Cruise (19 page)

All members of the shore party were lightly armed, looking like casual tourists from a cruise ship and carrying the issue Colt .45 cal automatics in soft holsters behind their back. All also carried in their day packs Microtech OTF automatic knives and specially designed, retractable batons in sheaths on a concealed harness. They all wore low profile earpieces and mikes for their two-way radio contact with both the yacht’s control room and each other. Once ashore, they split into two teams. Bibi’s team headed for Ann Norquist’s last known location at the Royal Hotel. The second team remained in reserve on Fast Boat II, their launch, two minutes away from the city wharf, on call if needed. Team two was more heavily armed and equipped with .223 cal AUG automatic rifles, multi-purpose tools, two grenades each and all wore level III body armor under their tourist-style clothing. On the way to the hotel, Bibi suddenly spotted a woman she was sure was an Altuna crewmember, Naomi, out of uniform, heading into a bar. Bibi made a detour into the bar, surprising the woman and Joan, her female companion. Bibi’s and her partner grabbed both women and escorted them out of the bar. They went down a narrow street as a tight foursome with .45s pressed against the two women’s back, partly hidden by their loose clothing, took an alleyway for a block and forced entry into a small, white stone house that Bibi had been told was used as a safe house in times of hurricanes. They broke in and went to the basement where the two women from the bar were interrogated. When no reasonable answers were forthcoming, the pair was swiftly stripped, bound and gagged. It soon became clear that this duo had participated in the abduction of the five Altuna women from the hotel and had been celebrating their new monetary gains. Bibi had her teammate take one of the girls to another room where they could not be heard. She stayed with Naomi. Thus, two simultaneous interrogations took place.

“You two have about a minute before we get intense,” Bibi said to Naomi. “We don’t have time to be subtle or wait until you feel like talking, so we are going to do things that will hurt…a lot, and you will tell us quickly, so let’s hear it now,” said Bibi, holding her face within an inch of the woman’s face, the double-edged dagger blade of the Microtech OTF at her throat.

Naomi whined behind the gag, shaking her head up and down, indicating that she would cooperate. The gag was removed and she began babbling so fast that Bibi had to make her slow down and speak slowly.

“We didn’t know. We didn’t know,” Naomi stuttered, her face red and swollen from Bibi’s initial slapping.

“Where are they?” Bibi said. She continued the questioning, afraid that perhaps these two runaways really didn’t know anything.

***

Back on Altuna, Hermann paid Marsha Clark, the security officer, a visit, bringing along a small picnic box with an assortment of delicacies and two splits of red wine.

“Oh yum, Hermann,” Marsha said happily as she tasted the warm muffins and Hermann opened the wine. “Aren’t you having any?”

“I eat too much in the galley. This is for you,” Hermann replied, smiling brightly.

“Well, I shouldn’t drink too much. I have the aft duty station tonight and I can’t be staggering around back there, even if things are quiet.

“You’ll be fine. Keep the rest of this in your fridge and have it when you get off duty,” Hermann suggested.

“Oh, I will, but its soooo good.”

They sat in Clark’s small cabin, chatting, with Clark drinking wine too fast and nibbling on the pate and shrimp until suddenly she stood up, grabbed her throat and fell over on the bunk gurgling and then was silent.

Hermann checked her pulse, found none and chuckled. “Guess you just can’t tolerate adulterated alcohol, Honey,” he said, carefully packing up the remnants of the meal, wiping down the places he had touched and departing the cabin silently. “Time to get moving,” he said to himself as he headed aft and upward.

Chapter Eighteen

Attack

The two rigid-hulled inflatable boats, RIBs, each powered by twin Yamaha, four stroke, outboard engines, approached slowly, one on each side of the yacht’s wake. They were low craft and ran without lights. On board each were five men, well-armed with AK-47’s and handguns. One man on each craft also carried a Taser weapon and one had a PBG rocket-launcher. Altuna was making just over ten knots through the water and as the evening security lookouts and guards, minus Clark, changed shifts, there was a short interval when there was no one watching the boat’s wake astern. In those few minutes, the trailing boats sped up and came up under the yacht’s broad stern, the first one putting four armed men on the retractable swim platform and then drawing away while the second boat did the same. No one on Altuna saw or heard them…until it was too late.

