Part 23 (2/2)

In the situation room they had watched the whole violent episode and were still staring at the CCTV screen. Hector broke the shocked silence.

'Minimum retaliation and quick submission.' He softly repeated the instructions he had given to Nastiya. 'Should I have said it in Russian for her to understand, Paddy?'

'Give the poor little la.s.s a break. She was very restrained. You can't really complain. She only bit his finger off, for goodness' sake.'

'I thought she was splendid,' said Hazel in an awed tone. 'A little bit naughty not to obey you, but splendid nonetheless.'

'That was nothing. You should see her when she really gets angry. I think she must have Irish blood in her,' Paddy said proudly.

Kamal sat in the captain's chair on the bridge of the Golden Goose Golden Goose. His face was haggard with pain and he nursed his hand tenderly, as he ordered Cyril Stamford to be hauled in front of him.

'I am going to free your hands,' he told Cyril. 'If you make any attempt to escape you will be beaten. You will obey my orders. You will sail the s.h.i.+p where and how I command you. Do you understand?'

'If you take these ties off my hands, I will sail her,' Cyril agreed. Kamal nodded and ordered one of his men to cut the nylon cable tie from the captain's wrists. Cyril went to the control console and opened the throttles. Then he looked at Kamal.

'Give me a course to steer.'

'The course is two-eight-five degrees magnetic,' Kamal told him and Cyril confirmed and punched it into the navigational computer. He set the engine revolutions at 120 rpm. The Goose Goose began to execute a stately turn to port onto the stipulated heading. Kamal checked the compa.s.s, and then beckoned to one of his men and snapped the fingers of his uninjured hand. Obediently the man handed him a portable satellite telephone. Kamal punched in some numbers and his call was answered almost immediately by Adam in person. began to execute a stately turn to port onto the stipulated heading. Kamal checked the compa.s.s, and then beckoned to one of his men and snapped the fingers of his uninjured hand. Obediently the man handed him a portable satellite telephone. Kamal punched in some numbers and his call was answered almost immediately by Adam in person.

'We have captured the s.h.i.+p, mighty Sheikh!' Kamal stood up from the command seat and moved out onto the port wing of the bridge, where the reception from the satellite would be clearer.

'All thanks and praise to Allah!' Adam exulted. 'What of the Bannock wh.o.r.e and the villain Cross?'

'They are my prisoners. I am bringing them to you with the s.h.i.+p, my lord and master.'

'I shall reward you with whatsoever you ask of me, my uncle.'

'I crave one boon of you, great chieftain.'

'Ask and I will grant it.'

'The Bannock wh.o.r.e is a she-devil, a monster with the soul of a h.e.l.lhound. She has bitten off my finger!' Adam laughed out loud and Kamal's tone rose sharply, as his anger boiled over. 'My Sheikh, I wish to punish her. I wish to humiliate her as she has humiliated me in front of all my men.' Adam stopped laughing.

'I have told you many times already that the execution of the woman is my prerogative alone, Uncle! It gives me pleasure to consider the manner of her death. At the moment I am undecided between hunting her with the dogs and having her stretched between two heavy trucks, a wrist and an ankle tied to each of them. When they are driven slowly apart her limbs will be plucked from her carca.s.s like the wings of a roasted chicken.' Adam chuckled at the mental image. 'You will be beside me to watch it all.'

'It will be a very interesting and amusing sight to watch,' Kamal a.s.sured him. 'I am not asking your permission to kill her. I wish merely to punish her. I want to give her to my men to sport with. I will be there at all times to make sure that none of them take the play too far.'

'Why do you not wish to enjoy her yourself?' Adam teased him and Kamal shuddered at the thought. His nephew knew well that his preferences ran strongly to young boys, and the thought of again letting the wh.o.r.e come close enough to touch him made his injured finger throb most painfully, chilling any residual ardour Kamal might have been able to muster for a female.

'She is beneath my dignity, Master. I would rather rut with a rabid pig.'

'Very well, my revered uncle. Let the men take her by both her holes, back and front. However, you must stop them at once if she starts to bleed copiously.'

'My loyal thanks to you, my magnanimous Sheikh and master.'

'What the h.e.l.l is Kamal up to now?' Hector wondered aloud as they watched him on one of the screens coming in from the wing of the bridge. From the situation room they had not been able to monitor his conversation with Adam. While they watched Kamal spoke to Cyril Stamford again.

