by Mike Leon
The room is unusually cool because of the air conditioning, a modern amenity to which he is not accustomed. The bed is soft and the sheets are cold to the touch. There is no sound but the light hum of cool air being pumped into the room. When the air kicks off, her breathing seems so much louder. That makes his problem even worse.
Shelly sleeps next to him in the same bed, or rather, on it. She’s under the covers, which he refuses to use because they will just become a hindrance if they are attacked in the night. The last thing he needs is to be tangled up in some sheets while a Mujahedeen assassin is shooting at him.
They did make it here without incident, which is good, but Sid always keeps his guard up. If he could just get it to where his guard is the only thing up tonight, then maybe he could finally fall asleep.
He turns his head slowly to his right, and there she is. Her long blond hair is scattered all over the pillow under her head. Her smooth skin is like silver in the moonlight. Her lips quiver ever so slightly with each breath and her chest elevates those wondrous breasts and then lowers them back down again.
He can’t see them through her green army camisole, but he has seen them before. He saw them when Victor stripped her at the cave. He saw all of her then, and it made him hard just like now. It didn’t last long, but for a moment he considered joining in his brother’s favorite pastime. Now he wonders if he can stop himself.
She told him sometimes girls want to get fucked. She said that. Maybe now is one of those times. Maybe if he rolls over and mounts her now then she won’t mind. She might even like it. But then there’s the problem of her missing parts. Victor wanted to cut her open to fuck her. Sid looks down at the butcher knife in his hand…
No. He won’t do that to her. Shelly is a good girl and a good soldier. He won’t cut her. He won’t hurt her like that. He sighs with frustration and the cycle begins anew. Three hours of this rock hard aggravation. There must be some way to make it stop.
He wills it to go away, but that doesn’t work. He then decides to focus his mind somewhere else. If he can lose himself in some other place or time, he might forget the girl.
He thinks about the way the Imam cut his own tongue on the poisoned knife after the Vulcan cannon annihilated that hotel lobby in Kandahar. He remembers the child cut in half by the cannon shells. He remembers the roof coming down on him when Kill Team Three entered and began shooting at everything that was still moving. He remembers Victor grabbing him and pulling him from that mess and the two of them running for the back exit. He looked back and saw the Imam walking calmly into the gunfire. That was the last he saw of any of them. Then they ran and didn’t stop for miles. They ran so far and so long that even Sid thought his legs would give out.
He thinks about what happened after that. The killing. So much killing. Men, women, children. He remembers Victor stomping on a baby’s head. He hears the crunch of recently formed skull and the squish of everything inside, the splatter of red and grey slime that exploded outward from under Victor’s boot.
Shelly rolls onto him and all of that goes away. Her face presses against his. Her skin is so soft against his neck. Her hand is warm on his chest. He can feel her breasts now against his shoulder. He wants to touch them with his hands. He must touch them with his hands. He slides his left hand slowly across his chest. Like a snake, it slithers down the top of her shirt. His fingers meet her bare flesh. He is hard again.
And then he pulls away. He has to get out of here. He has to leave this room. Shelly slept in his bed because she was afraid of what Victor might do to her on her own. Here, Sid is inching towards all of the same things himself. If he stays in this room he will hurt her.
He slinks out of her sleeping arms and away from the bed. He puts on a grey tee shirt and gym shoes Shelly bought for him in the terminal at KBL. He conceals the knife in his baggy black cargo pants and makes his way from the room without a sound.
It is 2AM in Dubai and the hotel hallways are quiet. Sid takes special care as he creeps past Victor’s door, the door next to his, for his brother is like to awaken at the sound of footsteps if he is asleep in there – IF he is asleep in there. Sid knows it is far more likely Victor is out in the dark of the city somewhere murdering. The other Hansen’s bloodlust knows no bounds, and he does not sleep when he could be killing.
