A Piece of Peace on Earth

"Tit's are OK, not too big and not to small. Too much pussy hair though. Our clients like 'em with just a little. How many guys has she fucked."

"Not sure. I've only had her a week and before that she was fresh off the boat. Maybe a dozen or so here. I don't know about along the way. Some of 'em have some bush, but you can make 'em shave if you want. The bush don't matter cause they're all tight. That's why we have 'em in the parlors, 'cause these slant bitches, they're all tight. You wanna fuck her and find out for yourself?"

I shook my head and grinned.

"Not a chance. My boss would feed me my balls if he even thought I was sampling the merchandise."

I let the girl's skirt fall and then did the same thing to the other two. The second flinched like the first. The third just stood there and looked like she was going to cry."

I looked back at the guy.

"This one has saggy tits and her ass is too big. She's not worth four, one maybe, but not four."

The guy grinned again.

"Yeah, her ass is bigger than the others, but I know that pussy is tight 'cause I fucked her last night. I guess she does have floppy tits though. How about three?"

I shook my head.

"Can't go three. I might go two, but that's it."

The guy smiled.

"I can do two."

"Ok. Now, where's the other two? We agreed on five. That's why I brought twenty with me."

The guy shrugged.

"The boss said give you a sample, I gave you a sample. You pay for these three and if everything goes OK - no cops show up and all the money is there - I'll call you and you can come look at a dozen more. You pick which ones you want and I'll keep the rest."

I was getting pissed. He was talking about these girls like they were just commodities, like corn or pork bellies, but I couldn't show that.

"So, I get these three for ten and my pick from a dozen more?"

The guy nodded.

I walked out to my car, pulled the aluminum case out of the trunk and walked back to the door. That was a signal to the agents by the bucket truck that the deal was going down. I stopped for a second at the door and then moved my head from side to side as if I was looking up and down the street. That was the signal that everything was OK and they should stand down but stay alert.

When I sat the case on the table and opened it, the guy said, "Fuck, man, I figured you were shittin' me about the C4.".

He'd seen the block of modeling clay in a paper wrapper that said "C4" in big black letters and "EXPLOSIVE" in white letters on a black field, and the aluminum tube with two wires that led to a small black box taped to the lid.

I looked at him with the best pissed off look I could manage.

"You fucking asshole, don't you know who I work for, or are you just as fucking dumb as you look? I told you, you don't fuck around with my boss. He'll be pissed as hell that I'm only bringing three girls when I told him I was bringing him five. When he sees that last one, he'll be pissed about that too. He always tries out each new girl and he hates saggy tits.

"You said next time you'd have a dozen. It better be twelve, not ten or eleven, and they better be healthy. No VD or druggies. If I don't see that, I walk away, and in a day or so, you'll be lucky if you ever walk again. Understand?"

The guy gulped a little then said "Yeah. Gotcha."

I pulled ten stacks of a thousand each from the case and handed them to the guy. All the serial numbers had been recorded before I got them so they'd be evidence of the sale in court.

"Count 'em if you want, but there's ten there. I'll be taking my girls and going now."

I didn't wait for an answer. I just grabbed the first girl's hand and motioned for the others to follow. In less than a minute, I had them in the back seat of my car and I was driving away. In my rear view mirror, I saw the two agents getting the bucket truck secured and ready to move.

Ten blocks away was an empty warehouse owned by one of the FBI's fake corporations. It that warehouse sat an older black panel van. The side door opened just as I got there and I pulled inside. The two agents inside quickly pulled the girls out of my car and pushed them into the van. The girls were on their way to a safe house where they'd be checked out medically, fed, and then interrogated. I drove back to the hotel where I was staying.

I got a call from the guy the next afternoon.

"Everything went OK. I'll have your lambs ready tomorrow at the same place."

When I drove up to the house and parked at the curb, the blonde guy was standing there with two more Mexicans and the bucket truck was in place again. The blonde guy smiled.

"Couldn't get all twelve here. We have to go to the farm. You follow me there."

