“Put your hand back on the ladder and get your ass down here nice and slow,” the unseen man ordered.
“Sure man, sure.” Still weaving, Adam gave a drunken horse laugh. “Wouldn’t wanna fall and bus’ my ass, now would I?”
“Yeah, like I give a shit. Just don’t try any funny business, y’hear me?”
“You got it,” Adam muttered under his breath, “no funny business.” With a quick twist of his torso, he turned and fired off a round. There was a loud, “burping” report followed by a dull thud, like a sack of laundry landing at the bottom of a laundry chute.
When he got to the bottom of the ladder, he limped over to the figure now lying crumpled on the ground. There was a neat hole right in the center of the unknown man’s forehead. The guy hadn’t even had time to raise his rifle to his shoulder, much less aim and fire.
Holstering his HK, Adam grabbed the dead man by the shoulders and dragged him into the shadowy darkness beside the shed. Then he leaned back against the weathered boards, trying not to pass out. Passing out was a luxury he didn’t have time for. Briefly, he hunched his shoulders forward against the pain. His thigh felt like wild animals with extremely sharp teeth were ripping away at his flesh.
* * * *
Back pressed against the wall, holding his HK muzzle down, Jesse waited in the darkness between the last two buildings before the enormous hangar where, according to Solo’s map, the assault rifles were being housed. He was watching a pair of Night Hawks as they strolled across the concrete apron toward the brilliant circles of illumination provided by the dozens of spotlights. If they were supposed to be conducting patrol they were doing a piss-poor job of it. Their AKs were hanging from their shoulders like designer tote bags, and they were far too busy passing the joint they were smoking back and forth between them to be on the lookout for any clandestine activity. In spite of the noise created by all the generators, the sudden roar of a plane’s engines passing mere feet above his head was both unexpected and deafening.
“Second plane’s landing,” came Wildfire’s voice over Jesse’s com link.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Jesse said wryly. “I thought the wheels were gonna leave a part in my hair. Adam? What’s your twenty?”
“Just finished rigging the water tower. Ran into a tango. Night Hawk.”
Jesse grunted. “He dead?”
“Pretty much. Tangos in each of the guard towers by the front gate. Fortunately the plane made so much noise as it flew over, they didn’t hear the shot.”
“Copy. I’m about to check the last buildin’ along the north fence before the hangar. So far they’ve all been empty.”
“That’s because everyone’s out on the tarmac, unloading the drugs, and bringing the rifles out of the hangar. I could see them from the top of the tower.”
“Your team in place, Wildfire?” Jesse asked.
“Affirmative. We’re ready to drop in as soon as the second plane taxis back to the apron and cuts its engines.”
“First load’s set to go in exactly seven minutes,” Adam chimed in.
“Copy,” Wildfire said. “Helos are on the way.”
Helos. MH-60 Blackhawks, modified to keep their noise level as low as possible. As soon as Adam’s first charge blew up the sorting shed, Alpha Team Three’s RPG’s would take out the lights. That would definitely grab their attention. The second explosion would immediately follow, lighting up the water tower like a Roman candle. Hopefully that would create enough chaos and pandemonium that the helos could approach from the east undetected.
At that point two Alpha teams would execute a rapid descent from each of the hovering choppers onto the runway, round up the non-combatants, and either capture or kill anyone stupid enough to take on seasoned special ops forces armed to the teeth and wearing body armor.
But before all that, Jesse had to find Sarah and get her to safety. And if he had to go through Ryder Malone to do it, he would. He also needed to find Solo. Hopefully, he’d retrieved the care package and was busy creating a little mischief of his own.
Chapter Fourteen
Sarah hung there in the dark, her entire body one gigantic ache. Her shoulder and back muscles burned as if a match had been set to every nerve ending. The heat and humidity thickened the air, making breathing difficult.
Her wrists and ankles were raw and bleeding from pulling against her restraints, searching for a weakness. But there were no weaknesses. And the only thing pulling accomplished was to send fresh rivulets of blood dribbling down her arms, to mingle with her sweat. It coated her skin, making it itchy as if thousands of insects were crawling all over it. So she just hung there, head lolling forward, drifting in some sort of twilight zone of pain and terror and regret. She kept her eyes closed, trying not to cry. Trying even harder not to think.
