by Andy Straka
“You people have been living down here,” I said.
“That’s it.” Sammy turned and lifted a box from somewhere, began stuffing his pockets and a belt with ammunition for his rifle.
“How many?”
“Eighteen.”
“How long have you been down here?”
“Few months.” He shrugged.
“Months.” I looked down the line of frightened eyes. The expression’s on the girl’s faces had shifted to one of wary curiosity.
“These girls have been smuggled in here to work as prostitutes by Los Miembros. You’re protecting them.”
He nodded. “They tell ‘em they’re going to be working in restaurants, in the kitchens or busing tables. Ain’t true.”
He said something to one of the taller girls in Arabic. The girl took his flashlight and disappeared back down the tunnel for the moment.
“How did they end up with you?”
“We’re all the same. I just been here a lot longer.”
“How come you didn’t go to police or ask someone for help?”
“We’re illegal. We make it on our own.”
“Where’d you learn to handle that gun?” I asked.
“War,” he said simply.
“Sudan?”
He nodded. “Same place we all from.”
“You kill those two gangbangers in the park the other night?”
He nodded again. “Had to. They had Faridah.”
“She the girl with the owl?”
He nodded.
I looked around again at the room. “Lot of mouths to feed here.”
“That’s right. These girls here are the skinniest. Los Miembros must have figured these weren’t worth the trouble.”
“So they were planning to leave them here to die.”
He said nothing.
“Where’s the owl?”
“She’s safe for now,” he said. “Faridah knows where to find her.”
“What have you guys been doing with that bird, hunting for meat?”
“Yes, sir. We got the idea from that book Jayani gave us. The girl, Faridah Abd al Mahir, she said her father had trained her how to handle the birds before he died.”
That explained the Arab-style glove.
“So you were cooking down here?”
He nodded.
“You’re lucky you didn’t asphyxiate themselves.”
“You ever been hungry enough?” His gaze was steady.
“Where’s Faridah now?”
“With your daughter and the rest of the girls. See, Jayani was the one. She’d tricked us, we knew. She’d been trying to figure out where we were.”
“And she finally found you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you know she was in bed with Los Miembros?”
“I do now.”
“And the missing pets, how’d they figure into the plan?”
“I took ‘em,” he said. He gestured with his head and shone the light on a couple of cages, bags of cat food and kitty litter in the corner. “The girls needed something to keep them from going crazy down here. Jayani let me. I still trusted her, you see?”
“After the falconry thing didn’t work, she was trying to use the pets as a way to figure out where you were hiding,” I said.
“I guess so. Something like that.”
“What about the feather and fur on the sidewalk?”
He shrugged. “I put ‘em there so the owners would think their pets were gone.”
“Do you know about Mitch Collins?”
“Who?”
The girl who had left returned bearing a small box and handed it to Sammy. “Look, mister, we got to get going, okay? You got guns. I saw you take one from that gangster. You go and take these girls with you. Keep them safe. Follow the other side of the tunnel we just passed. It’ll lead you out into the park. The girls will show you.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going after Jayani to get back Faridah and your daughter and the other girls.”
“You know where she’s taken them?”
“I know exactly where she’s taken them.”
“I want to know too,” I said.
32
Thunder rumbled in the darkness overhead. Drops began striking the canopy of leaves in the darkness of the park followed by a wave of heavy rain, more thunder. It was well after dark now. More than six hours had passed since I’d last seen Sammy Yel Bak. Lt. Marbush and I had agreed on a plan provided I went in with heavy backup. We were about a hundred yards north of the 97th Street Transverse, just inside the western edge of the park. West Drive was somewhere ahead in the darkness and the ball fields and the North Meadow. I moved quickly, any sounds I might be making obscured by the downpour. Toronto was about thirty feet to my left and behind me.
“Frank.”
Marbush’s voice crackled softly over the radio.
“Back at you.” I whispered, hoping she could make me out.
“What’s your ETA to contact?”
“Two to three minutes. Maybe less.”
“Okay. Just to make you feel a little cozier, spotters on the buildings are having a hard time seeing anything and the chopper’s out of play with the storm. All we’ve got are the troops on the ground.”
“Roger that.”
I motioned for Toronto to move up beside me. He scrambled forward, moving through the heavy foliage off the trail. Already we were both soaked to the bone.
“You’re sure they’re going to be in there now?” he said.
“Got to be. Sammy says it’s where Los Miembros meets to trade girls.”
“Like a slave market you mean.”
“Something like that.”
The Parks and Recreation storage facility was tucked neatly into the back of a hillside flanking the Drive. A pair of streetlights shone like lonely beacons up ahead. Only the dim roof of the building was visible from across the road.
“The owl girl going to be any help?” Toronto asked.
“Maybe. But she probably isn’t going to want to take any chances without Sammy.”
“If what you say about the kid is true, this girl Jayani and her pals may have bought off more than they can chew when it comes to Sammy.”
“Let’s hope so. But he’s only one against many.”
“And you’re sure you can trust the kid.”
“Time to find out,” I said.
