Survival Mission

3

Baltimore, Maryland

Two days earlier

The sixth victim, another working girl, had been discovered floating in the Chesapeake off Locust Point, near Fort Henry. As with the five preceding kills, her throat was slashed back to the spine, a case of near decapitation after a savage beating and a list of signature indignities well recognized by homicide investigators. FBI agents were working on the case, inspiring all the usual resentment from embarrassed local cops. The newspapers and smiling TV anchors babbled on about a “Ripper” in their midst, a stalker who had psych profilers baffled.

The truth, as usual, was rather different.

At Baltimore P.D., they knew that all six victims were employed—read owned—by Luscious Luther Johnson. Thirty-six years old, imprisoned twice for pandering and living off the proceeds of prostitution, Johnson was an aging dog who’d never managed to learn any new tricks on the street or in the joint. He liked controlling women, playing God in lives blighted by sexual abuse and drugs. He liked the money, too, of course, but that was secondary to the kick he got from reigning over female serfs.

Before his second prison term, Luther had disciplined unruly girls with belt lashings, a wire coat hanger sometimes, but nothing permanent. Something had changed inside him while he served his time at Roxbury Correctional, perhaps a hardening of attitude precipitated by the fact that two of Luther’s “bitches” had been brave enough to testify against him at his trial. One of them left the state thereafter, while the other kept working the streets around Patterson Park as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

Big mistake.

Divine Jones had been first in the series, succeeded by others who balked at the offer to join Johnson’s stable or held back too much of the cash they’d received from their johns. No disrespect of any sort was tolerated.

Police had questioned Luther at least a dozen times so far. But knowing he was probably involved and proving it were very different things. A team from Vice had worked on putting Johnson back in stir for pimping, using Maryland’s three-strikes law to send him up for life, but Luscious Luther wasn’t quite as careless as he’d been in the past. He kept no records of illicit business, paid his taxes on a chain of coin-op laundries and had generally kept his nose clean in the public eye.

Bolan had been passing through “Charm City”—also known to some as “Mobtown”—with no plans to hang around beyond a night’s rest at a local Motel 6, when he heard about the case on CNN. He’d made a couple calls, stayed over for an extra night of observation on the scene and saw a chance to do some good.

Like any other pimp who has a thriving urban racket, Johnson paid his dues. He tithed religiously to the Peruzzi family, which Bolan thought might rate a visit at some future date, along with bagmen from the Baltimore P.D. and City Hall. None would protect him if the Feds collected evidence to try him as a six-time psycho killer, but until that evidence appeared Johnson was golden.

And he wasn’t hard to find.

His second night in Baltimore, Bolan had followed Johnson on the pimp’s rounds, collecting cash from go-betweens, glad-handing people who appeared to be his friends, drinking at half a dozen bars where songs with indecipherable lyrics threatened long-term hearing loss. Bolan was on him when he spent an hour with his number-one old lady at her place, waiting for Johnson in the shadows when the man emerged.

From that point on, Johnson’s night of celebration went downhill. His bluster vanished with a glimpse of Bolan’s cold eyes and a close look at the sleek Beretta in his fist. Disarmed and cuffed with plastic zip ties, Johnson had directed Bolan to a small apartment that he called his bank. Inside it, with his hands freed to accommodate the combination lock on a wall safe beside a small desk, he’d given up roughly a quarter-million dollars gleaned from others’ suffering and degradation, smiling all the while.

“I jus’ keep that aroun’ for incidentals, yo. Man like you’self know how it is.”

“You’re right,” Bolan replied. “I do.”

“So, we good here, o’ what?”

“Almost. About the women…”

“Riiight. You want a lady now? I’d say you can afford a fine one.”

“The six women that you killed.”

“Whoa, man! You trippin’ now. Pigs axed me all about that, and I done been cleared, awight?”

“Well,” Bolan said, “there’s cleared, and then there’s cleared.”

“Man, what you tryin’ to say?” Johnson asked, trying to prolong the conversation as he quickly reached into an open drawer of the desk and pulled out a small gun.

But Bolan was faster with his response, letting the Beretta speak for him, with one sharp word that brooked no contradiction. Johnson hit the deep shag carpet with a look of dazed surprise in all three eyes, shivered a little, then lay still.

