Cruise (26 page)

Bibi shut the door after a quick check of the empty corridor. Checking all three for any other weapons, Bibi and Groff quickly bound and gagged them with nylon hose, duct tape and a variety of clothing from the duffels and drawers in the cabin. When they finished, the three attackers sat in the two wicker side chairs and the desk chair, shaking their heads and trying to figure out where they went wrong.

At that moment, there was a light knock on the door and six more of the rescue team appeared. Bibi and Groff briefed them and then turned back to Anna.

“Anna,” Groff said with a decided lack of friendliness in her voice. “I am in a very, very bad mood and want to repay you for your recent additions to my complexion, but there is no time, so I’ll just ask once and if you don’t give me the answers I want, I will shoot you in each major joint until you do. Knees first, Honey, so you won’t be skateboarding any time soon. Get it?”

Anna, who had been watching Bibi, not Groff, turned her head and nodded slightly. Bibi took out the scarf that held a dirty pair of panties in Anna’s mouth and then backed away, knowing that if she stayed too close, her adrenalin-fueled anger would overcome her good judgment and she would beat the shit out of the ship’s third officer before she told them what they needed to know.

“Okay,” said Groff. “What’s going on here? Do you know where Mrs. Norquist and the four girls are?”

Anna shook her head and then uttered a quiet “No.”

“Who do you work for?” Groff pressed. “And don’t tell me Norquist or the Captain.”

“My orders come from Amsterdam. They are coded and look like ordinary e-mails. I was assigned to plan and orchestrate this operation to put an end to Norquist’s meddling in foreign matters that are none of his business. Kidnapping his wife and daughters simply turned out to be the most expedient way to do this.”

“So why lock me up and have me beaten?”

“Two reasons,” said Anna, smiling slightly. “One, you are fun to play with and we needed a toy. Two, we figured your partner would follow you and then we’d have you both out of the way. There are parties in Europe who have indicated a willingness to pay well for you both.”

“Such as?’ Bibi interjected.

“I don’t know who. They just make the requests. They pay me in a Swiss account. You two took the wrong contract and it just happened that the purposes of my masters and your pursuers crossed somewhere, making this all very convenient. By the way,” Flores added, smiling more now. “You aren’t going to get out of here, no matter what do you to me.”

“Oh,” said Bibi, jumping into the interrogation that she thought was going too slowly. “You think that you are in a position to stop us?”

“No. Not me. But your little friend, Karine, is already undergoing some intense sex slave training and I don’t think she’ll survive it much longer unless you turn yourself in.”

“What did you say?” Bibi spat, lowering her face within an inch of Ann’s.

“Brillcart has her,” Anna said quietly. “He’s enjoying it. The only way she will survive is if we take you to him.”

“What’s Brillcart want with me,” Bibi said, trying hard to control herself.

“There is a little debt. You interfered with another operation in Prague and one of his agents died and a lot of others were arrested and are now in prison. He’s pissed.”

“How do you know this? Prove it,” said Bibi, waving her pistol under Anna’s nose.

“Fuck you. I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

“Why is that?” Groff asked, staring intently at Anna and glancing for a moment at the other two silent and bound attackers who were listening and watching the questioning carefully.

“This yacht is under our control,” said Anna with a grim smile. “We have over twenty of our people here and they are already setting charges which will go off soon, even if I don’t show up at the rally point.”

“What time is that set for?” Groff asked, moving closer and suddenly swinging the pistol, butt first, into Anna’s left ear. The sound of the gun butt colliding with flesh seemed to snap everyone in the room out of the trancelike state. Anna’s head snapped sideways and blood began seeping from her ear.

“It won’t matter,” Flores said, trying to recover her control and shaking her head slightly.

“Maybe not,” said Bibi, taking aim at Anna’s left knee and firing the pistol through a small pillow taken from the couch. Anna screamed as the bullet skinned her thigh, just above the knee.

“You sure you don’t want to fill us in on the rest of this,” spat Bibi, taking aim at Anna’s other knee. “You’ve got three more chances…”

“No. Nooooo,” Anna screamed. “Okay. Okay. The captain, Norquist and loyal crew alive and well are in the helicopter hanger. Everyone else is on my side, including a gang that came aboard yesterday during the shift charges. They boarded…oh God, my leg; can you get me a shot for the pain? I’ll tell you everything, I swear.”