Originally they had taken three separate rooms here in the hotel, but Shelly left her room empty as a decoy and came to sleep with Sid without telling either of them beforehand. He agreed to her request because he believed in the threat his brother posed. At the time, he had no inkling of the nuisance it would cause him. Despite that, he owes it to her still. Shelly Baum got them out of that awful desert.
Shelly took them to the Kabul Airport and they all walked through security without so much as a dirty look. All they needed was the papers she brought with her. Such an outlandish idea made Sid uneasy at first, and worse was the notion of leaving his guns behind. In a move that seemed entirely out of character, Victor gave up his weapons without any argument. He made a comment about how he preferred to kill with his hands anyway. Sid was not so quick to toss his arms aside. Eventually Shelly was able to convince him that it would be best not to draw attention in the airport with weapons and that they would not need them on the plane anyway. She was right. Nothing happened on the plane. It didn’t stop Sid from palming the first knife he spotted after they were back on the ground.
Ahead of him, the hallway intersects the stairs and the outer wall is replaced with a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the gulf. The city lights, directly below, glow in a wide spectrum of colors but they illuminate only as far as the waves washing up on the beaches ahead. Beyond is just a wall of inky black unknown. Sid does not linger by the window. His father taught him long ago to treat all windows as active windows. Armies, dragons, or devils could be out there in that dark looking in at him. He backs away and heads down the stairs.
The hotel is a strange place to him. It is rife with objects that seem unnecessary. They have beds that are much larger than anyone actually needs to sleep on. There is a TV in each of their rooms, and Sid assumes that means there are TVs in all of the rooms. Also there is a refrigerator stocked with bottled water while there is also perfectly drinkable water in the showers and toilets. He was particularly puzzled by that when Shelly told him the hotel demands payment for those water bottles. Why would anyone do that? Maybe, if they had no bottle or canteen of their own, then they could buy one of those bottles and refill it from the toilet. Yes. That must be it.
He reaches the bottom floor and hears music coming from the hotel lounge. Music still eludes Sid’s understanding. It seems to be noise for the simple sake of noise. His father never played music with them in the woods and he would have beaten either of the boys for such a blatant and careless display. Noises give away position. Silence is the way of the warrior.
He moves for the source of the noise. The lounge is a low-lit classy scene where a handful of dapper dressed hotel patrons mingle. Sid scans the room for possible threats. He sees none. He enters slowly and carefully, watching the eyes of those inside to see who looks at him – or who doesn’t look enough at him. He notices a man in a suit stroking the forearm of a black haired woman in a blue dress in the corner. At the bar, a white bearded man in a loosened red tie and grey suit smokes from some kind of colorful mechanism that looks like a tall jar with many long hoses attached to it. These men pay no attention to Sid, aside from a glance. He does draw the attention of a woman sitting alone in the corner of the bar. She has long and wavy brown hair and wears a very low-cut green top. She looks about Shelly’s age. She looks good too. Sid looks away. He’s trying to avoid that kind of thing right now.
He approaches the bar and sits down on a stool at the end, deep into the room, where his back is to the wall and nothing else. A bartender is there immediately. The man is Arab and wears a white dress shirt with a little red vest. It does not look like a ballistic vest. Too thin. Why else would anyone w
ear a vest?
“What can I get for you, sir?” he says in English. He has a thick accent. Clearly, this man is some sort of merchant like the peddlers back in the desert. He must deal his wares over this table. Very clever. A good number of travelers certainly pass through this place every day.
Sid considers the question. He still has no weapons other than this flimsy butcher knife in his pants. He could use some sidearms. He will see what kind this peddler can provide.
“M4 carbine with free floating quad rail, holographic sight and underslung M203 grenade launcher,” Sid says.
The bartender gives him a blank look. Too much to hope for. This vendor must not have anything that extreme.
“Glock 19,” Sid says. Glocks are cheap and abundant. Sid used to play with them when he was a baby. His first gun was a Glock left in his crib by Kill Team One.
“I don’t know that one.”
“Any kind of repeating sidearm.”
