Hello Everyone!
Here's the continuation. This story has gotten a life of its own and is getting bigger and bigger. Hope you'll enjoy it.
As promised Pics will follow to accompany the story
For those who'd like to read chapter 1, this is the link:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3407Enjoy
THE RED ORCHESTRA CASE, Chapter 2
Makryamos Hotel & Resort, Thassos Island, Greece
August 7 2016
Veronique
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... 186024.jpgwas lying on the wet sand by the beach, enjoying the feel of the very warm sun, caressing her skin. Veronique, actually Veronica Jaspers, was 24, a tall slim brunette with disproportionately large but very firm breasts for her lithe frame. She was lying face down, wearing only a string bikini and her face reflected the bliss she was feeling. Veronique was an SIS agent, posing on the island as a French Canadian guide for groups of French tourists. The assignment was good. The place was great: beautiful, almost exotic beaches, hot men, good lodgings and a very easy mission. Yeah, life was good. Her objective had been to closely observe a small community of rich Russians who lived during the summer in a secluded villa on the island. She had been sent on this mission together with another woman agent, Shabana Rao, because of the assumed connections of these Ruskies to international weapons dealing and support for terrorist organizations.
At first it hadn’t looked that way. The people there had seemed to just enjoy the sea the sun and sex; spending money like there was no tomorrow. Getting close to them had been exceptionally easy.
As luck had it they had befriended an American girl, who worked as an English teacher for the children in the villa occupied by the group of Russians. The girl, Britney Perdane, had made no friends on the island as yet and warmed to them really quickly. After about a week she had introduced them to the families living in the villa and soon after that they were working there too, basically serving and looking good for guests at parties. After about a month they were breezing in and out of the villa at will. During that month Veronique had slept on several occasions with one of the couples in the Villa. Lyudmila and Yuri Plechanov.
On one of those nights she overheard them whispering about something called the red orchestra. The news had struck uproar at HQ. Last night her partner managed to get some more info concerning a package relating to red orchestra and a delivery time frame. Shabana was on her way right now to send a message with the new info to London.
Veronique stretched and got up. She would have to meet with Shaby in the evening, so she decided to head back to her bungalow, and make the best out of her latest Greek lover until then.
The villa, outside Potos, Thassos, Greece
Britney was walking to her small but cute room in one of the Villa’s accessory buildings. She had spent the whole morning playing with and teaching the two kids. After the lesson the kids had been flown back to Moscow with their escorts to attend a summer school. However the Plechanov’s had told her that she could stay and work for them as a secretary’s assistant for a while longer. Britney was happy. She needed the money and the place was fabulous. It was more like vacation than work.
Britney entered her room and closed the door behind her. She headed straight for the shower, undressing in the process, a short process, as the close to oppressive heat allowed her to wear only a Kaftan like turquoise gown over her bikini. She relished the feel of cool water for a while, washing away the sweat.
After drying of she donned a fresh swim bikini and wrapped a pareo around her waist. She fell on the bed and relaxed, preparing for a short siesta. As usual thoughts of Robbie, her sweetheart, filled her head.
He was just so cute. They had been together for a few years now, since the start of high school.
They’d graduated together and done everything together and Britney was still very much in love. Then last spring Robbie had joined the marines with a scholarship program and it was the first time they had been apart. They had met again when he finished boot camp and on that night they made love for the first time. He had been so tender and loving. She felt a warm tingling sensation in her lower belly at the thought, a small sigh escaped her lips but she repressed the urge and kept her hands on the bed. After he had been shipped to his first duty post she had started looking for jobs to finance college when he came back. That was how she had ended up here. She thought of their lives in the future, thought about his love, his smile and his tight hug and the tingling got all the more intense. Without ever touching herself, Britney fell asleep with the image of her sweethearts smile on her mind.
Much later after a short nap she got up and headed out to the main building. Everything was quiet. Most of the residents were either asleep or on the beach. Suddenly hungry, she was headed towards the kitchen for a snack when she heard someone whispering. Not really knowing why, as she was usually a very discrete person, she turned quietly towards the source of the sound.
