End of Women: Part Two

Contraband

Thhhrrummmmmm

The floor shook. the air cracked and popped.

Thrummmmmmmm

Wooden crates shuddered in their holdings. Heavily-laden cargo slid back and forth as the X-Class Frigate Ship Intrepid banked and dove through the air. Millie gripped the cargo straps as best she could, struggling to stay put.

Thrumm, Thrumm, Thrummmmm!

The engines roared behind her head, punished by the ascent, giving three final blasts of effort before the plane levelled out again and Millie found her feet, keeping a wary eye on a juddering crate opposite her that looked ready to split its strappings and slide right into her face.

'What the fuck are they doing?' she yelled out loud. Her ride out of the states had bucked under her like an angry bull at least six times in the past hour. Until then she had been asleep - for the first time in days - so that now she had absolutely no idea where they were, or how close she was to freedom.

Millie tested the floor with her feet. It shook violently but stayed level, just about enough for her to stand. Her back and thighs were aching in protest at the tiny hole she had shoved herself into when they had taken off. Time to stretch, she thought, and had a walk among the crates.

Moving upright was like walking through the belly of a whale; everything seemed to be moving. She held on to anything solid she could find as she moved, ready for the burps and belches of ascent and descent as they hit her without warning.

The crate Millie had held onto for dear life was marked with Chinese characters she could not read, but it was big, and seemed to be moving independently of the racking aircraft. Millie put some distance between herself and that one. Next up was a palette loaded with brown packaged blocks of some substance - most likely cocaine, or some other illegal substance - and behind that were a series of white plastic tubs marked with a red cross, strapped down more securely than anything else in the room. 

'Right,' she reminded herself of her time as Chief of Staff, 'organ trade.'

The then-Secretary, now late Chief had warned the cabinet infinite times about organ smuggling. European and American ultra-rich who can't buy their way up the donor list make their way over the border and pay obscene amounts of money for kidneys, hearts, lungs and livers that are most likely stolen from the poor in Asia or Africa and shipped into South America. If the recipients were lucky, they might actually be human organs. If they were luckier still, they might live to think about the poor wretch whose body parts they had stolen.

Millie felt a rising sickness that had little to do with air travel and kept moving, determined to keep her mind active. There were a few more indistinguishable crates filling the enormous belly of the flying metal beast, but none looked all too interesting. Her mind drifted back to the trail she had tried to obliterate, and any cracks in the seams of her plan. Her plan, formed in the hell-hole of Filipe's control, made solid on the road to New England and finalised with the bullet that passed through Germaine Edgecliff's head. The plan was perfect, it was a work of art. There was nothing they could do to stop her. They wouldn't even find her.

'Unless they get to Ruth.' She spoke softly. 

Millie hurled herself between two crates and vomited hard, clinging to the woodwork as the plane jolted. She wiped her mouth and staggered back to her feet.

Ruth.

She was sure she had scared that treacherous cunt enough to keep her mouth shut, at least until the boys at the top worked out the gun situation. Maybe they would realise that Ruth Esther-Narrow didn't have the guts for fly-fishing, let alone killing another human being.