The Bee's Knees

Ukraine (Part 2)

With a shipment of four containers due to arrive in a couple of days, Ghost and Gaz planned a recon at the distribution centre. Ghost messaged Bee to ask if she could email him a program to access any PC's or laptops they found, as she'd done in Mexico. Bee sent him the program file and was able to get them a copy of the layout of the distribution centre.

With the thumb drive at the ready, Gaz and Ghost headed out, to gain access to the site and find any intel they could. With the entrances scoped out and the location of security ascertained, Ghost and Gaz were able to enter the facility unimpeded. Locating the main office, Gaz stood watch while Ghost located a PC unit.

Ghost loaded the USB and watched as Bee's program started working. Looking around, there were no obvious documents of interest in the office and too many papers in the filing cabinet for them to seize. Ghost hoped that with access to the PC files, it would given them enough.

Ghost's phone buzzed with a message from Bee to say she had access and was uploading files. The process took about five minutes and once Bee gave the ok to remove the thumb drive, Ghost and Gaz made their way out of the complex and headed back to base.

Bee immediately ran translation programs through the uploaded files, before running keyword searches related to the NGO shipments. While the search was running, Bee received a message from one of her online contacts with some information they'd discovered on the NGO activities in South America.

Bee made herself a fresh coffee and started sifting through the extensive intel. There were chat logs from online intel forums discussing South American trafficking routes to Eastern Europe. The NGO was mentioned in many of the discussions with details of their work with local communities after natural disasters, bringing aid. There was a lot of talk of suspicions that humanitarian aid was being used as a front to smuggle weapons and drugs. Not news to Bee. However, one post caught her attention.

The post listed a year old obituary for an independent journalist who's body had been found in Argentina. Attached to the post was a video file with the note "This was uploaded to his webpage before his body was found". Bee clicked on the link eager to find out why it was relevent.

The video, filmed at night on a smart phone, showed a dock with shipping containers. A group of people using acetylene torches to cut an opening in a container with the NGO's logo on it. Bee watched with interest as they cut a window sized opening, finally pulling the metal away. Two people shone torches into the hole.

Bee gasped when a terrified looking young woman appeared at the hole with her hands up. Bee watched with baited breath as a number of young women and children were pulled out of the container, dishevelled and looking emaciated. One of the men then climbed into the container and shortly after, several lifeless bodies were passed through the hole and laid on the floor. They were all children.

Bee could feel the tears running down her face as she watched the horrific scene unfold. The journalist appeared on screen talking in hushed tones about tracking the container after being given a tip that the NGO was involved in sex trafficking women and minors across South American and Eastern Europe. The people from the container were loaded into a van, the small bodies carefully lifted and held by some of the crying women, before the video cut off.

Bee sat back, drying her tears and trying to still her rapid breathing. Looking down the post, one person mentioned that the people in the container had told their rescuers, that they were from two small villages in Argentina that had been devastated by flooding and landslides. The poster talked about how the NGO had sent a number of workers there to provide emergency aid after the disaster.

He went on to say that it had been long suspected that the NGO took advantage of the natural disaster to pick up the lost and orphaned, under the ruse of taking them to emergency shelters. In the ensuing chaos and clean up efforts, their absence was passed off as another unfortunate soul to be added to the growing list of the missing, presumed dead.