“I don’t know what that is, sir.”
Do they have any guns here at all? What if they need to kill someone? They must do it with a knife. That or the peddler is keeping his weapons to himself. A prudent strategy.
“Is there something else I can get for you?”
There is one thing. What was that word Shelly had for it?
“A promiscuous woman?”
The bartender’s face twists into uncertainty.
“I can make a sex on the beach.”
“With?”
“Grenadine.”
She’ll have to do.
“Alright.”
Sid watches as the bartender mixes vodka, schnapps, orange juice and grenadine into an orange colored drink and sets it on the bar in front of him. He puts a straw in the drink and a tiny purple infantry saber impaling a cherry.
“That will be twelve dollars.”
Sid raises an eyebrow. He does not have twelve dollars. He isn’t even entirely certain what twelve dollars looks like. He picks the infantry saber from the drink and turns it over in his hand. Such a peculiar thing… useless as a weapon.
“Will you be paying cash or shall I open a tab, sir?”
Sid frowns. He has no idea what this peddler is talking about. He is contemplating whether to incapacitate the peddler and run, when someone slaps some money down on the bar in front of him.
“Eets on me, chéri,” says the woman in the green dress. Sid was already aware of her presence there, but he was still trying not to look. That will be unavoidable now.
He turns his head and views her over his shoulder. He can see now that her green top is part of a tight green dress that ends well before it should for any practical reason. Her left hand stays planted against the hem to keep it from riding up and exposing her nethers to everyone in the bar. She is shorter than Shelly, but her figure is a more exaggerated hourglass. Her breasts seem huge like melons – only inches from Sid’s nose as she stands next to him. He forces his gaze up at her face. Her eyes match the dress and her face is painted with make-up. This is something Sid has not seen much up close. Shelly doesn’t wear make-up and neither did the women in the desert. It seems odd at first. Her lips are so red they appear like shiny wet paint. Then she opens them.
“Somezing tells me you are lonely, no?” Her accent is strange. It isn’t like any Sid has encountered before, but then his knowledge of world languages is limited to the middle east, and most of that is limited still to the screaming and gurgling noises people make as they are shot and stabbed. She turns her head only slightly toward the bartender, but just the faintest recognition of her peripheral vision is enough to get the bartender’s attention. Such is the power of her seductive nature. “A sea breeze for me, monsieur.”
“Grenadine?” Sid asks.
“Of course. I’m… euh… old fashioned you Americans say? No?”
She sits down on the bar stool next to his, very carefully tugging her skirt down as she does so.
“I’m not an American,” Sid says as he picks up the drink and sniffs at it. It is probably best not to drink this concoction. There is no way to be certain it wasn’t poisoned.
“Where do you come from?” she asks.
“Nowhere,” he answers coldly.
“No one comes from nowhere, chéri.”
“That’s right.”
“So cold, and so young…” She brushes her fingertips across the hairs of his forearm. For an instant, fury ignites in him. He doesn’t like people touching him. But then that subsides. He likes this woman touching him. This is different. This is like Shelly touching him upstairs… “Maybe I warm you up tonight?”
He has a raging erection again. Great. He’s gone full circle. Might as well have stayed in bed.
“Maybe you come back to my room wis me?”
“What about the beach?”
“Ooh. Dirty. Maybe you are not so young and innocent. Still, zee beach is so messy. Zee sand it goes everywhere. In my air, in my close, in my…” She pauses, leaving Sid to guess where the sand goes. He has some idea. Back in Afghanistan he used to get sand in his underwear. It was quite irritating.
“In your underwear.”
“No. I’m not wearing underwear,” she says. She uncrosses and crosses her legs slowly and gratuitously. She’s not wearing underwear.
“So zen, I sink you come to my room wis me. We have drinks. We lie down. We make love for hours. You like zis? Yes?”
Sid hasn’t the foggiest idea what she means. Making love? The phrase doesn’t make sense. Can you make love like you make a pair of boots or a knife?
