Cruise (5 page)

Surprised to encounter this degree of resistance, the remaining two men forced Bibi down to the tile floor and set about subduing this blond hellion. Outside, Ammad, the delivery guy, dropped the package and charged back up the steps and through the half open door, landing on top of the thrashing trio. He was squeezed between the other two on top of her, trying to get both arms around Bibi’s tiny waist and trap her arms. As he tried to lift her up, both of the other men struggled to get her arms under control.

Bibi, on her back on the floor, was fighting for her life with one locked handcuff dangling from her left hand and her other arm and legs flailing wildly at the three attackers. Three hard punches to the kidneys of Ammad on her right slowed him down and he fell off the pile of bodies. Sensing rather than seeing him on the floor, Bibi kicked him hard in the crotch and was rewarded with a shout and a moan as he rolled away, clutching his smashed balls.

Bibi used this tiny respite to shift from defense to a stronger offence. Anyone who practiced combatives or tangled with Bibi in the past would have known that this subtle change in tactics signaled that it was time to leave and leave quickly if you wanted to remain ambulatory for the rest of your life.

Using one of her favorite moves that looked like a poor and frightened woman’s defense, Bibi rolled up into a protective ball, pulling her arms free and wrapping them around her head. She made crying sounds. Her body shook with fear. Both men, figuring that she was capitulating, eased up for a moment. Suddenly, Bibi once again jackknifed both her legs, flipping onto her left side and momentarily trapping the men’s arms under her while she struck out simultaneously with her right leg and fist at the second man, catching him in the balls with her bare foot and splattering his already hooked nose with a one-two, double slash of her stiff right hand. The man went down screaming; alternately clutching his ruined, bloody nose and his crushed testicles. Shouting breathlessly in Arabic to each other, the two remaining men were losing the battle, but were too dumb to know it was time to disengage.

Bibi rolled further to her left, presenting only her back to her single remaining attacker. Getting her left arm free, she swung it viciously with the attached cuff, catching the big guy in the side of the head and opening a deep cut just in front of his left ear. Bibi grabbed the wrestler’s same ear with her right hand and tore downward, hard. The ear ripped noisily, the cartilage popping under the strain and the man screamed, releasing the weak hold he had on her and struggling to get away.

Now Bibi turned to take on number three, the deliveryman, again. The already injured Arab, still gasping for a real breath, was about to become the target of Bibi’s enthusiastic, final vengeance. Seeing and hearing what was happening to his comrades, this somewhat tubby, bearded fisherman who had lost his name tag and cap in the initial struggle, got up and backed away, hands in front of him, into the building’s inside hallway. Bibi was up and on him in a flash, shouting attack cries and in hot pursuit. The frightened Arab suddenly realized that he was trapped in the dead end hallway. But it was too late. Bibi drop-kicked him first in the chest and sent him back against the locked door at the end of the hall, driving the heavy brass doorknob into the man’s already damaged kidney. Then Bibi pivoted once and drove the ball of her other bare foot directly into his horrified face. Ammad’s nose crumbled like mashed putty under the deadly blow and his front teeth vanished. He went to his knees, tuning up his screams with those of the other man, who, with blood streaming from his face, sat hunched up against one wall, his cries rising and falling like a siren.

The scene was not one often staged in a modern, middle class apartment house in Berlin, but had some unpleasant nuances of similar events in other times, following surprise visits by the East German Secret police. The deliveryman was completely out, crumpled on the floor near the door, his battered nose, balls and kidneys telling him they were likely to fail shortly. The man with the cuts from the steel handcuff and torn ear sat on the floor, looking dazed and holding a bloody handkerchief to his face, making moaning sounds that blended well, Bibi thought, with the duet of screams from the other two. Taking a crouched, attack stance and silhouetted in the open doorway, Bibi spoke quietly to the trio in German.

“You have ten seconds to tell me who sent you and why, or the police will find three dead bodies when they arrive.” She began to count down from ten and all three men started jabbering in different languages.

“One at a time, you morons,” Bibi yelled.

