Cruise (15 page)

The woman under her slid away, back and around Groff’s chained ankles to pose in front of her with hands grasping her buttocks, squeezing and massaging the rounded hillocks while the mouth went to the nipples, sucking them with the same unbridled enthusiasm as it had manipulated her pussy. Finally it ended. The attacker pulled away. Both sweat-soaked bodies cooled and slackened. Groff heard the rustle of clothing, the sound of soft-soled deck shoes on the tank’s floor and then, suddenly, with no warning, the cane sung through the air and struck her hanging breasts a terrible blow, driven with all the strength of the woman who had just brought Groff the strongest sexual satisfaction she ever experienced. The initial blow was such a shock, so unexpected, that Groff couldn’t even muster a scream. When the cane landed the second time on the inside of her spread left thigh, a real scream penetrated the gag, followed quickly by another as the cane sought and found the right inner thigh, where only a few moments before, the woman had been nestled under her, sucking and kissing her ripe, swollen cunt. The fourth strike went across her ass and the final, fifth stroke came upwards into her spread and leaking crotch. Groff screamed and screamed, pulling at the chains, scaring her ankles and wrists as she attempted to stretch what would not stretch, pull free what was locked to the deck, anything to escape the terrible cane blows. In the background, she heard the cane drop to the deck, the hatch open and shut and the silence of the tank return as she tried to stop her ragged breathing, her buckets of tears and the awful pain in her thighs, tits and crotch.

Hours later, someone else entered the tank, placed a kind of bucket between her legs and told her to urinate and, if she wanted to, evacuate her bowels. Groff, rationalizing that there was nothing else to do, performed both functions, was a bit surprised to have her ass and crotch cleaned up expertly and with a gentle touch that apparently recognized the abuse she recently suffered.

Her gag was removed and she was given water, as much as she was able to drink.

“May I speak,” she croaked after swallowing what was probably more than a liter of water.

“What?” was the response. She did not recognize the voice.

“Why?”

“You went snooping. Snoops get this.”

“How long?”

“Until you learn.”

“More of the same?”

“Maybe. That’s all. Open up.”

Groff opened her mouth. The rubber prong gag slid in and was sealed with the facial panel and head harness. She felt pain in her right nipple as something pinched it hard and then tugged it downward. The same thing happened to the other nipple and she was left kneeling with the hard metal clips and their attached weights hanging from her nipples. The woman left the tank and locked the hatch. Groff shook her chains, jiggling the weights on her breasts and tried to find a way to ease the pain in her knees and wondered what the Hell was going on.

Chapter Twelve

Scuba Hunt

“Anyone here want to dive this morning?” Janeen bubbled at the breakfast table in the master dining suite. Altuna was anchored in deep water some ten miles down the coast of a small island. The sun was bright and it was a fine day for fishing or diving or just lying in the sun.

“Why not see if Bibi wants to go with you?” her sister said without looking up from her fruit and yogurt. “I’ll bet she has gills under that great head of hair.”

“You don’t want to go with me?” Janeen asked.

“I want to brush up on my tan in some hard to get to places,” Phillipa laughed. “You know. Being out on the wheelhouse deck beats the tanning booth by far. Besides, that weird girl who has been hanging onto Karen Steiner is dying to help me with my sun tan lotion…”

“Oh great,” said Janeen. “You had better watch out. She’s going to be trouble. Where did she come from anyway?”

“Ingram says she’s her niece and she took her on as a cook’s helper to appease her brother, but I think she had to get out of town and this was the fastest way to leave Miami.”

“Are you sure about that,” her mother asked, casually. “I heard she was an excellent pastry chef and had just finished school at Florida Culinary.”

“Could be both…” Janeen said, getting up from the table and going to a phone on the sideboard. She pressed three buttons and spoke. “Bibi? It’s Janeen. Would you like to join me on a reef dive this morning, before the sun gets too high and hot? I have a good site mapped out and the Fast Boat is loaded and ready to go.’ She paused and then added happily, “Okay. Great. I’ll meet you at the swim platform at ten.”

“Bibi agreed?” her father asked.

“Yup. She said she’s all for it. She suggested that we invite Carol and Connie as well. They are both Dive Masters and usually chaperone the off boat dives.”