Love is for the weak. A warrior has no love.
She takes hold of his hand on top of the bar. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Sid’s stomach bubbles. He could throw up. He can knife fight a god made flesh with steel resolve, but the thought of what will happen in this woman’s room has him quivering.
He did ask for this. He asked for a promiscuous woman and this is a promiscuous woman. He sees what Shelly meant by that now. He is still not clear about what happens next – if he follows her back to her room that is. Does he fuck her and beat her like Victor with the girls in the desert? Is that what she wants? No. No one wants that. What then?
There is only one way to find out.
Sid stands up from the bar stool and takes Grenadine’s hand. She smiles, but he remains cold and wary. She leads him away from the bar and out of the lounge to the hotel’s grand staircase. As she bounces up the stairs ahead of him, seeing up her dress is a prospect far too tantalizing. With each step, her dress seems to hike up a little higher than with the last, and yet, like some wicked hypnotic spiral, it never truly moves from its starting point. After several flights, it has become such a fixation that he has lost count of the floors. He loses track of the turns in the hallway when they reach her floor too.
He finally comes to his senses again when she opens the door to her room and turns to him. She steps backwards into the room and beckons for him to follow. He lingers in the doorway, looking into the room as if he expects some sort of trap. Her room is nearly identical to his own by both the layout and furnishings. He leans over the threshold, expecting thirty ninjas with Uzis to leap out from behind the drapes in ambush. Nothing.
“Zo reserved you are,” Grenadine says. “I promise I do not bite.”
He steps through the door, still expecting thirty ninjas, but the ninjas never come.
“Welcome to my boudoir,” she says.
Sid walks a circle around the room, scanning the dresser and floor for any weapons or suspicious items. He leans over slightly to get a partial view under the bed. No one hiding under there.
“Eet is not a palace, but it will do.”
Sid nods.
“So…” he says, not certain if it will even continue into an actual sentence.
It does not. Grenadine wastes no time. She takes his hands in hers and places them on her breasts. They are bigger than any Sid has seen before. He feels them through the padding of her bra. He feel
s the bulky metal underwire holding them up and it surprises him. A weapon? No. Part of her clothing. These womanly things are very strange.
The dress sheds away down her legs and to the floor. Her bra goes with it. Without the padding to secure them, her tits are like huge doughy sacks that he kneads in his hands, his fingers disappearing into them. She puts her arms around him and presses her lips to his. They are wet and sticky with the colors she painted on them. Her tongue is warm and writhing. It is a living thing in his mouth and this is a completely new sensation. Sid grasps her buttocks in his hands and she leaps up onto him, wrapping her arms and legs around him. He spins and tosses her down on the bed. She puts her hands on his face.
“Let me show you what I like,” she says. “Just watch.”
She crawls away, backwards, on the bed and lies down. She spreads her legs and Sid can see her smooth shaven cleft. She licks the fingers of her left hand before she begins to rub them in circular motions against her crease. Then one finger glides effortlessly into her slippery wet pussy. Then another. Then another. She moans and then her whole hand vanishes inside her as she gives another quick squeak.
And then she pulls an oddly-shaped silvery-white gun out of there and points it at him.
His reaction is so quick it seems involuntary. He snatches up the room phone from the dresser behind him and hurls it at the gun in her hand. The phone strikes her weapon and knocks the barrel to the side. It emits a very hushed, but high pitched, squeal as a beam of red light cuts a line through the outside wall of the room like a scalpel to a piece of tissue paper. The damn thing nearly took his head off.
Sid dashes on top of the bed before she has time to set her sights on him again. He smacks the laser gun from her hand and it clanks to the floor. She rolls backward as he takes a swing at her. His fist hits nothing and she flips away from him, off the bed and onto the floor. She has that gun in her hand again in an instant, but Sid snatches hold of it by the barrel, and disarms her. He kicks her against the wall as he snaps the gun in two.
