More Than an Echo (Echo Branson Series)

by Silva, Linda Kay

  “Oh my God. You don’t mean—”

  Danica took the paper from me and read it in silence.

  “Body parts,” I said quietly, shuddering.

  All three nodded. “Organ harvesting is big business nowadays. You can make a killing, pardon the pun, on fulfilling people’s desire to extend their lives if you can give them the organ they need.”

  I held up my hand for them to stop. I was a little sick to my stomach. “Wait, please.”

  Danica lowered the paper. “Shit. It makes total sense when you think of the clues. Smiley has been trying to tell us that someone has snatched the homeless from our streets in order to harvest their organs. Think about it! Who would miss them? No one. You said so yourself.”

  Shaking off my revulsion, I nodded. “That explains why none of the missing are drug addicts. Drug-riddled organs would be of no use. They would need cleaner organs to sell.”

  “Right. Drug use would make many of their organs unusable. Alcohol, not so much, unless they were needing a liver. Even then, I’ll bet some of these guys don’t overdo it.”

  “So our missing men are still alive.” I said this barely above a whisper.

  “If our theory pans out, then yeah, we think so.”

  Throwing my arms around Carl I hugged him tightly. “Thank you. You guys are so good.”

  “If your savant was trying to tell you that the men are on a ship and they are being held in a refrigerator room, the obvious question we were left with was how did he know that?”

  Danica and I looked at each other. “He escaped,” we said in unison.

  Franklin shook is head. “Or he knows the Judas.”

  My heart sank at the thought that Dante or his people could have anything to do with this. “I’m going with he knew the Judas. Someone on the streets is leading the kidnappers to men who do not have drug habits. Whoever it is, knows Smiley.”

  “Unless Smiley is the Judas.” This came from Danica and we all turned to stare at her. “What? Think about it. The kid could be protecting his people by turning in others and not them. If he is a savant, then he is child-like. Who better to get to point the finger at the nondruggies than a scared kid protecting his family?”

  That made sense. “And Smiley travels in both cities.”

  Everyone was nodding now.

  “Then he wasn’t kidnapped?”

  Roger shook his head as he pulled out a map of the Bay Area. “Where were your guys taken from? Let’s see if we can deduce some sort of pattern.” He pinned the map to the corkboard and I started marking red X’s where the kidnapped guys hung out the most. When I was done, I stepped back and saw the picture more clearly. “Damn it.”

  Danica stood next to me and nodded. “BART.”

  I stared at the map with new eyes. “They’re all near BART stations because that’s how Smiley gets around.”

  We all stood silently as this sunk in. Smiley was not only acting as Judas, but he wanted to save the very people he was ratting out. I had to hand it to him, it was brilliant. Luckily for him, I had brilliant on my side, too.

  “So, Smiley is alive. He comes and goes with these guys in the van, not on his bike, which we know is locked up.” I stared at the map some more. “He points out the guys he knows who are healthier than the others. They get nabbed and taken to a boat where they are put on ice until it is time to take an organ or two. Does anyone have anything to add?”

  “Only that to a savant, or a child, the dumping of a body overboard would give the appearance of a heliotrope as it hit the water.”

  I nodded. Perfect clues.

  “Now all we have to do is figure out which boat out in the bay has your guys.” Roger shed his traditional smoking jacket and ran his hands through his hair.

  “If we’re talking about organ harvesting, my guys may already be dead,” I said softly.

  “Maybe not.” This came from Franklin, who was reading something on Google. “The reference to the ninth circle is about being frozen. They wouldn’t freeze our guys because that would do damage to the organs. Organ harvesting has to come from a live, healthy human being.”

  Roger was by his side now, reading. “You’re right.”

  “They won’t freeze them, but they will keep them on ice, as it were, at least until they harvest the organs. Maybe to detox them. These guys are all drinkers, right?”

  I nodded, feeling hope fill my chest.

  “He didn’t mean literally frozen then. They may be in a cooler or a locker where it’s cold, but not frozen.”

  “So we’re looking for a fishing boat or other ship with something Colombian on it.” I rubbed my hands together. “Excellent.” Looking over at Danica, I wondered why she was still staring at the map. “What are you thinking, Dani?”

  Slowly turning, she frowned. “I know why they have them in a boat.”

  “Why?”

  “Body disposal. They can harvest the organs and then just dump the bodies over the side. That’s the heliotrope. They turn blood red when dropped into the water; so do the bodies. I hate to say it, but that’s what Smiley’s seen: the dead bodies going overboard. We may be too late.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Not unless…” Roger ran to his computer and started pulling up more information. “The liver and kidneys are the most sought after organs. I think Franklin is right. They might wait a few days or more for those organs to clean themselves out before removing them from the bodies. After all, there’s no hurry. No one is going after them, right?”

  “It is more likely they are dead,” Carl said. “If I’m going to kidnap a bunch of people in order to yank their organs, I’m not going to keep them around so they can plot and plan. I’m taking whatever they have that’s viable and then dumping the evidence as fast as I can.”

  Franklin stepped away. “You’re creeping me out, man.”