Chapter Nineteen

Coffee Bound

Both Norquist daughters were so tightly tied that they were unable to move more than their fingers and toes. Still clad in their short shorts and T-shirt tops, the girls were bound with multiple restraints and fastened between the vertical bars of what had been a cell in an old Dutch prison in an abandoned coastal fortress on the island. Designated a National Park and historic site, the fenced and walled fortress remained more or less derelict for decades because no money was available to restore it or make it safe for tourists. There weren’t even any legal caretakers. The men who abducted the Norquist girls lived secretly in underground chambers and worked out of the old fortress. They were seen by the locals as both dangerous and deranged. Everyone made a habit of allowing them a wide berth when they were in town and making every effort to avoid them in the countryside.

Two pair of handcuffs now held their hands overhead on a sturdy iron water pipe and their ankles were wrapped with more of the same twine that was in their mouths. Tears and cries from the two went ignored as their captors bound their legs above the knee and tied their elbows together in front of their heads. Old coffee bags went over their heads and were loosely tied around their necks. The terrified girls were quickly silenced by Tonal, one of the kidnapers, who told them that if they continued to make noise, he would slit their pretty throats. The gagged screaming stopped. For an hour or more, they were left hanging from the overhead pipe, quietly sobbing. When Tonal returned, he again placed the knife to their throats, telling them to stay quiet while he “adjusted” their restraints, which he did with great care and attention to young asses, breasts and neatly trimmed crotches.

Three other men were busy in the next old prison cell with the Johnson Twins, abusing and taunting them while they hung by their slim wrists from overhead chains. None of the five knew where the others were being kept and the kidnappers made sure that Ann remained separated from her daughters and the Johnson twins.

Tonal took Gail down from the pipe first, recuffing her wrists behind her and laying her on the cool stone floor of the old prison cell. He then dumped a canvas bag of chain and locks next to the girl and began to bind her with the heavy steel chain. He began with a double length around her ankles, wrapping the links tight and then increasing the tension further by placing a large brass lock between her ankles and essentially cinching the chain. Janeen cried into her gag, the coffee bag hood still over her head. Tonal ignored her and placed a second length of chain around her legs just above the knee, doubled it and cinched it with difficulty so that her knees were pressed together and unable to flex at all. A second similar chain wrap went just above her slim calves, below the knee.

Tonal’s rough hands wandered a bit into the warm, damp apex between the girls clenched thighs, wrapping chain around the upper legs and then cinching it snug with a short chain joining the wraps, just below her sex. Janeen cried harder and Tonal slapped her partly exposed ass several times until she stopped the wailing. He rolled the girl onto her stomach, cut the shirt, shorts and panties off her and slipped a length of chain around her waist, pulling it painfully snug and locking it at the base of her spine, leaving a short end dangling down her ass. This short length he put over the handcuffs and stuffed through her crotch as she whimpered and cried in vain. He threaded the chain through the tightly bound thighs and pulled it up through her exposed pussy crack until the metal links disappeared between the lower lips. The girl choked, heaved and started to vomit. Tonal realized this and quickly removed the bag hood, cut the rope holding the bean bag in her mouth and let her throw up on the floor. Then he went about wrapping more chain around her torso, above and below her small breasts and over her upper arms. He used large pad locks to cinch this chain under her arms and pulled back her elbows until they touched, then locked a second pair of handcuffs on her thin arms just above the elbow.

“And now, sweet thing,” Tonal said with a thick Spanish accent, “I think I’ll let you watch as your sister gets the same treatment. And don’t worry, ladies, I have plenty of chain.”

“Wha… what are you going to do to us?” Janeen asked, trying to control her sobs and making an effort to clear the mucus and vomit out of her mouth.

“You know,” Tonal said with a laugh. “You know.”

“No, what do you mean?”

“Sold. You’ll be sold. You are all, including your mother, now considered as mere merchandise and you will get us a very good price.”

“You…you’re going to sell us?” Janeen mumbled almost inaudibly. “Sell us?”

“Un huh. You will make good sex slaves. You will be kept chained or tied all the time and will be used by your owners for what ever games they can think up. Where you are going there are night houses where, for a reasonable sum, anyone can have a slave girl for as long as they can afford. You will be fucked in every hole, whipped, locked in a tiny cage and kept as one might keep a pet rodent. White girls from America get very special treatment.”