It came from Mr. Plechanov’s office. She walked silently closer, suppressing a giggle with difficulty, feeling a bit like a naughty schoolchild again. She listened intently, standing in the shadows, just outside the partially open door. She could tell it was Plechanov’s voice, talking in Russian. She had taken Russian in high school, since some of her girlfriends at the time were daughters of Russian post cold war émigrés. It took a while to start making out what he was saying, but then she started understanding, and cold fear gripped her heart. As soundlessly as she could muster she backed slowly away, forcing her self not to break into a run, as much as she wanted to.
“Zoi” rent-a-room, Alikes, Thassos Greece
Shabana “Shaby” Rao was 22 and a succulent Indian beauty.
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... -curve.jpgShe grew up in London and had been in the Metropolitan Police before joining MI 6. She was dressed in a sexy orange two piece bathing suit, and gold sandals. She had driven to Alikes and then to the small hotel where she and Veronique kept a second, secret room. As soon as she was inside she deployed the small handheld satellite antenna, facing the open balcony door and connected the laptop. Proficiently she wrote the message in Word and encrypted it using the software provided by the service. She deleted the original file and then, when the satellite uplink was established she transmitted the few kBs of the message in a short burst. She proceeded to take everything apart again swiftly and return it to its hiding place. That done, she decided to have a shower.
She removed the top of her bikini, allowing her magnificent café au lait breasts to bounce erotically before settling in their resting position, just ever so slightly below their position when suspended. Despite the heat her dark nipples stood out, against her rather large areolas. The effect of the adrenaline of the fast driving in these small twisted roads, no doubt, she thought.
Just then there was a discrete knock on the door, followed by a woman’s voice informing her that she was bringing her a note from reception. Shaby opened the door. In front of her stood a tall sexy redhead in a maid’s uniform, smiling.
“Hello, I have this for you” said the redhead holding out an envelope. Curious, Shaby reached out for it, only to have her wrist gripped by the redhead, who pulled Shaby off balance towards her. Before Shaby realized what was happening the red head punched the young Hindi girl in the belly, winding her. Shaby’s knees buckled and she fell to the floor. Coughing she shook her head and tried to sit up, only to be kicked back down by the intruders high heeled mule between her breasts, pining her to the floor. Only now the “maid” was holding a silenced makarov 9mm, pointed directly at Shaby’s head. The smile was gone from her face, replaced by a hard calculating expression. “Where did you stash your comm. gear bitch?”
Shaby’s cheeks went flaming red at the shame of having botched everything so pitifully, to have allowed herself to be put in this position. At least I won’t give them a thing, she thought. Trying to look as earnestly shocked as she could she answered “What the fuck are you talking about, are you crazy?” and tried once more to push herself off the ground.
The “maids’ foot pinned her effectively though and she couldn’t move. “I am crazy yes”, the woman’s eyes glinted, “and I am going to shoot you if you don’t start talking”. Instead of talking, Shaby screamed. At the top of her lungs and the woman swore an oath.
The door to the facing apartment opened and a half nude middle aged woman came out, obviously distressed from all the screaming.
“What the fuck is goin…?”
“Phutt! Phutt!” The redhead’s gun barked twice sending a slug into each of the newcomer’s breasts. The woman squirmed spasmodically at the two impacts, then she fell backwards to land unceremoniously on her bottom. Finally she lay sprawled and quite dead on the floor, an expression of utter surprise forever etched on to her face.
Shaby tried to use the turmoil to shake her attacker’s foot from her chest, but to no avail. The red haired woman wouldn’t let herself be distracted and held her foot firmly between Shaby’s breasts. She was about to say something when voices from the stairwell announced the imminent arrival of a small group of tourists.
