by David Archer
She managed not to fall and spun to see what had happened, and saw that Pak had attacked her while she was distracted. His stance indicated training in the martial arts, but Sarah had been through some pretty intense training of her own. She snapped into position and waited for his next attack, which came almost instantly.
She managed to duck the punch he swung at her face, and drove her foot into his solar plexus as he spun past her. He managed to remain on his feet, but he was gasping for breath as he turned to face her again.
“Come on, you piece of crap,” she said. “Come on, let’s see what you got!”
A sudden shout from Sharon’s box caused her to glance toward it, and then the lights went out as Cho wrapped his arm around her throat and squeezed. It was a classic sleeper hold, and she was unconscious within seconds.
Pak helped his customer get back to his feet, profusely apologizing for the rebellious acts of the stupid girl. Lom brushed off his apologies and simply asked him to have her brought to the helicopter. Pak instantly agreed, and shouted for a couple of other men. With Cho, they bound her hands and feet and then she was thrown over the shoulder of one of them and carried down the path.
Lom began to follow, with Pak beside him. In Thai, and watching Pak from the corner of his eye, Lom said, “This one has more spirit. Perhaps she will not die so quickly.”
Pak smiled. “My old friend, you cannot expect such delicate flowers to endure the storms to which you subject them without being damaged. If you would keep her in your service, you must caution your clients to keep themselves under control. Exercising their passions is her purpose, but that does not mean that they should not leave her able to recover.”
“There are only a few who go to such extremes. I have long thought that there might be a girl somewhere who could defend herself against them. Perhaps this is the one.” He grinned slightly at Pak. “Of course, if this proves to be the case, you may not earn so much money this year. So far, I have bought one girl each month. This one could surprise us and last much longer.”
Ahead of them, Sarah had awakened and begun loudly cursing the man who was carrying her. She was thrashing about and doing her best to kick him or strike him with an elbow, until he finally threw her to the ground. A single kick to the side of her head put a stop to her resistance, and Pak watched as the man who had kicked her bent down and looked closely at her, then put a hand to her throat and scowled.
Pak rolled his eyes to Lom. “She will not last the day, if she continues to antagonize my men. You do recall, I’m sure, that all sales are final.”
* * * * *
Sharon heard the loud clunk as Sarah’s box was thrown open, and pressed her eye to one of the cracks in her own. She saw Cho drag Sarah out of the box, and then moved to another crack when she heard Pak speak.
It took only a second for her to understand what was happening, and she nearly panicked when she realized that Sarah was being taken away, was actually being sold as if she were nothing more than a piece of property. What would she do if Sarah were gone? Up until now, she had barely let herself hope that the mythical Noah would truly appear, and while Sarah insisted that Sharon was the true objective of any such rescue, her only real confidence rested in the hope that he would come for the girl who was one of his own.
And then Sarah was fighting, putting two of the men on the ground before they even seemed to realize it. Sharon’s heart rushed into her throat as she watched through the gap, but then Cho got back to his feet and it was Sarah who went down, obviously unconscious. Pak called for someone, and Sarah was quickly bound and carried away.
Alone, Sharon quickly felt her last vestiges of hope slipping away. Sarah had told her to survive, but she wondered now if that would even be possible.
The tears started to fall before she even realized she was crying. They were the tears of despair that come from someone who has lost all hope.
* * * * *
By the time they got back to the rental facility, Neil had already come up with a game plan. “Look at this,” he said to Noah as he steered the boat home. He turned the computer so that Noah could see the screen, and pointed at the deep vee-hulled boat that occupied its center. “This baby is a forty-four footer, and it has an electric inboard motor that runs on thirty deep-cycle twelve-volt batteries. It can make its maximum speed of eight knots for up to five hours on a charge, and there’s a generator on board in case you need it. It’s actually built for deep-sea fishing in environmentally sensitive areas, places where the loud noise of a gas or diesel engine might be prohibited, but it’s ideal for our purpose. In the dark, with all of us down low behind the gunwales, it should be just about impossible for anyone to know we’re coming.”
“That looks good,” Noah said. “Where do we get it?”
Neil grinned. “Actually, we just bought it. This is a used one that was up for sale, so I got Maggie and Julie to help me set up a dummy Thai Corporation, and we bought it through the business. We bought our own boathouse and pier, too, because it was sort of a package deal. It was a tourist fishing outfit that was going out of business.”
Noah looked up at him. “I don’t suppose you bothered to get Allison’s authorization to spend that much money?”
“Actually, no,” Neil said. “But that’s because I didn’t spend any money. I did a ghost transfer into the new corporate account, used that to buy everything. Now in about four days, somebody’s going to get all upset when all that money vanishes, but none of it can lead back to any of us. We’ll let the Thai authorities try to figure out who the boat and boathouse belong to after that, right?”
Noah raised one eyebrow in what Neil thought of as the closest thing he ever did to smiling. It was a gesture of approval, and Neil was always happy when he saw it.
“Where is the boat house,” Noah asked, “and how long will it take us to get from there to the island?”
