“Look there!” Arthur screamed at Bear, there is someone in need of help!”
Bear just shot a quick glance: “Other people’s problems!” They were not his problems and so he did not care.
Arthur was not listening to him. All of a sudden he recognised the luckless individual. “Hey, I know this guy! I was sitting next to him on the plane!” He opened the throttle and with a daring manoeuvre he held straight at the mass of people honking wildly.
“Arthur, wait!” was all Bear could yell after him, but Arthur was hell bent on a Wild West rescue mission. Cursing, Bear downshifted a gear and went after him.
Angrily the mob started aside as Arthur was bearing down at them full speed. Screeching he stopped next to Gerd who looked quite banged up.
“Get on, quick!”
Without thinking Gerd jumped on the bike behind him and with the engine revved up they shot away from the danger-zone. This all had happened within seconds, faster than anybody could react.
Bravo, well done. Arthur gloated over his role as last-minute saviour. Elated he turned around at full speed jeering at the stunned crowd: “Hasta la vista, you idio...”
He did not get any further because, as Bear watched in astonishment, he went straight into a pile of spice sacks of on the sidewalk in front of a shop, thereby tearing down the whole canopy. The debris came crushing down on Arthur, Gerd and the motorbike. A huge cloud of ascending turmeric turned the chaos into a vivid orange.
Bear stopped next to the mountain of rubbish, spices and bits of canopy. “Hey you, are you still alive?”
A hollow moaning answered his question. Bear got off, tore away some of the boards and looked at the two battered casualties.
“Okay, playtime’s over! Let’s scram!”
Arthur got up offering a hand to Gerd, trying to lift him up. “Very successful rescue mission!” he bellowed rubbing his arm in pain, “Could have saved yourself the effort! I don’t really care if I get killed by them or by you!”
Arthur huffed enraged. “Oh, please excuse me for risking my neck to save you! How ungrateful of you!”
“Has anyone told you before that you are a miserable motorcyclist?” Gerd retorted trying to brush off the orange dust.
“And has anyone told you, that you’ve got an obnoxious hamster pong on you?”
“Stop the bickering, you two!” Bear snapped, “we’ve got other problems!”
The mob, recovered from the shock, had formed a circle around them. The expression in their eyes betraying they were not letting this go by with a dinner invitation and a heart to heart—they were out for blood. Mainly the blood from this filthy foreigner…and if necessary from his two cronies as well, who doubtlessly also had been instrumental in the well poisoning and child eating business.
The loud bang of a pistol shot startled everybody around. “Nobody is going to touch the foreigners!” someone was yelling from behind.
“God have mercy, we’re saved!” Gerd sighed with relieve. The crowd parted and gave way to Shaki, Rajnesh as well as Number One and Two. All four of them guns poised. Shaki was grinning villainously. “We are going to kill them ourselves!”
“Shit!” Arthur and Bear swore in unison.
“Who the hell is this guy?” Gerd wondered.
Shaki bowed slightly. “We came all the way from Goa to blow these two gentlemen’s brains out” pointing his gun at Gerd and Arthur, “but since you appear to be a friend of theirs you are welcome to share their fate. The friends of my enemies are also my enemies... as the saying goes!”
“Just a minute now!” an indignant voice arose from the mob, “we had a nice blood frenzy going on just now, and here you come along and want to do it all by yourselves?! You’re not even from Bombay! Piss off!”
The usual shouts adequate for situations like these were to be heard. “Hear hear!—Get in the queue!—Bugger off!—Bombay lynching for Bombayites!—Goans get lost!” and so on.
Shaki raised his gun. “And what about THIS, heh? That’s a gun. The guy who has it, calls the shots, right?”
“Besides, this guy has stolen my motorbike!” Number Two complained. “My Yamaha! And look at it now! Scratches all over! I’ll pop the bastard!”
Quite a few in the mob could sympathise with that and one of them suggested: “Can’t we find an arrangement here, say half and half?”
Shaki tipped his forehead with his gun. “There’s three of them you imbecile! How you gonna split them, eh? Is everybody in Bombay a dickhead?”
This of course could not stand with the Bombayites and they bitterly expressed their outrage.
Alas, it was of no use. Regrettably this gunda was right, he had the gun and therefore he was in charge. Shaki, with a friendly gesture put his arm on Number Two’s shoulder. “Number Two, I’ll let you have the first shot.”
Number Two smiled in delight and said: “Thank you boss, much obliged!” and with relish took aim at Arthur.
A shot was fired. Although not from Number Two’s weapon who instead yelled out holding his hand. Someone had shot right through it preventing the deadly shot at Arthur.
Bear, Arthur, Gerd, the Goans and the mob’s heads all flew in the direction where the shot had been fired from.
Nobody had noticed the two Indian gentlemen with expressionless faces that stood before them. They wore identical black suits and sunglasses. One of them held a gun with an absurdly long barrel aiming it at Shaki. The other one took aim at Number One—with a minute black crossbow.