The attacker looked briefly in that direction and then again at Shaby’s face, her expression turned to one of disgust, then determination and with a fast and powerful move she brought her heel down, swiftly plunging her 3 inch steel heel into Shaby’s chest transfixing her heart. Shaby’s eyes went wide and she opened her mouth wide, gasping. Her whole body shook and trembled and as the woman pulled her heel back out, her eyes rolled back in her sockets, her own heels drummed the floor and then she went limp…dead as last year’s fish.
Jessika
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... e_mlwg.jpglooked around to make sure no one had seen her then quickly run away from the direction of the stairwell, out to a balcony and from there down by the fire stairs to a near by waiting motorcycle. She had barely settled her ass on the back seat when the driver drove hurriedly away, spewing gravel in his wake.
Back in her bungalow Veronique sat astride her man, panting and gasping and then moaning loudly as she came to her third orgasm of the day. Her lover was counter stroking eagerly, his hands firmly clutching her succulent buttocks, his mouth sucking on a nipple. After a few seconds he too started trembling and quickened his pace, and then with a loud groan he ejaculated his seed deep in her vagina, which triggered her fourth and final trembling orgasm. Veronique stretched her body backwards flaunting her breasts as this final wave of pleasure washed over her and she yelled at the top of her lungs. Then she just stayed there motionless for a few seconds, watching him with unfocused unbelieving eyes before she toppled exhausted on to the bed beside him.
******
Britney was driving like mad. As soon as she managed to get out of the Villa in a normal walk without raising any suspicions, she got on her rented scooter and drove off to the girls’ bungalow. She had to warn them, just please God let there still be time. She had never ever in her life driven like this before, reckless, breaking each and every traffic rule. Then again she had never ever before in her life felt so afraid!
Afraid for her friends, and of course now for herself as well. If, no, when her employer found out she had overheard him deal out an execution order she’d be next. How could she have been so blind? It was very clear to her now that these people were Russian Mafia.
Scilla sat in the shade of a tree keeping the bungalow in sight;
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... Scilla.jpg she had never developed the hunger for the sun that most German tourists exhibited. She was dressed lightly, the temperatures dictated that, but she still managed to retain her usual austere chic look. She was wearing a sand colored pair of Capri trousers and a silk white sleeveless shirt. A pair of white tennis shoes and a coral necklace rounded out her outfit. She held a rather large sand coloured canvas handbag, very stylish, by Luis Vuiton, which contained her silenced Walther P88 pistol. She sipped casually from her non alcoholic cocktail, pretending to be reading the newspaper. Her cell phone vibrated discreetly and she looked at the sms she had just received. The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly in an anticipatory smile. Confirmation received: execute immediately, no interrogation needed. She was a bit disappointed at that, she would have loved to torture the good looking wench a bit, but then life was full of such small disappointments. She got up, pulled at the back of her Capri’s, stretching out any hint of wrinkles, then ran a quick but efficient hand through her stylish short blonde hair, making sure it was neat. Then she walked purposefully towards the bungalow.
Veronique enjoyed the feel of the cool water on her skin. The sex had exhausted her and the cool shower was just so invigorating. The torrent of water fell on her dark mane and from there to her shoulders and breasts, its coolness making her tingle all over and causing her nipples to stand out. It also prevented her from hearing the door to the bungalow open, or the sound of a single sound-supressed gunshot, planting a 9mm hollow point in her sleeping lover’s brains. After a few minutes she turned off the tap and dried herself off with a large bath towel, which she wrapped around herself before exiting the bathroom.
Britney reached the hotel at golden beach in record time. She didn’t bother to slow down at the gates, leaving a screaming hotel employee to eat her dust. She navigated the small gravel paths of the hotel grounds expertly at high speed, spewing gravel and dust in her wake, all the while praying repeatedly “Please God let me be in time”. Reaching the bungalow she hit the brakes and came to a skittering stop.
