Cindy knelt in the cramped wire cage, trembling with fear. The 19-year old blonde coed had never been so scared, except maybe when, three nights before, the uber she and her two friends had taken home from the club suddenly pulled onto a darkened street and the driver ordered the three stunned teens out and into an adjacent truck where more men were waiting with ropes and gags. Beth was currently crammed in the cage beside Cindy’s. Meredith had one on the row opposite theirs, facing Cindy through the bars with a matching expression of terror.

The three friends’ cages were just part of the two dozen or so that filled a remote corner of a large, darkened warehouse. When they had been brought here, half the cages had been empty. Now, every one of them held a single terrified girl, naked apart from shackles and gags. The most recent arrivals, a pair of slender brunettes in the cages on either side of Meredith, had come in about eight hours ago. It was as they were being stripped and caged, Cindy had overheard the kidnappers talking, and that had sparked her current state of terror.

“We got these two just in time.” One of them said, “Now we’ll have a full shipment when the boat arrives tonight…” The plain and matter of fact way he said that belied the sinister meaning. Cindy had suspected, but part of the teen had refused to believe the awful truth that she, her friends and all the other poor girls here, had fallen into the clutches of a white slavery ring. Now, she could no longer deny it. The boat was on its way and soon she and the rest would be loaded aboard and shipped to some far off country to be sold into bondage.

A burly fellow, dressed in a stained t-shirt and faded blue jeans suddenly stepped in front of Cindy’s cage. His craggy face, lined with several days worth of salt-and-pepper stubble filled her view as the man took a ring of keys from his belt and bent to undo the lock of her cage. The teen’s heart raced as a beefy hand reached in and pulled her out roughly. Tossing the keys to another man, he drew a heavy matte-black pistol from the waistband of his jeans and brandished it in front of the terrified girl.

“You’re going to go to the boat quietly and not cause trouble.” The man growled. He spun his captive around in the direction of the warehouse doors and gave a push. Meanwhile, the second man had scooped up the keys and was busy opening Beth’s cage.

Cindy had taken maybe a dozen haltering steps in the direction of the doors when they were suddenly flung open and a quartet of men in dark mottled fatigues and balaclavas rushed in. Cindy’s gag-muffled gasp mixed with her captor’s earthier exclamation. The pistol at her back was withdrawn and raised in the direction of the newcomers.

It never reached that point. One of the men in the lead raised a short submachine gun, it’s stubby barreled lengthened by a chunky suppressor. A trio of rapid firecrackers barked in the warehouse and the slaver beside Cindy crumpled to the ground with a grunt of mortal agony. A second burst of fire from another gunman dropped the slaver who had just opened Beth’s cage and was going for his gun.

“Make sure that bastard’s dead.” The lead figure said, gesturing to the second dead slaver. “Then check on the women. You two, continue sweeping the warehouse!” As his men acknowledged him, the lead gunman stepped forward and knelt beside the slaver he had killed. He checked for a pulse and, finding none, grabbed the pistol from the dead man’s stiff fingers.

Cindy had, by this point, recovered somewhat from the sudden violence and her close brush with death. As her panic subsided, it was replaced by a sense of elation. Rescue was at hand! She wasn’t going to be shipped overseas and sold as a slave! Soon she would be free. Nearby, the rest of the kidnapped girls grunted their own joy at the new arrivals and their eagerness to be let out of the cages. As the man beside Cindy rose, she turned, presenting her cuffed hands towards him. She felt him reach out and grab them…

Click-click-click!

Cindy let out a grunt of confusion as she heard the ratcheting of the cuffs and felt the steel rings, rather than being loosened, tighten, digging into her wrists. Noticing her confusion, the man chuckled.

“Just what you’d expect from a bunch of clowns like this…oh, you thought this was a rescue, did you Miss?” He said mockingly. “Fraid not… This is more what you might call ‘Eliminating the Competition!” As Cindy wailed in renewed despair, he touched a finger to his ear. “How are we at the boat?” He asked. The answer over the radio must have been a positive one because he called to the others. “Boat’s secured and ready to go! Get the rest of the ladies out, they’ve got a boat to catch!”

Cindy struggled, shaking her head in disbelief. It was more than she could take, having rescue and release dangled before her only to be snatched away. But she couldn’t break free of the bigger man’s tight grip on her chained hands.

“Come on, strugglin’ won’t do you any good. Get moving!” He growled, raising his gun threateningly. Cindy sobbed, bowing her head miserably. She turned and shuffled, followed by the other girls, to the door and the boat waiting to carry them away.