Oh. My. Fuckin’. God! Icy terror gripped Jesse’s heart, threatening to rip it right out of his chest. Sokolov. Here. Comin’ in person to take delivery of his newest sex slave. The very thought of Sarah in the hands of that sadistic bastard, being beaten and tortured and raped over and over as he “trained” her, was enough to freeze the blood in his veins. His lungs seized, making breathing impossible. Just the thought made him feel physically ill. “Christ, Bill, we gotta get her outta there!” A quick glance in Adam’s direction told him his best friend was having the exact same reaction. And having so much difficulty dealing with it, he could hardly stand still.
“Shit, Jesse, we’ve got to get her out of there!” he said, echoing Jesse’s exact words. And it was up to Jesse to be the voice of reason in this fucked-up situation.
“I know, Adam, but you know as well as I do that we can’t just go bargin’ in there. They’ll shoot us on sight. We’ll be no good to her dead. We gotta stick to the plan. It’s a good one, and it’ll work.”
“Then we’d better get going, otherwise I’m going without you.”
Jesse turned to Bill. “When was your last communication from Solo?”
Bill grimaced. “Last night. Early this morning we left him a care package in the woods near where you went in last week—you know, the usual—homemade cookies, chips, salami, peanut butter, an iPod”—which Jesse took to mean flash bangs, C4, detonators, a suppressed pistol with ammunition clips, and a com link. “Don’t know if he got it, but our scout reported that it’s no longer there. The minute you called to let me know Sarah had been taken, I sent him a coded message to be on the lookout for her, but so far we’ve heard nothing back.”
“Well, if he’s mobile, he’ll be lookin’ for her,” Jesse said. “Count on it.”
Sam Olsen entered the tent. If he’d learned to smile in the last seven days, he was keeping it a secret. “ATV’s are ready guys. They’ll take you around to the north fence quicker’n walkin’. Not that I’m questionin’ your ability to walk, Nitro,” he amended hastily, putting his hand up in a quelling gesture when he saw Adam bristle. “I know the spiel—you’re tough, you’re a SEAL, you eat grenades, you crap razor blades, blah, blah, blah. Just spare me the macho bullshit and don’t screw this up, okay?” Without waiting for Adam to reply, he turned around and stalked out.
“I see Tool is his usual cheerful self,” Jesse murmured, tucking a K-bar into his left boot. He already had one in his right boot, but what the hell. No such thing as bein’ too prepared. Two back-up pistols, two combat knives, an HKMK23 assault pistol with extra clips—to say nothing of grenades and flash bangs. Jesse grinned. Just another stroll in the park for your average Navy SEAL.
The ATVs had been modified from the DPVs—Desert Patrol Vehicles—that had been used so effectively in Desert Storm. They were sleek and low-slung, like stripped-down dune buggies with roller bars on great big squishy tires. Their low profile would make them nearly invisible in the scrubby brush of the forest floor.
Mounted at the driver’s right hand was a fifty caliber M2 Browning machine gun, on his left a smaller M60 machine gun. A40mm MK19 grenade launcher completed the armament. The motors, though powerful, were nearly silent and were capable of going up to eighty miles per hour. Although not on the kind of terrain they were about to traverse.
Jesse and Adam climbed in, put on their helmets, and took off in a cloud of flying pine cones and needles. Sam Olsen had beefed up the suspension, so as they negotiated the exposed tree roots and fallen branches on their journey through the forest, the impact on Adam’s injured leg was lessened. Slightly.
By the time they arrived at the eastern end of the extended runway, the first plane, the one carrying the drugs, had just landed. Standing up and looking through his binoculars, Jesse watched the WWII-vintage cargo plane, a Douglas C47 Skytrain, lumber to a stop beneath the spotlights and make a half circle turn before shutting down.
Even at this distance, the noise from the generators gave him a pounding headache. Up close, they must be lethal. At least the hard rock hate-filled music being pumped through the stadium-sized speakers was absent tonight. As soon as the airplane’s door opened, two men rolled the metal stairway up to it, and more men began swarming up into the plane.
“C’mon, Nitro, we don’t have much time.”