Because thinking conjured up images of Jesse and Adam and that only led to more crying. She was trying hard not to feel hopeless, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. She felt drained, depleted, and more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life. So she forced herself to concentrate on the tricky process of pulling air into her lungs around the edges of the gag, without also pulling in copious amounts of the saliva she couldn’t swallow, in order to keep from choking to death.
Then, for some reason, the image in her mind became that of Daniel Day-Lewis—Hawkeye—in the eerie blue light filtered by the raging waterfall behind him, calm and sure despite the dangers his little group faced. Hawkeye—urging Cora to stay alive, to submit to her captors—an unheard of attitude for an eighteenth-century man. Assuring her that he would find her, no matter how long it took, no matter how far he had to go. He would find her.
As he spoke, his voice morphed into Jesse’s and Adam’s voices as they had echoed those very same words. But they hadn’t been just words to them. They’d been a promise. A vow. A creed they lived by and exemplified every day. They would find her. Because that was who they were and what they did. And thanks to Bill Payton and his Alpha team, they knew exactly where she was and were, even now, coming to get her. A wave of comfort surged through her, giving her a sense of renewed hope, and, with it, renewed strength. Her back straightened. Her chin lifted.
The blackness behind her closed lids brightened a little, letting her know that someone had turned on the light. She opened her eyes to find the Hulk walking toward her, one side of his mouth turned up in a leering grin. Only this time, she did not cringe away from him in terror and humiliation. She stood her ground, proud, defiant, returning his stare icily. Regal despite the fact that she was naked and grimy from the film of sweat, drool, and blood covering most of her body.
“Well, lookee here,” he crowed as he swaggered toward her, hooking his thumbs in the belt loops of his fatigues. “Ain’t you somethin’, hangin’ there like a ham in a smokehouse? You know, bitch, you got one hot little body.” He moved closer, his leer deepening. “No wonder Malone was so bent on gettin’ you.”
He walked around her, stroking his hand down her back, giving her a little smack on her ass cheek. “Nice ass. Ripe and juicy. Just beggin’ to be fucked,” he said approvingly, sliding his hand around her ass cheek to palm her mound. “Bet your cunt’s juicy, too. Man, ain’t nothin’ better’n a hot, juicy cunt. Sure would like me a piece a that.” He licked his lips, a gesture so repellent it made her want to retch. “Too bad that fucktard Malone had to go and sell you to that Russian bastard. We coulda had a little fun together, you and me.” His regretful look was replaced with a lewd sneer. “Hell, maybe we still can.” One hand lifted to give her breast a painful squeeze. “If we hurry. After all, it don’t take long to fuck no goddamn dirty whore.”
While she watched in mounting horror, his hands went to his waist. In less time than it takes to tell, he’d unbuckled his belt, lowered his zipper, and pushed his pants down around his knees. His knobby-headed prick sprang free, and he stepped into her, grabbing her hips and pulling her against his groin. The rankness of his body odor made her gag, but t
he feel of his hard, damp penis against her flesh made her homicidal.
Then he stiffened, and for a minute, she thought he was coming. But she didn’t feel a corresponding spurt of warm wetness anywhere on her skin. Startled, she drew back her head to look at him. His face wore a slightly bewildered expression, and even as she watched, the light slowly drained out of his eyes and he dropped to the floor like a broken marionette. That was when she saw the knife handle sticking out of his back.
She recoiled in shock as a man emerged from the gloom. A tall, skinny man with a shock of brown hair that resembled a haystack. A tall, skinny man wearing chinos and a white wife-beater beneath a Hawaiian shirt decorated with red, blue, and green parrots against a jungle backdrop. Huh? As she drew in her breath to scream, he put a finger against her lips. “Shhh,” he warned quietly. “I’m a friend.”
Oh, my God! “Solo,” she whispered hoarsely around the gag, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
He grinned. “I see my reputation has preceded me.” Placing his boot on the Hulk’s back, he used it as leverage to pull out the knife. He wiped the blade on the guy’s shirt, slowing when he noticed her horrified gaze following his every move. He shrugged. “Never did like the guy.”
