by R. S. Smith
Laura fired off a few silenced rounds into the china cabinet to get her attention. Cutlery shattered all over the place. “Who are these people?”
“These are my two daughters Brittany and Kayla, their two husbands, our neighbors the Johnsons, and my husband.”
“We want the money right now. Get it or your family and friends start having an evening from hell, lady!” shouted Jessie.
“Screw you! I don't have it.”
Jessie turned her pistol toward the frightened group. “Put all your keys, wallets, purses and jewelry on the table, wedding rings, too! Then everybody strip! I want to see a pile of clothes at my feet in thirty seconds!”
They all complied except for Wanda. “You too, old lady!”
Her arrogance dissipated as she undressed in front of them all.
“We're taking everyone's identification, so we'll know where you all live. If anyone reveals any details about tonight, they will live to regret it. Where's the money?” Laura repeated.
“Some of it's invested in this condo. The rest is overseas.”
“You've got a problem if you can't get it wired back into the company account tonight. A family that parties together, stays together. Let's get our party started.”
“Brittany, take Kayla's husband over to the couch and show him a good time. Everyone else, sit on these chairs and watch.”
“Stop, I'll get your money for you!”
“You're too slow, old lady. Watch the fun. Maybe you'll learn something.” She motioned for the mismatched couple to proceed with the entertainment. The once-arrogant woman raced to get out her bank statements and turn on her computer. The foursome cheered on the young pair as they watched the naked duo interact.
“This isn't very fair to Kayla,” commented Jessie.
“You're right,” agreed Laura. “Join the party, honey. Take either one of the Johnsons or Brittany's man, and get over there on the other couch.
She chose her sister's husband.
“The penalty for early withdrawal is death, you four, even harsher than at the bank,” she added with a snicker.
“Here, I've got it, look! I'm transferring the funds now. Eight million is all that's left,” the old woman called out.
Ashley used her throw-away phone to have Sherry confirm receipt of the money. They remained until the entertainment came to a stopping point, then gathered up the spoils and left. As always, they had been careful not to leave any fingerprints or traces of their DNA as evidence.
“I hope neither of them was on the pill,” said Renée with a wicked cackle as they departed the building.
As the following months passed, Sherry worked hard at promoting the business. She and Wanda barely spoke, and both signatures were now required on any checks or withdrawals. No one ever reported the home invasion. The families didn't want the bad publicity and feared the threatened retribution. Wanda couldn't claim theft as she was merely returning money into her own company's account.
When the six month waiting period had passed, Sherry and her new friends coordinated a plan. One morning when she was being presented with a retailing award in front of a hundred people, the hit was arranged. This time it would be in the underground parking garage of the condo building. The group made a thorough check for any security cameras. Jessica was made the designated hitter, much to her delight. As Wanda headed from the elevator to her car, Jessie approached from the other direction. The others watched from the shadows just to make sure she had no problems. She attached her silencer, buried her weapon in a pile of clothes, and appeared to be a college student carrying a load of dirty laundry home to her mom.
“Good morning, ma'am,” she said, displaying her youthful smile.
“Yeah, yeah,” came the grumbled reply.
A moment after they passed, Jessie dropped the clothes, turned and double-tapped two rounds into the back of Wanda's skull.
As she stood and watched the woman drop, she beamed a large grin and said “Yes! Yes!,” then began jumping for joy as though she had just won a big prize. The others came out from the shadows and congratulated her.
When it came time for the funeral, Renée felt compelled to satisfy her curiosity. She watched from a remote part of the cemetery as the mourners drove up. When the two daughters approached the grave site, both appeared to be six months pregnant. Her pleasure was equal to what Jessie's had been, and she went, “Yes! Yes!” She felt a surge of sexual gratification from the fact she had now been responsible for three new lives. With all the deaths that her career had brought, it seemed a unique way to compensate, and she looked forward to doing it yet again. She wondered how complicated the two families' lives would be because of it, and got a wicked rush just thinking about it.
About a week later, Jessica announced that she and Richard had grown so close through their correspondence, that she was going to go spend a year with him in Southeast Asia. Her interest wasn't really in the missionary work, but in all the possibilities that awaited her there with the accommodating, submissive people, the ransoms, the availability of weapons, the rapes and an assortment of other things. She had grown tired of Mikey, and when Laura found a buyer allowing them to double their investment, they sold the twins.
With her daughter leaving the country, Joanna lost interest in accommodating Renée. In order to keep Danny happy, she invited her sister Jenny to move in with them and continue the sexual relationship. Jenny readily accepted. This arrangement helped to drive a wedge between Danny and Renée. The split was compounded when he learned that the mother of his son had nearly been forced by Renée to crawl around in their yard naked, mooing and eating grass. He became livid.
When Laura decided to reconcile with her husband, Renée gave up the rental. It had been leased with one of her aliases, and she felt vulnerable remaining there knowing that the now-sold twins knew of its whereabouts. She and Ashley began having issues as to which one actually owned the other; she broke-off their relationship as well.
