The men were going crazy. Time for stage two. Selecting what she thought was a private from the crowd, Katya subtly shook the bottle, then bent over and held it out to him, indicating that he should open it. Goaded by the comments and smirks of the other men, he produced a bottle opener and popped the cap off. Immediately golden-white foam started flowing down the sides. Katya put on her best “oops” expression and began licking the foam off, ending up with her mouth completely over the top and neck of it and sucking down the weak liquid. What disgusting swill.
The crowd went absolutely fucking crazy. Even the sergeant had trouble getting the men back into some semblance of order. Partly because they were get getting too riled up, and partly because he was too distracted by Katya’s show.
“Katya, what the hell are you doing? They all look like they’re about to riot!” Vanner said.
No shit, that is exactly what I am going for, she thought, but didn’t say. Time for stage three. Katya began slowly removing her button-down olive drab shirt. She eased it off her shoulder, then back on, then back off. After teasing them like this for a minute, she slipped out of one sleeve and dangled it in front of the men, whipping it out of their reach whenever anyone grabbed for it. Her coy act was riling the men up even more; she now had all of them in the palm of her hand. They must be really repressed here—I haven’t even shown any skin yet.
Katya slipped the shirt completely off. Sashaying across the table to the sergeant, she draped it around his shoulders like a scarf while still holding on to the ends of both sleeves. She slowly drew him in for a kiss, but released the shirt ends at the last second and turned away. She strutted back to the middle of the table, leaving the man dumbstruck. The rest of his men pounded the table while shouting and catcalling even more.
Now dressed in a stained, wrinkled white t-shirt and fatigue pants, Katya thrust her hip out and threw her shoulders back. The pose drew every eye in the room to her splendid breasts straining against the flimsy cotton. All of this made the men even crazier. Spotting a chair at the end of the table, Katya motioned for it to be brought up onto the table. She watching with concealed glee as a fistfight nearly broke out over whom would have the honor of performing the simple task. After a few clumsy punches and another chewing out from the sergeant, the chair was set on the table.
Katya turned it so she could sit in profile to the men. As part of her research, Jay had given her specific films to watch, regardless of when they had been made. He had assigned her to study the women and their interactions with others, particularly men. “While understanding the psychology of how and why a woman strips is important, it is also important to understand the fantasy that the media, particularly in America, has always portrayed about women. To sell your role as the party girl/stripper, you’re giving your audience something that is twenty-five percent reality and seventy-five percent fantasy. You, however, have to portray it one hundred percent, all the time, every time.”
Katya had struggled with most of them. The one about the girl who had hitchhiked to Las Vegas to become a showgirl had been particularly awful. However, there was one film from the 1980s about a woman who was a welder by day and a dancer at night, It had intrigued her, despite being as unbelievable as anything else she had seen. The bottle in her hand wasn’t a cascade of water, but given how she had already got this group’s blood boiling, it would probably do.
Arching her spine over the back of the chair so that her proud breasts stood out in relief, Katya raised the beer over her chest and tipped the bottle down. A golden river poured out over her chest and legs, making the t-shirt transparent and revealing her magnificent tits for everyone in the room to see.
Katya thought she might go deaf from the whooping and hollering that erupted around her. After that, they were putty in her hands. Well, except for certain parts of them.
Finally the sergeant couldn’t take it any more. He pushed his way to the table, grabbed Katya’s hand, and pulled her off the table so roughly that she almost twisted her ankle on the way down. She just managed to get her feet under her, or she would have landed on her ass, and that might have been the end of it. However, he pulled her toward a door near the entrance that led to a smaller room in the building. Katya hoped it was the one she had noticed with a window in it.
The man pushed her into a small kitchen, complete with dirty tables, greasy counters, dusty cabinets, and a secondary exit on the side wall. The room smelled of burned rice and spoiled fruit. It was even better than she had expected.
The only problem was the three other men, all with one or two similar downward pointing black stripes with red edging around them on their shirt sleeves. Fantastic—the senior men fuck me before throwing me to the others. But she could work with this just fine.
Besides the exit, there were two more pieces of good news to this scene. The first was that one of the men had brought a rifle with him, and had set it down in the corner in preparation for the show. The second was that the other men were continuing the loud party she had gotten started outside, so anything short of full torture would be masked by the noise in the other room.
The sergeant pushed Katya toward the nearest counter, banging her hip painfully. She whirled around to see him drop his pants. Masking her pain and anger with a come-hither pout, she took stock of the position of her targets. The other three men were ranged around the room, too far apart for her to take them all out without one sounding the alarm first. She needed was a way to bring all close them to her. And when the sergeant dropped his drawers, revealing his thick, erect dick, everything fell into place.
Crossing her arms at her waist, Katya slowly drew her beer-soaked t-shirt off over her head. When she could see again, every man’s eyes were on her. She would have to be very careful when poisoning the sergeant, as she needed him to live for about a minute afterward.
