The Somali Deception Episode IV (A Cameron Kincaid Serial) (6 page)

“I told you.
 
Mister Stratos will be along
shortly.
 
Please share some of this
champagne with me.
 
This second
bottle is better than the first.”
 
Annalisa softly smiled.
 
“You
must tell me what it is like to be the famous Dragon Chef.”
 
She slid her hand across the cushion in
Cameron’s direction.
 
“Women love a
man that can cook.
 
I bet you get a
lot of attention.”

Cameron sighed and straightened
his back.
 
“I am sorry.
 
We are here for one reason.
 
I think it’s time we speak to Nikos.
 
His father has obviously found him.”

Annalisa leaned forward, her
breast revealed and almost falling away from the top that held them.

“Unless your next move is to
strip off that bikini top and wrap, and share your pleasures with us, I assure
you, you have run out of game,” said Pepe.

Annalisa sat upright.
 
“Mister Laroque --,”

“And I should further advise you
that in this special instance even the temptation of fruit such as yours will
not restrain our pursuit of Nikos Stratos.”

Annalisa went stone-faced for a
moment.
 
“Five more minutes
Cameron.
 
Mister Stratos is on his
way.”

“Why five minutes?”
 
Cameron’s eyes flashed wide.
 
“The earpiece.
 
She hears them.”

Cameron dashed to the
windowpane.
 
Demetrius and Nikos
were fleeing to the exit off the edge of the catwalk below.

“We will be leaving now,” said
Cameron.

“Please, let Mister Stratos
handle this and I am sure everything will be fine.”

“Get her, the door is locked,”
said Cameron.

Pepe offered his hand to
Annalisa.
 
“May I help you up?”

“Why?” asked Annalisa.

“We need you to get us out of
here,” said Pepe.

“I suggest you do as he asks
Miss Droukos,” said Cameron.
 
“You
will be very easy to carry conscious or unconscious.”

Annalisa stood and then finished
her champagne in one drink.
 
“They
are not going to let you leave.”

Cameron flashed his eyes up to
Pepe.
 
“I believe we can convince
them.”

Pepe reached for Annalisa’s
arm.
 
She defiantly jerked away and
went to the console.
 
She tapped a
short code.
 
“Stay, and there is no
trouble.”

“I find that is seldom the
case,” said Cameron.
 
“Stand back.”

At the first crack of the door,
the heavy trance beat bass flooded the room.
 
The sense of urgency, the adrenalin, the
force that was pushing Cameron, accelerated in intensity.
 
He pulled the door in wide.
 
The light of the lounge must have caught
the peripheral of the DJ.
 
DJ
MooreHouse shifted his gaze from his console to Cameron.
 
The DJ held a sunglass stare that looked
into and through Cameron, and then with a nod, slid a fader on one of his
boards leveling up a new rapid mix.
 
Cameron returned the nod, unsure what prompted the DJ.

Instantly Cameron had an answer.

A muscle bound Black Tee, locked
onto Cameron, emerged from a dark shadow across the platform.
 
Not to be too obvious to the approaching
thug, Cameron relaxed and went into a subtle relaxed Taekwondo attention stance,
the Charyeot stance.
 
His body
already in an upright standing position, his legs side by side, heels touching,
toes slightly apart, Cameron dropped his hands parallel to his body, relaxed,
proper to his training.
 
To the
arrogant Black Tee, Cameron would appear to be standing in the door waiting
unprepared for a confrontation.
 
Cameron was waiting, yet very prepared.
 
Already ultra focused, the techno added
a hypersensitivity.
 
Cameron saw a
slight acknowledgement in the approaching Black Tee’s eyes, not toward Cameron,
to someone to the side of the door.
 
When the second Black Tee spun into the doorframe Cameron was expecting
him.
 
This Tee, a crew cut blonde,
held up his flat hand in front of Cameron in a signal that the group should not
move.
 