Veronique exited the bathroom, swaying her hips wildly, and calling out sweet little profanities that she knew her lover liked, in the most sensual bedroom voice she could manage, hoping for a second round. Her phrases stopped short as soon as she turned the corner and saw the back of a young blond woman, blocking her view of the bed. Scilla turned gracefully, smiling and holding her silenced Walther in her extended right arm. Veronique’s blood froze in her veins and she felt a hollow pit in her stomach. Looking at those cold blue eyes she knew she was dealing with a pro. She raised her arms in front of her, palms out in supplication. “Please, please…don’t do it I beg you.” Tears brimmed in her eyes.
Scilla snorted in contempt and depressed the trigger. The slug hit Veronique in the center of her forehead and sprayed blood and brain matter all over the wall behind her. For a split second Veronique’s body just swayed there, face frozen in her final plea, and then she collapsed unceremoniously on to her back. Scilla coolly walked up to the corpse, tugged at the towel, baring Veronique’s body, and shot the girl between the breasts at point blank range for good measure. Replacing the still smoking gun in her handbag, she turned to leave.
Britney ran to the entrance of the bungalow. She almost made it to the front porch when the characteristic sound of a silenced shot, just like in the movies and followed by the thud of a falling body stopped her in her tracks. All the tension and the fear had build up in her and were ready to burst. The sound of the shot was the triggering event. Britney screamed at the top of her voice…
And Scilla heard it! She hurried to the door and opened it, stepping outside to face a shocked Britney looking at her with wide round eyes. Calmly Scilla smiled again and her right hand disappeared in her handbag. Britney just stared at her frozen in shock. Her mind screamed at her to run, but her body refused to react. Everything was happening in slow motion. The woman’s hand slowly came out of the bag, holding something black and big.
Britney bit her lip, so hard that it bled and the pain saved her. It was like waking up from a trance. Suddenly her limbs were functioning again and she turned and ran as fast as she had ever run in her young life. Scilla pulled her gun out of the bag as she had practiced a million times, but following Murphy’s Law this time the silencer caught on the lining. Muttering a choice German oath Scilla tugged at the gun violently and it came free. But it had gained Britney a few more seconds. Scilla loosed the first two shots in anxiety and they went wild. The third one grazed her fleeing target’s shoulder. Britney felt the searing pain in her shoulder and lost her footing. Fast as she was running she tumbled and fell, rolling wildly down the small hill and out of the line of fire.
Scilla followed in a brisk walk. For a few dreadful seconds her target was beyond her sight. And then she saw her lying tangled up but quite obviously alive by the well tended bushes further down the hill. She started bringing her pistol up. At that moment the hotel’s shuttle bus drove between them and stopped. Quickly Scilla hid the gun behind her back. The doors to the bus opened and several elderly and loud American couples stepped down, dressed in bright Hawaiian shirts, shorts and brandishing cameras. When the bus moved off again Britney was nowhere in sight.
Scilla sweared profusely, something very unusual for her, but then again so was failing to eliminate a target. She remained there motionless for a little while longer, scanning the area, but saw no hint of Britney. Out of choices, she restored the gun in her bag and quietly left the scene.
The Afghan-Pakistani-Chinese Border, Pakistan
Fortified Outpost 12
Special Detachment
40 Commando Royal Marines
The helo came in shortly after dawn. It settled heavily on the pad and turned off its engines. The powerful rotor kept swinging for a few more seconds, with diminishing frequency, then stopped altogether. Slowly the dust-cloud settled. The thin reddish dust was everywhere in this hell hole and covered virtually every surface of the small Special Forces outpost, providing a natural camouflage. The doors slid open and two men jumped out. A marine lieutenant and a colonel from military intelligence. The marines on duty at the pad saluted smartly, their impeccable military manner belying their outward shabby appearance. The whole outpost looked shabby at first glance, but a trained eye would see that despite the dust everywhere, the weapons were all clean. The machinegun and mortar posts were all manned. The bunkers were all well placed and the sandbags fresh. The two officers were led to the outpost’s commanding officer.
