People Trafficker (25 page)

“Then fasten your coat up and let’s go before they waken.”

She got up and fastened her coat. They moved out from the camp fast and quiet, not allowing her to take her backpack. After fifteen minutes of hard walking they stopped and Stewart came up to her.

“The coat, give it me.”

She took her coat off and he checked her pockets. Then he checked her body, removing her belt and throwing it to the ground. “Just in case you have anything you can use as a weapon, Karen,” he said before handing her coat back.

Karen said nothing; again a man hadn’t checked her that carefully, preferring to rub his hands over her breasts and bottom. While all the time her ankle knife remained unnoticed but absolutely deadly in the right hands.

It was another four hours before they arrived at a road. Stewart had called on his mobile telephone around half an hour before and already a white van was parked waiting for them. A man climbed out when he saw them coming. He walked over, looked at Karen then grinned.

“This is good, very good,” he said, at the same time removing two plastic tie wraps from his pocket. “Take her coat off and tie her hands behind her back with these,” he continued, handing the ties to Stewart. “Then put her in the back of the van.”

Soon Karen was sitting on the floor in the back of the van. “Can I have my coat back, I’m cold?” she asked before they shut the door. Stewart threw it in over her and then slammed the door.

“I’ll be off then, a car’s on its way for you three,” Asham said.

“Where’s our money?” Stewart asked.

“Oh! Yes, I nearly forgot, one minute,” Asham replied, running to the driver’s side of the van.

The men stood in a group; two were already lighting cigarettes when Asham suddenly came round the far side of the van, a huge grin on his face. He was holding a similar assault rifle as the men. Seconds later it came to life as he sprayed them with a full magazine of bullets. They had no chance and were dead before they hit the ground. He walked over to them, kicking each one, then satisfied they were dead he sauntered back to the van, threw the gun into the passenger well and climbed in, before starting the engine.

Karen sat quietly until the vehicle moved off; she’d already formed a plan and was hoping no one was going to join her in the back. When she’d heard the gunfire and although she couldn’t see what had happened, she’d suspected the driver of the van had killed the men dressed as soldiers. Now, hoping she was right, and it was just her and the driver, she’d every intention of escaping long before he arrived at their destination.

The back of the van was only lit by a very small skylight just above the back doors, but once she’d got used to the gloom it was enough for her to see by. She shuffled around and ended up kneeling down with her boots hard against the van side. Leaning back she was able to pull one trouser leg up, exposing the knife in its sheaf. Gripping the knife in one hand she pulled it out of the sheaf before twisting the blade around in-between her wrists. Now it was a simple matter of applying pressure on the nylon tie wraps with the sharp blade to cut through. She rubbed her hands to regain circulation and replaced the knife in its sheaf. Then she put on the big coat and her gloves, still stuffed inside a pocket where she left them when she’d taken her coat off at the van. The back door of the van was of a modern design and had an inner handle. Hoping it wasn’t locked from outside, Karen pulled the handle down. It wasn’t and the door swung open. They were still on the moor road and she crouched holding the door, waiting for the van to slow sufficiently that she could jump out without injuring herself. The opportunity soon came at a particularly hard right bend. Karen jumped, rolling over and over on the road. Then she was up and ran onto the moor, slowing down only because of short bracken. After a good ten minutes of running she stopped, at the same time holding her stomach and bending nearly double with a stitch. She looked around and saw a small culvert with water running at the bottom. Not hesitating she jumped down, crouching low, with just her head looking over in the direction she’d come. There were no signs of life, it would seem either the driver didn’t know she’d escaped, or hadn’t any idea at what point she’d jumped out.

However, Karen was not complacent, she was all too aware that he had a gun, and if she returned to the road for a lift, or help, she risked other people’s lives, if he came back and found them with her.

With no map, no communication or food she knew she must still move on. Deciding to now keep parallel with the road she climbed out from the ditch and began to walk. The terrain was up and down, sometimes she could see the road far in the distance, other times she’d not see it at all. The moor was particularly boggy, hard going and more than once she fell flat on her face trying to drag her boots from the soft slurpy bog that would grip her foot until the last moment and then suddenly release, sending her flying. She decided this must be the beginning of the wetlands everyone talked about as it was so hard going. The mud was a mixture of black sludge and rotting vegetation. Karen was filthy and unrecognisable. After forty minutes more walking and convinced now she had gone far enough that the driver could not follow with the way he was dressed, she found a relatively dry spot and settled down to rest. However, it worried her about where the soldiers, who’d taken her initially, had come from. Did the driver of the van, have access to others, if so would he send more soldiers to look for her? Then what of the two soldiers with her, would they realise something was wrong and call the camp? Whatever happened she’d have a dilemma, not knowing who to trust. With that in mind, she decided to do as she had done in the Lebanon. That was to treat everyone as the enemy and make her own way back to the camp, and hopefully safety.

However, Karen felt so cold; in fact she’d begun to shake uncontrollably. Even the clothes inside her big trench coat were wet, and she felt very down. In her mind she’d failed the test they’d set her, lost her soldiers, although perhaps saved their lives, and now her own life was in the balance, unless she could find her way back. She needed sleep, if only for an hour, but if they were out looking for her, they would almost certainly use imaging equipment. Imaging and portable cameras were now part of any search and in the right hands a camera was able to locate a person by the heat they gave off, similar to what police helicopters used when they were chasing criminals. If she didn’t hide herself from such an instrument, and if the man from the van had brought others in, she’d have little chance of staying undetected. She pulled her wet coat up tight around her body, with the collar high and her baseball cap down hard on her head, so not even the tiniest bit of her skin was exposed. Happy she’d done her best to hide her heat signature, she began to close her eyes and was soon drifting into sleep.

