by John Ringo
She was so fucking beautiful, it made Mike angry to think about her life. He knew that he had a blind spot when it came to beautiful women. Plenty of them, even in the West, had lousy lives. But a creature as visually perfect as Anastasia would have been able to write her own ticket in the States. Instead, she’d been sent off to be a harem slave. And she considered herself lucky, with reason. The whole developing world was awash with girls like Anastasia, ranging from her situation to the girls in the Alerrso brothel.
Without the economy and culture to support equality, women came out a distant second in the war of the sexes. Even the “lucky” ones who found husbands had lives of unremitting toil, popping out one baby after another until their bodies were worn out. The rest filled the brothels of the developing countries. The luckiest ones were the girls near Western military bases; the worst actions of the Western troops, by and large, were the norm in other cultures. American troops mostly just wanted to get it stuck in or sucked off. The few of them that were into pain paid for the privilege instead of thinking of it as a right.
But even those didn’t have much of a life. After they got old and worn, at all of twenty or so, they’d be shipped off to lower quality brothels, slipping down the ladder rung by rung. The bottom of the barrel were places around the Mediterranean waterfront, especially Istanbul. Trying to find a good looking whore in Istanbul was like looking for gold in a tarpit.
Mike wasn’t sure how long this gig in Georgia was going to last, but he knew damned well that none of his girls were ever going to wind up in a whorehouse in Istanbul. Not even Katya, although she deserved it.
Mike got up carefully at a chime from the sat phone, trying not to disturb Anastasia. She muttered but stayed in place.
“Jenkins,” he said, putting in the earphone.
“Mr. Jenkins, this is Lieutenant Timmons,” the duty officer said. “There will be a Georgian military helicopter at the airport in Tbilisi at two AM.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Mike said. “Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, it has room for two and some luggage?”
“It’s a Blackhawk converted for distinguished persons transport,” the lieutenant replied. “Plenty of room.”
“Great,” Mike said. “Thanks for the help. Hope the rest of your duty goes well.”
“All I have to do is stay awake,” the lieutenant said, chuckling.
“What duty officer stays awake?” Mike asked. “That’s what enlisted men are for.”
“Ones that work at embassies,” Timmons said, somewhat bitterly. “It’s not like regular SDO work. And guys on duty at SOCOM and the Pentagon for that matter. Norad, Cheyenne…”
“Got the point,” Mike said, smiling. “Well, come on out for a beer and some steak some time; I owe you that at least.”
“Will do, sir,” Timmons said. “Two AM.”
“Works,” Mike replied, “Have a good night.”
Mike covered Anastasia with a blanket, then pulled out a copy of the training schedule. Since he wouldn’t be staying over in Tbilisi, he’d be back for equipment issue. That was a two-day affair with basic uniform and field gear issue being in the morning and weapons issue the next day. Normally troops would get their weapons and then rack them. In normal militaries they’d spend a few months learning to clean the damned things and field strip them before they ever got to shoot them.
With the Keldara, Mike was taking another tack. They’d be issued on Friday right at the range. The only pretraining they’d get was on safety and aiming. Then they’d zero in the weapons. After that would be the class on stripping, cleaning and reassembly. One reason for that was that they were bound to mess up the cleaning. That meant nice dirty weapons to rag on them about come Monday and regular training. A weekend with a little grime here and there wasn’t going to ruin the guns. Hell, knowing the way that the Keldara did things, the weapons were probably going to be spotless.
Mike might or might not do a demonstration for the range day. The Keldara were only going to be firing on a twenty-five meter range for zero. The time to do that was when they did the full Basic Rifle Marksmanship class later in the training cycle. They were taking the Marine approach to that one, training them on marksmanship on the Known Distance range, then going to pop-up targets.
