Lea scowled at him. “Take your hands off me, you scum.”
He nodded silently and then delivered a hefty backslap knocking her to the dirt. Hawke leaped forward to her defense but was attacked by two of Chastain’s man. One hooked his foot out from under him while the other punched him hard in the back of the head, sending him crashing into the dusty gravel at their boots.
“Down boy!” Kruger yelled, and they all fell about laughing.
Except Saqqal who looked at his watch. “We need to get on.”
Chastain spat on the bull grass as he strolled the short distance toward them. “You boys surely do know how to put on a show, but let me tell you that killing my men was a big mistake.” As Hawke struggled up on all fours, Chastain kicked him hard in the ribs.
“Leave him alone, you coward!” Lea said, her lip still bleeding from Kruger’s slap. She was now pinned against the iron trim of a fence with the muzzle of an assault rifle pointing in her face.
“Ziad is right,” Chastain said. “We have better things to do than play with you assholes.”
“Like play with your own arsehole, you mean?” Scarlet said.
“Shut up!” Chastain screamed, his calm composure cracking for a brief moment. He turned to Saqqal and spoke for a few moments. The Syrian nodded and then Chastain ordered a man into the house. He returned a few seconds later with someone who shocked them all.
Saqqal saw their horror and smiled. “Allow me to introduce Mr Rajavi.”
A well-built man stepped off the veranda and into the Colombian sunshine. He was well over six feet tall and was so muscular he looked like he was built of bricks.
But his enormous muscles weren’t what they were staring at.
Hawke fixed his eyes on the dead, expressionless face of the man as he walked closer and stood beside Saqqal. At first Hawke couldn’t decide what was wrong with the man’s face. It looked almost normal, and yet there was something not right about it that his instincts just wouldn’t let go.
And then he worked it out. The man’s face wasn’t real, but a mask of a human face. A silicon mask that was so close to reality one glance wasn't enough to work it out, especially from a distance, but a longer look, up-close, and the deception was unveiled.
Saqqal noted their expressions and smirked with a demented pride as if he were displaying a rare animal.
“Mr Rajavi was mauled terribly by a Persian leopard while he was hunting them in the Zagros Mountains. He lost nearly all of his face, and let’s just say the surgical reconstruction was not of the highest quality. Today he hides the horror behind this silicon mask, which apparently is a facsimile of the face he used to have before the attack. Excuse his reluctance to speak — he’s not being rude. The sad truth is the leopard took his tongue along with everything else.”
Rajavi’s dark eyes blinked behind the mask, and the sound of his breathing grew in volume. The silicon mask was almost lifelike, but not quite, and that is what made is so creepy and unnerving. There was no way for any emotion to appear on the mask, so reading the mood behind the silicon was impossible, and yet the eyes were real, staring out at them all from behind the grotesque artifice of the shield he had erected between his disfigured face and the rest of the world.
“He’s not being vain, you understand,” Saqqal said. “The attack was savage, and the mask is there for your benefit, not his.”
Chastain looked suspiciously at the man for a few moments. Hawke didn’t know how long he had known Rajavi but it obviously wasn't enough to get used to the mask.
After a few long seconds, Chastain took a step back and moved closer to Lexi and brushed his hand over her breasts. “They are so beautiful,” he whispered. “It’s just such a shame to keep them locked up like this.” He ripped her top open and exposed her underwear, making her flinch in disgust.
Hawke leaped forward to help her, but one of the men raised his rifle and struck him hard once again on the back of his skull, but this time with the heavy polymer butt of the weapon. Once again, Hawke fell to his knees in agony, desperately clinging to consciousness.
“All right,” Kruger said. “Enough of this. We have work to do. I don’t care how you get rid of this scum but do it now and then we can get out of here.”
Chastain looked at the South African long and hard for a moment. He looked like he wanted to shoot him, but instead he ordered Corzo and Rajavi to take the ECHO team over to the cage.
The former Delta man strolled along beside them with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face. “Let me introduce you to Bonnie and Clyde.” They stepped through the tunnel of vines and got their first unobscured view of the cage. Hawke had been right — behind the bars two large black panthers were snoozing in different corners. The sides of the cage were at least ten feet high, but there was no roof on it.
“You’re looking at two of the finest examples of panthera pardus, or to bozos like you, black jaguars.”
“Panthera onca, you complete fool,” Ryan said. “Panthera pardus is the black leopard.”
Chastain stared at him. “Is that right?”
“It is.”
Chastain gave Ryan a slap with the back of his hand and nearly knocked him over.
The young man’s eyes burned with hatred as he wiped the blood from his mouth and Chastain laughed at his work. “As you can see, their little home is divided into two spacious rooms. The first cage is where they like to sleep and pass the day under the shade of the vines.”
It was now that Hawke saw a dividing wall of bars running down the middle of the cage. “And what’s this half for?”
Chastain grinned again. “Think of this end of the cage as their dining room… Corzo! That one right there is lunch.” He pointed to Lea, and the Colombian marched over to her and grabbed her roughly by the arm.
Lea struggled against him as he dragged her across the scrubby grass and up to the viewing platform. Chastain laughed and spat on the grass. Pulled his pants up with one hand. Sniffed hard and turned to Hawke. “See, boy… the pleasure here is guessing which one of them cats is gonna get her first. They ain’t been fed nothin’ for four days… makes ’em keener.”
Lea stared at the big cats, terrified as they awoke and began to pace around below her. “Joe!”
“Joe!” Chastain said in mockery. “Save me!” He laughed and joined them on the viewing platform for a better of the view. “No one gonna save you, darlin’.”
But then it all changed.
The explosion was enormous, and rocked the ground they stood on. Behind them, the top floor of the mansion was now ablaze, and smoke was pouring from a large hole in the terracotta roof.
Chastain and Corzo turned to see Kruger and the Syrians scrambling away from the house and covering their heads from the debris that was now dropping from the sky. Saqqal looked rattled and immediately ordered his men into the nearest Kiowa. Kruger measured the situation and decided to flee with them.
It was all kicking off again.
CHAPTER NINE
Chastain staggered back along roof, his arms flailing as he went and a look of unbridled terror on his fat face. He tried to stop himself going over by clawing at the air. It was pointless, but he was driven by instinct to survive.