Bolan secured his loot, all hundred-dollar bills, in a valise he borrowed from the late and unlamented pimp, locked the pad behind him and was on his way downstairs when the soft vibration of his cell phone took him by surprise. No more than half a dozen people in the world had Bolan’s number. He had never fallen prey to random telemarketers.

A quick check on the screen showed him that it was Hal Brognola calling from his office at the Justice Building in D.C., well past the normal span of business hours.

“Go,” Bolan said without preamble.

“How soon can you be here?” Brognola asked. “Well, let’s say Arlington.”

“I’m forty miles away,” Bolan said, “give or take.”

“I’ll see you there,” the big Fed said. “ASAP.”

BROGNOLA DIDN’T HAVE TO specify which “there” he had in mind. They’d met on previous occasions at Arlington National Cemetery, and while that facility closed to the public from 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., there was an all-night restaurant on Marshall Drive, near the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, that served as backup outside of visiting hours. Bolan found Brognola’s Buick Regal CXL already waiting in the parking lot when he rolled in, his second-oldest living friend ensconced with coffee at a corner booth.

“You made good time,” Brognola said in greeting.

“It wasn’t all that far,” Bolan replied, taking his seat across from the man.

A red-haired waitress came and took their breakfast order, filled a coffee cup for Bolan, then retreated.

“So, what’s the squeal?” Bolan asked, when they were alone.

“It may upset your appetite,” Brognola said.

“Try me.”

“Okay. What do you know about the child-sex trade?”

“Broad strokes,” Bolan replied. “It’s global. There’s a UN protocol designed to stop it, written ten or twelve years back, ratified by something like a hundred countries all around the world.”

“One hundred seventeen,” Brognola said. “For all the good it does.”

“No teeth in that, of course,” Bolan continued, “but most countries have their own laws penalizing human trafficking, child prostitution and pornography.”

“Again,” Brognola said, “for all the good they do.”

A nod from Bolan as he said, “Enforcement’s spotty, sure. Big money in the trade, and some of that sticks to official hands.”

“You’ve heard of child-sex tourism, I guess,” he said.

“Junkets for pedophiles,” Bolan replied. “They catch a flight to someplace where the cops and courts are paid to shut their eyes.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” Brognola granted. “Fifteen years ago, the International Labor Organization estimated that child-sex tourism produced two to fourteen percent of the gross domestic product for half a dozen Asian countries—Thailand, the Philippines, India, Malaysia, Indonesia. Since then, it’s been picking up in Mexico, Central America and Eastern Europe. The U.K. and the States have laws in place to punish nationals who go abroad to prey on children, but it’s tough to make the charges stick.”

Bolan had dealt with human traffickers before and rated them among the lowest forms of parasites, but shutting down the trade was an impossibility. As long as there were customers with cash in hand, there’d be suppliers to provide whatever they desired.

“Go on,” he urged Brognola.

“So, let’s flash back to the so-called Velvet Revolution. Nineteen eighty-nine,” Brognola said. “Czechoslovakia divides into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Assume they’ve always had their share of hookers. Overnight, the business takes off like a house on fire. The Czech Republic’s parliament banned any kind of organized sex trade—brothels, pimping, anything that smells like mob involvement—but they left the working girls alone, free to work under license. The net result—last year, reporters counted eight hundred sixty dedicated brothels nationwide, with two hundred in Prague. Hookers advertise in the newspaper classifieds section, charging an average sixty dollars an hour.”

“Someone’s greased the cops,” Bolan said. No surprise.

“Big-time,” Brognola said. “Two years ago, the state police investigated thirty suspected traffickers. Prosecutors took nineteen to trial and convicted a dozen. Facing maximum terms of twelve to fifteen years, three were sent up for three-to-five. The other nine had their sentences suspended and are back in business as we speak.”

“It sounds familiar,” Bolan said, thinking of every place where organized corruption put down roots. And that meant everywhere.

“Getting back to the kids,” Brognola said, “they come into Prague from all over. Eastern Europe and the Balkans, on to Vietnam and China. Some pass through the Czech Republic on their way to operations in the West, and others never make it out. If they survive, they’ll age into the adult trade or wind up on the streets, burned out and drug addicted, living hand to mouth.”

“This must be going somewhere,” Bolan said.

