Human Traffic (Detective Damien Drake Book 5) Read online

  Human Traffic

  Detective Damien Drake Book 5

  Patrick Logan

  Human Traffic

  Prologue

  PART I – The Wrong Side of the Law

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  PART II – A Business Card, a Scalpel, and an Auction

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  PART III – Everything has a Price

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  The End

  Author’s Note

  Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.

  - William Congreve

  Human Traffic

  Prologue

  “There are twenty-one baggies in front of each of you. You are to consume every one of these bags. Failure to consume all of the bags in the allotted time will result in you not getting on the boat. If you burst one of the bags, either on the table or in your mouth, you will not get on the boat. If one of these bags rupture inside you, you will die. Do you understand?”

  The girl was blindfolded, but she could somehow sense that everyone around her was nodding. She did the same.

  “Good,” the man continued. “You have twenty minutes. That’s one baggie per minute, give or take, so I suggest you get started.”

  The girl took a deep breath and then cautiously groped the table in front of her. When her hand fell on the first baggie, her heart started to race. It was much larger than she’d expected — about the size of a ping-pong ball, maybe even bigger.

  Impossible… I won’t be able to swallow one of these, let alone twenty-one.

  And yet, when the man shouted that there were nineteen minutes left, she pinched the ball between thumb and forefinger and placed it in her mouth.

  It tasted rubbery and salty, but she didn’t let it rest on her tongue for long. With a heavy gulp, the girl swallowed.

  The baggie only made it about an inch down her throat before triggering her gag reflex and she retched.

  The baggie rolled back onto her tongue.

  “I would like to remind you, that if any of the baggies break, you will not be getting on the boat.”

  The girl used two fingers to force the baggie down her throat. When she retched this time, she fought the visceral response by keeping her fingers in place. Her abdomen underwent a series of contractions, all designed to dislodge the bolus, but she persisted.

  Eventually, her eyes bulged behind her blindfold and her body switched tactics. Desperate for air, instead of trying to regurgitate the baggie, she somehow managed to swallow it.

  The girl could feel the thick wad stretch her esophagus all the way down to her empty stomach.

  The second baggie went down easier, as did the third. By the last one, the twenty-first, the process had become second nature; it was as easy as swallowing raisins.

  “Very good. I advise you to exercise caution as these bags will rub together in your stomach. If they burst, you will die. Now, stand up; one of my men will guide you to the boat.”

  Feeling queasy, the girl stood and someone immediately hooked an arm through hers.

  “I’m trying!” someone to her left shouted. “I can do it! I just need more time!”

  “Your twenty minutes are up,” the man said in a flat tone.

  There was a commotion, a struggle.

  “I can—”

  A single shot rang out and the room fell into silence.

  “Get the baggies out of her,” the man growled after the echo died down.

  “How?” a second man asked.

  “I don’t give a shit how you do it—tear her open for all I care. Just get them out.”

  Trembling now, the girl bowed her head as she was led first down a dirt walk, then onto a floating dock. A few seconds later, she was vaguely aware of the fact that she’d boarded a vessel of some sort.

  “You will be on this boat for nearly three days. During this time, you’ll have access to a special drink, but no food. The drink tastes terrible, but it is important to consume as much as you can — this will help keep the bags from breaking. You can piss all you want, but it’s in your best interest not to take a shit.”

  The grip on the girl’s arm tightened and someone grumbled in her ear that they were heading down a set of stairs. The others were all around her now; she could smell the reek of their sweat, she could hear their shallow breaths.

  When her bare toes eventually touched the landing, she was ushered across an empty space before being forced into a crowded room.

  “After three days, you will be transferred to a shipping container for an additional day of travel. If, during this time, you defecate and lose one of the baggies, you will be left at sea. Now, as soon as I close this door, you can remove your blindfolds.”

  The girl was shaking now; the promise of a new life in a new land had suddenly lost all appeal.

  This is a mistake, she thought. I need to get out of here.

  But it was too late to turn back now.

  She was not so naive as to think that the man’s claim that they wouldn’t get on the boat meant that she could simply go back to her previous life, as unappealing as the notion was.

  Not getting on the boat really meant getting a bullet in the head.

  Tear her open for all I care.

