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  “Sure! Guns or knives?”

  “Why not both. But you won’t encounter any enemies. This will just challenge your physical fitness.”

  Samaar transformed her thinking into competitive Luci mode. She stood tall and pulled Luke by his shirt into her arms.

  “You think something is lacking in my physical abilities?”

  Luke smiled, his arousal clouding his preparation. “Yeh.”

  “Well, in that case.” She leaned into Luke, pushed, then flipped him backward. He landed in the ocean, clothes and all.

  He came up to the surface surrounded by colorful fish and yelled up at Samaar laughing from the house.

  “You’ll be sorry for this you know!”

  “We’ll see about that. I’m resting up. See you at 23:50.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Luke gave Luci a head starts. He provided a general print out, so Luci would be mentally prepared where and when she could expect to meet a challenge. Every time Luke visited the island, his obstacle course grew in complexity. Weapons were hidden in strategic locations along the route for both protection and skill training. No one islander knew all the elements on the pathways. That way he could tweak things from time to time without worrying about leaks in his security. The entire island was also wired for remote viewing by RB. If needed they could refer to the archived files.

  Samaar raced from section-to-section meeting obstacles going over huge boulders and scaling banana palms. Her hands were covered in thin leather gloves, or she would have been cut open from the man-made impediments designed by Luke. Her black jumpsuit covered her body completely. She added a pair of socks and black runners that she found in the closet where Luke had stored her small bag. She wondered if he ever brought other women to his hideaway. Somehow, she felt the answer would be no.

  She shimmied across a rope stretched tautly between two ten-meter trees, then coming down the trunk, she scored a Sig Sauer like her own, in a carved-out hole about five feet down the trunk of the tree. She moved quietly and expertly, locating weaponry and breaking out into a good sweat.

  The last object on their map was an abandoned one-story brick building at the furthest end of the island. About a mile from their villa, Luci took a run up the side of the building and landed perfectly on the flat roof. Luke was waiting.

  “Not bad.”

  Luci was annoyed. She hated losing. Even if he designed, owned and ran the course regularly, she still should have beat him to the final spot.

  “I’m impressed. I timed you.”

  “Yeh, well, second doesn’t count in my world.”

  “Even if I cheated?”

  A slow smile crept up her face until she full-on grinned.

  “You did?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Luci smiled, then lay on the roof looking at the stars. Each wondered what the other was thinking. A motorboat engine idled off in the distance. Night-fishing he supposed. Neither were particularly inclined to check it out. Luke glanced in the direction of the sound and watched an over-sized cigarette boat build up speed and shoot past their island, heading out to sea in the direction of Malé.

  He looked at his watch. It was close to two a.m.

  “I’m hungry!” Luci stood up and grabbed Luke’s hand. “Feed me.”

  “With pleasure.” They set off at a jog towards their villa.

  11

  Paris, France

  “Momma?” Maggs pulled Alice into her arms.

  “Your momma is with Luke.”

  “Luke? My Luke?” Maggs looked at RB, smiling.

  “Samaar’s so done. If she’d just accept it, there might be a chance for a normal life for this family.”

  Luke’s inside man, his tall and leggy friend Maggs, and an adorable four-year-old wandered the streets of Paris like tourists.

  “We’ll never have normal lives, Maggs. It’s not in our DNA. We’re warriors. We are the protectors. We will never be good with the status quo.”

  Maggs looked towards the Opera house. “Do you like Opera RB?”

  “Sometimes. I remember my parents taking me to the opera when I was a child.”

  She reached for his hand, but Alice was already holding it. That child had a sensitivity that was uncanny.

  “Well, let’s think of only good things today and show Alice how young ladies in Paris lunch at Galleries Lafayette!”

  “Chocolate?” Alice giggled.

  “Yes, you can have chocolate.”

  The sky was turning grey, clouds were moving in, and the air was heavy. The rains would come soon.

  “Let’s get in before we get caught in a storm.”

  Alice wiggled out of RB’s arms. “Alice walk!”

  “Sure.”

  They headed towards the revolving doors, but there was a group of immigrants and refugee women sitting on the cement walkways holding placards, refusing to move. A cameraman from a French 24 Live was filming. An altercation of sorts was in the works and RB tried to see what was going on.

  “What is it?” Maggs looked over losing hold of Alice’s other hand in the confusion. Before she could stop her, Alice was in the midst of the commotion talking with someone.

  RB rushed over to grab hold of her, but she was fighting him.

  “Alice!”

  A woman smiled at Alice and began speaking to her in Arabic. Alice was responding in baby Arabic words.

  Maggs pushed through the group in time to see what was going on.

  “She speaks Arabic?” RB smiled in spite of the shock of Alice’s independent movement.

  “She’s learning from the Syrian family that Luci rescued on the Hungarian border and brought to Paris.”

  RB spoke Arabic because Luke had taught him years ago at Caltech that language proficiency would be the way of the future. And because of Samaar, he’d picked up basic Hebrew.

  “Come Alice. Let’s go.”

