The Landing Page

Here is the reworked landing page for Sabriya's Hope since marketing is half the creative journey. Click the image to visit the site for the full interactive experience... such as it is.

The Books Are In - The Serialization Ends

 

A novel of courage, redemption, and the fight for innocent lives, Sabriya's Hope online serialization of the first 33 chapters, as promised, comes to an end as the story approaches Act 3.  Fourteen more chapters continue the tale toward its exciting conclusion in the full book. 

Signed copies of the novel are available from Nineveh's Crossing at a discount, as well as from Amazon & Kindle, both ebooks, and paperbacks. All those links are here. 

Additionally, an Afterword discusses the research into human trafficking that went into writing Sabriya's Hope, and the difficult questions that writers face when trying to communicate a redemptive story of a very tragic worldwide situation. Sabriya's Hope was written to give hope where there is often little, and to remind all of us that one person, even a victim, can bring hope to many.

Fictional stories about human trafficking run into a paradox between the verisimilitude of reality and the reader's desire to read a story with a redemptive ending that conveys moral truth. That's the goal of our Catholic Edge novels; Sabriya's Hope is the third. 

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Chapter 33 - Arrest

 Thursday, August 15, 2024—7:55 PM

It was a humid night, and darkness, with help from an overcast sky, came like a falcon descending on its prey. Not familiar with the road, nor where it led, Landon guided her away from the two police cars that had entered from the main road behind her. With the lights of her SEC off, she drove carefully, trying to miss the ruts and voids in the tightly packed dirt road. She had purposely left behind Silas’s cell phone so that neither Sapptoso nor his associates could track her by pinging the phone. Although tracking her was a foregone conclusion, since those chasing her always appeared to know her location. 

Her heart was raging, having discovered the five drugged children in the panel truck but not Jia Kun. In another time or place, one of those kids could have been her daughter, who would now be in her protective arms. But that wasn’t the case. Her muscles were tight as she contemplated how close she had come to fulfilling her mission, only for it to have apparently failed … so far. And now her busy mind could not quell the wild thoughts of what she might discover over the next few hours. She might never see Jia Kun again, or she might see her daughter badly beaten and bloody, or discover that she’s been enslaved on a Russian trawler to a sex-crazed Russian oligarch. What a horrible mother she had been. And then there were the incessant police, whom hopefully she had just lost in the darkness behind her.

“Landon? … Copy?”

There was no answer. Yet, another vexation. What if she lost contact with the Embassy? Could she really go this alone, with no backup, blinded by the dark and mystery? 

“SEC One. Over.” Landon finally answered.

“Landon, I’m nervous about how long it’s going to take to get to Dr. Funzini’s.”

“I did talk with him and explained your situation. He will meet you at his lab as you requested. But why this Funzini? He’s in the heart of the city, and you were right, the city’s congested.”

Sabriya tried to explain. “The blood’s gone out of Jia Kun’s trail, and there’s a chance Funzini can give me a transfusion. Aside from the sex trade, of which there are many tendrils, Anya, unnerved me by confirming that Sapptoso is an agent not just for brothels, but also for organ harvesting out of the country. For that, he needs an operating room and immunology support, which means a testing lab. Funzini was at the Queen’s banquet and wanted to help. He runs a large medical laboratory. If his lab offers immunological testing for organ matching … the legal kind, he might be able to match incoming lab requests to a Mannu address, which could pinpoint Sapp’s operation. Find me a fast way to his lab, and then on to Mannu district.”

Landon didn’t respond for several moments, which only raised Sabriya’s tension. But when he did: “Sabriya, you may not have a choice of how to get there, at least not an unfettered one. Vinnie just handed me an APB telex from Meijing police. The police behind you are not going to be a problem. Instead, the greater metropolitan police are setting up a perimeter with 10-40 assets, along the northern perimeter of the city, right where you’re headed. They’re looking for, quote, ‘a female on a silent cycle in tactical gear.’ The 10-40 code means there won’t be any visual clues like sirens or flashing lights to warn you of their approach. They’ll be upon you before you know it … no alerts that they’re present.”

“Too bad for me. Guess I should have packed a ballroom gown and heels as a disguise.”

Minutes later, following Landon’s directions, Sabriya crossed the first major intersection on the northern edge of Meijing. The sheer volume of traffic and pedestrians tempted Sabriya to remove her helmet for greater peripheral vision and, in the process, to discard the face shield’s progressive darkening, which protected her eyes from the sun as it rose. But night was falling, and that reminded her of the helmet’s thermal scanning mode, which she toggled on with an obscure button, probably added to the SEC’s instrument cluster as an afterthought. Instantly, anything with a modicum of heat was outlined in her visor with thin green lines, while retaining the object’s natural light signature. The thermal imaging sub-system didn’t allow her to see in the dark, but it did allow her to distinctly make out objects with any level of warmth, such as cars, human beings, and even fresh animal fecal deposits. The enhanced visuals gave her a sense of invincibility, at which she smiled but quickly shook off the delusion.

Two late-model BMW sedans idled on a side street by the curb, their engine and exhaust heat signatures plainly visible. As she passed, the sedans pulled into traffic behind her and followed uncomfortably close. They were not the police.

“Landon, two black BMWs just pulled out and are following me extremely close. I can’t see in their smoked windows … wait, now a motorcycle like the one that followed us to Minu Cun, a Suzuki, just did a U-turn and fell in behind the two cars.”

