| |
DC
It felt as if I had been asleep for four minutes when Doc woke me four hours later. My eyes felt scratchy and were puffy as hell, and it felt as a load of sand had taken up residence behind my eyelids. My body ached from the very physical ride down and getting dressed wasn’t any fun. But once I was done I made my way to the kitchen looking for coffee and breakfast.
My dad wasn’t in the kitchen and I ate my breakfast surrounded by strangely silent men. The tension in the air kept my mouth shut and I focused on my food, avoiding their eyes. I was enjoying the last of my coffee when Doc came in and with a quick tilt of his head indicated that I had to follow him.
What the hell was going on here?
I walked into a windowless office behind him and sat down when he pointed me to a chair pulled into the corner of the room. There were seven of us in the room, Doc, Grizzly, Rover, Alien and I from the Jozi chapter and Boeta and Fisher from the Durban chapter. Fisher was their club’s information officer. Everyone in the room was a club officer except me. I had no idea why the Prez and VP of the Durban chapter wasn’t in the room, but I felt sure I was about to find out.
“You called me with some truly fucked up information, Boeta. I hope like fuck you can back up what you told me.” Doc’s first words were not encouraging.
“Ek fokken wens ek was verkeerd, Prez. (I fucking wish I was wrong, Prez.) After I spoke to you I knew we needed proof of the shit that’s been happening. I called in a few of the brothers I trusted and we snatched their cargo. We’ve got them secured at a safe location.”
Boeta’s eyes were haunted and he looked like his heart had been stomped on, but deep down anger burned fiercely. I knew just how upset he was by the way his explanation was peppered by Afrikaans words and phrases.
“Die klub en my broers is my lewe, Prez. (The club and my brothers are my life, Prez.) I’ve bled for my club and my brothers, maar ek kannie meer nie. (but I can’t anymore.)You know we were the last Warrior chapter to get out of the drug trade. En jy weet hoe diep ons in daai fokken kak was. (And you know how deep we were into that fucking shit.) I voted yes to get us out of the shit the club was drowning in. To live free and clear, to stop looking over our shoulders all the time, to stop fucking dying for no good fucking reason. Speedy was nie happy nie. (Speedy wasn’t happy.) The shit Speedy and some of my brothers are involved in makes what we used to do look like a fucking kid’s game. I won’t allow their greed to take down my club or my brothers.”
“How many of the brothers are involved?”
It was Fisher who answered. “Nine that we know of, Prez. And that includes our President, our VP, our Enforcer and our Treasurer.”
The news was not good. The men who made the decisions and the one who handled their money along with the one who made sure their orders were enforced had all gone rogue. But why had they gone rogue? They made a damn good living so it certainly wasn’t about money...or was it?
The room was silent as everyone waited for Doc to react. His voice was deep and rough when he did. He was pissed and disappointed. Speedy was a friend, a friend who had now gone rogue it seemed.
“I’ve spoken to Freeze and he’s given me the go ahead to investigate. I’ll be keeping him in the loop about whatever we uncover.” Doc sighed heavily. “Lay it out for us, and brother, don’t leave one fucking thing out. I want it all.”
Boeta’s eyes snapped towards where I sat quietly in the corner of the room.
“In front of her, Prez? This is club business.”
Dog gave an evil grin. “We need her for the cargo and to be able to help she needs to know it all. I’ve cleared it with National, so let’s hear it.”
I could see that Boeta was very uncomfortable with me there but he nodded and as he spoke I felt the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck rise in horror.
Speedy and his men were involved in a trafficking ring. They were the last stop before their products were shipped out of Durban in shipping containers to ports in Asia. And it was one of their so-called products that freaked me the hell out.
They weren’t only shipping rhino horn, elephant tusks, and lion pelts and bones to Asia. Every couple of months those containers contained young girls and boys that had been snatched throughout Southern Africa.
Boeta had no idea who the kingpin of the operation was. But he was convinced that one of the girls they had taken from the warehouse knew more than she was saying. She was older than the other girls, in her early twenties while the girls were twelve and thirteen respectively.