Marksmanship and combat engagement were two different mindsets, but the one was important to support the other. Training on pure marksmanship meant that the soldier was actually paying attention to the target. The two problems with that were he then tended to see the target as a human and not just a target and he tended to take too long in engagement. With the latter, he was paying attention to his shooting rather than the fact he was in a combat engagement. With the former he ended up more stressed by taking a human life. Training to simply engage pop-up targets and consider the shapes that the soldier engaged as nothing more than those tended to reduce both problems.
He put the training schedule away when he began to yawn and curled up next to Anastasia. He had to admit there were worse ways to fly.
* * *
“Mr. Jenkins?”
Mike had woken up the moment the cockpit door opened and now opened his eyes, to look at the copilot. He’d assumed the pilot was on his way to the rear for a drink so he hadn’t bothered before, just tracked his movements by sound.
“Yeah?” Mike asked, shifting upwards. Anastasia was still out like a light so he gently lowered her down so her head rested on his thigh.
“We got an in-flight advisory that we’re suppose to taxi to the military side of the Tbilisi airport and await a Follow-Me,” the copilot said, quietly. “Captain Hardesty thought you should know.”
“Thanks,” Mike said. “I should have told you guys I was picking up a helicopter for the rest of the trip. That’s all it’s about.”
“Okay,” the copilot said, nodding. “We’d… wondered.”
“No great adventures on this trip,” Mike said, grinning. “Maybe some other time. How long?”
“We’ll be beginning our descent in about a half an hour. Be on the ground in about an hour.”
“I’d better wake Anastasia up,” Mike said, nodding. “Thanks for the heads up.”
Mike looked at the girl on his lap after the pilot had gone and decided to let her sleep a little longer. She looked worn out by the day and flying in the chopper was probably going to unnerve her a good bit.
As it turned out, the power down and dropping feeling woke her up instantly.
“Are we okay?” she asked, sitting up hurriedly and wiping her eyes.
“Fine,” Mike said. “We’re on descent to Tbilisi airport. There’s a helicopter waiting for us there.”
“Okay,” the girl said, her eyes wide as the plane bumped through some turbulence.
“That’s normal, too,” Mike said. “Pockets of thicker or denser air cause the plane to go up and down a bit.” Mike thought there must be a front in the area since the plane lurched again. “Lean over here,” he said, sliding sideways and putting his arm around her. “It’ll be okay.”
Mike leaned over and looked out the window and was surprised to see that the air was clear. You got clear air turbulence from time to time, but rarely this severe.
“Captain?” he said, keying the intercom. “Are we following someone down?”
“Spot on, sir,” the copilot answered. “We’re behind an Airbus. I think we’re probably too close, frankly, but nothing we can’t handle. And this is where Tbilisi control wants us to be.”
“Back off a bit if you can do it discreetly,” Mike said. “The ride is getting a little rough.
“When a plane passes through it disturbs the air,” Mike continued to Anastasia. “It settles out pretty quickly, normally, but if you’re close to other aircraft it makes this happen; the plane goes up and down.”
“Will it make us crash?” Anastasia asked.
“Not hardly,” Mike replied. “These business jets are built very tough and very maneuverable. And Hardesty is a great pilot. This is
not a problem.”
“Okay,” the girl said, sighing. “It’s all new.”
“And a bit scary,” Mike said. “More than just the flight. You’ll be okay, I promise.”
Hardesty greased the landing and was careful on the braking, obviously keeping in mind his junior passenger. Tbilisi airport had been built to support Soviet bombers during the Cold War and it had plenty of runway for an easy brake. About halfway down the runway he took a right, instead of the normal left to the terminal, and followed a series of turns to stop not more than seventy meters from a Blackhawk with its rotor already turning.
“This is your stop, sir,” the copilot said, coming into the main cabin.
“Up we get, dear,” Mike said to Anastasia.
The luggage was secured in an underside compartment with a door behind the left wing. As the copilot opened the door, a Georgian lieutenant gestured for an enlisted man to help.