“What are you talking about? We did nothing wrong.”

“True. True, Lady Girl. You come wrong time to wrong place. You and your girl friends and your Mama. We only wanted one, but we got five. But that make no difference. People pay a great much money for to fuck you in ass, beat you with whips and listen to your scream in your English, which, of course, your new owners will not understand. It is a fine arrangement for everyone.”

You are going to sell us into slavery?” Janeen asked again, unable to comprehend what she was hearing.

“Dat is right, Lady Girl. Sell you to slavers who will take you back to Africa.”

“Why Africa?”

“It’s sort of a get even reverse of the old North American slave trade…but they treat the slaves better now.”

Janeen shook her head but didn’t even struggle as Tonal stuffed part of her torn T shirt back into her mouth and tied it with the girl’s bra. Then he unlocked Phillipa’s cuffs, forced her down on to the floor and chained her exactly the same way as he bound her sister.

“Hey girls, you looks good as slaves,” Tonal said when he finished. “Pretty soon you will be out of here and headed east. It will be a long trip, but, like so many cruises, it will have education value. You will get trained in the nuances…yes, nuances I think is the term…of sex slavery. By the time you arrive, you will be down a few pounds and toughened up a bit, but you will have learned how to behave. Get used to chains, Lady Girls. There’s a lot of chain in your future.” He laughed, made sure the improvised gags were deep in both wide-open mouths, tightened the ropes holding the torn shirts in place and then used more of their torn shirts to fashion blindfolds for both girls. The final touch, as he put it, was to stretch out the young chained bodies between two upright steel posts, pull the ankle chains tight at one end and place a chain collar around each slim neck at the other, pulling it to a ring on the opposite wall and securing it with yet another pad lock. They were now stretched between the post and the wall and unable to move more than an inch or so in any direction. In the cell down the corridor, the twins were experiencing the same harsh treatment.

“Get comfortable, girls. You will be here for a while. No one comes here at night and, as much as I would enjoy availing myself of your lovely female assets, that will have to wait. I have other things to attend to. We’ll see you in the morning and then tomorrow night, you get a ride to your cruise ship. If you need to use the toilet, there isn’t any, so pee yourselves silly, but make a mess and you will get your first slave training in cleaning it up. Goodnight, now.”

Stretched between the posts and walls of the ancient prison cell, the twins continued to sob and sniffle. Tonal left them with no slack in the multiple chain bindings and even if they had been able to loosen or remove the various chain wraps, their wrists and ankles, as well as their necks, would remain tightly fettered until someone released them. The prospect of slavery was slowly dawning on them and although they could not talk, both girls were well enough educated to realize that what Tonal outlined for their future was quite possible. As they lay there, both visualized the realities in their tormented brains. No one knew where they were or what had happened to them. The chances of rescue were remote and even if the ship’s security teams tracked them down, after tomorrow, according to Tonal, they would be gone.

Lynda had perhaps a more vivid mental picture of their future because she had, on several occasions in her post-teenage life, watched forbidden films and videos of women being enslaved and tortured. Although she maintained that such activities disgusted her, in her soul she knew that they excited her and the idea of being held captive, in chains and sexually used by strangers had a vague, mysterious appeal which she could not actually understand. Lynda tugged once again at the layers of chain holding her and realized suddenly that her naked crotch was damp, actually very wet. The feelings in her stomach and lower torso, enhanced by the chains and the position she was in seemed to argue with the morality in her head which said this was wrong and terrible. But her body denied this and she was deeply puzzled by the contradictions. As she finally dozed off to sleep, Lynda saw herself as a chained and shackled slave in some African villa, kept as a sex and bondage slave by men who used her on occasion, but more often ignored her except to make sure she was fully restrained and unable to speak or move without their permission. As she slept, her body continued to involuntarily respond to the thoughts and the actual bondage she now experienced. Oddly enough, down the damp and dripping corridor, the twins were having the same experience. But, unlike the Norquist girls, these two had been experimenting with bondage for several years and knew very well the reason for the mixed emotions and heightened excitement they felt. But they were chain bound three feet apart, each to her own post and wall, so there was not going to be any mutual pleasure in this bondage. Not tonight. Maybe never.