by Steve Curry
“Hey Gringo, drive around that point over there and tie up at the dock.” He pointed with his chin and cigarette while both hands were busy untying his boat from mine and then ran towards the side on the shore.”If it’s empty then turn on the light at the back of the dock. Tall pole with a bulb on it. Nothin fancy. Switch on the pole.”
I started the engine, threw it in reverse and started to maneuver away from the shallows. In front of me, the wiry “captain” of the other boat was leaning over and futzing with the pontoons resting on the shore. Just as the darkness swallowed them from my sight, I saw him swing the top of the pontoon open. He smiled and leaned down to lift out a teenage girl. I was still stunned and staring when he went to turn the fake rivets on the next pontoon. Before I saw what else, or who else, his cargo contained, the shoreline dipped between us and hid the other boat from view.
Human trafficking? That one was of a little more concern to me than other types of smuggling. I’m not a big fan of slavery. When I was young, we had thralls and it was a matter of little concern. Everyday lives from that time were not truly recognizable by today’s standards.
Truth is thralls or what you would define as slaves formed the second largest population of the three classes.
The smallest of the groups, like today, were the nobles or what you would call the one-percenters. The nobles were exemplified by a Jarl or sometimes a king. In fact, we held both in about the same regard. If they were strong warriors and admirable leaders then we followed them. If they were neither of the above, well, we often ended up with a new Jarl fairly soon. Sadly this usually occurred after the abrupt death of the weaker leader.
The entire thought of a Royal or Regal quality was foreign to us. There was a story of some Danes confronted by a retinue of the Frankish King. The Franks insisted that the Danes kiss the foot of their Royal personage. The leader of the Danes was not in favor of the idea and delegated it to another member of their band. The second Dane fulfilled the request but in a typical Viking manner. He knelt and grabbed the kingly foot then lifted it up to where he could kiss the questionable appendage at head height. It was assumed that the Frankish king’s royal bearing was not enhanced by sprawling on the ground at the foot of the Danes.
Below the Jarls were the Karls or freemen. This was the main layer of society with landowners and tradesmen lumped together. There were, naturally, different layers with that main body of peoples. Godi or chieftains often fulfilled a local leadership role but were also quite frequently the religious leaders of the community with a connection to the gods.
And then there were the Thralls. They worked with little or no pay to hopefully gain their freedom. Some were “property” brought back as spoils of war. Others were debtors sold into their lot until they could repay debts. Most of them, young and old alike, were treated well enough to maintain their health. A thrall was only worth the work he could do.
As I said, those times were little like today. Much of the time we were just trying to survive. We rarely grew or caught enough food to drive hunger away. We just discouraged it a little. You couldn’t hunt up a repairman whenever the roof leaked. Goods and clothing must be made or traded for. People were judged for the value they added to their holding.
To be a Thrall was still not a position anyone strove to achieve. They did the worst of the unskilled labor. Food and living conditions were pretty miserable sometimes. Some were taken as bed slaves, nannies or milk mothers. These usually had a gentler lot than a field hand or a woman grinding grain or salt by hand. It was not common nor was it illegal for a thrall to be treated badly by the freedman above him. Such abusers rarely kept more than a few slaves. One is wise not to anger slaves that outnumber your own men or family.
My own taste of slavery was at the hands of Wends or Vandals. My Scandinavian brothers and I traveled much of Europe and even as far as Asia and Africa. Sometimes we traded. Sometimes we raided. We were, however, by no means the only raiders in our time. The Rugi were a band of Slavs, we called them Rugi, Vandals, Vind, Wend or those goat-loving motherless dogs of the east.
One of their longboats captured me after a little naval disagreement. They carried me from Denmark into the Slavic lands. From there I was sold a number of times, usually by Jewish traders who could move freely in both Christian and Muslim lands. I ended up rowing a ship around the Mediterranean and Atlantic for a trader from Cordova. His rules for slaves were unpleasantly different from those I’d known. Fortunately, I was not his type. He was probably put off by my height. Some of the other men were not so lucky.
It was the Cordova ship that ruined me for slavery or thralls. We still had them on some of the ships and lands where I lived. After my own time in the collar, I always made sure their lot was never harsher than it had to be. And I never yearned to own any myself.
That’s probably why I was much more concerned with the sight of my guide’s “cargo” than I might be over the smuggling of drugs or other goods. I’ve also heard a few stories about the kind of things a young girl can expect once they’re part of the human trafficking operation. Maybe my kind had a reputation for ferocity and cruelty, but I was never part of a scenario like the stories you hear these days. That wasn’t very likely to change for some weasel I just met.
When I rounded the point it was readily apparent that there was nobody around the rickety dock. I hesitated to tie up at the ramshackle affair. At least the tires were likely to float. The rest of the thing was the best illustration I’d ever seen of the term flotsam.
Other than the tires and decaying slats of the dock, there was a rusted tin shack with no doors or glass in the windows. It was open enough to the elements that nobody over three years old could have been hiding. Or maybe a small dwarf. I guess some of the fey might hide there but they’re so good at hiding they wouldn’t need the building. But I digress.