“You’re right. It is. Seems like the scumbags aren’t content to buy their kids from so-called parents anymore. It still goes on, of course, especially in Asia and some parts of South America, but kidnapping is cheaper. Why fly buyers halfway round the world, when you can cruise the streets of Prague, Brno or Ostrava and snatch them off the sidewalk? Slash your operating costs on one hand—on the other, keep enough white kids in stock to balance out the ethnic inventory. It’s a win-win situation for the sons of bitches.”

“And?” Bolan knew there was more to come.

“And,” Brognola replied, “that brings us to the reason why we’re here.”

THE WAITRESS BROUGHT their meals, topped off their coffee mugs and went away. Brognola pushed his scrambled eggs around the plate, sampled a piece of toast, then set it down.

“Last week—four days ago, to be precise—somebody grabbed a ten-year-old girl in Prague. Her name is Mandy Murton. She’s American.”

“Odd place to find her,” Bolan said.

“School trip, if you can believe it,” Hal answered. “It’s the sort of thing rich parents do these days, I’m told. Instead of summer school or family vacation time, you send the kiddies off to Europe or wherever in a small, select group with teachers from their private schools as guides, tutors and chaperones. Supposedly, most of the trips come off without a hitch, aside from minor illness now and then.”

“But this one didn’t.”

“Right. It’s still unclear what happened to the girl, exactly,” Brognola went on. “Another kid swears Mandy wasn’t taken from the room they shared. Seems she went out to get a Coke instead of calling room service. The vending machines are on alternate floors, so she had to go up or down one. She never came back.”

“Security cameras?” Bolan asked.

“The hotel’s equipped,” the big Fed confirmed. “Exits and elevators covered, but it’s spotty on the hallways. There’s no tape of Mandy leaving, on her own or with an escort. Two things clicked as possibles. First up, a food delivery around that time, downstairs, with crates of goodies coming in and empties going out. Second, a bellhop with his face averted from the CCTV, wheeling out a laundry cart.”

“How many people on the food delivery?” Bolan asked.

“Two came with the truck,” Brognola said. “A couple from the kitchen helped them with unloading.”

“Have they been cleared?”

Brognola shrugged and tried the toast again, then answered with his mouth full. “They’ve been questioned by the cops in Prague and by the PCR—those are the Feds, Police of the Czech Republic. No evidence of any criminal activity has been discovered, quote, unquote.”

“The faceless bellhop, then.”

“More likely,” Brognola agreed. “A shot, some chloroform, a blackjack—take your pick. One guy could shift a ten-year-old without backup, much less involving two hotel employees.”

“So, she’s gone,” Bolan said. “Four days, Hal.”

“I know, I know. There’s been no ransom call, so that’s a wash. Whoever snatched the girl had other things in mind. Whether it was a trafficker or just some random psycho off the street, it’s all bad news.”

Bolan tried to decide which might be worse and couldn’t make the call.

“I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a heartbreaker.”

“I hear you,” Brognola replied. “But here’s the rub—her daddy is a well-connected chief of corporate security at GenTex Oil. Any given year, he earns more than the President of the United States.”

“He’s making noise,” Bolan surmised.

“I wish it were that simple,” Brognola replied. “Before he took the GenTex job, he was a Navy SEAL for sixteen years. Won every decoration they could pin onto his wet suit, except the Congressional Medal of Honor, and that was a close call. On his last time out—in Pakistan, no less—he saved a wounded teammate’s life. The other guy happened to be the grandson of a Texas senator with tons of GenTex stock in his portfolio.”

“Which nailed his present job,” Bolan observed. “A hero with connections.”

“And with skills,” Brognola stressed. “He’s not just making noise. When no one from the FBI, the Company or State could satisfy him, he went over there.”

“By which you mean—”

“To Prague,” Brognola said. “I shit you not. It’s Death Wish Seven, or whatever, and the film crew isn’t using blanks.”

“Has there been contact?”

Brognola sipped his coffee, grimaced—too much sugar.

“There’s no way to verify it,” he told Bolan. “This guy— Andrew Murton—may be middle-aged and rusty, but he’s still a player. Flew on bogus papers to the Czech Republic, and he likely has at least one spare ID on tap for when he’s ready to come home. If he comes home.”

Bolan waited for Brognola to tell it his way, in his own good time.

