Chapter 19

I am told that the doctor smuggled out film of Pablo’s end of life experience. The film, when I saw it, was carefully clipped to avoid giving any information away related to location, people, or even timing of the event. People with knowledge of the kiddie porn and snuff film industry said that the grotesque manner in which Pablo died served as a very real warning of what can happen to people who make their fortune off the suffering of children and women.

Pablo’s main competitor for the filth he peddled died in a particularly appropriate fashion. Ernesto had a habit of randomly choosing a girl from his sex stable and impaling her on a steel pike. The girl was carefully impaled so as to avoid killing her, because the main event came while every slave in his employ was forced to watch the child roasted to death above a BBQ spit. The tortured child was slowly rotated above the flames as an example to the rest of his stable about what happens when a child resists rape and sodomy.

When Ernesto’s associates found him, his completely roasted body was found impaled on a barbed pike and still turning over the long dead coals of what must have been a very hot fire. His entire stable of slaves was removed and reunited with their families following extensive medical and psychiatric care. Ernesto was un-mourned. His unclaimed body was dropped in a pauper’s grave along with the ashes of dogs, cattle and other animals that had also lived past their useful life.

Jack and Roy, along with their associates profited enormously as the traffickers died and disappeared. When they captured a trafficker, they were free to take whatever assets they found in his possession. We only took what could be liberated electronically and seized through forensic means. Their devotion to the task was legendary. Sexual slavery and human trafficking dropped off precipitously during our purge through the US and Mexico.

The Justice Department was once more awash in evidence of crimes, conspiracies as the international syndicate of child sex slavers met their end. The volume of indictments against bankers who washed the funds for kiddie pornographers, along with the owners and operators of many of the support business that served their ends were rounded up and jailed, awaiting trial, forced Congress to appoint more judges, open additional courts, and generally take notice of the sickness that was allowed to flourish under their watch.

The media caught on and began an assault against the organs of state that protected those responsible and particularly howled their outrage against politicians that were shown to have accepted bribes to look the other way. Our people provided the proof to the Judge, and he arranged for it to be made available to the outraged press, who dutifully did their part.

The murderous thugs at MS13 hired on to protect the worst of the kiddie porn offenders. “MS” in MS-13 meaning “Mara Salvatrucha” — “mara” being a Central-American word for “gang,” “salva” referencing “El Salvador,” the main country of origin for many founding members and “trucha,” being a slang term meaning “clever” or “sharp,” They only plied their torturous trade for a short while, because their employers along with their money, disappeared almost overnight.

The leaders of the gang were furious at being denied and turned against law enforcement, attempting to spark wholesale riots. Their campaign of terror was short lived as the bodies of scores of MS13 thugs were found hanging in gang controlled neighborhoods throughout their network of cities. One such body, when approached, burst open and thousands of cockroaches spilled out, running in every direction and attaching themselves to anyone nearby.

The message was clear.

Help the kiddie porn kings and die. And many died. Gangs are preconditioned to fight instead of think. Their first instinct is far too often to choose violence, because it usually works. Once the violence turned their members into statistics, they chose to make their stand wherever we found them. It used to be that prisons were filled with MS13 psychotic killers. After our season of hell, graveyards became the next destination for the gang. The attacks against law enforcement dried up as soon as the tortured bodies of MS13 thugs started to appear in their own neighborhoods.

One day the Judge came to see me.

“It’s time to close down the war on kiddie porn and sexual slavery,” was all he said. “Our people tell me that the damage you’ve done to their networks, fortunes and ability to conduct business will keep them from being a problem for the next twenty years, if not longer. The people at Justice are losing their nerve, so it would be best to shut down and head back across the water.

“I know you were brutally abused by those sick freaks. You’ve caused more pain and anguish than was inflicted on a hundred Ross Thompsons. It’s time. Let it go now.”

So we did.

Jack and his crew went back to what they did before my call, and I flew home to Castle Wellington.

Boarding Chasen’s “G” felt to me like I was visiting an old friend. The thought of heading home to Castle Wellington was as peculiar as it was comforting. I looked over at Joan who had flown over to help me organize some of my long put off obligations, and thought about Deirdre. She was home alone, hurt and lonely, having had to deal with the grief and fury over losing Evie by herself, while I hunted those responsible and sent them to hell.

She would find little comfort in the knowledge that most of those responsible for Evie’s murder were rotting in shallow graves, their ashes mingling with those of cows, horses and assorted farm animals. Her fury would still be fresh and her grief potent, but knowing that the people who brought that grief to her all died a violent death might help some.

Joan spent the first three hours of our flight handing over reports, documents, letters, invitations, requests, and other communiqués left ignored since my trip to America. She knew I was alone with my thoughts and kindly kept quiet. As grateful as I was for her consideration to my mood, the silence began to get to me after a while.

“Who are you, Joan. Where do you come from? What’s your story? We’ve worked together since before my grandfather died, yet we’ve never had an actual conversation.”

She shyly dipped her head, no doubt wanting to avoid having the conversation I was striking up due to her overactive sense of duty, but I wasn’t having it. “It’s OK to act like a person. You don’t have to be perfect proper all the time.”

It took some time, but Joan eventually started to talk.

“Lord Terrance. I do not usually talk about myself. When my manager asked me to go immediately to the castle to handle phone calls, guests, reception of flowers, and help for you and Lady Deirdre with your grandfather’s arrangements, I was petrified, but determined to be as much help as possible. The two of you were unbelievably kind and polite. I was quite taken aback.