by B. L. Morgan
It was quiet out here, very quiet.
I could see the front of the guest hotel. No one was coming or going out of the front door.
I could see the front of the guard’s quarters. No one seemed to be moving over there.
It was quiet. I didn’t even hear the night creatures of the jungle calling to each other. It was too quiet.
That was when the night exploded.
The chopper went up in a loud whoosh and the shockwave picked me up from the ground and slammed me against the brick wall of the building.
I went down in a crumpled heap, and as the darkness threatened to fall down over my head, flaming pieces of helicopter rained down all over the place.
With stars dancing at the edge of my vision I fought my way back to full consciousness in time to see other charges go off at the fence line in several places and dark dressed figures rush through the holes the explosions made.
The men coming through the fence disbursed in all directions.
I saw three of them take up a position on the ground near the door to the guards quarters. When the guards came running out of that same door a few moments later they were cut down by machine gun fire.
I was crawling back toward the side door into the slave’s quarters when two of the dark dressed attackers stopped where I was and leveled their rifles on me.
I rolled over and put my hands up, and with their black and green painted faces and the dark green camouflage fatigues I instantly recognized these guys as US Special Forces.
“You’re a long way from home,” I said to the pair.
One raised his rifle.
The other put a restraining hand up then reached into his breast pocket and took out a photo.
He looked at the photo then asked, “Are you Dark?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “And if I’d have been any closer to that chopper when you blew it up I’d be crispy too.”
That made him smile.
“Nash Graham sends his regards,” the soldier said.
“Tell him I said thanks,” I told him as he helped me to my feet.
“Tell him yourself,” the other soldier answered. “He’ll be here as soon as we finish the mop-up.”
CHAPTER 50
I was escorted back into the hallway where Candi waited with a crowd that looked to have grown to about thirty kids.
The higher ranked soldier told me, “Stay here. We’ll be back to get you when everything is secured.”
I wanted to go with him and kill some of these assholes but the truth is, what little bit I saw in the few seconds that it took to get back inside the hallway where Candi was convinced me that I was way too old to be doing this jungle fighting stuff.
These guys were fast and efficient. I saw at least ten guards riddled with machine gun fire, and the front wall of the building they were living in blown apart, all in the space of about ten seconds.
I recognized the moves these Special Forces boys were using as they combed the compound for resistance or captives. These were the same moves I used to be able to do. But that was a long time ago. Next to these guys I was like an old man just playing soldier.
* * *
In about an hour the same two soldiers who had escorted me back to Candi and the kids came and got us. The higher ranked soldier introduced himself as Sam Otto. The other soldier said his name was Mike Murphy.
A crowd of kids, somewhere around fifty, had already been rounded up and was standing in front of the building where the rest of the kids had been locked up.
Candi took the children that had been with us over to join the others. She had taken to acting like a mother hen in the last few minutes. It was good to see that. At least looking after these kids would keep her mind off of what had happened to Ron.
The kids all still looked pretty shell-shocked. I didn’t know if they would ever recover. Only time would show that.
These Special Forces guys had come well prepared. They even had a bulldozer. God knows where the hell they’d got that from. They used it to knock down the front gate. It probably would have been easier if they had just unlocked the gate and driven in but they probably just mowed the gate down because it was fun to do.
After they knocked the gate down, the Special Forces guys used the dozer to push what was left of the helicopter off to the side of its landing pad.
Right after they were done, as if on cue, we could hear the beating of another chopper’s blades in the sky above the trees.
* * *
In front of the guest hotel the soldiers had about fifty men lying on their faces with their hands tied behind them.
One of them was making a lot of noise.
It was that silver haired guy who appeared to be running everything here.
He tried to get to his hands and knees and a soldier shoved him back onto his face in the grass with his boot.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” the silver haired man yelled at him.
“No sir, I don’t,” the soldier told him. “And I don’t care either. I follow orders. If you try to get up again I’ll use my rifle butt on your forehead.”
That kept him quiet for a while.
* * *
The helicopter, beating the air with its blades, swooped in then touched down on the pad. As soon as it landed, ten more troops jumped down and ran over to where the prisoners were.
Two other men got off the military transport chopper.
One of them was a man I didn’t know. He looked to be in his early thirties and wore a dark tailor made suit and dark sunglasses. He looked like one of the agents from the movie The Men in Black.
The other guy, I knew him pretty well. He was a little bit outside of his jurisdiction but he was a welcome sight.
The other guy was Nash Graham.
CHAPTER 51
I went over to greet Nash and we shook hands.
I shook the other guy’s hand and introduced myself.
As soon as I’d said my name the other man told me, “Over here I don’t officially exist. Over here, I have no name.”
“Fine by me,” I told him. “No Name it is.”
I asked Nash, “And what are you doing over here?”
“Getting your ass out of the fire,” Nash told me. “Your friend Johnny bugged me non-stop until I told him I’d check up on you. I made some calls and found out you’d be coming here and knew they would be waiting for you.”
“Who the hell could you call to find out we’d be heading here?” I asked.
He glanced at No Name and both of them smiled.
Nash said, “Officially, my sources don’t exist. So you won’t get any names from me.”
“Fine,” I told him. “Thanks for coming over to lend a hand.”
“It wasn’t just for you,” Nash said. “This here is also about a little bit of my own pay-back.”
He started walking toward the group of fifty men laid out on their faces in front of the guest hotel. Nash headed specifically for that silver haired guy who had been making all the noise.
When he was standing in front of the man, Nash told the closest soldier, “stand him up.”
