Even though she’d expected it, Brie still couldn’t quite believe her situation. She was in a slave market. A real, honest-to-fucking-Satan slave market.

How could a place like this exist in the twenty-first century?

Children were gathered in small clusters, connected by rope. Some girls wore bright-colored, traditional Sudanese tobes, while others wore nothing at all. Flies gathered around their eyes, and they wore the dazed look of starvation and shock.

Bile rose in Brie’s throat. The girls were as young as nine and likely faced sexual slavery. The boys were maybe a year or two older, and those who escaped sexual slavery were destined to work in diamond mines in the Central African Republic or work for the oil companies here in South Sudan.

Children—of both genders—might be sent to Qatar to work as domestic servants, to Poland for sexual servitude, or Saudi Arabia and Yemen for forced begging. She’d known this market existed, but seeing the children was still shocking. Horrifying.

There were no adult women. Where were the mothers? Slaughtered by the slavers before their children’s eyes?

Or were mothers frantically searching the bush and Sudd for their babies?

Brie wanted to save every child here. Children who should be home with their families. In school. At the park trying to catch Pokémon. Or being told by their parents that they couldn’t wear a sexy vampire costume on Halloween because dammit, nine-year-olds shouldn’t be sexualized.

But these children had never heard of Pokémon or Halloween. They’d never known the joy of dressing up as a superhero and demanding candy from strangers.

Really, there was nothing better than Halloween. It combined the joy of pretending to be something greater than one’s self and chocolate. She wished every child on the planet could experience Halloween at least once. These kids had likely never even had candy.

Horrifying that they’d only known war and famine, and now they would know slavery.

Once upon a time, she’d naïvely gone to grad school so she could understand the perspective of the indigenous groups that were being harmed by Prime Energy practices all over the world. Her fellow students had rightly scoffed that, coming from the ultimate privilege as she did, she would never understand. Not really.

Now, here she was, at a slave market, to be sold to the highest bidder. The anthropologist in her recognized she was being presented with an opportunity to understand. The terrified part of her told the academic to fuck off.

This shit was getting real.

Upon arriving at the market, she was searched by a guard—a white man who only grunted his commands, giving no hint as to his native language or accent—then fitted with a metal collar with a six-foot chain. After obtaining her leash, the Nuer man who’d captured her led her across the sweltering market, heading toward a series of thatched-roof huts in the market center.

Dozens of children sat in clusters of three and four as men shouted their attributes in Arabic and English. Some slavers were white; others were dark and bore scars that indicated a dozen different ethnic groups.

At least a dozen buyers milled through the market, looking over the children. These men were of different ethnic backgrounds, with every shade of skin represented. None bore tribal scars. Were they Europeans and Americans who ran the diamond mines and oil companies, or were they in the market for sex workers?

Foreigners looted the continent of both resources and citizens. They took the oil, diamonds, gold, and other precious metals from Africa, knowing full well that nothing trickled down to the citizens of the countries they raped.

Rape was an apt word. These men violently took what they wanted. Government leaders profited. Their armies were well funded, but not by tax dollars. The rulers of most of the resource-rich countries of Africa didn’t need the consent of the people to govern, because they didn’t need tax dollars. They got their money—and therefore their armies—from oil, diamond, and other mineral revenues.

With citizens removed from the governing equation, there was no need to give a crap what the masses needed. So the people of Africa lived far below the poverty line, while their dictators enjoyed lavish wealth.

These children would suffer so their dictator could entertain men like her father at their dinner table. Men like Viktor Drugov and his son, Nikolai, the Russian oligarchs her father had sold his soul to years ago.

Today, she would suffer with the children. A fitting justice—to have a Prime pay this price, except her father wouldn’t give a damn if he knew. So all the horror would be hers, and hers alone.

Was she to be a worker or sex slave?

Who was she kidding? She would be a sex slave. There was no hope she’d be anything less horrible.

Damn, she wanted to talk with the children who’d been ripped from their families. She wanted to hold them and tell them what they faced wasn’t sex. Sex was something shared. A joining. A joy.

Rape was something taken. Even if they—and she—acquiesced to avoid further pain, it was rape. There was no shame in not fighting. Whatever it takes to survive. Even if the only option was to submit.

Survival was paramount.

She stumbled, and the Nuer yanked on the chain, jerking her forward.

She wanted to save all the children she passed, but the truth was, she couldn’t even save herself.

Bastian rolled his shoulders, looking at the road ahead and behind, then finally down again. There on the ground in front of him were Brie’s footprints. They faded into drag marks, then disappeared next to fresh tire tracks on the muddy road.

They’d suspected it, but here was the proof. She’d been caught.

The tire tracks turned in a U, heading north again. There were no paths to the east that weren’t cut off by swamp and river. The other half of his team was searching north of the burned USAID facility. That left west. There’d been precious few roads that trailed west toward the savannah, which narrowed their search area considerably.

