The Carnival of Curiosities (Matt Drake Book 27)

by David Leadbeater

The man looked nervous. “It is a large camp, Marko, and the woods are deep. We can’t watch everyth—”

  He never finished. Lupei pulled a knife from inside his jacket and sank it through the man’s left eye. The violence was instant and shocking. Drake winced as the man fell to the floor.

  “And you?” Lupei asked another man. “What do you have to say?”

  “Oana and Alba were taken thirty minutes ago,” he said carefully. “Whoever took them made a point of tying up two of our guards and leaving a message with them. The message is: I have your daughters. In retaliation for what you did to mine I will give them a fate worse than death. I will see them sold on, as slaves.”

  It was all Drake and Alicia could do to hold Cam back, to keep him from rushing off toward the camp.

  “It is a continuation of the Blood Feuds,” Lupei said. “Hagi the snake has spat his poison. Where did he take them?”

  “We don’t know yet. I sent a car after them, but it has not yet reported in.”

  “Nobody sells my daughters as slaves.”

  “Except you,” Cam hissed in an equally vehement tone. “Who wanted to sell them off for reinforcements.”

  Drake and Alicia kept the young man from rushing headlong at his father. They remained still as Lupei and his sons ran back to camp. When they’d gone, Drake climbed to his feet and turned grim eyes on the others.

  “This is a major problem,” he said. “People sold as slaves typically disappear. Forever. They can’t easily be tracked and are taken thousands of miles from home. We can’t let them be sold into slavery.”

  “Damn right we can’t.” Cam started off walking. “C’mon, we have to fix this.”

  “Hagi’s vengeance is ruthless,” Drake said. “The problem is... it will hurt Oana and Alba a lot more than it will Lupei.”

  “They are innocents,” Cam said. “They never wanted war. Never wanted conflict. Like Hagi, they longed for peace. And now he has ruined the very people that were initially on his side.”

  “Not yet he hasn’t,” Hayden said, running up. “We need a plan.”

  *

  “There will be an all-out, bloody war,” Cam said later, as they drove through the dark night. “My father will use this excuse to move forward with his most extreme plans.”

  Drake was in the passenger seat. Alicia and Dahl were in the back with Cam. Hayden was driving. “We’ll find them,” the Yorkshireman said with more confidence than he felt. “We still have resources we can call on.”

  “Not enough,” Cam said. “Oh God, my sisters...”

  He fell silent, imagining the hell that might be about to befall them. Drake knew his friends were wracking their brains to come up with a viable plan and stayed quiet. A crawling darkness insinuated itself against the car, headlamp beams barely illuminating the road ahead.

  “We have three major issues,” Hayden said. “Oana and Alba are one. The other is this Roma war and the people being trafficked by Lupei.”

  “Three pretty big issues,” Dahl said. “And all are urgent.”

  “Yeah,” Hayden mused. “We need a few fast, capable and resourceful people to go after the sisters.”

  “Me,” Cam said immediately.

  “No,” Hayden said. “That part of the op requires a clear head and dispassion. We need your help with the Roma. Somebody has to stop this madness.”

  Now Cam looked surprised. “Me?”

  Hayden shrugged. “Who else? We’ll toss to see who goes after Oana and Alba.”

  Alicia perked up. “Really? Can we choose who tosses who?”

  “I’ll go,” Dahl said quickly. “Slave traders are my favorite breakfast.”

  “All right.” Alicia looked slightly disappointed but then brightened. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Are you kidding, love—” Drake began.

  “Hey, shut it, Drakey. You and Mai got your little mission together not so long back. Now, Torsty and I get a few days alone.”

  “But you will have to move very fast,” Cam insisted.

  “Don’t worry,” Alicia said. “I’m the fastest there is when I want to be. Ikea Boy won’t be able to keep up. Torsty, start by calling Karin. Oh God, I can’t wait to see Kenzie’s face when she hears the news.”

  Drake tuned her out and watched Dahl make the call. The root of the problem was finding out how Hagi would move the sisters. Where would he take them? Who would he use? As ever, people were creatures of habit. Karin would hopefully find a connection.