She grimaced. I wasn’t too fond of him myself
Putting his arm around her waist, he lifted her up slightly, enough to relieve the intolerable strain on her wrists. A quiet sob left her throat. “Sorry, sweetheart,” Ted whispered in her ear, “I’m afraid this is gonna hurt like a son of a bitch.” He sliced through the ropes binding her wrists above her head. Her arms fell like dead weights, and she slumped against him, screaming at the agony spearing through her shoulders. A scream which, if it hadn’t been muffled by the gag, would have brought the entire encampment descending on them like flies on horse shit. “I know, sweetheart, I know,” he murmured comfortingly as he lowered her gently to the floor and cut through her ankle ropes.
Hunkering down beside her, he fingered the cruel metal shackles cutting into her delicate skin, his expression grim. Padlocked. There was no way he was getting them off without the key. Or a hacksaw.
“Listen,” he said urgently, hunkering down beside her. “I wanna take the gag out, but you gotta be quiet. Or I can leave it in, and you can make all the noise you want. But you gotta decide now. In?” She shook her head, a movement so slight it might easily have been nothing more than a stray tremor. He would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it. “Okay.” He reached behind her head and unbuckled the gag. Holding the ball in place with his thumb, he let the straps fall. “But you gotta be quiet, understand?”
This time her head gesture was a little more recognizable as a deliberate response to his question. “Good girl. If you don’t think you can be quiet, give me another nod and I’ll leave it in.” Another negative shake, this time with a lot more vigor. Solo smiled to himself. She’s a fighter, this one. Jesse and Adam better take damn good care of her.
Carefully he pulled the wet, spongy ball out from behind her teeth, watching the agony on her face as she slowly closed her mouth, followed by the relief as she swallowed for the first time in hours. Fresh tears ran down her grimy cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound. Gingerly she moved her jaw back and forth, wincing with pain as she tried and work out some of the stiffness.
“Here,” he said, swiftly shrugging out of the Hawaiian shirt and thrusting her arms through the sleeves as if he were dressing a toddler. “It’s not much, but it’ll help cover you.” He glanced around the interior as he buttoned it, misaligning it in his haste so one side hung lower than the other. Still, it covered all the basics, hanging nearly down to her knees. “We gotta get the fuck outta here, Sarah. Can you walk?”
With a tremendous effort, she managed to lift her torso and prop herself up on her hands. “I–I’m not sure.” Clenching her teeth and sucking in a sharp, hissing breath against the pins and needles of returning blood flow, she pushed herself up into a sitting position. She was trembling so hard she could barely sit. “I don’t think so.” A sob broke from her throat.
“That’s okay, love. Don’t cry.” He stood, then bent over her, reaching down to her. “Give me your hands.”
“Hey!” The angry shout came from the vicinity of the entrance.
Sarah’s gaze jerked over to the door to see a red-faced Ryder Malone accompanied by a small, thin…wasted looking man dressed entirely in black, with a body that couldn’t seem to keep still. A nervous tic tugged ceaselessly at the corner of his left eye. “What the fuck’s goin’ on here?” Malone demanded belligerently. “What’d you do to Conway? Why’d you untie the girl? And why’d you dress her, for fuck’s sake? I left her naked on purpose!”
Ted tapped his ear and gave Sarah a wink. Then he swung around and confronted Ryder Malone and the smaller, weasel-faced man with a fury that would have won him an Oscar if this had been a movie.
“I didn’t untie her, you moron! Conway did! I came in here to get some more fuel for the generators, and he was gettin’ ready to fuck her. I told him to stop, but he just laughed. Offered to let me have her after he was through.”
“So you killed him?” Malone asked, flabbergasted.
Solos shrugged. “He pissed me off.” He began fidgeting back and forth from foot to foot, managing, without being obvious about it, to move a little closer to Sarah with every step. “I come in here to get more fuel for the fuckin’ generators—and, by the way, what dickhead administrative genius woke up one day and said, ‘Hey. I got an idea. Why don’t we store the fuel for the generators all the way out in the Quonset hut? As far away from the generators as it’s possible to get?’ Shit, man, you got any idea how heavy those fuckin’ cans get when you gotta carry them all the way across the compound?”