Staying well back in the trees, they jolted their way along the north fence until they arrived at the spot where Jesse had cut the opening in the fence on his last visit. Adam’s leg was throbbing like an abscessed tooth, but he ignored it. He had a job to do. A job thirty of his comrades in arms were counting on him to do. A job he had to complete if there was any hope of rescuing Sarah.
Gritting his teeth, compressing his lips so hard they disappeared, he levered himself up out of the DPV and stood, white-faced, hanging onto the roll bar for dear life and trying not to faint at the sudden change in position.
Jesse watched him, wanting to order him to stay put, but he didn’t. Adam was a SEAL, and SEALs prided themselves on their ability to do the impossible. He knew Adam’s sheer grit and determination would see him through. But he hated to see his friend, his brother, the other half of himself in such pain. “Did you take your oxy?”
Adam just shrugged, and Jesse knew that he hadn’t. And that he wouldn’t. At least not until this op was over. If even then. Damn, the man was stubborn!
“Wait here.” In a crouching run, Jesse sprinted across the open space between the tree line and the chain link fence surrounding the encampment. Pulling the K-bar out of his left boot, he swiftly cut through the gray flex ties he’d used last week to disguise the fact that the fence had been breached. It was exactly as he’d left it. Jesse shook his head. Fuckers don’t even police their own perimeter. Guess they figure the rolls of razor wire topping the fence are enough to keep people out. He grinned. People, yeah. SEALs? No fuckin’ way. Hooyah!
Taking the bolt cutters hanging alongside his backpack, he enlarged the opening and bent the fence back, this time not even bothering to hide the gaping hole. By the time anyone discovered it, this place would be swarming with federal agents, and lots of people would either be in jail or dead. Personally, he was aiming for dead.
“Okay, Nitro,” he said into his com link, “let’s get this party started.”
Before he even finished speaking, Adam was beside him, slipping silently through the fence. Crouching, both men ran to the building that housed Solo’s office. No light shone through the window and a quick glance revealed the office was empty.
“Okay. Go do your thing. I’m gonna look for Sarah.” Sarah. It’s been four hours…His stomach lurched at the thought of his sweet Sarah in the clutches of Ryder Malone—or worse, Viktor Sokolov. His hands clenched by his sides. Christ, if anyone has done anythin’ to her…With a flex of his jaw, he ruthlessly shut down that line of thought. It was a distraction he didn’t need right now. He had to focus on the task at hand, and that was to find her and get her to safety ASAP. And if people got killed along the way…he grimaced and gave a mental shrug. This was war. Shit happened.
* * * *
Sarah didn’t know how long she had been hanging there in the dark. All she knew was that she ached all over. Her head felt as big as a basketball and a dull pain throbbed through it with every beat of her heart. She could swear her shoulders were being slowly pulled from their sockets. Her ankles and wrists had been rubbed raw by the heavy metal shackles. With the ball gag in place, she couldn’t swallow. Strings of drool dribbled down her chin, dripped onto her naked chest.
The Quonset hut was not air-conditioned, and the heat retained by the metal walls was nearly suffocating. Her throat was parched. If she didn’t drink some water soon, she would quickly become dehydrated. Sweat dripped down her skin, matted her hair against her head, dripped off her chin and the tip of her nose. She looked like a drowned rat and felt like last week’s leftovers. Even worse, she smelled like the inside of a Dumpster. Some sex slave she was going to make.
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The door opened and the ceiling light came on—a bare bulb with a green metal shade. The bulb couldn’t have been more than sixty watts, but it seemed as bright as the sun to Sarah’s light-starved eyes. Squinting against the sudden brightness, she raised her head and looked toward the door.
When she saw who was standing there, her blood ran cold. Ryder Malone. He was even more loathsome than she remembered him.
He wore ragged jeans, a white wife beater T-shirt, and a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off to reveal thick, heavily veined biceps and forearms covered by crude, black prison tattoos. His head was shaved, as were his eyebrows, though the shape of one of them was defined by the five bone-shaped silver bars piercing it. His lower lip was also pierced with what looked like a nail. As she watched him swagger toward her, the hard ridge of his erection bulging behind the zipper of his jeans, she didn’t even bother to suppress her shudder of revulsion. He’s aroused by this? How sick is that?