  “No! Baby. See?” RB leaned down to speak to the women in their own language. They showed him signs they’d made with inferior photos of young children. He conversed with them getting information. Every note he wrote immediately found a spot in his logical brain to be studied later. He spoke words in a sympathetic tone of voice, nodding his head, and offering comfort. Then he took Alice in his arms, snuggled her into his shoulder and let her cry.

  “What’s wrong RB?” Maggs was alarmed.

  “These women are all from Syria, refugees that managed to make it this far. They stay in the camps around Paris. They’re trying to bring international attention to their situation. Their children have been stolen, and they're desperate. It's unlikely, but they hope that maybe someone will recognize one of their children and help.”

  He leaned down asking questions and recording notes on his cell phone. Maggs knew RB would be all over this when they returned to their secure tech center in Samaar’s home.

  “Ah Alice, come to me.” Maggs looked at Alice who had huge tears rolling down her cheeks.

  RB returned and spoke with Maggs.

  “You know, there’s something that I saw in top secret files recently. It had to do with the United Nations and a clandestine group. It was so obscure I almost missed it. I’m going to get on it when we get back.”

  A tiny voice whispered in Maggie’s ear. “I want my mommy.”

  “I’ll catch up with you in a minute. I have a message coming in from the Maldives.”

  Maggs glanced back, but her focus was on Alice. Her little heart was breaking. You wouldn’t think a child so young could understand what she was seeing. But she did. She could feel the pain of the Syrian mothers and knew that it was the separation of parent and child. That’s something Alice could relate to,

  Maggs mused.

  Sometimes their lives were so idyllic in Paris that Maggs forgot about Samaar and Alice on the run from the drug cartels in South America. Surely the child has some types of memories of fleeing and fear. RB broke into her thoughts.

  “Taxi! We need to get back to our secure room right a
way. There’s trouble in paradise.”

  12

  Maldives Atoll

  A few hours later Luke woke to the sound of pounding on his bedroom door. The sun had not yet risen. It would be light soon.

  “Mister Luke, Mister Luke!”

  Luke grabbed his shorts and hurried to the door. Samaar was close behind him.

  “It’s my children! My children are gone!” Mohammad held Fathi up, she looked ready to pass out.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  Samaar tensed, alert yet controlled.

  Fathi eyes were bloodshot. She couldn’t stop crying. Her husband tried to console her.

  “We went to wake our children for school, and they are no longer in their beds. They are gone.”

  Luke slipped his feet into his deck shoes, grabbed his satellite phone and took the lead.

  “Let’s go. Show me the room.”

  The four ran across the bridge towards the caretaker's island villa, a smaller version of Luke’s home, and raced up the outdoor stairs to the bedrooms. Luke immediately noticed that the lighting was out along the edges of the house.

  The children’s beds were empty.

  Luci whispered. “Do you smell that?”

  Luke’s body stiffened. “Yes.”

  He reached down to check the beds. Cold.

  He stepped away and spoke into his phone.

  “Thirty minutes. Okay.”

  He looked over at the distraught couple.

  “Do you have any idea what might have happened to them.”

  The wife looked down, her husband looked up. Luke waited.

  “We wanted to mention this to you, but we saw you had someone with you and thought the subject could wait until later. There have been stories from the other Atolls of children going missing. The Malé police take reports but ignore the parents. The authorities close the cases and don’t believe the parents. They say the children must have drowned. But people talk of seeing unidentifiable speedboats come in close to the islands and leave during the night.”

  Luci nodded to Luke and pointed towards their home.

  “Look, we will do everything in our power to solve this. Do you have recent photos of your children?”

  Fatimah hurried back from her room with two recent photos of the children in their school uniforms.

  “Where is the local school, Luke?” Luci studied the pics carefully. She had a photographic memory so once was enough.

  “A passenger boat picks up the kids from the Atolls, and they go to a neighboring island for classes.” He turned towards the panic-stricken couple.

  “I promise you we will get your children back!”

  He nodded to Luci.

  “Let’s go. David will be here by the time we get ready.”

  “Send a message to RB and tell him we will need his assistance in the next half hour.”

  “They’ve been snatched, Luke. And anyone who would take this much risk has an escape route planned.”

  Luci was in full-on combat mode. Her body language had gone operational, and her vision was clear. She sat behind a desk onboard Luke’s yacht and researched the Human Rights websites for Asia and India.

  “Look Luke. This alert came out as I was searching. Listen:

  Ilya Ivanov, the notorious leader of Kyrgyzstan crime syndicate, is allegedly responsible for the international trafficking of both drugs and humans. He’s been arrested, released from prison for medical treatment based on faked poor health reports, and appears to be at large in Russia or Kyrgyzstan. He’s suspected of trafficking in minors to sell them into the sex trade in Europe. He remains at large.

  “What about the Malé Police Department? Can you get RB to hack in for us?” “I’m already all over that. RB was out, but he’s back now. You should be able to pull up the reports in minutes.” RB had been alerted and was monitoring the situation from Paris. He had the secure line open almost immediately.

