Cruise (30 page)

The oldest girl, a tall redhead named Brenda Allen, appeared to be the most coherent and, with Bibi’s encouragement, she took charge of the group. Searching the chamber, they uncovered a stash of the girls’ original clothing, some of it torn and stained, but still better than nothing.

“Get everyone dressed decent enough to be on the street. I’ve had the ship call in the province cops and the British consular office. There is no American diplomatic presence here that we can find,” Bibi told the group. “When the cops get here, insist they take you to the consular offices, not police headquarters,” Bibi said. “We cannot go with you now, as it’s nearly daylight, we’re carrying a lot of weapons and our own people are still missing. Obviously, based on what happened to you, our women are still very much endangered.”

“I understand,” Brenda said, gravely. “You saved our lives and we’ll make sure that the cops get on this right away. What about the body below the stairs?”

“You were in coffins, so you know nothing. Leave it at that. We’ll try to sort this all out later,” said Bibi.

“Consider that the local cops may be involved in what is happening here,” said Karla. “I suggest you all stay together until you can leave the island safely. Stay in a public area and make sure people know what is happening.”

“The Mercado Hotel is just down the street. It’s pretty fancy and if we walk in looking like this, I think we’ll be safe there,” Brenda added.

“Good,” said Bibi. “We’ve got to go. Good luck.”

As Brenda and the other women fled up the stairs, Bibi looked at Karla and said, “I don’t think we’re going to discover much else tonight and if we stay, we’ll have a lot of people looking for us.”

“Agreed,” said Karla. “I’ll call for exfil as soon as we get back topside. The radios won’t work down here.”

Chapter Thirty One

Solution

Back on Altuna, Bibi reiterated that she was pretty certain that they had all the useful intel they were going to get. They now knew the location of the slave freighter and where it was headed. This information had come more easily than Bibi expected, with the two captured casino employees seemingly eager to tell all that they knew to stay alive. The interrogation ended, the men went without complaint to the brig and Bibi went back to the crew mess to see how Reinholt and Groff were doing with briefing their teams. They accepted only the best of the crew for this mission, although nearly everyone wanted to get in on the raid. The most fit and those who had proven in the past to be loyal, aggressive and handy with weapons were chosen. Those who were not qualified were already at work outfitting all four launches with Norquist’s special operations gear, including a compressed air launcher for a grappling hook and rope, highly effective engine silencers for the Fast Boats and a few items which might, he said, prove useful in reducing the odds in their favor.

“I have really picked only the most experienced and most cold-blooded,” Reinholt said to Bibi as they surveyed the ten woman squad. “No sissy girls here. They all want blood.”

Although in the early discussions they debated taking prisoners, it had been the unanimous decision that if they were to survive the odds, free the captives and get back home, they would have to kill or totally disable everyone on the freighter, making sure that no radio messages or signals of any kind were sent telling of the freighter’s fate.

“What a blood-thirsty looking gang you are,” said Bibi as she checked each member’s weapons and equipment. “You, Karla, have, I think, perhaps too many knives,” Bibi said as she gently poked the woman in the waist and chest, each time encountering one or more blades in secure sheaths.

“She throws with incredible accuracy,” Roz offered, putting her hands up and signifying that Bibi should leave the knife cache in tact. “Let her have whatever she wants.”

“Okay, but make sure of your target, Karla. It will be dark and I don’t fancy having one of those…what are they, anyway?...stuck in my neck.”

“Never happen, Bibi,” said Karla, sliding two of the double bladed daggers partly out of their sheaths and displaying how she had darkened the blades so that no reflection would give her away. “You know I’m good. We did the first raid together, didn’t we?”

Bibi nodded.

“These were my boyfriend’s knives,” Karla added. “They are Gerber Guardians. He went to Iraq with the Army and didn’t make it back. A buddy brought me his blades and I am just itching to use them on those fuckers, one at a time and slowly.”

“Right,” said Bibi. “But follow Roz’s lead and no hot-dogging, you hear?”

“Yes. I got it.”