On the stair landings above, three of her neighbors, all senior pensioners, hung over the railings and watched the performance with considerable glee, cheering Bibi on and shouting unnecessary warnings when it looked like one of the men might be gaining the upper hand.

“He’s speaking Farsi,” her neighbor from the floor below her shouted. The woman was from Lebanon and fled the country years ago. She and Bibi were good friends and had often remarked about the crime rate in this part of the city being worse now than it was under Soviet rule.

“I don’t think so, I know Persian,” Bibi shouted back.

“It’s a mix of Turkish, Kurdish and Persian, that’s why you can’t understand it,” the woman shouted back down the stairwell. “He says he’s Turkoman and that his brothers will kill you.”

“A Turkoman? I doubt that,” said Bibi and she stepped over to the man with the already ruined face and kicked him hard in the stomach, using the top and instep, of her narrow and calloused foot. The man folded up, hit his head on the floor and vomited. Bibi backed away and turned to the next moaning man.

“What about you?” Bibi said, moving over to the one who had been at the door first. “Minayna atayt?” she asked harshly, resting the ball of her stronger left foot on his quivering shoulder. “Where are you from?” She repeated, this time in English, punctuating her words with light kicks on either side of the man’s already swollen face.

“Brillcart,” the man mumbled from his broken mouth. Bibi hit him again, bringing her foot up under his chin. Bone and teeth crunched. “Brillcart,” he mumbled through broken teeth and blood. Then he too pitched forward and passed out.

“What a bunch of wimps,” said Bibi to the three bleeding men in her hall.

“Cops are coming,” said the old man who lived on the second floor as he moved slowly down the stairs. He had a long, heavy stick in his hand and was watching Bibi and the three goons as he navigated the steel stairs with caution.

“You won’t need the nightstick,” Bibi told him with a grin. “I think these three are out of business for awhile.

“You never know with them,” the man said as he reached the landing and then sat down, exhausted from his descent, on the last step, watching the bloody trio and slowly swinging the stick so that it made a rapping sound as it landed in the palm of his left hand. Bibi knew he was a former DB railroad police officer and they had shared stories from time to time when the man felt well enough to chat. “This trash will go to the hospital and be back on the street by tomorrow,” he said sadly. “Here, you might need this,” he said as he extended his hand and gave Bibi a small handcuff key. She unlocked the single cuff from her hand and went over to the moaning delivery guy, cuffing his hands behind his back as he cried and begged for help.

“Yes,” she said. “Probably, but they’ll need new teeth and maybe some serious rehab. They may have to settle for easier targets next time.” Outside, the two-toned warble of the police vehicles pulling up in front of the building was heard.

The Berlin police quickly recognized Bibi, remembering her from previous encounters. Men and women police officers liked her and respected her style, knowing she was on their side. More than once they arrived on a crime scene with Bibi standing or sitting in the background; a display of felons lying about in various states of disrepair. The cops were friendly, efficient and courteous to Bibi and her ex-cop friend. They let him do most of the talking and insisted that, despite their injuries, the trio be cuffed to the rolling gurneys as the EMT crew trundled them out the door to the waiting ambulance.

“You’re a railroad cop?” one of the officers asked the old neighbor.

“Yeah. Die Bahn. Retired,” he said.

“What train ran over these three?” the cop asked with a serious expression of his young face.

“They fell down four flights of stairs,” the former rail cop answered, also straight-faced.

“Yeah,” said the officer, putting his notebook away and taking off his white-topped hat. “Looks that way. They must have tripped over each other all the way down. You see it happen?” he addressed Bibi.

“Some of it,” she replied. “The rest of the time I was busy.”

“We saw the whole thing,” the two remaining old women neighbors shouted together from over the stair railings. “Do you want our statements?” asked one woman hopefully.

“Sure, sure. Thanks,” said the cop wearily as he started up the stairs, still looking curiously at Bibi with her blood-streaked jeans and stained T-shirt. As usual, she wore no bra and the nipples of her large, heavy breasts thrust outward aggressively against the thin cotton of the shirt.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, trying not to stare too hard at the jiggling, fulsome globes under the shirt.

“I’m fine. Once they got in here, I just tried to help them out,” said Bibi, extending her arms outward, explaining the blood.