The only other sign of people was a rugged looking block of rust that slowly resolved itself into an old utility van with filthy windows. Just on the off chance, I dug a flashlight out of my tackle-box and cruised by to check through the van windows.
No ninjas or irate border patrol jumped out at my light so I went ahead and looked through the dirty window. No people lurked inside but there was a dirty blanket atop what looked like a couple of milk crates. Fair enough, there didn’t seem any immediate threats so I crunched through dried weeds to turn on the light with the switch on the aforementioned light post.
I had fished my thermos full of coffee out of the boat and started pouring a cup when a cheerfully whistled “Tijuana Taxi” alerted me to the approach of my supposed guide. What surprised me most was that he came out of the weeds alone and walked straight to the van.
I tried not to be obvious while I looked for his trafficking merchandise. He wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Without giving me more than a quick glance and a smirk he produced keys and unlocked the van to climb behind the steering wheel. “Well, get in Gringo. If we hurry I can get you back to your room to grab a few hours of sleep before checkout.”
I was curious. Maybe he had a partner that took possession of the young girl before he came over to the van. If that were the case though, why involve me or drive a second vehicle like this van himself?
I shrugged and climbed into the passenger seat. “What’s the deal with the boat then? I paid a hefty cash deposit since I didn’t want to use a credit card. I’d rather not buy even a cheap used boat and leave it on the lake for whatever reason.”
He flashed me his sharp grin again. “No worries. We won’t need to do anything for a while. I’ll make a call. One of my associates can turn it back in at the marina. Until then it can wait right where it is. Nobody comes over here anyway.”
The engine sputtered once but then coughed into life with only a few clicks and whistles that you wouldn’t expect to hear from an automobile. The sounds did, however, go with several spots of visible rust on the sides and rear of the van. Even the doors had what looked like Bondo repairs that hadn’t been s
anded or painted either one. If the engine was on a par with the rest I was worried we might not make it back to my room in any reasonable amount of time. I was worried about nothing. He dropped me off half an hour after we got out of the boats.
It was already after midnight. I contemplated a drink or two. Even more than a drink I wanted to call Maureen. It had only been a day since I left her lying in a tangle of silk sheets and lithely golden thigh. The thought of that last glimpse of red hair and carelessly exposed legs had me reaching for the phone. Before I finished dialing though, I reached back across the cheap bedside table and put the handset back on the receiver.
I wasn’t very comfortable about how much I missed this particular girl. I was pretty sure giving in to call her after midnight would not win me any favor points. Or it might. My always sketchy knowledge of women and relationships was not exactly current. In fact, I often tripped myself up between expectations from the seventies and expectations from a thousand years ago.
I felt pretty confident the late call would score on the lower scale of her favor. Nor would it score very high in the autonomous male department. It was too late to call anybody anyway. I told myself that several times while I tried to fall asleep.
2
One of the main perks from my previous one-eyed mostly-niscient employer is the whole healing and recuperating thing. We don’t fall over from the most serious of injuries. If something doesn’t kill us we tend to recover rapidly and we can run the ragged edge of exhaustion and then recover with barely a short night’s rest.
I wasn’t feeling the least bit tired, so after just a couple of hours, I woke as refreshed and revitalized as your average trophy wife after a spa weekend. The revitalization factor has never bothered my appetite though. Sometimes I think our higher vitality requires a higher calorie intake as well. Or maybe we’re just the ravenous out of control barbarian brutes people like to imagine. Whatever the cause, I usually enjoy a healthy breakfast.
That meant I was up, sampling the hotel buffet when Perro walked back in. He spotted me right away and walked straight across the foyer without an apparent care in the world. At least he didn’t look like he was trying to avoid attention.
Perro was apparently of the opinion that hotels were lax about who was and was not a guest entitled to their complimentary perks. He piled a plate with assorted breakfast meats and eggs then topped it off with a gooey hot cinnamon roll of some sort. When he got to my table he slid the plate down across the table from me. Before he sat down he fished out a bundle he’d tucked under his arm while juggling with the prodigious stack of food.
Tossing the package to me he sat down with a grin and dug into the free grub with a fascinating amount of energy and obvious enjoyment. Between mouthfuls, he pointed at the package I had reflexively caught.
“When you’re done eating go put that on. We got a little time but not enough to screw around all morning. Glad you’re up though. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had time to stoke the furnaces like this.” The sentences came out in bite-sized phrases only slightly muffled and distorted by the oversized chunks of sausage and bacon he consumed steadily and rapidly. It was enough to make me wonder how he kept that lean whipcord physique.
Despite my intentions to eat a hearty morning repast, the sight of gobs of mixed and mashed meat as he talked did a number on my appetite. I shrugged and pushed a half-empty plate away. We might as well get on the road and I was more than a little curious about what was in the package.
I headed back to the room while Pedro got up for another run at the free food. What I found in the package was pretty much a standard uniform for lots of first responders. Ambulance drivers or ER techs even trauma nurses often wore the same thing. Black trousers with a kind of combat fatigue look were matched with a black polo-style shirt that had a caduceus and some stylized letters on it. I wondered what the AMTMA stood for. Then again I doubted it was going to matter. I had to assume that the uniform was just for disguise.