  By the time they parked up near their hotel, the entire team was briefed and prepared. Drake nodded at Alicia and Dahl as they jumped into one of the cars to start their operation.

  “Bring them back,” he said.

  “Not a problem,” Dahl said, all confidence.

  Kenzie hadn’t stopped glaring at Alicia since she heard what was happening. Now she leaned into the open window. “Keep your eyes and hands to yourself or you’ll be answering to me.”

  Alicia cheered. “Fuckin’ fantastic. I so love a challenge like that.”

  “We have to go,” Dahl said. “I have Karin on the phone. See you soon.”

  Drake watched them drive off, sad to see them go but confident they’d be back with Oana and Alba and a string of crazy stories. Hopefully not too crazy...

  He turned to Hayden. “What’s the plan?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Alicia called Karin whilst Dahl drove.

  “Hey, Blakey, what time is it over there?”

  “Three a.m.,” came a mumbled voice. “I think.”

  “That’s great! Well it has to be three a.m. somewhere, right? We really need your expertise, Karin, and fast.”

  Alicia laid it all out as Karin moved around her darkened apartment, making coffee. By the time she’d finished, Karin was sounding much brighter.

  “So, this Hagi fella has kidnapped Lupei’s two daughters, who were trying, inadvertently, to help Hagi by unearthing Lupei’s human trafficking activities. Jesus...” She sighed down the line. “These people.”

  “We’re assuming it’s Hagi,” Dahl said. “The other two major clans were getting the sisters anyway through arranged marriages. We need to know the location of Hagi’s HQ and any criminal organizations he might frequently use.”

  “Sure. It may take a while, but I’ll get back to you.”

  Alicia ended the call, sat back and looked at Dahl. “Dude,” she said. “What the hell are you driving us into this time?”

  The Swede pursed his lips. “I don’t know. I just have to do something.”

  Alicia nodded. “We could always find a hotel room.”

  Dahl couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t have to pretend now. Drake and Kenzie aren’t with us.”

  “Who said I was pretending? It’s been a long time since I had Swedish meatballs.”

  Dahl choked a little and changed the subject. “It still worries me—what happened back at Clearwater. If the team’s that vulnerable and conspicuous together, how is it ever gonna move forward?”

  “Targets for life,” Alicia said. “Doesn’t have a good ring to it.”

  “You prefer Bad Boys?” Dahl said, referencing the movie.

  “Damn right I do,” Alicia said sincerely. “So long as they know their place.”

  Some time later, Dahl pulled into an all-night service station and they managed to grab a few hours’ sleep in the car. By the time the dawn was rising, Karin was back on the phone.

  “So, this Hagi character. He’s the latest in a long bloodline that runs that particular clan. All called Hagi. They’re very middle-of-the-road, keeping their activities low key and under the radar. But they do commit small-time crimes. Hagi has his own men, presumably from the family and immediate clan. But he also uses a few... shall we saw law challenged groups? They’re not full-blown criminals but they do err on the wrong side of good.”

  “Are they close by?” Alicia asked.

  “I checked them both. One resides in eastern Romania, the other in the wes
t. But the western based crew call themselves Brigazi after a Mafia group. They are no Mafia, but they are ruthless and immoral. They work out of Pascani, a city in western Moldovia and have been linked to Hagi countless times. I realize it’s not conclusive, but if Hagi was wanting to move the sisters quietly and quickly and with no blowback on him directly, that’s the way to do it.”

  Dahl was already entering Pascani into the satnav. “It’s a couple of hours from here,” he said. “Send us the GPS coordinates for their base. Can you get local CCTV?”

  “Not easily, not out there. But I will try.”

  Alicia settled in as Dahl drove. The Swede was right—their position as a whole was perilous. The new American president clearly had a secret agenda which involved ghosting its best Special Forces teams, but who did that benefit? Their vulnerability was just a side effect. What was really happening in the White House, and who was taking advantage of it?

  It was time to find out.

  When President Coburn was murdered, the new President Lacey already had several unusual plans in place. Implementation happened very quickly. Was someone controlling Lacey? Weakening the United States?

