Cruise, page 21
“Let’s see what these two know,” Groff said, tearing the duct tape from both women’s mouths and slapping each one twice with her free hand. “Let’s have it, you two. Is she telling the truth?”
“Uh, uh, no,” stuttered Lynn, the smaller woman. “Most of the gang is already off the yacht and headed for the Andiamo. There is just a skeleton crew left and we were half of it. The men with the computers are already gone. There is no way to know where the explosives are hidden and they may be able to detonate by remote control.”
“What the hell? Bitch!” Bibi shouted, turning and firing a second round into Anna’s other leg. This time she didn’t even bother to muffle the sound with the pillow. Anna screamed even louder and both wounded legs now leaked profusely onto the carpet.
“How much time do we have?” Groff shouted at the two crying women. “How much?”
“Not long. I don’t know,” Lynn whimpered. “That’s why she’s stalling you. We need to get out of here now, the second woman moaned, tugging at her tied arms and making the wicker chair squeak.
“Do you know where the captain, owner and crew are?” Bibi asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you free them?”
“Yes. The keys were in my pocket. You put them over there,” the woman said, nodding to the pile of items Groff pulled from the women’s trouser pockets before they were tied up.
“Okay. Who are you?” said Bibi untying the smaller woman from the chair, but leaving her hands tied behind her back.
“My name is Brit,” the woman answered. “I work on the helicopter maintenance crew. One chopper was still here a few minutes ago. It was to take us off. Maybe we can use it.”
“Not likely,” Bibi said. “There’s too many of us. Jean, I’ll go with Brit and free the crew. If we can, we’ll check on the helo. You see what else you can learn from this scumbag and then take Lynn and try to get to the bridge. I’ll meet you there. If anything blows, try to go over the side before the whole thing goes up. You might survive it if you go fast.”
“Right. See you on the bridge,” said Groff, ignoring Anna’s moans and whimpers as she untied Lynn.
Bibi and her charge were already out the door.
“Stand against the wall,” Groff said. “Face it and be quiet. I don’t need you to find the bridge and I will happily shoot you if you make one wrong move.”
“Okay,” said the woman, following Groff’s orders and standing against the bulkhead. “But we must hurry.”
“In a minute,” Groff said. She turned to Flores. “Anna, you are going to die here, one way or another, so make the call. But I want to know where Brillcart is and where he’s got Bibi’s friend, Karine. Tell me that and I will do a quick bit of first aid and leave you here. Fail to tell me now and you will either bleed to death or blow up with the rest of us if the charges go too soon…” She paused. Anna’s head nodded drunkenly. She had lost a bit of blood.
“Time’s up. Your choice,” Groff added, checking her watch.
“Shoot me.”
“I’ll do that, but first I’ll do your elbows and you will suffer a hell of a lot longer than if you just tell me Brillcart’s whereabouts.”
“Zurich. His villa. The girl is one of many in his basement. We have been there for entertainment, but…” Her eyes suddenly rolled up and she passed out.
“We need to go,” urged Lynn.
“Shut up,” Groff growled. “Do you know where this villa is?”
“Yes. Get me out of here and I’ll tell you. Draw you a map if you want, but get us out of here. I think I may also know how we can locate the charges.”
“How?” Groff snapped.
“The ship’s primary server has duplicates of everything on the laptops. I don’t think the bandits knew that. We may be able to access the plans on any monitor here. Like that one,” she said, pointing to the display on the cabin bulkhead.
“Do it,” Groff said. “Quickly.”
Lynn went to the wireless keyboard and entered several lines of information and was rewarded by a chart displaying Altuna’s outline from the top deck down. At six locations, small red light bulb shaped icons blinked.
“I think this is it,” Lynn said.
“Print it out, several copies,” Groff yelled.
“There’s not enough time,” Lynn said, shaking her head as the printer on the shelf chattered away, spewing out colored copies of the display screen. “It’s twenty-one thirty now.” At that moment, Anna made a lunge for Groff’s pistol, but she was slow and hampered by her leg wounds.
