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Tripoli, Libya
LEINE BASSO GAVE her clothes the once-over, making sure she was presentable before leaning down to wipe the six-inch blade on the dead man’s trousers.
Good. No arterial spatter. If only there was a mirror around when a girl needed one. She made do with the hem of her shirt and wiped her face and neck. The only stain visible belonged to sweat from the intense afternoon heat, which radiated through a pair of partially open, paint-deprived shutters.
The recently deceased thirty-something piece of shit lay on the ground in a pool of his own blood, sightless eyes staring at the fifteen foot-tall plaster ceiling above them. Leine experienced no regret at the loss of his life—not when the person she’d just killed had been responsible for dozens of women and children being sold into the horrors of sex trafficking.
One down, so many more to go.
The trafficker’s death was merely a drop in a very large pool of the never-ending sex trafficking trade—clubs and organizations run by criminals that managed to materialize wherever the need arose. And the need arose pretty much everywhere. This time, she’d been sent back to Tripoli to weed out the scumbags trafficking marriageable young women to the terrorist group Izz Al-Din as bonuses for their freedom fighters.
As an elite former government assassin, Leine Basso’s specialized skill set was in heavy demand, and she was glad to provide it for the cause. If she could, she’d clone herself and wage an all-out war against the dirtbags who profited from the sale of human beings, especially when those transactions included children.
But she was only one person, as her handler, Lou Stokes, liked to remind her.
“Take a break, Leine,” he’d argued the last time they spoke. “You’ve been working too hard. You need to rest. Go home to Santa. Remember him? You can’t save everyone.”
It was that last line that irritated her the most. Maybe she couldn’t save everyone, but she sure as hell could try. And of course she remembered Santa. She lived with the guy, didn’t she?
Leine straightened and slid the knife back into its sheath. The trafficker’s pistol was still tucked in his waistband. He hadn’t been expecting her, didn’t know she would be in the apartment when he returned with the girl. Leine had sliced his throat from behind before he could cry out. It happened so quickly he didn’t have time to draw his weapon, let alone fire.
It was hard to beat the element of surprise.
She took out her phone and photographed the body, capturing the bloody details. It would make a good addition to the wall. She’d created a secret, eyes-only file on her laptop, plastering a virtual wall with photographic trophies of her work as an operative for SHEN, the anti-trafficking organization. The wall was a reminder of why she did what she did. If she’d thought about it, the idea was pretty macabre.
But she didn’t think about it.
One down, so many more to go.
Careful to avoid tracking through the blood, Leine crossed the room to the girl she’d been sent to find. Eyes wide with shock at the violence she’d just witnessed, the fifteen-year-old American stood in the corner, gaze riveted on the dead trafficker. Dressed in a traditional floor-length abaya that hung off her thin shoulders, she wore a hijab with a veil covering the lower half of her face.
“We need to get you out of here before his friends show up,” Leine said with a nod toward the door.
The girl, whose name was Chessa, looked as though she was just now emerging from a trance. She blinked and shifted her attention to Leine. “Is he really dead?”
“Let’s put it this way—he’s no longer a problem.” Gently, Leine took her by the arm and led her past the corpse.
The young woman balked. “Why should I trust you?”
“My name is Leine Basso. I work for SHEN, an organization that helps women like you get out of shitty situations. Your parents, Adrienne and Richard Carmody, sent me to find you.”
The confusion in Chessa’s eyes cleared and she nodded. Compared to the photograph her parents had provided, she’d lost several pounds in the weeks she’d been held by Izz Al-Din.
She’d most likely lost more than that.
The upper part of her face flamed red and she cut her gaze to the floor. “I feel so stupid. I should have known he didn’t love me.”
She was talking about the recruiter she’d met online, a Lothario who preyed on naïve young women and promised love, acceptance, and adventure. What they got was misery and pain and a life of sexual servitude.
Leine softened her voice. “We all make mistakes, Chessa. That’s the thing about second chances—if we’re lucky, we get a do-over.”