  “Just realistic.” To me he said, “We’ve taken this as far as we can, Princess. One way or the other, your guys are or were on a boat flying a Colombian flag or bearing some Colombian markings near a bridge. It’s up to you, now.”

  Up to me? “How confident are you about this?”

  Carl looked at the others. “Pretty confident. Think of all the homeless people living up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego. They’re ripe for the picking because nobody cares.”

  “Human cargo,” Franklin said. “Human cargo would be best transported by boat because the Coast Guard is about as ineffective an organization as ever existed. How hard would it be to hide organs in a fishing boat or drop bodies over the side?”

  Franklin pointed to a map of the United States on another monitor. “Well over twelve thousand miles of coastline, the Coast Guard can’t defend much, if any, of it.”

  “Boats come in, boats go out and no one is the wiser. Only two percent of the incoming boats are ever boarded and investigated. What percent of outgoing vessels do you think are ever inspected?”

  “Less than that?”

  “Bingo. Princess, there’s a humungous Black Market for viable organs.” Carl undid and redid his ponytail. “The cartel is nothing if not progressive. Why sit around waiting for a hundred thousand dollars worth of cocaine to be sold when you can make that much on just one organ transplant?”

  I finally had to sit down before I fell down. “I knew it was big business, but a hundred grand?”

  Carl nodded. “At the bare minimum. It’s not big business but dangerous company, Princess. When the word Colombia came up, the Boss wouldn’t let us do anything else.” He shot a look over to Danica. “She knows this warped from story to danger in the blink of the proverbial eye…which are also harvested, by the way.”

  I glanced over to Danica, who was staring at me with an eyebrow raised. I knew what was coming next.

  “Dangerous folks come from there, Clark. Dangerous and violent criminals who destroy everyone and everything who gets in their way.”

  Carl nodded. “There’s no beating these guys. They’re
like what the Mafia used to be—ruthless, efficient, unstoppable. The FBI, CIA and Interpol are helpless against them. And as the American need changes, so does the cartel’s ability to fill that need. Organs are one such need.”

  “Right. Plenty of rich Americans are unwilling to wait for the donor list to cough up an organ. There’s always been a way around that, and here it is, in our backyard.”

  I looked over at Franklin’s computer. There was a graph showing how many Americans needed a transplant and how many organs would be available. The odds were not good. Only thirteen percent of those on the list received organs. Eighty-seven percent of our population would die before they received the transplant. Who wouldn’t scrape up a hundred thousand dollars to save the life of their child? Of their spouse? I realized we were on to something really huge.

  Dangerously huge.

  “So they put them on ice, clean them up a bit, and then basically dissect them.”

  Carl pulled a couple of sheets out from a file and handed them to me. “It happened off the coast of India a dozen years ago. They didn’t find them, but they did find the boat. What they discovered on that boat was something out of a horror flick.”

  I took the printout and scanned it. They were, as usual, impeccable in their homework.

  “We think what happened in India is happening here.”

  Danica stepped next to me. “Listen to this, Clark: In 2003, an illegal kidney-procurement network was uncovered in South Africa. The donors were recruited mostly from the slums of Brazil flown to South Africa where the operation was performed, compensated between $6,000 to $10,000 and returned home. The South African middlemen were then able to sell the organs for as much as $100,000. It’s big business, Clark. Big, dangerous business.”

  As if she’d read my mind.

  I read the rest of the piece, my palms sweaty. This was happening everywhere on a voluntary basis. The Chinese government actually sanctioned the harvesting of organs from its prison population, and in one year, performed over forty-one thousand operations. “My God—”

  “In South America, they actually use the street urchins because their organs are young and viable. They sell mostly to an expanding Asian market, namely the Japanese, who as you may know, have a burgeoning class of millionaires.”

  “Your boy Smiley is on the inside of a story that will blow your career open if you live to tell about it.”

  “She’s not going to tell about it,” Danica said matter-of-factly. “Leave this one to the cops, Clark. Tell the story after the fact, but leave the rest alone.”

  I looked up at her but said nothing.

  Roger kept talking. “Besides their housing boat, they may have one or more smaller boats as well because they won’t want to dump the dead bodies near the ship. They’ll have to dump them further offshore.”

  “They’ll also need a smaller boat to get the guys from the dock to the mother ship,” Franklin said, his fingers skimming across the keyboard.

  “In other words, Clark, step away from the God—Damned— Story.” Danica’s voice was steel. I had only heard her use that tone twice before in our lives.

  I looked from one serious face to another and, one by one, they each nodded. “Even if you are able to convince that task force of what is happening, politics would take over before justice. Even the United States government can’t control the cartels. Why do you think eighty percent of the world’s cocaine comes out of Colombia and yet, the United States has never imposed a Cuban-like sanction against them?”

  Danica walked over to me and took my hand. “Nothing good can come of this. Tell Finn. Tell the task force, then let it go.”

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  Danica held her hand up. “And lest you doubt the four of us really, really smart people are right, then ask Melika. Hell, ask Tip. This is not your fight, and it’s not a fight you can win.”

  Then whose fight was it?