She ran a finger around her lips, then put her hand on his stiff cock. He nodded, grabbing the back of her head and shoving her toward his crotch. Katya took him into her mouth and began vigorously fellating him. While doing that, she also kept one hand stroking his shaft while she manipulated the valve at the base of her finger on her other hand to ready the poison. When that hand was ready, she began massaging his firm balls, slowly increasing the tempo of all three movements in a pattern guaranteed to make a man come in minutes.
Curious about the toxin she could inflict on others, Katya had done enough research to get a pretty good idea of what it was. The doctor who had installed the system had said it was modified cobra venom. Katya had learned that different venoms of various cobras had one or more deadly effects. Some were neurotoxic, attacking and incapacitating the nervous system to cause paralysis in the victim. Some also had a cytotoxic element as well, causing swelling and necrosis in cells near the bite area. And lastly, some venoms also had a cardiotoxic effect, weakening the heart muscle and causing it to be unable to pump blood efficiently, causing general weakness throughout the body.
Katya didn’t know exactly what kind of poison cocktail they’d given her, but she did know it was seriously neurotoxic, which was exactly what she needed. Increasing her pace on the sergeant’s cock, she felt him about to climax, which was the last thing she needed to go to work.
He threw his head back as he spasmed into her mouth. Lost in the climax, he didn’t feel her stab a fingernail into the base of his testicle and inject the toxin. As his semen squirted into her mouth, Katya was careful not to swallow any of it. After all, she needed all the weapons she could get. She kept the injector right where it was, pumping the man full of poison while sucking him dry.
When the first full-body spasm hit, Katya pulled away, making sure to look puzzled. The man jerked again, lurching against the counter while stammering to his subordinates for help. Katya backed away while activating the other chemical reservoir inside her body, the one that heightened her strength, speed, and reflexes.
The three men all came forward at the same time.
Perfect.
> As they moved to their stricken leader, Katya looked the nearest one right in the face and spit the mouthful of semen into his eyes. Caught by surprise, he staggered back, wiping at his eyes and saying something she assumed was a curse.
The drug kicked into full speed, and Katya saw everyone around her slow down while her own vision, movement, and reactions remained swift and crystal-clear. She had carefully trained herself to ride the heightened rush the drug gave her and channel it into devastating attacks against one man or a group. The training had been remarkably effective. Even Mike, the only one who would take her on while in this state, had only suffered bruises and muscle sprains through his padded suit. This was the first time she would be trying those methods in the field, however.
With one man temporarily distracted, she was already moving to the other two. Both were still trying to help the sergeant, who had started convulsing as he slid to the floor. One turned his head toward the door and opened his mouth to call for help. Katya drew her foot back and kicked him in the Adam’s apple, crushing his larynx and trachea. The blow was so powerful it knocked him off his feet and onto his ass. Both hands clutched at his swelling neck as his face began turning red. His mouth opened and closed silently, like a fish trying to breathe out of water.
The last soldier was just turning to her, one hand dropping to the pistol on his hip while he also opened his mouth to yell for help. Katya fired the heel of her palm into his jaw, slamming the lower mandible into the upper maxilla hard enough to fracture both and splinter a few teeth. The man grunted through a spray of blood as Katya pistoned the same palm heel into his solar plexus, paralyzing the large bundle of nerves there and sending him crashing to the floor.
Hearing a footstep behind her, she whirled to find the first man charging her. To Katya, it looked like he was running against a strong wind. Grabbing his closest outstretched hand, she pivoted and used his momentum to flip him over her hip to the ground with a breath-stealing thud. Katya followed up with a ram’s head punch to the temple. She hit him so hard that his head bounced off the tile floor. The blow crushed the temporal bone, creating a hemorrhage in the temporal lobe directly underneath. Immediately knocked unconscious, the man would never wake up again as he slowly bled to death inside his skull.
Checking the man with the broken teeth, she found he had managed to draw his pistol and pull the slide back. Before he could aim it at her, she was on top of him, grabbing the gun and wrenching it free hard enough to break three fingers. He clutched his injured hand and opened his bloody mouth to scream. Katya prevented that by clubbing his jaw with the butt, breaking it again and knocking him out.
She looked around to see all four men incapacitated or dead. Just then the drug wore off, and Katya steeled herself against the muscle spasms that sometimes followed the strenuous activity. They subsided in a few seconds, and she quickly began stripping clothing and equipment off the four bodies.
When she was finished, she had the rifle and two extra magazines; four pistols and four extra magazines; four combat knives; and four grenades, two smoke and two tear gas. Most important, she had found a set of keys in the sergeant’s pocket.
Weapons first. Katya dressed herself in the cleanest shirt she could find. Then she tucked a loaded pistol into her waistband, hiding it under her shirttail, but still available for a fast draw. Wrapping up the other three pistols and extra magazines in another shirt, she tied it into a pouch. When she was done with that, she slung the rifle over one shoulder and the gun-filled bag over her other one. Taking two canteens, she rinsed her mouth before filling them with water at the sink. In the small refrigerator she found moldy chicken curry and curdled goat’s milk, which she skipped. There was a container of cold, plain rice and an unopened mango drink of some kind. She grabbed both; every extra calorie would help in what she had to do.