The soldier did just that grabbing the silver haired man under the armpits, picking him up, and setting him back down on his feet.
“Senator Jack Craven, I assume?” Nash said to the man.
The man never even for a moment looked surprised. He never missed a beat. “You and your flunkies are in some very serious trouble,” Craven spit out at him. “How dare you come into the nation of Tehan Setar and, by unauthorized military action, shut down a business operation! How…”
Nash stopped him with a raised finger in his face. “You threatened me once already and that’s why we’re here. You best come up with something better than that. I know about your internet kiddy-porn operation. I know about your international snuff film business. Senator, you are the one who is fucked here.”
Senator Jack Craven, like any good politician, was fast on his feet or at lea
st fast with his words. He now said, “I have business interests all over the world. If I come out of this clean I’ll make every one of you very wealthy men.”
“I’m listening,” Nash told him.
That was when I noticed that Candi was now standing beside me. The pistol she’d taken from the guard who’d tried to rape her was in her hand down at her side.
“How much was Ron worth?” She asked the Senator.
Craven looked at her uncomprehendingly and just said, “What?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Candi said. “He wasn’t worth anything to you. You wouldn’t remember him.”
She raised her gun and shot Senator Jack Craven in the right knee.
He screamed and fell to the grass on his back.
“This is for Ron!” Candi shouted and blew the Senator’s other knee to pieces. “And this is for all the children you ruined.” She shot Craven in the crotch and then emptied her gun in his head.
When she was done tears were running down her face. Candi turned away from us and walked back to where the children were.
Nash Graham, No Name, and I looked down at the bullet riddled corpse that had once been a US Senator.
“Well, I guess that shoots to hell any deal we might have made with him,” Nash said. “It doesn’t really make any difference. Even if we would have made some money off that bastard I’d have had him killed anyway.”
PART III
WELCOME BACK TO MY JUNGLE
CHAPTER 52
After the entire compound had been searched, the total number of children found was right around eighty. After Nash and No Name made some calls, two well-used school busses showed up.
Candi and I escorted the children out of the compound and took them to Sister Mary Sheridon at The St. Wisdom Orphanage. The Sister assured us that she would search for the families that these children belonged with, and that the children whose families she could not locate would stay with her.
It was a big job she had ahead of her but she thanked us for bringing the children to her.
We thanked her for being there to take the kids in.
* * *
As for all of the vacationing perverts who had paid top dollar for the privilege of raping children; No Name informed us that every one of these idiots had actually been videotaped having sex with children. They would be delivered to their home country’s authorities along with the evidence of their crimes.
Most, if not all of them, would soon be serving long jail sentences.
* * *
We arranged for Ron’s body to be flown back to St. Louis, and three days later he had his funeral. He was buried at The Pine Bluff Cemetery next to Sherry, Lisa Rios and Kira Brooks. Pretty soon they would probably rename this place the John Dark Memorial Cemetery. If you become one of my lovers or one of my friends you may as well reserve a spot here, because this is probably where you’ll be heading to before long.
* * *
At Ron’s burial, Johnny surprised me by taking Candi in his arms and holding her as she sobbed on his shoulder. He comforted her as well as he could, and when Candi turned away from him as Ron’s casket was lowered in the ground, I saw tears in Johnny’s eyes.
Maybe there was hope for Johnny yet. I know that I’ve learned that you can never place a label on someone and expect them to be what the label says they are. Ron and Candi: one of them was a macho gay guy, the other one is a gender-blending transsexual. Both of them are two of the most brave and honorable people I’ve ever met.
They fit no label or stereotype, then again, nobody does.
As for me, I know I’ve changed. I got the revenge that I sought and it felt hollow. There was no satisfaction there. In shedding the blood of Tian Kham I found no enlightenment. There was only the empty spot in my life that Sherry used to occupy.
I have no idea what it will take to fill that void.
* * *
I sat in Johnny’s Bar and Grill and looked out at the seven people occupying tables, downing alcohol and getting wasted in the dim light of the bar room.
Johnny poured me a Miller High Life.
I tasted it and held it up to him. “What’s up?” I asked. “Normally you throw me your worst rot gut.”
“Well, after what you’ve been through you deserve the good stuff for at least one night,” he answered.
“Thanks,” I said, as we clinked our glasses and then downed our beers in one drink.
He poured me another and held his glass up.
“Let’s have a toast,” Johnny said, “To Ron.”
“And to Sherry,” I added.
We clinked our glasses together again.
“We’ll remember you,” he said, and lifted his glass to the air.
“One other thing,” I told Johnny. “After what I’ve seen lately, if I see someone mistreating a kid they best give their heart to god…”
“Because the rest belongs to us,” Johnny finished.
“And we ain’t the forgiving kind,” I told him.
“You got that right,” Johnny said and we slapped palms over the bar.
AFTERWORD
If only life were as simple as fiction.
The events which took place in this book are entirely fictional.
The nations of Tehan Setar as well as the child sex resort The Flesh Pit are creations of the author’s imagination.
Unfortunately, the problem of women and children being sold or kidnapped for sex slaves is a reality.
Literally thousands of women and children are sold into slavery every year to be used in prostitution rings and child pornography.
In a time when The U.S. Government is using our military to police the world no one seems to want to defend the children who are being abused every day.
There are organizations which I am not at liberty to name that fight the sexual exploitation of women and children.
Please support these organizations.
Please help to end these atrocities in any way that you can.
Sincerely,
B.L. Morgan