by Lee Weeks
Usually it was the small runts. The Colonel liked to finish some of them off himself. He had a penchant for torture. If they were not finished, then Brandon slit the girl’s throat at the edge of the ravine. Sometimes he just pushed them over the side. One or two had actually jumped. Brandon wondered what role he would have when the White Circle took over everything. He hoped that it would be a better one than undertaker. Hopefully Blanco would respect and need him. Blanco was a killer like Brandon, disciplined and clever. Blanco deserved big respect as far as Brandon was concerned. He had planned out the whole operation. He had coordinated Hong Kong, the UK and the whole of the Philippines. He had called in people that they would never have been able to access on their own. Even the government were working for them, and the DDS. The Colonel was fast slipping in Brandon’s esteem. He was getting sloppy. He spent more time off his face than on it, and he was getting harder to reason with. Only Terry knew how to handle him. Terry was the master at it. Brandon watched the way he did it. He never lost control. Everything he said or did was considered first. Brandon saw how he watched the Colonel, letting him hang himself with his own rope, waiting till he was almost dead, then Terry would step in and slide a chair beneath his dangling feet and let him stand on it a while, until the Colonel decided to kick it away again. Terry would turn things around and make the Colonel look almost sane-Terry was fucking good at his job.
Today the Colonel looked a mess. Normally he was a meticulous dresser, he liked his chinos and his polo shirt, but he hadn’t changed his shirt in days and the smell of stale sweat was sour and rank. He was drinking brandy chasers and looking up and down the street continually. His head swung back and forth as his leg jittered.
‘When can we expect Terry, Brandon?’
‘He should be here any time now, sir.’
‘Teacher-is Blanco here yet?’
‘No.’
‘Well, how are we going to coordinate everyone without him here?’ The Colonel was riled.
‘Everyone has their part. They all know what that is. They have been told. We all do our job, Colonel-there shouldn’t be a fucking problem. One of us cocks it up, and he effectively kills us all.’ He sat and waited for Comfort to bring him his beer and leave again before continuing. She stood back, reached over and placed it in front of him. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of standing too close. The Teacher was like the Colonel-never nice. When she had gone he sat back and glared at a group of passing locals who were not passing quick enough for his liking. ‘But, what should I care?’ He continued eyeballing them until they were out of sight. ‘You can all be replaced.’ He picked up his beer and raised it at the Colonel. ‘Cheers. Go ahead and fuck up.’
The Colonel was shaking with anger. Maya squirmed as his grip on her tightened.
‘I am a personal friend of Blanco’s-you are just hired help. Don’t forget that. If anyone is going to get replaced, it won’t be me. Where is fucking Terry?’
The Colonel sat back and downed the last of his brandy. He banged on the table and Comfort appeared beside him with another brandy and two beers.
He caught hold of her as she was turning to go back inside the bar.
‘Wait. Comfort, I need you. Go and wait for me upstairs. I need you to do something for me. You are my favourite, Comfort, always were. You know that, don’t you?’
Comfort smiled and nodded her head. The Colonel watched her until she was out of sight. Reluctantly, she handed over her tasks to another girl at the bar and went up to the top floor, to the Colonel’s apartment.
68
The Colonel sat on his bed in his shorts, his back resting against the rattan headboard. It would not let him sleep. His skin was bathed in old and new sweat. His bony chest rose and fell rapidly. He chewed the inside of his lips and they needed continually wetting. Comfort stood at the end of the bed, waiting. Maya sat in the corner of the room. He stroked his member as he sat watching Maya. It grew hard.
‘What’s the matter, Comfort? You look tense.’
