The silhouetted man punched her in the back of the head, the glancing blow felling her to her knees.
“Enough!”
The Mexican madam’s rotund mass outweighed the silhouette’s by a good sixty pounds. “Give her to me, she is mine. Come here, Chuleta. Did Ali Chino hurt you?”
Good cop — bad cop. The thirteen-year-old crawled into the woman’s embrace, bawling her eyes out. The madam winked to her associate.
Human trafficking was not prostitution. Human trafficking was the multibillion-dollar global business of kidnapping and purchasing children and young adults to be used as sex slaves. It was the third-most-profitable criminal enterprise in the world. Controlled by organized crime. Dominated by the Russians, Albanians, and Ukrainians, who trafficked women into Western Europe and the Middle East.
America remained a major consumer. Thirty thousand foreign women and children were trafficked into the United States each year. Smuggled across the Mexican border, they were sold to sex rings and transported to stash houses and apartments, some in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, others in smaller suburban towns, where they hid in plain sight.
But the highway that ran slavery into the United States was far from a one-way street. American children and teenagers were in high demand overseas. A six- to thirteen-year-old could be sold at a six-figure premium. Many end buyers included Saudi princes, “allies” the State Department was loath to crack down upon. When it came to human trafficking, corruption remained the lifeblood of immorality, the public’s indifference its pulse.
The chamber was windowless. A dozen bare mattresses covered the concrete floor. Shared by twenty-two girls, ages ten to nineteen. Working in shifts. Business was rampant at the End of Days.
The “harvest” was mostly Russian and Hispanic. Halter tops and cheap makeup covered emaciated flesh. Bare arms sported track marks and bruises. The victims’ eyes were vacant, as if the light of their souls had been sealed in amber — a result of having been gang-raped and beaten, forced to service twenty to thirty men a day.
The madam kicked a Romanian girl off a mattress, shoving the American teen down in her place. As “surrogate mother,” the matriarch’s job was to psychologically torture her charges before passing them off to male trainers who would repeatedly rape and beat each new recruit into submission. After two weeks, the American merchandise would be drugged and exported to Eastern Europe for sale to the highest bidder. For this, the madam would receive $3,000.00.
“Please let me go! I just wanted to buy a watch—”
The obese woman backhanded Gavi across her face, drawing blood. “You will wait here until I come for you. If you try to escape, the other girls will tell me, and Ali Chino will return. Ali Chino kills many girls. Do you wish to be killed?”
Gavi Kantor’s body shook uncontrollably, her eyes blind with tears. “No.”
“Then do as I say. I am here to take care of you, but you must listen.” She scanned the room, pointing to a Russian girl. “You. Teach her how to use the penicillin.”
With that, the Hispanic overlord left, locking the door behind her.
Central Park West defined the western border of Central Park, running from 110th Street south to 59th Street.
Dousing the lantern, Paolo exited the deserted subway station, leading Francesca, Virgil, and Patrick across Frederick Douglass Circle to Central Park West, darting between abandoned cars.
The moon was cloaked behind endless clouds, its veiled light revealing the high-rise buildings bordering Central Park. Home to some of New York’s wealthiest, the structures had been rendered dark and foreboding. But far from silent. The cries of the destitute and suffering pierced the night, joined by the occasional sickening thud of a body as it plunged from an open window, striking the snow-covered sidewalk below.
Reaching 106th Street, Paolo led his entourage to the Stranger’s Gate, a modest park entrance composed of a black slate stairway that deposited them in a wooded area. Moving beneath a canopy of American Elms laid bare by winter, they headed east across a hilltop meadow until they came to the tarmac path that was West Drive.
Closet psychotics and sexual deviants roamed the periphery — wolves wearing human flesh whose whispered cravings added another layer of terror to the night. Francesca pulled her husband closer. “We’re too exposed out here. Take us along the ravine.”
Two hundred feet overhead, the Reaper drone hovered, silently tracking its quarry.
The information was relayed over Major Downey’s communicator, the target’s coordinates visible in his right eyepiece. “They’re in Central Park. Let’s move!”
“Sir, we’re missing a man… the National Guardsman.”
Downey cursed under his breath as he switched radio frequencies in his headpiece. “Control, I need a track on Delta-8.”
“Delta-8 is four meters south of your present position.”
Downey looked around, confused. He entered the walk-in refrigerator—
— locating David Kantor’s communicator lying in an open container of mayonnaise.
Paolo’s eyes scanned the dark field, searching for the blotch of shadow. “This way.”
Spanning ninety acres of Central Park's northern quadrant, the North Woods was a dense woodland so thick, it obliterated any trace of the surrounding metropolis. Running through the forest was the Ravine, a stream valley encompassing the Loch, a narrow lake that cascaded into five waterfalls before flowing into a brook that paralleled a southbound trail.
Moving quickly across the snow-covered lawn, they reached the forest edge. A frigid wind whipped at their backs, setting the trees to dance. Paolo knelt in the damp grass, shielding his lighter as he attempted to ignite the lantern. The flame would not catch. He tried again and again until his frozen fingers burned. “The wick’s gone. The lantern’s useless. Francesca, try your flashlight.”
Francesca aimed the beam, but it was too faint to penetrate the trees. “Now what?”
“Shh.” Paolo listened, his ears homing in on the rushing sound of water. “Hold hands. I can get us to the trail.” Taking Francesca’s hand, he stepped over brush and entered the woods.
The darkness was so encompassing, he could not see his groping hand in front of him. Through leaves and stumbling over logs, past unseen branches slicing their coats and cheeks, they continued on until the forest floor yielded to a narrow tarmac trail. Somewhere in the pitch ahead was Huddlestone Arch, a natural underpass consisting of huge schist boulders held in place by gravity. Inching forward, ducking their heads, they felt their way through the arch, carefully progressing along the steadily descending path.
A sliver of moonlight revealed the southbound trail. It looped to their right, leading to a small wooden bridge that crossed a stream.
Standing on the bridge was the Grim Reaper.
“Paolo, my feet… I need to rest a moment.” Oblivious to the Angel of Death, Francesca approached the bridge, leaning back against its wooden rail.
Shep attempted to shout a warning, only his voice constricted, as if a weight were pressing against his throat. His eyes widened in terror as he watched the Reaper silently raise its scythe high over its right shoulder, the curved metal edge targeting the back of the pregnant woman’s frail neck!