  Luke looked off into the horizon towards the towering buildings of Malé. It always amazed him how this 2.2 square mile island could support approximately 140,000 people within its cement retaining walls. It had to be one of the densest cities in the world.

  “David, pull the boat into our permanent mooring area. I’m not sure if we’re going back out or not.”

  Luke watched Luci, her fingers moving quickly across her keyboard.

  “Okay, RB has it open. I’m into their reports Luke!”

  Luke thought about what he’d heard at the last meeting he attended in Washington, DC about World Crime Trends.

  “Look, tell RB to do a search in the deep web and to tap into our sources. Didn’t we hear something about the United Nations Human Rights Council going after sex traffickers? Tell RB to contact them immediately.”

  Luci nodded and typed commands on her laptop.

  “Do you know that human trafficking has tied drug trafficking in the number two spot in criminal activity around the world? Over 20 million people worldwide were victims of this crime in 2017 alone.” Luke announced to Luci and David, his mind already planning their next move.

  “What I can see here is Malé has gone silent on the accusation of a wave of human kidnappings.” Luci read what she could find on Interpol. Then she clicked on a new window RB had opened for her.

  “It’s obviously not good for tourism to talk about crime bosses dealing in kidnapped children. But here we have it. Buried. I can see several reports from various atolls. With more than 1200 islands to monitor it would be difficult to police, and ripe for victimizing the Islanders. Easy in-and-out access. No police patrols to worry about. Slick. This is bad Luke.”

  Luke studied the commercial port of Malé. The Costa Cruise ship was pulled up to the dock. White tourists disembarked, some were sunburnt, all excited by this foreign country in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

  “The question is where do they go once they have their victims? Do they head out by ship, by air, what?” Luke grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and passed one to Luci.

  “Dig deeper Luci. See if you can find any reports on the port. Any suspicious activity or complaints. Anything that you think might lead us to where they take the kids before they transport them. We need that route. Get RB working it from his end too.”

  13

  Malé Marina, Maldives

  David returned to the yacht.

  “I

  reported the kidnapping at the police station. They were polite, but I could tell that there would be no investigation. They said they’d send a report to the UNHRC. Apparently, the UN is monitoring human trafficking in the area and have a team of experts working in Geneva.”

  David continued his report, although the words he spoke did not match the intensity and anger Luke could feel below the surface of a well-trained ex-SEAL operative.

  “I have a source inside the police force. He’s retired military, from India, and he says he will speak with us. We meet him tonight at midnight near the shipping docks.” David turned back to his electronics.

  “But the trail will be cold.”

  “It’s our best opportunity to figure out what’s going on. These kidnappers are pros; they’ve got a pattern here. If they think they’re protected—and it sounds like maybe they are—they’ve already moved the kids to the next exit point from here. We need to be patient and methodical if we’re going to find them.” David turned back to his computer.

  Luci reluctantly agreed.

  "Wait! Look at this. RB sent the video-feed from the moment the kidnappers arrived on the island. They're masked, carrying weapons, and professional. Look how they know exactly where they're headed."

  "It must be inside information, Luke. Maybe the boat that takes the children to school." Luci watched while David played the feed again.

  "Can you see any markings on the boat that would make it unique?"

  All three studied the quick shot RB had captured of the kidnappers' vessel.

  "Nothing." Luke nodded.

 
"Our best option is to meet David's contact tonight."

  They had lunch and prepared their weapons.

  Luci continued online research looking for the latest Intel and the routes from Asia to the burgeoning first world markets that trafficked in human misery.

  Luci pulled on her running shoes and a lycra top. The evening was chilly enough to wear her custom-made jacket that would hold everything she might need.

  Luke was usually not operational, but lately, he was feeling the need to be in the middle of it all. It was no longer fulfilling to merely monitor and pull strings. In this particular situation, it was personal.

  “What if this was our Alice?” No one responded.

  David nodded to Luke.

  “Let’s go.”

  Three stragglers strolled along the dock looking for action. Music, somewhere to have a beer and maybe a game of pool. They saw the sign for a local watering hole fifty meters ahead.

  “I’ll go alone. You two sit at another table and see if my contact was followed.”

  David, a new addition to the team, was a natural leader, a good strategist, and a well-honed operative.

  The smoke-filled venue blasted offensive heavy metal music. It set the tone for the oily odor of spent industrial fuel and rotting fish, remains from catches off-loaded along the pier. Dock-workers and sailors from Asia and India stood around tables throwing down bets on cards, listening to great tales of near misses at sea, and getting drunk. It was not a place for women, but Luci had her hair up under her cap and played down her femininity—if that were possible. She and Luke took a spot near the entrance and ordered drinks.

  David took a casual look around and caught the eye of one man sitting at a table for two in the far corner. His back was to the wall, his stance loose but aware of everything. His subtle nod spoke of years of training in the military and a need for discretion.

  “Hey, buddy. Long time no see.” They embraced like old friends, even though they'd never met. Any observers would assume this to be a meeting of friends and pass on the need to pay attention.