Lynn shrieked and jumped back as Groff’s Colt fired twice and Anna shuttered and then went limp.
“I’ve had enough of her shit,” Groff said. “We don’t need her any more and I don’t want her at my back. Pass out the charts, Lynn. We’ll go in twos and disarm the charges. Best method is to carefully pull the blasting caps out of the explosive blocks. Don’t cut wires or mess with the connections. If you can’t get to the caps, throw the whole thing over the side. Get moving, now!”
Lynn was crying as Groff led her out the door and down the silent hallway, certain that the multiple gunshots had already alerted the remaining crew, but also gambling that they might have concluded that Anna was disposing of unwanted parties. It as a fifty-fifty gamble and Groff was a gambler.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Rings
The nipple rings were just the beginning. Neither sister had any body jewelry or piercings, but at times in the past, both had thought about it and even considered going together to the tattoo and piercing center where so many of their friends went in the past. The big obstacle was always the same. The pain. They weren’t worried about their parents’ reaction. Their Dad got his one and only tattoo while in the Army and their Mom had hers done a few years later when a few of the local mothers suddenly all got rollickingly drunk one night and ventured downtown to the area that they normally would consider the wrong side of the tracks. They each opted for the less painful, small images inked on their butts and ankles and other normally invisible body acreage. Now, of course, the girls had no choice about the piercings and both shook nervously, saliva bubbling out from around their tight gags as they moved as quickly as they could in their chains. They were being escorted to the small inside cabin where three people dressed in slightly blood-stained surgical scrubs were just finishing up on another slave captive. The girl they worked on was strapped down on a modern operating table, but crudely gagged with a wide strip of soft wood held between her teeth by a double strap that went behind her head. Other leather straps at wrists, ankles, across her chest, at her waist and at the top of each thigh held her immobile on the stainless steel table that had a few small blood pools on it. Her breasts were blood streaked and another small pool of coagulating blood was on the table between her legs, seeping slowly under her buttocks. The strapped down girl screamed endlessly and Phillipa and Janeen heard her screams from a long way down the dimly lit passageway as their guards hustled them along. The guards chatted between themselves, as though they were alone, while the two girls struggled to keep up with them because of the short chains between their shackled ankles. An additional inhibitor was the taut chain leash attached to Phillipa’s collar that extended back a few feet to Janeen’s. Their wrists were cuffed behind their back in the common steel manacles that all slaves on board wore constantly. From the manacles, chains led up to the back of the collar and down to the leg shackles. Janeen, who was proving to be a less than cooperative slave, wore an additional and restrictive set of thin metal cuffs around her thighs, just above the knees. Both girls had punitive elbow cuffs with variable length links, holding their arms back and causing their breasts to jut out obscenely. Their gags were expanding metal and rubber pears with a key slot in the front that allowed the jaw-jacking devices to be slowly cranked open or closed, depending on the girls’ behavior and the degree of oral plugging desired by whoever possessed the keys.
Phillipa staggered along the hallway, trying to keep up with the guard’s constant pulling on her leash and wishing that her stubborn sister would cooperate a bit more, at least so that the guards would not use their crops indiscriminately on whichever ass, tits or thighs happened to be closest when they wanted the girls to move along faster.
The chains they wore were, by now, more or less permanent. Initially, their captors experimented with a wide range of restraints until they seemed satisfied that this arrangement would provide an interesting and efficient range of features on this particular pair of newbies. The objective of all restraints on board the freighter was more or less the same as that subscribed to by the slavers on the island and in the underwater habitat: provide security, discomfort, sexual accessibility and ease of use. This simple pattern seemed to work on the sisters, so they wore it almost constantly and learned new ways to provide for themselves while chained and held in their box-like cells. If the idea of eating, drinking and performing otherwise normal body functions without their hands had presented itself before they were taken prisoner, neither girl would have imagined that now, after three days on the freighter, they would demonstrate considerable dexterity at using the three-times-a-day-provided toilet or eating their meals out of a single stainless steel bowl.
