When vile human-trafficking kingpins run amuck around the globe, an elite, but troubled, team of ex-military operatives must rescue the victims before it’s too late.

SYNOPSIS:

Three former military operatives have to put their emotional issues aside to rescue victims of human trafficking around the globe, and capture those responsible. The team is led by RHONDA BUTLER (35), a fiery black woman with a dark personal history. She’s joined by TREY STENSON (28), a rich, religious Texas cowboy out to save the world, and Lin Su (25), a beautiful Chinese-American who previously washed-out of the military and a TV-reporting job. They are funded by LEXI WORTHINGTON (70), whose foundation wants to put a dent in the $32 billion human-trafficking industry. The “field operations” are based on actual human-trafficking cases.

The team’s recent operation in West Africa is disastrous. Five young girls are rescued, but the ringleader, MBEETU (50), escapes, hires more goons, and kidnaps twenty girls in retribution. Rhonda is distraught to learn that Mbeetu shot a 12-year-old boy-soldier (TEWDROS) in the stomach after the boy failed at guarding the girls the night before. Mbeetu also killed the boy’s family to prove that fighting human trafficking in the region is futile. The rescue team’s emotions are at an all-time low.

Lexi Worthington creates a high-tech “Rescue Room” and hires three young computer geeks (Rosa Sanchez, Jan Rejmanek, and Bret Munson), former-trafficker (Willy Leyman), and a wealthy retiree (Ted Reynolds) to ensure future operations are more successful. The next field operation goes a little smoother as Rhonda and her team follow human-traffickers from Bucharest to Paris to capture the bad guys and rescue kidnapped children. However, Trey discovers that his adoption by rich Texans has masked deep personal feelings for the Central European orphans he’s rescuing. He was one of them.

The next mission involves the leading trafficker in the world, known as the Godfather, who ships millions of poor Bangladeshis to Malaysia for slave labor and the sex-trade. The team goes to great lengths to capture the Godfather in a brothel in Teknaf, Bangladesh. But the mission takes its toll on Lin, who relives her TV reporting of the devastating 2013 fire in a garment sweatshop that killed over one thousand underpaid laborers, many of them children, so Westerners can buy cheap clothes. Lin feels the full emotional weight of personal responsibility.

The team returns to the States to fight human trafficking here. The target is a madam known as Tencha, the ringleader of the largest human-trafficking ring in Texas history. Tencha earns millions by smuggling young, pretty, illegal aliens from Mexico and locking them in rooms behind a bar in Houston. But Rhonda’s past is revealed when she finds that one of the victims is a very young girl. Rhonda collapses. In the hospital, Rhonda’s own history of abuse unfolds, but she recovers more determined to attack a beast that got away: Mbeetu.

Rhonda devises one final mission to bring Mbeetu to justice, save twenty additional young girls, and rescue Tewdros for a second time. Using disguises and cunning, she and her team are successful. Now the long process of healing begins.

Our story ends with sad reminders. The human-trafficking cases were real. The industry flourishes with high demand for cheap garments, food, electronics, and the sex-trade around the world. There is no “Rescue Team” or “Rescue Room,” but there should be.

RESCUE ME TWICE