by D. V. Berkom
Polaris Project
Truckers Against Trafficking
Federal Bureau of Investigation: Innocence Lost
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC)
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Many thanks to the Polaris Project, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the FBI Innocence Lost National Initiative, and several other non-profits and law enforcement agencies too numerous to mention who are working tirelessly to end child trafficking.
I would also like to thank the following people for their feedback and suggestions while writing Bad Traffick: Mark Lindstrom, Jenni Conner, Ali Mosa, Darlene Panzera, Wanda DeGolier, Bev Van Berkom, Larry Van Berkom, Michelle Yelland, Kim McNamara, Jen Blood, Mary Buckham, and Ruth Ross-Saucier.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DV Berkom is a slave to the voices in her head. As the author of two bestselling thriller series (Leine Basso and Kate Jones), her love of creating resilient, kick-*ss female characters stems from a lifelong addiction to reading spy novels, mysteries, and thrillers, and longing to find the female equivalent within those pages.
Raised in the Midwest, she received her BA in political science from the University of Minnesota and promptly moved to Mexico to live on a sailboat. Many, many cross-country moves later, she now lives just outside of Seattle, Washington with the love of her life, Mark, a chef-turned-contractor, and several imaginary characters who love to tell her what to do.
To find out more, visit her website at dvberkom.com
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
Thank you for reading BAD TRAFFICK. If you would like to find out more about Leine and Santiago or my other work, please see the links below.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DvBerkomAuthor
Twitter: @dvberkom
Website: http://www.dvberkom.com
Blog: http://www.dvberkom.wordpress.com
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/dvberkom/
Amazon Author Page:
US: http://amzn.to/oMUb1Z
UK: http://amzn.to/pBwClD
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Other books by DV Berkom:
Leine Basso Thriller Series:
Serial Date (Leine Basso #1): http://bit.ly/serialdate
When a former assassin's daughter is abducted, she's drawn into the twisted game of a serial killer who may be a grisly remnant from her past.
The Body Market (Leine Basso #3) (*See excerpt below) http://bit.ly/bodymkt
Everything’s for sale…
Former assassin Leine Basso is called in when a celebration south of the border turns into a nightmare.
Cargo (Leine Basso #4) http://bit.ly/cargoAMZ
Haunted by memories, Leine Basso searches Bangkok for the missing daughter of an old friend, uncovering a treacherous criminal underworld where everything has a price—especially her life.
Kate Jones Thriller Series:
Kate Jones Thriller Series Vol. 1: http://bit.ly/boxset1
The first 4 novellas in the bestselling Kate Jones Thriller Series: Bad Spirits, Dead of Winter, Death Rites, and Touring for Death.
Cruising for Death (Kate Jones #5): http://bit.ly/cruisingfordeath
Paradise lost…
Kate and Cole are on a luxury cruise in the Caribbean when a passenger dies of an apparent heart attack and the ship is boarded by modern-day pirates. Along with two other passengers, Kate is kidnapped by a long-lost enemy who wants to settle an old score.
Yucatán Dead (Kate Jones #6): http://bit.ly/yucatandead
She was a dangerous man’s lover…now she’s his dangerous enemy
Hunted by a ruthless cartel boss, Kate Jones finds herself deep in the Yucatán determined to turn and fight the evil that pursues her.
A One Way Ticket to Dead, (Kate Jones #7): http://bit.ly/tickettodead
Digging up the past can be deadly…
After years of running from her ex and his subsequent death, Kate Jones is ready to bury the past and try to piece together a new normal. But first there’s a loose end to tie and it involves digging up old ghosts that are best left alone.
Kate Jones Thriller Series, Volume 2 (Cruising for Death, Yucatán Dead, A One Way Ticket to Dead): http://bit.ly/KJboxset2
EXCERPT from THE BODY MARKET (Leine Basso Thriller #3)
CHAPTER 1
LEINE BASSO CROUCHED in the shadows next to the hulking metal shipping container. The odor of oil mixed with hydraulic fluid and diesel clashed with the briny sea air. Bright spotlights pierced the darkness casting a harsh yellow hue over the container yard. Leine checked her watch: eleven o’clock. Only three hours before the China Blue Star was scheduled to leave port for Hong Kong.
Three hours to find one shipping container in a massive sea of identical containers.
Lou paid off the security guard, which gave Leine only a short window to find the container before he released the dogs. She adjusted the fit of the pack, tightening the straps so it molded to her body. She’d pared down the equipment as much as she could, but it was never enough.
C’mon, Lou. Give me some good news.
She closed her eyes and imagined the young face in the photograph. A lead from the trafficker’s hard drive had led her to a seaport currently run by cartel thugs on the west coast of Mexico. She hoped she wasn’t too late.
Three hours.
“Leine.” Lou’s voice came over the wireless earpiece.
“I’m here,” she replied.
“Left, three aisles, number fourteen-thirty-four-twelve.”
“Got it.” Gun drawn and keeping to the shadows, Leine moved along first one aisle, then another, searching for shipping container 143412.
There it is.