Between the three of them, the copilot, Mike and the Georgian soldier, it only took one trip for the bags. Mike, frankly, could have humped them all himself, but he wasn’t about to get in the way of the dance. He ended up with just his briefcase and personal bag.
He led Anastasia over to the helicopter and started to strap her into one of the comfortable chairs in the center of the chopper’s cargo bay, but she pointed to one of the jump seats.
“I would like to look out, if I may,” she said, diffidently.
“Sit wherever you’d like,” Mike said, leading her over to the seat and strapping her in. Unlike the passenger seats, the jump seat had a four-point restraint system and when hooked up it hiked her skirt all the way up to the top of her stockings. She discreetly pulled it back down on the sides, but there wasn’t any way to cover up the inner thigh.
“Perhaps I should…” she said, waving at the regular passenger seats which had normal “airline” seatbelts.
“I like the view just fine,” Mike replied, picking up a headset and putting it on her and then following with one for himself. “Pilot?” he asked in Georgian.
“Yes, Kildar,” the pilot replied. “Are you ready for us to take off?”
“At your leisure,” Mike replied. “Thanks for the ride.”
“It is an honor, Kildar,” the pilot said.
The rotors increased in speed and Mike looked out to see if they’d form a halo. Sometimes, when the dust was just right, static discharge would form on the rotors. It would slide down to the edge of them, like little lightning bolts, and the effect would look exactly like a silver halo on the ends of the rotors. Not this time, alas. Anastasia would have liked it. However, it was also a sign of increased rotor wear, so he thought he should be thankful.
“Are you okay?” he asked as the bird lifted into the air. There was an intercom control on his seat panel and he’d switched it so that he was only talking to the girl.
“Fine,” Anastasia squeaked, nervously. But she leaned forward and watched as they lifted. “This is beautiful. I had thought I’d be afraid, but I am only a little. This is very interesting to watch.”
The bird spiraled up to about two thousand feet above ground level and then headed southeast towards the valley of the Keldara. The moon was only a quarter, but once they got away from the city lights and their eyes adjusted, it lit up the landscape like day.
“This is so beautiful,” Anastasia whispered. “There are so many trees. I’d forgotten how much I like trees. It must be very green in the day.”
“It is at the moment,” Mike said, looking out for himself. “The trees are just coming out in their leaves and it’s greening up nicely. The tops of the mountains, though, reach above the tree line. Some of them are snow-covered year round.”
“Where I came from there were many trees,” the girl said, quietly. “But no mountains.”
“Lots of mountains in Georgia,” Mike said. He’d noticed that the helicopter was on a continuous fair climb, even after the upward spiral, but as it approached the mountains it turned south into another spiral, fighting for altitude.
“We are going very high,” Anastasia said, breathing deeply in incipient panic.
“High mountains,” Mike pointed out. “We’ll be fine. These things are rated for ten thousand feet with a load of troops. This is easy flying.”
As they headed into the mountains, below the peaks, the helicopter began to buffet in the crosswinds and Anastasia squeaked and closed her eyes.
“This I don’t like,” the girl said. “I think I am getting a little sick.”
“Try opening your eyes,” Mike said, rummaging around in the seats until he found an airsick bag. The package was paper with a plastic bag on the inside, which he extracted and handed across to the girl. “If you have to go, go in that.”
They crossed through a saddle, with tree-covered slopes on both sides that seemed close enough the rotors should have hit the branches, then started to descend, banking through a series of turns as the helicopter followed the complex angles of the valleys. The crosswinds had settled down, though, and while the chopper was banking, it wasn’t going up and down so much. With the change of motion, Anastasia seemed to get over her sickness, sitting with the bag in her hand but a rapt expression on her face as the chopper banked past the hills. At one point it practically stood on its left side, letting her get a close look at the ground below and leaving her hanging in her straps.
“This is fun,” she said in surprise as the chopper leveled back out.
“That it is,” Mike admitted. “I really need to get one for a dozen different reasons.”
“You can buy a helicopter?” Anastasia asked.
