My route takes me far north of the city, far enough that the bright and sprawling metropolis of Paris is out of sight behind me, save for the glow over the horizon bright enough to be a beacon to everything around it.
For kilometers, there’s nothing on this stretch of road to my left and right but farmlands and fields. The odd car I pass every few minutes is the only other source of company on this lonely stretch of road — so much so, that if I hadn’t known where I was going, I would have missed my turn onto a narrow dirt road that leads a short distance to what to anyone else would look like some kind of garage for industrial shipping, a run-down, two-story building with few features and rusty corners, half-obscured by high, weathered walls and no gate.
The logo on the front of the walls belongs to a shipping company that has been out of business for many years. But none of the local authorities ever investigates this place, and no city official of the nearby towns and hamlets dare move to have it destroyed or repurposed.
Each and every one of them is bought, because my target used to be one of the most valuable junctions of the slave trade in France.
I stop just after my turn. My eyes are on those ruined walls as I silently slip out of my car and move around to the trunk, retrieving my equipment and strapping it on my person. As I strap guns to my chest and knives at my side, my eyes fall on a ski mask I’ve kept on hand for some time. I consider donning it but I reconsider and close the trunk.
Should anyone see me and live, I’m done hiding. I want them to know who’s shutting down the slave ring again.
Crouching low, I make my way to the walls, pressing myself up against the side and listening for what’s inside. I can hear little, but the occasional footsteps tell me there’s at least one man outside the facility. Back in the old days, the Bratva usually ran things similarly, making it look like there was a lone employee in the parking lot.
I move up to where the walls part into an opening, just a few inches from the corner, and I slip my knife out. My other hand reaches into my pocket for my car keys. My lock has a relatively quiet horn, a light sound that won’t carry beyond the exterior of the building. Taking a breath, I click the lock button twice.
My car gives a short beep as the lights flash once. I hear the footsteps in the courtyard pause, then start to come closer.
I breathe a sigh of relief. If he wasn’t alone, he would have said something to his partner. A few moments later, I watch a man in a white tank top holding a cigarette in one hand and an Uzi in the other stride into view, craning his head to look for the source of the unscheduled arrival. He has time to catch sight of me and widen his eyes before I’m upon him like a tiger, wrapping a hand over his mouth and dragging him behind the wall before my knife slides between his ribs and silences him forever.
I lay his body down in the bushes beside the wall before I start searching him. Cigarette pack, spare pistol, wallet...and a cardkey on a lanyard. I free the cardkey and slip it into my jacket pocket, poking my head around the corner before advancing into the grounds.
The walls around me hold more than just sleazy men with more weaponry than they should ever be entrusted with. In the days of the Bratva’s human trafficking ring, this place was a shipping facility of sorts.
Here, they prepared the women they enslaved to leave the country. This was the last stop for these women before they were sent to their new lives, if such slavery could be called living, and it was here that they would often break the more spirited women for all they could. Starvation, sleep deprivation, anything that would make them more pliable before their journeys to their buyers, whether they be in Europe or as far as Asia or, most commonly, North America.
Maggie is a tough person. I know her to be. I recruited her personally, just like all my other students, and I looked for a particular kind of mental resilience that could flourish in another country.
But nothing should have to prepare a human being for this. Nobody should be born to expect slavery.
I move to the side of the building, crouching behind a dumpster where a window is situated nearby. Faint light is visible from within, and I suspect there’s someone home. But the window is shut, so I move up under it to try to listen inside.
“...wouldn’t even listen when Vasili roughed her up a little, we had to take her away for most of the party,” one of the men is saying in Russian.
“Fucking Americans,” another man spits, “what are they teaching their girls over there? I bet he really gave it to her that night, eh?”
“No,” says the first man, “boss said to keep hands off those parts of her, no wounds that show. The client has eh...high standards. Some rich fuck in the US or Canada, I don’t know, I don’t get to drive this one to the docks. They’re gonna dress her up real nice though. Shipping her up to Calais in the morning to make her look good for her new husband.”