Shaki was the first to come to his senses. “And who are you supposed to be? The Blues Brothers? The Men in Black?”
The man holding the gun answered without changing his expression: My name is Babu, and this here is Willie!”
“We are freelancers!” added Willie.
“We have been given a contract to kill a certain foreigner named Mr Gerd Lauterbach.”
Gerd was about to raise his hand but thought better of it.
“Well, you can save your time and trouble” Shaki said “we’re about to kill those three anyhow!”
Babu’s head jolted upward. “We cannot let that happen. We always finish our jobs ourselves.
Hey! Which of you is Gerd?”
Hesitating for a moment Gerd pointed at Vishnu, the emaciated Indian, who had tried to steal his shoes. Stupefied for a moment Vishnu pointed at Bear and Bear to Rajnesh and he to Arthur. Arthur who had no clue what was going on pointed at a little statue of the elephant god tucked in a shrine close to the wall of the house.
Babu and Willie shot each other a quick glance. Babu shrugged his shoulders and raised his weapon. “Okay, we kill all three of them then!”
“Just a minute!” Shaki interrupted, “If anybody is killing anybody, it’s us that’s going to do the killing!”
“And us!” the mob insisted.
“Shut up, you amateurs!” Shaki bellowed.
A heated dispute ensued over this, encouraged by Bear, vociferously proclaiming, if at all, he’d rather be killed by the mob. This promptly led to an open fight; violent shoving and pushing, insults and fists were flying. In short, pandemonium everywhere with the result that for a short while nobody took any notice of Arthur, Gerd and Bear.
“Let’s make a run for it” Bear hissed at the other two, “now!”
They crept carefully backwards but nobody paid any attention to them. All parties involved were much too busy trying to hurt each other in the most straightforward way possible: Kidney-shots, upper-cuts and heel-kicks, flying teeth and clouts on the head. Taking no part in all of this was Number Two who was incredulously staring at his perforated hand. The three-inch whole in his hand allowed him to watch the three foreigners as they disappeared around the street corner.
“Hey, Boss! They are running away!” he yelled at Shaki, who was ho
lding Willie in a headlock stoically enduring his elbow blows with a somewhat whining tone in his voice.
Meanwhile all the others had cottoned onto the disappearance of the three. One after another they let go of their antagonist and took up the chase.
“They’re behind us!” cried Arthur, “run faster!” Gerd was wheezing already. “Can’t run any faster, only got one shoe, dammit!”
“And I hate sports!” Bear huffed looking back. “Holy shit, we got half of Bombay at our heels!”
The unleashed mob running through the streets clamouring had, by now attracted quite a following made up of curious onlookers who had nothing better to do. After all, running about, swinging lathis, screaming blue murder made for a welcome diversion. Thus the mob grew bigger by the minute never mind that most of them did not have the least idea what this was all about.
Whereas for Bear, Arthur and Gerd it seemed they were running away from an ever-increasing tidal wave. They soon realised they were to loose this race. Hearts drumming in their chests, every cigarette, every beer was taking its brutal revenge.
Suddenly Gerd thought he had recognised a building. And there it was! The dead cow! Right in front of them was the beer bar!
“In here!” he shouted at the other two, ran ahead and yanked the door open. At once all three were chasing down the narrow hallway, eventually they came to a halt, panting for air.
The Sikh standing in front of the inner door took one disdainful look at Gerd’s desolate appearance and waved them off. “Regulars only!”
“What?” Stunned all three stared at the bouncer.
Bear drew himself up to his full height. “We are bringing some friends with us, look!” he stepped aside to let the Sikh have a clear view at the outside. This very moment the floor began to shake lightly and the horrified Sikh faced the vast bulk of humanity rolling in at full speed towards his tiny entrance door. Panic was swelling up inside of him, for a moment his humble Sikh life passed before his eyes while his sphincter was about to fail him any second now... the result of all of this left him in a state of torpor, giving the threesome a chance to slip by him and disappear into the bar.
At this very moment in the last of the rooms, Sherie tried to open Báaba’s suitcase, without avail. Just when she had managed to wedge a knife into the gap the earth started to vibrate under her. She looked at the huge plasma screen on the wall; saw the masses of people simply overrunning the massive Sikh rushing into the bar. For a short moment she was perplexed, what in Shiva’s name was going on in there? Then she calmed down. Whatever those people wanted, she felt save behind the special door. Just out of precaution she decided to bolt it.
Suitcase in hand she got up and went to the door—and certainly would have locked it if it had not flown ajar this very second hitting her square in the head. The suitcase was flying high, crashed against the wall whereupon it opened distributing its contents all over the room.
Arthur, who had been the last to enter the room, gave an appreciative nod. “Not bad, that trick with the hinges!”
“Yes, I do know this place. They explained it to me last night!” Gerd answered a little proud of himself, closed the door turned around taking in the following scenario:
Sherie—the bitch that had drugged him a couple of hours ago—sat on the floor rubbing her head.
