Those in Peril (Unlocked) (52 page)

Kamal was sitting forward in the easy chair stroking his curling beard and watching with fascination as his men prepared Nastiya for her punishment. From time to time he gave an order on how to proceed, and his men quickly obeyed. Under the overhead lights Nastiya’s body was pale and sleekly muscled. Her hair was tangled around her face and her lips were swollen, and one of her eyes was half-closed, bruised and puffed up where Kamal had struck her. She seemed very young and fragile in comparison to the men standing over her. They were laughing and joking with each other, aroused by her nudity. The one who had cut away her clothing reached down and squeezed her breast, then tweaked her nipple and pulled it out, stretching it to the limit of her skin’s elasticity. The others guffawed and then one by one they each took their turn to fondle and pinch her breasts. They howled with merriment as she lay quiescent in the grip of the two men restraining her. Her tormentors were egging each other on, clowning and trying to outdo each other. One of them took her nipple between his filthy fingernails. He pinched her so cruelly that a drop of blood welled up from the wound. He licked the blood off his fingers to the delight of his companions. Then another reached down to her pubic bush and seized one of the golden curls. With a savage jerk he pulled out a tuft, and sniffed it as though it were a bouquet of flowers. Then he passed it around for the others to savour. Nastiya did not move or cry out.

‘She can do that,’ Paddy whispered. ‘Self-hypnosis. She can shut out the pain.’

‘This is horrible,’ Hazel said. ‘I never bargained for this. I am totally to blame.’

‘No!’ Hector intervened. ‘Not you. It’s Kamal and Adam who are to blame. But there will soon be a reckoning.’

At a sharp command from Kamal the men who were gathered around Nastiya drew back and Kamal leaned forward and showed her his injured hand.

‘Listen to me, you Christian whore. I am going to punish you for the wound you have inflicted on me. Every one of my men will rip into your filthy body and spurt you full of good Muslim sperm. You are going to bleed, whore. You are going to cry for my mercy, you dirty sow.’ Nastiya did not look at him. He eyes were focused far away and her expression was calm and remote.

‘She is preparing herself to act,’ Paddy said almost under his breath. On the screen they saw that Kamal was becoming angry and frustrated at her isolated calm. He turned to his men with blazing eyes.

‘Which of you will be the first to ride this filly?’ he shouted.

‘Bayhas, the lion!’ they shouted. ‘Bayhas of the mighty pole. He was the first to mount this whore’s daughter at the Oasis. He must be first to plough the Mother Whore.’ They pushed Bayhas forward. He chuckled and opened the front of his trousers and brought out his monstrous sexual organ. It stiffened and extended to its full length as he tugged and massaged it.

‘Hold the she-dog,’ he ordered the men around her. ‘She will grow mad with lust when she feels this thing going into her. Open her legs.’ The men on each side of the table pulled her thighs roughly apart, and Bayhas stepped between them. He spat in his hand and anointed the head of his penis with the saliva.

‘I have to stop this,’ Hazel burst out. ‘We have to go in and bring her out of there.’

‘Wait! You cannot stop the war with the first casualty,’ Hector told her.

‘Nastiya is not a soldier.’ Hazel was angry.

‘Oh, yes she is,’ Paddy contradicted her. ‘She would never forgive you if you pulled her out now. This is what she is trained for. This is her trade. Her profession. Watch her!’ He pointed to the screen. Bayhas, the lion, was rubbing his lubricated penis along the opening of her sex, shifting his feet, steadying himself for the first thrust into her. Suddenly Nastiya’s lithe body jack-knifed under him. She broke the grip that the two Arabs had on her ankles. Her knees folded back over her shoulders with seemingly effortless grace, then drove forward again with such power that they seemed to blur. Her naked heels smashed into the base of Bayhas’s pubis. Over the microphones they clearly heard his pelvic bone break, cracking at the juncture of its symphysis into its two separate halves. His engorged penis was caught between Nastiya’s heels and the sharp leading edge of his own pelvic girdle. It was crushed by the force of the blow and his corpora cavernosa, the blood-holding chambers of the penis, were ruptured so that as he was hurled backwards against the bulkhead his penis squirted blood instead of semen. He wailed as his knees buckled under him and he sagged down the bulkhead and fell onto the deck clutching his damaged organs.

Nastiya jack-knifed her body again but this time each of her legs hooked around the necks of the two men holding her shoulders down. Using her own momentum and the strength of those long athletic legs she swung forward again and hurled the men across the cabin as though they were stones from a catapult. They too crashed into the bulkhead. One of them went into it head-first and the front of his skull was stoved in. The other managed to throw up one arm to protect his face, but his elbow bore the brunt of the impact and the joint splintered. He rolled on the deck whimpering, and calling on his God for mercy.

Nastiya jack-knifed yet again and flipped forward onto her feet in perfect balance. She stooped over the body of the dead man and still with her wrists tied together she drew the dagger from the belt of the sprawling corpse and whirled around to face the charge of the other guards. She slashed the first of them across the belly and when he doubled over to try and prevent his innards bulging out of the long wound, she used the silver and rhinoceros-horn hilt of the dagger like a hammer into the base of his skull. He was dead before he sprawled on the deck. One of the other guards had come up behind her, urged on by Kamal’s roars of rage. Nastiya did not turn to face him, but she shot out a backward mule kick that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back so violently that the vertebrae in his neck were crushed and he flopped down onto the deck like a discarded shirt. His comrades jammed in the doorway in their eagerness to escape from the suite.