Paranoia set in like the green lines on her visor, to say nothing of how her arms, abdominals, and legs quickly tightened in readiness.

To lose the Beamers, she wanted to accelerate, but two lanes of dense traffic and a row of gigantic concrete tree pots housing red Japanese maples down the middle of the boulevard restricted her options. In an emergency, there were the sidewalks, but they were packed with people and carts carrying packages. Cars, buses, trucks, scooters, and bicycles were everywhere, weaving in and out. As she dodged one vehicular or pedestrian, another cut her off. When signal lights halted all motorized traffic at an intersection, a tsunami of pedestrians, delivery bikes, and tricycles deluged the streets from every direction. 

Then, it started to happen. The sedans on her tail found opportunities to ram her cycle from behind, trying to knock her off the road, although there was no “off-road” margin on which to force her. Each time she thought she found an opening, it closed. Finally, with a hard bump from the Beamer behind her, she shifted her weight so as not to fall, squeezed the throttle, and slipped through a narrow corridor between lanes and vehicles, her right and left rearview mirrors rubbing like insect feelers caressing the cars or trucks on either side. No sooner had she exited the corridor than a bus pulled in front of her, and diesel exhaust filled her helmet. She swerved onto the shoulder for cleaner air, only to be stopped abruptly by a food vendor on a tricycle ringing its bell. The bus moved ahead a little and passed a parked bus, allowing Sabriya to drop into another between-lane corridor and accelerate, her mirrors ricocheting again off the sides of the buses, already in need of new paint. She had managed to lose the broad Beamers, but the Suzuki motorcycle followed her through the gauntlet. 

Enough was enough. “Landon, hope you can follow me.” She caught a break in the traffic and dashed sharply to the right into Meijing’s Old Town’s narrow streets, barely wide enough for modern cars and mostly frequented by bicycles and by small motorcycles. There were low-hanging electrical wires and laundry lines overhead, just high enough to duck under. Neon signs jutted out from entrances, parked bikes, and trash thrown into the street created an obstacle course. Was she being followed? She was pretty sure she was, though her rearview mirrors were twisted, and she dared not turn so far around to look behind. She had turned on her headlights and was distressed that her taillights were on as well, but she needed to see where she was going. Ducking under a hanging rug, her mirror scraped against a brick wall, and she nearly came to a stop to kick a plastic crate out of the way. 

She saw it, the motorcycle was not far behind, though it was not trying to engage in such close quarters. Trying to gain separation, Sabriya accelerated. But at the same instant, a woman with a large basket of fresh produce entered the street. Sabriya quickly zigzagged and missed the old lady, but the bike’s passing presence scared the grandmother to the point of toppling the produce onto the street. Sabriya felt bad, but noticed that the woman and the basket had delayed the cycle behind her. Now if the guy would only stop to help the old lady. No? Well, a few seconds gained.

The narrow old-town street emptied out into an open-air Night Bazaar with brightly lit stalls featuring local foods, arts and crafts, and handmade goods. Couples walked hand in hand, lovers embraced, children played hide-’n-seek, and a meandering band of street musicians playing bamboo drums, finger cymbals, a lute, and a loud double-reed Chinese oboe or suona, drifted among the shoppers and stalls. Oh, how nice it would be to visit this with David some evening … but not tonight … I’m busy. 

Trying to avoid the more leisurely and refined contributions to culture, she raced through the Bazaar, zigzagging awry, hoping to gain ground and lose her devoted follower. But just as she accelerated around a stall, she zagged through a shallow pool of water, and her SEC skidded nearly out of control and slammed against a light pole, bruising her thigh. Quickly regaining control, she kept going, dodging a food cart, and seeing a dark area on the horizon ahead, only to hear the screaming of adults and children and a crash of chaos behind her. A quick look revealed her pursuer sliding sideways on the ground, destroying a stall of ceramic pottery and sending the stall keeper into a rage, who descended on the cyclist with a large shard of broken ceramic, taking him out of the chase and perhaps to a hospital. 

Anxious to disappear, Sabriya turned toward that dark area on the horizon to find a ramp down into an underground parking structure, hopefully with an exit on the other side. What normally would echo with the sounds of a motorcycle’s exposed engine, exhaust, the high whine of RPMs, and the rapid expansion of exhaust gases that created a motorcycle’s sharp, boisterous sound … the SEC was silent except for the squeal of tires as Sabriya rounded corners searching for the opposite exit. The concrete pillars, low ceilings of hard concrete beams, and narrow passageways restricted by hard concrete walls gave her pause, and having descended into the darkness, she now had to find a way up and out. To her right, a spiral ramp turned upwards. Turning sharply toward it, her rear tire slipped outward and clipped a pillar; her lights flickered on and off, but up she went in a tight spiral, not knowing what disaster would greet her at the top. 

Turning off the ramp, out of the structure, and onto an access road—there was only one way—she headed for an automatic security gate that was closing. Ducking low, she slipped under it and out into a warehouse district with only one way back to the city through a labyrinth of large brick buildings, loading docks, and parked semi-trailers. Slowing to gain her bearings and reconnect with Landon, the welcome calm and quiet was shattered when two police cruisers rushed at her from around a corner, their lights flashing and blocking her exit. She stopped dead in the patrol cars’ headlights, blinding her. Two police jumped out of the patrol cars and stood behind their passenger doors, their service weapons drawn and aimed directly at her, while a loudspeaker barked, “Get off the cycle, remove your helmet, and put your hand in the air. NOW!” 

