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A chance to do fuck all. Who was I fooling? They’d locked my wrists and elbows behind me with handcuffs and chain and rope, as well as done my feet and thighs. My one bit of fortune was the hogtie link between hands and ankles had been left off since they’d hoisted me off the plane at some tiny airstrip.
I was in Papua New Guinea, back in my old haunts, and from what I’d heard of Vetrov, soon to be tortured to death for my misdemeanor of helping a woman to almost escape from his little slave house back in Australia. Wherever Jazmine was, I prayed she was better off than me.
Not likely, but I could hope.
Sweat dribbled into my eye and I blinked it away.
Maybe I could sweat away all my muscle bulk and slip free like a skinny Spiderman instead of the Incredible Hulk people liked to compare me to. From my para-military experience I was all too aware that muscles or even fighting skill didn’t mean invincibility. Men died from being shot and macheted and burned all the same – skinny, superfat, or superfit.
Yeah, I was slightly fucked.
Never give up, never give in.
I resumed my watching of the proceedings outside on the dirt track. Birds whooped and whistled up in the trees. I counted five raskols armed with homemade pistols and various knives and machetes. Plus three of my guards, all ex-mil like me, and armed to the fillings in their teeth. Wasn’t legal at all here, to carry, but they did. Their shotguns and shiny Sigs and Rugers were pretty weapons the raskols would be drooling to get their hands on.
The minutes ticked by. I was in no hurry. At the end of this drive might be my death.
Then a little girl in a grimy dress hopped up on the back of the truck and smiled at me. Nine, ten years old?
What the... I blinked. Still there. I wasn’t tripping out on dehydration or concussion or whatever drug they’d injected me with a few minutes ago.
I croaked out a sound, then licked my lips and swallowed, tried again. “Hello.”
Her smile widened.
Here was someone who might be innocent enough to help. I knew some of the pidjin English they spoke here. “Want gut moni?” But would I get her in trouble?
If I told her an address, would I get my friends killed? They were...
My surroundings fuzzed out, my tongue thickened.
Drug...
And fuzzed back in. And she was gone. Fuck.
My windpipe gurgled as I breathed and I coughed. Then the girl was back again, screaming and running from a snarling beast of a dog. She leaped into the truck and scrambled to me, the dog’s jaws snapping shut just a few inches shy of her leg. With my tied-together feet, I booted the mutt in the jaw and sent it sprawling back a few yards. A young man yelled at and kicked the dog then chained it up.
He levelled his gun at me where the girl huddled quivering my side.
Typical New Guinea justice. They’d probably trained the beast to attack but that didn’t help its case. Not that I wanted the girl mauled.
Last I saw of the boy was a scowling face as he hauled her out of there. A sheathed knife fell from his belt and I stared stupidly at it, almost scraped it to me with my heel before he snatched that up too.
“Fluck it,” I slurred, my tongue now thick enough to use for toast. Missed a chance. And goodbye world. I could feel myself going.
Blackness swirled in.
I awoke staked out, flat on my back, in an open yard. Glaring sun above. Dirt all around me. My sight was still hazy. Damn it. Who was paying for this trip? I wasn’t even getting an in-focus view of my holiday resort.
“Who is this?” someone asked from just beyond my vision. Male or female? They could’ve been Martian for all I could tell.
I swung my head, dirt grating against the back of my head. My thick lips were stuck together. My eyelids too. But I kept that one eye open a half an inch.
“Pieter. A traitor. He let us down, helped the Jazmine girl escape, got men killed.”
My hearing seemed filtered through a ton of mud.
“He’s acceptable in appearance. I like him. I don’t know why you thought you could get rid of the girl without my agreement. She’s special to me. I need to see her damaged and humiliated, slowly. Clean him up. I want to see him play with her. Maybe more if he does well.”