With the dagger still clutched in her tied hands, Nastiya leapt over the first corpse and went for Kamal. He saw her coming and he sprang out of the chair, turned around and ran. He was the last man through the door. As he reached it Nastiya stabbed the point of the dagger through his tight jump-suit pants into his buttocks. With another howl of pain and rage he hurled himself through the open doorway and one of his men slammed the door shut behind him. Nastiya slid the lock on the door across, then came back into the salon, stepping daintily over the corpses, and perched on the edge of the table. She wedged the dagger between her knees, slipped the point of the blade under the cable tie and with one quick upward jerk of her bound wrists cut through the tough nylon. When her bonds fell away she massaged the welts around her wrists and then stood up and came towards where she knew the camera was placed. She stood before it stark naked and unashamed and she looked up at the watchers in the situation room in the depths of the ship. Her expression was calm and unfathomable. Then she drooped one eyelid in a conspiratorial wink before she smiled. The smile was angelic and serene as though she were totally uninvolved with the dead men scattered around the cabin deck like cuttings from a flowerbed made by a demented gardener.

Through all this the watchers in the situation room sat in astounded silence. At last Hazel found her voice.

‘What is she doing now?’ she asked as Nastiya turned her attention to the air-conditioning control panel on the bulkhead beside the door.

‘She’s turning down the temperature as far as it will go,’ Paddy explained.

‘Why would she do that?’ Hazel was puzzled.

‘She is very fastidious,’ Paddy said in tones of high approbation. ‘I expect she doesn’t want the corpses to start stinking, not if she has to share the suite with them.’

‘And I was fretting myself into a nervous breakdown over her safety!’ Hazel laughed, almost hysterical with relief. ‘She is unique!’

‘Isn’t she just perfect,’ Paddy agreed. ‘I was hesitating, but after that little performance I am seriously going to ask her to be my wife.’

Nastiya turned away from the air-conditioning controls and sauntered through to the bedroom of the suite, her buttocks oscillating like a pair of silk bags full of live serpents.

‘God! She is just so cute,’ Dave Imbiss said in tones of near-religious awe.

‘Much too cute for you, my lad,’ Paddy asserted. ‘In future when you look at her, kindly keep your eyes firmly closed.’

As Nastiya entered the bedroom the next camera picked up her image again. She locked the door behind her and went to the vanity. She seated herself in front of the mirror and with one of Hazel’s brushes she rearranged the hair style that Kamal had disturbed. When she was satisfied with her hair she powdered over her facial bruises, and helped herself to Hazel’s Chanel lipstick and perfume. She was playing up to her hidden audience, fully aware that all their eyes were upon her. She stood up and went through into the walk-in wardrobe at the far end of the cabin. Unhurriedly she browsed through the trays of Hazel’s underwear, and at last decided on a matching set of Janet Reger panties and bra in oyster silk and Venetian lace. She held the panties across her lower body and looked up at the camera with her golden head cocked on one side, obviously seeking approval of her choice. They could not break silence to applaud her, but Dave put two fingers in his mouth and gave an almost inaudible wolf whistle.

‘Perfect! I couldn’t have made a better choice myself,’ Hazel murmured softly. Almost as though she were able to hear them, Nastiya smiled again.

O
ne of the units in the electronic navigation array on top of the mast above the
Golden Goose
’s bridge contained a link to the situation room in the covert area. The operator in the bowels of the ship was able to monitor the radar and Global Positioning System. In the situation room they were as well advised of the ship’s progress as were the men on the bridge.

An air of tension pervaded the entire covert area. The men spoke hardly at all and when they did it was in stage whispers. Mostly they passed the time checking and preparing their equipment: honing the edges on their trench knives, unloading the ammunition clips then polishing and lubricating each separate round to feed smoothly into the breach, cleaning the rifle bores until they gleamed and adjusting the trigger release until it was sweet and light as a maiden’s sigh. Hector and his officers maintained their rapt attention in the situation room, monitoring the navigation displays and the CCTV screens.

Vincent Woodward was still locked in one of the smaller cabins on the same level as the owner’s suite. His wrists were pinioned with cable ties and two heavily armed guards sat on the narrow bunk and covered him with their AK-47s. Another three guards were posted outside the cabin door. Twice during the day Kamal came down from the bridge to vent his choler on Vincent. He started by spitting on him and calling down the wrath of Allah on his filthy pagan head for having assassinated his father and his brothers, then he put the boot into him again, aiming for his belly and crotch. Vincent doubled himself into a ball to guard his vitals and he kept rolling to ride the main force of the blows. When at last Kamal tired he grabbed an AK from one of the guards who were delightedly following the performance, and finished the beating with two or three cracks with the steel-shod butt of the rifle aimed at Vincent’s head. However, Kamal’s damaged hand was so painful that the blows lacked real power. Vincent easily managed to deflect their main impact.

‘Vincent is earning his ten thousand dollars,’ David commented.

‘I shall have to add a bonus to his pay cheque for services far beyond the call of duty,’ said Hazel, shaken by the savagery of Kamal’s temper.

‘Nonsense!’ Paddy demurred. ‘For Vic a little tickle up like that’s no more onerous than a kiss from an ugly wench.’ He thought about it for a moment, then added, ‘He would probably prefer the beating to the ugly girl.’

There were another five men guarding the door to Nastiya’s cabin. None of them had dared to enter the salon where the corpses of their comrades still lay. They had dead-locked the door and piled heavy furniture against it to protect themselves. Their trepidation was undisguised. They kept as far back from the barricaded door as the bounds of the cabin allowed and never took their eyes off it. With fingers on triggers, they were poised to repel another sudden whirlwind of kicks, blows and snapping teeth.

Kamal emerged from the opposite cabin where he had been beating up Vincent and now he turned on his own men, haranguing them furiously.