Josie laughed at the visual.
“I am not even kidding.”
He finally hung up and slid his phone into his back pocket. “We’re ready. We’ve got four undercover females wired up in the back of a van. The van is sitting outside. A woman named Sheila will get you to the apartment address. She’s undercover narcotics and she’s a pro. Once you sign the ladies over to Big Ben, you come back out, get in the van, and drive off. Take the van directly to the police station, where I’ll be waiting for you. We’ve got another undercover minivan parked in the back of the apartment lot as backup.”
He paused and Josie nodded to indicate she was following along.
“The females get two hours inside, long enough to get the basic logistics for what happens when new females arrive. Then we’ll bust as many people as we can get. We’ll send a message with this one.”
Josie nodded. “They’re all wearing recorders?”
“Three of them are. Sheila’s wearing a ratty shirt with ugly buttons on it. One of the buttons has a tiny camera on it. That’ll give the team a visual of what they’re walking into.”
Townie handed her a manila envelope filled with fake driver’s licenses and passports. “You said the guy you referred to as Big Ben will ask for the girls’ documentation. Here you go. He’ll actually expect fake documents. That’s part of the deal—the girls get delivered with U.S. documents ready to use.”
“You move quick.”
“Like I said, we’ve been working this for a while. Your phone call? It killed me.” There were crinkles around his green eyes when he grinned. “We knew there was a labor trafficking group for some local fleabag hotels. We had the players, but not the logistics.”
“Well, I need the players. I need the name of the female who’s organizing the transportation from Guatemala,” Josie said.
“We’ll work on it for sure. We’ll make the bust this afternoon. Depending on what the undercover officers find, we’ll shut it down today. If things get touchy we’ll go in early. The code word is stop. We’ve got a SWAT team on standby. The plan is, exactly two hours from when they enter that building, we go in with the SWAT team and pull them out.” He paused and eyed Josie carefully. “You ready for this?”
“Absolutely. Let’s roll.”
He eyed Dell. “You want to hang out with me in the control van? I’ll just be monitoring radio traffic. I won’t be entering the crime scene. Hell of a lot better than sitting in your truck all day.”
“That’d be great.” Dell grinned like a kid. He was a loner who loved the isolation of the West Texas backcountry, but there was also a part of his character that thrived on adventure.
Townie explained where the undercover van was located in the parking lot of the brownstone and that Sheila had directions to the address Josh had provided Josie. The van was a dark blue beater that could hold twelve passengers. Josie got into the driver’s seat and turned to see the women sitting in the back. They all smiled and waved, calling hello. It was a surreal sight. They were dressed in shabby clothes, with messy hair. Josie guessed most of them hadn’t showered that day, to get ready for the undercover assignment. But their expressions were clear and bright. They all had the confident bearing of cops ready for action.
Josie introduced herself, and the women each did the same. She took the documents out of the package and matched them up with the women to get a sense of who she was working with. She asked each of the women questions about their fictional background, memorizing each woman’s name before proceeding. If Josh’s story was accurate, it would be a simple exchange, but if she was questioned she needed basic information on each of the women who had supposedly been in her care.
Josie finally said, “I think we’re ready.”
She got a thumbs-up from the other women and Sheila said, “Take a right out of the parking lot and turn left at the stoplight.”
Josie followed Sheila’s directions and listened to the cops’ banter in the backseat as they discussed the players they would most likely encounter once they were inside the apartment building. One of the women worked vice, and they were still catching her up to speed on the investigation.
After a ten-minute drive, Sheila directed Josie into the parking lot of a building that looked like public assistance housing gone wrong. Three dumpsters were backed up against the side of the five-story building, each one with trash overflowing onto the ground. Windows were broken and duct-taped together, and a general sense of misery pervaded the block of tenement buildings.