“Well, a Blackhawk would be a little out of my range,” Mike admitted. “They’re damned expensive. Good birds, but overpriced. The Czechs sell a Hind variant for executive transport and medical evac that’s only about six hundred grand. And there’s something like ninety percent parts compatibility with regular Hind-Ds. And Hinds are all over the place. The only reason the Georgians have these Blackhawks is the U.S. government gave them five and support the parts.”
As he finished, the Blackhawk banked one more time into the valley of the Keldara and Mike realized he’d forgotten to get anyone to lay out an LZ.
“Pilot,” he said, switching back to the general intercom, “I forgot to tell anyone I was coming so there’s no LZ laid out. You want to hang up here while I call or go in on an unmarked?”
“I’d prefer marked,” the pilot admitted.
“Okay,” Mike said, pulling out his sat phone. “We’ll probably go in on my lawn, then.”
He’d left another satellite phone with Nielson for general communications and he speed dialed that.
“Keldara House, Dinara Mahona speaking, how may I help you, sir or ma’am?” a female voice answered in Georgian.
“God I love Vanner,” Mike replied, smiling. “Hi, Dinara, it’s the Kildar. I’m up over the valley in a chopper. Could you wake up somebody from the duty squad that knows how to lay in an LZ and ask them to put one on the lawn?”
“Yes, Kildar,” the Keldara said. “I will do that immediately.”
“Thanks,” Mike replied. “We’ll just tool around up here until you call.”
“Pilot,” he said, switching back to the intercom. “There’s somebody getting up to lay in an LZ, but it will be a few minutes. You’ve got fuel?”
“Enough for another hour, Kildar,” the pilot replied. “More than enough for twenty minutes or so up here and then flying back.”
“Take a turn around the valley, then,” Mike said. “I’ll show the lady the sights.”
Using the chopper, Mike pointed out the houses of the Keldara, who were probably wondering what the hell was going on, the new roads that were being laid in, the ranges, where the dam was under construction and Alerrso. Finally, the sat phone rang.
“Kildar, this is Killjoy,” the former Marine said. “We’ve got chemlights laid out on the lawn. Best I could do at the moment. One blinking strobe at the end. Wind is more o
r less from the north, recommend come in from the south and set down at the lower end of the lawn. That will give him plenty of room to pull out over the house.”
“Will do,” Mike said, passing the orders on to the pilot.
* * *
“Hey, Killjoy,” Mike said as he pulled back the doors to the chopper. “How they hangin’?”
“Still one lower than the other,” Killjoy replied, his eyes widening at the sight of Anastasia. “What, you didn’t have enough women in the house?”
“She’s a manager,” Mike replied. “Give me a hand with her bags?”
He shook the hand of the pilot and co, then helped Anastasia across the lawn. She was wearing four-inch spike heels and they sank in the cut grass. Finally, he just picked her up and carried her to the paved walkway.
“Welcome to Keldara House,” Mike said as he set her down. They were by the door to the harem garden, which was standing open, so he led her in that way. “This is sort of the side door. Sorry.”
“It is very beautiful,” she said, looking around in the moonlight. Hard work on the part of the Keldara had cleaned up the garden so it was presentable again. The fruit trees and roses had been trimmed and the trees were in bloom, filling the garden with a heady scent.
“It is nice,” Mike said. “It’s the harem garden, technically. But since I don’t lock the girls in anyone can come in here. Nice place to have a party.”
“It would be,” Anastasia admitted.
“Oh, introductions,” Mike said. “Anastasia Rakovich, Corporal Lawrence Killjoy. Call him Larry.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Killjoy said, setting her bags down and shaking her hand.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Killjoy,” Anastasia said, formally.
“You don’t generally get introduced, do you?” Mike asked.
“No,” Anastasia admitted as they headed for the house.
“Would you prefer that I not?” Mike asked. “It’s considered impolite in my culture. But so is having a harem.”