The Rescue, Part Two
If you need help keeping up with the characters, you may go here.
Cindy could hear the distant sounds of the men following her. Shouts for her to stop peppered the air. Taking a moment to glance at the twins, she saw fear in their eyes. They knew the men would hurt them if they were caught, though she knew it was her they wanted to hurt the most.
Ignoring the pain in her foot caused by the thorn, she redoubled her efforts to get away from them. She figured she had perhaps another quarter mile to reach the rendezvous spot, and her ears told her the men were getting close and she might not make it, especially carrying the twins. For the first time, she realized bringing them may have been a mistake, though it was still a decision she would choose over leaving them behind. She knew the twins would be punished for going with her, but she would be the only one to die if they were caught.
And the thought that she would have died in two days if she’d stayed helped Cindy find a new source of energy and banished the doubts about bringing these two sweet girls. If they were caught, perhaps this would harden their own resolve one day to escape Pablo and his cruelty.
Finally, she heard the men only a short distance behind her. Their shouting and the noise from moving through the brush that reached into the pathway had continued, so she was able to keep up with their location relative to her own. She was making noise as she ran along the path as well, but she thought the men’s stumbling noises made it nearly impossible for them to separate their own clumsy sounds from hers.
It dawned on her she would not make it to the meeting place without the men catching her first, so she made a quick decision to hide instead, hoping they would run past and not notice.
She veered into the jungle to her right and moved as silently as possible off the path to a stand of thick growth. She held her finger to her lips to signal the girls to remain silent.
Crouching down into the undergrowth, Cindy and the twins waited as the shouting men pounded up the path. They would pass them no more than twelve feet away.
She saw the men’s faces as they ran along the path. She knew them, two of Pablo’s guards named Jorge and Ricardo. They had never been friendly toward her in the least. In fact Ricardo was always making lewd comments about what he wanted to do to her, even though he knew Pablo would strongly disapprove if he had raped her as he wanted to. Strangely, Pablo was probably the only thing keeping him from doing so.
The two men ran along the path, oblivious to the fact they were now past their quarry. Cindy watched them until they were down the path far enough for them to quietly disentangle themselves from the vines of the bushes that had hidden them.
Now she worried what would happen when the men came upon Carlo and the waiting car. Would Carlo have time to react? Would he be able to hide? She hoped for the former and doubted the latter.
Once again on the path, she began to jog toward their destiny, hoping it was a destiny she would want. Each step was now excruciating, and her arms were tiring rapidly from carrying the two girls.
********
Pablo bounced along in the back seat of the jeep, his men doing the same in the front. Just as Pablo was checking to make sure his pistol was fully loaded, one of the men in the front shouted an oath and slammed on the brakes.
“Qué es?” What is it? Pablo asked, but as soon as the question was out, he knew because of the sound of air escaping the tires. Looking back he saw the roofing nails scattered on the path behind the jeep. All four tires hissed as the air ran out around the nails, which had a large, thin, flat head to allow them to lie on the dirt road with the points sticking up.
That son-of-a-whoring-bitch, he thought. I will kill him more slowly for this.
“Get out!” Pablo commanded in Spanish. “Go back to the house and get another vehicle!” As the men ran back to the house, maybe a quarter mile back along the road, Pablo got out and drove the jeep off the rutted pathway to allow the other car to pass when it arrived. Then he went back and used his feet to sweep the nails off the path, checking to make sure he hadn’t missed one. There had to be a hundred of them scattered along the road, with more embedded in all four of the jeep’s tires.
Once he had cleared the narrow roadway, he sat there and fumed over the audacity of Carlo and Cindy to attempt her escape just before he planned to kill the whore. He could not allow such boldness to go unpunished. He would make an example of them. He would force his entire household to watch them being tortured to death. None would dare cross him after that.
It was mutiny, and that sort of thing, not stamped out in the beginning, had a tendency to grow and thrive in the minds of the lesser beings he owned and used for his pleasure. It could even invade the minds of his paid servants, especially since one of them, the chauffeur he thought he could trust, was a part of this conspiracy against him.