“That’s the best part,” Neil said with a big grin. “It’s just north of the village of Hat So, which is about two miles across the channel from your chosen landing site. The boat is already there, and the previous owner has agreed to wait and show us around this evening. He is expecting us this afternoon, but he thinks we’re just employees of the corporation. It turns out Julie speaks fluent Thai, so she made the phone calls. She told him that she is sending a bunch of Americans who have experience in running such a business to take it over for her.”
Noah turned his attention back to the bay, steering the boat toward its dock. “That’s some excellent planning, Neil,” he said. “I’ll make a point of telling Allison just how excellent it was when we get back.”
Turning the boat back in took a bit of time, but the boat yard's crew took care of unloading all the scuba gear and cleaning it up. A short time later, they dropped off Maggie and Julie at Maggie’s place, and picked up an extra headset for Jenny from Maggie’s equipment room. After that, they grabbed a quick dinner and were on the way south, once again on Highway 3, by five o’clock.
The drive to Hat So took almost 20 minutes, mostly because of the smaller roads they had to follow once they left the highway. It was just after six o’clock by the time they arrived at the boathouse, and Mr. Loy, the former owner, was waiting in the office to greet them.
Mr. Loy spoke very little English, but was able to convey the gist of what he wanted to say about how he had run the business up to that point. It had been a one-man operation, with Loy himself acting as manager and captain of the boat. He explained that he would run the generator to power the boat until he got close to the coral reefs around Khram Yai island, then shut it down and run on the electric motors in compliance with noise and pollution restrictions imposed by the Royal Thai Navy. The fishing in those waters was excellent, he said, but only silent fishing vessels were allowed to operate so close to the coral.
Showing them how to operate the boat took only a few minutes, and he pronounced himself satisfied with the way Noah handled it in the test run. The boat was essentially nothin
g but a long hull with a control panel and tiller at the stern, and padded benches that ran the length of the vessel on each side. Fishermen, he explained, would either sit or kneel on the benches as they cast their lines into the water. The batteries were mounted along the keel, putting all the weight at the very bottom.
Loy was gone by ten o’clock, and the two teams began loading their weapons into the boat. Noah said he wanted to wait until just past midnight to start toward the island, letting the guards and any other personnel at the compound get as relaxed as possible before their assault. He knew from his military experience that midnight truly is the witching hour, the time when soldiers and others on duty begin to think more about how soon their shift will end than what their responsibilities might be.
“Here’s the plan, the way I’ve got it figured out,” he said. “The way this boat is built, we can drive it right into the beach. Jenny, your team will move in just to the north of the compound, while Marco and I will head directly to the isolation boxes. We’ll be using the headsets for direct communication, but I want to maintain radio silence until the fireworks began. If Sarah and Sharon are still in the isolation boxes, we’ll do our best to get them out silently. If not, then Marco and I will begin a full-frontal assault. As soon as that happens, Jenny, I want you and your team to move in.”
“Slice and dice, right?” Jenny asked. “Any of them that are armed are targets. I was thinking, though, that we don’t want to kill everyone until we have both the girls. If for any reason we don’t find them, I’ll need someone to interrogate.”
“Good point,” Noah said. “We’ll make landfall just about the same place where Marco and I did earlier today, and the tablet is stashed near there. It should give us a good idea of where Sarah is, and hopefully Sharon will still be with her. If not, we’ll grab Sarah and hope that she can tell us where to find Ms. Ingersoll. Barring that, we’ll just search the whole island if we have to.”
“Aww,” Jenny said, “but interrogation is so much more fun!”
Neil rolled his eyes. “You’re just evil, you know that?”
Jenny blinked at him. “Of course I am, sweetheart, that’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
Marco nudged Neil with an elbow. “She has a point,” he said.
Neil insisted that he was hungry, so he and Dave ran out to try to find sandwiches. They had to drive quite some distance to find an open door, but came back a bit later with sliced pork and unsliced bread. Marco managed to do a fair job of cutting the bread with a dive knife he had acquired earlier, and they all sat down to eat before launching the boat on its mission of murder and mayhem.
TWENTY-THREE
Darkness had fallen, and Sharon was feeling more alone than ever. The sun had not been down long, she knew, but the dark seemed so oppressive that it almost made her breathing difficult. She kept hoping that Sarah would return, but the later it got, the less she believed it would happen.
She heard footsteps crunching toward her, and then the top of her box was thrown open. She looked up into the face of a man she hadn’t seen before, and he grinned at her.
“You want out?” he asked her.
Terrified of what was coming next, Sharon tried hard to decline, but she heard her own voice say, “Oh, please, please let me out, please, I can’t take…”
The man reached in and took hold of her arm. At first he seemed gentle, as he helped her rise to her feet, but then he simply leaned into her and dragged her over the top of the box on his shoulder. He dropped her onto her feet, but her legs had been cramped up too long and collapsed. She sat down hard, and the man looked down at her and laughed. “You fall down,” he said. “You in good position, and you ready to be whore?”