We pushed on through the rain. The ground was uneven, the grass and the rocks slick with water. As if we weren’t wet enough already, each bush or small tree branch we brushed past soaked us some more.
The temperature had taken a sudden a drop as well. Steam rose from the beams of our small flashlights. I touched the stolen Beretta in my waistband to make sure it was still within easy reach. Marbush had been pretty accepting once she’d found out the truth about her shooting investigation and the missing pets fiasco. That, at least, gave me a warm feeling all over. The arrival of a pair of federal immigration agents to put the girls I’d managed to walk out of the tunnels in protective custody and escort them to the hospital proved less comforting.
I’m all in favor of protecting the homeland, securing our borders, you name it. The last thing I want is some jihadist surreptitiously bent on destruction showing up in my neighborhood. But when face to face with these illegals clearly bent on nothing more than their own survival—and making heroic efforts at it to boot—the platitudes tended to melt away like so much rainwater. Not my call, but I hoped they’d get a decent break, be offered asylum. I hoped their only memories of America and New York City wouldn’t end up being Jayani and the Los Miembros sex slave ring, the upscale suburban clients of which no doubt would be shocked and horrified to know that the girls they were using for their own pleasure were not only underage but kidnap, rape, and imprisonment victims as well.
There were no cars on the Drive, closed at this hour. The rain blew in sheets in front of us and the sound of the occasional car swishin
g by on the Transverse Road to our south only served to heighten the feeling of emptiness here.
Toronto and I switched off our lights, emerged from the overgrowth and crossed the pavement together like twin apparitions. A chain-link fence surrounded the storage structure. The gate was locked, but there was a hole the size of a taxicab in one side of the fence, so I’m not even sure why anyone bothered securing the gate.
We made our way through the opening and down a steep embankment to the broken-up pavement of the truck turnaround. The light from the streetlamps reflected off the draining water and puddles, moving with the staccato beat of the rain pouring down. Even through the storm, the rich scent of oil and diesel fuel was redolent on the wind.
What were we doing here, I thought for a moment, chasing ghosts? But Jayani Miller was no ghost, and neither were Los Miembros, even if they did have a lot in common with the occasional slave traders who’d apparently roamed this section of Manhattan sixteen decades before.
As if on cue, the figure of Sammy Yel Bak emerged from the darkness of the open storage building, barely visible in the dim light. He was smoking a cigarette, the Kalashnikov held by a shoulder harness slung casually at his side. Something wasn’t right.
He looked at us and said. “What you people want now? Can’t you just leave it alone?” His voice was devoid of emotion. It didn’t seem to fit the situation.
“I’m just after my daughter and I want to help you and the rest of the girls.”
“Right. Everybody just wanna help. Help themselves to women. Help themselves to money.”
“It’s not like that Sammy, and you know it. Not everyone is that way.”
Sammy was silent for a moment. He took a final puff on his cigarette and tossed it into the rain. “Too late now anyway,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“They gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
“The girls.” He coughed into his hand. “Los Miembros took them. Best you forget about them all now.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“Dead.” He shook his head. “All of us gonna be dead, sooner or later.”
“Dead?” I fought at the note of panic welling up inside me. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know, man,” he said, slipping into his street accent. “How I supposed to know such things? Supposed to know everything, do you think? Sammy’s supposed to know everything?”
Either he was drunk or drugged. Or was it something else? I studied his silhouette, the slope of his shoulders, and the fix of his gun.
“You seeing what I’m seeing?” I whispered to Toronto.
“Yeah …I see it.”
“He’s been shot.”
I tapped Toronto on the shoulder and pointed to the shed. We hit the ground, guns drawn, as the first 9 mm rounds began striking the pavement around us.
We followed the tracers with return fire. Someone screamed and uttered an obscenity from deep within the storage shed. Sammy Yel Bak seemed oddly unaffected by it all, standing there with his Kalashnikov still hanging by its strap.
As if it was necessary or would do any good, I keyed in the radio handset and pulled it to my mouth.
“Code red. Code red. Shots fired in front of the storage shed.”
Toronto crawled behind some storage barrels filled with sand and I followed and fired around them. Sammy was slumping to the ground. Maybe he’d been hit in the crossfire. Not that it would matter now.
The first SWAT team members scrambled across the pavement to our left, training their weapons into the black hole behind Sammy. A siren whooped close by as four other assault officers, rappelling down from the roof above, hit the ground outside the shed.
“Hold up! Hold up!” More obscenities erupted from inside the open air shed. “You want to kill all these here women?”
The shed and the entire lot was flooded with light then as NYPD beams and laser finders bounced all around the inside walls.
“Hold up. Hold up, I said. It ain’t worth all that.” It was Jayani Miller, still in her security guard uniform, and three others, their weapons thrown to the ground, their hands high over their heads.
Toronto and I moved in as Sammy Yel Bak slumped to the ground. He was bleeding heavily from the abdomen, even the nose and mouth.
“We need an ambulance stat,” I shouted.
“On the ground,” the cop in charge blared through a bullhorn to the shooters. “Face down on the ground with your hands behind your heads.”