'I am leaving four of my men here to watch your every move. You will not alter our speed or our course. Neither you nor any of your crew is to touch the electronic equipment to transmit any message. Do you understand?'

'I understand,' Cyril confirmed gruffly. In the situation room Hector nodded his approval.

'Good man, Cyril. At least somebody on board is following my orders.' They watched Kamal gather up the rest of his men and lead them down to the owner's suite on the deck below. The men were all laughing and chattering with excitement. When they crowded into the sitting room, Kamal seated himself in one of the leather armchairs and issued a string of instructions to his men. They dragged in the table from the dining salon next door, and placed it in front of their chief in the centre of the cabin. Once he was satisfied with the arrangement Kamal gave another order and four of the men went through to the bedroom suite where Nastiya was still kneeling in the centre of the cabin. Her guards watched over her warily. They had seen how Kamal had lost his finger. They had bayonets fixed on their rifles and they kept well clear of her, even though her hands were pinioned in front of her.

'Kamal has ordered us to bring the wh.o.r.e to him,' they told the guards, who looked relieved. Two of the Arabs moved in on Nastiya and at a signal they seized her arms and hoisted her to her feet. Then they ran with her into the sitting room and bundled her onto the table in the centre of the room. Still holding her arms they stretched her out on her back with her legs dangling over the end. While they held her down one of the others came to the table with his curved dagger in his right hand. He ran two fingers into the front opening of her black jump suit and holding the cloth away from her skin, slipped the point of his dagger into the opening and split the suit down to her crotch. Then he ripped the suit off her body and left her lying naked on the table. Her arms were still pinioned in front of her by the green nylon cable tie on her wrists. The watchers in the situation room far below were shocked into a strained silence as the scene unfolded on the TV screen.

Kamal was sitting forward in the easy chair stroking his curling beard and watching with fascination as his men prepared Nastiya for her punishment. From time to time he gave an order on how to proceed, and his men quickly obeyed. Under the overhead lights Nastiya's body was pale and sleekly muscled. Her hair was tangled around her face and her lips were swollen, and one of her eyes was half-closed, bruised and puffed up where Kamal had struck her. She seemed very young and fragile in comparison to the men standing over her. They were laughing and joking with each other, aroused by her nudity. The one who had cut away her clothing reached down and squeezed her breast, then tweaked her nipple and pulled it out, stretching it to the limit of her skin's elasticity. The others guffawed and then one by one they each took their turn to fondle and pinch her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They howled with merriment as she lay quiescent in the grip of the two men restraining her. Her tormentors were egging each other on, clowning and trying to outdo each other. One of them took her nipple between his filthy fingernails. He pinched her so cruelly that a drop of blood welled up from the wound. He licked the blood off his fingers to the delight of his companions. Then another reached down to her pubic bush and seized one of the golden curls. With a savage jerk he pulled out a tuft, and sniffed it as though it were a bouquet of flowers. Then he pa.s.sed it around for the others to savour. Nastiya did not move or cry out.

'She can do that,' Paddy whispered. 'Self-hypnosis. She can shut out the pain.'

'This is horrible,' Hazel said. 'I never bargained for this. I am totally to blame.'

'No!' Hector intervened. 'Not you. It's Kamal and Adam who are to blame. But there will soon be a reckoning.'

At a sharp command from Kamal the men who were gathered around Nastiya drew back and Kamal leaned forward and showed her his injured hand.

'Listen to me, you Christian wh.o.r.e. I am going to punish you for the wound you have inflicted on me. Every one of my men will rip into your filthy body and spurt you full of good Muslim sperm. You are going to bleed, wh.o.r.e. You are going to cry for my mercy, you dirty sow.' Nastiya did not look at him. He eyes were focused far away and her expression was calm and remote.

'She is preparing herself to act,' Paddy said almost under his breath. On the screen they saw that Kamal was becoming angry and frustrated at her isolated calm. He turned to his men with blazing eyes.

'Which of you will be the first to ride this filly?' he shouted.

'Bayhas, the lion!' they shouted. 'Bayhas of the mighty pole. He was the first to mount this wh.o.r.e's daughter at the Oasis. He must be first to plough the Mother Wh.o.r.e.' They pushed Bayhas forward. He chuckled and opened the front of his trousers and brought out his monstrous s.e.xual organ. It stiffened and extended to its full length as he tugged and ma.s.saged it.