Doc twisted in his chair and gave me the look. I nodded.
“I need Rover and Alien with me and Law to do the usual.” I said quietly. “The sooner I start the sooner we finish. Take me to them.”
Rover and Alien along with Skelly usually accompanied me when I did what I did for the club. Law was the one who made sure I had what I needed and disposed of the evidence once I was done. He was the only person outside of the club’s officers who knew I was Doc’s Crow.
I followed the men out of the room with my gut in a tight knot. What had we walked into down here?
We rode through Durban Central and deep into an industrial area where we pulled in behind an abandoned factory. I followed the men inside and Boeta lead Doc and I to the lower level where the girls were being kept. I would be using the empty room next to where the girls were being kept as a changing room.
After changing my clothes I stood in the empty room and closed my eyes, going inside myself where the other me lived. And when I opened my eyes she was there, waiting.
I breathed in deeply before I walked into the dark windowless room. I had left my humanity in the other room. I looked into the scared eyes of the two little girls and my heart clenched and bled for them. The other set of eyes were different, she was trying really hard to look frightened but she failed. She was weighing her options, trying to come up with a plausible excuse. Some of the men might have fallen for her shit but not me.
“Take the kids into the other room.” I whispered through my mask. Rover immediately scooped them up and left. He returned almost immediately with a kitchen chair which he placed in the middle of the room.
“Put her in the chair.” Again a whispered command.
Rover and Alien picked her up and sat her protesting body in the chair. Rover fastened her ankles to the chair legs with cable ties while Alien pulled her hands behind her back and cable tied them to the chair back. She wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.
Rover went back out and came back with another chair and placed it in front of her. Then he and Alien retreated, leaning against the wall with arms crossed and silently watched.
I sat down, crossed my arms and stared at her silently. She couldn’t hold my eyes and started squirming.
“Tell me a story.” I hissed coldly.
“I...I...I don’t know what you want. I’ve been kidnapped. Please. I want to go home.” She begged. “Please let me go home.”
Pulling my knife from my boot I played with it. Twirling it through my fingers, over and over. I wore black Nitrile gloves, the very same ones I used in my shop. Her eyes were riveted on the swirling, twirling blade.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know what you want to know! Please! Let me go!” She screeched.
“You can stop that screeching. No one can hear you, and there’s no one here who will help you. You’re alone. You know what I want. Tell me.” I hissed and twirled the knife close enough to her face that she jerked her head back in fear. “Or don’t tell me and I’ll get to play. With you.”
And right on cue she wet herself. So fucking predictable. I pulled my feet away from the growing puddle. I didn’t want my boots to stink.
She started to babble, words tumbling out of her stupid mouth.
“I look after them. I swear that’s all I do. Speedy and the men bring them to the warehouse and I look after them until it’s time for them to leave. That’s it, I know nothing about anything.”
Her eyes snapped towards the door before they returned to me. I slowly leant forward, lifted the edge of her little flippy skirt with the point of my knife and slowly moved it up her thighs. I stopped once I had both thighs and her disgustingly wet black panties exposed. Tears silently ran down her cheeks as she watched with terrified eyes.
I tapped the top of both thighs with the flat of my knife.
“Very pretty.” I hissed. “Such a pity. Did you know that a straight cut is easiest to repair and usually leaves behind very little scarring? But I don’t like straight cuts. That’s not what I like to do. I like patterns. Zig zags are my favourite. Very difficult to repair without heavy scarring.”
I had no damn idea if that was the truth or not, I just knew that with women it always worked. No matter how hardened they were after the first couple of cuts they talked. No one likes ugly scarring anywhere near their pussies or tits.
I drew the knife up the inside of one thigh across the top of her mound and down the inside of the other thigh hard enough to leave a raised red line but not hard enough to cut into her skin.
This one was even easier, no cutting needed.
“Please, don’t! They are working with someone called May...May... something, a woman. I’ve never seen her, she never comes here. She just calls Speedy with her orders. I swear I don’t know anything else. I’m not that important. They just use me for the kids and when they need to get off. Please don’t hurt me, please.”
“Where is Speedy?”