Don’t get me wrong, I have more than a little experience as a combat medic. While it’s true that our Valkyrie handlers weren’t especially thrifty with our replenishable lives, they always wanted as much profit as possible before one of us died. We were tough enough to survive wounds that would put other men down. Yet, we were just as vulnerable to massive trauma or slow depletion of our resources as other people. It just took more massive trauma or longer periods of time for us to bleed out or lose our endurance.
That meant somebody or everybody had to learn how to plug up holes and splint broken bones. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone that you had no doubt was sporting a broken bone still clubbing a rifle like some kind of medieval maul. We were supposed to give our bosses the most bang for the buck after all.
Perro shouldn’t know that much about me though. Or if he did then I was going to do some research and have a long and brutal talk with a seemingly immortal wolf. Freke was supposed to make sure he erased anything about my current existence from his memories. Come to think of it he’d never promised not to tell anyone else first.
Wolves aren’t usually quite that damned deceptive though. I mean cunning and stealthy yes. They were great at camouflage and misdirection but usually, you could depend on their odd sense of honor to keep them from telling outright lies or forswearing themselves by breaking an oath. If this one had broken his sworn oath then there was probably a way for me to exact some revenge. The universe seems to have its own code of honor when it comes to things like that.
I came down from the room in my newly acquired uniform and my own comfortably broken in combat boots. Since I was traveling light, my own clothes were in a gym bag. An old army issue duffle slung over my shoulder held some other clothes and gear. The room key I left on a bedside table in plain sight. Housekeeping would turn it in for me. It meant I might lose the cash deposit from checking out properly. On the other hand, nobody would know exactly when and where I was going or what I was wearing now.
The wiry little guide for my odd little tour of south Texas crooked a finger at me from the door and jerked his head to indicate the exit. We came out under an awning that shaded a vanilla looking white van with the AMTMA logo on sides and doors as well as various other markers that OSHA would probably approve of.
I was still looking at the van with a nagging feeling in my gut when Perro took my duffel and hefted it with a grin. “Gear in here too? Maybe something we don’t want to explain to Law Enforcement Officer types?”
His chuckle told me he wasn’t particularly distressed about deceiving an LEO or two. “Probably best if we don’t have those on us just yet. I’ll take care of it. Here take this for now and hand over anything else that might make somebody suspicious.”
The bundle he handed me contained a few clip-on holsters with pepper spray and an EMS multi-tool. I checked the multi-tool and discovered that one of the blades had been replaced with a locking tanto style blade. The new attachment was about five inches long and looked deadly as well as durable. There was also a plain and cheap looking cell phone.
I expected him to put the duffel into another hidden compartment or such. If the boat had been any indication then this fellow knew smuggling better than most. So I was surprised when he waved and summoned a rider on a large thunderously loud motorcycle. The biker stopped for Pedro to strap my duffel behind the seat with handy cords. Before I could protest, the bike rumbled away.
Pedro walked back to the van and gestured for me to get in the passenger side. It wasn’t until I opened the door that I knew where that nagging feeling had come from. Rather than sit down I took a few steps back and looked over the vehicle. The thick layer of dust was gone which made the windows look old but not cracked or falling apart. Likewise, the rusted spots and primer paint was covered with new logos and safety signs.
I ran a hand over the “artwork” on my door and discovered it was a thin and very well made film of some sort that looked like it had been painted on. I was willing to bet that it would peel off and sti
ck back on with very little effort. Our decrepit wreck from the night before was now a worn but serviceable and more importantly recognizable medical transport.
When I got in I started to speak to Perro behind the wheel. Except Perro wasn’t behind the wheel. Instead, I saw a small and very pretty young girl anywhere from seventeen years old to thirty. She had a petite but attractive figure and large dark eyes that were much too innocent for the world I’d assumed she was part of the previous evening. She was also wearing a uniform similar to mine.
“Elena, this is Moose. Moose, Elena.” The voice was familiar but the frail-looking old man in the wheelchair behind us resembled Pedro Perro only in size and weight. He was still lean but that appeared more a lack of muscular development than the whipcord physique he usually displayed.
His was one of three wheelchairs locked to the floor in back. One was empty. The other held a dozing older lady wearing a floral patterned ankle-length dress or robe of some sort. She had the wan olive skin that some of the older Mexicans get from their Spanish ancestry. Her hair was a cascade of silver with just threads of the dark brown mane she had probably once used to lure the young men. Even half-asleep her bearing was erect and proud looking. Her head bobbed but her neck would never bend.
“That’s Senora Dolores Mr. Moose. She’s probably gonna sleep most of the way. Last night was tough on her. She’ll be ok by the time we get to Arizona though.”
Arizona? I thought I was supposed to be headed down south. What the hell was I going to Arizona for? I started to ask. The oily little weasel of a man beat me to it though. “We just gotta drop these two off. Got us a hotel room in Sedona tonight. We cross into Mexico tomorrow. Your guy ain’t there right now anyway. Might as well take care of my two birds with one trip eh?”
