by John Ringo
"No," Dmitri replied. "He's a sweetmeat vendor of all things. When Georgi died he bought all of his stock. He's trying to unload it now, but is willing to buy some more."
Katya didn't bother to ask where a sweetmeat vendor got the money to buy a string of whores. Obviously he was more than a sweetmeat vendor.
Yaroslav, when he finally made it to the café, turned out to be a pig. The man was grossly obese. If she had to service him it was going to have to be from on top; the man would crush her otherwise. Short and at least two hundred kilos, maybe more. He wheezed his way across the café and collapsed in the chair, which creaked ominously, then leaned back, interlacing his fingers across the top of his huge belly.
"She is pretty," Yaroslav wheezed. "But I already have too many girls. I cannot afford to pay more than a thousand euros..."
Katya had gotten used to it a long time ago and now that it wasn't, at some level, real it was easier. But it was never fun to be bartered over. Fucking men treated women like a piece of meat to be dickered over.
Finally a price of five thousand euros was settled on and Yaroslav hoisted himself to his feet.
"I will return with the money," he wheezed, stopping to breathe deeply at the effort to get to his feet. "I of course don't carry that much on me. I will return. Soon."
"Well, if you decide to run you won't have much trouble," Dmitri said, bursting into laughter as soon as the door to the café shut.
It was much the same thing Katya had been thinking but she just shook her head.
"I won't run," she said with a shrug. "What do I have to run to?"
Besides, she had a mission to complete. There were men to screw over and, with luck, a few to kill. Why should she run?
* * *
"This is...where you...will be sleeping," Yaroslav wheezed, gesturing at the room.
It wasn't...yes it was. This was definitely the worst place she'd ever been bedded down in her long career as a whore. The stone building was one large room, about the size and general shape of the Keldara homes, but open and filled with beds lining the walls. The beds were springs, no mattresses, and the room was unheated. Cracks in the walls let in drafts that were virtually gales in themselves. The floor was packed dirt, so stained with unnamed fluids and garbage that it brought a new meaning to "dirt."
Arguing or complaining had never gotten her anywhere, though.
"Is there a blanket?" she asked, meekly.
"I will try to find you one," Yaroslav said. "I am doing this practically out of the goodness of my heart. When my good friend...Georgi died his ladies were left with no protector." He paused to breathe deeply and wiped at his eyes as if there were tears. There weren't. The pause indicated that he'd had to dredge the name of his "good friend" from unsure memory. If he wasn't such a slob, Katya would have suspected him of offing a competitor just to buy up his stock at a discount. "It was from the goodness of my heart that I took you girls in. I will have no complaints as to the quality of the lodgings."
"I'm not complaining," Katya said, hastily. The man might be a pudge-monster, as the Kildar would put it, but he could still probably smack the hell out of her. And in her current cover, all she could do was try to move so it didn't hurt too much. She'd have to take the punch with barely a flinch.
"All the other girls left yesterday," Yaroslav said, puffing. "I had hoped to return to my simple life of a sweetmeat vendor. Then you were dropped on me. So you must make the best of it until I can find someone to take you on to Azerbaijan." Pause. Wheeze. "There may be some blankets the girls left behind." Pause. Wheeze. "Check the cupboard. I must return to my money-making ventures. I do not have time for this."
"Yes, sir," Katya replied. "Should I work?"
"Of course you should work!" Yaroslav thundered. "There is little enough money to be made in this town, I cannot afford idle hands, or pussies in your case. Get out there and make my money!"
"Yes, sir," Katya said, smiling nervously. She so wanted to give this prick a heart attack.
"I may have another job for you, besides on your back," Yaroslav admitted, more gently. "Not that it pays anything but nothing in this town does. The Chechens have a woman they are keeping. They, of course, cannot defile themselves with dealing with her. They had hired one of the girls to tend to her needs. Perhaps you can do that."
Katya kept her face puzzled but let nothing else showed. But what went through her mind was: It can't be that easy. There was only one girl that could possibly match that description. Surely she wasn't being handed the fucking target on a platter.
* * *
It was that easy. Fuck.
It was Marina Arensky. From what Katya could see past the blindfold anyway. And the small scar on the chin was a dead give away.
The girl was tied to a chair, a padded one Katya noticed, blindfolded but not gagged. Nonetheless she was silent as if she had been gagged.
The men holding her weren't Chechens, either. They were Russians and if she hadn't been on this mission for a specific reason she would have wondered what Russians were doing in a Chechen held town. There were quite a few of them, too. The building was much larger than the barn for the girls with several rooms off a corridor. The doors of most of the rooms had been open as she and Yaroslav passed and there were men, heavily armed, in all of them.