“No deal,” said Bibi. “I want to know where Karine is, how much time we have and where the charges are. NOW!” she shouted, taking careful aim with the Walther at Anna’s other leg.

“No. No wait,” shouted Anna, grinding her teeth in pain. “If nothing changes, my people will off load in the next thirty minutes. The charges are set and timed to go off at twenty-two hundred hours. There are six of them. Locations are on a notebook computer that Dharbo, one of the men who came aboard yesterday, has in his backpack. It’s synched to the ship’s computer system, so he can detonate the charges remotely at any time. I think there’s a copy on a smart phone that one of his men has as a backup. That’s all I know.”

The other two bound and gagged women were yelling into their gags and struggling to free themselves, partly out of fear that their legs were about to look like Anna’s and also because they were not as sanguine as she was about being blown up. They made continuous noises behind their gags and Groff decided that they might have something to add in exchange for being let go before the yacht exploded into a billion small pieces.

“Let’s see what these two know,” Groff said, tearing the duct tape from both women’s mouths and slapping each one twice with her free hand. “Let’s have it, you two. Is she telling the truth?”

“Uh, uh, no,” stuttered Lynn, the smaller woman. “Most of the gang is already off the yacht and headed for the Andiamo. There is just a skeleton crew left and we were half of it. The men with the computers are already gone. There is no way to know where the explosives are hidden and they may be able to detonate by remote control.”

“What the hell? Bitch!” Bibi shouted, turning and firing a second round into Anna’s other leg. This time she didn’t even bother to muffle the sound with the pillow. Anna screamed even louder and both wounded legs now leaked profusely onto the carpet.

“How much time do we have?” Groff shouted at the two crying women. “How much?”

“Not long. I don’t know,” Lynn whimpered. “That’s why she’s stalling you. We need to get out of here now, the second woman moaned, tugging at her tied arms and making the wicker chair squeak.

“Do you know where the captain, owner and crew are?” Bibi asked.

“Yes.”

“Can you free them?”

“Yes. The keys were in my pocket. You put them over there,” the woman said, nodding to the pile of items Groff pulled from the women’s trouser pockets before they were tied up.

“Okay. Who are you?” said Bibi untying the smaller woman from the chair, but leaving her hands tied behind her back.

“My name is Brit,” the woman answered. “I work on the helicopter maintenance crew. One chopper was still here a few minutes ago. It was to take us off. Maybe we can use it.”

“Not likely,” Bibi said. “There’s too many of us. Jean, I’ll go with Brit and free the crew. If we can, we’ll check on the helo. You see what else you can learn from this scumbag and then take Lynn and try to get to the bridge. I’ll meet you there. If anything blows, try to go over the side before the whole thing goes up. You might survive it if you go fast.”

“Right. See you on the bridge,” said Groff, ignoring Anna’s moans and whimpers as she untied Lynn.

Bibi and her charge were already out the door.

“Stand against the wall,” Groff said. “Face it and be quiet. I don’t need you to find the bridge and I will happily shoot you if you make one wrong move.”

“Okay,” said the woman, following Groff’s orders and standing against the bulkhead. “But we must hurry.”

“In a minute,” Groff said. She turned to Flores. “Anna, you are going to die here, one way or another, so make the call. But I want to know where Brillcart is and where he’s got Bibi’s friend, Karine. Tell me that and I will do a quick bit of first aid and leave you here. Fail to tell me now and you will either bleed to death or blow up with the rest of us if the charges go too soon…” She paused. Anna’s head nodded drunkenly. She had lost a bit of blood.

“Time’s up. Your choice,” Groff added, checking her watch.

“Shoot me.”

“I’ll do that, but first I’ll do your elbows and you will suffer a hell of a lot longer than if you just tell me Brillcart’s whereabouts.”

“Zurich. His villa. The girl is one of many in his basement. We have been there for entertainment, but…” Her eyes suddenly rolled up and she passed out.

“We need to go,” urged Lynn.

“Shut up,” Groff growled. “Do you know where this villa is?”