I didn't have any choice but to get back in my car and follow the guy. I saw one of the agents by the bucket truck pull a mike from his vest while he was working the levers to get the boom back on top of the truck and the support legs pulled back in. I knew there was no way they could get the truck ready to roll before we drove out of sight. They could track me by the GPS tracker hidden in my car, but that was going to take a while. I was pretty much on my own until they did.

The place was out in the country south of Houston, and looked like an old farm house. When we pulled into the drive and stopped, I got out, got the case from my trunk, and followed them inside.

In the living room stood twelve Asian girls. All except one looked pretty young, maybe nineteen or twenty. That one looked older, maybe about twenty-five or so. It was hard to tell her age for sure because Asian women don't seem to age like Caucasian women, but she was definitely no teenager. Her face was more mature and her curves were fuller.

Another woman sat in a chair off to one side beside a table with a marble statue of a nude woman on it, and as soon as I saw her, I swore under my breath. She was Hispanic and had red hair, and I was sure I'd arrested her when I was a patrol cop in Philly.

The blonde guy pointed to the girls and said, "Here they are. Pick which two you want."

I started doing the same examination I'd done before, and as I looked at each girl, I kept glancing at the woman in the chair. It was her all right. I remembered the mole on her upper lip and the little scar on her right cheek. Her name was Tiffany, and the reason I remembered her was she seemed a lot smarter then the rest of the hookers we'd arrested that night. Tiffany was also a violent bitch. She bit one of the arresting officers and almost took his ear off, and kicked another in the nuts before they got her in cuffs.

She was looking at me too, and that bothered me. It had been almost ten years and I had a beard and longer hair now, but sometimes that doesn't work. I tried to look like I was concentrating on the girls, but I was also keeping her, the blonde guy, and the two Mexicans in my peripheral vision.

I'd looked at four of the girls when the redhead motioned to the blonde guy. As he walked over to her, I knelt down, lifted the skirt of the girl in front of me, and held it up with my left hand. I let my right drop down to my ankle. A second later, all hell broke loose.

The blonde guy yelled, "He's a cop", and started to pull the nine mil from his belt. I'd pulled my.380 and thumbed the safety as soon as he turned around. He went down with the first slug in his chest, the second a little higher, and the third in his throat. I was turning toward the Mexicans and got off two more shots before the bullet slammed into my left shoulder and spun me sideways.

That was fortunate, because the shot fired by the other Mexican missed me. I fired four more rounds at them. One caught the Mexican on the right in the forehead and the second and third put the other on the floor with one in his shoulder and the other in the center of his chest. The fourth round missed because I fell over when I tried to lean on my left arm.

The girls had all run out of the room during all this, all except for two, the redhead and the Asian woman who looked older than the rest. I'd turned to where I thought the redhead would be, but instead of sitting in the chair, she was standing over me with a pistol in her hand. Her face was a sneer.

"Thought I recognized you even with the beard. You're that fucking cop from Philly. You bastard, I sat in that fucking jail cell for two hours with two dykes who beat the shit out of me when I wouldn't lick their cunts. The bitch cop who was supposed to stop them just stood there and laughed her ass off. I'd show you how that feels if I didn't have to get back and tell Roberto what happened here. Instead, I'm gonna shoot you in the balls and then the gut."

She was aiming at my crotch when I heard a shrill scream. Tiffany started to turn her head at the same time the older Asian woman hit her on the back of the head with the statue from the table. The redhead went down like a sack of wet dog shit and then rolled over on her back. There was another scream from the Asian woman as she hit Tiffany with the statue again, this time in the face. I heard a crunch and then a gurgle as the redhead started choking on her own blood. I could see the Asian woman then, and her face was a mask of hate. There was another crunching sound when the Asian woman brought the statue down on the Tiffany's face again. Tiffany didn't move or make a sound after that.

The Asian woman dropped the statue then, and knelt down beside me. The hate had left her eyes and had been replaced by concern.

"Lay still so I can see how bad you're hurt."

"You speak English?"

She started unbuttoning my shirt.

"Yes. Now be quiet so I can concentrate."

She got my shirt unbuttoned, but she wasn't strong enough to roll me over. By that time the adrenaline was starting to wear off and I was feeling pain like I'd never felt before so I couldn't help her much.

