Covert Network (A Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller Series Book 14)

by Trevor Scott

  “What about the girls?” Sirena asked.

  “They are kept. . .housed in other buildings,” Pablo said.

  “Since we are potential investors,” Jake said, “perhaps we could meet the girls.”

  “I am afraid that is impossible at this time. They are resting now, since they must work this evening.”

  Jake shrugged. “All right. Well, thank you for the tour.” He started to wander back toward the front entrance.

  “Wait,” Pablo said. “I could show you our video showcase menu.”

  “Perfect,” Jake said.

  The three of them went to an office with a number of desks and computers with large screens. Pablo brought up a slick file with every woman or young girl they had at this location. Sirena paid particular attention to the faces of the women, trying her best to discern if her Spanish friend was among those on the menu. Finally, after viewing each set of images with the girls in various positions to highlight their assets, Sirena gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Maria was not here. Or at least not on the menu yet.

  “Some of these women are young,” Jake said. “Do they get some kind of training before you put them on the menu?”

  Pablo smiled. “They are usually experienced enough. But some go through remedial training with our more experienced practitioners. And once a month we bring in a special consultant for additional training.”

  An idea flashed quickly into Jake’s mind. “I think I know who you are talking about. Sten Larsen’s wife Tiffany mentioned something about helping with other aspects of the operation,” Jake lied.

  “Do you know Tiffany?” Pablo asked.

  Jake smiled. “Many people know Tiffany from her work.”

  “Yes,” Pablo agreed. “She is very talented.”

  “And flexible,” Jake said with a smirk.

  They both laughed and Sirena gave Jake a look of partial annoyance.

  After viewing the menu, Jake said, “Are you sure this is all you have?”

  “Yes. But we have a lot of turnover in this business.”

  Jake could only imagine.

  Pablo continued, “Do you not see one you like? We could arrange for a personal meeting tonight.”

  Sirena now put her hands on her hips and said, “Maybe my colleague should sample the product.”

  “That will not be necessary,” Jake said. “At least not for the purpose of investment.”

  “I understand,” Pablo said.

  Jake and Pablo spent a short while discussing business investment, with Jake giving the guy an exorbitant figure for potential investment in his operation. Sirena pitched in, saying she could help with a steady stream of Eastern European girls. In the end, they agreed to work out the details at another time. But the most important accomplishment of their discussion was a meeting with the Nazca Boys, as Pablo and Larsen referred to the others in the organization.

  “Are these Nazca Boys the top of the food chain?” Jake asked.

  “They seem to think so,” Pablo said. “But I think this is just delusions of grandeur. They are a bit unconventional.”

  “How so?” Sirena asked.

  Pablo considered this carefully, fighting for words. “They are a bit. . .crazy.” Then he gave Jake and Sirena the name of the man in charge of the Peruvian operation, along with an address. Nothing more.

  The owner showed Jake and Sirena to the front door. Just as they were shaking hands to leave, Pablo was interrupted by the man at the reception desk, who whispered into his ear.

  Pablo nodded and sent his man back to the desk with a shift of his head. Then he said to Jake and Sirena, “It seems that the Policia are at our front gate,” Pablo said. “My men believe they are looking for you.”

  Crap, Jake thought. “Is there another way out of this property?”

  Pablo raised his brows and smiled. “Of course.”

  25

  Jake was instructed to follow a narrow dirt road around the back of the complex of buildings. The sun was starting to set, but Jake could still see a series of buildings where they must have been keeping the young women. Now he had a dilemma. He was sure that these women or girls were being exploited, but he also knew that this was not his mission. Well, it was to a certain extent. He was in South America to find Maria Vega, the Spanish intel officer, who had been there to find the two young Spanish college girls taken in Argentina. But he had also just followed a van with two men from that country who had violated international law by transporting kidnapped girls across the border of Argentina and Chile.

  “What do we do about these girls?” Sirena asked.

  Jake turned the wheel to avoid shrubs along the narrow road. “Nothing right now.”

  “We can’t leave them here,” she said. “There must be a couple dozen girls. Probably from all over in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.”

  “More than that,” Jake said. “I counted twenty-nine girls on the menu. Plus, the three they just brought here. Maybe more that have not been trained yet.”

  “We must free them,” she said.

  “Not yet. If we call in the local cops, they will shut down the operation. But Pablo and friends will get the girls released and they’ll simply move their operation. Besides that, they will warn the Nazca Boys in Peru. They will scatter across the countryside and disappear. Who knows, they might just ship the girls to Asia.” Or kill them, he thought.

  Sirena nodded agreement. “I know. But we have to do something.”

  Jake slowed when he saw the back gate ahead. “We will work through INTERPOL or other sources. You heard Pablo mention that he had contacts in the Policia.”

  “That’s my biggest concern,” Sirena said. “We have to work outside of the local authorities.”

  The gate guard must have been told they were coming, since he opened the gate for them when he saw their car approaching the gate. Jake simply waved at the guard, who seemed disinterested. He drove out and stopped at a cross road, which was a country lane much like the one they had driven on to the penguin compound and girl exploitation factory.