Sherry paid her debt to the group, continued to grow her business, and pondered requesting a similar hit on her fully insured hubby. Her special I.O.U. remained with her at all times and had Ashley's cell number written on the back. When Sherry persuaded her husband to interview for a live-in housekeeper, Ashley magically appeared and had an impressive reference. She agreed to another one year commitment.
Alone for the first time in years, Renée consolidated her assets and departed to spend a year touring the South Pacific.
Chapter 5
Thailand
Terror
Now in her mid-thirties, Renée had accumulated a multimillion dollar nest egg from her years as an assassin, and had been taking a year off to tour the South Pacific and its adjacent areas.
One day, her travels took her to a remote part of Thailand where she was staying in a lavish five-star hotel. It was an area known for its great surfing and abundance of marijuana. She was lying on her beachside hammock enjoying a rum-fruit drink, surrounded by the lush green jungle, mountainous hillsides, and the sounds of exotic birds. As she looked out on the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Thailand, she felt most serene.
Restless and bored with her lifestyle of the past year, her thoughts drifted back to earlier times. She missed the adrenaline highs. Theirs had been a close group of mercenary-assassins, every one of them had at one time or another had sexual relations with all the others. Each of the women was bisexual, a few with lesbian leanings, but all had gone their separate ways a year earlier due to the usual emotional conflicts such an intense occupation can create, and a minor internal power struggle. She sipped her drink, wondering what had become of them.
Suddenly, the tranquility was interrupted by a deafening burst of automatic gunfire. Renée instinctively sprang to her feet and saw a band of a dozen army-fatigued, masked terrorists rounding up the wealthy tourists, both couples and families. They motioned for her to join the assemblage.
The way they were masked gave her the impression they were Muslim. W
hen she heard them speaking what sounded like Arabic, she felt certain of it. Their style of instilling mass fear was similar to what her own group had used. The smallest of the group appeared to be their leader and approached her as she stood in the line of frightened hotel guests.
“I could gut cut you right now you rich American bitch, and no one would even care! You look like one of those western lesbians!” The voice seemed disguised.
The threatening character rummaged through Renée's belongings, took her room key and left. A few moments later, she saw her luggage being loaded onto the group's truck, no one else's. The menacing individual returned and walked behind them, screaming insults and threats, kicking their legs so that they each fell to their knees. This was Renée's first taste of being on the receiving end of terror, and she didn't like it. The sinister leader leaned down alongside her and whispered into her ear.
“Relax, Renée, it's me.”
“Me? Me who?”
“It's the kid, it's me Jessie, but keep quiet about it. Don't blow my cover!”
“No way,” she softly mumbled to herself, astonished. “No fucking way!”
Jessie was about fifteen years younger, had been in her group of assassins back in L.A., and had been her closest same-sex lover. Renée had been her mentor.
Once all the hotel guests were together, a half-dozen couples and families were separated from the others and loaded onto the cargo truck, Renée among them. At the last moment, she was shuffled into the front compartment with the leader and watched in amazement as Jessie pulled off the mask.
“What a rush, Renée! You're going to need more clothes than that bikini where we're going, so I packed your stuff. Those insects can get nasty out there, but we've got lots of screening.”
“I can't believe my eyes, hon! The last I heard, you'd hooked up with that missionary son of Laura's.”
“That didn't last long, but because of Richard, I got to meet all these guys. I organized them and they helped me get the weapons. They follow my instructions, and we share the spoils. I'm a desk clerk at that hotel. I do credit profiles on each guest to determine who might be worth a ransom. Since I'm sleeping with the assistant manager, he looks the other way whenever I do anything that looks suspicious. We pay some of the proceeds to the local powers-that-be to look the other way. I didn't recognize your alias on the registry and couldn't believe that was you on the hammock. I thought you were in the Fiji Islands.”
“I was for a while. I got bored.”
“A person can have a really good life here. You need to try it out. It's paradise. There's surfing and all the pot you want. The locals are so friendly, too, and totally accommodating sexually. The criminal norms are different though. There's way more rape and violence than we're used to. These guys prefer to rape in front of families, and sometimes they actually disembowel people!”
“Damn, Jessie, it sounds like you've gone over the edge. What have I unleashed on the world?” said Renée.
“I've always been a little crazy; it's just coming out more now. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, lover. Speaking of which, you look really nice in that tiny bikini,” she said, as she tenderly slid her fingers along the soft, nicely tanned flesh of Renée's thigh.
“It's been too long, kid.”
“I still remember how to show proper respect to certain elders,” she said with a suggestive smirk.
“Where are we going, Jess?” Renée asked, as the old cargo truck bounced along the bumpy gravel road.
“We have a makeshift camp hidden across the bay. I have my own little cabin, the others share quarters in a few other ones. They're mostly men. When we get there, our passengers will be unloaded. They'll all be relieved of their valuables, especially any diamond rings, and then told to strip just like we did with our victims back in the states. It's important psychologically, as you know, plus tons of fun. It's what you taught me, a girl has to have fun with her work, and I've passed that concept along to the others.”