Years of Wing Chun conditioning taught her to channel the fear that rose at times like this into rational thought and control. Assessing a fight-or-flight response came naturally to her, but right now neither was an option. She glanced to her right and left for flight options. To her left, between two buildings, there was a narrow sidewalk through which her SEC could easily pass, but not the patrol cars. She could also escape around the rear end of each car—there was room—or she could return through the parking structure. But she was pretty sure that her SEC was not nearly as fast as even the poorly aimed bullets from those guns. On the fight side of the equation, she was packing, but she was not so dumb, nor did she feel the necessity to outshoot a squad of police who had beaten her to the draw. “Landon, you can’t see what I see, but you do know where I am.”

“What do you see, Sabriya?”

“You can track me without the helmet, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m cornered by two Meijing police squad cars, and at least that many drawn weapons. Helmet’s coming off. Talk to you on the other side, wherever that is. Tell David.” 

Sabriya appeared calm and collected as if being cornered by a couple of guns backed by perhaps trigger-happy cadets at close range was a regular occurrence. A close look indicated that the Glock 17-toting cadets were shaking. 

Sabriya was surprised by how calm and relaxed she was. Her heart was steady, although beating a bit faster than normal.

She smiled innocently at the two young men shaking their pistols at her, knowing she had not broken any laws and that her actions over the past few hours were justified, at least in self-defense, although proving that might take some time.

What kept her mind swirling was how she would rescue Jia Kun from a jail cell. These cops were not going to believe she was tracking down human traffickers and trying to rescue a secret daughter, let alone that she was the wife of the British ambassador, although he might come and bail her out if she promised not to buck his authority. She may have appeared calm on the outside, but inside, she was paddling like a duck trying to avoid the large mouth of a hungry Goonch catfish. Options poured through her mind, but none made sense. She was without recourse. Or was she—St. Michael, deliver me from evil.

There was not much she could do without risking her life, her reputation with the Palace, or destroying David’s career, if she hadn’t already done that. The thought of her failure, not just of losing her daughter, but of obliterating the career of the most wonderful man she had ever met, was eating away at her insides, and in spite of her efforts at control, tears collected in her eyes. It was not in her nature to do whatever men demanded. Oh, it was part of her past, but not of her present, which was evident in the current predicament. Had she gone along with David’s demands, she would not have been confronted with the demands of these men, men with guns. 

Chapter 32 - Contact

 Thursday, August 15, 2024—7:40 PM

Sabriya froze, instantly recognizing the voice. Her gut spasmed; shallow breaths came instinctively, speechless and trembling. Get a hold of yourself, Girl. He can’t hurt you just yet. Disguise your voice, an old woman. Tell the truth … mostly.

“Hello?!” Sabriya replied with a high-pitched, quavering, hesitant voice. “There’s been an accident … I came upon … stopped my bicycle … to help, but I can’t … I’m too old … ’dare two men … unconscious … don’t think der’s dead.”

“DAMN! Who are you? How’d you get this number?”

“I’m calling on a phone … found in the da truck … the most recent number ... ‘dare also girls and boy in the back ... d’are distressed … need a doctor. Might you come and help? How far away you?”

There was a pause, and loud, angry, muffled talking in the background that Sabriya could not understand.

The man’s voice came back more rash, more demanding. “We can be there soon as we can tidy up a delivery in Mannu.”

Acting dumb, “Where exactly that? Are you a long way?” 

“Never mind where I am, tell me where you are.”

Sabriya told the man as best she could, describing the landmarks off the main road to Red Coast and how far down the rural route marked with a sign that read G351. Before Sabriya could ask how long it would take for him to get to the “accident,” the man disconnected.

Working as fast as she could under the city’s reflected light off the low-lying clouds, Sabriya carried and dragged the five children through the woods and brush by different obscure routes to camouflage her path. 

Jogging back to her SEC, she asked Landon to locate Dr. Lu Funzini, director of the Meijing Medical Laboratory, and ask if she could meet him at his lab later this evening. Landon confirmed he would try, and in the same breath, reminded Sabriya of the APB out for a vigilante on a cycle. “Try to lower your profile. You’ve now got the real police looking for you.”

“I’ll do my best. In the meantime, can you trace a telephone number and find out the billing address?” She gave him the memorized number. “It’s the phone number of the man in charge of this particular trafficked cargo. I don’t know if it’s the same person who’s behind capturing Jia Kun and Gely, but it’s a person I know all too well.”

“You know him? Who is it?”

“Sapptoso Wanti. He’s a trafficker … and he’s Jia Kun’s father—the man who controlled my past and from whom I fled years ago. He’s awfully dangerous. Given the chance, he’ll kill me or carve out my organs. Unfortunately, I was either a genius or the stupidest person on the planet. I told him where his truck is. You’ve got to get these kids out of here before he comes.”

“How far away is he?”

“I have not the … wait, he said he’s coming from the Mannu district. That’s south of Meijing, isn’t it?”

“Yes, let me plot it … .yeah, okay, he’s at least two hours away. I’ll get Hannah on the rescue. She can get there in less than an hour. What will you do?”

“Lu Funzini, I know where his office is. I’ll head there. He can help me locate Sapp, and perhaps Jia Kun.” To herself, she thought, “What have I gotten into? Oh, St. Michael, please help me and protect Jia Kun.” 