  Glancing to his left, Jake said, “Crap. The police are heading this way.”

  “Go right,” Sirena said, and then pulled out her phone to check the map. “Why are they after us?”

  Jake pulled out to the right and picked up speed moderately, checking his rearview mirror. “It might be the fact that we’re in a stolen car,” Jake said. “I didn’t disable the GPS.”

  “That might have been a good idea,” she said, her fingers moving the map.

  He knew that, but he also knew that it would have taken too much time to disable the car GPS. And they had traveled constantly after leaving Buenos Aires.

  “Too late now,” Jake said. Looking back through the mirror, he saw that the policia car had hit its lights. Then the sound of the sirens made it to them.

  “Turn left at the first road ahead,” Sirena said.

  With darkness creeping in, the lighting made it almost impossible to see anything clearly. But he finally saw the road and turned at the last second, the tires squealing as the vehicle nearly rolled.

  Jake picked up speed and saw that the policia car was still behind them. “Maybe Pablo turned us in to his friends.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think he really wants to work with us.”

  “He definitely wants to work with you.”

  “Yeah, he was a little creepy.”

  “What? Just because he fucks penguins, you shouldn’t judge him.”

  “And young girls,” she reminded him.

  “Hey, he’s an entrepreneur and an inventor. His penguin fucking harness is patent pending. Hang on.” The car hit a rise in the road and almost sent them airborne.

  “Easy partner,” she said, and then looked in the side mirror. “We’ve picked up another car. Turn right.”

  But Jake didn’t react quickly enough, so they passed the road. Jake hit the gas hard and then lunged forward.

  “Or not,” she said.
“All right. There’s a right about a half mile ahead. Take that one.”

  Jake could see the road ahead, but he kept up their speed until the last second, when he jammed the brakes and cut the wheel hard. Not losing a lot of speed, Jake powered up again as he looked in the rearview mirror. The first police car had not made the turn and the second one almost ran into the first, but was able to cut a path past the first policia car and take up the chase in the lead.

  “You’re getting us to the private airport, right?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah, the one in La Reina. Isn’t that where they’re holding the Gulfstream for us?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “They texted me hours ago saying they had landed, refueled and were waiting for us. But first we have to lose these cops and dump this car.”

  “All right,” she said. “Remember this. Right, left, left, right, right. First turn about a mile ahead.”

  Jake ran the sequence through his mind as he concentrated on his driving. The roads here were narrow and full of pot holes.

  Without asking again, Jake turned and powered through each turn. When he got to the last right turn, he could see a major road ahead that he would have to weave into. At this hour, traffic was heavy. Jake slowed just enough to make it through two cars, cut hard to the right and weave into the outer passing lane. But he nearly rammed into a stopped car. So, he cut to the left around the car on the shoulder, where dirt and rocks flew up into a cloud of dust behind him. Instead of cutting back into the lane, he kept his left tires out in the dirt to try to cut the vision of the policia cars.

  Glancing back, Jake could barely see anything—only a glow of red and blue lights from the policia cars.

  “Where now?” Jake asked.

  “The airport is about two miles ahead.”

  “Can you climb back and grab our bags?” he asked.

  She looked back. “I think so.” Sirena unbuckled and started to squeeze between the bucket seats. In doing so, her butt ended up right in Jake’s face. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Not a problem.” He gave her a hand by pushing on her butt.

  “You could have at least bought me a drink,” she said.

  “I’ll get you one on the jet.”

  Jake watched her in the mirror as she pulled down one side of the back seats and found their bags. They had left their clothes, some passports, and a bunch of U.S. cash in the bags. So, they couldn’t leave those behind.

  “I’ll stay back here,” she said. But she shoved Jake’s bag forward into the front seat.

  “How far from the airport?” he asked.

  She settled in and pulled out her phone. “Less than a mile.”

  “Hang on,” Jake said. “They’re jamming up. Get ready to jump out on the left side. I’ve got an idea.”

  All Jake could see ahead now were red tail lights. But he was still dusting the vehicles behind them. At the last second, Jake hit the brakes and cut the car across in front of the lane, blocking traffic. Cars honked at him all around.

  Jake gabbed his bag and jumped out. Sirena did the same from the back seat.

  Once outside, the dust obscured their view. Jake ran up between the stopped cars. After getting past a few cars, he heard the tires squealing to a stop, but not quick enough. The first policia car rammed into the side of their car. The second policia car smashed into the back of the first one.

  Jake and Sirena used the chaos to continue running toward the front of the line of cars. Now he could see why the cars had stopped. The policia had set up a road block, and they were rushing right toward it.

  When more cars crashed behind Jake, he turned briefly and saw that these cars had crashed into the policia vehicles.

  Now the two of them went from a run to a casual walk along the right side of the road, as if they had been walking along the highway before all of the mayhem. Policia officers from the road block started rushing toward the crash site.

  “What now?” Sirena asked, her breathing heavy.

  Jake could see the entrance to the private airport nearly a quarter of a mile beyond the road block. “I say we just walk past them. They look preoccupied.”

  “I wonder why,” she said from the side of her mouth.

