Cruise (16 page)

“My guess is that you were out for at least fifteen or twenty minutes, based on the time it took me to get back to the boat, change tanks and then come looking for you,” said Bibi.

“My computer indicated that I was on low air consumption, so my breathing must have slowed way down,” Janeen said. “And I had about three hundred pounds left when you and I finally surfaced. Sure glad you came back for me. I was starting to panic.”

“We never leave anyone behind,” Bibi said. “And that means Carol and Connie too,” she added.

“Are we going back to look for this dome?” one of the search team asked. “Just as we were running low on air, we found some indication of recent changes in the bottom cover.”

“Like what?” Bib asked.

“Looked like sand had run into some sort of crevasse or sinkhole. The plant growth was minimal, as though the bottom sand was new.”

“Okay. Georgia…it’s Georgia, right?”

“Yes ma’am,” the well-tanned and muscular lead diver said.

“You guys did a great job. Your response time was better then anything we trained for and you followed instructions, so you all get steak or lobster for dinner tonight, captain’s treat.” This comment brought five smiles from the SAR team who had, Bibi thought, done exceptionally well. If Bibi had failed to find Janeen, these well-trained divers probably would have, so that phase of the search and rescue plan worked well. The mystery was Carol and Connie and no one had answers to their disappearance.

“However,” Bibi said. “Let me think a bit about this. I’m not sure we just might want to get out of here and move further south. It’s really up to Mister Norquist and Captain Ingram.

“Mizz Lynx…ah...Bibi?” one of the team asked, somewhat hesitantly.

“It’s Bibi.”

“Okay. Bibi. I was carrying one of Mr. Norquist’s new experimental radiation detection monitors and I think I got some pretty interesting readings before we ended the search and surfaced.”

“Really? Was that in your report?”

“Yes, Ma…yes, Bibi,” the girl said.

“Was it when you were in the area that looked like disturbed bottom?”

“Yes, but I was getting faint signals from the time we entered the water.”

“Okay. You get down to the lab and see what the gadget recorded and then let me know. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Roz,” Bibi said. “Where are the helos right now?”

“Expanding their search radius. Helo One is due back for refueling in about ten minutes,” Roz said checking her watch.

“Can you double the lookouts and put a pair up with Night Vision Goggles up on the mast,” Bibi said.

“Done,” said Roz, making a quick note on her tablet.

“And make sure we stay well illuminated all night. I’d like to put out two boats around the clock in ever-expanding perimeters with a pattern moving down current, but retracing the same areas the helos covered,” Bibi added. “There is always the chance that they may have drifted too far from the boat and may still be in the water, although my guess right now is that they were picked up by the divers we saw and that they are somehow connected with the dome.”

“I’m on it,” Reinhold said, getting up and heading for the bridge.

The rest of the meeting broke up and Bibi went looking for Groff.

As she stepped into the crew mess for a juice drink, Bibi met another crewmember who looked out of breath and held up a message form envelope for her.

“For your eyes only,” the woman sputtered, trying to regain her breath.

“Thanks,” said Bibi, tearing open the envelope and reading the short sentences twice. “Shit,” she said, too loud. “Come with me,” she said and headed double time for the bridge.

***

“When was the last time anyone saw the twins?” Bibi asked, looking from one woman to the next as they stood around her in the radio room behind the bridge.

“They went ashore with Mrs. Norquist, but failed to log in or out on the manifest. The helo was recalled for the SAR mission and in the process, we lost track of the girls and her,” the Radio Comm Officer said quickly.

“So they got to town and then what?”

“Helo pilot says all three were met by the Royal Hotel car and she took off as soon as the chopper refueled.”

“What time was that?”

“Helo was off the ground at 1013 hours local,” said the RCO.

“And nothing further from any of them?”

“Zip. Nothing. We continue to try and the hotel says they checked in to their suite, changed and then left separately an hour later, around 1130. No one at the hotel has seen them since.”