  They weren’t people anymore. They were simply a means of transportation — they were expendable, organic vessels containing something far more valuable than their lives.

  “The next time you see the sun, you’ll be standing on the shores of the greatest country in the world.

  The pressure in the room suddenly changed as the door was slammed closed. This was quickly followed by a click that could only be one thing — a padlock being snapped shut.

  With trembling hands, the girl reached up and lifted her blindfold.

  Only she still couldn’t see anything.

  The room was bathed in darkness.

  “Bon voyage,” the man said from the other side of the door with a chuckle.

  PART I – The Wrong Side of the Law

  Chapter 1

  Drake’s eyes snapped open and he sucked in a deep breath.

  His initial instinct
was to sit up, but he found himself unable. His muscles simply refused to obey his commands.

  “Where — where am I?” he croaked. “Where the fuck am I?”

  Blinking rapidly, the scene before him eventually started to become clear. Drake was in a small room of some sort, with annoyingly bright incandescent lighting embedded in the ceiling above. Off to one side, he noted an archaic-looking computer that beeped intermittently.

  “He’s back,” a voice said, drawing Drake’s attention. He turned his head in the direction of the voice, but this action sent his world into a tailspin and he was forced to close his eyes again. He retched and a thin fluid spilled from his mouth and coated his chin and cheeks. The vomit was sour and hot; just the idea of it brought more of it up from the pit of his stomach.

  He was vaguely aware that someone was cleaning his mouth and face with a gloved hand. Confused, Drake opened his eyes again and found himself staring at the face of a man he’d never seen before. He was young with blond hair that was closely cropped to his head. There was a stethoscope dangling around his neck.

  “Damien? Damien Drake?” The man asked, raising a penlight.

  Drake squinted and tried to turn his face away from the offending light, but the man wouldn’t let him. His gloved hand firmly gripped his chin as he waved the light back and forth. Drake tried to bring his right hand up to swat the man away, only he couldn’t. And yet, unlike before, this was not the result of disobedient muscles.

  Something sharp bit into his wrist, followed by the familiar sound of metal on metal when he relaxed.

  He was handcuffed to the bed.

  “Where am I?” Drake demanded.

  “You’re—” the man with a stethoscope didn’t manage to complete the sentence; Drake was suddenly jostled, and for a split-second, he was airborne.

  I’m not in a room, he realized. I’m in the back of an ambulance.

  And the archaic computer to his left wasn’t a Commodore 64, but a heart rate monitor.

  Gritting his teeth against the nausea that returned with every bump, Drake pressed his brain into remembering what happened.

  He recalled bits and pieces of his chase after Beckett’s kidnappers, his journey to the farm. He also remembered speaking with someone… someone with dark hair and darker eyes.

  Tears suddenly spilled down Drake’s cheeks and he closed his eyes again.

  I was too late… Beckett was already dead when I got there. And I should be, too.

  “Is all this really necessary?” a new voice asked. Drake opened his eyes and looked around, trying to find the source, but he couldn’t; the man was somewhere above his head.

  “It’s for his own safety,” the paramedic said as he squeezed a clear IV bag.

  “Bullshit,” the second man replied. “It’s because that douchebag inspector told you to cuff him. Don’t lie to me. And if you keep squeezing a fucking bag like that, you’re going to give him a goddamn emboli.”

  The voice was familiar, but Drake couldn’t place it. The annoying ringing in his ears that was punctuated by the ping of the cardiopulmonary monitor on the rare occasion that his heart decided to pump was making it difficult to concentrate.

  “I’m just doing—”

  “Your job? Wow, that’s a fucking new one. Why does everyone say that like it’s an excuse for everything? I’m just doing my job. Oh, you know that SS soldier? You know the one… he killed millions of Jews because Hitler told him to — hell, he was just doing his job. What about the ISIS member? The one with the beard? Oh, he’s a nice guy, really loves chess, long walks on the beach. It’s just that Allah told him to blow up some Jesus lovers. And—” the man grunted in pain. “—shit, if you’re so set on doing your job, why don’t you give me something a little more powerful for my fucking finger? It hurt like a midget giving birth to triplets.”

  Beckett?

  There was only one person he knew that spoke like this… but that man was dead. Wasn’t he?