"I have to roll you over", she said. "I can't do it by myself. You're too heavy so you'll have to help. It's going to hurt, but I have to see if the bullet came out or if it's still in you."

She was right about it hurting. She was trying to lift my shoulder and that hurt like hell. When she said, "roll over", I tried again and that hurt a lot more. I groaned and fell back down.

She yelled at me then.

"Do you want to die? Roll over or you will."

I felt something grating in my shoulder when I finally managed, and then a lot more pain when she pulled my arm up so she could get the sleeve off. She put my arm back down and then pulled the shirt away from my back. Her voice got calm and soft again.

"I know it hurts but don't you give up. Just stay with me. The bullet went all the way through, but it doesn't look like it hit any arteries or veins. You're going to be OK."

I heard the ripping of fabric and then more pain hit me even harder when I felt something being pushed into my chest. A few seconds later I felt the same thing on my back. I must have blacked out then because that's the last thing I remember.

}|{

I woke up because somebody was doing something to my shoulder and it hurt. I heard a voice say, "Goddammit. Jack, he's starting to tense up. Give him a little more to relax his muscles again." Then everything went black again.

The second time I woke up, it was because somebody was wrapping something around my arm and that made my shoulder hurt. When I opened my eyes, I saw a woman in blue scrubs.

She smiled.

"It's about time you woke up. You feel OK? The doctor OK'd some meds if it hurts too much."

I had some pain, but it wasn't all that bad, and ever since working Narcotics for a year in Philly, I'd been hesitant to take anything more than aspirin. I'd seen too many junkies who'd started on prescription painkillers because of some kind of injury or surgery and got hooked. They'd changed to heroin because it was cheaper than the meds and the guy on the corner didn't ask for a prescription.

"It hurts, but I can manage. A few aspirins might be nice though."

She finished taking my blood pressure, then brought me two aspirins in a cup and made me drink half a glass of water to swallow them. She said breakfast would be in about an hour and then left.

I was still pretty groggy, but over that hour it mostly went away. When the same nurse brought me a tray with two eggs, a sausage patty, and a cup of coffee, I wasn't really hungry. I ate one of the eggs and half the sausage, and was finishing the coffee when a guy in a black suit and tie walked into the room and closed the door behind him. He pulled the chair from the corner up to my bed, stuck his sunglasses in his inside pocket and sat down.

"You're a lucky man, Agent Hicks. It took us half an hour to find you. If that woman hadn't known what she was doing, you wouldn't have made it. She kept you from bleeding to death.

"You'll be happy to know that between the video from your camera and what she and the other women told us, we had enough information to start taking down the trafficking operation. Agents arrested some of the minor players this morning, and they're talking, well, the Americans are talking. The Mexicans aren't saying a word. Can't say as I blame them. They won't be safe anywhere if they do. There are enough cartel members in prisons around the US that they'd only live a couple weeks no matter where we hold them. Right now they're in solitary for their own protection."

He stroked his chin, then scratched his bald head.

"There is something else, John. We uh...when we went over that house in the country, we found something that we didn't expect. The place was wired and had video cameras like we figured it would. We have what happened on a DVD we found in the recorder, and we know the Asian woman came to your rescue so she isn't going to be charged with anything.

"We didn't figure there would be a microwave transmitter for the video and audio feeds. Our tech guys were able to find the location of the receiving antenna, but by the time we got there, the place was deserted and all the equipment except the antenna was gone. What that means is the cartel has you on video and they have your voice. They also have the redhead saying you're a cop."

He shook his head.

"You can't go back in the field, John. There's no way the cartel is going to forget about this. You can't go back to being an agent either. We've already found one clerk here in Houston who was bought off by the cartels. As soon as you show your face, there'll be a target on your chest and they won't stop until you're dead."

I asked him what I was suppose to do then. He scratched his head again.

"We'll need you to testify at some of the early trials about what you saw. There won't be a trial for the blonde guy and two Mexicans or for the redhead. You killed the guys and the Asian woman killed the redhead, but you still have information we can use in the trials of some of the minor players. After that...ever considered living in Montana?"

