Deep Woods

by Newbury, Helena

  Cal

  I COLLECTED UP all the guns and handed them out to the women, then got them to help me hustle all the men, guards and members alike, into the cells in the basement, where we locked them up. The women hugged one another, many of them in tears: they’d been through hell. I was taken by surprise when one of them threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she sobbed into my chest. “Thank you.”

  I looked down at her in confusion for a second. She was a complete stranger but she wasn’t scared of me. I awkwardly patted her on the back, and told her she was safe, now. And then I choked up a little, because I felt the crushing weight of the guilt lift, just a little.

  What Bethany said was true. I could make things right.

  None of the women I’d rescued knew anything and the club members weren’t any more helpful. But then I thought to ask who was in charge, and everyone pointed me to a guy called Preston Cairns. I pulled him out of his cell and he turned out to be the same guy who’d turned his nose up at me when he opened the door. I threw him on the floor and stood over him. “Where did Ralavich take the women he bought?”

  He shook his head and glared up at me, tight-lipped. Even now, with his little empire in ruins around him, he was keeping to some tradition of protecting his member’s secrecy. I could beat it out of him, but I didn’t have time.

  I thought for a second. Then I stepped between his feet and kicked his legs into a wide vee. I whistled and Rufus obediently trotted over, coming to a stop between Cairns’s knees. Cairns went pale. I guess he didn’t like dogs, especially big ones.

  “Ever see a German Shepherd play with a chew toy?” I asked Cairns. And then I looked meaningfully at his balls.

  Cairns’s face went dead white. “They put them in a shipping container. A red shipping container. And loaded it onto a truck, heading for the port of Seattle. They left early this morning, almost as soon as they came back.”

  I cursed. Bethany must have left here about the same time I set off from the smallholding. All that time running here had been wasted.

  I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up. One of the women I’d rescued was comforting another, putting a blanket around her bare shoulders. My chest contracted in pity. Okay, maybe not wasted. But that didn’t change the fact that Bethany was eight or nine hours ahead of me. She could be at the port by now. Even if I jumped in a car right now and drove like a bat out of hell to Seattle, it would take five or six hours. How long did it take to load a ship? Not that long. I was going to miss her. She was going to be on some ship and gone. Unless….

  I picked up Cairns, tossed him back into his cell, and slammed the door. Then I turned to the women. “Call the cops,” I told them. “Local and state and the FBI.” The club might have been able to crush an investigation when it was just the word of a lone witness, describing a mansion she couldn’t locate, with nothing to back up her story. But when the cops arrived and found ten women all ready to give statements, a dozen armed guards, a group of wealthy senators, CEOs and the attorney general, automatic weapons and a basement full of cells...not even the club could cover that up.

  I raced upstairs, then found the mansion’s back door and burst out into the gardens, praying I was right. Ralavich had told Alik to call when he’d killed me and he’d send the helicopter to pick him up. Alik had never made that call. So maybe, just maybe—

  I rounded a hedge and saw it, and my lungs filled in hope. The helicopter was still there. I ran over, wrenched open the door, and pointed my assault rifle at the pilot.

  He threw his hands in the air. He was in his early sixties, with curling white hair and a paunch. “I swear, these assholes just hired me last night to fly them out to the woods. I never would have taken the job if I’d known what was going on out here. But that big Russian guy, he said he’d kill my family if I went to the cops!”

  I relaxed and lowered the gun. “You help me,” I told him, “and you’ll never have to worry about him again. How long to the port of Seattle?”

  The pilot pursed his lips. “Two hours. Less, if I push it.”

  “Push it,” I told him, and jumped into the back with Rufus.

  * * *

  Less than two hours later, the helicopter swung in low and touched down beside a warehouse. “Close as I can get you,” the pilot told me. “Good luck!”

  I thanked him and Rufus and I jumped out. Now, all we had to do was find a red container. We ran around the corner of the warehouse and—

  I stumbled to a stop.

