by Paul Blades
Mercifully, when her cunt's throbs petered out, Louise allowed Maureen to eat. The girl frantically sucked down the food. Louis laughed as she watched.
At the motel, Leon's eyes clouded over as he tried to maintain his attention on the actionless screen. He had missed it when Herman had left the barn and gone to the house. Jake was looking over Leon's shoulder when he caught signs of activity. He slapped Leon on the back of the head.
"Idiot!" he yelled. "The lights are on in the house!"
Leon jolted to attention. "What?" he said.
"The lights are on, idiot. Unlike your head, there's somebody home!"
"Oh," Leon replied sheepishly.
Irving and Leon played back the recording of the night's activity. They watched the van pull up to the barn and Louise get out and open the barn door.
"Well, if there wasn't anybody down in that cellar before," Irving challenged Jake, "there is now."
"Okay, okay," Jake replied. "But we're not making any move until someone shows up to collect them."
"That could be days," Irving replied.
"If it's days, it's days," Jake answered him. "We didn't put those girls, whoever they are, into that hole. If we weren't here, they'd be just where they are. They're not our responsibility."
Irving bristled. "So you say."
"Yes!" Jake relied emphatically. "So I say! Now you fix me up something that will let us know when someone pulls into that driveway, some kind of alarm. These dodo's can't keep awake watching a computer screen."
"I'll set up a motion detector," he offered.
"Good," Jake answered. "Just don't get caught. We've got to see whoever stops to pick up the merchandise."
Irving fought back the urge to challenge Jake's assessment of their responsibility to the kidnappers' victims.
The next morning Irving had the gear set up. Jake instructed him to get a gizmo to track the pickup vehicle so they didn't have to follow it. The team spent three anxious days awaiting developments. They watched on the computer screen as Herman and Louise made their way back and forth to the barn. They were able to see as one or the other, or both, descended a ladder into the dungeon. Irving had added sound to the bug in the barn and they could hear occasional snatches of conversation as the two kidnappers walked from the barn door to the trapdoor and back.
On the third day, on Martinez's watch, Herman was seen bringing the girls up from the cellar one by one. The crew gathered around the computer screen as they watched three naked young women mounted in stocks. The camera had a powerful zoom lens and they were able to record the frightened faces of the women as they were trussed up for display.
Jake ordered Curley and Leon to go to the farm and get ready to plant the tracking device on whatever vehicle pulled in. About an hour later, the motion detector went off and a large delivery truck pulled up the driveway.
Chuckie was driving, and he backed the truck up to the barn door. Feeney stepped out of the passenger side and strolled to the barn. Chuckie followed. Jake and his crew watched them enter the barn.
"Get a close up of their faces," Jake ordered. Irving remotely maneuvered the camera lens to record their identities. Leon was charged with getting a make on the truck and installing the 'gizmo'.
Irving panned the camera back as the two men entered the barn. They watched Herman shake hands with the thin one. Herman and Louise stood by expectantly, while Feeney perused the product.
Irving and Jake watched with astonishment when the thin man pulled a gun from his jacket. There was a look of surprise followed instantly by alarm on the faces of the kidnappers. Two sharp, shots rang out and the old couple fell to the floor. The thin man approached them and put two more shots in each one's head.
"Well, that party's over," Jake observed.
"Shit," was all Irving could say.
Feeney replaced the gun in his shoulder holster. Business was business. He had relayed to his partners his suspicions that Herman was getting ready to close shop after the last trip. The fact that Herman had notified him of a new load so quickly reinforced his suspicions. Herman was not to be allowed to enjoy the benefit of his ill gotten gains. Loose lips sink ships.
The hooded and naked prisoners were quaking and moaning. One of them had peed. There was no mistaking the sound of gunshots in an enclosed environment like the barn. The sound of Herman and Louise dropping to the floor, uttering short, doleful moans, was confirmation of their demise, if any was necessary.