Bibi nodded to everyone and stalked out of the radio shack, headed for her cabin. After the last few hours’ events and the electrical shock underwater, she needed to lie down for a moment and gather her thought. She vaguely wondered how all of these sudden disappearances added up. Before she got to her room, she thought she had a plan. It was crude, but she thought it would work.

Chapter Thirteen

Tanked

Jean Groff’s position in the tank went from impossible to intolerable. She screamed until she had no voice left, she pulled and tugged and the chains until her wrists were swollen and her neck ached. When they came and provided her with toilet relief and water plus a bit of nourishment, she begged to be released, chained any other way but on her knees. At one of these sessions, she apparently made her point and was astonished to feel her captor locking her ankle cuffs to the deck, attaching the front of her waist chain to the wall ahead of her where her collar chain already was attached and placing chains on either side of her waist and thus restricting any sideways movement. They slipped some sort of cushion under her bruised and numb knees and her hair, now a mess, was brushed and then plaited into a single braid that was completed with a steel ring at the bottom. The ring was mated to another short chain that went to her shackled elbows, forcing her head back even further and aiming her blinded eyes at the overhead.

I need to remind myself,
she thought in a detached, humorless way
, not to ask for any other favors.

Twice daily, as near as she could tell, she was fed, watered and provided with the opportunity to empty bowels and bladder. The combined sex and flogging continued, but not predictably. On one visit, whoever was doing her arrived with an extraordinarily large strap-on. The visitor changed Jean’s position enough to allow her to elevate her hips and rest on some sort of pillows, then ravaged her for the longest time, driving the rubber dong deeper and deeper, rotating her hips and sliding the thing in and out with maddeningly imperfect thrusts, only ceasing when Groff gave unquestionable truthful evidence of having had three different orgasms. The pattern was not predictable, but it was clear that for every sexual release Groff was forcibly driven to, she was beaten with equal energy. The tools of the torture trade varied from cane to cat to buggy whip to wooden paddle to a few lengths of rubber covered wire apparently attached at random to some sort of handle and yielded smartly so as to bring terrible, long term pain to the body parts to which it was applied. No part of her suffering body was spared. Jean spent hours wondering what the next session would bring. They had already exhausted her ass, thighs, tits and stomach and were now working on the more esoteric target such as the soles of her feet, her calves, the insides of her biceps and her tongue. This latter torture was something out of the inquisition, as far as Groff could imagine. They removed her gag, attached a clamp to the tip of her tongue and then proceeded to slowly flog the extended organ with blows from a tiny rendition of a cat-o-nine-tails, but which used strands of wire instead of leather.

The torture/sex routine took on, as Groff recognized when she was conscious, the pleasure/pain, temptation/reward character that she had read about years ago. It left her wondering if, in time, she would come to seek the torment in order to get the orgasmic reward. It was a worthwhile mental debate and Groff devoted many hours to mentally hashing over the possibilities, especially in terms of how long one could endure this sort of abuse before she went around the bend and didn’t care one way or the other what was done to her.

After the first day or so, they switched her position enough to provide some relief to her knees and legs, but she was always chained in a way that allowed no real motion and always held so that some sort of sexual activity could be carried out without changing her pose. Eventually, after all of the obvious violations were done, her captors, none of whom she could identify, became increasingly more creative and demanding of her. One time, she was unchained from her seated position on a steel bench and forced to her knees, then fitted with a head harness and gag bit in her mouth. Real leather reins were attached to the bridle and a long hair tail was jammed up her ass and held there with a harness that encompassed her hips and waist while driving a similar plug up her cunt. Her ankles remained shackled and her wrists were cuffed with about a foot of chain between them. Then she was driven around the circular interior of the tank, whipped on her tits and ass for any infraction of the rules that were dictated as she trotted, walked and galloped about, the long tail flying in the breeze created by the whips.

“I think she will make an excellent draft pony, don’t you?” her normally silent tormentor said to whoever else was in the tank with them.”

