by David Archer
“Oh, Geez,” Knapp said. “Listen, about once or twice a year, a few girls go missing out of the prison. They’re always the exceptionally pretty ones, some of them downright beautiful. Local authorities deny it ever happens, and those women just disappear off the face of the earth. You’ve heard about the Thai sex trade? Well, we’re pretty sure that’s what happens to them.”
Noah’s blank, emotionless expression seemed to unnerve Knapp. “Are you telling me that she may have been taken by sex slavers, and it’s all a big coincidence?”
Knapp spread his hands wide, shaking his head. “Look, I know how that sounds, but that’s all it can be. None of our intelligence services have ever been able to break these people, we have no idea when they’re going to strike or where they disappear to. I can start calling everybody in the local intelligence community, but odds on this is going to be a shock to them, too.”
“Then get started,” Noah said. He lifted his own phone and punched a speed dial icon.
“Thank you for calling Brigadoon Investments,” came a recorded voice. “I’m afraid no one is in the office today. If you know your party’s extension, you may enter it at any time to leave a message. To leave a general message, please dial zero.”
Noah punched in 9904, and a new voice answered instantly. “This is Ops.”
“This is Camelot. I have a situation.”
“One moment.” There was a series of beeps on the line, and Allison Peterson’s voice said, “Camelot? What’s going on?”
“Sarah was just removed from the prison,” Noah said. “Immediately after signaling us that she had found the target, she was taken away in a van, possibly by members of the Asian sex trade. I was not able to follow and have no idea where she’s being taken.”
“Good God,” Allison said, “how many times is that girl going to be abducted? What about the target?”
“I have no knowledge about the target.”
There was silence on the line for all of ten seconds. “Camelot, acquiring the target is the mission priority, but with the original plan in ruins, we’re going to have to do it the hard way. Team Cinderella happens to be in Hanoi, that’s only a couple of hours away from you. Their mission is already complete, so I’m going to divert them to Bangkok. They’ll make contact with you in the morning, your time. In the meanwhile, I’ll make certain the target is still in the prison. She is every bit as attractive as Sarah, so if the sex slavers took her and they were together, it’s possible both were taken. If that’s happened your entire mission will change, but if she’s still there, you have to devise a new plan for getting her out. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Noah said. “May I put our people here to work on trying to find out where they might have taken her?”
“Absolutely. And if you do, I’ll authorize any actions necessary to retrieve her, after you complete your mission. Just remember that the mission comes first.”
“Understood.” Noah ended the call and turned to Knapp. “I want you to use every contact you’ve got,” he said, “or do anything else you have to do, but I want to know where she’s gone. You know how to reach me if you learn anything, right?”
“Yep,” Knapp said. “I’ve got your number. Can we drop you guys somewhere?”
Noah glanced around at the body that was strapped to a gurney in the back of the van, connected to beeping machines that were keeping it just barely alive. “Yes,” he said. “The closest possible place to get a taxi.”
“You got it.” The driver put the van in gear and drove sedately along until they came to a brightly lit area full of go-go bars. “You’ll find plenty of them around here,” Knapp said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything.”
The three men climbed out of the van and it drove away quickly. Marco pointed toward a taxi, and they crossed the street to climb into it. The driver started to object when Noah got into the front seat, but the handful of money Noah held out to him changed his complaint into a smile.
“Okay, okay,” the driver said. “Where you wanna go?”
Noah had them driven directly back to the hotel, and the three of them went up to the room. Neither Marco nor Neil had spoken since Sarah’s disappearance, but when they got inside, Noah turned and looked at Neil.
The tall, skinny kid had tearstains on his cheeks. “Noah,” he said, choking, “we gotta find her.”
Noah looked him in the eye. “We will,” he said. “Don’t worry about that. For now, we all need to get some sleep. There’s no telling when we’ll get another chance.”
Marco looked at him but said nothing, and all three of them took off their shoes and lay back on their beds. Noah was asleep within minutes, but the other two lay there for more than an hour before they managed to relax.
Noah was awakened by the ringing of his phone at four AM, and he had it to his ear instantly. “Camelot,” he said.
“It’s me,” Allison said. “I’m afraid the situation just got worse. The State Department has confirmed that both Kayla Maguire and Sharon Ingersoll are listed as missing from the prison and are presumed to have escaped earlier last night.”
“Escaped? According to our people here, these girls usually just disappear and the prison denies knowing anything about it.”
“Yeah, they tried that,” Allison said dryly. “I guess it took a little pressure from State to get them to own up. Of course, they’re never going to admit the truth, but at least we know that both of them are gone and presumably together.”
Noah nodded into the phone. “Do any of our intelligence services have any idea where these girls might be taken?”
“Nothing concrete. It seems that they’re usually taken somewhere for ‘training,’ before they find themselves in one of the brothels. You can translate training to mean breaking, tearing them down so that they’ll do what they’re told. We don’t have any solid Intel on where that might be, but CIA has picked up rumors of training grounds scattered all over that part of the world. I’ll let you know if I get any information on where any of them might be, but if you come across any intelligence on your own, don’t hesitate to act. The target is still top priority, but there’s at least a good possibility you can find them both at the same time.”