He paused to give the Hulk, aka Conway, a kick in the ribs, then flung his arm toward Sarah, who was desperately trying to figure out what the hell he was doing. There was purpose behind his seemingly random movements, there had to be. Otherwise none of it made any sense. Now if she could only figure out what that purpose was.
“What the fuck you thinkin’, Malone? Bringin’ a woman into a camp fulla horny men? Are you crazy? And tyin’ her up and displayin’ her like that, naked and helpless—why didn’t you just paint a target on her twat? Seriously. What’s she doin’ here?” He gestured toward the man with Malone. “And who is this fucker?”
Sokolov, for it could be no other, strode forward and leveled a pistol, which had appeared in his hand as if by magic, at Solo’s head. “This is fucker who is killing anyone who interferes with this transaction,” he said in heavily accented English. “Now back. The fuck. Off.”
“Hey, man, no problem.” Solo tilted his head, raising his hands palms out in surrender as he resumed his shuffling steps backward toward Sarah. “I’ll even help the lady up for you.” Before anyone could protest, he turned and grabbed her hands, pulling her up hard against his body. “Waistband,” he whispered into her ear before turning back around to face Sokolov and Malone. As Sarah placed her hands around his waist to keep from falling over, she couldn’t fail to notice that he kept his body between her and them, partially blocking her from their view.
“Get away from woman,” Sokolov ordered with a quick flick of the gun barrel, “or you are dead man.”
“Sure, man, sure,” Ted said, his body still doing a lot of moving without actually putting any distance between him and Sarah, trying to give her enough time to reach beneath his rumpled wife-beater and grab the gun tucked in his waistband.
“You were warned,” the Albanian said, firing a bullet into Solo’s left chest.
“Oh, my God!” Sarah screamed as Ted literally crumpled to the floor in front of her, pressing the heel of his hand hard against the wound, which was gushing blood everywhere. “You shot him!” she shrieked at Sokolov, falling to her knees beside Ted. “He’s not even armed! Are you crazy? He was no threat to you!”
The man just shrugged, shoving his pistol back int
o the shoulder holster, which Sarah now saw was as black as everything else he was wearing. No wonder she hadn’t noticed it before. He started toward Sarah. “Get up, bitch,” he ordered in a voice as hard and cold as a glacier. “Time to go. I’ve wasted enough time in this shithole.”
“He’s dying!” she cried. “You’ve got to help him!” With great effort, Ted rolled onto his right side, exposing his back to Sarah. Still crying and carrying on in a Oscar-worthy performance of her own, she leaned over him, pretending to inspect his wound, which was bleeding all over the place, while fumbling beneath his shirt with her right hand. “Oh, God, please. Please. He’s bleeding to death! He needs a doctor!”
As soon as her hand closed around the grip, she wrestled the gun free from his waistband. Draping her body over his to hide the gun from view, she held it low against his hip. She’d never fired a gun before, but would not hesitate to do so now.
With a loud groan, Solo pulled his legs up into the fetal position, rolling back and forth and groaning in what appeared to be an agony of pain.
Sokolov leaned down and grabbed Sarah’s left forearm, giving it a hard tug. “I gave you an order, bitch. I expect obedience. No, wait.” A vulpine smile curved his lips. He released her arm. “I have better idea. Stay on your knees and turn toward me.” She heard the hiss of a zipper near her left ear. “I want to see what my money buys me. If you are a good cocksucker, I may keep you for myself.”
His hand reached out to grab Sarah’s hair, and she instinctively ducked away, careful to keep her right hand tucked as far into the crease between Solo’s hip and the concrete floor as she could to keep the pistol hidden. Oh, God, Oh, God! This horrible man is going to make me suck his cock. And God only knows what else! Her chest tightened with panic. She had to act! She had to kill this man! And she had to do it right now! Otherwise, she and Solo were both dead.
Owning Sarah [Sequel to Loving Sarah] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 36