Jack Wilder - The Missionary

She touched his chest with her fingers, eyes shut tight, shivering and shaking. “You…you feel real. I’m so scared. I don’t want to go back there. Back into the dark. It was so dark, Stone. No light, not at all. I couldn’t see my own hand in front of me. I could hear things, voices, footsteps, birds. But I couldn’t see anything. And I was so confused. Like I was floating. Dreaming, lost in a cloud. Then I’d come down from the cloud and remember, and I’d try to hold on to the remembering, because even up in the clouds, I knew something was wrong, it was too dark and I was alone. All alone. And I was scared. Of him . He’s evil , Stone. The square door in the ceiling opens, and I see his—his green flip-flops. That’s all I’d see, until he was right in front of me, and he’d look at me. His eyes are dark, and they might almost look normal, like he looks almost normal. But then he looks into my eyes and I just know…he’s evil. Evil . He wants me to be afraid, but I can’t let him see. He wants me…he wants something from me. I don’t know what. I always thought he was going to rape me. But he didn’t. He hurt me. He’d hit me. Kick me. He brought men down to look at me. Like I was…a painting, or a sculpture. Something to be bought.”

She shook her head, opened her eyes and stared up at Stone, her gaze pleading with him to never let go, to not let her slide back down into that nightmare. And he wouldn’t. He’d never let go.

He rubbed her back with one hand and brushed the dark locks of hair from her eyes with the other. He felt the guilt like an acidic ball in his gut. “I knew something bad would happen. I knew it. I didn’t stop it, and I’m so sorry, Wren.”

She shifted, put her palm to his cheek. “No. Please no, Stone. It wasn’t your fault. You told everyone, whether they wanted to listen or not, that we shouldn’t do this, that it was a bad idea.” She seemed to draw strength, spine stiffening and tears drying, though her body was still wracked by tremors and slick with fever sweat. “It wasn’t your fault. You begged me not to go. You told me not to go anywhere without you.”

Stone rubbed circles on her back, held her against his chest. “Enough. Enough blame. It happened, and you’re out. I won’t let anything else happen to you. I’ll get you home.”

“What about—what about the other girls? The ones who…who didn’t have you to rescue them?”

Stone sighed. “I wish I could give you an answer you’d like. But…I can’t. It’s just not possible. There are too many, and only one of me. And even with a team of guys, a team of trained SEALs, I couldn’t rescue them all. It’s a trade that has gone on for…forever, I think. For as long as there’s been prostitution, there’s been a woman forced into it somehow. And this is just one corner of the world, one particular group of sex slavers.” He closed his eyes and breathed in the reality of Wren in his arms. “You know that story you always wanted to hear? You guessed it had something to do with Manila. What this stupid trip was all about. You were right. It was my last mission. A bunch of American girls had gone missing, including a senator’s daughter. She was backpacking around Europe and Asia with her girlfriends, except she never made it out of Manila. Well this senator had some sources, and they said his daughter had been kidnapped by sex traffickers. Nasty fuckers. Kidnap the girls, drug them, sell them, run a train of johns on them until the girls were just…gone. Drug them again, use them until they were useless, and then leave them dead. Kill them, dump them in the river. It was happening to girls from all over the world. Russians, Germans, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, local Filipinas, Americans. It wouldn’t have involved us at all, my group of SEALs, I mean, until this senator decided to pull some strings. It was all to get his daughter back, of course, but it was wrapped up in a pretty little humanitarian package. Send a message, and all that.”

Stone took a deep breath. “So we went in, my fireteam and Foxtrot. My guys were point, the ones who went in. Foxtrot was backup, extraction zone coverage. On the surface, the traders, whatever you want to call ‘em, seem like just another group of thugs and smugglers, drug dealers, whatever. But they’re organized. Smart. Someone in charge is smart, rather. Individually, they really are just drug dealers and common criminals, but they’re run by someone sharp. We knew that going in. They had a network of informants, people on the street, people watching and reporting. Paid, or frightened into keeping an eye on anything that happened. Our intel even put out some false trails, misleading info. We went in dark. Swam from way out. You know those SEAL commercials, where the guys are coming out of the surf in full gear? That was us. We found the right place without trouble, which in Manila at night was quite a feat in itself, especially in somewhere like the Tondo district, just mile after mile of interconnected shanties with no direction or addresses or real streets or anything. We went in, and…they were ready for us. Six SEALs can do a shitload of damage, okay? We’re the best of the best. But when we’re up against twenty or thirty guys who are waiting for us with AKs and Uzis?”

He paused, rubbed his face with his palm and pushed on. Wren was silent and still, except for the shivers of the fever. “They were waiting for us. Dozens and Zane were covering our ingress point. Watching the door, I mean. Dozens got it first. I never saw it happen. Just heard the AKs open up, and then he was gone, Dozens, and then Zane. Gone, in less than thirty seconds. A blink of an eye, guys I’d known for five fucking years, just dead. I’d just gotten shitty with Dozens a couple days before. We’d gone to the bar together, put down like, four pitchers between us.

“Well, the only way for us to go was in. The ambush was behind us, so we went in. Room by room, by the book. We saw…some awful shit. Girls too drugged and apathetic to respond even to automatic arms fire. Rescued, but too fried to care. Some we rescued. We found the senator’s daughter, Lisa, and a few others. A bunch more. A dozen white girls, too many local girls to count. We got our target out. But we lost Dozens, Zane, Benny, Nancy. Blake almost didn’t make it. I almost didn’t make it. Took shrapnel to the knee, ended my career. Shredded my knee bad enough that I couldn’t keep up, even after I healed. But we got the girls out, and we took out their operation.

“Shitty thing is, even though we killed—god, fucking dozens of guys, it wasn’t enough. They came back. Started over, hired more, moved their ops to somewhere else. Cervantes, man. He’s the one.” Stone realized he was gripping Wren’s arm too hard and forced himself to relax his hand. “All that, for one girl. Four of the best SEALs in the entire Navy, dead. They knew going in, every mission, it might be the last one. We all knew it. Wasn’t the first time we’d lost guys. But…it was different. We all had sisters, girlfriends, wives, moms, friends, and when you see the pictures of the girls with ribs showing, beaten bloody, track marks on their arms, sold like fucking meat and killed, floating face down in the river…you’ll do whatever you have to. It wasn’t about Lisa Johnson. Not entirely. And then this stupid church and their goddamned idiotic mission trip. Save the prostitutes for Jesus. How goddamn stupid can you be? I tried to tell them. Build houses for Jesus. Feed the hungry, bring medicine, penicillin, water. Fuck, bring empty water bottles so they can have light. They fill these empty bottles with water and a little bleach, cut a hole in the ceiling and hang the bottle into the room, the sun shines through and it’s free light. Fucking genius, really. But no, those holy-ass elders wanted to do something bigger. Nick meant well, but he’s never left Virginia, he had no idea what he was planning, what he was getting you kids into. And it happened. And now I’ve got more blood on my hands. I’ve got Cervantes and his entire fucking operation on my ass, and all I’ve got is one pistol and my bare hands. This is the guy who managed to ambush US Navy SEALs, and I’ve got no back up. No extraction zone. No chopper waiting for me.”