"Let's get to work," Feeney ordered Chuckie. Chuckie had been surprised at the summary execution of the old couple, but he shrugged his shoulders and got on with his work. It took about an hour before all three girls were loaded on the truck. Leon had already wired the tracker to the underside of the van and had recorded all its distinguishing characteristics.
Feeney stood by, smoking, while Chuckie did his work. This was Chuckie's job and he was damned if he was going to do it for him. When Chuckie was done, Feeney nodded toward the two lifeless bodies. "Let's drop them down the hole," he said. "Then we gotta wash down this blood. I don't want these assholes found for a long time."
After unceremoniously tossing Louise and Herman's bodies down into the cellar, Chuckie got a hose from the house and washed away the blood. The water thinned out the deep red puddles until a reddish hue spread across the floor.
"In a couple of days you won't be able to tell the difference," Feeney said. He went over to close and lock the door to the dungeon.
"Hey," Chuckie said. "Is that fat broad down there?"
"How the hell do I know," Feeney answered him. "And what if she is?"
"Are we just going to leave her there?" Chuckie asked.
"I'm not going down there and neither are you. We're getting out of here now."
Feeney's voice had the sharp edge of command.
Chuckie shrugged. "It just seems a waste," he said. "I mean a blow job is a blow job."
"You'll be giving my .22 a blow job in a minute if you don't get in the truck," Feeney responded.
After putting out the lights in the house and the barn and locking them both, the two men mounted the van. After a moment it began to move forward and rocked gently as it navigated the ruts and potholes, then disappeared from view.
Martinez and Tucker were waiting a few hundred yards down the road in the Taurus as the van pulled out. Jake called Martinez's cell phone.
"Is the beeper working?"
"Like a charm," Martinez answered.
"Stay a few hundred yards behind him at first, then drop back. If they pull off the road, don't worry. Irving's got a relay from the tracker here. We'll track them if they make any detours."
When Curley and Leon got back, Jake ordered everybody to pack up. Irving protested. "There's somebody down that hole," he said. "You're not going to just leave her there, are you?"
"We don't have time to fuck around," Jake said.
Irving got up. "I don't care what you do, Jake. I'm going over there and I'm going into that hole. I'm getting the girl out. If you want to stop me, you'll have to shoot me." He looked hotly into Jake's eyes. Jake had never seen him like this.
"Do you know what it's like to starve to death, Jake?" Irving asked him, his voice trembling.
"Okay, Okay," Jake relented. "But what do we do with her?"
"Call your big shot, Bertram," Irving replied. "Let him work something out."
Curley and Leon finished packing up their stuff as Jake and Irving drove down to the farm. Jake made them stop a hundred yards from the driveway.
"Why're we stopping?" Irving asked.
"I'm not adding my tire tracks to the evidence log once those two dirtbags are found," Jake answered. "We're getting out here and walking in. We'll walk the girl out. Since we're here, you might as well be of some use. I'll go down to the cellar of the barn, you get on the computer and transfer the money to this account." He handed Irving a piece of paper with an offshore bank's name on it and a long list of numbers. "This is between me and you. Got it?"
Irving smiled. "Got it."
Jake unlocked the barn with no problem. The lock on the trapdoor was a little more difficult, but he had picked tougher locks and after a few moments, the bolt slid open.
Maureen had watched as Herman and Louise's bodies had come crashing down into the underground prison. She could tell right away they were dead. She froze in terror when she heard the trapdoor slam closed and the bolt shot home. She was gagged and bound, captive in her little steel cage. Her body crumpled in despair. She knew now she was going to die a long and excruciating death.
Her heart leapt when she heard the trapdoor open again, but as she watched the legs descend, she realized that whoever it was might be coming down to finish her off. When Jake reached the bottom of the ladder and turned to see her, his cold, hard visage brought her no comfort.
Jake took in the sight of the miserable girl. Irving was right, he thought. When he approached the cage, the frightened girl drew her body back as far as it would go.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he told her. "I'm getting you out of here. Where's the key to the cage?"
Maureen began to cry with relief. She nodded her head toward a hook on the wall. Jake took the key and unlocked the cage. Hesitatingly, the naked, girl crawled out. Jake carefully drew her to her feet. Maureen's eyes were flooded with tears.