“Could he find guns in Prague?” the man from Justice asked rhetorically. “Hell, yes. Has there been trouble since he landed? Cops report that one suspected trafficker’s gone missing, but he had a court appearance scheduled for next month. Could be a simple bail jumper. The thing is, Murton had been talking to his wife something like five, six times a day. Updating her, you know. And now he’s stopped.”

“How long?” Bolan asked.

“Half a day. It spooked her bad enough for her to call the Hoover Building. They reached out to me.”

“And here we are,” Bolan said.

“Right. What do you think?”

“About the girl? I told you, Hal—”

“I know. But what about the dad? If there’s a chance that we could pull him out…”

“It plays out one of two ways,” Bolan said. “He either found the traffickers who took his daughter, or he found somebody else. With option B, the only reason for not killing him straight up would be a ransom bid.”

“Again, there’s been no call,” Brognola said.

“Okay. He’s either dead or being held by someone with another reason not to put him down. Maybe interrogation. Maybe using him for leverage somewhere down the line.”

“Bad news, no matter how you look at it,” the man said.

“The worst,” Bolan agreed.

“All right,” Brognola said. “It’s your call. Want to go and have a look around, or not?”

THE FLIGHT FROM Dulles International to Paris-Orly Airport spanned seven hours and forty-eight minutes. Orly to Prague consumed another hour, plus the downtime Bolan spent waiting to make his Czech Airlines connection. Bolan had used the time efficiently, to study Brognola’s file on Andrew Murton, then erase it; to memorize the Google map of Prague; and finally, to catch up on the sleep he’d miss when he had reached his destination.

Finding Murton in the urban jungle that was Prague seemed like a nearly hopeless task to Bolan, but he knew that nearly wasn’t absolute. Someone had seen the missing father. Someone knew what had become of him, whether he was alive or dead. Someone would talk, if the correct inducement was applied.

The problem: Bolan was a stranger to the Czech Republic and its capital, clearly a foreigner. Unlike the vanished former SEAL, he spoke neither German nor Russian, much less Czech, Slovak, Croatian or Bulgarian. The good news: according to his Fodor’s guidebook, ten percent of all Czechs spoke at least some English. In Prague, the number supposedly rose to fifty percent for residents aged nineteen to thirty-five, and hit eighty percent for those eighteen or younger.

So all I have to do, he thought, is keep asking directions from kids on the street.

It was a joke at first, then soured on him when he thought about the people he was hunting and their chosen trade. Whether or not he could find Andrew Murton—much less the aggrieved father’s child—Bolan vowed to wreak havoc among the Czech merchants of misery.

Scorched earth, if he could pull it off.

If not, at least a healthy dose of cleansing fire.

Bolan had never been a moralist per se. He didn’t care who slept with whom, or why, as long as all concerned were consenting adults or roughly equal in age. He didn’t mind if sex was sold or bartered, either. What repulsed him was the domination of illicit prostitution by a breed of predators who victimized the helpless to enrich themselves. Slave traders, in effect, and Bolan owed them nothing but a bullet, which, in most cases, was long years overdue.

He harbored no real hope of saving Mandy Murton. Even if he found her still alive, in Prague or somewhere else, and managed to extract her from the hell that had consumed her life of privilege, what would be left of her? Would years of therapy undo the trauma she had suffered at the hands of her abductors and their paying customers?

Bolan knew how her father must have felt. His own long war against the Mafia had started with a tragedy at home, akin to Andrew Murton’s. Bolan had exacted justice on his own, using his military skills, when there’d been no one left to save. He didn’t have to speculate over the depth of Murton’s rage, the guilt that haunted him for failure to protect his own from half a world away.

He found that Brognola was right. It didn’t take a master spy to find black-market guns in Prague. In fact, it only took a name and Luscious Luther Johnson’s contribution to the cause. Bolan was pleased to spend the cash he’d taken from a killer pimp in aid of tracking and destroying other predators. If not exactly karma, it still felt like some kind of poetic justice.

As for information, that came down to asking questions. Brognola had gotten him started with the name of Murton’s suspected first victim—an indicted trafficker, one Mikoláš Zeman. The vanished man had known associates, and Bolan, having duly armed himself beforehand, went in search of them.

The first, a twice-convicted brothel boss named Stanislav Karpíšek, managed to convince Bolan that he knew nothing.

The second, František Pato

Dead or alive?

Pato

Bolan had thanked Pato

Busted, dead to rights.

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