**Note: This chapter and several that follow will include segments that involve governmental corruption. While I have used real countries, however, I have made up fake branches of the governments that are included in this book. Remember, this is a work of fiction. The names I chose for these branches of the governments is purely coincidental and in no way should be inferred that corruption is associated with the actual government branches.**
While I started working in Luxembourg as a Honey Trap, I was soon moved to a more profitable region. That is when I first began to appreciate just how pervasive human trafficking and the sex market truly is. It goes way beyond the pimps with their two or three girls working on a street corner in any major city as is commonly depicted in television or in movies. This is a multi-billion dollar business with international money and political support and protection. If this is what my poor sister got involved in, she never stood a chance.
The market for beautiful young women just never seems to dry up. The problem is that beauty is such a perishable commodity. These poor girls service seven or more men a day, six and seven days a week. By the time they reach twenty, they have already aged way beyond their years. The turnover rate is very rapid. No matter how many girls I entice into the fold, it never seems to be enough.
I quickly found myself in a moral dilemma. While I did my best to find girls/boys who are at least 18 years old, that is not what they really want. My boss wants girls/boys ranging from 14, 15 to 16 years of age. In some cases, they want even younger girls/boys. However, they know my limitations. I am simply too old to attract these young children. Besides, they already have people and methods set in place to fill these needs.
If you want a depiction of sex trafficking that is fairly accurate in parts, watch Liam Neeson’s 2008 blockbuster movie Taken. While some of the action scenes are a bit over the top, the portions of the movie that depict political corruption and the extent of the sex trafficking network are quite accurate. They also show an example of how a honey trap works. By watching it you now know what my job is like. I entice girls by whatever means I deem necessary. Unlike the character in the movie whom I believe is portrayed by the actor Luke Grimes has no conscience, I do. I can’t wait till we get enough to nail these guys. It’s killing me to recruit these girls. The only consolation I can take is if it wasn’t me doing it, even younger children would be selected and at least, I am working on breaking up this trafficking ring.
The more time I spend undercover the more information I learn about the sex trafficking ring that is flourishing throughout Europe and Asia. The trafficking ring is very well-established and it has territories that are broken up into grids. Each grid is controlled by a deputy. The ring is known as the Black Dawn and is controlled by a single leader. His identity is a closely guarded secret. However, by a slip of the tongue I found out that his name was Felix Popovic. Apparently, he is a Ukranian Oligarch.
Because there were so many layers insulating him from anything illegal, the chances of taking him down are slim to none. He has more politicians in his pocket than you can believe. However, everybody has some vulnerability or weakness, his, apparently is the belief that he’s untouchable. Through our sting operation we will discover the identity of three of these key politicians that are in his pocket.
– Otto Muller–German Minister of International Affairs
– Holub Marek–Czech Republic Minister of Local and Regional Development
– Pierre LaCroix–French Minister of International Relations
These politicians help to protect the trafficking ring in their grids because they hold key positions in the government. Each one has oversight on immigration into their respective contries.
After a while I felt that I was slipping into a deep quagmire and I was starting to become confused. This tends to happen when you have been undercover for a protracted period of time. I contacted my handler Jasmine Giordano. I know that she is our CEO, however, she personally handles all of our agents that are undercover. I informed her that I needed to be brought in because it was starting to get to me. She tells me that we are getting close and that I need to hold on a little longer.
Several months later when I thought I couldn’t go any longer, I heard some news through the grapevine about a large shipment of girls going to Germany. This was what we had been waiting for. I immediately informed my CEO about the shipment of girls and since it was the largest one that they had ever tried to move and it was also rumored that the top dog Popovic was going to be present to supervise it. If this was the case, we could bring down the whole network. An added bonus was that there was going to be several traffickers present to control all of the girls. Usually only two are required for smaller deliveries. But this one was rumored to be over 40 girls, many of them under ten years of age. It was certainly more than our missing person agency could handle by itself. The problem was who could be trusted to coordinate this sting. There were so many powerful people in the employ of this trafficking ring, most of whom were still unknown to us that keeping it under wraps would be a logistics nightmare.
Since there were so many girls being flown in, they were using a Bombardier CRJ550 outfitted with extra collapsible fuel tanks in the luggage bays to eliminate the need for refueling. They were trying to keep the footprint as small as possible. They were going to land in a deserted runway that was just barely long enough to accommodate the plane. It was secretly maintained by the syndicate for just such an event. Not only was I able to eventually discover the location of this landing strip but the time it was going to arrive as well. I don’t even want to tell what I had to do to get this information. Suffice it to say, I had to take several showers to feel clean again.
Through all this, one of the things that bothered me the most was my poor Jojo. Thank God, Captain Smelter agreed to take care of him for me. To cover the cost of putting him up at their house, I had given him a check for $25,000. You should have seen my captain’s eyes when he saw the amount written on the check. I told him, “You don’t know the half of it.” It turns out that the Captain’s grand children are having a great time taking care of Jojo. The youngest one is even riding him like a horse.
I don’t know how my boss or the agencies that were working with ours did it but they managed to pull it off. When the plane landed on the airstrip and taxied to the old deserted hangar, Popovic was waiting there to greet his newest aquisitions. He, of course, was surrounded by armed security. However, they were insufficient because they were soon overwhelmed by a large contingency of camouflaged and heavily armed multi-national ATF agents. They seemed to come out of nowhere as they swarmed the hangar, plane and Popovic’s helicopter.
It didn’t take long before Popovic was singing like a canary. It was all the agents could do to keep up with avalanche of critical information that he was spewing out. Between him and Burak Kaya, one of the traffickers on the plane, pretty much the entire ring was being given up. I guess neither one of them wanted to be somebody’s girlfriend in prison.