Tears began flowing down her face as she shook her head, and once again she heard her voice begging. “Please, please, no, please…”
Still laughing, the man grabbed her hair and dragged her to her feet once more. “You stink,” he said. “You make mess on you self, you need bath.” He turned her around and started marching her along the path, continuing until they entered the compound. He walked her to a short, round structure, and when he suddenly picked her up and threw her in, she realized that it was a large vat of water.
The water was cold and closed over her head, but she came up a moment later gasping for breath. The man was laughing again, and she suddenly realized that they were surrounded by a few other men and numerous women. The women were chuckling at her, while the men were simply standing there and staring.
She spit out water that had gotten into her mouth, and the taste told her that this was bathwater. There was a soapy flavor, and that was explained a moment later when the man who had pitched her in reached in and grabbed a bar of soap that was floating on the surface and brandished it at her. “You wash,” he said. “You wash now. We no like stinky whore.”
Surrounded as she was, Sharon didn’t dare refuse. She took the soap and began rubbing it onto her hands and face, but the man suddenly grabbed her hair and pulled her toward him once more. “Take off clothes,” he yelled at her. “You take bath, no clothes!”
Crying her heart out, Sharon began removing her clothing. The loose prison shirt came off over her head, and she sank low to keep her breasts under the water as she took off her pants. She instinctively tossed both of them onto the edge of the makeshift tub, and some of the women grabbed them and took them away.
Sharon picked up the soap again, and turned around, trying to find a way to wash modestly, but there were men watching from every direction. At last, she took a deep breath and remembered that Sarah had told her it was necessary to do whatever it took to survive, so she rose onto her knees and began washing herself.
One of the other men reached in and grabbed the waistband of her panties, and they ripped off easily. “You wash all,” he said, and she steeled herself against the embarrassment as she rose to her feet and continued to watch the rest of her body as the crowd watched.
You can do this, she told herself. You can do this because Noah will be coming. Sarah was so certain, she had to be right. Noah must be coming, and I have to be ready when he does.
That thought gave her strength, and she bent down and got her hair wet, then began rubbing the soap into it. She stood again, ignoring the men and women who were ogling her body as she worked up a lather in her hair, then scrubbed it into her scalp as hard as she could. Her body was on full display, she knew, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. All that mattered was survival, no matter what else might happen to her.
She dipped down to rinse herself off, then leaned against the side as she brought up her legs and washed them. The men were beginning to smile at her, and she forced herself to smile back. The looks on their faces told her what was coming, but she simply focused on the necessity for her own survival.
The man who had brought her to the water began to act impatient, and she decided that it would be better to face the inevitable than try to postpone it. She dropped the soap and rinsed herself once more, then stood and faced him. She held out one hand, and his impatience turned to a smile as he took hold of it and helped her to balance as she stepped out of the tub and onto a rock.
A couple of the women came close, and dried her off with some rough towels that didn’t smell as clean as she would have liked, and then a simple shift was pulled over her head. Another woman tossed a pair of simple sandals onto the rock in front of her feet, and she stepped into them, working her toes to get them situated properly.
As soon as she was dressed like all of the other women, the man who was still holding her hand tugged on it, and she was led toward one of the huts. She didn’t resist as he pulled her inside, and she saw the simple, handmade bed that stood in the middle of it. He pointed, and she walked as calmly as possible to the bed and sat down on it, and that’s when she realized that four other men had followed them inside.
“You take off clothes again,” the first man said, and she thought back the tears that wanted to flow once more
as she pulled the shift over her head and laid it across the foot of the bed. She kicked off the sandals without being told, then lifted her legs and lay down on the rough mattress.
The man grinned, and nodded to the others. A moment later, they all stood naked around her, while the first man climbed onto the bed.
* * * * *
Because they wanted to be as stealthy as possible, Noah didn’t bother to start the generator when they pulled away from the pier. The batteries were fully charged and capable of making it to the island and back more than once, so they ran silent. At full speed, however, the boat made a loud rustling sound as it passed through the water, so he cut the speed down to three knots when they got within a half-mile of the island.
With no lights, and only a sliver of a moon above them, the boat was essentially invisible. He ran the boat aground on the same beach where he and Marco had swum ashore earlier in the day, and they left Neil to guard the vessel as the rest of them disembarked. They entered the trees and found the waterproof bag Noah had hidden earlier, and he quickly withdrew the tablet and powered it on.
“She’s not showing up,” he said. “I suppose it’s possible the tracker has failed, or it may have been broken if she’s been manhandled enough. We’re going to proceed on the assumption that she’s here somewhere, but let’s also be prepared to ask questions. She was in a hotbox earlier, and I doubt they would consider her properly broken so soon.” He looked up at the others. “Also, remember that Sharon Ingersoll is the mission objective. Marco and I will check the boxes where we last had position on her, but if anyone finds her, I want you to break radio silence and let me know.”
Jenny and her men moved quickly toward the north side of the compound, navigating by instinct according to the map Noah had drawn for them. Noah let them have a moment’s head start, then he and Marco started toward the area where the isolation boxes had been.
