Chapter 1

“Fear me, you lords and lady preachers.
I descend upon your Earth from the skies.
I command your very souls, you unbelievers.
Bring before me what is mine.
The Seven Seas of Rhye.”
-Queen, “The Seven Seas of Rhye”

Airbrakes hissed as the semi-truck pulled up to the harbor gate. The younger of the two guards in the gatehouse took a break from slapping the screen of the monitor that had gone out a minute before.

“It fine, Jacques,” the older man grumbled in exasperation. “I make report in morning. Do your rounds.”

“But I just go to piss and all these cameras...” The older guard cut him off, waving to the driver of the truck, who put the mighty vehicle in Park and rolled down the drivers’ window.

“Is pigeons. You gonna work the docks a long time, New Kid. Cameras go out. Do the rounds, I got this.”

The younger man started to grumble, but was too new to risk it. He checked his pistol and flashlight, hooked the heavy Detex Clock onto his belt, and was off. The older guard watched him walk off with bemusement, fiddling with the much newer and lighter digital version of the same device that he carried.

When the rookie was out of sight, he walked up to the driver’s side window. In the darkness of the cab, his face was shaded by the brim of the trucker’s cap he wore. The older guard didn’t bother looking closer.

“My apologies,” he said to the driver. “He is new. Too ‘fresh-faced’ to get how things work yet, eh?”

The driver wordlessly extended a thick envelope of cash out the window. The guard took it, thumbed through the bills, and stuck it in his pocket. He returned to the guardhouse and opened the gate to let the truck pass. Once it was around the corner ahead, he closed the gate, went behind the bank of monitors, bent down, and plugged it back in. He straightened up and turned to see the rookie’s pistol pointing between his eyes.

Inside the warehouse that the truck was making its way toward, a Chinese man in a suit with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder raked a cattle prod across the bars of a jail cell door, making loud zapping sounds and causing blue sparks to fly from the bars.

“QUIET,” he barked in his native language to the women in the cell, watching as they cowered away from the sparks. They hadn’t been making any noise; he simply enjoyed doing the thing with the prod and did it again.

Another Chinese man with an assault rifle and a pack of several rolls of duct tape stepped into the larger room outside the cell.

“That’s enough,” he told the man with the cattle prod, tossing him the duct tape. “Truck’s coming. Get them ready to move.”

With a look of disgust for the women, he ran the prod over the bars one last time before telling them all to face the wall. The other man unshouldered his weapon and covered him as he opened the cell to bind the women’s hands and mouths with the tape.

Out on the main floor, two men watched as the truck came to a stop outside the warehouse. The driver flashed the headlights twice, then got out and walked toward the door, his cap pulled down low over his face, obscured further by the shadows cast by the headlights. The driver stopped a few feet short of the door and raised both hands to show that he was unarmed. One of the men unlocked the door and let him in.

“You’re late,” one of the men barked at him in Cantonese.

“There was a complication,” the driver said in the same language, stepping into the warehouse. One of the men noticed the curve of the driver’s breasts from underneath the coveralls a moment too late as the cap came off, revealing short black hair with curly bangs. “Me. Now don’t move or speak.”

The two men froze perfectly still as Contessa Helena de San Finzione dropped the cap and took their weapons. She turned to one of them.

“How many more of you are there?”

“Twelve,” he replied, wanting to shout an alarm or pull the trigger of his gun, but unable to move even slightly or say anything except the answer to her question.

“All know Cantonese?” He nodded and she continued. “Call them out here and away from the girls in a way that won’t arouse suspicion,” she said to him, taking a seat at a folding table and fiddling with the Mah Jong game they’d been playing before her arrival as the man shouted.

“Truck’s here! Driver needs help again, everyone out here,” he called out, betraying his comrades.

The fear filing him now was a special one. A fear that he realized he should have had back in Hong Kong when one of the superstitious elder brothers in his family learned where his work was carrying him and offered an old charm or blessing to him, assuring him that the stories of The Viper That Speaks All The Tongues of Man’s ability to make men obey her commands were true. A fear that he should not have mocked on the journey to this land when one of his brothers would ask what to do if they encountered The Viper and he’d flick out his balisong quicker than their eyes could see, no matter how drunk he was and shout “I CUT OUT HER TONGUE! Before she speak ANY Tongue of Man” and laugh the question off.

It was a fear compounded by the fact that the three inches it rested in his pocket from his fingertips may as well have been the distance of leaving it in Hong Kong for his ability to compel his fingers to reach for it. Unable to do so until, as more of his brothers entered the room, she ordered them to put all their weapons in a pile, strip, and kneel in a row as if being arrested; and he complied along with them and tossed it onto the pile. It was the fear of all his bravado’s uselessness being made manifest as he and the others obligingly disarmed the building’s traps and disabled the alarms for her.

When everyone was returned to their arrest positions, Contessa Helena de San Finzione pulled the neckline of the t-shirt she wore forward, tilted her head, and spoke English down at her bra.

“All clear.” She looked up and made certain the thugs were in a safe area. “Move in.”

The garage door rolled open and Generalissimo Hernando Ramirez entered the building in full breaching gear, his MP5 at the ready. Four of the men and women of San Finzione’s elite Squadra de Ultimados troops poured through the door behind him. Two other teams followed suit at the side exits. The Generalissimo confirmed La Contessa’s assessment that the warehouse floor was secure and ordered the troops to secure the rest of the building and locate the prisoners. Helena gave him an expectant look. Ramirez sighed and nodded.