Looking back up the path toward the house, he wondered what was taking the men so long to get another car.
********
Carlo could hear the men chasing Cindy, so he knew without a doubt that Pablo was now on his way to him, but he hoped the men were too occupied with racing up the road to notice the roofing nails until it was too late. He had purchased them in town a few days ago and had stored the box in the small compartment in front of the passenger seat. He had scattered the whole box of nails on the road.
He had no way of knowing if his plan had worked, but the fact that a car had not arrived yet was a good sign.
He smiled, wishing he could be there to see the looks on the faces of the men as they tried to start any of the other cars on the compound. Getting any of the cars started would take a long time because they would have to return to the jeep to borrow from it what was missing from the others. He only wished he had been able to disable the jeep, but Tomas always drove it home each night.
Smiling again, he looked into the back seat of the car he was driving at the four sets of red and black battery cables that lay there.
********
Tomas, one of the two men from the jeep, pounded the steering wheel of the car he and Luis had jumped into. He had turned the key, but nothing had happened. Not a sound issued from the engine.
Getting out and popping the hood, he saw that the battery cables had been disconnected from the battery as well as from the starter. The cables were missing. Screaming an obscenity, he ran to the next car, popping the hood first before trying to start it.
This car, too, was missing the cables.
Glancing up the line of cars, he realized his only hope lay in the last car in the line. If it, too, was without battery cables, he would have to return to Pablo and inform the tyrant they were unable to go any further unless they took the battery cables from the jeep to use to start one of the cars. Either that, or they would have to drive the jeep on the rims, though that would be a slow process, almost assuring the escape’s success.
Arriving at the final available car, he lifted the hood. All his strength seemed to desert him when he saw the disconnected battery. Without a cable running from the battery to the starter, none of the cars could be used.
********
Pablo grew tired of waiting for Tomas and Luis and jumped back behind the wheel of the jeep. Starting it, he began to steer down the dirt road, ignoring the sluggish way the jeep handled with its four flat tires.
He had no idea what had happened, but he suspected the other cars had been sabotaged in some way, preventing the men from bringing a fresh vehicle to take them to Carlo’s and Cindy’s deaths.
********
Carlo could hear the men approaching and wondered where Cindy was. He had been expecting her and the twins to burst out of the jungle at any moment, but now it was obvious they had been forced into a maneuver to prevent being caught by the men.
The shouting of the men had alerted Carlo to their nearness, and he was ready when they burst out of the greenery onto the road.
Each man saw the car, then Carlo. Finally, their gazes fell on the gun pointed at them.
It was the last thing each man ever saw.
In what looked like a single movement that displayed a dancer’s grace, Carlo aimed and pulled the trigger once before moving quickly to his left to aim and fire again. He had been trained as a sharpshooter, and the bullets found their marks, entering the foreheads of each man and making scrambled eggs of their brains. They fell in two lifeless heaps where they stood. The two cracks of gunfire were heard by everyone on the compound. One shot had followed the other so closely that most people would think they were intended for the same target.
********
Cindy stopped short at the sound of the gunfire, panic rising in her chest. Two gunshots fired so closely together, they had to have been fired by the two men who had raced past her moments ago when she and the twins were hiding.
Carrying the twins, who seemed to gain weight with each of her steps, she continued to hobble toward the end of the path, which she knew must not be far now.
Finally, she saw the clearing that meant she had reached the end of the path. If Carlo were dead, the escape would be over. Not caring if she were caught, she burst out of the brush. The two men lay on the ground, obviously dead. Then she saw Carlo and the waiting car. She noticed the large pistol that dangled from his hand as if it were a part of him. Had he shot them? No other explanation was possible.
Carlo hissed, “Get in, quickly! Pablo might be along any second!”
She hurried to the waiting car and climbed into the open trunk with the twins, who had maintained complete silence since they had emerged from their hiding spot in the trees and brush.
Once Carlo had slammed the trunk closed, she hugged them tightly.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “This will all be over soon.”