Stacked three high, the 40 foot-long steel boxes loomed above her. The one she was looking for was stacked 40 feet in the air on top of two other boxes. She moved to the end of the bottom container and reached for a handhold. Before she could grab the next one, someone seized her pack and yanked her off, slamming her back-first into the pavement. Her nine millimeter skittered across the asphalt, disappearing in the darkness between two containers. The impact took her breath away, the pain from a recent rib injury spiking through her like a spear.
Leine rolled, narrowly missing a kick to the face. She grabbed her attacker’s foot and gave it a vicious twist. The assailant corkscrewed and landed on his side with a grunt.
Ignoring the deep ache in her side and with adrenaline fueling her, she sprang to her feet and kicked the gun from his hand. The weapon pinged off the side of the container and bounced into the shadows, out of sight. Before she could get clear, he scissored his legs and caught her at the knees. She sprawled forward.
This time she couldn’t ignore the pain.
Winded, she slid a knife free from the sheath attached to her leg. She pushed off the ground, rolling to a crouch as her opponent climbed to his feet, a knife in his hand. He lunged forward. Leine parried with a thrust to his throat. At the last second, he ducked.
They circled each other like roosters in a cockfight, both acutely aware of the weapon in their opponent’s grip. Leine feinted left and rushed forward, scoring a direct hit on the man’s shoulder, slicing through the black fabric of his shirt and drawing blood. He pivoted and came at her from the side but she rotated her torso, narrowly missing a slash to her kidney. She turned to face him as he came at her again. At the last second she stepped wide, allowing him to slip past her. Using his own momentum, she shoved him forward. He stumbled a few steps, recovered, and spun to face her.
Leine swept her arm forward in an arc and released the knife. The blade buried itself in his eye socket, a scream dying in his throat as his hand flew reflexively to his face. He collapsed to the ground as he exhaled his last breath.
�
��Leine. What’s going on? Are you okay?” Usually unflappable, the sharpness in Lou’s voice betrayed his concern, even over the radio.
“I’m fine.” Her hand supporting her now-throbbing rib, she leaned over the body with a grimace and extracted the knife, wiping the blade on the dead man’s shirt. The tattoos on his forearm suggested cartel affiliation. Leine doubted he was working alone. “Just some unexpected company.”
“Did you find the container?”
Leine scanned the metal boxes above her.
“Got it.”
“I don’t have to tell you to be careful, right?”
“No, but it’s nice to know you care.”
Leine grabbed the man’s legs and gritted her teeth as she dragged the body into the dark gap between containers. She removed his transmitter, turned off the voice activation, and slid on the earpiece. She didn’t want the next gunman to come along and sound the alarm before she had a chance to subdue him. After she retrieved the weapons she checked to see that the body couldn’t be observed from the aisle. Satisfied, she walked back to container 143412.
With a quick glance to be sure the fight hadn’t attracted company, she latched onto a vertical handle at the end of the first container, wedged her toe onto a hinge, and began to climb.
As she was preparing to hoist herself up and over the top of the container, she heard movement below her and froze.
“Where are you?” the voice muttered in Spanish, clear enough for Leine to hear through the transmitter.
She craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the man below her. Compact in bearing and dressed in black like the man she’d just killed, instead of a knife he carried a modified submachine gun.
“Answer me,” he snapped into his earpiece. When he received no reply, the man stepped over the smear of blood left by his compatriot. It looked like he might continue on when he abruptly stopped. Leine held her breath. If he glanced down, he’d notice the blood. With her left foot wedged onto the barest of toeholds and gripping the top of the container with her left hand, Leine slid her gun out of its holster, ready to fire—something she was loath to do since the sound would bring others.
The man pivoted 180 degrees, scanning the area, his gun in front of him. Leine ignored the muscles screaming in her left hand as the metal cut into her flesh.
He stood still for another moment, observing his surroundings. After a few seconds, he touched his earpiece.
“He’s not here.” The person at the other end acknowledged the transmission. “I’ll keep looking,” the gunman said as he moved out of Leine’s line of sight.
She released her breath in a quiet sigh and slid the gun back into her shoulder holster. With her right hand now free, she grabbed onto the top of the container, relieving her left hand. She waited a couple of beats to make sure the gunman was clear and then pulled herself up and over.
The higher vantage point worked well to monitor the yard. When the other gunman had traveled far enough that he wouldn’t hear her, Leine shrugged out of her pack and set it aside. She stretched flat onto her belly and put her ear to the container. There was no discernible movement inside.
That didn’t mean much.
“I’m on the roof,” she said in a low voice.
“Hear anything?” Lou asked.
“No.”
Leine unzipped the main compartment of the bag and pulled out a battery pack and a mini plasma cutter and placed them on the roof beside her. Next, she reached into another compartment for a fiber optic night vision camera and a collapsible light hood.
She deployed the hood and marked the area to be cut, then flipped the plasma cutter’s switch to on and adjusted the amps. Angling the tip as she cut, the small hole took only a few minutes. Turning off the cutter, she stowed it back inside the pack along with the hood.