West, deep into the marshy grasslands that concealed a slave market.

“We need better intel on the market,” he said to Ripley, who had the satellite phone. “Is it controlled by rebel or government forces? What tribe holds the power here?” Alan had said neither Dinka nor Nuer controlled the area, but he was an aid worker, not privy to intel gathered by intelligence agencies. “Get Savannah James on the phone.”

A moment later, they had Savvy on speaker. “Both rebel and government forces have been driven out of the area. SIGINT indicates there could be Russian players.” SIGINT was signal intelligence—data gathered by intercepting signals.

“How are you getting SIGINT out here?” Ripley asked. A fine point, considering that only satellite phones worked in this electronic dead zone.

“I’m not. The intercepts are elsewhere, but we think the communications pertain to the market.”

“What about human intelligence?” Espinosa asked. “Has the Russian connection been supported by personal accounts?”

“Brie Stewart was my best hope for HUMINT on the market.”

The idea that Brie could right now be taking in the mother lode of intel twisted Bastian’s gut. He knew this was Savvy’s job—and Brie must’ve been game or she wouldn’t have been at Camp Citron—but Savvy never should have asked someone untrained in espionage to report on a black market that trafficked in weapons, drugs, and children.

“So it’s possible Russians are backing the market, providing security, laundering money, and who knows what else,” Cal said.

“Yes,” Savvy said.

“Wasn’t there some sort of alliance between Prime Energy and Russia’s Druneft?” Bastian asked, again wondering if her abductors had known she was a Prime.

“The alliance fell through about six months ago,” Savvy said. “Now the two companies are competing for the same pipeline concession.”

“So this could be about Brie’s family connections and a business rivalry.”

“We can’t rule anything out. But if someone found out Brie is a Prime, she never suspected. And she was careful. After you recognized her, she considered not going back because she was compromised. I convinced her you would keep her secret.”

He appreciated that there was no question in Savvy’s tone.

“We need the coordinates for the market, ASAP,” Cal said.

“Satellites are searching as we speak. We will find it.”

“Why the hell didn’t you find it before?” Bastian asked. “You’ve had, what, a month?”

“It wasn’t high priority. We have no role in the market and had no reason to believe an American would end up on the auction block. And you might recall we spent a week of that time searching for Morgan Adler.” Savvy’s tone was defensive. But then, she’d just admitted that while she was gathering intel on the market, there’d been no plans for the US to do anything about it.

“Hurry and find it,” Bastian said and ended the call.

He studied his team. If they were going into the market, they needed to get out of their military gear. None of them could pass for Sudanese, but they could conceal their US Army affiliation. Fortunately, blending with locals was one of the skills Army Special Forces excelled at.

Once they had the coordinates, Bastian would enter the market alone. His features were ethnic enough to not be obviously American, plus Special Forces were given leeway on shaving, allowing them to fit in with the locals they trained, and he’d taken advantage of that for the last few weeks. He rubbed his thick beard, grateful, not for the first time, that men from Pacific Northwest tribes tended to have more facial hair than other indigenous Americans. Between his beard and Arabic fluency, he’d be able to navigate the market with ease.

The others would be in position outside the market and ready to move when he located Brie. All that was left was to pray she hadn’t already been sold.

As both adult and white, Brie was a rarity in the market. A fact made clear when the man holding her leash dragged her toward one of the thatched-roof huts in the center.

The common language here was Arabic, and she understood enough to know the transactions that took place inside the huts were different from the wholesale marketing of children outside.

She was to be auctioned separately, out of view of the regular market crowd. Inside the hut, her chain was attached to a bolt embedded in a concrete block at the center of the round structure.

The Nuer man who’d abducted her received payment from the man who locked her chain to the bolt. The Nuer left the hut, his part in capturing and selling her complete.

The slaver pocketed the key as his gaze scanned her from head to toe. This must be his hut. Was the whole market his, or was this the equivalent of a booth in a farmer’s market?

Wouldn’t Savvy love Brie’s observations on the market now?

The slave trader had facial scars, but Brie couldn’t identify a particular tribe from the pattern. Without preamble, he produced a sharp knife, pulled her shirt collar away from her throat, and sliced downward, splitting the cloth from collar to hem.

Instinctively, she covered her bare breasts—she hadn’t spared a moment to don a bra when she fled the USAID building—but he waved the knife in front of her face and she dropped her hands.

Next he reached for her waistband. The blade nicked her skin, drawing a bead of blood. He signaled with the knife that she would undress herself or risk being cut.

I will survive this.

She mentally chanted the words as she removed her clothes.

I will survive this.

She had to believe in something, and she chose survival. She didn’t dare hope to be unscathed. Rape was a certainty. But she would live. She would find a way to escape. She was thirty-three years old and spoke English, French, and some Arabic. She wasn’t a starving child. These men usually preyed on the young and weak. Kids who spoke only their tribal language. Children who knew nothing of life beyond their war-torn villages.