She sobbed loudly. “They went on a run to fetch the rest of the kids. They’re bringing ten more to the warehouse tomorrow morning. The container is ready and they are being shipped tomorrow night.”
“Good. Very good. You answer what I ask and I might not draw pretty patterns on you. So the kids are loaded into a container and put on a ship. Do you know the name of the ship?”
“Yes! That’s what happens. It’s Josephine, the ship’s called Josephine.”
“Two last questions. Do they wear their kuttes while they are doing their business and what is the name on the back?”
She looked confused. “What? What is a cut?”
Fuck, I did not have a good feeling. I pointed with my knife at Rover and Alien.
“Those leather waistcoats with their names on them. That’s called a kutte.”
“They take them off when they go to the ship but they wear them the rest of the time, and sometimes it says Road Warriors and sometimes Iron Dogz.”
I sat back and tapped the knife against my cloth covered cheek, my eyes never leaving hers as I went over what she had given me. There was one thing I didn’t know and it was a crucial bit of information.
“Where is this container?”
By the sudden flare in her eyes it was obvious she had hoped I wouldn’t ask that particular question.
“I...I...don...”
I waved the knife back and forth in front of her eyes as I shook my head.
“No, no, no. No lies now. You know what happens if you lie.”
Hope died in her eyes and her whole body slumped. It poured out in an unending stream, chilling me to the bone.
“Speedy arranges for the special containers to be brought to a pre-arranged rendezvous point. It is always close to the harbour but never the same place. The container is sealed after they load it. He has a contact at a trucking company who arranges the transportation of the containers and fixes the paperwork. Once the product is loaded they escort it into the harbour and onto the ship where Speedy hands it over to the captain. He pays off a lot of people to look the other way, even the harbour cops.”
She gave a loud sob. But we weren’t done yet.
“Which trucking company?”
Her answer shoved a spear of ice into my gut.
“Iron Dogz Trucking.”
“How far up does this go? Are the owners involved?”
“No, Speedy hates the Iron Dogz. He is always saying that their president, Hawk Walker, is the perfect scapegoat. I know everything I’ve done to help him is wrong. I know. I know. But if I don’t do as he says he will put my little sister in the next container. I’ll do anything to keep it from happening. Anything.”
I slid my knife back into the hidden sheath, slowly stood, bent over and pulled her skirt back down over her legs. I gave her thighs a tap before I straightened.
“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you. Don’t make me come back.” I whispered.
I stood in the empty room after I had changed clothes with my hands over my eyes and tried hard to keep myself from screaming in rage and despair. Those poor, poor kids. All the ones we couldn’t save. A heavy hand settled on my shoulder. I whirled and threw myself into my dad’s arms. I held onto him as I battled to get my raging emotions under control. He moved me slightly and closed the door behind us.
“This shit has just escalated. I don’t want you back at the clubhouse. I sent Raj to pack your things and bring it here. I’ve spoken to Hawk and he trusts us to keep you safe until he gets here.” I tried to interrupt. “No, baby, no. Boeta can’t guarantee that there aren’t more of their men involved in this. I don’t want you anywhere near when shit goes down. Hawk called me after he spoke to you early this morning and I gave him what I knew. Your old man is fucking stubborn, DC. Wouldn’t wait to hear from me before coming down. Now I’m fucking glad he’s so fucking stubborn. We’re going to need every man we trust to handle this shit without it blowing back on the clubs.”
I rolled my head against his chest and tightened my arms around him.
“I can’t imagine doing something like this to an innocent child, Dad. How the hell did Speedy get involved in this shit? How do these people live with themselves? How do they sleep at night? How do they...” But I didn’t get any further because the rumble of a lot of bikes filled the air.
Law stuck his head into the room. “The Dogz are here, Prez, and there are a few surprises in the pack.”
Doc nodded. “I’ll be out now.”
Doc kissed my forehead softly before we walked out of the room and down the long passage to the wide open back doors of the factory. I frowned when I saw the bikes. There were at least twenty. I groaned when a visibly pissed off Hawk, with Tiny, Skelly and Shaka following him, stalked towards us.