  I heaved a huge sigh. I hated when she used Melika to back herself up. “I understand what you’re all saying but—”

  “But nothing, Clark. Goddamn it, you are way out of your league on this one. I’m sorry, but you really are.” Releasing my hand, Danica took a folder off the desk and handed it to me. “Read this.”

  The boys were all nodding. “The Boss is right. Walk away. It’s probably too late anyway. More than likely, your friend is a goner.”

  “But what if he isn’t? What if there’s a boat out there with our guys in it? What if everything you’re saying is true and I do nothing? How do I live with myself knowing I sat cowering in the corner doing nothing?”

  “The way the rest of us live with ourselves. You have to ask yourself why you are the only one willing to risk your neck on this.”

  I looked into Danica’s eyes. I didn’t have to be empathic to read her fear. Whatever they had discovered in their digging had scared the hell out of every one of them.

  “Forget what they taught us at Mills and take care of yourself.” Danica opened the folder and rifled through the pages. “There’s a reason the cartels are still around, still powerful, still in our midst, and it’s a big reason. They. Are. Killers.”

  I took the folder from her. “I tell you what; let me ask Melika about it. If she says—”

  “Why not ask Tip?” Danica asked.

  I shook my head. “ No way. If she so much as thought I was going to be in danger, she would be here like that.” I snapped my fingers. “Even if I didn’t need her help, which I don’t.”

  “Some day, you’ll realize what Tip is all about, but for now, you need to proceed with caution. These are not the kind of people you want to piss off. You might win this battle, but these people are warlords, Clark. Warlords who seldom lose.”

  I nodded. “We’ll see. I’ll have to think about it.” Gathering up the file, I looked over at the guys who were eyeing the pizza. “You guys are the best. You know that, don’t you?”

  “We’re only the best if we can keep you alive.”

  “I’m going to be fine. I swear. I’ll read everything in the file. I’ll arm myself with knowledge, but I’m not walking away from this.” I started out the door with Danica hot on my heels.

  “Clark. I know how you get, and I am begging you to let this one go.”

  “Dani, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but if there’s a boat under a bridge, I don’t know how I can turn away, cartel or no cartel.”

  She nodded slowly. “I have something for you in case you simply can’t stop yourself.”

  I followed her back to her office. She opened her desk and pulled out the revolver she had threatened to buy for me. Then, she pulled out something I initially thought was a phone.

  “This is your direct link to the boys’ computers. It’s a prototype for a machine Roger has been working on. It’s also a video camera for conferencing. Has a camera, webcam capability, and uploads via satellite, not wi-fi or cable. That means it doesn’t matter where you go, you are always online. We all have one. You can video conference with one at a time or all of us while also emailing or surfing the Internet. This way, if you need instant information, we can access it for you right away. It’s just a prototype, mind you. Presently, we’re having some problems with the embedded camera, but we’re working on that.”

  I opened the tiny computer and was amazed at the clarity of the screen. Suddenly, Carl’s face was on the monitor. “Yo Princess. Pretty cool, eh?”

  I almost dropped it. He scared the crap out of me.

  Danica nodded. “The moment you open it, all of our computers beep. The fact that it’s linked to a satellite means no dead spots, no dropped calls, and has a better frequency and longer range. Opening the monitor signals the rest of us on the same vidmeet protocol. Let’s just say it’s our way of keeping tabs on you.”

  I marveled at it. “Kind of like some cyber babysitter.”

  “Not what it was intended for, Princess, but if it will keep you safe…safer…then so be it. Take the vidbook with you and k
eep in touch. Regardless of how you do this, it will keep you connected to the brains of this operation…and that would be us.”

  I nodded. “Fine then. Are you sure you guys don’t just want to put a bug up my butt?”

  Carl grinned. “Don’t have to. There’s a GPS system built right in.”

  “Of course there is.”

  Standing up I wrapped my arms around Danica and hugged her tightly. “Believe in me, Dani. I can do this. It’s not like I’m going out there to haul them in myself.”

  “Right. You’re an empath, Clark, not some superhero. Remember that, will you?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Funny thing was, I wasn’t sure there was a difference.

  “Hi, Mel. It’s me.” Shifting ears with the phone, I felt my shoulders relax as they always did when I talked to her.

  “I was hoping you’d call. We’ve made all of the arrangements to get Cindy out of there, and they are willing to release her into your custody tomorrow morning.”

  “Into my cu—”

  “Just until we can get her out here. George can’t come, so I bought you and the girl an open ticket. I know this is a bit of an inconvenience for you right now, but it’s the best I can do at such short notice.”

  “I can handle it, really.”

  “I know you can. They’ll meet you at the hospital tomorrow morning at eight.”

  “Eight. Got it.”

  “As for the piece you are struggling with, all I can tell you, all that you’re willing to hear is that you need to do what you have always done; and that’s to follow your heart. It’s how you’ve always managed your life even when you were a young girl. I have no doubt you will do the right thing for your life…whatever that may be.”

  “And if I’m in danger?”

  There was a slight pause. “Echo, my dear, the world we live in is fraught with danger. Just because we have extraordinary abilities does not mean we are safe from these dangers. We each must look into our own heart to determine whether or not we are willing to take these dangers on.”

  “Like the time you threw chicken to that alligator?”