She worked as she talked. “Her parents finally caught on, of course. She was sixteen and in love, love, love, going to marry him and be on his arm instead of me. She wrote all this in her diary, and her mother snooped and found it. Mothers do that, you know. Snoop.”
Jesus, the bastard could bleed, even though the ropes were tight.
“Statutory rape, of course, due to the age difference, and the fact it started when she was fourteen. It was pay big money or go to prison, so the bastard bought his way out of it. The parents wanted money. They really didn’t give a damn about the daughter, as long as he paid them four million dollars. They sold her. You see that, don’t you? Isn’t that what you ragheads do—buy children to fuck?
“My husband could have probably made a better deal if he had gone to them up front,” Nora mused aloud, “and said, ‘I’ll give you a million dollars if you’ll let me fuck your daughter on the sly for the next three years.’ A bang a month. Sometimes two. Call it fifty fucks in three years. A million bucks for fifty fucks.” She giggled. “They would have gone for that.”
Sweat was pouring off Ragnar’s face. Blood was seeping out his mouth around the gag. The shit had bitten his tongue. Idly, she wondered if he had bitten it off.
“One day the bank called the house to verify a check while he was making the rounds of the dealerships. I went to the bank and took a look. Can you believe it? The idiot wrote it on a joint account. Four million bucks. That was a damn big pop for us. I had the locks changed on the house that afternoon and filed for a divorce two days later.
“He tried to keep it all hushed up, but I fought to get the money back, so it became a huge stink.”
She stared down into Ragnar’s eyes, which still tracked.
“You haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you? It’s too bad, really. But even if you spoke English, you wouldn’t have understood. Men seldom do. And you don’t strike me as the empathetic type.
“I’ll bet you were a pretty good pirate. My husband was, Honest John, but the divorce and publicity cost him the dealerships. They even threw him out of the country club. He became an alcoholic. Pickled himself, and his liver gave out last year. That’s the way it goes, I guess. You wear out your turn, then it’s someone else’s.”
Nora wandered around the room, touching this and that, paused to wipe the blood off her hands and arms on a blanket in the bedroom, then went into the living room and sat in a chair with her back to Ragnar. Amazingly, she spotted her purse in the rubble of the main room, right where Ragnar had tossed it several days ago.
She got it, rooted in it, found some cigarettes and lit one. It tasted delicious. She sat looking into the night as she smoked it. Above her, through the holes in the ceiling, she could see stars. Heard the desert wind whisper through the holes.
I stood in the doorway of Ragnar’s lair listening to what remained of the battle between the Shabab and the pirates. An occasional distant automatic weapons burst, then long moments of silence. An occasional explosion, no doubt from an RPG. Someone was cleaning up, executing the last of their enemies. Burbles of conversation on the tactical net in my ear. The SEALs were still on the beach, drones were overhead, the controllers were reporting on the battle. It was a bit like listening to a baseball game without the crowd-noise background or commercials.
My watch said it was a little after 4:00 A.M. I was almost tired enough to sleep standing up, even with the nicked leg. The bleeding had stopped. Slowed, anyway. Smarted a good bit. I needed to get a bandage on it.
The shards of war were scattered all over. Burned-out pickups, bodies, pieces of bodies, crap from the face of the building, glass all over, spent cartridges … Even with the breeze, I could smell cooked meat. A couple of women were examining the bodies. Maybe looking for their men. Or sons. Nora Neidlinger was upstairs carving on Sheikh Ragnar, the terror of the Somali coast.
Here came the television people with flashlights, picking their way through the trash, absolutely certain no one would ever want to shoot them. Poor deluded fools. Cameramen, reporters, engineers toting gear … Donatelli looked tired and a little the worse for wear. One-star accommodations can wear you down. Still cute, though.
The group came toward me and obviously intended to enter the building. I stopped them. “Don’t go in there. Off-limits to the press.”
“That’s the best vantage point for filming,” Ricardo explained, pointing upward toward the penthouse. “Great background. Anyway, we want to interview Ragnar. He’s still in there, isn’t he?”
“I am not his press secretary. He has other people for that. But I doubt if he wants to talk to you. Beat it.”
That got them.
“Who are you, anyway?” the BBC man demanded.
“Nancy Pelosi. How do you like my disguise? No one is supposed to know I’m here.”
“Don’t you understand? We’re the press! The whole world wants to know what is happening.”
“I don’t give a damn if you’re the pope’s eldest son. Take your act and git. Go interview a corpse.” I waved the Kimber around.
They went, carrying their gear, threading their way through the remnants of the pickups and bodies and pieces of everything, some of it bloody. They hiked off toward the fortress. If they knew about the trench bomb, they were the pride of their networks. I doubted if they did. Ricardo hadn’t impressed me as that kind of guy.
I was sitting in the doorway with my back to the pillar watching the sky brighten to the east when the drone controller announced that apparently the Shabab had won and were boarding pickups. They would be here in short order, he said. I looked at my watch. Almost 5:30 A.M.
I hiked back up the stairs to collect Nora Neidlinger. Met the two Mossad guys coming down. Each of them was carrying a couple of those Communist claymores. Souvenirs.
I found Nora sitting in a chair in the main room calmly smoking a cigarette. She had bloodstains to her elbows and on the front of her blouse. Lots of blood. The remains of Sheikh Ragnar were there on the floor, still trussed up. I tried not to look.
“Come on. Some bad guys are coming and we gotta get you outta here.”
She was in no hurry.
“I mean now. Unless you want to let the holy warriors rape you to death.”
She picked up her purse, stood and headed for the stairway. She didn’t even glance at Ragnar.
“I’ll need my knife.”
She jerked her head back toward the chair and kept going. I found the knife on the floor. Used a wad of currency to wipe as much of the blood and gore off the knife as possible—taking care not to look at Ragnar—put it in its sheath, threw the bloody money on the floor and followed her down the stairs.
Jake Grafton was waiting when I came out of the building. He had one of the pickups. Ben and his buddy were sitting in the bed, one on either side of Mohammed Atom, whose wrists were held together with a plastic tie. Grafton took a look at Nora and then at me. Didn’t ask any questions.
“Get her in the surf,” he said. “Wash her off.”
I took her elbow and walked her toward the ocean. We passed a couple of SEALs lying on the beach. They were wearing those black wet suits and were difficult to see until I almost stepped on them. If Nora saw the SEALs, she paid no attention. We passed them by, walked into the water to our knees. It was warm, wet and black, with rollers flopping on the beach and running back into the sea.