Lieutenant Antonia “Toni” Hearne,
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... ntonia.jpg the late Lady Hearne’s second daughter was a striking blonde, lean, fit - very fit - with a well endowed bust and a sweet sexy face. She was 24 and already a very capable young officer, climbing the rank ladder three steps at a time! Her classmates all joked that at this rate she’d make the first ever female commander of the Royal Marines by the time she was 26 or so.
In private Toni still had trouble coming to terms with her mother’s and sister’s untimely demise. Command of this remote outpost had been just the right medicine for her soul. It gave her a myriad different problems to solve each day. In the few remaining idle hours of the day exhaustion prevented her mind from wandering and she slept like a hibernating bear.
Acceptance had been hard at first. That’s not to say that her marines openly disobeyed or disrespected her. These were highly trained professionals, some of the best on the globe, but they respected the rank not the person and they followed orders, but their heart was not behind it and she knew it.
That was eight months ago. Since then a lot had happened. The first surprise for the men came when they realized that the girlie lieutenant listened to her experienced NCOs but was not led by them. Most women junior officers had a tendency to not listen to anyone in order to ascertain their leadership, or listened to everything, afraid to take responsibility.
The second surprise came when she decided to move the original camp by almost a mile, despite contrary advice by her staff and the universal resentment of everyone in the two platoons of the outfit. She had steely resolve though and got her way with both the men and HQ.
The feat was accomplished in two weeks of backbreaking labour, and the first attempt at sabotage by the terrorists, just three days later proved her right on all counts. The new site was infinitely more defensible. The men came to realize that their new lieutenant was quite the tactician. Day by day their respect for her grew, but it was two incidents that finally won them over, heart and mind.
The first was when her supply sergeant informed her that the logistics base wouldn’t give them three air conditioners that were slotted for them, claiming a shortage of supply, although the machines were there. In all probability the supply officers meant to keep them for their own offices. At first Toni went through the appropriate channels protesting the necessity of the equipment to make life in the tin revetments in the summer bearable. It got her nowhere.
So she drove down to their logistics base in Khudabad along with two corporals and a sergeant. They went to the appropriate warehouse, where she underwent an amazing transformation. Suddenly becoming very feminine, she unbuttoned the top buttons of her fatigues, showing her cleavage and looking just like the embodiment of the proverbial empty-headed blonde bombshell, and totally distracted the officer in charge of the warehouse with a steady stream of inane questions about logistical procedures and a shower of wide flashing and promising smiles of gratitude for explaining things to her. She even batted her eyelids at him over wide innocent eyes. The poor man stood no chance. His eyes were glued to her cleavage and her batting eyelids. Within seconds he was totally smitten, and witless. Meanwhile, as instructed, her people loaded the crates into their Landover behind the officer’s back along with a few cases of beer.
The success of “operation appropriation” was celebrated in a grandiose way back in the outpost. The tale of how their serious and efficient lieutenant drove the supply captain out of his mind with the bat of an eyelash and a couple of unbuttoned buttons circulated around camp for a long time.
The second incident was of a more bellicose nature. A Landover with three marines on patrol was knocked out by a remote controlled land mine, injuring two of the three passengers, one quite seriously. Subsequently the men started taking small arms fire from a group of terrorists and were pinned down. The men managed to keep the terrorists at a distance, but their ammunition would not hold for ever.
A storm prevented airborne help from arriving. The position where the patrol was pinned down was about 1 hour’s driving distance from camp.
Toni put everyone on alert, passed command to her more junior colleague just in case and then personally led a three Landrover patrol to the site, in a mere forty minutes of “hell on wheels” driving, suddenly attacking the superior numbers of the terrorists from behind, creating panic in their ranks and dispersing them. She then proceeded to evacuate the wounded men in the two Landrovers while she and her senior sergeant, who had volunteered as her driver, fought a rear guard action to cover the evacuation and returned to camp almost out of ammo six hours later. The action earned her a medal and the affectionate nickname ‘OBL’ (our ballsy lady) by the men at the base. The second was the award she treasured more.