Sabriya mounted her SEC, moved it out of hiding onto the road, and began retracing her route. But no sooner had she started down the road than she saw two vehicles approaching from the main road. One with police emergency strobes going off like Chinese New Year fireworks. She was right; the police were the rats in Sapp’s pocket. She reversed direction, turned off her lights, and opened her encrypted radio channel. “Scorp. Scorp! Landon? Urgent.”

“Yes, SEC One.”

“Police are nearly upon the site of the truck. I was driving toward them, but I’ve reversed direction. The kids are where I pinned them. Direct me out of this mess.”

“Will do. I’ve got you on the map. You’ve got a couple of klicks before you need to turn south.”

“How did they know we were here? Could my one phone call on the truck driver’s cell have triggered my location?”

“Definitely! Cell towers triangulate location somewhat precisely. But, I don’t know how your nemesis would get that information … wait, this is the police?”

“What it looks like from here … flashing lights and … previously, a marked truck with a machine gun. It feels like they’re looking over my shoulder.”

“I don’t have a solution. Let’s get you out of there.”

“Right!”

As Sabriya raced away from the oncoming police, she forcibly suppressed her anger at hearing Sapptoso’s voice, albeit through a cell phone. But she could not suppress the memory of his perversion and anger that had led to this.

 

Flashback—October 2011
Meijing

Slamming the door open against the wall, he barged into her room and stood over her bed, demanding, “Where’s the rest of it?” 

“That’s all there was. He was poor,” she said, cowering behind a soiled sheet and blanket.

“Don’t lie to me. We had an agreement.”

“I didn’t agree to this.”

“You did! You started this.”

“You manipulated me, and I have nothing to show for it.”

“So you steal! That’s it?”

“How can I steal from myself?”

“Right, you can’t. You’re stealing from me.” He grabbed her arm, yanked her off the bed onto the floor, pulled apart the bed, shoving the thin mattress into the corner, looking for the money. He was convinced the trick had paid more than she had turned over.

Defiant, no tears, she yelled at him. “I’m telling you, I gave you all I had.” 

“Damn, you, bitch. I know you better than that.” He kicked her legs with his hard boot, creating yet another bruise to go with the others. 

She teared up, but refused to cry. The hatred was deep. 

He yanked out the drawers of her dresser, scattering the contents—camisoles, stockings, panties, bras, T-shirts, ribbons, and letters tied in bundles. But there was nothing. With a quick thrust of his arm, he wiped the top of the dresser clean—extra condoms, makeup, perfumes, barrettes, ugly-cute stuffed animals, all went flying, hitting walls, a cacophony as everything tumbled to the floor. Behind a curtain that cordoned off a dressing area, an iron pipe hung with cheap gowns, thin robes, negligees, and shoe boxes. He ripped down the curtain, flung everything on hangers into the air, and kicked the boxes of shoes she had neatly stacked on the floor. All ransacked … for nothing. 

While he was ravaging her belongings from a life of being ravaged, she dragged the mattress back onto the rattan frame and cowered cross-legged on the bed, holding a blanket over her naked body for what little protection it offered. Her face tight, her muscles taut, deeply creased jowls, eyes, cheeks, and mouth, hard set in scorn. Someday he’d pay. 

There would be no tricks tomorrow. Good. Her room, more than she, would have to recover—that was the unwritten rule. For three months, their twisted relationship had fallen further apart if that was possible. She had resisted his advances. Why he wanted her, a woman he visibly loathed, was a mystery. But to her, he was all she had. Her perverse attraction to the whoremonger repulsed and frightened her. She longed to leave. But there was no place to go. And yet, this was no place at all. 

Disputes over customers’ payments had been brewing for some time. There was a fixed rate for a half hour or an hour, and then there were extras, for which she was entitled to fifty percent. Of course, which extras and how much she collected were entirely her word against the departed tricks’. Sapptoso wasn’t privy to the in-room negotiations. What he wanted had little to do with what really happened. She knew that and, consequently, made up her own rules. 

She was convinced that Sapp’s devotion to his bronze god had perverted him, which, to her way of thinking, gave her permission to secrete away a perversion of her earnings that, to her way of thinking, his perversity had not earned. While she was willing to deprave herself and satisfy just about any man who requested her services, she considered it a depravity to give satisfaction to the man who convinced her of the need for degeneracy. From the beginning, she had never considered her descent into moral corruption anything but a necessity to expedite her ascent from it. 

So, when her cleaned-up boudoir was open for business again, she was repulsed when he entered and demanded her services with all the extras for free. It was the least she could do, he claimed, for him to allow her back within his graces. She refused … which he refused. But it wasn’t a stalemate. He was bigger and stronger … the very model of a modern major pimp … and he despised protection. 

There are Natural Law consequences for every action, and humans have no choice in the matter. Like all businesses, Sapptoso’s nascent brothel was subject to the supply-and-demand economic model. In due time, when Sabriya’s customers demanded a curvaceous maiden, all she could supply was a bloated pregnancy. When customers demanded seduction and congeniality, she had little choice but to supply what came naturally—irritability and hostility. If customers demanded she come to them smelling of lilacs and musk, there were times when she supplied her own seductive odor of vomit. When a customer demanded to kiss her velvety cheeks, all she could supply was acne. And often when a customer demanded a dance, her supply was down to a wobble and swoon. After weeks of complaints, when Sapptoso demanded infanticide, she threatened him with homicide.