Other captives on board, when seen by the girls, showed a bazaar range of personal bondage and restraints. Many had the same chain combination as the sisters, but others, apparently because of their behavior, physical assets, (or lack of them), were kept under control by other means. More than one girl that Janeen saw wore a heavy metal helmet that included a collar and enclosed her entire head. Janeen noted with horror that this device had a small, hinged panel on the front that apparently could be opened and shut to allow a gag or nourishment to be inserted into the mouth that was propped wide open by a padded ring set behind her front teeth, inside her mouth. When led stumbling and blind through the lower deck slave quarters, the poor girl often ran into doors and walls as her guards delighted in leading her almost up to a bulkhead and letting her continue until she crashed into it. The girl was strictly bound with her closely fettered arms rigidly straight down behind her back and her long legs hobbled with four different cuff and chain sets at the top of her narrow thighs, above and below her knees and at her ankles. Little sound emerged from the brank and the guards laughed merrily as they yanked on the chain leash and pulled her back to her feet, only to stagger once again into a barred panel or closed door. This performance brought tears of laugher to the guards and Janeen, seeing only parts of the whole act, was grateful that she was kept in her lesser, but still highly restrictive bondage.
Other prisoners showed additional creative and obviously uncomfortable restraints. For example, both sisters quickly noted that only some slaves wore chain harnesses around their hips with a single, double or triple chain through their sex and up between and around their buttocks. Initially, given their lack of exposure to such things, both girls assumed that these body harnesses were simply for control. Only later were they to learn that the real function of the chain belt and crotch splitter was to hold plugs and dildoes firmly inside the wearer’s lower apertures and to cap or stretch the sensitive little nubs of sex that were usually somehow “adjusted” by these chain restraints.
“It is time for some ‘adjustments’ in your jewelry,” said Kreble, as he hustled Janeen down the hallway and into the smaller operating theater. “Put her in the stirrups and get her prepped,” he said to the two gowned and masked women already in the room. They seized Janeen and put her on the table, removing her chains and fastening her arms and legs in the requisite stretched out position. Plastic-covered straps went over her chest above and below her breasts and additional straps were placed around her neck and waist. When they finished, the girl was firmly bound to the table, unable to move anything except perhaps her fingers and toes. Then her feet were individually released and fastened into the steel stirrups and her legs spread obscenely wide while they shaved her crotch, removing the small triangle of bikini bush she had tended carefully for the last few months, expecting to wear little or nothing while on the cruise. The gag in her mouth was most effective in keeping her complaints and screams at a reasonable volume and when they swabbed her nipples and entire crotch, she knew at once what was coming.
Janeen thrashed in her straps, unable to do more than twist slightly to one side or the other. A few more turns of the ratchets on the straps brought this minimal exercise to an end. She lay like a log on the cold steel table as Kreble and the others brought a variety of terror-inducing tools and instruments to the side of the table and began what was to be a lengthy operation to place stainless steel rings in her nipples, lower labia and clitoris. Each piercing and insertion of the rings brought pain beyond anything Janeen had ever endured, even at the hands of the family’s sadistic dentist, who, more than once, had surreptitiously molested both mother and daughters while carrying out painful drillings and gum surgery. More than once the dentist’s hands wandered over the up-thrust breasts of the Norquist women and each time, he would stare into their pain-filled eyes and say that it would just be a little longer until the Novocain took effect. When Papa Norquist was told about these incidents, he initially discounted the stories as exaggerations, but after quizzing all three women and then forcing Jolene, the young and pretty dental assistant to tell him the truth, Doctor Younger suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Police finally established that he had been having an affair with Jolene and that the two were the unfortunate victims of an automobile accident in the high Austrian Alps one holiday evening in mid winter. Younger’s wife never doubted the police account and, after discovering that her unfaithful husband left her a large fortune in real estate and insurance, insisted the bodies be cremated at once.