One of her comrades passed her a lit joint he had just rolled. She took a puff, passed it along to Renée and continued, “Like I said, this group is more violent than ours was. They'll rape at least one of the women in front of everyone just for affect. Then I suspect that at least one of them will be killed. The ones we can't ransom, we sell into the sex slavery market or use for target practice, some of the teens we keep for our own village brothel. It is a very lucrative business here and much more commonplace than back home.”
“Isn't killing one of them like losing out on a nice ransom?”
“I look at it more as a loss-leader like at the grocery store. Experience has shown that it really motivates the others to pay-up the maximum.”
“I guess I'll need to adjust my thinking. I'm looking forward to the unloading. Is it safe to assume I won't be one of the ones raped?”
“Oh yes, you're safe as long as you're with me. In fact, I'll let you choose who gets raped if you'd like. I do suggest you change right away into fatigues though; the mosquitoes are huge. You'll be staying with me of course. Grab a sidearm from our cabin.”
“Sweet! Thanks, Jessie!”
They soon arrived at the compound and Renée felt much more comfortable once she had donned the fatigues and side arm. The new 'guests' were unloaded and lined up. An American expat named Gus gave them their orientation dialog.
“Listen-up, everybody. You're here for whatever ransom we can get for you. You will provide us with a list of all your assets and the people we can contact for help in liquidating those assets and delivering the proceeds to us. Each family will be scored on a point basis. You get points for the amount of assets you reveal and points for how cooperative you are with us. The family with the lowest number of points will suffer the consequences. You will address me as 'Master'. Are there any questions?”
Renée quietly asked Jessie, “Who's this Gus character?”
“I met Gus when I was with Richard and the other missionaries. He supplied my weed and we became close buds. He considers himself a master manipulator and came up with this intentionally-vague point system as a way to get our guests to want to please him.”
“Really? He sounds like my kind of mentor!”
“Do you see that helicopter over there hidden under the camouflage?”
“Yeah, what's with that? It looks old, Jessie.”
“It's Vietnam-vintage, an old Huey. Gus learned how to fly when he was in the military and we picked it up cheap from Army Surplus.”
“My guess is that you've had a few flight lessons,” speculated Renée.
“Yeah, for emergencies. I've never soloed. Anyway, it turned out both Gus and I had the hots for one of the missionary wives, so we hatched a plot to have her. We kidnapped her and her husband and left a ransom note saying we were part of the Islamic Mujahideen and would return them for a ransom. The same thing happened to another missionary couple the year before I got here. That's what gave us the inspiration and made it all that much more believable. It was all a hoax so that we could both have our way with the woman. As it turned out, everybody wanted a piece of her. All our foreign friends who learned our secret wanted to join whatever our cause was. It was humorous, but we built on it, renting her out for guns and followers. She was the catalyst that brought this hodgepodge together. Sadly, none of these guys even knew how to clean a weapon, many of which came to Thailand compliments of our own country's government. This group is mostly just a pot smoking bunch of sexual deviants willing to take big risks to make easy money. I broke up with Richard and disappeared, moving here full-time. It's like a house of cards waiting to collapse, but for now the money keeps rolling in, so we're riding the wave.”
“What happened to the couple?”
“The husband became annoying. He was more trouble than he was worth, so one day I executed him. I dropped him to his knees just like I did with this group back at the hotel, then I double-tapped two rounds into the back of his skull in front of everyone. It was similar to when I term
inated Wanda. It gave me instant credibility, and these guys have followed me ever since. The wife went nuts, so when the church paid her ransom, we let her go back to the states. Remember Wanda?” Jessie asked.
“Oh yeah. Speaking of her, did you know that Sherry and Ashley are together?
“No, must have happened after I left. Do tell.”
“Ashley needed a place to live when I shut down the house, so decided to do another stint as a submissive maid,” said Renée. “Sherry's husband is totally clueless as to what's going on between the two of them.”
“It's too bad you and Ashley couldn't work things out. My favorite memory was the night she pushed Johnny off the hi-rise balcony for us,” confessed Jessie. “Hey, I've got a satphone if you ever want to call her. Cell phones don't work here, but there's always a satellite overhead. I got her number off the back of that sex I.O.U. she gave Sherry.”
As Gus continued his indoctrination, his companions began gathering up the wedding rings and other valuables. When he informed them of the stripping requirement, one of the older European women prisoners began shouting profanities. A gunman punched her in the face. No one else voiced an objection.
“Oh, this is always one of the fun parts,” said Jessie, as everyone began undressing.
Things were proceeding too slowly, so one of the gunmen shot off a spurt of bullets into the ground in front of them. Clothes began coming off more quickly and getting gathered up. One of the family's teenage daughters was not participating.
“What's your name, honey?” Gus asked.
“Julie.”
“You're costing your family valuable points, Julie. Which parent do you want to see punished? We can shoot daddy or all rape mommy. Strip or find out which!”
She began to disrobe, but stopped halfway.
“Hurry, these men have itchy trigger fingers,” said Gus, “Show 'em tits and ass. Show us that sweet pussy!”