“Understood. Team Cinderella?”
“They are in the air as we speak, and will land at Bangkok airport in about an hour. I’ve got a car waiting for them so they can come straight to your hotel, and Jenny came up with a good suggestion. Our people there in Bangkok are going to meet her at the airport and provide her with identification naming her as Lisa Maguire. It may come in handy for her to be able to pose as Kayla’s sister. I told her that she and her team will be under your orders, so use them as you see fit.”
“Very good,” Noah said. “I’ll wait here for their arrival, and then begin looking at options.”
The phone went dead and Noah set it back on the nightstand. Marco and Neil were awake, just looking at him.
“Any news?” Neil asked.
“Sarah and the target are both missing from the prison, so they were probably taken together. It’s possible they’ve been taken to a place where women recruited into the sex trade are broken and trained, but we don’t know where that might be. Allison is beating all the intelligence bushes and will let us know if she gets anything. Team Cinderella will be here in a couple of hours, and we’ll start figuring out what to do.”
Marco grinned. “Cinderella? I worked with her before, she’s something else. Nice as can be, most of the time, but as cold-blooded as I’ve ever seen.” He inclined his head toward Noah. “Sorry, Chief, but I haven’t seen you work yet.”
“No problem. I met Jenny once, during the memorial service after the attack on Neverland. She struck me as professional and capable, and that’s what I need. What about her team?”
“She’s got Jim Marino, Randy Mitchell and Dave Lange. Marino is her computer man, Lange is the driver and Mitchell’s the muscle. The one thing I can tell
you for sure is that they are absolutely loyal to her. If she told one of them to sacrifice himself in order to accomplish the mission, he wouldn’t hesitate.”
Noah just looked at him for a long moment. “I would expect the same from my own team,” he said.
“And you’d get it,” Neil said. “We all knew what we signed on for. It’s always the mission first.” He squared his shoulders and looked Noah in the eye. “Moose lived up to that.”
Noah nodded. “He certainly did.”
Marco looked from one to the other. “Yeah, we all know what the job is. Don’t worry, Noah, if it comes down to it, I know how to take a bullet.”
Neil laughed sarcastically. “Be careful about that,” he said. “I already did, once. It sucks.”
Marco nodded. “I know,” he said. “I was actually in practice runs with Team Oz when we were attacked. They had me set to be the fourth man for an upcoming mission. When all hell broke loose, we rushed to the HQ like everybody else, and I was hit twice. Left leg and right arm.”
Neil’s face softened slightly. “Okay, I guess you do. And as much as I hate not having Moose with us, I’m glad you made it. You’re not as bad as I thought you were.”
FOURTEEN
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked, but no one answered her. As far as she could tell, none of the other girls in the van spoke English, and the three men in the front couldn’t hear them.
Sharon was sitting close to her, their shoulders touching. “This isn’t good, is it?” she asked softly.
“Not even a little bit,” Sarah said, but then she gave the other girl a wry grin. “But I can tell you this: if anyone can find us, it’s my team. Don’t give up hope.”
“Do you really think there’s a chance?”
Sarah shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, of course,” she said. “The only thing I know for certain is that Noah will never give up. If he got my signal, he’s looking for us already.”
Sharon turned to face her. Their eyes had adjusted to the minute amount of light in the van, and they could see each other dimly. “Noah?”
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “I’m with an agency you probably never heard of, and Noah is my team leader.”
“I figured you were CIA,” Sharon said. “Was I wrong?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so. I know you got a pretty high security clearance, but I probably can’t tell you much more than I already have. Let’s just say that we’re the ones the CIA calls on when they need a mess cleaned up.”
“Then how did you get stuck trying to rescue me?”
Sarah hesitated for a moment. “It’s because of the work you do. Apparently, your bosses feel like they can’t get by without you. They went to the State Department, who went to the CIA, who went to the president…”
“Who went to you. Right?”
“Well, to our boss, anyway. We’re just one of several teams that work for our boss.”
Sharon leaned her head against the wall of the van. “So, somebody decided I was a mess that needed to be cleaned up, right?”
“Not exactly. I’d say it was more a case of you being too valuable for them to risk losing. You wouldn’t believe the lengths they went to to get you out.”
“You said something about a signal? How did you signal anyone?”
“Little gizmo under the skin over my ribs. If everything had gone according to plan, I would have used it when they locked our door to get ready for the shift change. We ran a number of practice runs in a mockup of the prison that was pretty accurate, and if everything had worked properly we’d be out by now.” She glanced toward the men. “When these guys mucked it up, I figured the only thing I could do was try to give Noah a heads up. I sent the signal to tell him I found you, and I’m hoping he was able to track me. I have a little tracker in my arm, but it’s got a short range. He might not be able to see where I’m going, now that we left the prison.”
Sharon looked at the man who was facing toward them, holding a gun in his hand. “You really think he’ll be able to find us?”