“Fine with me,” said Norquist. “As long as they are not needed elsewhere.”

“Right. We’ll take Fast Boat and get Donna to drive, if that’s okay with you. She’s good company, drives really well and also swims like a fish. She has her Dive Master’s card too and a lot of other ratings, so we’ll be fine.”

“Watch the weather and make sure you check the currents,” her father added, picking up the morning faxes and smiling at his older daughter. “And please wear the waterproof transponders I am still testing. Donna knows how to calibrate them and track you.”“Yes, Daddy. We’ll wear them. If they end up attracting sharks, I’ll let you know.”

By ten fifteen, the highly modified Hinckley Picnic Boat named Fast Boat launched from the starboard side and took off with five gorgeous women aboard. They headed for a waypoint on the chart and double checked their position with the boat’s multiple GPS and sat nav systems. In less than twenty minutes they were on the site.

“Max depth here is eighty to ninety feet and there’s lots of fish, so let’s just cruise and see what’s around for the first tank,” Janeen said as they suited up with one mil wetsuit tops, single 89 Cubic Foot tanks with 38 percent oxygen and separate, detachable alternate air sources, (AAS).

“Janeen and I will buddy up,” Bibi said. “You, Carol and Connie, run the westerly course. That way, if one pair gets caught in the current, the other will be closer to the boat,” she suggested. Everyone agreed.

“There’s almost no current here, but I’d suggest you swim at about one hundred eighty degrees magnetic, towards that island with the light tower, and beep me in forty five minutes,” Donna said. “I’ll look for you between here and there. Any problem, fire the sausages.”

“Right,” echoed the four divers and they back-flipped over the side.

The water was warm and calm. Bibi and Janeen waved to Carol and Connie and then headed slowly down the anchor line, took a bearing on their compasses and finned off, cruising about five feet over the pristine, sandy bottom. Schools of tropical fish sparkled over and around them and they both kept close tabs on each other in good buddy diver discipline. At one point, Bibi noticed something in her peripheral vision and tapped Janeen on the tank, pointing to the right. Both women changed direction and swam slowly towards what looked like a silver dome mostly covered by the sand. They bled off a bit of buoyancy from their BC’s and settled lightly on the sand bottom next to the dome, amazed to find anything so obviously manmade out here in the middle of nowhere.

The electric charge seemed to leap from the side of the dome and sent twin bolts of lightning towards both women. Janeen, who was slightly closer, received the full effect of the strike and crumbled to the bottom. Bibi, also taken by surprise, but further away, saw a flash and then blackness as she felt herself slowly settling down onto the sand. Desperately trying to stay conscious, she squeezed her auto inflator lightly and then passed out. In what seemed like seconds later, when she awoke, she was somewhere between the bottom and the surface, still rising in a controlled slow ascent. In another few seconds, she surfaced and immediately checked around her. The boat was not in sight, but her head ached from the shock and the bright sunlight hurt her eyes as she tried to focus and figure out exactly what had just happened. Looking for Janeen and then for a landmark, Bibi checked her dive computer and noted that she had apparently been unconscious long enough to make a proper slow ascent. Her depth gauge said she had been at 40 feet and then risen slowly. Her air supply, displayed on the same LCD face of her computer, said she was down to a bit more than 500 psi of compressed air. She pulled the inflation lanyard on her emergency sausage and heard the CO2 cartridge fire and inflate the six-foot long, day glow orange tube. If her mental calculation was correct, Fast Boat was about a mile away, down wind. Bibi continued to look around for any sign of Janeen, and then started swimming slowly towards the boat.

Donna, sitting on the foredeck with binoculars next to her, saw the sausage and immediately started the engines, winched in the anchor and headed for Bibi’s signal.

She shut down as they neared each other, turning the stern towards Bibi and then helping her up the boarding ladder.

“Where’s Janeen,” Donna shouted as Bibi shrugged out of her BC and put the near empty tank carefully on the deck. “Where are the others?”

“Call the ship,” Bibi said breathlessly. “Tell them we have a class one emergency and to come at once. See if they have any track on where Janeen is, using the transponders we’re wearing.”

“Okay. What else?’