  What was their endgame?

  “We need to find out why Lacey disbanded us and all the others,” she said aloud. “The Strike Force teams. How he did it so quickly. If he’s dirty, he needs to be extracted.”

  Dahl turned and blinked at her. “Jesus, Alicia, I’m game for anything, the riskier the better, but extracting the US President? Are you serious?”

  “What we do next will change the course of our lives and, quite possibly, the world’s history. What we do next has to matter. One life, live it, right?”

  Dahl nodded. “If there’s a big, nasty weed growing in the system you yank that motherfucker right out. I’m with you, Myles.”

  “Good.” Alicia went back to brooding as midday approached and they reached the outskirts of Pascani. Dahl drove them to the general area of the Brigazi’s HQ and parked up whilst Alicia called Karin.

  “Anything?”

  “Still waiting. Like I said, the satellite stuff can be a long process. I can’t pinpoint anything on CCTV so far. Pascani isn’t exactly an NSA hotspot.”

  Alicia gave Dahl a gloomy look. “I guess we’re waiting here for a while.”

  The Swede nodded. They had to be sure of the sisters’ whereabout before they made a move. Anything that tipped the Brigazi gang off risked Oana’s and Alba’s lives.

  “So,” Dahl said speculatively. “What did you have in mind for President Lacey?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Drake stood at their hotel window, looking back into the room. “No more messing about,” he said. “We go now, and we don’t stop until we find the current crop of poor bastards Lupei is trafficking. We must save them and put a stop to his operation.”

  Hayden was nodding. “Yeah, everything has to be simultaneous. Hit Lupei hard, take away his captives and watch his obscene operation crumble. Hopefully, he’ll never recover.”

  “Tool up,” Drake said. “We leave in twenty.”

  Shaw stopped them. “But the carnival’s moving today. To another town.”

  Drake chose to see the positive side of that snippet of information. “Then we follow,” he said. “They’ll be more vulnerable on the move and when they’re re-assembling.”

  The traveling fair wasn’t hard to find. A slow-moving sideshow trundling in the direction of the Black Sea, they started by following it, packed into a seven-seat station wagon and counting the number of trucks.

  Hayden found out the rumbling caravan’s ultimate destination and they peeled off in that direction, certain the trafficking trucks wouldn’t be part of the main group, and hoping to scout the destination first.

  The site of the carnival’s next stop was an enormous parking area that was part of a gym and restaurant complex north of Bucharest. The area was surrounded by a large forest but had several major tributary roads, making it easily accessible and likely to be busy. Drake and the others found a place to park and waited for the carnival to arrive.

  Once it started setting up, they had a base point to work from. Drake and the others spent the rest of the afternoon searching nearby areas of woodland, parks and service areas, but Lupei’s special trucks were nowhere to be found.

  “This is the problem when you’re working without resources,” Hayden complained at one point. “Where do we even start looking?”

  “There’s a way to restart,” Mai said. “Work as a team, with resources, the same way we used to.”

  “Bryant?” Hayden asked. “Glacier?”

  Mai nodded. “The jobs he takes are... wide ranging,” she said. “But it would offer diversity.”

  “Right now, a drone would help,” Kinimaka said. “Or a set of satellites. A chopper. Hell, even a few quad bikes.”

  Drake knew that Hayden was spot on. Intelligence was everything in a situation like this. The trucks could be two miles away or twenty.

  “We have no option,” he said. “It’s Plan B.”

  Kenzie squinted at him. “Since when did we have a Plan B?”

  “We always have a Plan B,” Drake said. “We just don’t use it very often. Plan B is usually kind of... blunt.”

  “Let’s hear it.” Kenzie was leaning against their big car, shivering but preferring that to being cooped up inside.

  Drake glanced at Hayden, still thinking. “We visit the carnival, wait for it to get busy and then snatch someone important. Someone that will know where those bloody trucks are. This madness has to end tonight, before it ends in carnage.”

  “That would be Lupei or his sons,” Hayden said.

  “There are others,” Shaw said. “He has lieutenants. Three men that I saw. I don’t know their names, but I would recognize them.”