Comfort had worked out who Maya was. After her meeting with Wednesday, her mind had been troubled, and slowly the pieces had fallen into place and she had remembered the face of someone she had called a friend. She had seen Brandon take the wrapped sheet containing Wednesday’s body and she knew he was heading towards the ravine and that Wednesday’s body was destined to feed the animals in the marshes. It would be devoured by the crawling creatures. Sadness consumed her now, sadness and desperation and a screaming anger that made her heart beat furiously. Comfort always had that anger in her, that’s how she had been able to hurt Peanut. Most of the time she could shut her mind to it, but now memories came back of her horrible childhood, of her father who had beaten and molested her, and of the Colonel who had used her as a toy and then discarded her. The only sweetness in her childhood memories were the days when she had played with Wednesday, when the older girl had looked after her until the day she had been rescued and Comfort was left behind. Now she hated the Colonel more than she had ever done before. She looked at Maya and saw herself sitting in that chair all those years ago.
‘You know who came to see me?’ He smiled. ‘You remember Wednesday?’
Comfort knew better than to try and lie to the Colonel. She nodded.
‘Never thought you’d see her again when the priests took her, did you?’
She shook her head.
‘No one ever escapes me, Comfort. You should know that. Now she has paid the ultimate price for disobeying me. Come here, Comfort. Come to me. It’s been a long time since you slept in my bed, since I have a new little girl to play with. Does she look familiar, Comfort?’
Comfort turned and looked at the child sitting in the corner of the room. She nodded.
He laughed. ‘And what will happen to little Maya now?’ He looked over at her. She stared back. ‘I suppose I will have to bring her up like my own-but then I do own her. I own you all.’ He laughed. ‘I will have her like I had her mother and I had you.’
‘Please-Kano, please, I beg you not to.’
As Comfort spoke the words, she knew she had overstepped the mark. It was like looking into the red-rimmed eyes of the devil.
He moved down the bed a little and made himself comfortable. He straightened his throbbing cock inside his pants. The Shabu gave him a hard penis like when he had been a teenager. It ached for relief, but it took him a long time to get it.
‘I am feeling generous today, Comfort. Take off your clothes and come over here.’
Comfort did as she was told. She crawled naked onto the bed and knelt beside him.
‘Turn around. I want to see if you taste the same as you did as a child.’
Comfort turned her back to him and swung her leg across his lap. She looked at Maya. Maya was hiding behind the chair. She saw Maya’s eyes staring, horrified. The Colonel held onto Comfort’s thighs and pulled her sex to his mouth. Comfort shut her eyes tight. His mouth was hard, always hard; even his tongue was angry and aggressive. He reached down and removed his shorts, kicking them off the bed with his foot.
‘No hands.’ He fed his cock into her mouth. He picked up a length of cord and pulled Comfort’s hands together behind her back, tying them tightly. ‘Just mouth.’
His cock was hard and huge in her mouth. Her mouth wouldn’t open wide enough to take it in.
He pressed his hands to either side of her skull and held it in a vice. He kept her head straight as he forced his cock deeper into her mouth. Comfort began to struggle. She was squealing in pain as he began chewing her as if she were a juicy peach. He could taste the blood in his mouth. He pulled at her sex with his teeth. Eeeee. She sounded like a donkey as she tried to breathe and scream. Then Awwwww as her body shuddered. He had to hold her hard. She was strong and she fought hard against his grip, but she wasn’t able to move more than an inch: her knees were jammed to his sides, her hands tied. Eeeee Awwww Eeeee Awwww. It made him smile. His balls twitched but he knew it would take him time. He held onto he
r head and pushed deeper. He could feel the back of her throat now, she was gagging, her teeth grated around his cock, but he wasn’t all in yet. He wanted that hot mouth to be around the whole of his shaft. Comfort fought harder than ever. She was passing out. Hot pee covered the Colonel’s face. It stung his eyes. Fucking bitch. He pushed her legs away from his face and knelt over her. Picking her head up in his hands he held onto it with a vice-like grip and glared at her-mad angry, but too excited to lose his way now. He had to finish it. He lifted her head from the bed and forced his cock deep into her mouth, pausing only to look at her. Her eyes bulged in her face, frantic. Her mouth was splitting at the sides-she stared at him in terror as he grinned back.