***

Not far away, but a hundred feet beneath the sea’s surface, the occupants of Habitat Three gathered in the day’s catch. They were a bit disappointed that they had failed to snag all four of the Altuna’s lovely divers, but satisfied for the moment with the two blond crew members who were easily captured when the undersea dome fired its electrical charge and stunned Bibi and Janeen. The abduction went easily with two men wearing closed circuit, rebreather diving rigs coming up behind the pair of young women, using the underwater equivalent of tasers on both of them, then dragging them to the well-hidden entrance air lock of the Habitat. Stripped of their gear and quickly bound and gagged, the Altuna crew women revived only to find themselves in the hands of several men who treated them as chattel and handled them like sides of beef. While Bibi and Janeen lay dazed a few hundred meters away, the operators of the Habitat set about preparing their new acquisitions.

Chapter Fourteen

Prelude to Disaster

By now, Bibi was certain that something bad had happened to Groff. Despite the assurances of Reinholt that she was probably ashore and carrying out some sort of confidential business as she had hinted at with Norquist, the multiple disappearances from the yacht were adding up in Bibi’s mind as cause for alarm. Two meetings with the ship’s officers yielded little more than an agreement not to leave the area and to mount double security on all watches. At Bibi’s continued insistence, all officers now were armed and wore body armor. All shore trips were stopped, at least until there was some explanation as to where the missing people might be. At one point, Bibi asked Norquist if she could speak privately with him and they went to his small office below the wheelhouse.

“Sir,” Bibi began, standing with her back to the door. “I think it may be time to call in the authorities. We have at least six people missing, including your wife, two young guests, two crewmembers and Jean Groff, and I don’t see what else we can do here.”

Norquist appeared shocked to hear, perhaps for the first time, the numerical realities. “There is nothing any local authorities can do and I will not have Interpol, the local nitwit cops or, God forbid, any half-assed American government agencies involved in this. Since our registry is Dutch, there really is no agency with any jurisdiction unless we put into one of these flea-bag ports. I’m sure that you share my distaste for bringing some local cops on board.”

“I agree. But can we at least carry out a total on-board search?”

“What do you mean? That has already been done. Twice.”

“What about the aft storage spaces behind and below the hanger deck? I am still unable to gain access to those areas.”

“Unsafe and unnecessary,” Norquist said.

“I suspect otherwise. Why won’t you tell me what is going on back there? There’s a great deal of space unaccounted for and its certainly not all fuel storage.”

Norquist looked pained, sitting at his desk, looking out at the calm sea through the large rectangular window.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Here’s the deal. The spaces aft are used, from time to time, for highly secret research work. I have government contracts that specify who can have access to those areas. Unfortunately, you were not on the list.

“Can you tell me what you are working on?” Bibi asked, sounding exasperated and annoyed that her employer with held information critical to the yacht’s safety.

Just then, the phone on his desk buzzed. Norquist answered it, listened and then, looking pale, handed it to Bibi. It was Roz.

“Bibi, against my orders, the helo pilot took the Norquist girls ashore about fifteen minutes ago, dropped them off and is headed back. She just radioed in, saying she was sorry, but the girls pulled rank on her and she felt it best to do as they ordered and then report it.”

“Crap!” said Bibi. “Okay. Ground both choppers until either you or I authorize further flights. That means everyone, including Mr. Norquist and The Captain. Got that?” She ignored Roz’s sputtering on the phone and hung up.

“Your daughters took one copter to town. Why I don’t know, but now we have two more potential missing persons,” Bibi said as she plopped herself into a chair and tried to figure exactly what was going on. “Can you quickly tell me what the lab was or is working on? Is it something that someone might know about and want to get in exchange for these missing women?”

“Well,” said Norquist. “Nothing at the moment. I have other things on my mind and the area is locked and sealed. Only Captain Ingram and I have the entry codes. Among other things, I have perfected a highly effective silencer for four-cycle outboard engines, which can easily be installed on any small boat. There is also an underwater radiation detector, some interesting tracking devices and a new weapons system that may be of interest even to you. But there is no activity in the lab area on this cruise and everything there is well secured. Besides, nothing there would merit kidnapping or any sort of hostile threat to us or the yacht.”