  So it was decided. Drake led the SPEAR team into the Carnival of Curiosities, taking Shaw and Cam with them. They were past being cagey. Past being cautious. They were ending this entire thing tonight before the abductees reached the Black Sea and were sold and gone forever.

  *

  Drake handed the rifle off to Kinimaka, cursing his luck.

  “Nice shot,” the big Hawaiian said as he raised the weapon. “But bad luck. You want me to get you the cuddly monkey or the pink octopus?”

  Drake ignored him, turning away from the rifle range. The carnival was filling up as the night bore down, stars already scattered across the cloudless black dome above. Not even a gasp of wind stirred the tents or trees, taking the bitter cold edge away from the night. Hundreds of men, women and children roamed the carnival’s byways, shouting and laughing, queuing and handing their money over for hot chocolate, cotton candy and rides that creaked, groaned and bulged.

  Cam stood beside Drake, head down, face mostly hidden by a cap and a high-necked coat. Shaw was similarly attired. Kenzie, Hayden and Mai were pretending to queue for the coconut shy whilst doing surveillance.

  Drake’s phone buzzed. “I see Mihai,” Mai told him. “Your three o’clock.”

  Mihai was Lupei’s youngest son. “Perfect,” Drake said. “We ready?”

  As one, the team broke away from what they were doing and fanned, closing in on Mihai. The young man looked a little like Cam, with boyish features and dark eyes but his face was drawn and harsh, his bearing speaking of a man under pressure. He was walking at a brisk pace, past the burlesque tent toward the shadows at the rear of the carnival.

  Drake let him walk for another two minutes, keeping pace about twenty yards back. When Mihai left the lights cast across the main body of the carnival and entered the shadows, he sprang into action.

  Together, Drake and Kinimaka ran after Mihai. The others came in from the sides.

  “Hey,” Shaw said, popping out ahead of him.

  Mihai stopped, startled. “You! Have you been hiding here all this—”

  Drake gave him a punch to the kidneys that sent him to one knee. Mihai yelled out until Kinimaka clamped a dish-sized hand
across his mouth and dragged him upright.

  “We know what you are,” Drake grated into the man’s face. “Not leaders. Not royalty. Not even the proud owners of a respected carnival. You’re human traffickers. Cowards feeding off other people’s misery.”

  “The only way you live through this is if you tell us where the captives are.” Shaw produced one of her knives and held it at Mihai’s throat.

  The man’s eyes widened at the sight of the blade.

  “Yeah, you remember what she can do with that, don’t you?” Drake said. “Where are the captives?”

  “I don’t know,” Mihai said. “And if I did, I would not tell you.”

  Drake punched him some more. Shaw extracted narrow lines of blood from his neck but still, Mihai wouldn’t talk. Cam had warned them to expect as much. Mihai was young, but he was a Lupei.

  “Time to get serious,” Drake nodded at Kinimaka, who clamped Mihai’s mouth shut, and took out a short dagger. Without hesitation he plunged the blade into Mihai’s right thigh, staring him in the eyes.

  “Where are the captives?”

  Mihai’s eyes bulged. Drake was about to repeat the process when Mai, on lookout, gave a low whistle.

  The warning was late. As Drake spun around, two large men appeared, both carnival workers. They immediately recognized Mihai and the trouble he was in.

  Without a word they ran at Drake.

  Mai came out of the shadows, striking in from the left and doubling the first attacker. Kenzie flew at the other, kicking his legs out from under him. Both men hit the muddy ground with grunts of pain. Mai leapt atop her opponent, delivered two harsh blows, then choked him into unconsciousness. Kenzie’s adversary was a little savvier.

  The man rolled, anticipating the attack, and swept Kenzie’s legs, knocking her off her feet. Shocked, the Israeli landed on her back. Mud flew out from under her, spraying everywhere. The man drew a small gun, a Ruger EC9, extended his hand, and aimed it at her.

  Hayden kicked the arm, sending the gun high into the air. The man cursed and tried to stand. Hayden clubbed him across the face with a plank of wood she’d found discarded in the undergrowth, rendering him insensible.