“Well, hopefully the intelligence people will have some idea where they might be taking us. He’ll find out, and I guarantee you he’ll come looking for us.” She grinned again. “I’m actually a little jealous,” she said. “While he’ll do everything he can to get me out, you are his mission priority. And with Noah, the mission always comes first.”
Sharon’s eyebrows rose. “I get the feeling he’s more than just your boss?”
Sarah nodded slowly. “He asked me to marry him,” she said, “just before we began this mission. We’re going to talk about it more after we get you out, that has to come first. Believe me, we all get it drilled into us: the mission comes first. The mission always comes first.”
“It’s kinda that way where I work,” Sharon said. “It’s all about results. Some of the people I work with have made some incredible discoveries, but if they don’t fit in with whatever we’re supposed to be working on, the brass just doesn’t want to hear about it. Oh, they take our data and pass it off to someone else, but we don’t get to continue with it. We have to get back to working on whatever assignment they gave us.”
Some of the other women were sliding down and trying to make themselves comfortable. “Look at them,” Sarah said. “Noah is always telling me that I should rest whenever I get the chance. He says you never know when you might have to go long periods without the opportunity, so don’t pass one up when you get it. Maybe now is a good time to take his advice. We should at least try to lay back and rest, so we can be ready whenever he makes his move.”
Sharon let out a sigh. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. She slid down onto the floor of the van and rested her head on her arm. “Wake me up if anything happens, okay?”
Sarah slid down beside her and assumed a similar position facing her. “That’s a promise.”
Sharon’s breathing slowed only a few minutes later as she drifted off to sleep, and Sarah watched her in surprise for several moments. It was hard to believe that anyone could lie down and go to sleep under the circumstances, but she was even more surprised when she herself awoke sometime later.
Light was just beginning to creep into the van from outside, as the sun started to peek over the horizon. It was still dark, but not as dark as it had been. At a guess, she figured it must be somewhere between five and six in the morning. The van was cruising along at a fairly slow pace, and it sounded like gravel under the tires. Even if she could have seen outside, though, she knew she would never have known where she was at. Thailand was an entirely new experience to her.
It had been nearly midnight when she had been taken, she knew, so they had been on the road for at least five-and-a-half hours. As far as she knew, they could be in Thailand or one of several other countries. The way the van was moving, though, she suspected they were getting somewhere close to their destination.
Her theory was borne out a few minutes later when the van came to a stop. The other women who were still sleeping woke up, including Sharon, and the men in the front seats climbed out. A moment later the back doors were opened and all of them were ordered out of the van.
Sarah realized that they were standing at a small dock, and there was a medium-sized boat tied up to it. Across the water, in the distance, she could see what looked like rocks and trees, and wondered if they were taking a shortcut across a lake until she recognized the smell of salt water. It didn’t seem like the ocean, but whatever body of water this was must open onto it.
They were pushed toward the boat, and Sarah simply followed the example of the others when they offered no resistance. Trying to fight or run would probably only get her killed, she knew, and she was even more concerned that Sharon would try to help and meet the same fate. As long as they were both alive, there was still at least some chance that Noah would track them down and get them out of whatever nightmare they had fallen into.
She remembered what Jacqueline had said. Could it truly be that, after all she had been through,
she was now being forced into sexual slavery? The thought sent chills down her spine, even though it was not nearly as deadly as things she had already faced. Still, she suspected there could be worse fates.
As long as I’m alive, she thought, there’s hope. I know Noah, and he’ll never stop looking for me. All I’ve got to do is survive until he either finds me, or I get the chance to escape and call for help.
The women were forced to sit down in the bottom of the boat, which was open. Two of the men sat on the gunwales and watched them while the third took the helm at the back of the vessel. The big outboard motor rumbled to life, the lines were cast off, and a moment later the boat began moving away from the dock.
Sitting in the bottom of the boat, Sarah couldn’t really see out. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she began to notice trees appearing over the bow, and realized they were approaching a shoreline, maybe even the coast of an island.
The thought of an island scared her even more than she already was. If they weren’t even on the same continent, how would Noah ever find them?
“Is that some kind of island?” Sharon asked, echoing her own thoughts.
Sarah nodded. “Yeah, I think it is.”
Sharon shuddered. “Out of the frying pan,” she said, “and into the fire. What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”
Sarah looked closely at her. “You heard what Jacqueline said, and she was probably right. We just have to do whatever it takes to survive. Understand? Can you do that?”
Sharon looked down at her feet for a long moment, then turned her eyes up to Sarah. “It’s just—I’m not a prude or—it’s not like I’m a virgin or anything, but I’ve never been a whore. I don’t know if I can…”
“You can do whatever you have to do to survive this,” Sarah hissed at her. “I told you, Noah will find us, and we’re both too important to throw our lives away. I can guarantee you, he’s already realized we’re gone, so that means he’s already talked to our boss. They’ll give him any kind of help he wants in order to complete the mission, and completing the mission means bringing you home safe.” She forced herself to smile. “Lucky for me, I’m here with you. That means he’s got a chance to bring me home safe, as well.”
