Anya

Manipulating the Manipulators: 3

I wish I could say it was early in the morning when we'd arrived, that there were birds chirping as they rummaged through trees, that the ocean was warm and welcoming. But that was not the case.

We'd arrived late in the afternoon, parked our boat on crowded docks where dozens of merchants and buyers were crowding around the area. This wasn't the central region of the black market, not the main area where sales were made, but there were still dozens of bodies being exchanged in secret. We hadn't taken into account that there might be selling activity here as well and I knew Samuel wished he could help everyone, but we needed to focus on our specific plan at this time. Get to the helicopter, send the women to the United States, then go scope out the black market in Haiti in order to come up with another plan.

"Donde estan las mujeres?"(where are the women) A short, older man with a scruffy gray beard had approached us as soon as our ship docked on Dominican Republic soil. The docks here were different, they were more refined and paved, rather than the feeble wooden ones we'd departed from last night. "¡Se suponía que estarías aquí hace tres horas!"(You were supposed to be here 3 hours ago!)

"Lo siento, pero tuvimos un problema con algunos matones." (Sorry, we had issues with some thugs). Samuel responded, keeping his hands behind his back, tracing over the gun that was cocked in his belt buckle. His Spanish was perfect, if I didn't know any better, I'd have considered him a native.

"Asi... sacarlas." (So... bring them out.) The man instructed, skepticism crowning the visible features on his face. I turned around to face the women who were all slowly waking up. Spots of light entered through the many small windows of the wooden ship, hitting some of them in their eyes and forcing them awake. They looked like this was the first time they'd peacefully rested in a while and I was thankful that we could provide them with these small pleasures. Aspen, Hyacinth, and Ilia were walking over to them and handing them water bottles as each lady woke up.

"Cuantos hombres hay aqui? Tenemos muchas mujeres." (How many men do you have? We have a lot of women.) Samuel asked. The question may not have seemed suspicious, but we all knew he was trying gauge how many people we were up against. We could easily take down five thugs who didn't know we were coming, but five who knew we were against them was a completely different story. Especially in an area like this.

"Tres, mas o menos." (Three, more or less.) The man said and Samuel turned to me with a look that signaled he would handle this. I nodded as I walked over to the women, all crouched so meekly on the ground. I explained to them that they'd be leaving here and would need to pretend the ropes were still tied around their wrists.

They were smart, waking each other up and quickly taking charge. They loosely tied the rope around each other's wrists, some wincing when the thick material touched the redness that the rope had created before. I wondered if these women were able to get close to one another, oftentimes, the women would keep in touch after going through something so traumatic together.

"Tengo dos hombres conmigo. Pero, hemos manejado a estas mujeres solos, por lo que no necesitamos la ayuda de tus hombres." (I have two men with me. But we've handled these women alone, so we won't be needing your men's help.) I heard Samuel say. He was beyond clever in his response. I just hoped that the man would take the bait and leave us alone. We could tell him that we would walk them to the train discreetly, we just hoped that he didn't recognize that we weren't the same men he was supposed to be meeting. And that he realized that Aspen, Samuel, and I were only there because the 'thugs' that had made us late had taken two of our five men.

In order to defeat your enemy, you had to know your enemy. And I knew that these men always had one man speak for all of them. So Aspen and I remained silent while he spoke with Samuel.