“Yes. Get me out of here and I’ll tell you. Draw you a map if you want, but get us out of here. I think I may also know how we can locate the charges.”

“How?” Groff snapped.

“The ship’s primary server has duplicates of everything on the laptops. I don’t think the bandits knew that. We may be able to access the plans on any monitor here. Like that one,” she said, pointing to the display on the cabin bulkhead.

“Do it,” Groff said. “Quickly.”

Lynn went to the wireless keyboard and entered several lines of information and was rewarded by a chart displaying Altuna’s outline from the top deck down. At six locations, small red light bulb shaped icons blinked.

“I think this is it,” Lynn said.

“Print it out, several copies,” Groff yelled.

“There’s not enough time,” Lynn said, shaking her head as the printer on the shelf chattered away, spewing out colored copies of the display screen. “It’s twenty-one thirty now.” At that moment, Anna made a lunge for Groff’s pistol, but she was slow and hampered by her leg wounds.

Lynn shrieked and jumped back as Groff’s Colt fired twice and Anna shuttered and then went limp.

“I’ve had enough of her shit,” Groff said. “We don’t need her any more and I don’t want her at my back. Pass out the charts, Lynn. We’ll go in twos and disarm the charges. Best method is to carefully pull the blasting caps out of the explosive blocks. Don’t cut wires or mess with the connections. If you can’t get to the caps, throw the whole thing over the side. Get moving, now!”

Lynn was crying as Groff led her out the door and down the silent hallway, certain that the multiple gunshots had already alerted the remaining crew, but also gambling that they might have concluded that Anna was disposing of unwanted parties. It as a fifty-fifty gamble and Groff was a gambler.

Chapter Twenty Seven

Rings

The nipple rings were just the beginning. Neither sister had any body jewelry or piercings, but at times in the past, both had thought about it and even considered going together to the tattoo and piercing center where so many of their friends went in the past. The big obstacle was always the same. The pain. They weren’t worried about their parents’ reaction. Their Dad got his one and only tattoo while in the Army and their Mom had hers done a few years later when a few of the local mothers suddenly all got rollickingly drunk one night and ventured downtown to the area that they normally would consider the wrong side of the tracks. They each opted for the less painful, small images inked on their butts and ankles and other normally invisible body acreage. Now, of course, the girls had no choice about the piercings and both shook nervously, saliva bubbling out from around their tight gags as they moved as quickly as they could in their chains. They were being escorted to the small inside cabin where three people dressed in slightly blood-stained surgical scrubs were just finishing up on another slave captive. The girl they worked on was strapped down on a modern operating table, but crudely gagged with a wide strip of soft wood held between her teeth by a double strap that went behind her head. Other leather straps at wrists, ankles, across her chest, at her waist and at the top of each thigh held her immobile on the stainless steel table that had a few small blood pools on it. Her breasts were blood streaked and another small pool of coagulating blood was on the table between her legs, seeping slowly under her buttocks. The strapped down girl screamed endlessly and Phillipa and Janeen heard her screams from a long way down the dimly lit passageway as their guards hustled them along. The guards chatted between themselves, as though they were alone, while the two girls struggled to keep up with them because of the short chains between their shackled ankles. An additional inhibitor was the taut chain leash attached to Phillipa’s collar that extended back a few feet to Janeen’s. Their wrists were cuffed behind their back in the common steel manacles that all slaves on board wore constantly. From the manacles, chains led up to the back of the collar and down to the leg shackles. Janeen, who was proving to be a less than cooperative slave, wore an additional and restrictive set of thin metal cuffs around her thighs, just above the knees. Both girls had punitive elbow cuffs with variable length links, holding their arms back and causing their breasts to jut out obscenely. Their gags were expanding metal and rubber pears with a key slot in the front that allowed the jaw-jacking devices to be slowly cranked open or closed, depending on the girls’ behavior and the degree of oral plugging desired by whoever possessed the keys.

Phillipa staggered along the hallway, trying to keep up with the guard’s constant pulling on her leash and wishing that her stubborn sister would cooperate a bit more, at least so that the guards would not use their crops indiscriminately on whichever ass, tits or thighs happened to be closest when they wanted the girls to move along faster.