“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Of course, you have,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. “They are practically dominating the route, you know. I’ve found a way for us to stop them.”
“Stop them,” I repeated. “When did I start working for the government? Interpol and the others see them pass every now and then, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do. But this isn’t for the government, Konstantin. It’s for ourselves, for our business. It won’t be too long before our clients hear about these traffickers using the same route. And when they do, they begin to grumble about their goods passing the same route, since these guys could make a misstep and attract public or even international eyes on the route. They wouldn’t want their cargo to be caught in that kind of crossfire; it would cause problems for us and for them. Before we know it, they’ll start to cancel deals passing through that route, forcing us to use the other route—and that means smaller cargo and more scrutiny, you know. Same thing that happened to the Carusos with the Baja route.”
“So your idea is to…?” I prompted after a few silent seconds.
“We make a move. A contained one, at that. Doesn’t get to the public or media but effectively stops them,” he disclosed.
I nodded at him, and he continued.
“We bomb their trucks and threaten to expose them if they pass the route again. They would assume we’re one of these private humanitarian societies. Traffickers fear these guys because of their media power—we’ll use that.”
“When you say ‘bomb their trucks,’ do you mean destroy the truck with the human cargo?”
“No, not at all,” he clarified. “Our guys will attach themselves to the trucks and, just when they’re on the route,they blow the doors open. All the doors holding the people they’re trafficking in.”
“That causes an uproar. They’ll have to stop moving to control it.”
“Yes. And then, they see the message the guys have left them. We let them think we’d go to the media if we caught sight of them again. They get it across to their boss. He asks them to be more discreet, and they change routes. Mission accomplished.”
“You seem so sure it’ll be that simple,” I pointed out.
“It might not go exactly as I’m picturing, I know. They might decide to take the route again with more protection, but they can’t match our men. So, whether it takes one or three attempts, the effect will be the same. And we can carry on business as usual without looking over our shoulders for any trafficker dragging a media trail our way.”
“That’s if it goes well.”
“It will, Konstantin. Their guys are common bouncers. They have nothing on trained mafia men. Besides, there is a ‘greater good’ angle in all of this.”
“And, what would that be?”
“The people we’d be setting free. Most, if not all, of them are victims. They did nothing wrong and were just going about their regular lives when they were abducted. They didn’t want to travel out of the country. They had real hopes and dreams, which weren’t to whore themselves out to stupid old men.”
“I should care about that because…?”
“Come on, don’t give me that soulless monster act,” he remarked, chuckling. “We both had mothers. We have lovers, female relatives, and female friends. It just takes a thought of something like that happening to one of them to see we’re doing the right thing. Besides, considering all the immeasurable evilwe’ve done, this might be one bar for us on the redemption side. Who knows?”
That gave me a pause.
Redemption?
I thought of my little nieces, and my jaw clenched at the thought of someone squeezing them into a container and sending them off on a truck.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay then. Get back to me real soon.”
I nodded as I ended the call.
My mind traveled to Alina.
If I kill her, wouldn’t that be on the other side of the redemption Yousef just mentioned?
My phone vibrated and I picked up.
“Sergei.”