Báaba Singh in comatose sleep was down on the floor as well.
An open suitcase, its content spread everywhere.
Said content consisted of a brown envelope from which numerous perverse photographs of different foreigners had flown, plus: three transparent plastic bags filled with shimmering Golden Biker grass—valued at roughly the price of a neat mid range car inclusive air-condition and all the extras.
It took Gerd only a couple of seconds before he had stomached this information. He took a rigorous step toward Sherie and rudely tore at her arm.
“Look, who we have here!” he snapped angrily, “How did you get here, bitch?”
Arthur always the gentleman could not allow a lady being treated this way. “Hey, get a grip and let go of that woman!”
“No way, she’s the one who got me into all this shit! She slipped me a mickey and after that she robbed me blind!” Gerd answered.
“Let go of that woman” Gerd repeated, better have a look at this!” In wonder he picked up one of the transparent bags filled with shimmering Golden Biker.
“Well, bugger me! Have you any idea how much money you can get for this?”
Sherie who had found her senses again slipped from Gerd’s grip and snatched the bag off Arthur’s hand. “Hands off, asshole, that belongs to me!” she spat out in perfect German.
Surprised Arthur raised an eyebrow. “Such a beautiful woman and such bad language! And in German too!”
“Sycophant!” was her contemptuous comment, while she gathered up the bags with the grass put the photos back into the envelope and stuffed it all in her shoulder bag.
Arthur sprang to his feet “Can I be of assistance?”
“Are you mad?” Gerd said angrily, “Didn’t I just tell you the slut has robbed me!”
“This must all be one big misunderstanding!” Arthur answered, Sherie’s apparent feminine charms had not eluded him and he started to smile at her.
Meanwhile Bear was watching the charging pack of lynch-crazed Indians on the big screen realising to his surprise, that with every room traversed they had become fewer and fewer.
The one scenario Báaba had always been afraid of was a full-blown raid by the vice squad and it’s minions. Therefore he had been training all his employees in the bar endlessly exercising for this case of emergency. Those exercises had served one purpose only: To ward off any intruders and to protect Báaba’s audience room as long as possible.
It goes without saying that Báaba had been smart enough to not employ sheer brute force as a measure of defence—this would have faltered hopelessly. Báaba’s emergency plan was rather based on the insight that wherever scandalised morality went along hand in hand with zealotry, at the root of it was the envy of the disenfranchised. Consequently one only had to give the people what they despised the most. His secret weapon was to hit the charging vice squad where they would be most susceptible: Sex!
As soon as the angry mob had stormed the entrance door the rehearsed emergency plan started like clockwork. Having reached the first room already a substantial part of the crowd had stopped as if petrified. Never before in their life had they seen anything such as this: Beautiful women were dancing seductively, cooing at them lasciviously caressing the men’s lathis, so menacingly swung just seconds ago. For most of them this was enough already to produce an inanely grinning smile on their faces and to let themselves fall on to the benches.
Those however who resisted were greeted in the second room by even more attractive girls, busily throwing water bombs at each other or emptying clay pots filled to the brim with coloured liquids over each other’s blouses. Laughing and frolicking in their wet saris they appeared not to take any notice at all of the amazed menfolk. This scenario exactly matched the masturbation fantasies of every avid cinemagoer... meaning more or less everybody present.
Already in the third room the advancing group consisted of no more then Shaki, the two sunglass wearing professional killers Babu and Willie as well as four of the most fanatical of the mob. Rajnesh would have preferred to have stayed with the wet females, but was grabbed by the scruff of his neck by Shaki and dragged along. As they entered the room they were could not help but being surprised, the room was totally empty—nothing in it but mirrored walls, some benches and tables, some courtesy drinks and savouries. Puzzling over this an instant, they were about to run to the next door when a not to be missed humming noise made them stop in their tracks. Another perfidious attack on their moral integrity was awaiting them: The huge mirrors became translucent and b
ehind them four screen flickered to life. ‘John Bernd Production proudly presents:’ this appearing in alarmingly red letters,
‘POLAND PERVERSE!’
Foreign made porn of the cheapest kind, strictly banned in India, was presenting the unspeakable on all four walls.
Rajnesh and the four fanatics were goners. Mouths wide open they sank into the soft cushioned benches staring transfixed at human reproductive organs in wide screen performing sexual practices, that the originators of the Kamasutra could have learned something from.
Shaki tore himself away forcibly following Babu and Willie, both of whom seemed to be totally unfazed by all of this. Shaki was impressed: Men like machines. Cold blooded professionals—once unleashed—to be stopped by nothing at all. No human responses at all, their mission to be executed first of all. Some sort of fighting robots—just the type he needed.
“He called back at them, “when this is over and you’re still looking for a job: I’d take you on!”
“We’re freelancers!” Willie answered curtly “We’re don’t work for nobody!” He opened the next door and froze.
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