"I'm going to unlock your hands and remove your gag. You have to be absolutely quiet. Do you understand?"
Maureen nodded energetically.
He removed the chain and collar from the naked girl and unbuckled the gag from behind her head.
"Oh, thank you, mister, thank you," Maureen blubbered.
"Shhhhhhh!" Jake remonstrated. "You have to be quiet. Can you make it up the ladder?"
Maureen nodded. "I think so," she said, her body quivering.
When Jake got the girl up the ladder, he relocked the trapdoor and carefully replaced the pallets on top of it. He took Maureen's hand and led her to the house. When they entered, Irving had just completed the transfer of the money.
"Take her upstairs and give her a shower," he instructed Irving. "Don't let her out of your sight. Give her some of the old lady's clothes and feed her. I'm going to call Bertram."
Bertram answered his cell phone on the second ring. Jake brought him up to date, then he told him about the girl.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do with her?" Bertram screamed into the phone.
"Listen," Jake told him. "Either you make some arrangements pronto to get this girl someplace where she can be treated and held incommunicado or this job's over right now."
There was silence on the phone. After a few moments, Bertram responded. "All right. I can probably get a long distance ambulance there in a couple of hours. I'll find someplace to stash her – but if this fucks up the deal on Madeline, you're a dead man, Jake."
"Many people have tried," Jake answered.
* * * *
Maddy, was rendered numb by her assault. Docilely, she watched the tall, dark eyed man who had raped her ride away. She had the feeling some line had been crossed and her almost ceremonial ravishment marked the beginning of her new life. Her wrists strained at the buckles holding them high behind her back. She discovered she was crying. A feeling of dark foreboding came over her as she watched the man recede into the distance through her hood's narrow apertures.
The despondent girl was able to see only small swatches of the landscape around her. There were long lines of white rail fences around what looked like a dirt track. A large house stood in the distance. There were several outbuildings. To her astonishment, she thought she saw a tall, masked, naked woman pulling a cart.
That was exactly what Maddy had seen. Standing next to the young girl, watching over his new charge, was Maddy's trainer, Anton Drabik. Drabik was a former colonel in the Red Army. Times had been tough when the former Soviet Union collapsed and it was many months following his discharge 'for economic reasons' that he had been able to get any kind of a decent job. His skill as a killer of men, well honed in the Afghanistan fiasco, was the only skill he had to market. It didn't take long for him to be recruited by one of the new 'mafias' that had sprung up. He had risen quickly in the organization and now worked as an assassin and part time trainer of ponygirls for Axmail Grobgy, himself a former KGB apparatchik.
It was Grobgy who had sampled Maddy's cunt just now. He was her new owner and master. He also commanded a virtually tribal clan of steel eyed, ruthless gangsters who controlled thirty-five percent of the heroin smuggled into the new Russian and Ukrainian Republics. His 'family' had extorted themselves into significant shares of hundreds of legitimate businesses. There was a special market they ran outside of Odessa specializing in 'hard to find' items such as weapons, identification papers, car parts, and, some alleged fissionable material.
Untold wealth had fallen into the coffers of a fortunate few since the fall of the 'Evil Empire'. The two dozen or so newly minted multi-millionaires who had taken up residence in central Kalikastan had purchased huge estates, most of them former communal farms, and resumed the sports and hobbies of their capitalistic and feudal forbears. Among the ancient traditions of the raiders of the Kalikastan steppes was the sport of pony racing, female, human ponies, that is.
The rules of the sport were simple. All women recruited to serve as human thoroughbreds were to be of non-Slavic origin. This prevented the sportsmen from drawing on the hundreds of thousands of nubile women in the former Soviet Republics who might otherwise grace their paddocks. Females from countries that were the traditional enemies of the Workers' Paradise were especially prized. Americans, Britons, Germans, Poles, and other Western European females were numbered among the prime pony flesh. Drawing on centuries old enmities, Swedes and Hungarians were treasured. Maddy was potentially, given her large but graceful physique, and her American origins, a natural for the sport.