“But I believed his lies. He promised we’d be together.”
Leine didn’t have the heart to tell her that the recruiter she fell for had been cultivating more than a dozen similar relationships at the same time. He received payment only when he’d successfully delivered the “brides” to the terrorist camp. Chessa’s parents hadn’t thought twice about her request to travel to London for a semester abroad with a group from her high school. Once there, it didn’t take long for the recruiter to make contact and offer to get her into Libya so that they could be together. There was a catch, though. If they were to be married, she would have to convert to Islam, which included several weeks of rigorous “religious” training.
Once she agreed, the hook was set.
Leine led the way down the stairs to the apartment building’s entrance. She slipped a scarf over her hair and slid on a pair of sunglasses before scanning the street for unwanted company. Leine stepped off the curb and began walking at a fast clip.
“Where are we going?” Chessa hurried to keep up.
“The car’s just over there.” She nodded toward a white sedan idling halfway down the block. The driver, Rami, sat in the front seat, smoking a cigarette. “Right now we’re going to a safe house on the other side of the city.”
“And then I can go home?”
“As soon as it’s safe for you to leave.”
Chessa stopped in the middle of the street, her eyes wide. “What if they’re waiting for me at the airport? They have people everywhere.”
Leine gestured for her to hurry. “You need to keep moving, Chessa. We’ve got it handled.”
The former assassin jumped into the front passenger seat, while Chessa climbed into the back. Rami pulled away from the curb and headed for the safe house.
“You said you had it handled. How?” Chessa asked, craning her neck to look out the back window.
“One of SHEN’s partners has offered the use of their private jet,” Leine explained. “You’ll leave from a small airfield not far from the safe house.” The partner was Fitzpatrick Personal Security, Inc., or FPS, a security firm out of Los Angeles that worked primarily in North Africa and the Middle East. Occasionally, their objectives aligned with SHEN’s, allowing anti-trafficking personnel and the victims they rescued to hitch a ride on one of their transport planes.
As Rami drove, Leine kept her head on the swivel, laser-focused on identifying threats. She doubted that the dirtbag she’d just offed was alone. Usually she worked Libyan rescue operations with Hamid, another operative for SHEN, but he was still recuperating from a recent injury and personnel were stretched thin. The office had received an anonymous tip early that morning with the address where Chessa and her captor were allegedly holed up. Rami, a relatively new employee, was the only one available to accompany her.
“They told me he died,” Chessa said in a quiet voice. Leine turned in her seat and studied her. The girl stared out the window at the sunbaked buildings flashing by. “They said I was to marry another man to honor my fiancé’s memory.” Bitterness laced her words and she shuddered. She gripped the door handle so hard that her knuckles turned white. “They said he was a major supporter of the cause and that I should be honored to be the wife of the leader of an important madrassa. But he was old. And fat. Not handsome like Tarik.” Anger radiated off her in waves.
That’ll take some therapy, Leine thought.
Just then, an SUV pulled onto the road behind them.
“We’ve got company,” Rami said in a terse voice as he kept one eye on the rearview.
“Put on your seatbelt.” Leine said to Chessa. The girl didn’t hesitate and snapped on her belt.
The sedan they were in wasn’t exactly a speed demon. The SUV was a newer model Mercedes—one that could eat the older model Taurus for lunch. The Mercedes closed the distance between them and Rami stepped on the gas. The other vehicle kept up easily, staying about a foot off their bumper. They screamed through a residential area, racing past apartment buildings and single family homes, neighborhood markets, and children playing in the street.
“Get us away from here, Rami. Somewhere without a lot of kids.” Leine pulled the semiauto from her waistband. “Lou said you knew Tripoli inside and out. Lose these assholes.”
Rami nodded and mashed the accelerator to the floor. The sedan shot ahead, gaining some distance from the SUV.
Leine looked back at Chessa. Her face pale and knuckles white, she gripped the door handle in stony silence.