  The port went on for a couple of square miles. And a huge chunk of it was filled with cargo containers. Thousands of them, stacked five-high to form a sprawling maze. More containers hung from gantries that whirred back and forth on rails, stacking them like building blocks. Still more were being trundled around by huge forklift trucks. And then I turned and saw the ones already sitting on the decks of cargo ships. At least one in five of them was red.

  68

  Bethany

  THE SOUND of quiet, constant sobbing filled the container. All of us were slumped on the floor, now, our backs against the padded walls. It had been hours since we’d been loaded onto the ship and since then, we’d felt the impact as containers thudded into place either side and then, terrifyingly, on top of ours. We were being buried in a stack. Is there an air hole, somewhere? What if they’ve covered it up? One mistake by the workers loading the ship and we could die in here!

  There was a plastic crate in one corner with bottles of water and energy bars and a covered bucket for a toilet. How long are they going to keep us in here? The other women didn’t know any more than I did. They all had similar stories to me: low-paid jobs, cameras in their workplace, a sudden offer of a job in another city, and then waking up in the mansion. They’d all been drugged a second time before waking up in this room. Where are we? I hadn’t seen anywhere like this when I was last here, but then I’d only seen a few rooms and the mansion was huge.

  And if we did survive the journey, what awaited us in Russia wasn’t much better. Rich Russian men, who’d pay to do what those bastards at the club did. Who wanted a woman who couldn’t go to the police. My stomach knotted.

  I felt something. I couldn’t figure out what it was, at first, because there was no sound, just a sensation. A deep, throbbing vibration. There were some crumbs on the floor from when someone had eaten one of the energy bars and they began to dance and shuffle along the padding. I felt my face crumple and I let out a silent no of horror as I realized what that meant.

  The engines had started. The ship was about to leave.

  69

  Cal

  RUFUS LOOKED expectantly up at me. But I didn’t have an answer, didn’t have any idea how to find her. I only knew that she was slipping away from us with each passing second. And this place...I’d never felt so out of my element. The city was bad but even a city has trees and parks. This place was nothing but metal and concrete. And after the soft green and brown of the woods, this place was an overwhelming riot of bright primary colors, all mixed chaotically together like a world made of random Legos. Every surface was hard and smooth, reflecting and amplifying the noise as containers banged together and diesel engines roared. I felt like a mouse trapped inside the world’s biggest machine.

  This wasn’t some problem I could solve with a gun, or with brute strength. What would Bethany do?

  She’d talk to people. She was good at that. I wasn’t.

  But if I wanted to save her, I had to try.

  I hid the assault rifle behind a dumpster and ran to a tall building whose top floor had big, sloping windows that overlooked the dockside—the control room, I hoped.

  I burst inside and looked around wildly. It reminded me of the offices on military bases: the ground floor was full of harried staff dealing with questions about pay and assignments. What I needed must be upstairs.

  “Hey!” yelled a man in shirt sleeves. “Where’s your ID badge? You can’t bring a dog in here!”

&nbs
p; I had to move fast before I got thrown out. I saw a flight of stairs and pounded up them to the top floor. Behind me, the guy yelled for me to come back.

  I burst out of the stairwell into the room with sloping glass windows I’d seen from below. It was a control room. People sat at computer screens, their faces lit with reflections of shipping routes, maps of the port, and the glowing, colorful rectangles of thousands of shipping containers. It was quiet and calm.

  Until I showed up. As I marched in, my hip knocked against a stack of papers on a desk and the whole thing toppled to the floor and spread out into a wide fan. Rufus bounded in behind me, his tail clearing desks of trinkets and coffee mugs. Everyone looked round.

  “Who the hell are you?” a woman’s voice demanded.

  I turned. She was in her forties, wearing a headset and a trouser suit, and she stood in the very center of the room so that she could see everyone’s screen and what was going on outside the windows. I didn’t need to look at her ID badge to know she was in charge.