“Good. Now who is carrying the silenced hand guns?”

Portia and Terry raised hands and then holstered their HK automatics with the silencers already fitted.

“Make sure those stay dry. The salt air raises hell with suppressors and silencers, so keep the condoms on until you need them.”

“Understood, said Terry and she nodded at Portia who also nodded back. Clearly, the tension was already building and it was time to do the final briefing and get to the boats.

“One more thing,” Groff said sharply. “No cowgirl antics. No grandstanding. We want all of you and the hostages back and alive. Don’t risk their lives even if you don’t care about your own. I want everybody back here safe and secure. Got that?”

There were ten yeses and then they headed out on deck, Roz and her five to port and Bibi and Groff, plus five to starboard. The boat drivers were already at their stations, checking equipment on the four launches. They wore ocean-racing gear: survival suits, PFDs designed to float the wearer high enough so that their mouth and nose were well clear of the surface, two different knives; one for emergency cutaway and another for personal defense, crash helmets with internal communications earphones and mikes, face shields and extra goggles. The helmets had the latest night vision gear mounted over the forehead. The boats were ready to launch. Tension was high.

On the blacked out bridge, Ingram, Norquist and their selected loyal crew reviewed their role in the plan. They would bring Altuna only close enough to the departing freighter so that she would not show up on radar. This meant staying over the horizon, beyond the curvature of the earth and unfortunately creating a much longer run for the attack boats to travel undetected. If they were picked up on anyone’s radar and challenged, plan B was for Altuna to speed to their assistance and use her superior firepower if necessary to subdue the pirates. This plan was undesirable because it meant a much greater chance of harm coming to the captives on the freighter.

Chapter Thirty Two

0245

The plan was nearly a duplicate of the one the pirates used to get on board Altuna, but the raiders this time were fewer and had to rely on surprise and stealth if they were to succeed. No one knew exactly what the freighter had as defensive equipment or weapons, but it was, as Bibi said, a given that the pirates had means of repelling boarders if they had to. The trick, she pointed out, was to get abroad and not activate any defenses at all until it was too late.

Silently, with Norquist’s still secret engine mufflers operating beautifully, Fast Boat crawled up the freighter’s wake and slipped under the overhanging stern. The single grappling hook arced up silently from its catapult and grabbed the first time. Then everyone waited to see if the hook had alerted anyone on board. A few anxious minutes later, Bibi, carrying a heavy, long rope ladder, went up the rope hand over hand, the weight and bulk of her weapons only slightly slowly her ascent. She stopped at the deck, looked around for a moment and quickly climbed over. She dropped the long ladder, made sure those in the Fast Boat had it and then moved to a security position from which she could protect the team coming up the ladder.

They came up quickly and quietly. Reinholt signaled Bibi that all were accounted for and they spread out, each team going forward along the rails, checking each hatch, each ventilator, each door, for any crewmembers.

Suddenly, Roz’s A team met three semi-drunken crewmen apparently coming off watch. Without even stopping their forward advance, the team fired silenced rounds into them. They jointly helped the pirates over the rail, tossing each of the skinny bodies into the water, hoping they might find an immediate engagement with the vessel’s slowly turning propellers and thus be spared the discomfort of spending a few wounded hours hopelessly thrashing in the warm ocean before going to the bottom. At the first ladders, two of the team went below, and two went up. Roz continued forward alone. Half way along the dark side rail, she literally stumbled over Kreble, who had been happily fucking a woman on her knees, chained hand and neck to the rail and making enough noise so that Kreble didn’t even know Roz was next to him. The large caliber automatic in Roz’s hand went off the instant she bumped into his hammering ass, the first round going into his left side, breaking two ribs and severing his aorta before rumbling around in his torso and exiting through his abdomen. The man crumbled to the deck, his already limp cock slipping out of the girl’s swollen pussy. She continued to scream and Roz, after only a second’s hesitation, put her mouth to the girl’s ear and said: “I can’t release you now, but we are here to rescue you. It would help a great deal if you would continue to scream.”