“Hang on,” Rami yelled and spun the car onto a gravel side street. The sedan fishtailed wildly until he brought it under control. Leine checked behind them. The Mercedes overshot the intersection, but quickly reversed and was soon eating up the distance they’d lost. Rami drove to the end of the street and hooked a sharp right, raced down the block, braked hard, and spun the wheel again, threading the sedan into a narrow alley. They sliced their way past closed doorways and garbage bins, kicking up a rooster tail of dust behind them.
Chessa twisted in her seat and looked out the back window. “Did we lose them?”
Rami glanced in the rearview mirror. “Maybe.” At the end of the alley he shot out onto the main thoroughfare, spinning right, tires squealing.
Once again he stomped on the accelerator, weaving in and out of traffic with little regard for stoplights or signs. The Mercedes was nowhere to be seen. Two blocks later, Rami stopped abruptly behind a line of gridlocked traffic. It wasn’t long before a dozen vehicles stacked up behind them, blocking them in.
Leine checked her side mirror. The Mercedes materialized several cars behind them and oozed into traffic.
“They’re back.”
Rami inched the car to the left and straddled the low divider, waiting for his chance. Without warning, he gunned the engine and pulled into the opposite lane, barely missing a head-on collision with a BMW. He veered left to avoid a Mitsubishi compact, and at the last second swerved back into traffic. Inching slowly forward once more, Rami drummed his fingers on the steering wheel before he muttered something that sounded like fuck it in Arabic. He spun the wheel and rocketed away from the line of cars, heading the wrong direction down the opposite side of the street. Then he hooked a sharp left and shot down an arterial street, barely avoiding being smashed flat by a delivery truck.
Three turns and a double-back later, he pulled into a vacant, single-car garage and turned off the engine. He exited the vehicle in a flash and rolled the garage door shut. Leine got out and moved to the closed door. Chessa stayed inside the car.
“We wait,” Rami said, his tone matter-of-fact.
Leine’s breath echoed off the bare walls of the small space. With the sedan parked inside, there wasn’t much room to maneuver. A moment later, the sound of tires crunching on gravel could be heard outside as a vehicle slowly rolled past. Leine held her breath.
The sound receded in the distance and Leine relaxed. They waited several more minutes before Rami nodded at Leine.
She helped him raise the door and walked outside to make sure there was no one nearby. Leine gave him a nod and he backed out of the garage. She climbed in the passenger side and they took off, keeping to the back alleyways and less populated streets.
Leine turned in her seat and said, “You can remove your veil if you’d like.”
“I’d prefer to leave it on,” Chessa answered.
“That’s fine. We’ll be there soon.”
Forty-five minutes and several evasive maneuvers later, Rami parked outside of a plain concrete building next to a private airfield. Leine led Chessa through the double front doors to the reception area, where a young woman wearing a hijab sat behind the reception desk. Leine introduced Chessa to Fatima, who was working intake that afternoon. The former assassin sighed with relief as the teenager appeared to relax in the presence of Fatima’s warmth. A victim of trafficking herself, Fatima exuded confidence and compassion and was a staunch defender of the women put in her care.
Leine didn’t envy what lay ahead for Chessa. It would be hard work finding her way through the feelings of anger and betrayal, not to mention the weeks of terrorist propaganda she’d had to endure once she’d arrived at the training camp.
Fatima ushered Chessa into the back and Leine wrote up an abbreviated report, leaving out the part about the trafficker’s death. SHEN operated in Tripoli with the unofficial blessing of the Libyan government, which could be compromised if news of a murder found its way into an official report.
Besides, one less terrorist wouldn’t be missed.
Chessa would be looked after by medical personnel while at the safe house. Soon, she’d be on her way back home to Los Angeles where she would try to pick up where she left off. Back to a home where life—especially American life—would never again be the same.
With a weary sigh, Leine signed the report and slid it into Fatima’s “in” basket. Then she slipped on her scarf and sunglasses and stepped back onto the street into the relentless midday sun.