by John Ringo
"I'd love to know how," Vadim said, dispiritedly. One of the bodies was very young.
"I'll see if we can get the phone system in Alerrso upgraded," Mike said. "If anyone moves through the town, we can set up a signaling system. Maybe put out some hide positions using radio. Even without the militia, there's a tiddly strike force in the trainers. If they strike first through the roads we'll have warning."
"Do what you can," Vadim said. "I'll stay here to clean up. It's all I can do."
* * *
"That's the situation we're dealing with," Mike said, shaking his head. He'd called Adams and Nielson into a conference as soon as he'd gotten back. "While we're training, we need to keep one eye on the security situation."
"I don't want to just put guns in the hands of the Keldara," Adams said, frowning. "They're smarter than I'd hoped, but I don't think that would be a good idea."
"Agreed," Nielson said, setting his laptop on the desktop. "But the trainers can start carrying, heavy, from now on. The work they were on is winding down as I'd planned as we get closer to the planting festival. Planting's done, by the way; what are they waiting for?"
"It's scheduled for a particular day in the year," Mike said, shrugging. "It's more of a spring festival than a strictly planting festival. But I still think we should wait until then to start training; I don't want to interfere in their festivals and for a few weeks after there's not much to do around the farm the women and older men can't handle."
"I can work with that," the colonel said. "We can start pulling back a small strike team, five or so, in the event that something goes wrong. Keep an SUV up here for them to move in."
"Create a ground-floor weapons room," Mike said, nodding as the plan took shape. "There's a small utility room by the main entry corridor. Start storing personal weapons there. I'll get a couple of Keldara to set up weapons racks."
"That will handle any minor attack," Adams said. "But I'd like some recon and a warning net."
"Some of the Keldara are hunters," Mike said, musingly. "Give them over to a pretraining team and set them out, two-man teams, as eyeballs north and south. Nothing we can do about the tracks in the mountains right now, but we can keep an eye on the road. Get Vanner setting up the main commo shack and train them in on the radios. Scatter some radios in Alerrso. Lay in a secure line to the Keldara commo center or put it up here."
"Up here would work better," Nielson said, definitively. "It's the most secure location and we can put an antenna farm up on the roof that will link through the whole area easily. We've got the satellite radios for longer range; only thing that will work in these mountains. I'll set up the training teams. Probably send out a trainer with the hunters for some makee learnee. One trainer and one hunter per team for the time being."
"Give me the names and I'll start rounding them up," Adams said. "And the back-up strike teams. We should rotate that."
"I'll get it to you by the end of the day," Nielson said, frowning.
"I'll get some Keldara up here and get them started on the gun-rack," Mike said, nodding. "Anything else?"
"Not that I can think of at the moment," Nielson said.
"I can," Adams said. "Some of the Keldara are bound to get shot up doing this stuff. The medics are going to designate some of them for basic medical training, maybe more with some of the women. But we're still a long damned way from the hospital. Any way that we can get a chopper for extraction?"
"Unlikely," Mike said, shaking his head. "As far as I know the hospital in Tbilisi doesn't even have one." He looked at the chief's face and frowned. "Damnit, you want me to buy them a chopper?"
"One that we have first priority on," Adams said, nodding. "Yes. And they'll probably need help, for the first year at least, with support and pay for the pilots. Keep in mind, you might be the guy that needs it."
"Christ," Mike said, shaking his head. "This is getting expensive enough it's noticeable. Okay, okay, I'll think about it."
"Then that's all," Adams said. "I'll get with the Keldara about the gun-rack; you don't know diddly about building a gun rack."
* * *
Mike was down in the weight room, pushing his way through a punishing pect workout with E Nomine cranked up on the speakers, when the door opened to reveal one of the Keldara women. She immediately shouted something he couldn't catch over the booming industrial.
Mike stepped out of the Nautilus machine and turned off the stereo, cocking an eyebrow in query.
"There has been an incident in the village," the woman said. "A Keldara woman has been taken by Chechens. They were seen driving down the hill this way."
Mike thought rapidly about how long it would take them to make it out of the area as he grabbed a towel and ran up the stairs. He could hear the duty squad throwing on their gear but he didn't bother; the vehicle would be out of the valley before they could even make it out the door fully rigged. Instead he kept climbing, running up to the second level and into his bedroom.
He'd laid in a gun room next to his room, a little security blanket in case everything went to shit. Among other weapons in the room was a Barrett. The Robar was more accurate but the M-82A1 was a better light material gun.
He grabbed the Barrett and headed for his balcony, looking down into the valley. He could see the road clearly from his position and there was a white van heading down the valley road at high speed. They must have gotten the impression they weren't welcome or maybe they were just really stupid drivers.
Mike moved rapidly but with care, throwing the Barrett up onto the balcony railing, sliding in a magazine, arming the weapon and then snuggling in to look through the scope.
