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I hung out a few more minutes, then told those gathered I was heading to my room to get some rest.
“I’m going that way myself,” said Cayman.
“What? Are you afraid Iris is comin’ after you?”
“God, wouldn’t that be bloody awful?”
“Hey, Ares, before you leave, I called a briefing at zero nine hundred tomorrow. The Los Cab team will be joining us, and you’ll be leading it,” said Doc.
I turned around to see if he was joking, but it didn’t appear he was. “Roger that,” I said as Cayman and I walked out.
Neither of us spoke either in the elevator or on the way to our rooms.
“See you in the morning,” he said when I continued to my room.
“Yep,” I grunted in reply.
I’d just completedthe briefing the following morning when Gunner got word the Tanzinople was scheduled to arrive within thirty-six hours.
“We’ll leave at thirteen hundred,” Doc announced. “That means everyone.”
“I’m ready to leave now if anyone else wants to head out early,” I told him. Cayman, Puck, and Kodiak all spoke up, saying they were ready to leave as well.
The whole way to Felixstowe, I had a bad feeling about Nem. I wished I could get a mulligan on our conversation from yesterday. Especially the part where I acted like a dick and walked out.
Unlike when I was in Yavaros and didn’t call because I thought it was too early, this time, as much as I wanted to, I knew she wouldn’t want to speak with me.
From the timewe arrived at the port, I didn’t have a minute to think about anything other than the op in front of us.
After they arrived, Gunner and Razor sat down with Kodiak and me and essentially blew both our plans out of the water. I was pissed, but not as much as Kodiak was. Fortunately, he kept it under wraps.
“Either way,” Gunner began. “There’s still the problem of whatever guards are inside the containers communicating the raid to the others. Both your plans result in a bloodbath. No offense, gentlemen, but they’re way too complicated.”
Doc approached. “What do you propose, Gunner?”
“I don’t give a fuck who tells who what. The first thing we do is scramble all communication. We board the goddamn ship the minute it arrives in port—en masse—and we open every one of the containers on your drawing,” he said to Kodiak.
“It isn’t that simple. Logistically, it’s impossible,” he responded.
“No, it isn’t. We get to those containers the same way deckhands would if one caught fire or was leaking or if they believed there were stowaways in it—or fucking victims of human trafficking. Is it hard? Damn straight, it is, but we’re talking about over two hundred lives.Innocent lives.I’m not standing around with my thumb in my ass, waiting.”
“He’s right,” said Razor. “Thermal imaging will give us a road map to priority containers.”
Doc put his hands on his hips. “Regardless of the plan we implement, there are inherent risks to the victims. Our goal is to get them to safety and do everything we possibly can to keep them alive while we’re at it. The loss of one life in Yavaros was a painful reminder that we do what we can, to the best of our ability.” He turned to Gunner. “My vote is to proceed with your plan.” He looked at Merrigan.
“I’m in complete agreement. My intention is to focus solely on what happens once the victims are rescued.”
“Ares and Kodiak, let’s powwow with Razor and nail this shit down,” Gunner said, motioning for me to sit back down after I’d stood.
Later,when the ship arrived almost twenty-four hours early, we initiated Gunner’s plan. The good news was we did it without a single loss of life. The better news was Luisa Reeve had been in one of the first containers we opened. While there was no doubt she’d be in rough shape mentally for quite some time, maybe even the rest of her life, physically, the worst of her injuries was severe dehydration. It was the same with all the victims.
The horrible news was we hadn’t apprehended a single trafficker. The only arrest made was the terminal manager, who’d switched the SSA numbers on the ship, giving the traffickers, none of whom were on board, an extra twenty-four hours to get everything off-loaded.
Instead of having guards in each of the units, the motherfuckers had locked the victims in and epoxied and painted over all the doors on the inside so there was no way for them to escape.
While there were no casualties and we’d saved the lives of over two hundred people, that we had no arrests save the one was damned disheartening.
Two days later,after we’d checked out each of the ten destinations—all of which were abandoned warehouses in different parts of England—we walked away without any suspects then either.