Someone pounded on the door from outside, making Katya almost drop the canteen as she drew the pistol and aimed it at the door. The soldier outside shouted something that sounded like a question. What the fuck is he asking? Wait—that has to be it!
Katya moaned loudly as if getting fucked. A loud cheer went up from the other side of the wall. She kept going, varying her cries of simulated pleasure as she pulled the pins on a tear gas and smoke grenade. Tipping a chair over, she wedged the top of it against the grenades, placing them with the spoons held against the door.
Still groaning, she changed the tone so it sounded like she had her mouth full before slipping out the side door, making sure to lock it behind her. The Cascavel armored cars were parked right outside. Katya shook her head. The Kildar would never allow such sloppiness…
Inside, the party was going on in full force. She could hear the men singing drunkenly even from here. Checking the cars until she found which one her keys fit, Katya dumped the stolen gear into it and drew one of the knives. Going to each vehicle, she punctured three tires on each one. It was hard work, and her fingers and wrists were sore by the time she was finished, but all of the nearest vehicles were disabled when she was done.
Climbing back into the Cascavel, she locked the outer hatch and took a moment to familiarize herself with the controls. Everything seemed fairly basic; steering wheel, gas and brake pedals. It was an automatic transmission, which made Katya breathe a sigh of relief, as she wasn’t that great with manual. Its gas tank was also almost full. Finally, she located the headlight switch and flipped it on.
Taking a deep breath, she turned the key, making the 190-horsepower Mercedes Benz diesel engine rumble to life. Shifting into gear, she depressed the gas pedal, taking off as men began spilling out of the barracks to see one of their armored cars being stolen.
Over the rumble of the engine, Katya could barely hear the shouts and screams as the men found the surprise she had left for them in the kitchen. She found what looked like a main road leading out of town and took it, making the armored car leap forward to put as much distance between her and the barracks as possible.
Once sure she was safely away, she called the Big Fish. “Vanner, this is Katya. Tell me how to find Mike and the others.”
* * *
“So, you don’t know shit about what’s going on either?” Co-pilot Major Jonathan Wolfe said as he completed the preflight checklist for the C-130J-30 Super Hercules cargo plane.
“I know exactly the same things you do. Get our asses in the air and get to Tbilisi airport with all due haste.” Aircraft Commander Major Alan Timmons ran through his checklist as well, then lowered his voice. “But the scuttlebutt on the tarmac says the orders came straight from the top.”
“The Joint Chief?” Wolfe asked incredulously.
Timmons shook his head and pointed upward.
“The POTUS himself?!”
Timmons shrugged as he strapped himself in. “Take that for what’s it worth, but everyone who mentioned it so far said that’s who gave the order.”
Wolfe didn’t mind in the least. He had been finishing up his rotation at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. They had just completed a supply run to Incirlik the day before, and were about to head back home when the orders had come in diverting their aircraft northeast to Tbilisi instead. It would be about a two-hour hop, and that was only the start of the mystery.
“What are we supposed to do once we get there?” Wolfe asked.
“Orders said we will be contacted by a party on the ground, and that we are to give any and all aid and assistance possible. That’s what the Old Man told me, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing, regardless of any secret squirrel stuff going around.” He hit his mike. “Sergeant, prepare for takeoff.”
“Yes, sir,” Tech Sergeant Sandra Wilcox replied from the cargo hold.
Wolfe nodded and concentrated on his duties as Timmons contacted the tower and got clearance. As far as he was concerned, anything coming down from the president had to look good when the promotion boards came up, right?
* * *
Mike, Jace, and Adams stood in the middle of the trus
tees’ quarters, which now looked like a hurricane had gone through it. Several of the rough bunk beds had been smashed to pieces, and the dozen prisoners lay scattered among the wreckage.
Injuries were light among the three Americans. Adams had dislocated three knuckles, which he had popped back into place. Jace had received a split lip from a lucky punch, and Mike had suffered a graze from a swinging board off one of the beds that had come a hairs’ width away from beaning him.
“Any more questions?” Mike asked.
“Yes.” The leader pushed himself up into a sitting position on the floor. Gingerly probing his swelling jaw with scraped fingers, he spat out a tooth. “What the fuck are you going to do with us now?”
After getting the translation from Jace, Mike replied. “Well, as attractive as digging gems for the fucking military for the rest of my life sounds, my friends and I are going to break out of here tomorrow morning. All of you can either stay here, or you can join us.”
Those trustees who were still conscious broke out in ragged laughter. “Man, you must be crazy, and not just by taking all of us on,” the leader said. “Don’t you think others have tried to escape? Where do you think you are going to go? There’s a hundred kilometers of jungle between us and any place larger than a village. We can’t count on the surrounding villages to help, not since the warden put out a five-hundred thousand-kyat reward for any information about escaped prisoners. We can’t even smuggle out gems to try and pay our way to freedom, since the guards strip search us every day—every goddamn inch.”
Another prisoner spoke. “The last two times someone tried to escape, the guards hunted them down like dogs, running them through the jungle until they dropped from exhaustion. They shot them and brought the bodies back for us to bury. No one’s been stupid enough to try since then.”
Tiger by the Tail-eARC Page 31