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For the last two years, there were transactions that never made it into the financial logs. We’d reviewed security footage and found blocks of time missing, and began to investigate. What I found did not surprise me. The import and export of illegal goods were fairly common in ports. I once weeded out the import of cocaine from Columbia within my own company in Mexico in the nineties when I first took over, not long after I came back to the country of my birth from living abroad. A downside of living forever and having to keep it from the rest of the world. I also found the black market and bought the girls from Celeste’s pack while looking for her in Arizona.
Finding my way through the underground wasn’t something new to me. Maybe that should have been my first clue that I was going down the wrong path. Still, I took a modicum of solace in knowing I’d helped right wrongs where I could, keeping drugs off the streets, and saving the survivors of the massacre I was ultimately responsible for.
If the pattern I found in the books were correct, I would be able to see a container come into port tonight. I needed more information on what they were importing and how much. I needed to figure out what I was up against before I decided how to tackle this problem. I sent most of my warriors away after settling in San Diego. Without their help, this work required finesse. I didn’t want to make a mess of it without backup. I needed to cut off the head of the snake, not the tail.
I always liked to do the recon anyway. There were always details to be picked up. Nuances that let you know who was in charge, and who was not worth leaving alive.
I stopped thinking and focused on the task at hand when I saw men arrive in solid black SUVs and a long van with no license plates. I grabbed my camera and began taking pictures as people began bustling about.
One man jumped onto the crane and began to make his way to a docked ship that was supposed to be exporting textiles while the rest followed. They removed three unmarked containers with identical graffiti on the side. Two semis rode in and parked a little bit away from the openings of two containers. The wind was blowing downwind, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying between the shutter in my camera going a mile a minute and the howling of the wind. I would have to wait until they pulled out the goods to find out what they were trafficking.
They opened the first container, and clothes spilled out. A couple of men began scooping them out of the container in order to retrieve the real import. Once a path had been cleared, they began to remove boxes. Long and thin, squared. Rare black-market goods, if I were to guess, art pieces from the delicate way they were being handled, but these weren’t loaded into the semis. They were loaded onto the van carefully, confirming that they were valuable. At least it wasn’t people. I could investigate with more patience when lives were not hanging in the balance.
A small man with a clipboard ticked off each item as it was pulled out and once that container was empty, they loaded it back into the ship. They moved on to the next container. They backed one of the semis closer to the second container, and as they began removing the clothing that surrounded their contraband, I heard strange sounds. I raised an eyebrow, camera at the ready. I could only imagine the noise level down there if I could hear it with these winds carrying most of it away from me. Whatever was in there was alive, but it wasn’t human.
One of the men went in with chains, while another followed with a long Taser. I saw them wheel out a cage holding a white tiger inside. The scope of their operation was becoming clear, and it was larger than I expected.
Usually, rare goods were a niche trade. Rare art, animals, or weapons. Rarely did you see an operation that dealt with more than one type of black market goods. It required serious connections and muscle to be this broad and not get caught. That meant there was serious money and power behind these traffickers, and this operation wasn’t going to be easy to dismantle. I smiled as I took picture after picture of endangered animals being brought out. I was going to enjoy this hunt, and I might even reach out to a few of my old warriors to see if they were interested in joining.
The tiny human with the clipboard finally saw the last item in the container removed and motioned for them to put it back onto the ship. The semi left, leaving only one container and one truck left. I leaned a little too far forward in anticipation. After giving up my misguided quest for revenge, I could admit that I found myself bored without anything to do.
The third container opened, the clothes removed, and a single cage was wheeled out. I was not expecting to see a giant, beautiful white wolf wheeled out, and I almost dropped my camera in shock. That was not a wolf. It was most definitely a werewolf. A white werewolf.
Was this why I was here? Did Selene want me to save this rare werewolf? Pure white werewolves were almost unheard of. They were the stuff of legend these days, though more commonly seen almost a thousand years ago. The white wolf was said to have special healing qualities and occasionally other unknown abilities. I wondered briefly if these people, who appeared to be human, knew what they held in their hands.
I felt the wind swirl around me as I watched the wolf look up at the moon. Her white coat was glowing as it reflected the blue from the ocean waters and the moon. It tilted its head, and after a moment, it cried out the most sorrowful and anguished howl I had ever heard. It constricted my heart, and I was surprised to feel a tear falling down my cheek.
The semi left, and I left my hiding spot and returned to my house. As I downloaded the shots and video I took tonight, I walked out to my balcony. I looked up as rays of the full moon shone down from behind the clouds.
I won’t let you down, sister,I vowed.