In the distance a helicopter was following a grid search pattern. Inside Canadian Commandos, already on a training exercise, had been brought in to help with a search of the moor. They were sat on the floor of the helicopter with its open sides allowing their feet to rest on the skids. All had binoculars studying the terrain.

Sitting alongside the pilot a soldier was watching a monitor carefully. This monitor was specifically designed to display different temperatures fed from an infrared camera fitted at the front of the helicopter. The screen was very flat; nothing was showing up, apart from the odd heat spot of a rabbit stirring. He stretched, took his eyes off the screen for a second then looked back. Did he see a flash of a larger image then?

“Turn fifteen degrees north,” he called to the pilot.

The helicopter turned.

Again he studied the image, and then he saw it again and grinned. This time he was going to see just what it was, and turned up the sensing equipment to maximum. Now the rabbits stood out like light bulbs, even down to a mouse. But of course he wasn’t looking at those, more the larger image he’d seen a glimmer of earlier.

“Son of a bitch, I don’t believe it,” he shouted.

The Captain came closer to see what he was talking about.

“Look, Captain, I think it’s someone who’s blocking their heat pattern, or a dead animal, but I don’t think it’s an animal. Turn five degrees west,” he again called to the pilot, “then slow down and I mean slow down.”

The helicopter banked and slowed as the operator watched.

“Yes I’m certain it’s no animal, it’s human. This must be our missing soldier, trying to remain hidden, as most of the heat is purposely being blanked, probably by wet clothing, two hundred metres dead ahead.”

The Captain didn’t comment. It could also mean the soldier was already dead, and all he could see was what little body heat was left.

The helicopter began to descend, the Commandos piling out spreading wide, their guns primed and ready. Moving forward they found the source of the weak heat. Karen was still sat where she’d stopped, her big coat pulled round her, hat pulled down low over her face. She didn’t really notice two soldiers at her side, or their medic joining them.

He glanced up at the Captain. “What’s the soldier’s Christian name?”

“Her name’s Karen.”

“Karen… Karen… Wake up love, it’s time for you to go home now,” he shouted into her ear, at the same time gently shaking her.

She opened her eyes, at first disorientated, not knowing where she was. Then it all suddenly came back to her. She panicked thinking it was the people that had snatched her, then she saw the insignias on their combat clothes.

“Hi, I’m Lieutenant Harris,” she said weakly. “I was just having a rest. I’m a little tired; I don’t suppose you could give me a lift back to the camp?”

He smiled. It was obvious she was in a very bad condition and would not have been able to travel much further without help, but she was lucid and that was a good sign.

“That’s why we are here, Lieutenant, to take you back to camp. Besides, you’ve got two very fit Commandos waiting to give you a lift?”

Seconds later they were either side of her and helping her to stand. She felt cold, light-headed; her legs didn’t seem to want to work.

The medic looked at Karen; she could hardly keep her eyes open. There was no way she’d be able to walk over the bog to the helicopter. “The girl’s at the end of her endurance, we carry her, link arms,” he told them.

Within five minutes she was in the helicopter, a thermal blanket wrapped round her, the medic urging her to drink hot sweet tea from a plastic cup. Soon with all the Commandos aboard, the helicopter lifted off.

By now Karen had begun to come round, the hot drink making a big difference.

“Lieutenant, I’m Captain Starkey, Canadian SAR, how are you feeling?”

She looked at this very good-looking and well built Captain. “I’m fine thank you.” Then she frowned. “What am I doing in Canada?”

He laughed, so did some of the others.

“You’re not in Canada. We were on a NATO training exercise as part of their search and rescue teams. We were asked to help look for you. We carry heat-seeking cameras so we were ideal. That’s always providing the person being searched for doesn’t deliberately try to hide from such equipment.”

She grinned. “Well I didn’t do a very good job, after all you found me.”

“Don’t you believe it, Lieutenant, you hid very well and we wouldn’t under normal combat conditions have taken a second glance. This search was exceptional, as we were looking for even the slightest heat source; it was suspected the signal might be very weak, if you’d met with an accident for instance.”

“You mean if I was dead?” she added quietly.

“Yes, if you were dead as well I’m afraid.”

“How did you know where to look for me?”

“We didn’t. The two soldiers you were with joined up with others and said you’d gone missing along with three other soldiers you’d captured earlier. Everyone was totally confused as to who they were, as all soldiers had been accounted for on the moor. Then three men, dressed as soldiers, were found at the side of the moor road. They’d been shot. Roadblocks were set up for miles around by order of a General Ross. A man in a white van stopped short of one of the road blocks and tried to make a run for it. He was caught easily and his van searched. They found the gun that they think was used to kill the men and also two tie wraps cut and loose in the back of the van. It was then the search and rescue teams were called in. Everyone was convinced you’d managed to escape somehow, and were out on the moor hiding. What was confusing was why did you leave the two soldiers you were with originally?”

She shrugged. “The men had guns, with live ammunition, where we had empty ones. They threatened to kill the two soldiers if I refused to go with them. But they were not very professional. They searched me and missed my ankle knife, so after I was bundled in the van with my wrists tied, I just got it out and escaped. Mind you that part of the moor is pretty bad, it took a lot out of me to get far enough away.”