Alert for movement on the ground below her, she activated the camera and fed the probe through the hole, watching the video feed on the small LCD monitor as she did. At first, all she could make out were the metal ribs of the container. She fed the line further into the dark interior and a moment later the camera swept past an object. Leine pulled up on the scope to get a better look. The object moved. Two tiny light circles appeared and blinked off and on.
As she angled the camera for a better view, she realized she was looking at a dark-haired girl huddled in the corner, her eyes glowing dots in the camera’s lens. Leine pulled back for a wider shot. Dozens of bodies came into focus, placed side by side on the floor of the container with no room between them. Most were lying prone—except for the young girl.
“I’ve got something,” Leine said into the mic.
Lou let out a sigh as though he’d been holding his breath.
Another girl, this one with light-colored hair, sat up and looked first at the girl in the corner and then at the camera.
Leine’s heart beat faster. From what she could tell, she matched the picture.
Amy.
“Is she there?” Lou’s clipped tone gave away his anxiety.
“Yeah. I think so. And she’s not alone.”
Leine relaxed her shoulders, relief flooding through her.
“Let’s get them out of here, Lou.”
CHAPTER 2
ELISE WAVED A fistful of pesos at the bartender in an attempt to flag him down. She stood her ground as the press of spring-breakers surged against her, pushing her into the crowded, mile-long chrome bar. The oppressive heat from the packed club combined with the pulsating music from the nearby speakers reminded Elise of an old movie from the seventies she’d seen a few nights before, and not in a good way. The bartender raced past, his dark eyes barely registering her.
Earlier, when Josh had been with her, the bartender had gushed over them both. That was over two hours ago. The bar wasn’t as busy then. With an impatient sigh, she lowered her arm. Elise was not used to being ignored when money was involved. In her world, currency was king. Both her parents ran with an elite crowd even for Angelenos—the A-Listers of the financial world. Her father was the head of a thriving biotech company about to go public, and her mother worked as a financial consultant, dealing primarily in hedge fund management. Both ultra-busy professionals, neither had time to spend with their seventeen-year-old daughter. Elise preferred it that way. If she needed an adult, which was rare, she went to the housekeeper, Teuta, a grandmotherly woman from some Eastern European country Elise had never heard of.
“I’ll only be gone five minutes,” Josh, her date for the evening had said, and disappeared with some guy he’d just met at the bar. That had been two hours ago. Elise was now officially bored.
And pissed.
Giving up on getting a drink within the next millennium, she shoved the money back in her Louis Vuitton clutch and squeezed past the crush of wasted partiers. Teuta would be horrified to know her little Eliseka had crossed the border from Southern California into Mexico with a boy she hardly knew, ending the evening alone at a bar in Tijuana.
Unable to locate Josh anywhere in the club, Elise made her way to the exit, pushing disgustedly at the ogling drunks who staggered up to her. Apparently they’d never seen a blonde wearing a low-cut, sparkly dress and five-inch Louboutin heels.
So juvenile, she thought.
Outside, the heat from the unseasonably hot spring day radiated off the sidewalk into the evening air and mixed with the nauseating smell of car fumes and cigarettes. Brash neon from the row of nightclubs lit the street as though it were daylight, casting everyone around her in a sickly kaleidoscopic glow. People milled past, laughing as they hurried to the next bar. Her anger growing, Elise dug her phone out of her purse and called her best friend, Brittany.
“Hey—what’s up?”
Elise plugged an ear, unable to hear over the music blasting from the club behind her.
“Josh left me at the bar.”
“Seriously? He is so dead.”
“Yeah. Listen. Can you come and pick me up?”
“Of course, sweetie
. I can be at the border in a couple of hours.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to ruin your Saturday night.”
“Believe me, you didn’t ruin it. I’m happy to get out of town. There’s nothing going on.”
Elise ended the call, slipped the phone back into her purse, and turned to wave down a taxi. It wasn’t far to where she was going to meet her friend, but Elise didn’t feel like walking and possibly breaking a heel. A cab immediately pulled to the curb and Elise walked over to the driver.
“How much to the border?” she asked.
The cab driver scanned her from head to toe and back again, his leer punctuated by a missing front tooth.
“For you, señorita, almost free.”
Elise rolled her eyes. She turned and walked away, ignoring the slow crawl of the taxi behind her. She’d find another, more respectful driver.
“Come on, chica. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Elise kept walking. The cab driver attempted to get her attention, but when he saw it wasn’t working, sped past her.
“Elise! Wait.”
Josh hurried toward her through the crowd, an apologetic smile on his face. She crossed her arms and glared at him.
“Babe, I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad. The guy had this killer weed, and I lost track of time and…”
“Are you kidding me? You left me alone in that club for two hours, Josh. Two hours. What the hell?”
Josh stepped closer to Elise, sliding his hand along her bare arm. The casual, thrown together look of his über-expensive T-shirt and jeans, along with the perfectly tousled, sun-kissed hair reminded her of a model she’d seen in a magazine advertising men’s cologne.
“Aw, come on, babe. Don’t be like that. I’ll make it up to you.” His grin brought out the dimples in his cheeks and Elise tried hard to suppress a smile. He was still the hottest guy she knew. So what if he was a little forgetful? It was probably the weed.