Sapptoso finally caved and took Sabriya off the menu. In turn, her developing nurturing instincts found meaning in caring for the other girls who continued to work. To those who were homeless, she tried to give them a home by stealing for them more and better food and clothes, and to those who were emotionally imprisoned, she listened and intervened on their behalf with the man who manipulated them all and denied them freedom.

Late at night, alone in her room, Sabriya would lie on her bed, her eyes filled with tears, her heart summoned hope, her womb crammed with purpose, and her spirit overflowed with prayers for a child that could break the curse. 

Chapter 31 - Truck Abuse

Thursday, August 15, 2024—7:10 PM

The brown panel truck’s headlights lit up the empty road ahead, making her realize that her SEC and the truck were the only vehicles on this lightly traveled secondary road, and that her single-beam headlamp could easily be seen in the truck’s rear view mirrors and look suspicious. She slowed down to increase the distance between the two vehicles, hoping to reassure the driver that he was not being followed. 

The panel truck crossed a narrow bridge, after which the road slowly curved back east toward the coast and turned more rural with occasional curves that caused her to lose sight of her prey. The cat-and-mouse, slow-motion chase was now in a low-lying forest, with trees and brush on both sides. The road was isolated; no other vehicles appeared ahead or behind. She could not allow the driver to become suspicious that her single headlight beam was following him. She considered getting close enough to read off his vehicle tag to Landon for a vehicle search, although she wasn’t sure he could do that. If he contacted the police for a tag search, it might tip off the wrong party. As she debated that idea, she got close enough to the panel truck to read the tag number and discovered another complication. The tag was from Vietnam, not from Pellagore, meaning the Pellagorian police would be reluctant to make an international request without probable cause.

Then she saw something ahead in the truck’s headlight beam that forced a decision. She increased her speed, quickly passed the truck, and disappeared over the hill. A half mile down the road, she veered around a corner, taking note along the way of any potential turn-offs the truck might take behind her. If it did, she’d have to double back. Far enough ahead and out of sight, she pulled off the road and hid her SEC in the brush.

As the truck came around the corner, it came upon a drunken woman staggering in the middle of the road, her clothes askew, revealing more of her feminine attributes than David would approve. The woman staggered about and turned slowly, keeping her head down but her eyes on the approaching truck. Coming close to her, the truck stopped, its headlights brightly revealing the apparently inebriated woman, her face dirty and her long black hair disarrayed.

Two men descended from the truck’s cab and came for the woman. At first, she couldn’t see their faces for the strong backlight of the truck’s headlamps. But she knew they could see her friendly, unsteady gait and lax appearance. When they got close enough, she caught the lustful gleam in their eyes and smiled in reply. The driver was big, almost more around than tall, perhaps Chinese; the wiry, shorter sidekick was perhaps Vietnamese. They smirked at each other, willing to take a chance, not believing their luck.

The woman drunkenly flirted and teased, beckoning them on, even as she stumbled backward over her own boots. Frightened by her instability, she squiggled and giggled at her own clumsiness.

The men laughed and hurried to her side, ostentatiously to help the poor woman from falling and hurting herself, there in the middle of the road, at night, all alone.

Little did they know ...

The skinny man came on to Sabriya first, offering to steady her as she regained her footing. His left hand took her right, pulled her close, and led her in a stumbling, erratic, roundabout waltz while she slurred a discordant but apparently happy tune from her lips.

The fat man, however, was not having anything to do with his partner’s pathetic romantic ritual. Waddling into the fray, he grabbed the outstretched arm of the skinny man and yanked the runt out of competition. Without losing a beat, he tugged the drunken woman into a tight embrace, lowered his face to hers, and tried to kiss her. Except the vast protrusion of his mid-section obstructed the attempted canoodle. That was fine by Sabriya—the man’s rancid breath and pustule-face were sufficient triggers.

Still in the fat man’s grip, Sabriya morphed, came out of her self-imposed stupor, and sharply lifted her right knee, finding the oversized man’s remarkably undersized sack of gonads, brutally crushing them. Instantly, Tubby released his grip, fell onto the roadbed, bounced like an overinflated beach ball, and, groaning voraciously, rolled into the drainage ditch and the dark out of the truck’s headlights. Meanwhile, skinny ran to the truck.

Sabriya pursued the beach ball. As the man tightly crossed his legs bemoaning his condition, she tied the laces of his boots together, removed his custom-length belt, and with it cinched his elbows together behind his back, threading the belt through the laces of his boots, securing the man alive but immobile. As a final touch, she lifted the tail of his shirt and stuffed it into his mouth, preventing him from screaming or calling for help once he stopped sounding like a pig in labor.

The skinny man was of a different caliber. Evidently, the pinnacle shape of his head made him the gang’s ballistics expert. While Sabriya was busy tending to Fatso in the ditch, Skinny had retreated to the truck and returned with a Russian-inspired submachine gun (a PP-19 Bizon), with a 55-round 9mm magazine protruding from the rear of the barrel as a second handhold.

When Sabriya first saw Skinny, he was on the dance floor spinning aimlessly, pointing the submachine gun in a wide arc, searching for something or someone to shoot. He looked like a desperate, wannabe gangster with a baby submachine gun. Sabriya hid in the shadows behind the fat man’s bulk out of the truck’s headlights, while the musketeer was night-blinded by them.

