“Shit,” Dawson mumbled. He suddenly realized that Payne hadn’t been informed about the missing vessel. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but we never found the slave boat that you and your partner talked about. The Coast Guard is currently conducting an all-out search of the gulf, but as of right now, we don’t know what happened to it.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me!”
“I wish I was. But it hasn’t turned up.”
Payne tried to process the new information as quickly as possible, but it threw him for a temporary loop. “So the slave boat could be on the bottom of the gulf? What about Robert Edwards? Did you find Robert Edwards anywhere?”
Dawson shook his head. “He’s one of the missing slaves. His wife and future baby are fine, but he’s still unaccounted for.”
Payne tried to make sense of the information. When he left the island, he thought he had rescued everyone except for Ariane and the unknown captive from the truck, but now he realized that he might have sent a boatload of inexperienced sailors to a watery grave.
“Jon?” Dawson whispered in a comforting voice. “Not to change the subject, but when you pounded on the mirror and called me an asshole, you implied you had a bunch of questions. Did you want me to answer anything else, or is that all for now?”
It took Payne a moment to gather himself. “With the new information that you just gave me, one suddenly leaps to mind.”
“Go ahead, fire away.”
Payne wished he’d stop using that expression. “How in the hell did you find us? I thought the people on the boat must’ve told you about the Plantation, but since they’re still missing I guess they couldn’t have been the ones.”
Dawson nodded. “A couple of planes noticed the house explosion from the air. They, in turn, notified the local authorities. Eventually, word filtered down to us.”
“And you’ve had no luck finding the missing slaves? What about Levon Greene and Octavian Holmes? Any luck with them?”
Dawson shook his head. “We put out an APB and flooded the airports and local islands with their pictures. Unfortunately, if they decided to head south, we’ll have little chance of finding them. Hell, a guy in a sailboat can fart and propel himself to Mexico from here. We’re that close to the border. It makes things kind of tough for us.”
ONCE Payne was excused from the conference room, he rode the elevator to the main lobby, where he met up with Jones. The two greeted each other with a firm handshake, then walked into the bright sunlight of the Crescent City.
“How’d the questioning go?”
Jones smirked like an uncaught shoplifter. “Just peachy, and you?”
“Not too bad. When things started to get sticky, I made a big fuss, and they immediately backed down.” Jones’s smirk must’ve been contagious because it quickly spread to Payne’s lips. “Did they ask you anything about the hard drive?”
Jones patted the pocket of his T-shirt and laughed. “Nope. And to be honest with you, I forgot to mention it.” He stopped on the sidewalk and pretended to turn around. “Do you think I should go back and tell them? Because I could-”
“Nah, I doubt it’s important. The damn thing is bound to be blank.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It probably won’t tell us where to look for Ariane, or Levon, or the other slave owners. And even if it did, it’s not like we’d care.”
“Not at all,” he growled. “Not one bit.”
THE property in Tampico, Mexico, had been in Edwin Drake’s family for four decades, but he never had any use for it until recently. After several years of dormancy, the land was now critical to Drake’s slave exportation business. It served as a makeshift airport in the middle of nowhere, a place where they could load people without interference.
The boat of slaves, piloted by Octavian Holmes, reached the Tampico coast just before dawn and was greeted by two trucks full of dark-skinned guards, all chosen from Kotto’s plantations in Nigeria. The Africans loaded six slaves into each truck, then drove them to Drake’s property, which sat ten miles northwest of the Mexican city. When they arrived at the camp, the slaves were quickly herded into a containment building. They were stripped, hosed, deloused, and clothed, before being fed their first meal in over a day.
The slaves were then examined by Kotto’s personal physician, who treated each of their injuries with urgency-these people were Kotto’s property, after all-making sure that every wound was cleaned and every infection was attended to. After certifying and documenting the health of each person, the doctor gave the slaves the immunization shots they would require for their trip to their new home, Africa.
Once the medical details were taken care of, the slaves were led to Drake’s homemade airfield. There the guards checked the names and ages of each.
Doubting the ability of the foreign guards, Levon Greene double-checked the list of passengers. He realized these twelve people would generate a huge payday and knew how far that money could go in Africa, so this wasn’t the time to make any mistakes.
“How do things look?” Holmes asked, no longer worried about Payne or Jones. “Are the dirty dozen ready for their trip to the motherland?”
Greene nodded. “As ready as they’re ever gonna be.”
Holmes smiled. “To help their transition, we’ve selected
for their in-flight movie.”
CHAPTER 58
Wednesday, July 7th
Ibadan National Railyards
Ibadan, Nigeria
(56 miles northeast of Lagos)
THE
dark-skinned American looked both directions, making sure that the busy rail station was free of incoming traffic. When he was satisfied, he continued his journey forward, lifting his white cotton robe away from the grease-covered tracks. After crossing the congested railyard, he turned left, walking parallel to the far rail while trying to conceal the limp in his gait. It was the only thing about him that was the least bit conspicuous. Other than that, he blended in perfectly, resembling the rest of the peasants as they rode the trains home after a hard day of work.
“May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you,” said a passing Muslim.
“And also with you,” he replied in Yoruba, one of the common languages in Ibadan.
With a watchful eye, the American continued forward, searching for the designated meeting spot. He had already completed his reconnaissance of the neighborhood-checking the security around the Kotto Distribution Center, studying the building blueprints, looking for weak spots in the perimeter of the industrial plant. Overall, he was happy with his findings, but his opinion mattered little in the greater scheme of things. He was simply a pawn in a very complex game, one that he knew very little about.
But that was about to change.
At the rendezvous point, he glanced in all directions, making sure that he wasn’t being followed. Everything looked clear to his well-trained eyes. Smiling confidently, he knocked on the railcar five times, the agreed-upon signal to gain access to the boxcar that had been commandeered for the current operation.