“I’m scared,” Sonia said.
“Me, too,” Sophia whispered, her voice indicating she was very close to tears.
“Shh, it’s okay,” Cindy said, trying to soothe their fears. “We’re going to be safe now. Don’t cry. We will be in the air in less than an hour.”
“Really?” Sophia asked, obviously gaining some optimism from this news.
“Yes, really. And you two can be my two little girls and live in America with me.”
Sonia managed a smile, though it was too dark inside the trunk for anyone to see. She liked the idea of being Cindy’s daughter. She had no idea where her real mother was now, and besides, she had sold her and her sister into sexual slavery. She didn’t matter anymore.
“We’re approaching the gate,” Carlo shouted. “Stay silent.”
They could hear Carlo talking to someone, but they couldn’t make out the words from inside the trunk. Cindy hoped they would be able to get into the cab of the car after this. The trunk was hot and cramped with the three of them squeezing together to make enough room to fit.
Then they felt the car begin to move, slowly at first. Then they heard the shouts. Cindy recognized Pablo’s voice, which was muffled somewhat by the trunk’s lid, but not so much she couldn’t hear what he was saying. He was shouting at whoever was at the gate to stop them. The car lurched forward, putting as much distance as possible between the gate and themselves.
********
Pablo stopped the jeep and jumped out, demanding the gatekeeper to start his own car, which sat on the other side of the road from the gatehouse.
Javier, the gatekeeper, jumped into his car and started it while Pablo jumped into the front seat beside him. He had never had anything like this happen before, and he wondered what Carlo may have done to piss off Pablo so much, because his boss was angrier than he’d ever seen him.
Gunning the car’s engine, the man drove after the fleeing vehicle, Pablo urging him to drive even faster.
“I’m going to return them to the compound and kill them both very slowly,” Pablo said.
“Both?” Javier asked, puzzled.
“Yes, my woman must be in the trunk with two of my other girls. The girls will be allowed to live because this escape wasn’t their idea, but Carlo and the bitch must die.”
Javier decided to stop talking and drive. He preferred to keep his nose out of other people’s business, especially when the other person could have him shot and suffer no consequences.
********
Lolita spotted the landing strip and circled to land. She had seen it from the air before, a small grass strip of land about fifty feet wide and perhaps a half mile long. The orientation was southwest to northeast, and the windsock that perched beside the airstrip indicated she needed to land from the southwest. She was flying low, as these two beautiful women had requested, about a thousand feet above ground level.
As she turned to her left to line up with the landing strip, she noticed two cars speeding toward the air field from about a mile away. Looking in the co-pilot’s seat, she assured herself that her pistol was there at the ready should she need it.
Gwen and Kayleigh clasped hands as the plane banked to land, each smiling reassurance to the other.
“There are two cars speeding toward the airstrip,” Lolita said, unaware of the panic she was causing to grip the women sitting in the back.
Gwen pulled out her pistol and picked up the one she’d given to Kayleigh earlier that had been left on the seat beside the porn star turned heroine.
“Remember, we knew we might have to actually kill someone when we made these plans,” Gwen reminded Kayleigh, who went pale when the gun was held out to her. “It looks like we really might have to do just that.”
Kayleigh swallowed hard before realizing this was a matter of life or death. If she didn’t kill the other person, that person could kill her. Her daughter would have no mother. Her face hardened at that thought. She could easily kill to prevent that from happening.
The plane touched down with a bump on the slightly uneven terrain of the grass landing strip. Rolling the plane to a stop, Lolita saw the first car swerve toward them before sliding to a fast stop ten feet from the plane.
Carlo jumped out of the car and rushed to the trunk. He had hoped they would all be able to be in the cab of the car before arriving at the airstrip, but that plan had been ruined by Pablo and Javier’s car, the one good car Carlo couldn’t have sabotaged even if he’d realized it would be available. Now, Pablo was only a few hundred meters away and closing fast.
Popping the trunk, Carlo shouted, “In the plane! Now!”