Annoyed at a loss of targets, the gunslinger fired off a couple of rounds into the air, trying to flush his prey into the open. Instead, Sabriya used the cover of the gun’s barrage to stay low and scamper through the brush to the back of the truck, behind the bright lights. If Skinny turned to face her, he’d be blinded by the headlights. Although the truck’s motor created some background noise, Skinny heard his heavyset partner moaning some meters away into the dark. But just where the stilted gunman could not tell. With his back to the truck, he stared into the night, shielding his eyes, straining and yelling, “Silas, where you at?”

Grunts and thrashes emanated from the ditch.

But before Skinny could discern just where Silas had rolled off to, he heard the revving of the truck’s engine and the spinning of its tires. He turned, stepped aside, raised the submachine gun, and tried in vain to thread his finger into the trigger guard. But it was too late. The truck turned toward him, ran him down, and knocked the gun away. The tires crushed his lower legs, his blood pressure dropped, and he fell unconscious.

Sabriya jumped from the truck’s cab, used the man’s belt to again tie his elbows behind his back, gagged his mouth with his own shirt, and dragged him to the opposite draining ditch from his obese partner.

For Sabriya, her heart and blood ran fast, for while these two men first needed to be incapacitated, her soul was in the back of the truck where she expected to find her daughter ... alive ... and safe.

With the truck turned off and the keys out of the ignition, Sabriya rushed to the back of the van and unlocked the doors. Inside, she found five drugged young teens, four girls and a boy, all 12 to 15 years of age. Sabriya’s heart raced, her eyes searched frantically, then deep breaths and a furrowed brow—Jia was not here. Obviously, this was valuable and fragile cargo, but not the right one. Where’s Jia?

Exiting the truck, she kept a lookout, triggered the encrypted radio link on her tactical earplugs, and called in. “Landon? Have you been tracking me?”

“Sure have. We have your location. David and Jack are here. What’s going on?”

“I found the van, ambushed the drivers. They’re alive but tied up. In the panel truck are five teens, four girls, and one boy. We need to get them someplace safe. They’re drugged, out of it, can’t take any of them.

“We can call the local police ...”

“We’ve been through that,” she interrupted. “Don’t. Have Hannah and Anya come here in the car, get these poor kids.”

“Sabriya, this is Jack. It may be too late for that. We’ve been monitoring the police bands. For some reason, they’re onto you and know your approximate location. You need to get out of there.”

“Not without these kids, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Hide them nearby,” said David. To Landon, he said, “Can we track where she hides them?”

“Sabriya, this is Jack. Take the kids as far as you can into the bush, a clearing, but away from the truck. Are they unconscious or nearly so?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Find a place and when they’re all together, walk in a big circle around them. We can track that and find them. We have maps of the area. It looks like there is another secondary road about two-tenths of a klick west of you. Can you take them in that direction?”

“I can try.”
“Time is the essence. Hurry.”
But Sabriya had another idea. In the truck’s cab she

found a cipher radio, a cell phone, and a road map folded as if it were being used to guide the truck en route. She checked the cell phone’s recent calls, memorizing the last number, and called it.

A gruff man answered, “Silas. What?”

Chapter 30 - Rushing

Thursday, August 15, 2024—6:24 PM 

Rushing toward Red Coast Harbor on the main road, Sabriya slowed her SEC as she passed through villages, side streets, and turn-offs. It was overcast, and twilight had descended. The sun would set in half an hour, so it would soon be totally dark. She looked carefully for an old brown panel truck with blacked-out rear windows. Time was of the essence; she had to find the truck before the truck found the coast, and hopefully before it got dark.

Sabriya found it maddening and a sham that the miscreants believed violence led to peace. But then she had been part of the corruption, and only through violence had she escaped to find peace. She was thinking not only of the North District Police but also of Dr. Shin, the Pohan pharmacist, and the cowardly stall holders at the Sapae-Nok market. 

Her mind wandered. Were there elements of corruption at the Embassy and at the Palace? The latter might explain the Queen’s sudden change in attitude when Sabriya had mentioned Míwú Cūn as the location of her daughter’s abduction. Could she trust the Pellagorian Army to help find Jia Kun? If she didn’t trust the police, would the army be much better … or much worse? 

She could use armed help at this point, particularly with the coming night. But how could she, or any of her Embassy team, discern a good cop from a bad cop, or a good soldier from a corrupt one? There was no time to investigate. She could trust herself, but she doubted she was better off on her own. Leaving the safe house and mounting her SEC, she was troubled by the fact that no help was coming.

David was suddenly in her head, “SEC One. Copy?”

“Copy, David.”

“If I can be so bold as to call you ‘dear,’ the real police are now looking for you on a real All Points Bulletin, which now includes a more desperate plea to find the silent motorcycle and its rider that was involved with the explosion of a police vehicle near Pohan which killed three of Pohan’s finest, or so the APB implies. 

Sabriya’s brain was busy navigating the darkening road and remembering what exactly had happened near Yung Fa Ho, where the explosion was her fault, and curious why she could be blamed for the deaths in Pohan that were surely the fault of the police, or whoever was driving the Hilux. 

“I’m on the road.”

“Yes, we see where you are.”

“So, why are you telling me this? It’s getting dark. I need backup.”

“It’s not coming, unless it’s coming for you.”

She said nothing, glancing at her battery levels. Still good, but for how long?

“Sabriya, come back to the Embassy. Let the police find the truck and the girls.”