It took him a moment to acquire the speeding van but when he did he slid forward, laying the crosshairs on the engine compartment and then leading it. In the mild spring air he could see the round crackling through the rippling air and it impacted forward of the van, gouging up a spurt of dust that was lost in the dust of the van's passage. He pulled back a bit and the second round cracked into the side of the vehicle, uncomfortably close to the cargo compartment. The third of five rounds cracked into the driver's area and the van swerved wildly for a moment then straightened out. Killing the driver was nowhere in his plan so he led the van, which was getting out of range, a bit more and let go with the fourth round. He couldn't figure out where that one went but he followed it up with another and was professionally pleased to see the van's muffler start streaming blue and the van slowing to a stop.
He dropped the Barrett, then stopped by the gun room just long enough to pick up a fully-loaded silenced M-4. He still made it out the front doors just after the last member of the duty squad.
"Over," Mike snapped, slipping in the door of the Expedition.
"God damnit, Kildar," Russell said. He was one of the Rangers with the group, a pure shoot trainer, a real freak of nature, too. He pumped more iron than any normal human should and looked like a walking tank. Loaded down with his weapon, body armor and spare ammo he looked even worse. "You're not even in armor."
"Shit happens," Mike said. "Go!"
No one had gotten out of the van when they reached it. It was parked on the side of the road, near the southwest end of the valley. A few Keldara who had been in the fields had drifted that way but Mike waved them back as he unloaded from the Expedition and moved forward in tactical present.
As he neared the back door he could hear the rest of the team moving out to either side and noticed a bit of movement by the back window. Suddenly the back door opened up and a man was revealed holding a gun to the head of a girl. Mike noticed in passing that it was Katrina. Figured. She looked more pissed than scared but she was sitting still. There was a large red mark on her face and her blouse was torn, revealing an amazingly good chest for a fourteen year old girl. Mike figured somebody was just going to have pay for that.
"If you or your men move closer I'll kill her," the man said in heavily accented Georgian.
"Go ahead," Mike said, glancing past hi
m into the van. There were seats in it and he couldn't figure out how many girls were in it, but it was close to full. "I've been in this situation before. One guy walked away alive. He was the one that let the bitch go. I don't really care if you kill her, pussy in the mountains is in overabundance. But if you do you won't be walking away." The M-4 was sighted for 150 meters, so at this range, due to parallax, the round would tend to track up. Mike dropped the sight to just below the guy's chin and worried about the shot. The problem with the M-4 was that the 5.56 round was bound to pass through the target. If there was a girl on the other side of him, and Mike was pretty sure there was, she was liable to take a round in the back. "Hey! Girls in the van! On the floor if you please!"
"Shut up!" the man shouted. "I will kill her, I swear!"
"You're clearly not listening carefully," Mike said, dropping to a sitting position and leaning over a bit so he was now targeted to go through the guy's head and upward. "You can let her go and walk or . . ."
The top of the man's head lifted up and sprayed blood and brains into the interior of the van accompanied by screams from the girls on the interior.
As soon as the man's hands went flaccid, Katrina rolled out of the van and onto the ground, lying flat. Mike darted forward to cover her as the rest of the team went for the other doors. There were more screams and a crunching sound as women started to pour out of the side door.
"Sorry about that, boss," Russell said as Mike walked around the driver's side of the van. Russell was holding the driver by the wrist and the guy was sitting on the ground, trying very hard not to move; his hand was at a forty-five-degree sideways angle. "I guess I pressed a little too hard when I jerked him out."
"Works for me," Mike said, walking over to the man on the ground. "Hurt?"
"Yes," the man whispered, his face white.
"Good," Mike said. "Your van's all shot up, but we'll get you a splint and a ride back to Chechnya. Then you tell your buddies that the valley of the Keldara is off limits, clear? You try to take our food, you try to take our women, you try to fight us, you're going to end up very dead. Is that clear?"
"Who are you?" the man asked, looking around. "You're Americans."
"I am the Kildar," Mike said. "These are some of my friends that I asked over to help out with the security situation. American and British Spetznaz. They're going to be working on the security in the area. And training the Keldara to do the same. So unless you want to get the shit kicked out of you, stay far, far away."
"Patch him up," Mike said, looking at Russell and switching to English. "Tell doc to just splint it. I'll get Vadim to find a ride for him back to the border."
"Will do, boss," Russell said.
"Boss?" Thompson said, walking around the side of the van. "We've got the girls unloaded, what do we do with them?
"What the fuck do we do with them?" Mike asked, looking at the nine girls lined up by the roadside. They'd mostly stopped crying and now looked at the men with guns in fear. They also were covered blood and in some cases vomit.
"Clean 'em up and fuck 'em?" Thompson suggested. The former Sfer shrugged at Mike's expression. "Just a thought. I mean, they were on their way to being whores anyway, right?"
Mike had to admit that under the mess some of the girls were damned good looking. Not as good looking as Keldara, but still damned good looking. On the other hand, some of them were . . . pretty young.
"We'll take 'em up to the caravanserai for now," Mike said. "I'll call Vadim and get his read on the situation. They all came from farms, maybe they can go back."
* * *
"They were all 'sent to town,' " Vadim said, after entering Mike's office. The girls had been turned over to Mother Savina with orders to get them some clean clothes and a bath. "Most of them are from farms down the road to the south. Various places between here and the Gorge."
"So can we send them back?" Mike asked.