Cindy leapt from the trunk and helped the children out before herding them toward the open door of the plane. She could feel the air from the propeller rushing along the plane’s fuselage, bending the grass over as if the blades were in fervent prayer for their success.
She heard shots being fired from the car that had been behind them, and she felt a bullet enter the flesh of her left thigh. It burned and the impact had felt like being kicked by a mule. She stumbled, and as she did, she heard a second shot. She heard the bullet whiz past her head, narrowly missing her. The stumble had probably saved her life. Cindy had one final thought of Jenna and lunged for the open plane, where the twins were already scrambling up into the aircraft.
She felt a presence behind her and glanced around. Carlo was there. Then she heard another shot and Carlo was gone, having either fallen from being shot or by choice to take aim at Pablo. She prayed it was not from the bullet.
More shots rained from the car Pablo had been in, and Cindy noticed another man there, firing shots toward the plane without seeming to care where they landed. As she was hoisting herself up into the plane, she felt a woman standing over her. A loud report of gunfire came from above her where the woman stood.
Gwen had seen Carlo fall, a bullet splattering his brains onto the grass. She stepped forward to take aim at the man firing aimlessly when a bullet entered her sternum, shattering her heart. She was dead before she hit the ground outside the plane.
“Gwen!” Kayleigh shouted.
Cindy had managed to climb into the plane and noticed the twins huddled together, each with hands covering their ears, their eyes shut tightly against the violence all around them.
Lolita, seeing that the cargo they had come for was now either on the plane or dead beside it, revved the engines to circle around to take off. Before turning the plane around, however, she took her gun and aimed it carefully out the window. She had taken marksmanship lessons since she was nine, and she was as good as Carlo when it came to hitting what she aimed at, maybe better.
She had recognized the man who had fired the first shots. It was Pablo Peligro. He was well known in this part of South America, and her family had had more than one run-in with the man. He was responsible for her own brother’s death, and now it was time for revenge. She was sad for the two lives that had been lost today. She knew families would suffer because of this evil man’s actions once again, but it was not for them she fired.
It was for Vicente, her eldest brother, whom she loved and worshiped from the time she could walk.
“This is for Vicente Suarez,” she said quietly as she squeezed the trigger.
Later she would swear she could see the bullet flying toward the man’s head. It seemed to take a full minute to arrive, but when it did, she watched with glee as the head of the monster who had murdered her beloved Vicente shattered in a cloud of red and gray.
Pablo Peligro never knew what hit him. Or why his life had been taken so violently.
Looking around at the carnage, Javier leaned over and threw up into the short grass of the air field. Then he climbed into his car and drove home. He felt that since his boss was now dead, he would have to find another job.
He wasn’t upset about that in the least.
********
As the plane careened and banked up into the afternoon sky above what is normally a beautifully green area of Colombia, Kayleigh hugged Cindy as they both wept bitterly. Cindy had harbored hope that she could convince Carlo to join her in the plane for a ride to safety and freedom in America. Barring that, she had hoped to convince him in the coming months to immigrate to California to be with her.
Now, that would never be. Five years of her life had been stolen from her, and now a part of what she’d hoped would be her future had been ripped from her as well, all by the one man she hated most in the world. The only solace she had was that she’d seen Pablo die, though the thought had occurred to her that his death was far too quick.
The twins clung to her as if releasing her would make her disappear. They sobbed as well. They cried from the fright of their journey to this plane. They cried from the loss of a man they knew had cared about them. And they cried for the woman who was now their mother, who had obviously both lost and gained something precious on that isolated landing strip. They loved her with a strength and passion that they were still too young to fully realize. And without realizing they had had such a thought, they vowed to make her life as good as it could possibly be without Carlo.
Kayleigh was too stunned to speak. Tears and sobs were the only things that could come from her at that moment. She had known this was dangerous and had accepted the possible consequences, but like so many who understand a possibility, she had not expected that the worst could ever really happen. In her mind before the disaster that was Gwen’s and Carlo’s deaths, she had pictured them getting out unscathed. She had seen their fear as the worst thing that would happen to them. Gwen had been loyal to Cindy even though she’d never met her. She had risked her life back in California for a woman she’d only seen pictures of.