“Are you serious? Let the police? David, the police just tried to kill me. They’ve been bought off by the thugs who kidnapped my daughter. The police and perhaps the army, too, are trafficking our children.”

Now it was David’s turn to say nothing.

“Landon?” Sabriya called out.

“Yes, Sabriya, this is Landon.”

“Tell David I love him, and not to wait up for me. Gotta go.” 

Sabriya toggled off the encrypted radio channel. She was tempted to turn off the location tracking and biometrics, but she didn’t know how, and, thinking twice, decided letting them track her wasn’t a bad idea. 

Just as her mind cleared of such thoughts, a large cargo truck came barreling down on her and refused to get out of the way of the single lane they both shared—such were the single-lane highways of Pellagore. 

Just as night was about to fall, she saw it. Ahead of her was an old, brown panel truck with the rear windows backed out. Anya’s description was accurate, down to the bent right bumper. After following it for a few miles, the truck’s brake lights came on, it slowed down, and it turned off the main road onto a side road, turning south away from the coast. She followed it at a distance, now trying to think how to stop the truck and overpower the driver and any accomplices. Her heart beat rapidly, and her nerves tensed, but mentally her excitement grew.

Meanwhile, in his Mannu fortress, a disgruntled Sapptoso Wanti fretted about the woman on the bike, whom he was sure was Sabriya Kensington. He wanted her dead to avenge her treachery and duplicity. Taking her daughter was the least he could do, but taking her life would make them even. 

How she emerged as the wife of the distasteful British ambassador bewildered him. He could not understand how the uptight, prudish Englishman could marry a whore. It was unfathomable. But then the British were a contradictory breed—all law and order, and proper on one hand, and malevolent colonizers on the other. He could never understand how they could so easily take moral high ground while simultaneously bombarding China’s coastal ports until China agreed to legalize the opium trade, a deadly narcotic if there ever was one. Sapptoso was against recreational drugs, unless they aided his own trade by drugging useless humans for pleasure and profit. Sapp’s acquaintances challenged his inconsistency until he arranged for said acquaintances to take up residence in an ocean trench. 

Aside from sending warships to destroy Chinese cities, what did the British do with problems like Sabriya that just wouldn’t go away? Executing them, or chopping off their heads, was one thing, but how did they persuade the remaining populace to fall in line with the monarchy’s decrees? They were obviously successful. 

Sapptoso wasn’t a reader by any measure, and he certainly wasn’t a history buff. But curiosity, aside from killing the cat, was hard to kill when it came to a catty nuisance. Rummaging through his nearly forgotten belongings, he found what he hoped would give him an answer, a textbook on world history, written by an American, where he found this:

From the 14th through the 18th century, British Kings and Queens kept their populace in check through a variety of capital punishments, the most effective of which was hanging, drawing, and quartering ... It was a sexist practice reserved only for the male species. Women were burned at the stake.

For all his brutality, even Sapptoso was stunned by such a description and astonished that the prim and proper English could descend to such cruelty. But he had to admit, drawing, quartering, and hanging the parts in public was effective. For centuries, English monarchs held a firm grip on their subjects and extended that rule to most of the known world. 

After a few minutes of reflection, Sapptoso realized that killing a man for treason by being hanged, drawn, and quartered was similar to his own organ harvesting process, although his process was more humane since he anesthetized the victim with Noxydrine, a potent and often lethal sedative, before cutting them open. Considering his revenge plans for Sabriya, he could not follow the English practice in one respect—burning a woman alive was barbarous for such a civilized gentleman as himself.

Chapter 29 - Cease

Thursday, August 15, 2024—5:55 PM

Landon answered the Embassy’s secure phone, “Scorp. Major Landon.”

“Major, this is Sabriya with Hannah on speaker. I’m calling to speak with my distressed spouse. But I have a question for you first.”

“Yes, he’s upset. What’s your question?”

“I assume that David is intimately aware of my activities and whereabouts through you and our SEC links. But this demand that I cease and return feels like it’s coming from outside the Embassy. Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right. Let me find the message.”

A good minute elapsed while Landon dug through the system, which only increased Sabriya’s anxiety. She had not wanted to take the time to bring Anya to the safe house, for fear of the children’s trail going cold, and now this, which could completely derail her and guarantee her daughter’s grotesque demise.

“Here it is,” said Landon. “It was an email from the Pellagore Police, Northern District, marked URGENT about two hours ago. I’ll read it to you. 

‘August 15, 2024—1500 Hours 

‘British Embassy, Meijing, Pellagore

‘Sir David Kensington, HMS Ambassador

‘Dear Mr. Ambassador. 

‘It has come to our attention that an agent of your employ is unilaterally involved in unauthorized activity in Pellagore’s Northern District without the knowledge or approval of this agency. This activity has resulted in the death and injury of several Pellagore citizens. It is most alarming to us that the British Government would disregard Pellagore’s sovereignty in such a disrespectful and offensive manner. We demand that you cease this activity and present said person to our custody for immediate prosecution. Failure to do so before 1800 hours this day will result in the immediate loss of diplomatic immunity under the 1961 and 1963 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, or be prepared for a visit by our Armed Forces to enforce this demand.’

“It’s signed, Inspector General, Lieutenant Qiang, Northern District, Pellagore Police,” concluded Landon.