Marina was held in a room at the very back of the building. It backed on a rock wall; there was no entrance at the rear and no windows. Conceivably the assault team could come through the wall if they used enough explosives. That wasn't for her to figure out, though. All she had to do was look around as they walked through and make sure the video was going to the, unfortunately small, memory chip installed in her skull.
"This is the new girl," Yaroslav wheezed. "All my other girls I had to sell. I will sell this one as soon as I can. Then we are done."
"We don't need her for long," the man said. He was a cold one, Katya could tell. About 175 centimeters, cold gray eyes, slim face. She ran through the dossiers she'd been shown and tried not to blanch. Kurt Schwenke, the former Stasi agent and terrorist. She was going to have to be very careful around this man. He was a trained agent which meant that anything she did out of character was going to give her away. She instantly decided she was going to switch roles as soon as Yaroslav was gone. Just enough that Schwenke would catch it. It was a fine line to run. She had to show her hard side without in any way making him think she was an agent.
"I go now," Yaroslav said. "She will work for you. She is very biddable."
After Yaroslav had waddled out of the room Schwenke walked around her, looking her up and down.
"Biddable?" the German finally scoffed. "Is he blind?"
"Most men are," Katya said, coldly.
"I am not, bitch," Schwenke stated, stopping in front of her and then slapping her, hard.
With the change in demeanor Katya could have, would have, avoided the slap as much as possible. She couldn't have used a trained block, that would give too much away. But she could have lifted her arms, turned away, flinched, something.
If she'd had time. The man was faster than a snake. All she could do was spin away from the powerful slap and try to remain conscious.
She found herself on the floor, propping herself up with her hands and trying to breathe just before a boot crashed into her side.
"I am not," Schwenke said, just as coldly. "So let us not play games, yes? What are you?"
"A whore," Katya said, curled on her side. "I was born in an orphanage in Novy Birsk. I was raped by a man like you when I was eight. If I could press a button and kill every man on earth I would. But I know better than to cross you. Good enough?"
"Perhaps," Schwenke said, kicking her. "And perhaps too pat. Why are you here?"
"Because I killed my last pimp," Katya spat. "Veniamin was a bastard. But he has friends. He knew too many of the men in the Balkans trade and too many in Russia. If I stayed, I'd be as dead as the pig. Turkey, though, there I could disappear. So kill me or bea
t me or fuck me, I don't care. But if you piss me off too much, you'd better kill me."
Schwenke paused and then laughed. Shrilly.
"Better bitches than you have tried to kill me," he said, still chortling. "But I like your spirit. Feel free to try. We can make a game of it, yes? You try to kill me, I try to kill you. Nothing obvious. Shooting you, beating you to death with a lead club, these would be too easy. Fun but too easy. Poison? Do you know poisons? I know thousands. Shall we play the poison game, bitch?"
"Teach me a few and I'll gladly give you a blowjob that will curl your toes," Katya said. It was pure honesty and that shown through.
"Perhaps," Schwenke said. "Perhaps. But you would probably not enjoy bedding me. I am a master of pain."
"I have been hurt," Katya said. "Plenty of men have beaten me."
"Who said anything about beating?" Schwenke asked. "I prefer to simply give them a little cocktail. That way they scream and scream in pain as a fuck them. Then the pain passes and they are so grateful. Until I brew the next cocktail. I make them watch as I prepare the syringe. They begin to scream before the needle even touches them. Would you like to scream?"
Katya was stunned. She'd run into some real bastards, absolute sadists, as pimps. But this guy was just fucking nuts. More around the bend, if possible, than Katya herself.
"I've screamed until I was hoarse, plenty of times," Katya said. "But if you'd settle for fake screaming and just teach me your recipe, I promise you won't know the difference."
"Oh, but I would," Kurt pouted. "But for my recipe, would you take my little cocktail? Voluntarily?"
"I don't know," Katya temporized. "How much am I getting paid? I'll fuck you for the recipe. For the pain...seven hundred euros. And Yaroslav doesn't find out. For that much pain I'm not going to cut in the pimp."
"What a delightful child you are," Schwenke said. "We'll talk about it, yes? In the meantime, you've been hired for other reasons."
"Who's the bitch?" Katya asked. "Your newest playtoy?"