She thought back to past conversations with Gwen about Cindy. She had told this special woman turned vigilante rescuer about the sex she and the girls had shared with Cindy. Gwen had looked forward to possibly sampling some of that delicious pussy herself.
Now, she never would.
Also, she never would be able to enjoy her own nieces again. Those girls loved their aunt, had made passionate love with her, and now perhaps their favorite person in the world was gone.
It all seemed so unfair, really.
Looking down, she noticed the ugly, bleeding hole in Cindy’s thigh.
“Oh, my God! You were shot!” she exclaimed, shocked at seeing this wound that didn’t seem to bother Cindy in the least.
Cindy looked down as if noticing the injury for the first time. “Oh, yeah. It was while I was getting in the plane. Then Carlo was behind me and–” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Kayleigh thought of Carlo. The man had given his life for Cindy. She looked at the crying woman and felt she should tell her what she hadn’t seen.
“He tried to fire his gun and shoot Pablo,” Kayleigh said. “But it must have jammed or something. Then he saw that Pablo was aiming at you to shoot you before you could get on the plane. He jumped between you and Pablo. He took the bullet meant for you. You were halfway into the plane by then, so it would have hit you square in the middle of the back if he hadn’t done that. Probably would have hit your heart. He saved your life.”
Cindy stared at Kayleigh as if she were trying to decipher the words, as though Kayleigh were speaking an unknown language. He had stepped in to take the bullet?
Sobs shook her as she thought of this wonderful man who had given his life to save hers.
They were still crying when they landed at Santiago Vila and boarded the Learjet for home.
The End of PART TWO
Continue on to PART THREE: The Young Adult Years, starting with Chapter 61
Author’s note:
First, this is not an apology for what took place in the story. I am proud of this phase of my erotic novel, and have become convinced that I can write mainstream fiction because of this. Normally, of course, an author just lets the story stand for itself, but because I communicate with my readers through comments on the website, making me feel much closer to you all, I felt more was needed than just saying adios to a couple of characters who had played such a big part in this story.
I’ve known for a long time that Carlo and Gwen would die in the rescue, as well as Pablo. The other minor characters who chased Cindy and the twins through the brush died because the story required it, and I know that nobody felt the loss of them at all.
I am aware many of you won’t like this ending to this part of the story. Forgive me, but that only means I did what I set out to do. That you care about my characters is the greatest compliment any writer can receive. It means they are more than words on a page. They have become real to you.
I set out to make Part Two an erotic thriller that would become a page-turner more for the suspense than for the sex, and I believe I have succeeded. I worried that the vast majority of you would stop reading this book because there were chapters totally devoid of erotic scenes. I am sure some did move on to other stories, and that’s fine. I cannot force people to read my work, and this is an erotica site, after all. That many of you not only kept reading, but also urged me to ‘hurry up’ with the next chapter is music to my ears. I am humbled by your admiration of my work.
It wasn’t easy to write this portion of the story. I was always concerned with pacing, not wanting to venture too far into the suspense without having, for want of a better term, sexual relief (as opposed to comic relief). I feel I have accomplished this, including enough sex of the type we all enjoy, as well as telling the story of the rescue.
Now, the good news for those wanting a bit more sex is that beginning with the next chapter, there will be much more of it. In fact, the first four chapters of Part Three are filled with it, including the introduction of a new eleven-year-old character. (I know…can’t wait, can you??) My spouse, Lisa, has read it and she loves it, having come several times reading it. I hope you can do the same.
This author’s note will eventually become a blog post, but I wanted it here first so those reading this story would see it and read it. Again, no apologies are offered, and if that offends you, then so be it. We lose people we love in our lives all the time, and dangerous missions like the one here almost always result in loss of life on both sides of the situation. You know, like war.
Cheryl Taggert
November 14, 2016
Approximately two weeks after finishing this chapter