“Looks like you did okay,” said the cop. “How did they get in?”

“I was dumb enough to open the door. Said they had a delivery. That box over there,” she said, pointing to the package on the floor in the entryway.

The cop put his peaked cap back on his shaking head, turned and climbed the stairs, laughing to himself.

Bibi went outside, retrieved the undelivered package and handed it to the second cop who was making notes as he stood in the doorway.

“What’s this,” he asked, looking at the package.

“They were supposedly trying to deliver this to me,” Bibi said. “Should we open it? It could be a bomb.”

“I’ll have the EOD guys come by and pick it up. If it’s just trash, we will get rid of it. If it’s something important for you, we’ll phone you. I need your name and phone number.”

“No problem,” said Bibi, handing him a slightly blood stained business card that had been crunched up in her hip pocket. “I’m on my way out for a six-month job though, so email me if anything turns up.” She gave him her email address and then went back up the four flights of stairs two at a time and hoped for no further interruptions to her delayed shower. That was when she remembered Karine.

When Bibi finally got back into her apartment, she was happy to find Karine still in the shower, leaning on the tile wall, seemingly asleep.

“I wonder what that was all about?” she muttered to herself as she walked into the steamy bathroom. She removed her soiled and bloody clothes, stepped cautiously into the shower and began to massage Karine’s neck, telling her she was sorry to have left her there and that they would have to make up for that time tonight.

Karine only murmured into the sponge gag. When Bibi started to remove it, Karine shook her head and made it clear that she was fine with the gag in place.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Kar,” she said stepping into the warm stream of water and putting her hands on Karine’s still gagged and water-soaked face. Karine muttered something into her gag and stayed where she was, slowly aligning her face to the space between Bibi’s slightly spread thighs.

While Karine did her best to get comfortable on her knees and help Bibi relax a bit, Bibi reached over, adjusted the strong water stream with one bloody hand and gently pushed Karine’s head between her now more widely spread legs. As Karine pressed herself and the slightly protruding ball gag into Bibi’s warm and liquefied crotch, Bibi reached for the shampoo, saying, mostly to herself: “And who the hell is Brillcart?”

Chapter Three

Brillcart

Bibi scrubbed herself and Karine with the foamy body wash, doing their hair carefully and then shutting down the water. Karine seemed unhappy with that, but Bibi stepped out of the shower, toweled herself off and then, removing the chain from Karine’s ankles, brought her out of the bath and into the living room area, where she toweled and blow-dried her still bound friend. Within a minute, they were into the bed. Bibi took her usual dominant role, this time tying Karine’s legs wide apart to the foot of the bed and then ravaging her with her mouth and tongue until the younger woman screamed into the gag, bounced up and down on the bed and in general, signified that Bibi had done exactly what she wanted her to do. Bibi then removed the gag and sat with her smooth, hard thighs on either side of Karine’s head while the experience was reversed.

An hour later, they got up, Bibi freed Karine’s wrists and they bounded down the stairs, heading for a small nearby bistro for dinner.

Later than night, back in bed with the lights out, legs and arms wrapped around her once again bound friend, Bibi only devoted a tiny bit of her mental time to the mystery muggers that had invaded her home.

During the next thirty-six hours, Bibi was well occupied with getting ready for her flight to Miami where she was scheduled to board the yacht, Altuna. So, when she got a call on her mobile from a police detective she knew, she was a bit surprised.

“Bibi,” the voice on the phone said pleasantly. “Detective Investigator Frey. You may recall we met on the von Holt case a year ago.”

“Right. Sure, I remember you well, Frey. What’s up?”

“What’s up? Damn, Bibi, you’ve been spending too much time with Americans or rockers or something. What’s up?”

“Okay, Frey,” Bibi said in clear and formal German. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call? That better?”

“Yes. More civilized anyway. We checked out the package and found that it contained a cake and some other nicely made pastries.”

“Really? Well, you can have them. I restrict my personal diet to fruit and steak,” Bibi said laughing as she pictured Frey, who was not exactly in great physical shape anyway, stuffing down the cake that was meant to be hers.