The six foot four inch tall Drabik was the ace of Grobgy's trainers. He knew good pony flesh when he saw it and this new girl had great potential. All would depend on her training. All thoughts of her own humanity must be driven from her. She must learn that she was merely chattel, albeit a valuable one, existing only to please the lusts and desires of her master, his guests and servants.
Maddy's opportunity to take in her new surroundings was cut short by a pull on her leash. Fearfully she followed the lead. She could see the broad back of a man walking purposely before her. He was wearing a dark blue tee shirt and jeans. His hair was long and blond, descending loosely to his shoulders.
They were walking quickly along a dirt pathway. Maddy struggled to keep up, fearing the consequences if she should stumble and fall. She saw that they were approaching a huge, white, barn-like building. On the peak of the building was a large crest, consisting of a yellow, rampant wolf, its talons raised to strike, on a field of blue. Underneath the fiercely depicted wolf was an inscribed motto, "Sub hoc signo vinces" – Under this sign we shall conquer.
When they reached the building, the man slid open a large wooden door set on a track. The inside of the barn was dimly lit and Maddy had trouble making out any details. Before her eyes could adjust fully, she felt herself pulled further into the barn.
They stopped in the middle of an open area. Maddy could see what looked like a warren of wooden stalls on either side. There were large wooden beams above her and a chain dangled from one of them.
Drabik stood back and made a visual inspection of the naked girl. He admired the well toned, muscled flanks, the broad chest, the taut belly. He ran his hand over the leather hood covering Maddy's shaved head and stroked the long brown hair that jutted from the hood's rear. Maddy tried to pull away when he reached out for her breasts, but was brought back by a sudden and rough jerk on her leash. The man frightened Maddy. His face was clean shaven, but he had large bushy eyebrows and a hard, piercing gaze.
As Drabik caressed her breasts, Maddy could feel the strength of his calloused hands. He pulled at her nipples, pinching them hard,
and drew a small yelp of protest from the girl. He took her by the shoulders and turned her around, then ran his hands down her thighs, assessing them, pleased by what he found.
Maddy was overwhelmed by the freedom with which the man handled her body. It was as if it was no longer hers, or rather, that it belonged to him. She felt her wrists behind her back being unfastened from the leather harness she had worn now for almost twenty-four hours. She uttered a sigh of relief as she was allowed to lower them. She felt the harness being unbuckled and removed from her body.
The barn was oddly quiet. Maddy heard the harness fall to the dark wooden floor as it was tossed aside by the man. She heard the sound of the chain that hung from the joist above her being pulled down. The man clipped it to her right wrist then quickly spun her around. By the time Maddy realized what was happening, the left wrist had been affixed to the chain and the man was pulling on the opposite end. Her wrists were quickly forced to rise over her head. The man pulled on it until Maddy was standing on the tips of her toes. He stepped over to a large wooden vertical beam and fastened it to a hook embedded there about seven feet above the floor.
There was little doubt in Maddy's mind as to what was going to happen next. She remembered well the whipping of the red headed girl the day of her arrival. She began to whine and moan. She tried to beg the man through her still gagged mouth to spare her. The result was a strangely garbled, piteous sound.
Drabik stepped up to Maddy and ran his rough hands over her skin. He massaged her breasts, grabbing them firmly, circling them with his long, steel hard fingers. She grimaced as he squeezed them in a vice-like grip. He pressed his hand between her thighs and caught her labial lips between his thumb and forefinger, pinching them cruelly. Maddy moaned in pain.
Seemingly satisfied he had Maddy's full attention, he walked over to a rack of whips hanging along the outer wall of one of the stalls. He selected a long, thin, leather encased reed. Maddy tried to plead again frantically as she watched him test its strength and swish it through the air. He stepped behind her, his thick soled boots making a heavy, thudding sound on the hard wooden floor. He circled her twice, swishing the reed back and forth, eying her lustfully. Maddy tried to keep up with him, spinning on her toes so that she could keep him in view.