"Assuming we can find any of the farms, probably not," Vadim said, shrugging. "Generally, none of these girls have been more than a kilometer from their homes and don't really know where they are. I'll send one of my men out to see if they can figure it out. But even if we can find the farms, girls get sent to town for a reason. Generally, they're of no more use. And if you send them back, they're just going to be sold again."
"So what the hell do I do with them?" Mike asked, angrily.
"I dunno," Vadim said, shrugging. "Clean them up and fuck them?"
* * *
After Vadim was gone, Mike sat at his desk and rubbed his forehead in thought. For good or ill, he'd apparently inherited a harem. The honorable thing to do was to figure out some way to send them off to a school, preferably female only, until they were old enough to find jobs. But half the time even women with training in countries like this ended up as "bar girls," whores in other words. There just weren't enough jobs for all the men and women got hired last. Even when women could find decent jobs, it was usually at the cost of putting out to the boss. He thought about the "secretary" or whatever who served tea at his meeting with the president. It was unlikely that she only typed for her pay.
Hell, it was unlikely that he could find a school that would take them. None of the girls were going to speak English so sending them to somewhere in Europe would be out of the question and one in Georgia would probably reject them. Boarding schools in countries like Georgia were for the well-to-do. Period. Country peasants need not apply. There might be a school run by nuns or something that would take them in. Unlikely, but possible.
The easiest thing would be to simply keep them here as a harem. He considered that for a moment. The biggest problem the girls would face, even if they were "of age," say eighteen or so, would be education. He could get a tutor. Get them educated to high school level and they could get into a university. If they needed money for that, well, he had money.
He had to admit that the thought had a certain something. Poor, almost assuredly virginal, waifs. What to do? Clean 'em up and fuck 'em seemed to be the general consensus. It was what they knew was coming, anyway. Okay, and get 'em a tutor and take care of 'em until they were old enough to find a real life.
Conscience salved and decision made, Mike got up to go explain the facts of life to the girls.
* * *
"Good evening, ladies," Mike said, looking the group over. He was holding the meeting in the atrium of the harem quarters, sitting on the still nonfunctional fountain. The girls had been cleaned up and clothing found for them. There wasn't enough actual clothing available in their size so they were in whatever was available. In a couple of cases that meant robes and one of the ones in robes had a magnificent set of hooters that were showing a good bit of cleavage. He tore his eyes away from it and looked around at the other girls. Most of them were mid-teen but ranged from about seventeen down to one he was afraid might be twelve or so. She was a sweet looking thing with black hair and an elfin face. And blue eyes that were watching him nervously.
"You all know why you were sent to town," Mike said, firmly looking away from the girl's eyes and the various breasts that strained clothes. "The good news is that you're not going to be turned into whores. The bad news is that there's not much else to do with you."
"Could we stay here?" one of the girls asked, nervously.
"That's the way it's trending," Mike admitted. "But, and there's always a but, you can guess under what conditions. The term is concubine. You'll be housed, fed, tutored and given a small salary. You'll clean house and provide other comforts. To be precise that means warm my bed and sometimes the beds of visitors I designate. Anyone who can't handle those conditions I'll have taken to Tbilisi and dropped off with some money and clothes. You can make your way from there. But you know damned well how you'll be making your way."
"That is fine," the little girl with the blue eyes said. "We heard that the Kildar had returned even where I lived. I do not mind being a woman of the Kildar." She actually seemed eagerm which blew Mike's mind.
"I
think you're nuts," Mike said, shaking his head. "And you'll be waiting for a bit; in my culture you're way too young so for the time being you'll just be helping around the house, little lady. Later we'll discuss the rest. As for the rest, when you're old enough to make it in the world you can go forth with an education under your belt and enough money to get a start. That I can do."
"Where are we going to stay?" the girl with the hooters asked, pulling her robe closer.
"Here," Mike said, waving around. "It's the old harem quarters. Convenient, no? We need to get you clothes. A tutor. An understanding tutor. Sheets for the beds . . ." He stopped and shook his head, sighing.
"Kildar," one of the girls said, standing up and coming over to sit by him. "We will speak to Mother Savina and tell her that we will be staying. And the rest that you said. There should be others to take care of that."
"What's your name, girl?" Mike asked. She was pretty but not beautiful, with long brown hair and brown eyes. She'd borrowed a dress from one of the hookers, Flopsy's if he recalled it correctly, and it fit her like a glove. Since she wasn't wearing a bra, she bulged out pleasantly. She also apparently had a longer torso since the dress, which was designed to fall to mid thigh, was hiked up to where it just barely covered her assets.
"I am Klavdiya," the girl said. She was on the upper end of the age range, probably about seventeen.
"You're hereby appointed straw boss," Mike said, sighing and trying not to stare down the dress. "Until I can get a harem manager. Tell Mother Savina that we'll need more house outfits."
"There are many rooms," the one with the hooters said. "Which one do we use?"
"There are four in use now," Mike said, pointing down the corridor. "Other than those, I don't care. Choose."
"We don't have to share?" Klavdiya asked, surprised. "Bless you, Kildar, I have never had a room of my own!"
"This is a sick culture," Mike muttered in English.