‘So scared, aren’t you, Comfort? I told you-you are worth nothing in this world. I own you. I can do whatever I want to you. You and that little girl over there.’ He flicked his eyes towards Maya. ‘You watching? It’ll be your turn to please me soon. In fact, I think your time has come…’
He laughed. The thought of having the child made him much nearer to climax. He grinned down at Comfort, her face turning blue, her bulging eyes drifting.
‘Just one more inch. Open wide.’
He held onto the back of her head, pushed hard and felt her teeth jam against the thick base of his shaft. Just there-that’s the place… His cock was wedged inside her throat at an angle, its tip was touching the smooth sides of her trachea. He held onto her skull and squeezed it to him with both hands as he clenched his buttock muscles and thrust hard. He felt his abdomen tighten, twitch, spasm. It was coming now, relief, then he would be able to sleep. He lunged forward, pressed her head to him as hard as he could. Three massive thrusts and the Colonel threw his head back and bellowed to the ceiling in his painful ecstasy as he pumped his load into her throat. He rested there for a few minutes, breathing hard, sweat dripping from his forehead. He felt her motionless beneath him. Her head was heavy now in his hands. He relaxed his grip a little and looked at her. Her hair was wet with his sweat, her eyes were staring straight ahead. Her face was dark. Her mouth had stretched so that it had split in the corners and fresh pink blood was smeared on her face.
He held her by the hair as he tentatively eased himself out of her mouth. He was so sensitive now. Her teeth had hurt. It was a long way back. He lay down on the bed. Now he was so tired and so cold. It always took so much blood to fill that big cock, it left him as weak as a baby afterwards.
He lay there, his chest rising and falling at last, but still he was not to be granted sleep. He tried closing his eyes but they would not stay shut. The Shabu was not sated. He looked over at Maya.
‘Come, princess, you will have your turn. Come here and lie with me.’ He beckoned with his hand. Maya, still hiding behind the chair, shook her head.
‘I said come’.
She slid out from behind the chair and walked slowly forward; her huge eyes were on Comfort. He pulled her onto the bed and laid her next to him. Comfort was in the way now. He had had enough of sharing his bed with her. He bent his knees towards his chest then pushed her hard with both feet. Comfort shot off the end of the bed. From the direction of the floor he heard her retching and coughing as she vomited.
‘So, you decided to spit and not swallow this time?’ His head went back and rested on the wall behind him as he laughed his lunatic laugh. ‘Now get the fuck back to work.’
He left his head resting where it was, on the wall. He was exhausted, so spent, but still he felt the stirrings start. He ran his hand up Maya’s leg.
‘Come here, baby, come to me.’
He lifted her onto his lap. There was a banging at the door.
‘Colonel, you need to come.’ It was Brandon. ‘The place is crawling with Chinamen. It’s starting.’
69
This time Father Finn’s office was next to his bedroom on the first floor at the front of the refuge. Mann sat listening to the crickets call and the mosquitoes whine furiously on the other side of the window net as they lined up to attack him when they got the chance. He was sat at Father Finn’s desk, waiting for the laptop to fire up. Becky was resting in the next room-Father Finn’s bedroom-which he had given over to her whilst he and Mann intended to share with Paulo and the boys downstairs, although no one expected to get any sleep that night. He waited with trepidation as the internet connected. He put in his password and his emails started to bounce up on the screen.
In the bottom right of the screen a message alert appeared.
You have a new message from BLANCO.
Mann clicked onto it.
PRESS. To sample the delights of Angeles.
Mann clicked on the sign and a photo appeared of Maya, naked, lying on a bed wrapped in a bloody sheet.
Tick Tock…Tick Tock…time is slipping away
Becky finished her conversation with Jimmy Vance, thanked him and hung up as Mann came into the room.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. He could see she wasn’t. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands tucked beneath her legs, hunched over as if in pain. She kept her eyes glued to her lap as she spoke.