Sabriya’s first reaction was visceral. Yes, she was operating unilaterally, but also indirectly under the Queen’s auspices. She was chagrined that when visiting with the Queen yesterday afternoon, she had not informed the Queen and received some sort of official consent from the Palace to hunt down the traffickers and rescue her daughter. In retrospect, she thought she was acting as a citizen and the favorite daughter of Pellagore, not as an official of the British Government. But now Sabriya understood how she had stepped over a diplomatic boundary that was, at best, a mistake or worse, illegal, which explained David’s anger. Yet, something Landon had just said raised several red flags. 

“Landon, did you say this was an email?”

“Ah, yes.”

“From where, again?”

“Pellagore Police, Northern District.”

“Why would the Pellagore government, or some agency of it, communicate officially with the British Embassy by email, about something that affects their sovereignty or our responsibilities to respect that sovereignty? Every morning and throughout the day, David reviews official encrypted cables from various government entities regarding official business. I doubt he has ever received an email, especially if it is unsecured.”

Sabriya paused for Landon’s response, which didn’t come for a long time, as if the line had gone dead. Then … 

“You are astute, Mrs. Kensington, and I, of all people, am surprised that I didn’t ask that same question.”

“Landon, remember. I was viciously attacked by the so-called police in Pohan in a frightfully capricious manner. No talk, just sudden machine gun fire. Anya remarked that Dr. Shin was paying off the police. I’ve been thinking that our trafficking enemy has bought off the local police.”

“Let me check something, stand by.”

Landon was silent for only a few seconds. “Sabriya, you are absolutely right. I just opened the email’s header. It did not originate from any division of Pellagore’s police. While the visible email address appears to be from a Pellagore government agency, it’s a spoof. Looks like it was forwarded from a foreign country. I am embarrassed, Ma’am. You may have my job yet. Let me bring David up to date and on the line.”

A few moments later, David’s voice clicked onto the line. “Sabriya, Landon has explained to me that this startling email we received a bit ago is not real. But I am still properly unhappy with the reports that he has been giving me about your, ah, shall we say, bloody adventures. Sorry, but that’s what they’ve been. Even disregarding this email, I am facing a major international embarrassment in fulfilling my duty to amicably mitigate, harmonize bilateral agreements, and de-escalate conflicts between any group within Pellagore and the British government. That the parties offended are illegal traffickers doesn’t really matter, insofar as they can dramatically upset the citizenry and create a quite difficult situation between our two governments. 

“David, you’re saying the life of my daughter is of secondary importance to diplomacy?”

“When someone of a sovereign governmental agency is displaced by a guerrilla … who happens to be married to the ambassador of a foreign country …” 

“I’m also a Pellagorian citizen.”

“You’re not above the local law, Sabriya.”

“I’m trying to prevent the kidnapping, rape, and murder of an innocent girl, who happens to be my daughter.”

“And you may be starting a bl---- ... a war.”

“Now I’m starting a war?”

“Wars have been started for less. You don’t realize this must be included in my daily activity report to the Diplomatic Service, and they will bluntly ask why I’ve sent, or allowed, my Pellagorian-born wife to pursue a military-style mission reserved for Special Forces. Do you realize that will likely get me called back?”

“So, you go back to England, and what? I stay here? Am I now your disposable, protocol minister? Darling … if I can be so bold to address you so affectionately … it’s fake. It is NOT an official communique from Pellagore. It is from traffickers spoofing you, because I’m on their tail and fulfilling the Queen’s wishes, when her husband, the King, is entangled by the discovery of bureaucracy. I doubt you have any responsibility to pretend it’s real. What is real is that I’m closing in on the kidnappers, and they’re panicking.”

“Mister Kensington, this is Hannah. Would it be wise at this juncture to communicate with the Palace, via cable, and tell them what Sabriya is doing, in diplomatic, tactful language, without the blow-by-blow detail, endeavoring to gain their sympathetic approval, and if nothing else, to avoid them being blindsided by Sabriya’s efforts?”

“Yes,” said Sabriya. “The Queen and King may have realized THAT was my intent in visiting Her Majesty before I encountered this opposition.”

On this, David was quiet. He’s boxed into a corner, thought Sabriya.

“Hannah pushed her luck. “Jack and I can work on some language and deliver it to the Palace this afternoon, with your approval, of course. It can distance the British Embassy from their Pellagorian favorite daughter, who, as a private citizen, is boldly chasing down the Queen’s enemy.”

David was quiet again, though Sabriya was beginning to recognize his grunts and groans. 

“In other words, we’re asking forgiveness rather than asking permission,” smirked Hannah.

Finally, David spoke, “Landon, get Jack to my office immediately. Sabriya, this is an order: You are not to kill, maim, disfigure, insult, or harm anyone else until you find your daughter.”

“Can I kill them then?” 

David groaned. “Landon, get Jack up here.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Ambassador.”

Sabriya winked at Hannah and ran out the door. But it wasn’t a happy wink, or a gleeful departure. All she thought about was the brown panel truck bouncing along the rutted road to Red Coast Harbor, and what was inside.

The ride was jarring on the thin, worn mattresses; the light was dim as it poured through the opening to the cab, and the sound of men grumbling was foggy and incomprehensible. Jia Kun lay on her side, still in her school clothes, unable to move her legs or arms, and too disoriented to raise her head. Next to her on similar mattresses were several other children about her age, two boys and three girls. Up front, behind the partitions, two men sat in seats, mumbling and squabbling as the van bounced down a road.