'Hold the she-dog,' he ordered the men around her. 'She will grow mad with l.u.s.t when she feels this thing going into her. Open her legs.' The men on each side of the table pulled her thighs roughly apart, and Bayhas stepped between them. He spat in his hand and anointed the head of his p.e.n.i.s with the saliva.

'I have to stop this,' Hazel burst out. 'We have to go in and bring her out of there.'

'Wait! You cannot stop the war with the first casualty,' Hector told her.

'Nastiya is not a soldier.' Hazel was angry.

'Oh, yes she is,' Paddy contradicted her. 'She would never forgive you if you pulled her out now. This is what she is trained for. This is her trade. Her profession. Watch her!' He pointed to the screen. Bayhas, the lion, was rubbing his lubricated p.e.n.i.s along the opening of her s.e.x, s.h.i.+fting his feet, steadying himself for the first thrust into her. Suddenly Nastiya's lithe body jack-knifed under him. She broke the grip that the two Arabs had on her ankles. Her knees folded back over her shoulders with seemingly effortless grace, then drove forward again with such power that they seemed to blur. Her naked heels smashed into the base of Bayhas's pubis. Over the microphones they clearly heard his pelvic bone break, cracking at the juncture of its symphysis into its two separate halves. His engorged p.e.n.i.s was caught between Nastiya's heels and the sharp leading edge of his own pelvic girdle. It was crushed by the force of the blow and his corpora cavernosa, the blood-holding chambers of the p.e.n.i.s, were ruptured so that as he was hurled backwards against the bulkhead his p.e.n.i.s squirted blood instead of s.e.m.e.n. He wailed as his knees buckled under him and he sagged down the bulkhead and fell onto the deck clutching his damaged organs.

Nastiya jack-knifed her body again but this time each of her legs hooked around the necks of the two men holding her shoulders down. Using her own momentum and the strength of those long athletic legs she swung forward again and hurled the men across the cabin as though they were stones from a catapult. They too crashed into the bulkhead. One of them went into it head-first and the front of his skull was stoved in. The other managed to throw up one arm to protect his face, but his elbow bore the brunt of the impact and the joint splintered. He rolled on the deck whimpering, and calling on his G.o.d for mercy.

Nastiya jack-knifed yet again and flipped forward onto her feet in perfect balance. She stooped over the body of the dead man and still with her wrists tied together she drew the dagger from the belt of the sprawling corpse and whirled around to face the charge of the other guards. She slashed the first of them across the belly and when he doubled over to try and prevent his innards bulging out of the long wound, she used the silver and rhinoceros-horn hilt of the dagger like a hammer into the base of his skull. He was dead before he sprawled on the deck. One of the other guards had come up behind her, urged on by Kamal's roars of rage. Nastiya did not turn to face him, but she shot out a backward mule kick that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back so violently that the vertebrae in his neck were crushed and he flopped down onto the deck like a discarded s.h.i.+rt. His comrades jammed in the doorway in their eagerness to escape from the suite.

With the dagger still clutched in her tied hands, Nastiya leapt over the first corpse and went for Kamal. He saw her coming and he sprang out of the chair, turned around and ran. He was the last man through the door. As he reached it Nastiya stabbed the point of the dagger through his tight jump-suit pants into his b.u.t.tocks. With another howl of pain and rage he hurled himself through the open doorway and one of his men slammed the door shut behind him. Nastiya slid the lock on the door across, then came back into the salon, stepping daintily over the corpses, and perched on the edge of the table. She wedged the dagger between her knees, slipped the point of the blade under the cable tie and with one quick upward jerk of her bound wrists cut through the tough nylon. When her bonds fell away she ma.s.saged the welts around her wrists and then stood up and came towards where she knew the camera was placed. She stood before it stark naked and unashamed and she looked up at the watchers in the situation room in the depths of the s.h.i.+p. Her expression was calm and unfathomable. Then she drooped one eyelid in a conspiratorial wink before she smiled. The smile was angelic and serene as though she were totally uninvolved with the dead men scattered around the cabin deck like cuttings from a flowerbed made by a demented gardener.

Through all this the watchers in the situation room sat in astounded silence. At last Hazel found her voice.

'What is she doing now?' she asked as Nastiya turned her attention to the air-conditioning control panel on the bulkhead beside the door.

'She's turning down the temperature as far as it will go,' Paddy explained.

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