‘Yesterday, in Puerto Galera, I checked a message left on my voicemail and found it was from a woman claiming to be having an affair with my husband, whom she called Lenny. She said her name was Suzanne. I thought it was just a mistake, nothing to do with me-wrong number. But when Jimmy Vance went round to check on things at my flat he found a woman there.’ She looked up from her lap and stared wide-eyed at Mann. ‘Jimmy’s just rung me now. He’s been at the flat. I asked him to look into it for me. He said Alex’s PC is riddled with references to the Colonel, to Reese Pearce and to Terry Saunders.’ She sighed heavily and shook her head as if she couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been. ‘Then I thought about it and I realised the names-Lenny is Leonard Cohen, his favourite singer, and ‘Suzanne’ is Cohen’s most famous song. Alex is Lenny, and Alex is right in the middle of all this. What if he has something to do with Amy Tang as well? I married a monster, Johnny. He’s been living a double life. He’s capable of anything. I suppose he’s not in Hong Kong?’
Mann shook his head. ‘That much I do know. He left there just after we did.’
She was shaking her head in disbelief.
‘You weren’t to know, Becky. When you get too close to a person you just can’t see it clearly.’
She stood and stepped away from the bed. Mann could see she was clearly reeling from it all. She looked at him, defiance and pain in her eyes.
‘I’m ready,’ she said. ‘We came here to find out the person who has Amy Tang and to free her. If Alex is here and if he knows anything about it then, God help him, I intend to find out. I will do my job Mann, no matter what it takes.’
‘Come on, Johnny…I mean it.’
Mann looked at her. The bruising and swelling in her face was livid now. She stood absolutely still, her shoulders tensed and her feet squarely planted-defiant as they faced each other beneath the fan that hung down from the apex of the high wooden-beamed ceiling.
‘You can’t come.’
She started to protest but he wouldn’t let her.
‘Listen to me…If you are right and Alex is involved in all this, then that’s why you were targeted back at Puerto Galera. It’s why you were attacked. It was retribution. Alex must be up to his neck in shit and he doesn’t know the calibre of men he’s dealing with-they will eat him alive. I don’t want them to do that to you. They intended to kill you then… that’s a certainty, they won’t hesitate to do it now. I can’t have that, Becky. I cannot go there knowing that you will be a target. We have to protect you and this mission. We can’t afford to jeopardise any of it. Plus, Eduardo needs protecting. If the DDS are government-funded you can bet your life he’s on their list, right at the top, joint first with Father Finn…I need you to stay here and protect them.’
Mann laid out his weapons on the bed. He stripped off his shirt and attached the shuriken knife belt around his waist and strapped the Death Star across his
chest. He tied the throwing-spike sheath to his arm. The last time he had seen these weapons was when he had taken them out of the dead bodies of Becky’s attackers. In the dim light of the room he could see how intently she was watching him. She was scared, he knew that. He looked at her.
‘Someone down on Fields Avenue has the answer to why we came here. One of those men is directly or indirectly responsible for ordering the kidnap of Amy Tang. Our job is to try to stop the bloodbath that will follow a triad uprising if she dies. We have to do our part now. We have to see it through. We have no choice. If it turns out to be Alex then I will deal with it, not you, Becky.’
‘What you’re trying to say is that I might not be able to do my job, I might let him off, that I might not do the right thing.’
‘I’m just saying that it’s too much to ask anyone to do.’
She sat back on the bed, deflated.
Mann finished attaching his weapons. He put his shirt back on, then he tucked Delilah into his boot. He pulled out a semi-automatic from his bag, and handed it to her.
‘You okay with that?’
She nodded, it was one she was very used to. She had practised with it many times on the police targeting range. He fished out the ammunition and threw it down on the bed.
She looked at him, desperation in her eyes. He knew she didn’t want to be left behind.