  As it turned out the policia officers didn’t even seem to notice them wander past their cordon. They simply kept on going until they slipped through the private airport entrance. Moments later they checked through a security area that consisted of an old guy with a gut and a wrinkled uniform having a hard time keeping his pants up.

  They were met at the steps of the Gulfstream by the pretty Spanish flight attendant, who had a tall rum in her hand waiting for Jake.

  “What would you like to drink, Sirena?” the flight attendant asked.

  Sirena nodded her head toward Jake and said, “I’ll have what he’s drinking.”

  “Splendid.” The flight attendant went back to pour the 25-year-old rum from Nicaragua.

  Jake set his bag along the bulkhead and sat in his normal chair. Sirena took the chair across from Jake. Seconds later the flight attendant handed Sirena her glass of rum.

  “Where are we heading?” the attendant asked.

  “Lima,” Jake said.

  The flight attendant started to leave, but hesitated for a second. “We heard there was some kind of major accident out on the highway. I’m glad you weren’t involved with that.”

  “We saw that too,” Jake said. “We must have just missed it.”

  The flight attendant smiled and went to the cockpit.

  “See,” Sirena said. “I’m barely here and she’s making idle conversation with you.”

  “I’ve known her much longer,” Jake reasoned. “She’s just being nice.”

  “Right. That’s it.”

  They both sipped rum as the pilots fired up the engines and started to taxi toward the runway. Jake still had mixed feelings about what they had just left behind on the outskirts of Santiago. These girls needed their help. But he had to think about the big picture. He’d drop a dime on that operation once he got to the bottom of this entire case. He had saved the GPS location of the Young Girl Sex Club/Penguin Exploitation Operation.

  Jake found his phone and called Kurt Jenkins just after they were airborne. He wasn’t sure how long he would have cell service.

  “Jake,” Kurt said. “It looks like you’re leaving Santiago in a hurry.”

  “You could say that,” Jake said. He quickly explained the operation at the compound, where they had followed the van with the three girls. And how Jake was concerned for their safety. He gave Kurt the address of the compound, and said he would text him the GPS coordinates, which he did as they spoke.

  “You were right to hold off trying to liberate those girls at this time,” Kurt said. “Do you think this contact in Lima will be the final rung in the ladder?”

  “We think so,” Jake said. “This guy in Santiago.”

  “The penguin fucker,” Kurt said.

  “Right. He seemed to be disgusted and concerned about what he called the Nazca Boys in Peru. The same was true of our American friend in Montevideo. That has to be the leadership.”

  “I’m probably going to lose cell service soon,” Jake said. “Look into this guy named Gerhard Beck.”

  “He’s the contact in Lima?” Kurt asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. I’ll have everything you need to know before you touch down in Lima.”

  “Thanks, Kurt.” Jake hung up and put his phone in his pocket.

  “Kurt’s gonna get us intel on Beck?” Sirena asked.

  Jake yawned. “He said he would.”

  “You need to get some sleep,” she said. “You’re not getting any younger.”

  She didn’t have to tell him that. His sore muscles were a constant reminder.

  Jake raised his glass and the flight attendant came with the bottle of rum, filling his glass about half full.

  “Thanks, dear,” Jake said.

  The flight attendant
lifted the bottle for Sirena, but she declined. Instead, Sirena handed her empty glass to the younger woman.

  Once the Spanish woman was out of earshot, Jake said, “See, I think she likes you also.”

  “She’s hot enough to make me switch sides,” Sirena said, her eyes on the flight attendant’s tight butt.

  Jake was almost too tired to contemplate that scenario. Almost. He slowly finished his drink and drifted off to sleep.

  26

  Nazca Center, Peru

  Maria had spent the day learning what they did here at the compound. Some had called it a period of purity. Others had called it simply the time before. But Maria wasn’t sure what this was before. What came next?

  After evening dinner, she had been picked up by one of the men in uniform and escorted to the main administrative building adjacent to the great hall.

  She sat now in an old wooden chair in an office with a large window that she guessed would overlook the garden complex in the middle of the square. But darkness had already come to them, and only a few dim lights gave her any indication of the location of the perimeter fence. Earlier in the day she had worked for a while in the garden, while she observed the fence topped with razor wire. She had a feeling this place had been a military compound at one time. Based on the age of the buildings, she guessed they had been built during the Second World War or shortly thereafter.

  What she saw in this room was disturbing and a bit disconcerting. The main wall contained picture boxes with military memorabilia. Inside those boxes, however, were iconic symbols of Nazi Germany—from tattered flags to armbands with swastikas and knives with SS on them. There were also old black and white photos of Nazi officers placed precisely on an old wooden credenza below the picture boxes on the wall.

  Now she was confused. This Gerhard Beck had spoken the other day about the human race being placed on this planet and becoming gods who had informed them to build the great pyramids on Earth. How did this strange ideology mesh with this Nazi memorabilia? More importantly, perhaps, was her fate in this society. What were their intentions with all of these young women?

  Suddenly she could hear mumbled conversation outside of the entrance door, but she could not hear the words clearly. She did hear that the language was German, which she did not understand.