“Have them launch the helos and the submersible and be ready to get a search team of divers at this long/lat ASAP. We need to cover this area and East of here.”

“What happened?” Donna pressed.

“Make the call. I’ll tell you in a minute. I need a new tank.”

Bibi was back in the water in less than ten minutes, went directly to the bottom and then began to search for the dome. Before going back over the side, she told Donna what had happened and gave her as many details as she could about the dive. It took her five precious minutes to find the silver dome again and this time, she slowly circled at a distance, staying close to the bottom and keeping her profile as small as possible. On the second time around the circumference, Bibi stopped and allowed herself to settle into the sandy bottom, angled directly at the dome and presenting a very small target if anyone was watching the perimeter. Her trail of bubbles worried her most because other than holding her breath, there was nothing she could do about the constant stream of exhaled air rising back to the surface, marking her location precisely. On the far side of the dome, about fifty meters away, she saw two divers swimming at about ten feet off the bottom, apparently looking for something. Bibi assumed that they either didn’t see her bubble stream or ignored it, thinking it was coming from the dome. They were far enough away so that Bibi was unable to tell what they were doing, but she was certain that they weren’t Janeen or the other pair. Bibi decided to just watch and see what was going on, hoping that reinforcements from the yacht would arrive soon. Meanwhile, she continued to scan the handheld Diver Location Monitor, DLM, looking for a blip that would respond to Janeen’s coded transponder signature.

Suddenly, the LCD display on her wrist blinked brightly and then, as she studied it, there was a tap on her shoulder. Bibi kicked her speed fins hard and rolled away to the left, away from the touch, rotating her body and reaching for her defensive knife. Before the blade cleared the sheath, she realized that it was Janeen, hovering just a few inches off the sandy bottom and looking a bit dazed. Bibi smiled enough to allow a bit of salt water to enter around her mouthpiece, touched Janeen on her head, then used two fingers to indicate her eyes and then pointed to the two divers now nearly a hundred yards away. She asked if Janeen was OK using the standard diver hand signals, and getting the donut sign, indicated that they should move away in the opposite direction of the dome and the divers. They swam slowly for another hundred meters and then headed for the surface, stopping for what was probably an unnecessary decom stop at 15 feet, and then breaking the surface. Taking out her mouthpiece, Bibi asked Janeen if she was all right. The girl shook her head and Bibi reached over and added more air to the girl’s buoyancy compensator vest, lifting Janeen’s head a bit higher in the water so she could breathe without the regulator. Then Bibi inflated Janeen’s rescue sausage, which was another bright orange, six-foot long inflatable tube. It stood straight up in the water and in seconds, they saw the sun reflected flash of the Fast Boat’s windshield and heard the distant whine of the Bell helo heading for them. Donna got there fast and first, waving the helo off as she headed to pick them up.

Pulling alongside the two divers, Donna killed the jet drives and helped get Janeen aboard, all the while telling them that help from Altuna was on the way.

“You got radio contact? Who’s running the team?” Bibi shouted, still in the water.

“Yes and I’m not sure. Apparently Groff wasn’t responding.”

“Tell them to go to your anchor waypoint and dive in a spread out, in- line pattern, looking for two divers in yellow and blue wetsuits. Tell them to avoid getting close to the dome, but we want those divers. Any sign of C&C?”

“No. Nothing. You can get aboard okay?”

“Yes. Make the call.”

Two hours later, all rescue divers were back aboard the yacht, but Carol and Connie were still missing and Bibi was putting together a more intensive search plan. Complicating matters was the fact that Groff was still nowhere to be found. Bibi, concerned about this, but knowing that Jean was capable of handling herself, managed a debriefing for the group. She learned nothing more than she already knew. The search parties had scoured the area and found neither divers nor dome and then returned. The submarine had ranged further with equally negative results.

“What I can’t understand is what happened to the dome. We all saw it and now it’s vanished,” Janeen said. As soon as Fast Boat returned her to the yacht, she went to the medical clinic, was checked out by the ship’s physician and then headed for the briefing room. She could add nothing to Bibi’s information, saying only that she felt the electrical shock, passed out, but retained her mouthpiece and awoke lying on the bottom, thirty meters or so from where she saw and met Bibi.