But the surgery without anesthetic was a specialty of the slaver crew and they made sure that the girl felt every pinch of the hemostats and every stab of the wide piercing needles as the sadistic team inserted the thick rings into all of the key parts of her breasts and sex. When complete, Janeen had gained about a pound of steel on her body, making it obvious that she would never again go through airport security without a full body search and noisesome probing by security morons. The nipple rings were too big to go unnoticed, even if she wore a padded bra and the rings in her crotch were, well…equally obvious, as well as painful.
“The discomfort that we now feel,” said Kreble seriously as they finished up the procedures, “will slowly fade. If you behave yourself, nothing will be attached to these little jewelry gems for a few weeks until you heal completely and the rings can be moved freely in their flesh. However, Miss Norquist, should you become in any way difficult or unmanageable, you will be bound by these rings in a most unpleasant position until you learn that you are ours and will do at once as you are told. Do I make myself clear?” he asked as he tapped the clit ring lightly with his forefinger, sending waves of pain and anguish through her pelvis.
Janeen nodded her strap-bound head and blinked back the endless stream of tears that flowed throughout the surgery.
“Take her to recovery. Secure her so that she cannot use her hands or mouth. Give her something to sleep with and then let’s get the sister in here for some more fun,” Kreble said with a cruel laugh.
Ten minutes later, Phillipa found herself on the still warm steel table recently occupied by her tormented sister. Phillipa already had the eight ring group and was now on the table for the next in the series to outfit her for the slave markets. Phillipa’s earlier surgery was carried out during her first night aboard the ship and she was now beginning to heal quite well, so it was time for the next set of metal implants to be installed.
“Today, dear little girl,” Kreble intoned with some gravity, “you will be getting your final compliment of steel jewelry. This group,” he said as he held up a small plastic box with four rings of different sizes, will give you the mystic number of imbedded service rings. These four go, as you might expect, in your ears, your septum and your sweet little tongue.” Phillipa cringed against the steel tabletop, trying to fade into the smooth metal and disappear as she anticipated the same sort of lingering pain that they inflicted upon her when the original body rings were installed.
The surgical team went happily to work, adding a bit more oral stuffing when the girl’s screams got to be more than anyone wanted to hear. This happened when they struggled to get the piercing needle through her nasal septum and the needle seemed to be stuck in the cartilage. Pulling and pushing on the thick needle failed to dislodge it and, as Phillipa’s screams reached unbearable pitch, the principal surgeon gave in and pumped a full ampoule of Novocain into the girls face and, after a few minutes, applied a device that looked like a wheel puller to extricate the stuck needle. Finally, the spring-loaded, stainless steel ring, spread open with the locking pliers, was then inserted and closed, settling decoratively on the girl’s upper lip.
It was not Phillipa’s day as the team propped open her mouth, attached a pulling device to her pink tongue and stretched it as far as physically possible before clamping it off, removing the pulling device and setting the one step piercing machine to drill a hole through the tongue, in one side and out the other. Setting up this procedure was more difficult than it might sound, especially with the girl struggling and fighting, despite her bonds. The head clamps were tightened, the powerful side-loaded cranium frame adjusted to maximum safe retention and the various tools for holding the tongue out and motionless were all applied. The piercing shot was fired. The thick, hollow needle slammed through the tongue muscle and exited on the other side, accompanied by wails and screams of terror and pain from the unfortunate victim. Wasting no time, the surgical team inserted the D shaped steel ring and closed it to locking position so that the straight bar of the D went through the tongue and the curved portion hung either above or below the tongue’s surface. Given the same lecture about behavior as her sister had been given a few hours before, they lifted Phillipa off the table and escorted back to her cell box, her aching head encapsulated in a stylish new discipline hood made from ultra thin calf’s skin. It fit her like an outer layer of her own skin, snugly enclosing her surgically altered head with the appropriate antibiotic bandages carefully fitted on the critical areas. The eyeholes were kept covered and the various exterior straps held her mouth shut. A small black rubber hose emerged from the right side of the zippered mouth opening, installed to allow accumulated liquid to exit her mouth without her having to swallow it.