  “Beckett,” Drake croaked.

  How is this possible? I saw Beckett’s body on the ground with the disciples of the Church of Liberation.

  A pale face suddenly hovered into view, and Drake had to blink several times to make sure that what he was seeing was actually there.

  It was Beckett… the man looked tired, older, even, but there was no denying that smirk.

  “What a fucking night, Drake. I mean, I had some doozies in the past — in college — but this one… this one definitely takes the cake.”

  Chapter 2

  “Well, you gave your liver quite a jolt,” the doctor with the round spectacles said. His demeanor was strangely jovial, given the circumstances. “And you very nearly died.”

  Drake grunted.

  “No shit,” he said. “But I’ve been training my liver for some time, now.”

  “I can see that,” the doctor replied, still smiling. He held out a clipboard with some letters and numbers on it that Drake couldn’t make sense of. The doctor shrugged. “You’ve got dangerously elevated liver enzymes, as well as other markers for fatty liver syndrome.”

  Drake didn’t hear a question, so he refrained from answering.

  “The good news is that your doctor friend there, Dr. Campbell, managed to get some hooch in you before you died from ethanol poisoning. Normally, this would take hours, but it looks like you also consumed a high dose of Temazepam — sleeping pills.”

  Beckett suddenly appeared beside the doctor.

  “Forced,” Beckett corrected, sternly staring at the man with the clipboard. “Dr. Ramsey, he was forced to consume both the ethanol and the sleeping pills.”

  Dr. Ramsey looked at Beckett with wide eyes behind his spectacles. Then he scribbled something down on the clipboard. Beckett tried to look over the man’s shoulder, but he brought the paper to his chest like a student trying to avoid someone copying their answers.

  Drake watched this with morbid fascination.

  He wasn’t sure if Beckett knew what really happened back at the farm and was just trying to save Drake’s ass, or if he was just making assumptions. Either way, given the fact that he was still handcuffed to the gurney, Drake decided that it would be in his best interest to go along with his friend.

  “Ray… Ray Reynolds forced me to drink it.”

  Dr. Ramsey’s eyes turned to Drake. He had extremely thin eyebrows, which Drake found irritating, more so when they slowly inched up his forehead.

  Drake wasn’t sure what to say next, so again, he bit his tongue.

  The doctor scribbled something on his paper again.

  “Well, the good news is, I think you’re going to make a full recovery. The bad news is that you’re going to have to start making some lifestyle changes.”

  Drake frowned.

  Why is it that doctors all use the same refrain — except for Beckett, of course, who punctuates his speech with f-bombs. Lifestyle changes…? What’s with the euphemisms? Just tell me what you want me to do.

  “I’ll cut down on the alcohol,” Drake offered pro-actively. He just wanted Dr. Ramsey gone now so that he could be alone with Beckett.

  To find out what really happened back at the Reynolds’s farm.

  “And you’re going to have to start exercising. You might only be 37 years old, but your body is that of a man twice your age,” the doctor chuckled to himself. “Okay, maybe not twice your age, but at least fifty years old.”

  Drake couldn’t argue with that — if anything, he felt compelled to correct the doctor’s math.

  He felt trapped in the body of a 100-year-old punch-drunk boxer.

  “Sure, whatever.” Drake raised his handcuffed arm. “Not going to run very far with these things on, though. When are you going take the shackles off, doc?”

  For the first time since entering the room, Dr. Ramsey’s face sagged.

  “I’m afraid that that’s not part of my purview. You’re gonna have to talk to the police about that.”

  Beckett clapped the man on the back,
and he stumbled forward, nearly dropping the clipboard in the process.

  “I think I’ll take it from here. Maybe you should grab yourself a coffee.”

  Dr. Ramsey looked confused, but with further insistence, he eventually left the two of them alone.

  “A good doctor,” Beckett said after Ramsey was gone. “But my God has he got some weird bedside manner.”

  “No kidding,” Drake replied. He opened his mouth to add something else, but then closed it again. The truth was, he wasn’t sure what to say. They had been through so much over the past few days that he figured anything he might come up with would either be inappropriate or insufficient. But the longer he thought about it, Drake realized there was only one thing he could say.