  I hurried towards her. A security guard moved to intercept me from the back of the room.

  The woman frowned. “Who are you?” she asked again. “You can’t be in here!”

  I stopped right in front of her and now she wasn’t mad, she was scared. She backed away from me and the security guard started to run. Shit. I was looming. I’d spent so many years looming and scowling and scaring people away, I’d forgotten how to switch it off. I opened my mouth to speak but those cogs and gears were all jammed tight again. This wasn’t like talking to Bethany, with her patience and cool, calming voice. Everyone was staring at me, defensive and worried.

  I looked down at myself. Bearded and long-haired. Nearly seven feet tall. My clothes were torn and mud-stained from my run through the forest, blood was soaking through one sleeve where a few shotgun pellets had winged me and a big German Shepherd was prowling around my legs. I’d be scared of me.

  The security guard put his hand on his gun. “Just back away, pal.”

  I had to talk to this woman. Convince her to help. But she was the first person I’d had to really talk to, other than Bethany, in six years. “I—”

  Feet pounded up the stairs. The man in shirt sleeves from downstairs appeared, along with another security guard. “Sorry, Nina, he got past me. C’mon, outta here!”

  I stared down into the woman’s eyes. She was scared and I didn’t know the words to say to put her at ease. “I—”

  The security guards each grabbed one of my arms. “Come on, buddy, let’s get you downstairs.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I hunkered down, bending my knees until I was at eye level with the woman. And then I forced myself to talk like I did to Bethany. I had to not growl or snarl or grunt. Just speak.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “My name’s Cal Whittaker and...I need your help. To save ten women, including the one I love.”

  The security guards started to pull me towards the stairs. I let them because if I resisted, they’d reach for their guns. I kept my eyes on the woman—Nina, the guy had called her. And I prayed she could see in my face that I was telling the truth.

  “Wait,” she said.

  The guards kept pulling me. The guy in shirt sleeves scowled. “He’s just some homeless guy.”

  “Wait!” ordered Nina. Everyone stopped.

  Nina walked over to me. She looked down at Rufus, who immediately sat and looked up at her with eyes that would have melted a heart of stone. She looked at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a shipping container somewhere on your dock with women inside,” I told her.

  Nina blinked. “If...that’s true then we can get the police involved—”

  “There’s no time! It got here hours ago, it might already be on a ship!”

  Nina debated for a second. “Do you know the container number?”

  “No. I know it’s red.”

  The whole office gave a despairing sigh.

  “I know it came in by truck a few hours ago and I know the ship’s heading to Russia!” I told them.

  Nina crossed her arms and frowned at me, trying to figure out if I was a crazy timewaster. I stood there trying to look as sane and sincere as I could. The guy in shirt sleeves shook his head at Nina. She glared at him. Bit her lip….

  “Marcus,” she asked, without taking her eyes off of me. “Do we have anything heading to Russia today?”

  A guy in his twenties tapped at his keyboard and then turned to her, pushing his glasses up his nose. “There is one...the Charodeyka. But...that’s leaving now.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I threw off the guards and ran for the stairs, Rufus right on my heels. Nina’s voice followed me. “Wait! You can’t just—”

  I tore through the office downstairs and out onto the dockside. I stopped for a second, searching. There! On the rusting, black-painted stern of a ship a few hundred yards away, I could see the name Charodeyka.

  And it was moving.

  I sprinted down the dock, Rufus racing alongside me. The ship was one of the smaller ones, with maybe twenty containers piled up on its deck instead of the hundreds some of the others carried. But it was still massive. As I pulled alongside it, I could hear the roar of its engines and see the churned-up water at its stern. It wasn’t going fast, yet, but it was picking up speed. And they’d already removed the gangplank. How the hell do I get on board? There was a good eight feet of water between the dock and the ship, too far to jump.