“Do it,” he said into his headset. Lines dropped from the skylights, and four more Ultimados rappelled in from the roof.

Helen applauded and rose to her feet, preparing to drag her chair over to address the prisoners when one of the Ultimados came forward and carried the chair for her. She gave a graceful nod of thanks, and sat down in front of the group of men, producing a cigarette and lighting it before addressing them in Cantonese.

“I know that was excessive, but they brought the gear with them and I really wanted to see them do it up close like this, so they indulged me. Anyway, gentlemen, welcome to San Finzione. I am your hostess, Contessa Helena de San Finzione. I’m afraid my schedule only permits me a couple of minutes for photos, but I’ll try to see as many of you as I can in turn.” She paused and thought for a moment. “I’m sorry, ignore that last part. It’s late and I’ve got a ‘surprise drop-in’ on the castle tour this afternoon; I’ve been practicing for it.” She took a long drag of her cigarette and continued.

“I admit to some curiosity, though. This looks for all the world like a Triad operation. But you see that can’t be right; because I’ve explained to the Triads that slavery and human trafficking DO NOT HAPPEN in San Finzione!” The captive thugs were surprised that she didn’t pull a gun and shoot one of them right then from her tone. Helena paused and seemed to collect herself before speaking further.

“And I know the Elders didn’t order this operation, because I would then have to pay a formal visit to Hong Kong, and nobody wants that. OOH!” Her eyes lit on a nice leather jacket in the pile of clothing and she walked over and put it on, giving the thugs a look that said that whoever it belonged to before, the jacket was hers now. Helena returned to her chair with her new jacket and continued.

“So this wasn’t sanctioned from on high; this is the work of some upstart who thinks he’s ready for the big time. You’ll tell me in a bit. You’re going to tell me everything I want to know, and then you’re going to deliver a message for me. The nature of that message and how strongly it will be worded depend upon the condition in which I find your captives. I’ll be right back. Until then, you’ll do everything my people tell you to or...” She stood up and crushed out the cigarette, then looked back up at the prisoners with a sweet smile.

“Or they’ll tattle on you.”

Two of the Ultimados were covering a door in the hallway. Contessa Helena de San Finzione approached them, bathed in the light from the flashlights on their helmets and pulling something long and wrapped in plastic from her coveralls.

“The cell is in here, Contessa,” one of them said through his gas mask. “The room hasn’t been swept for traps yet.”

“It’s clean,” she replied, tearing open the plastic and producing four green glow sticks from it. “And turn those fucking lights off!” As they complied, she snapped and shook the glow sticks, then handed one each to the men. “I know movies always show the rescuers shining big flashlights in their faces. These women have been locked in darkness for who-knows-how-many days. You’ll blind them.”

Helena entered the room and gently tossed one of the green glow sticks between the bars of the cell door. It rolled about three feet and illuminated the women cowering into the back corners from the light. It was hard for her to make out numbers in the darkness. Most were white women in their late teens and 20s with assorted other skin tones mixed in; their mouths and wrists bound with duct tape. Looking over the ripped clothing and tangled, greasy hair on the women’s heads, she pointed to one of them and motioned her over to the door. When the woman approached, Helen carefully removed the tape from over her mouth and leaned forward and spoke softly to her.

“Can you understand me? What language do you speak,” Helena asked in English. She began asking the question in French, but the woman nodded and mouthed “English.” She nodded her understanding and motioned for the woman to step back as she opened the door and stepped in, holding the other glow stick in front of her.

“You are safe now,” she told them. “My men and I are here to rescue you. You are within the borders of the Sovereign County and Nation-State of San Finzione and I am Contessa Helena de San Finzione. The soldiers you will be seeing are with me. They are the men and women of my Squadra de Ultimados, and they are here to help you. We’ll be taking you to receive food, clothing, and medical attention, and then we can work on returning you home. I must know something first.”

She took a seat on the single bed that was the only furnishing in the room. Helena motioned for the woman she’d spoken to before to come sit next to her. She removed the duct tape from her wrists, took the woman’s hand, and looked her in the eyes.

“Just be calm. I need to know how they’ve been treating you. Don’t be afraid to tell me anything.”

The woman looked into Helena’s eyes and a peaceful calm washed over her as she began to speak.

Contessa Helena de San Finzione returned to the warehouse floor, where the prisoners were still waiting on their knees. She held a roll of duct tape in her hand.

“None of you look at them,” she shouted in Cantonese. The thugs instantly turned their heads away as the women shielded their eyes and entered the room. The Ultimados stood between the women and their captors as they were led out of the building to where paramedics and buses were waiting. When Lisa, the one Helena had spoken to, walked past, she pointed out the man who’d been so enthusiastic about the cattle prod. Helena motioned for the women not to leave just yet.

She walked over to the pile of weapons and retrieved the cattle prod. A balisong knife on the floor caught her eye and she picked it up, flicking it open and closed a couple of times. Helen remembered nights in her early teen years sleeping with a less-ornate model of the same blade under her pillow. She cut off a strip of tape and put her new knife in her new jacket as she walked over to the man Lisa had pointed out.

“You like this one, don’t you,” she asked him in Cantonese. He didn’t want to nod his agreement but found himself unable to stop. Helena gave him the roll of tape as she looked down the length of the prod.

“You’re going to go back into the cell with this. You’re going to tape down the button, and then you’re going to shove it up your ass by the live end as far as it will go.” She thought for a second, and then put the tape over a spot about a foot down its length. “You can stop when you get to...” She moved the mark down another four inches. “Here.”