Then in an action of brawn
and inexperience the massive Tee smirked at Cameron and made the brutal mistake
of shoving his meaty hand forward.
 
The ape must have only seen a blur as Cameron slid to the side, clutched
the man lightly by his wrist, and with little effort used the man’s own
momentum to send him flying into the lounge.
 
A blur would have been the most the
Black Tee could have seen, because as he flew by Pepe, he received a solid
elbow to the base of his skull that sent him crashing to the floor.

Upon seen his cohort disappear
behind Cameron, the first Black Tee went rooster, his chest filling with rage
and, a critical flaw, emotion.
 
The
Black Tee raised his arms, his delts, pects, and lats pumped full.
 
Cameron was sure steroids had dumbed
down this giant.
 
When the grizzly
of a man was close, Cameron surprised the man with a quick Gunnun Sogi stance,
a solid step forward followed through with a full on thrust to the Black Tee’s
breadbasket.
 
The Black Tee’s eyes
screamed wide and his knees buckled.
 
The tribal pulse of the music bore into Cameron’s center.
 
Another Black Tee thundered toward
Cameron.

Cameron and Pepe exited the
lounge.
 
Pepe met the Black Tee
first.

This third Black Tee was
thinner, compact, and more agile than the first two.
 
What he lacked in mass he made up for in
skill.
 
Seeing Cameron’s style of
maneuver the Tee approached in a Taekwondo fighting stance, rattled off two
strikes that Pepe easily repelled and then fluidly went into a back-L stance,
one foot on the ground, the other a flying kick toward Pepe’s head.
 
The blow may have been fatal had the man
not failed at rule number one, know your audience.
 
Pepe of course practiced Taekwondo.
 
Pepe practiced Kung Fu.
 
Pepe practiced Karate.
 
Pepe was a master at Judo.
 
Pepe effortlessly dodged the nimble
assailant, his rotund upper body gyrating on his lowered knees, his head
slipping back out of the way, his forearm sliding up to gently assist the
younger man’s leg away.
 
Well trained,
the Black Tee used Pepe’s assist to thrust him into a spin and as his body
curled around, he raised his other leg to smash Pepe’s ribs, forcing him to the
wall.
 
Pepe grimaced, the air
crushed from his lungs.
 
He dropped
his arm over the young Black Tee’s leg and rolled himself hard forward against
the wall splitting the limb out sideways away from the knee, the action and
young man’s anguish, silent beneath the electronic beat, ever increasing to a
mind blowing rate.

Everyone else on the platform
seemed oblivious to what had happened.
 
No one left for the other room or even sat up.
 
No one appeared to notice, no one except
for Annalisa.
 
Outside the entrance
to the lounge, Annalisa had lost expression.

“C’mon!” screamed Cameron.

Annalisa did not hear
Cameron.
 
He seized her arm,
alerting her back from wherever she had checked out to.
 
She turned her still vacant face toward
him, and a glint of recognition filled her eyes.
 
Cameron tilted his head toward Pepe and
the stairwell, and in a normal voice said, “Let’s go.”
 
He was sure that beneath the volume of
the pulsing unearthly music, she could not hear him.

Annalisa nodded and then began
to move toward the exit.

* * *
* *

Stratosphere, Ibiza

As more of a matter of training
than formal protocol, Cameron remained by the door while Pepe led Annalisa down
the metal stairs to the catwalk.
 
He
mentally divided the VIP level into quadrants and then scanned them one by one
in search of anyone that was not subdued by a drug heavy trance or that
appeared to be taking too much interest in him.
 
Both he and Pepe had seen cameras hidden
among the overhead lights.
 
Regardless whether the occupants of the VIP level had paid attention to
their tussle with security, in a facility this size, someone was watching.
 
Reinforcements were on the way.
 
Confident the level was clear, Cameron
twisted, clutched the rails of the stairwell, and slid down.
 