"No. Why?"

"We're going to put you in the witness protection program. You'll get a new identity and Montana's big enough it will be easy for you to stay out of sight. We'll set you up in a house with some job references so you can find work. You'll go on with a new life."

"What the hell would I do except be a cop? I don't know anything else."

"Oh, I think you do. You worked your way through college in the dorm kitchens, didn't you? Maybe you'd like to be a cook, or maybe start your own restaurant. We can help you do that too.

"Well, I have to get back to the office. They'll have finished interrogating the batch they brought in this morning, and we have to figure out which ones to go after next. You think about that restaurant thing, OK."

I said I would, and then asked him about the Asian woman.

"That Asian woman. Can I talk to her?"

He looked at me for a few seconds and then frowned.

"After we interrogated her, we put her in a safe house and even I don't know which one. I'll see what I can do, but she's on those videos too and they know her name. She's in as much danger as you are."

}|{

A doctor came to see me that afternoon. He said the bullet had busted my collarbone, but other than that, hadn't caused that much damage. He said it would hurt to move that shoulder for a while, but they'd fixed my collarbone so in about six months, I'd be about as fit as before and in a year I probably wouldn't know it had happened except for the scars on my chest and back.

He left then, but said he'd check on me every day and when he thought I was doing OK, would release me.

He did release me after a week, but I wasn't really released. As soon as I got dressed, the two agents who'd been outside the door to my hospital room since I got there walked me down the stairs and out the back of the building. We got into an unmarked van and after about a hundred turns, stopped at a huge house in one of the exclusive Houston suburbs that had a nine-foot wrought iron fence around the entire lot.

There was a guy in shorts and a flowered shirt sitting in a chair on the lawn in front of the house with a crossword puzzle and a soda. Most people wouldn't have noticed the tiny ear bud in his ear or the way his shirt seemed to have a crease on the right side just above his waist, but I did. The ear bud meant he was listening to somebody in the house. That crease was the shirt pulled a little too tight around the butt of a Glock.40, the standard FBI issue sidearm at the time.

I also saw video cameras all over the place, front door, each corner and each side of the house, and even in the trees around the house. There was an "ADT" sign by the front step, but I knew all those cameras weren't sending anything to anybody. I figured inside there'd be a room filled with video displays and at least a couple people sitting there monitoring them. When we went past the door, I saw there were four, not just two. I figured I was in a lot more shit than I thought if the FBI was that concerned about me.

The agents wouldn't tell me their full names. After making the rounds of the house, all I knew was Bob, Jack, Willard, Kimberly, Susan, and Rocky, and I wasn't sure those were their real names. Rocky was the guy in the front yard. Bob, Jack, Willard, and Kimberly manned the video room, and Susan was both a guard and the cook. When I shook her hand, she said dinner would be at six.

At ten 'til six, I walked downstairs from my room and into the dining room. There were two places set at the table. I assumed one of the agents was going to eat with me because except when I was in my room or the john, I hadn't been out of their sight.

I sat down to wait, and about five minutes later, the Asian woman from the house in the country walked in. She smiled at me.

"How does your shoulder feel?"

I smiled back.

"As good as can be expected, I suppose. I hear I have you to thank for just having a sore shoulder."

She looked down at the table.

"I couldn't let you die. You were the only chance I had to get out of that place."

"The agent who talked to me a few days ago said if you hadn't known what you were doing, I'd have bled to death. How did a pros...how did you know what to do?"

She looked up at me.

"It's all right. You can say it. I didn't want to be that way, but I was."

Susan brought two trays into the dining room and sat one in front of each of us.

"It isn't filet mignon but it's steak, and it turned out pretty good. I'll be back with your drinks in a jiff. Sodas or iced tea? I have both."

Once she brought my iced tea and the woman's Pepsi, she left us alone again. I was hungry and the steak was good, but I also wanted to know more about the woman who had saved my life.

"Miss, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself. I'm John Hicks."

She looked up from the steak she'd been cutting and smiled.

"My name is Kim Lee Sun. In Korea, Kim is a last name, but you can call me Kim if you want. That's what the other agents call me."