The Chechen knelt and dipped a canteen into the water.
Gil was partially hidden behind a rhododendron, but not well enough to conceal him from a direct look. The rifle was beneath him, attached to the three-point sling, and at such close range, he didn’t dare move to draw the pistol.
Another Chechen emerged and knelt beside the first, dipping his canteen as well. Within a half minute, there was a regular canteen-filling convention taking place, with six Chechens kneeling shoulder to shoulder at the water’s edge. They were talking in regular voices, entirely unconcerned about their security. Two were smoking cigarettes. This was their territory, and they obviously felt safe. Whether or not they had any knowledge of the battle that had taken place a full click to the north was anybody’s guess.
The best clue was that they were all filling two canteens apiece, indicating they had possibly spent the earlier part of day operating in the high country, where water was scarce. It might have even meant they’d been traveling parallel to Gil during his descent, but from the ill-disciplined manner in which they carried on, he doubted it. There was no urgency about them; no sense of vigilance.
As they began standing up to put away their canteens, one of them glanced in Gil’s direction, looked away — then did a double take, shouting a warning to his compatriots, pointing with the canteen in his hand instead of grabbing for his AK-47.
Gil ripped a ready-grenade from his harness, the pin pulling automatically as he tore it loose and biffed it into the shallow water. The Chechens who saw the grenade dove for cover; those who didn’t were grabbing for their rifles when it exploded.
Two of them were blown apart as Gil rolled to his side, laying down a hail of fire from the AN-94. He killed two more, but the remaining two jumped up and fled through the gap in the rhododendron. He sprang to his feet and gave chase, not wanting to risk them warning Umarov’s camp. The Chechens crashed through the undergrowth a few meters ahead of him, just out of view as they followed a narrow deer trail, hoping to get away from Gil and whoever might be with him. They would have surely recognized his Spetsnaz camouflage, and the Spetsnaz were known to operate in wolf packs.
Gil fired at them through the undergrowth. One of them cried out, and Gil heard him go down. He leapt over the body in the trail a second later and bound unexpectedly into a glade; a small clearing in the forest. The other Chechen had vanished into thin air. Gil went immediately to ground and tuned his ears for the slightest hint of movement.
72
Mariana lay on the bed utterly petrified, naked from the waist to her ankles, her hands bound painfully behind her back.
“What did Peterson say?” the big guy asked. He had an old 1911 pistol stuck in the front of his pants.
The smaller guy tucked the cellular into his back pocket. “He wants us to kill them both.”
The guy with the gun looked at Mariana lying helpless on the bed, his eyes coming to rest on her pubic mound. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
His partner glanced at Mariana and shook his head. “That’s not really my thing.”
“More for me, then.” The big man tossed him the pistol.
“You’d better make it fast.” His partner tucked the gun into the small of his back. “We’re on the clock, and that prick next door is bad news.”
“I won’t be long, bro.”
Mariana began to sob as the guy dropped his trousers and knee-walked across the bed, grabbing her knees in strong hands and forcing them apart, and then falling on her heavily as he maneuvered between them.
The other guy picked up the remote and turned on the TV to cover Mariana’s muffled cries. Then he went into the bathroom and stood peeing into the toilet. He finished and dropped the seat, pushing the button on top of the tank before stepping back into the room. After watching his partner on top of Mariana for a minute or so he decided, Why not? They were going to kill her anyhow. It wasn’t like she’d have to live very long with the trauma.
The door to the room burst inward, and he spun around just in time for Crosswhite to grab him behind the neck with both hands, holding him in a Muay Thai clinch and delivering him a vicious knee to the groin. The Cuban’s legs buckled beneath him, and Crosswhite snatched the gun from the back of his pants, kicking the door shut with his heel and thrusting the pistol before him as Mariana’s rapist was rolling off the bed.
“Freeze, motherfucker!”
The big guy stood beside the bed with his pants down around his ankles, his erection wilting rapidly.
Crosswhite stalked forward and buried the toe of his boot in the guy’s groin. The man let out a hideous squeal of pain and dropped to the floor, convulsing and vomiting onto the tile. Crosswhite kicked him in the face and stomped his skull with the heel of his boot. The little guy began get to up, and Crosswhite stalked back across the room to slug him in the side of the head with the pistol. Then he put the pistol under his shirt and grabbed the guy by the hair, giving his head a brutal twist and snapping the neck with a crunch.
He took a folding knife from his pocket and cut Mariana loose.
She leapt off the bed and shuffled into the bathroom with her pants still caught around her feet, slamming the door behind her and retching into the toilet. The shower came on a short time later.
Crosswhite was standing by the door when the big guy began to stir. He walked over and finished him off with a heavy heel to the back of the neck. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and took out his cellular to call Ernesto the doorman.
Ernesto knocked a few minutes later, and Crosswhite let him into the room.
Ernesto saw the bodies. “Santo Cielo! Do you leave dead men everywhere you go, señor?”
“Looks that way,” Crosswhite answered glumly, sitting back down on the bed and taking out his cigarettes.
Ernesto looked around for Mariana. “Is the señorita okay?”
Crosswhite shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you want me to call the doctor?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know yet.” He struck a match. “I don’t think she needs that kind of a doctor.”
Ernesto realized for the first time that one of the dead men’s pants was down around his ankles, and his face turned ashen. “Was she… was she violated?”
Crosswhite tossed the match onto the floor and breathed smoke from his nostrils. “Yeah.”
Ernesto stepped over and spit on the rapist’s corpse. “Coño!”
“Do you know somebody we can pay to get rid of these bodies, Ernie?”
“Yes, but I think it will be very expensive.”
“Expensive I can handle,” Crosswhite said. “Cops I can’t.”
“I’ll have Lupita bring her laundry cart. The cart is small, so it will take two trips, and she will want the money right away.”
“That’s fine. What happens after the laundry carts?”
“I can call my cousin. He has a fish truck. He can give the bodies to the men he buys the fish from, and they can dump the bodies in the ocean.”
“You’re sure they’ll help?”
Ernesto shrugged. “If you will pay, they will help. Money is the law here, señor.”
“Okay, Ernie. Better go find Lupita. We’re burnin’ daylight.”