Miller and the others complied. Officers shone their lights and swarmed into the building. The brightness revealed a group of terrified young women, clumped into a mass at the back of the structure, apparently as frightened by the blazing police lights as they’d been by their captors and the shooting.
I searched the group of women while the cops secured the suspects. There were about a dozen girls altogether, in better condition than the ones I had brought out of the tunnel, as Sammy had said. Wild eyes in tears, dark skin, dressed in tattered jeans, shorts and T-shirts, all bound and gagged. And there, among them, with her hair a mess and her face bruised but looking very much alive, Nicole. Even with her bonds, she was hugging one of the group who was sobbing hysterically, the slight figure of the girl I had last seen with the owl.
I ran to them and put my arms around Nicole, pulling the gag from her face.
“Hey, Dad,” she said softly.
“Hey yourself.” I undid the rope around her hands and began helping untie the girl. “You okay?”
She nodded. “This is Faridah Abd al Mahir,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “Sammy told me. I found the other girls in the tunnel. He found me.”
“He tried to help us, but they caught him and tortured him before they shot him. It was … .” She wiped a tear from her cheek.
“He wasn’t supposed to show here until we arrived.” He still hadn’t completely trusted me.
Paramedics arrived and quickly moved Sammy under cover. Faridah wanted to be near him so we approached within a few yards, but they had barely gone to work on Sammy when he went into cardiac arrest.
The rain poured down harder, beating like the sound of a locomotive on the roof of the shed. Toronto, Lt. Marbush, and even Darla—who had shown up on her crutches wearing an NYPD slicker—came over to be with us. Police, additional medical personnel, and immigration officers swirled around, making room for those working on Sammy’s lifeless body.
Maybe if the entry wounds had been different. Maybe if they’d been in an operating room with a trauma surgeon. Maybe if they’d had just a few more minutes, been in some precious different place where the rain never fell, bullets never flew, and the night never closed around them like a curtain. They rushed Sammy into a waiting ambulance, and at one point in their fervor to save his life tore an emblem and a chain from his chest that Faridah rushed forward to take from them. I found myself whispering a prayer.
They did all they could.
33
On a cloudless morning three days later, Nicole, Darla, Toronto, an interpreter, and I accompanied Faridah Abd al Mahir in an ASPCA van as it drove her up to Nixon Deebee’s farm with her great horned owl in back. Faridah had not given the big female bird a name, which was probably just as well. Wildlife officials had agreed to allow her to transfer possession of the owl to Deebee, who would make sure she was well fed and fit before releasing her back into the wild.
Faridah, like the other girls, was a ward of the federal government now. As war refugees, their immigration status looked promising. If only Sammy Yel Bak had been so lucky. The waif-like girl sat quietly in the far back seat of the van between Nicole and the interpreter, her eyes an empty canvas, as she stared out at the passing scenery. Still dangling from her neck was the chain the paramedics had ripped from Sammy’s neck. It had been a gift to Sammy from his father, Faridah had told us through the interpreter. It was a magic amulet, Sammy claimed, that had protected him from bullets countless times—a silve
r crusader’s cross.
“Nice out here in the country,” Darla said.
I nodded.
“It’s nice that you’re doing this … for the girl, I mean, and her bird.”
I shrugged.
“No, I mean it. You and your daughter could have just walked away after I got shot, but you didn’t. I won’t forget that, Franco. And who would’ve believed this would have turn into such a crazywild
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Marcia had flown up to join us at the hotel in Midtown where we’d rented a couple of rooms. I had had several long talks with her and Nicole, whose bruises had begun to yellow and who seemed to be doing a little better. Mostly, we talked about Faridah and Sammy—by horror forced too soon from their childhood in another land—who’d somehow ended up thrown together in the underbelly of this city of their dreams, yet still managed to stand up against such impossible odds.
What had the young Christian Sammy, veteran of a real war with real weapons fought by children, seen in the slight Muslim girl and her band of fellow orphans? What had he seen in the book of the Mews and their captured wild owl? Visions of chivalry? Arthurian or Al-Furusiyya knights in full armor, astride their mounts with banners waving, riding down Fifth Avenue? We would never know. What we did know was that Barry LaGrange’s feature article in the Post two days before had forced the venue for Sammy Yel Bak’s memorial service to be moved twice and brought out hordes of everyday New Yorkers to stand quietly behind the police lines in front of the big church on Malcolm X Boulevard. The lines of African-American, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and even some Sudanese cab drivers in their cars backed up traffic for nearly an hour.
The cops were busy closing the rest of the matter too. Cato Raines’ ex-wife claimed his body and had him cremated without any kind of memorial. Jayani Miller, two other Grayland Tower guards, and a half dozen members of Los Miembros were all in custody facing numerous counts of abduction, rape, and murder. Mitchell Collins had been arrested at JFK while trying to flee the country. Dominic Watisi was not under arrest for anything yet. He was apparently coming clean with authorities and in true semi-celebrity fashion both his legal and propaganda teams were working full time both to try to keep him out of jail and to shore up any damage to his reputation.