"No," the German said. "Alas, I'm not permitted to play with her. Not as long as her father cooperates. She stays in the chair except for two exercise periods each day. That is when she craps or pisses or whatever. Her hands are never untied. Her feet are shackled whenever she is out of the chair. You have to feed her, get her to the latrine, get her on the pisser. The men are not permitted to talk to her. You will only talk to her as little as possible. If any of the men try to see her, to touch her or rape her, you will report it to me. They won't, though. They know the penalty. They start with my little cocktails. At night she lies in the bed. She must be shackled then, as well. You will shackle her and then return to whatever pisshole you call home here. I will check to make sure they are tight. In the morning you return. If I am unsatisfied by the tightness of her bonds the night before we will have another little chat."
"I won't let her go," Katya said, chuckling. "I'd just as soon watch her raped."
"You don't want to know why we are keeping her?" Schwenke asked.
"I assume for ransom," Katya replied with a shrug.
"Ah, and such a ransom," Schwenke said. "You will not ask her her name. If I find that you discover her identity, you will be killed. I may play with you first, but you will definitely be killed. She does not want you to be killed, I'm sure, so she won't tell you. But if you piss her off enough, she can kill you by simply mentioning her name. She did so to one of the girls who was...unkind to her."
"I will be kindness in itself," Katya promised. "What if she is a problem?"
"Then bring it to me," the ex-Stasi said. "Here you are, the two of you trapped like a proton circled by an electron. Unable to escape each other short of the death of either. Or, of course, she being moved on. So I would suggest that, despite your nature, you become the very best of friends."
* * *
"Hello, ladies," Mike said, looking around the room. "Thanks for staying up until the middle of the night to meet with me."
"You are very busy, Kildar," Mother Ferani said. "We are at your disposal."
"Here is the situation," Mike said, gesturing at the pile of recently received steerable chutes. "As you know, a team is being inserted by advanced parachute techniques to set up a radio center. I've got all I can do just training them to minimal standards. And we all want Julia, Olga, Jeseph, Ivan and Pat well trained. But that will require that, towards the end of training, they do multiple jumps per day. The Master Chief and I are the only qualified parachute packers in the area. I won't have the time to pack thirty chutes a day. That's the six of us doing five jumps per day, which is what I'm shooting for. Somebody is going to have to pack the chutes."
"Us," Mother Ferani said, her eyes wide.
"Yes," Mike replied, simply. "These days either specialized members of the military who use the chutes, riggers they're called, or the users themselves generally pack the chutes. Because the very lives of the users depend upon them being packed right. On the other hand, I don't have the time to train the team on HALO and packing. Nor do they have the time to do their own packing even if I did.
"However, four of the Six Families are represented on the jump. And a mother, sister or cousin of each of the team members is represented here. If they cannot trust their own mother, sister or cousin, who can they trust? Anyone who really feels they are not prepared to hold the lives of their son, brother or cousin in their hands after this training can opt out. There are actually about twice as many of you as I need. There's a reason for that too, but I won't get into it. However, if you don't think you want that responsibility, you can opt out. After you're trained."
"Very well, Kildar," Mother Ferani said. "We are at your command in things such as this. And I find it to be an honor."
"Great," Mike said, tiredly. "Let's get started. But just one thing I'll add: It's pretty apparent that the Keldara are going to get used for more and more 'special' missions. And the Keldara don't seem to mind, even when there are losses. So it makes sense to make sure they're all as prepared as possible..."
"You're going to extend the training," Liza Mahona said from the group.
"After this mission is over I'm going to institute unit-wide training in airborne and HALO techniques," Mike said with a nod. "We'll work on SCUBA later."
"What is SCUBA?"
Chapter Seventeen
Kacey yanked back the door of the Blackhawk and stepped out fast, carrying her flight bag in one hand and a carry-on in the other. Tammie, similarly encumbered, followed fast behind but paused to wave to the crew-chief and slide the door shut.
Their greeting party was a middle height man dressed in casual clothes, more or less ignoring the rotor wash, and a bigger guy that had a look that Kacey somehow tagged as " local" wearing a digi-cam pattern she'd never seen before. The guy in digicam was wearing a sidearm of some sort in fast-draw holster. It might have been an H&K USP, but Kacey wasn't enough of an expert in side-arms to be sure. The odd thing about the local took a second to sink in: he was so damned good looking it was scary. He looked like he could have stepped off a Hollywood set but she was sure he was a local.
The landing area was a farm in a valley just about surrounded by really high mountains, pretty prosperous with some new tractors working the fields and an SUV or two in sight. But the houses looked pretty much like the ones she'd seen in the Kurdish area in Iraq: dressed stone and slate roofs. They looked like they might have electricity.
"Captain Bathlick?" the casually dressed man asked. "I'm Mike Jenkins. Thanks for coming out here just to talk."
