“Oh, you swing that breadstick both ways, do ya?”
“Huh?” The man looked down. “Well, in this camp you have to.”
“As attractive as you make all that sound.” Alicia came close. “I have to reject you.”
“Wha—”
He collapsed without making any noise, unconscious, bruised around the temple. Alicia tied and gagged him, but couldn’t bring herself to help the zipper situation so just left everything hanging out. He’d probably never notice. She slipped her head back out of the tent, saw all was still clear, and resumed her mission.
Then Crouch was in her ear. “We found a guard out by the beach. Drunk and unconscious. We think there’s another around the other side, but don’t want to get close. Keep seeing the end of a burning cigarette and hearing the sound of a bottle clunking.”
Alicia tapped twice to show she had heard, but didn’t reply. The guards — if they could be called that — watched the sea then. Of course they appeared to have been located here for years, so complacency was a given, especially considering the amount of alcohol and drugs she’d already seen about the place.
Someone was going to regret it in the morning.
Still, their numbers were large enough to be worrying. And what had happened to Jensen? Alicia thought she knew. If the self-acclaimed pirate boss had known about this place, he’d have also surely known about the force that occupied it. Clearly, he’d chosen a safe route and was probably ensconced inside some rum-sodden hidey hole.
Waiting for… what?
She delved further into the camp, halfway through now and well past the point of no return. The fires still burned strong; men tended them every now and again. To them she was a shadow, barely discernible. She froze in her tracks as two men exited a tent and sauntered by, cursing and laughing at some uproarious joke. They passed her position only a meter away, not noticing the crouching blonde at the side of the nearest tent. On one of the men’s belts swung a set of handcuffs, on the other a huge hunting knife and a coiled rope. Curious. She held her breath as their boots tramped the grass before her, then stopped, the men spotting something after all.
“What da fuck is dat?”
“Jus’ Jeff, man. He up dat tree.”
“Ya mon. I see now.”
Alicia slowly turned her head so she could see what they were seeing. Beyond their waists she saw a thick oak bordering the camp and a figure sitting with his legs on either side of a wide branch. The harness that kept him up there stretched taut as he had clearly fallen off whilst fast asleep. Both men stared.
“Y’think we should help?”
“Naa, mon. Dis is cool. He drinkin’ too much bag juice.”
Both men guffawed, then moved off. Alicia let out a deep breath. If the quest for Morgan’s treasure had been fraught with nothing but bad luck so far, tonight had gone a little way to evening the score. She waited until the camp quieted again before moving to an area near the back, where the slope of the hill began. Here a row of tents had been lashed together, and a perimeter fence staked down at chest height. Whoever inhabited those tents would not easily leave.
Prisoners.
Alicia was sure now. These men — this band of callous, neglectful, dirty, well-armed thugs — were nothing but modern day pirates. Men that roamed the seas looking for boats and people to kidnap and ransom. Men that lived to steal and hurt and terrify. These kind of pirates smuggled people, belongings and even bodies through borders and across the waves, meeting the demands of ruthless entities such as terrorist organizations and the worst criminal enterprises. Alicia knew they brought the word pitiless down to a whole new level. For most of them, life had not been easy and they had no clue how real people and the real world actually worked. They made rich men richer, and took everything they wanted.
Alicia saw some of the signs of their occupation smoldering away in a fire in front of the row of tents. Piles of clothes, burned and still smoking. Whoever had once worn those clothes clearly no longer had a use for them.
Alicia paused before the fence, well aware of her exposure but feeling a pull toward what could well be an imprisoned family. The area also appeared unguarded and a close check of trees and nearby tents revealed no sentries. Alicia moved to the rough gate and looked at the lock.
A length of twine, knotted around. Classy.
With nowhere to hide, she turned and surveyed the camp. Very little moved out there save for the flickering of flames. Another man emerged from another tent, making her drop low, but he soon vanished without even looking around. Tension caused the muscles across her shoulders to knot but she shrugged it off. Even a seasoned soldier found it hard to deal with such relentless danger and having to keep a hyper-awareness. A guard now exited a nearby tent and looked over at her. Alicia sauntered away, conscious his eyes never left her back.
It didn’t look right. She was going to be exposed.
“You want something?” His voice echoed.
Alicia held up a hand and chose a tent at random, conscious that she wore no metal-plated vest or other protection in her efforts to blend. To look back would only increase his mistrust so she fell to her knees and pushed at a tent flap. The material gave and she climbed in.
Face to face with two bearded men.
Both stared at her with wide eyes, mouths working but making no sound. Both were bare chested and hairy. They played cards, drank alcohol and chewed on some kind of blackened meat. And, perhaps trusting some kind of brutish sixth sense, they both reached for their weapons.
Alicia acted instantly, knowing there was no going back now. She launched herself at the men, but not in a panic-stricken way. She attacked with precision, using the lessons learned from hundreds of face-to-face battles. The man to the left was quickest, fingers already brushing the barrel of his Uzi, but it was pointed the wrong way and tangled with a bed sheet. So she swooped for the other, clamping his wrist before he managed to even touch the cool metal, twisting and breaking bone just as she clamped a hand over his mouth.
The scream went unheard.
Wrenching again, she twisted his arm until his face showed he was too concerned about the pain than the screaming, and she left him collapsed on his knees. Now she switched to the other man who was just bringing his own Uzi to bear. Alicia let it come around, knowing he would be fully concentrated on the weapon and its deadly uses, which was his weakness.
The barrel brushed her forehead.
She brought the hilt of her knife up under his chin, through the roof of his mouth and on, watched his eyes bulge and felt the machine gun fall between her knees.
Twisting again, she didn’t let up. Her first opponent was finding an extra burst of adrenalin as he saw his comrade die. But still, like almost everyone that hadn’t been trained, he focused on the one thing he thought gave him the advantage — the gun. Alicia watched him reach out, bend slightly, waiting for the precise moment, then used his own lunge to turn him around and put a chokehold around his throat.
No sound. No warning cries. Just the dying chokes of a ruthless modern-day pirate.
She ended it faster with the knife, then let him fall gently to the floor of the tent. She looked around, wondering now that she had a tent to herself if there was anything of importance she might find. With low-level crooks such as these she suspected to find nothing, but would look anyway.
Underneath the bunk was a pile of magazines and spare clothes. The low picnic table in the corner — the owner’s only furnishing — held an assortment of what appeared to be trophies. A gold watch, a pearl bracelet, a pair of cufflinks. Alicia bit her bottom lip as she stared at possessions that had once belonged to innocent people, no doubt captured by this band of callous mercenaries and ransomed or tortured and killed. She looked over at the dead, bleeding bodies and felt no remorse, only a pang of distress at the knowledge that they had once been as innocent and young and carefree as any child born anywhere. Somebody had made them this way. Somebody made a deliberate decision to make a child become… this.