Meat Market
By David Edward
A brutal short story in the Dirk Lasher series where special operators infiltrate Panama's human trafficking underworld. When two teenage girls are kidnapped outside Fort Sherman, Lasher and Isa Kern have minutes to stop them from disappearing forever into a global crime syndicate.
|
OverviewOutside the gates of Fort Sherman, Panama, a weekly gathering transforms from local tradition into hunting ground. The Meat Market, as soldiers call it, draws crowds seeking connection and commerce, but beneath the surface operates a darker economy. When special operators Dirk Lasher and Isa Kern witness two teenage girls being forced into a van, they have seconds to decide whether to maintain their cover or intervene. The choice launches them into a desperate chase through Panama's underworld, where human trafficking networks operate with impunity under the nose of the US military. The trail leads from nude beaches to industrial docks, from corrupt officials to crime syndicate enforcers. Lasher pursues his nine-month hunt for a hidden island where kidnapped women disappear, while Isa confronts truths about the world that threaten to break her carefully constructed defenses. Their informants, former players in the trafficking game, provide breadcrumbs toward Ecuador and a boat that carries special cargo. But every lead costs time, and for the girls already taken, time is a luxury they cannot afford. As violence erupts in the Panama Canal locks and bodies pile up in pursuit of answers, both operators face personal reckonings. Isa discovers unsettling shifts in how she sees her partner, while Lasher's rage threatens to consume his judgment. With coordinates finally in hand and a three-day ocean journey ahead, they race against a system designed to make people disappear. In this world, survival means accepting that some lines, once crossed, can never be uncrossed. |
Questions this book answers
- How does organized crime operate within sight of military installations, and what compromises allow such proximity?
- What drives former participants in human trafficking to become informants, and can they ever truly leave that world behind?
- How do special operators balance mission objectives against immediate human suffering when witness to atrocities?
- What psychological toll does prolonged exposure to humanity's darkest markets exact on those who hunt within them?
- Why would a teenage girl choose to arm herself rather than simply escape when given the chance?
- How do professional partnerships survive when personal boundaries begin to blur under extreme pressure?
Selected quotes
"If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly."
"Strip away the horror, and it's nothing more than Economics 101. They cultivate supply, inventory it, and trade it for information or leverage."
"No standing ten counts meant no dramatics, no circling like some playground fight. It meant he was going to take them down, fast and without mercy."
Why it matters
This story strips away comfortable distances between military action and human trafficking, revealing how these worlds intersect in ways that challenge both operators and readers. By pushing beyond typical military thriller boundaries into darker territory, it forces confrontation with systems of exploitation that persist precisely because people look away. The story matters now because it refuses to sanitize the cost of intervention or the weight of witnessing atrocities. For readers seeking military fiction that doesn't flinch from moral complexity or the psychological toll of righteous violence, this delivers raw truth wrapped in relentless action.