They had almost crossed the catwalk when
a Black Tee appeared from the exit, took two strides, and then nimbly sprung
forward into a front facing stance.
 
Pepe fluidly dropped into a shallow standing squat, an agile position
giving him the flexibility to launch both attacks and defences against the
formidable Tee.

The open catwalk was a maelstrom
of electronic pulses, bass beats, and a sublime and ethereal, swooning female
chorus.

Panicked by the appearance of
the Black Tee at the exit, Annalisa spun back toward Cameron.
 
Her eyes flashed in horror, alerting
him.
 
He ducked and twisted short of
an attack from a second Black Tee that had managed to elude him on the VIP
platform and shadow them down.

Electric dance music was not
something Cameron ever listened to, yet fighting was like dancing, and he was
exhilarated.

The bass beat was pounding at a
crushing speed.
 
Bright flashes of
brilliant color punctuated lightning fast punches.
 
Cameron kept Annalisa in his
peripheral.
 
She appeared
disoriented, stunned by the rapid strikes and blows, her head switching from
one side to the other.
 
Pepe moved
uncomfortably close, she almost caught an elbow.
 
She shuffled toward Cameron, to a near
miss, as a foot flew past her face.
 
She sidestepped up and down the catwalk, dodging feet, elbows, and open
hands.
 
There was never a need for her
concern.
 
Neither Pepe nor Cameron
broke a sweat, or an expression.
 
The young Black Tees were fluid mechanized warriors.
 
Every move made, whether by Cameron,
Pepe, or the two agile security men, was cool and flowing, and occurring at a
rate that, especially with the deep trance beat, was incredibly rapid, and
remarkably predictable.
 
The
maneuvers were textbook, the only moves to make.
 
As was the maneuver that made Annalisa
gasp, when in unison, Cameron and Pepe positioned themselves on the far sides
of the catwalk fight and their opponents close to her.
 
Between punches, Cameron caught Annalisa’s
eyes go wide and bright, he shot her a devious smile.
 
If she guessed the move was
choreographed, she would have been right.
 
Cameron and Pepe had practiced the move for staged bar brawls and the
next part was Cameron’s favorite.
 
The two gave each other a nod when they were ready, and then each thrust
a body blow to their opponent, penetrating to the true solar plexus, the dense
cluster of nerve cells located behind the stomach, right below the
diaphragm.
 
The blow was intended to
cause great pain, knock the wind out of the Black Tees, and most important, the
simultaneous action was designed to shove the Tees into each other.
 
The modification was that Annalisa was
between them.
 
The move worked.
 
For a split second, the Black Tees
attention was drawn away from their opponents to the overwhelming pain in their
gut, and to Annalisa between them.
 
In that opportune slice of time, when the Tees turned toward her,
Cameron and Pepe squeezed each by the back of the head, seized them by the
crotch, and then wielded the Tees airborne over the side of the catwalk.

In that sudden instant, as the
two Black Tees arced high above the crowd, the thunderous backbeat that had
shaken the building in a constant quake, abruptly stopped.
 
Silence, an unworldly hush descended
over the crowd, and then, echoing through the cavernous building in a soft
repetitive whisper, “All for you, all for you, all for you, --.”

Cameron peered out into the
hall, into the writhing mass gone calm, and then he looked up at DJ MooreHouse.
 
DJ MooreHouse, way too cool in his
sunglasses and heavy headphones, was smiling widely at Cameron.
 
The DJ nodded his head, extended his
arm, and then pointed his index finger straight to Cameron.
 
“All for you, all for you, all for you,
--.”
 
Cameron smiled up to the DJ
and shot his finger back, and then DJ MooreHouse, in a dramatic motion, swung
his arm up and around to jab down on the soundboard.
 
The maelstrom of sound returned tenfold
and the crowd of faithful thousands rallied.
 
DJ MooreHouse nodded at Cameron again,
and Cameron returned the gesture.