“Well, if it ain’t little Miss High ’n’ Mighty Marshall,” he sneered contemptuously as he approached. “’Cept we’re not so high ’n’ mighty now, are we?” He stopped directly in front of her, studying her like an entomologist studies a hitherto-unknown species of insect. “You know,” he began conversationally, as if they were old classmates catching up at their tenth high school reunion, “when I got out, first thing I did was sneak into that big ol’ fancy house of yours, thinkin’ we could, you know, spend a little time together. Just you and me, gettin’ to know each other, havin’ a few laughs. I figured I’d tie you up, spread your legs, and spend the next few days fuckin’ all your holes. But you never showed. Two fuckin’ days. That’s how long I waited. But you never showed. And that pissed me off, you know? So I left you a little…souvenir.”
She shivered at the remembrance of the “souvenir” he’d left her—her bedroom destroyed and everything in it ripped to shreds, then splattered all over with pig’s blood.
“Nothin’ fancy, you know? Just a little somethin’ to remember me by until I could get my hands on you.”
Pacing back and forth in front of her, he crammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “But the more I thought about it, the less a few days of havin’ you at my mercy seemed like enough payback for eight!”—he shoved his face in hers, his voice rising in both volume and belligerence with every succeeding word—“Fuckin’! Years! Of prison!” Spittle flew from his lips. “I wanted to give you somethin’ a hell of a lot bigger. And a hell of a lot more…permanent.” He grabbed her breast, squeezing until she cried out, hunching forward and trying to twist away. God, that hurt like a son of a bitch! Tears rolled down her already streaked face, while she gasped for breath.
“So I thought to myself…hmmm…why don’t I make you my full-time sex slave? Kidnap you, take you someplace where nobody would come lookin’ for you? Keep you chained up, fuck you any time I wanted…” He let his voice trail off, watching her reaction. “But that sounded like way too much hassle”—he gave her a leering grin—“except for the fuckin’ part. So I did a little research.” He paused. “And that’s when I found out about Sokolov.”
The name meant nothing to Sarah, but just the way Ryder said it sent cold chills racing up and down her spine.
He tightened his hand on her breast, making her cry out again, as he leaned close, his breath reeking of garlic and onions. Putting out his tongue—which was also pierced—he licked up her cheek, grabbing her chin with his other hand when she would have jerked her head away from him.
“Don’t you dare pull away from me, you fuckin’ little cunt,” he warned in her ear. “We got a score to settle, you and me. You cost me eight years of my life. Eight fuckin’ years! So you owe me, you worthless whore! Understand? You. Fuckin’. Owe me! And it’s gonna cost you, bitch. It’s gonna cost you a hell of a lot more than just eight years.” He tightened his grip on her chin, forcing her head around to look at him. “It’s gonna cost you…the rest of your fuckin’ life.”
His voice was low and threatening, filled with hatred. “By the time you leave here tonight, everything that matters to you will be gone”—he pressed a lingering kiss to her cheek—“your job”—his mouth slid down to kiss her jaw—“your house”—he released her chin only to circle his fingers around her throat—“your money”—his fingers tightened, sending panic rushing through her as she struggled to drag precious air into her lungs—“your two gay boyfriends.”
With devastating force, he continued to tighten his grip around her throat until blackness began to creep in from the edges of her vision. “You hear me, you little cunt?” He released her suddenly, so suddenly that if she hadn’t been suspended, she would have fallen to the floor. “I’m gonna take everything from you.” His voice was a vicious rasp, but she could barely hear it over her desperate attempts to inflate her lungs. “Everything that makes your life worth living. Everything that makes you who you are, including your freedom, even your very identity.”
He grabbed her hair, twisting the wet strands around his hand, tugging painfully on her scalp. “After tonight, Sarah Marshall will cease to exist. Because where you’re goin’ you won’t have a name. You won’t have a face, because much of the time it’ll be covered in a leather hood with nothin’ but two little holes to breathe through and a bigger one for men to fuck your mouth through. You won’t have a voice, because when your mouth isn’t busy suckin’ cock, it’ll be gagged. In fact, dependin’ on who buys you, you may not even be human any more.”
