball bat. The men who caught the spray dropped where they stood and writhed on the floor. The pain was bad enough to lock their muscles; they couldn't even put up a proper fight.
In the meantime the other slaves scooped up the pistols the crew had dropped.
"Work down this corridor. Toss every room and find the rest of them. Kill anyone who fights back. Maximus and I are going to the surveillance room."
I had already pulled the layout out of Giovanni before we came: how many men lived on site, where they usually stayed, where the cameras were mounted, where the monitors sat. We put the men on the floor to sleep with Sleep, bound them, and threw them into an empty room. Then I took Maximus upstairs.
With a body that shrugged off bullets, Maximus was a tank, and putting down whoever was left was no great labor. He went in without flinching from gunfire, and between that terrifying strength, a fighter's instincts, and the body arts he had learned from Argon, he beat them to the floor with ease. Once they were down, I wiped the CCTV recordings, yanked the hard disk outright, and burned it.
By the time we finished and came back down, the other slaves had finished their work as well. Gunfire had gone both ways. They had killed one man, and taken another alive when he surrendered. I checked once more that no one was left. When it was all done, we gathered the captives in one place. One dead. Nine taken alive.
We brought a van around to the warehouse's rear door and loaded them in. They were packed shoulder to shoulder, but there was nothing to be done about it for now. Maximus asked,
"What shall we do with the girls?"
"Leave them. None of them look like a day without food is going to kill them."
I ran a slave trade in another world, yes. I was not about to haul off kidnapped people and sell them as slaves. If I was selling anyone, it would be the ones worth the price.
The next day I rented more vans. Forty-two new pieces of merchandise went into four vehicles, and we headed for a vineyard on the outskirts of Rome. Once the goods were moved, I put in an anonymous tip to a newspaper.
The day after that, all of Italy turned upside down. The news and the papers were plastered with the trafficking of refugee girls.
They had been rescued. That was enough. I wasn't about to take responsibility for the futures of the girls who had been saved.
What remained for me was to catch the men who would have bought those girls, forced them into prostitution, and worked them like slaves — no. The men who were out there trampling someone even now — and sell them off as slaves in turn. I had learned who they were by interrogating Giovanni, Moreno, and the other officers.
Around the time the work in Italy had been put more or less in order, a call came in from Istanbul. The lawyer.
"Yes, Representative. The item you mentioned has been sent to the address you gave me. You should have it by tomorrow. I included a video on how to use it. It isn't difficult — you'll pick it up in no time."
When the call ended, I ordered Maximus to take the forty-two pieces of merchandise back to Gaia and wait there. Collars of submission locked around their necks, the slaves strung together in a line, Maximus returned to Gaia.
The day after he left, a courier truck arrived at the farm, just as the lawyer had said. I had the big hard case carried in and opened the lid. Once I was sure nothing was missing, I shut it again. I would be using it in Gaia. No point taking it out here.
The item was in hand, and by the schedule Marco and his party ought to have reached Sorbon Harbor by now. I booked a flight at once and headed for the airport. The destination was the place I had arranged to meet Marco.
Damascus.