  I looked frantically around and saw a truck parked almost at the water’s edge. I climbed up onto the hood and then, ignoring the driver’s yells, up onto the roof. That put me a good eight feet above the ship. I took two running steps and jumped….

  And landed hard on the moving deck, picking up a few new bruises. A second later, Rufus jumped and I turned just in time to catch him in my arms and cushion his fall by going down on my ass.

  A man in his fifties marched towards us. His thick black beard was dusted with silver and his face was craggy and weathered from a life spent at sea. “What the fuck are you doing on my ship?” he yelled. His Russian accent was as thick as Ralavich’s. “You’ve got no right—”

  I grabbed him by the throat and lifted until his feet left the deck. “Where are the women?” I snarled.

  His expression changed. Only for a second, but I saw it. He knew. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he spat. “And you’re trespassing on my ship!”

  Something was happening on the dockside. Two Port Authority cops were yelling to the crew and I heard the engines stop. Shit. I had to find Bethany fast, or they’d arrest me instead of the captain. “Where are they!” I yelled into his face. He flinched but didn’t break. And now the cops were wrestling the gangplank into place so they could come aboard….

  I dropped the captain and ran down the length of the ship, searching. White containers, green ones, blue ones, but no red. Had I got it wrong? I looked back towards the cops and my heart sank. They had the gangplank in place and were running up it. Shit!

  Then it occurred to me that the containers were stacked in two rows, and I could only see the ones on this side. I raced around the end of the stack and started down the other side—

  And there it was. A red container, about halfway along the ship, at the bottom of the stack. I ran to it and got there just as the captain and the two cops arrived from the other direction. “Freeze!” yelled the older of the two cops. He was graying and tubby and clearly didn’t appreciate being made to run.

  I raised my hands in the air, very glad I’d gotten rid of the assault rifle. “There—There’s women in there,” I panted, nodding at the container.

  “This man is trespassing!” snapped the captain. “I want him off my ship!”

  No. God, no, not when I’m so close! “Please!” I looked pleadingly at the cops. “Please, arrest me, take me to jail, do whatever you gotta do but just take a look, please!”

  “He’s crazy man,” said
the captain. “Is potatoes in there!”

  The two cops looked at each other uncertainly. I held my breath.

  “Maybe you better let us take a look,” said the younger cop at last.

  I sucked in a huge breath and almost lowered my hands. The older cop made a warning gesture and I raised them again. I didn’t care, as long as they opened the container.

  Cursing, the captain broke the seals and undid the locks, then pulled the doors wide—

  I stared, icy shock sluicing through me. Potatoes piled almost to the ceiling. A few shook free and rolled against our feet.

  The older cop sighed. “Sorry, captain. You can get underway.” He turned to me. “You, you’re under arrest.”

  He grabbed my shoulder and I let him march me towards the gangplank. It was over. Maybe I’d been wrong about the captain and the container was still on the dock, waiting for a ship. Maybe it was on this ship, and Cairns had lied about the color. Or maybe it was on a ship that was already at sea, and the crew had lied about their destination. Whichever it was, Bethany was gone. No one would listen to me now.

  When we were almost at the gangplank, I heard, “Get this mutt out of here!”

  I looked over my shoulder. The captain was trying to shoo Rufus away from the container, but Rufus had his nose inside, sniffing. Then he started pawing at the potatoes, slowly at first and then faster, as if he was trying to burrow into the pile.

  He looked at me and barked.

  I drew in my breath and twisted around, shaking the cops off me. Then I was sprinting back down the ship, shoving the captain out of the way, and joining Rufus in front of the open container. I burrowed alongside him, shoving my arms into the pile and tossing huge armfuls of potatoes over my shoulders. I worked frantically, hearing the cops pounding down the deck towards me—

  Three feet in, my hands hit metal. I shoved the potatoes aside and found a metal wall...and a door. The captain and the cops arrived just in time to see me wrench it open. The inside was covered in thick, red padding. “Bethany?” I yelled.