Depending on who buys me? The blood froze in her veins. Oh, my God, did I hear him right? Depending on who buys me?
“You could wind up bein’ nothin’ but an animal, livin’ in a kennel or some rich guy’s stable, eatin’ your meals out of a bowl on the floor or a bag tied around your head.”
“You’ll be kept naked, of course.” He sniggered. “Oh, except for that butt plug they’ll shove up your ass—you know, the one with the tail hangin’ from it.” Once again he put his lips against her ear. “The plug they’ll only take out to give you an enema or let you shit. Or whenever one of ’em wants to fuck your ass, which could be dozens of times a day.”
Inwardly recoiling at the monstrous images conjured up by his hateful words, she tried ducking her head away from him, but his painful grip on her hair kept her in place. “Because, you see, that is all you will ever be from this night forward. A hole for men to fuck. And you won’t be able to do a damn thing to stop it.
“So that’s it, bitch, that’s your future. Fair exchange, I’d say, for destroyin’ eight years of my life, don’t you agree?” He raised his head and looked up, as if listening for something. “Hear that?”
It sounded like an airplane about to land on the roof.
“That’s Sokolov now, comin’ to get you. Your enslavement is about to begin.”
He released her head with a malicious shove that wrenched her neck sideways, then turned and walked away from her. She sank her teeth into the spongy ball to stop herself from screaming at his retreating back in pain and frustrated rage. When he got to the door he turned and looked at her, a smirk on his face. “Because you see, I sold you to him. For a cool million bucks.”
* * * *
Hugging the side of the building, Adam stuck his head out and did a quick scan of the open area he was about to traverse. Fifty feet away stood a ramshackle shed and beyond that, his second target—an old water tower tucked into the northwest corner of the airfield. He’d already wired his first target—the old mail sorting shed Ryder Malone had turned into his weight room. When no heat signature registered on his NV goggles, he sucked in his breath and took off in a crouching run. He didn’t stop until he reached the patch of darkness provided by the shed. Pulling up short, gasping at the pain knifing through his thigh, he bent forward, hands on his knees, fighting a wave of nausea and weakness. A chill shook him as he broke out into a cold sweat. Christ Almighty!
Twenty yards to his left was the main entrance into the camp, flanked b
y two guard towers. He could make out the ghostly green silhouettes of a man in each, but they didn’t appear to be looking toward the camp interior. They were looking outward, obviously figuring that any sneak attack was going to come from the outside. He grinned. Just goes to show you how wrong you could be.
From his vantage point in the shadows, he studied the water tower. Unused since World War II, it rose about twenty-five feet above the ground and was made entirely of wood. Lovely, old, dried-out, highly flammable wood. It would blaze against the night sky like a beacon once the charge he was about to set went off. After one more quick check, he ran over to the rickety wooden ladder leading up to the platform at the tower’s base and began climbing. Christ! His thigh hurt like a son of a bitch, but he couldn’t think about that now. He had to focus on his target. Clenching his jaw against the wave of pain that engulfed him, he finished his climb.
He quickly set a series of small charges around the perimeter of the tower’s base, moving cautiously when he felt it sway. He didn’t want to blow it to smithereens. He just wanted a fire big enough to get everyone’s attention. The unmistakable engine drone of an approaching aircraft and the sudden bright glare of its landing lights turning on had him ripping off his NV goggles and scrambling for cover around to the east side of the round tower, crouching there until it passed, plunging everything back into darkness. As soon as the million pinpricks of light stopped dancing against his closed eyelids, he swung his leg around the ladder and started back down.
“Hey! You!”
Uh-oh. Adam froze, halfway down the ladder, swaying slightly as if drunk.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man demanded belligerently. “What’re you doin’ up there?”
Adam just shrugged and released the ladder with his right hand to gesture vaguely. “Nothin’, man. Just thought I’d—whoa!” He deliberately buckled his knees, swinging his hips away from the ladder to make it appear as if he were losing his balance. “Whoa!” he said again, closing his hand around the Glock tucked into his bellyband holster. He’d opted for that instead of the breastplate and carrier.
Owning Sarah [Sequel to Loving Sarah] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 35