Stunned by the sudden turn of events, the girl looked at Roz, who winked and moved on down the passageway, not looking back. The screams continued, even more enthusiastic than before.

The B team that went cautiously below soon discovered an impressive array of training and containment facilities. In two adjacent cabins they found women chained to steel bunks. One was stretched from the four corners of the bed, ordinary handcuffs holding her wrists and ankles in place and a metal brank on her head. She made no sound as the team cut the chains and used the same heavy bolt cutter to remove the brank. The second girl was stretched as well, but in her case, she was posed standing on her spread feet, facing the triple-decker bunks with arms chained outward and a temporary gag taped in her mouth. The end of some sort of butt plug stuck obscenely out of her ass and she trembled when the door opened and the first two of the team burst in with weapons ready. Again, the bolt cutters were used to free her, the huge inflatable plug was deflated, eased slowly out of her ass and she was given instructions to stay quiet and fall in behind the rest of the parade. Shocked and afraid, the girl followed the team leader’s instructions to stay behind them as they moved to other cabins.

In the ship’s mess area, they found their largest cache of captives. As they later learned, the mess was a sort of central assembly area where new and old slaves were trained and held in restraints, sometimes for days while the pirates carried out devious and demented activities. On this night, the five young women in the mess were all identically mounted on a unique and functional bondage pole device.

In the simplest of terms, this gadget was an adjustable, chromed steel pole with a wide metal collar at one end, a series of different sized cuffs arrayed along its middle length and a short T bar with fixed cuffs on the ends at the bottom of the pole. The pole also had rings welded on it that allowed it to hang in various ways from the walls or ceiling. On this evening, all five were attached to the poles in the same unpleasant pose, kneeling with the pole behind them, their elbows and wrists cuffed close to the pole and the T at the end holding their ankles about two feet apart. Each girl was hooded with the by now familiar leather and rubber discipline hoods that had eye, ear and mouth holes and which were, at this time, sealed shut with only the wearers’ ringed noses projecting out from the triangular opening in the front of the hood. Lined up along one bulkhead, the naked young women were totally silent as the team burst in from the hall, followed cautiously by the already rescued duo from the cabins down the hall. The nose ring of each pole-supported captive was clipped to a long chain running the length of the room. A similar chain passed along in front of each girl, also locked to a single large ring that protruded from between their slightly spread upper thighs.

“Get them down,” said Portia, the team leader. “Security, both doors. Move it, move it.” With the team guards in place, the rest went about cutting the thin chains and trying to open the collars and eight locked metal cuffs on each of the five poles. The combination hoods were easily removed once the small padlocks were cut, but the cuffs defied all efforts to remove them.

“Look for keys,” shouted Portia, as she started opening cabinets and drawers along the walls.

“Here, try these,” one of the squad said, tossing a small ring of keys to her.

“Where did you find them?” Portia asked as she tested and succeeded in opening the first of forty cuffs.

“I took them off the clown down the hall before I blew his ass away,” was the girl’s reply. No one saw that happen and now, no one cared. The real key was to quickly get the captives topside and ready to go to the Fast Boats when they came along side.

As she removed the hoods from the second and third captives, Portia noticed that they were Lynda and Gail Johnson, the missing twins. Working fast, she said nothing and moved the girls towards the exit.

To starboard, Bibi split her team the same way, as planned, and she and Groff moved forward. The pairs going to the upper decks were instructed not to enter the bridge unless they had to, but to get to the radio room and make sure no signals were sent. Roz, Bibi and Groff all met on the deck below the bridge, then split again, with Groff joining Reinholt and taking the port side stairs up to the bridge. Meanwhile, the eight team members clearing the super structure encountered pitifully weak resistance. They opened cabin doors, shot and otherwise quickly dispatched each crewman and woman they found and then moved on, searching for the area where the prisoners were held. In less than ten minutes from the time all of the team was aboard the ship, they secured all areas, dumped seven bodies over the side and discovered the holding cells on C deck, freeing their bound and tormented inhabitants. Among those freed were Wink, Ann Norquist and her two daughters.