I will survive.

Whoever her buyer turned out to be, he would make a mistake somewhere.

If fighting back is too dangerous, I will be meek to protect myself. There is no shame in not fighting. There is no shame in survival.

She removed her boots, then dropped her pants and underwear to the floor. She stepped out of the pile.

No shame in stripping when threatened with a knife.

Once upon a time, she’d learned to stand regally and present speeches to sell a toxic development plan to people who didn’t want it. If she could do that, she could handle this.

Fully nude, she faced her abductor without flinching. The man had dead eyes. He scooped her clothes from the floor and tossed them out the door.

I will escape. I will come back to this place. I will help the children here. And I will kill you with your own knife.

The last vow caught her off guard.

Could she kill a man?

The metal collar around her neck chafed in the heat.

Yes. Absolutely.

An hour after they received the coordinates from SOCOM, Bastian entered the market. He was unarmed except for a knife, and wore civilian clothes that signaled Western and buyer. This was to be a quick recon mission. He would only act now if Brie’s sale was imminent.

She had to be in one of the three huts near the center of the market. Even though the market operated without fear of reprisals, they wouldn’t conduct the transaction of selling an American woman in the open. That was the sort of thing the US military couldn’t ignore.

Assuming, of course, that they knew Brie was American.

Bastian studied the layout of the market. Six guards patrolled the edges, keeping parents or other would-be rescuers out and the children in. Proof the market operators weren’t fearless.

He counted the clusters of children who were lined up in the sweltering heat. At least fifty children. Some cried, but most sat silent with a thousand-yard stare as flies vied for the moisture in their eyes.

Bastian hardened his jaw, thankful for the cover of his beard. Today, he was a buyer. He couldn’t react to the sight of starving children offered up as chattel.

If he returned here with a full twelve-man A-Team and a squad of SEALs, they could take out the slavers and free the kids. End this atrocity in one sweep.

But he couldn’t do that today. Today, he was only authorized to save one American adult, meaning this op would fuel nightmares for years to come.

SOCOM had been clear: retrieve Brie Stewart and no one else. Otherwise they risked alerting the South Sudanese government that the US military had conducted a rescue operation within their sovereign borders. The US could not get drawn into South Sudan’s civil war.

The US military had played that game too many times, with sometimes disastrous results.

But still, his gaze took in the beautiful ebony-skinned children. Malnourished. Emaciated. They faced slave labor or sexual exploitation. He’d have to be a monster to walk away.

He could save some of these kids. Now. Today. But that risked his mission objective—to rescue Brie Stewart.

Weeks ago, he’d gone AWOL with Pax and Cal to save Morgan Adler, and they had managed to save a bunch of girls who’d been rounded up by a warlord to fund his private army. He’d thought that place was bad, but this market brought atrocity to a whole new level.

He cut through the market, inspecting the “wares” while keeping his revulsion from his face. He had a hidden mic in his collar and a tiny earpiece, keeping him in touch with his team.

Ripley and Espinosa spoke Arabic and could translate Bastian’s conversations with merchants for the others. The easiest way to spring Brie without revealing he was a soldier was to buy her. He had money. The question was, did he have enough?

Could he buy all the children?

Doubtful.

Plus it would be noticed if he suddenly bought out the market. And the slavers would just be encouraged to round up more children.

No. These assholes had to bleed.

He reached the huts at the center and circled the first one. Made of grass-thatched mud, the structure had plenty of gaps for him to peek inside. He whispered to his team without moving his lips, “Southeast hut is the arms depot. AKs, grenades, and a shoulder-fired rocket launcher.”

“Relaying the intel to Savannah James,” Ripley said.

Bastian moved on to the next hut. He couldn’t quite make out what was inside but suspected some of the items were artifacts. Probably drugs too. Both funded terrorism. Did Boko Haram or ISIS use this market? He passed the intel on to Ripley and then moved on to circle the third hut.

The mud filled the gaps better on the structure than the others and a curtain covered the open doorway. He thought he saw a woman inside but couldn’t confirm it was Brie.

From the chatter, he learned potential buyers would get to view the goods one at a time before the auction began. Some cynically speculated that they were stalling, waiting for a special buyer to arrive and the previews were just to drive up the price before the man got here.

A special buyer meant auction was fixed. It had to be Brie.

He’d just have to line up with the other previews and try to buy her before the auction even began. With enough money, it might work, but he would need every dollar they’d taken from the Blackhawk.

He headed back toward the market entrance to grab the money and confer with his team. He heard a piercing shriek and turned to see the source. A girl who couldn’t be more than ten lay huddled on the ground, her arms covering her head as she sobbed.

A man three times her size kicked her in the side and yelled at her to get up and take her place on the block.

Bastian wanted to puke.

Instinct urged him to lunge for the man and gut him.

But his mission required him to keep on walking.