Free Someone Elses Daughter by Jack Norman Page A

suck in some air, acrid fumes caught at her throat.
    Three large laundry trolleys had been wheeled into the room, and four men were working to dump the women into the plastic bins. Anna was being grasped by the hair and hoisted into a sitting position as Kasharin stepped over her and flipped open the lid to the laundry bin nearest to the door. He dumped Nina unceremoniously into the bin.
    “Wait, put this one in there too,” one of the other men said, pulling the prone body of a small red-haired girl. Kasharin nodded. He stooped to grasp the girl by her ankles and helped the man to lower her into the bin on top of Nina. “Two more for the circus,” the man said, throwing discarded clothing on top of them before flipping the lid shut.
    Lying in the bin, afraid to breathe, Nina waited blue in the face until the lid closed above her before squirming under the dead weight of the unconscious nude girl and trying to get some ease. She felt the lurch of the trolley and knew that it was moving. Then the forward movement of the trolley halted for long seconds before Nina experienced being spun around and moved in the other direction. It stopped with a jolt. Only when she heard the familiar hum of an elevator mechanism did she dare to suck in air. After more lurching movement, the lid was flipped open again and Kasharin peered into the bin. “Quickly,” he said. “Get out of there.”
    Nina struggled to push the unconscious girl aside, standing on her to clamber over the high sides of the bin. She looked round and found herself in a large underground car park. Two large black vans stood nearby, their rear doors wide open with ramps in place.
    “Where can I go? I’m naked.”
    “Hide somewhere down here until everyone has gone. Someone will come to collect you,” he said, closing the lid and pushing the trolley to the nearest van. “Don’t try to leave before then. It’s the best I can do.”
    “What about my friends?”
    He paused to give her a quizzical look and then pushed the trolley up the ramp into the van. “Hurry and hide, the elevator is coming down again,” he said.
    Nina dashed as far away from the lifts as she could before the lift doors opened. She dived behind a concrete pillar shielded from view by an old Zil sedan, and peeked over as the men loaded the laundry trolleys into the black vans. Her knuckles flew to her mouth as she realised that the trolleys contained her two unconscious friends and the other unwitting women. After a while the vans were driven away, sweeping out of the underground car park, one behind the other. Vadim Kasharin, Nina noted, was actually driving one of the vehicles. Then some of the other men returned to the elevator, presumably to go back up to the apartment, and it seemed an age before they returned with Tara. Nina’s flesh was thoroughly chilled by the cold night air and her teeth were chattering by the time that Tara and the remaining men climbed into their cars. She scurried to hide behind another car when one of the men headed for the battered Zil. Then they left in convoy, three cars together, nose to tail, and Nina was left alone, naked, in the car underground park.
    As it happened, she didn’t have long to wait. After twenty minutes or so, a white van, not unlike those used by the traffickers, drove briskly down the ramp into the car park, halting with a screech of brakes and a swirl of smelly diesel fumes. Nina remained hidden, fearing that the gang had returned, perhaps to find her. The vehicle’s engine remained running, spewing grey-blue exhaust fumes into the air. After a few minutes, when nobody had emerged from the van, Nina mustered the courage to steal forward, running low between the parked cars until she was near enough to get a better view. She was then able to see that the driver was a young woman, chewing gum and looking bored. The sight reassured Nina somewhat, even if her recent experience had demonstrated that the female of the species is at least as