Over the months the men had come to obey her implicitly and treated her with the outmost respect, while the older NCO’s watched over her like they would a younger sister, or in the case of her senior sergeant like a treasured daughter.
She was filling out a report when said sergeant opened her tent flap and the colonel stepped in. Toni was on her feet immediately and snapped a crisp salute. Out of sight of any sniper the usual military courtesies were observed and the sergeant excused. The colonel relaxed and smiled at her. “Well Toni, jolly good job you did out here. Back at HQ you’ve made a name for yourself”. If the piece of well earned praise flattered her at all Toni gave no outward sign of it, answering with a simple ‘thank you, sir’, still standing at attention. He took a chair for himself indicating to her she should also sit.
“The reason I am here is rather peculiar… and delicate,” he began. She listened intently without interrupting. “I am here to offer you a special assignment. Should you take it, you will immediately be relieved of your command and replaced by the lieutenant waiting outside.” Her face showed no expression but the slight hardening around the eyes showed the Colonel how she felt at the prospect.
Unfazed the colonel continued: “Furthermore, information on this assignment will not be kept in your records and officially you will be on extended leave. As you must have guessed this will be a completely black op.” A spark of interest shone in her eyes very briefly and was then promptly extinguished. She was loathe to abandon the unit she had worked so hard in shaping up. “I can see your reluctance, well founded I am sure, so by way of encouragement, although I shouldn’t really, let me tell you that it directly involves an former soviet officer by the name of Pulyakov” The name hit her like an anvil and in a mere second her whole thought process was reversed. Still maintaining an outwardly cool demeanor, she was raging inside. Without further delay she accepted. The colonel offered his hand and they shook. “We’re going to miss you out here Toni. We’re leaving as soon as you are packed. Your junior lieutenant will handle the transfer of command to the new CO.”
It took her all of 20 minutes to pack and they exited the tent together. As they walked through the camp something felt wrong. There was an unusual quiet about the place. No work gangs to be seen anywhere, no laughter or swearing coming from the tents, no music from the radios. Even the two mortar emplacements and the four heavy machinegun emplacements were unmanned, against her strict orders. The only visible personnel were the sentries on their towers. Toni felt uneasy and casually unlatched the holster of her service pistol.
It all became clear as soon as they reached the Helipad. Both platoons were there, in perfect formation and full uniform. A whistle sounded, two tones, and the sergeant’s voice boomed. “OBL on deck. Preeeesent arms!” The command was followed crisply with a resounding thump of boots and the sergeant saluted as she walked by. He reported everybody present and accounted and then in a breach of protocol told her: “Hoping you shall not find this too forward, Ma’am, but we are all going to sorely miss you here. We had no time to prepare much, but I would like to present you with this on behalf of all the blokes”.
What he gave her was a combat helmet with the units insignia emblazoned in the front, the rest of it hastily sprayed over in a wild fluo-pink and bearing everyman’s signature and a wish for all the best in her life. “Every man jack in this unit is proud to have served under you.” The usual salutes were exchanged and Toni hastened to enter the heli, hoping against hope that no one noticed the tears in her eyes.
The Police Station,
Limenas, Thassos, Greece
Chrissie was having a bad day.
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... kFtZTc.jpg It had started well enough with a nice morning swim and light breakfast of fruit and coffee. She had driven the roughly 10 kilometers from the small summerhouse that she was renting to the station with the top of her Vitara rolled down. Once there things were quiet with not much going on which gave her and her friend Marina
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... b70001.jpg plenty of time to catch up on local and national gossip while sipping coffee and pretending to be hard at work behind the closed doors of her office. This was a major change in Chrissie’s life, one that she enjoyed immensely. After 5 years on the fast lane in Athens’ high profile, very busy and prestigious but stressful organized crime taskforce she was grateful for the break.
Her boss had valued her work there and after her first year on the job had started seeing in her the daughter that he’d never had. When he first noticed that the immense workload and the stress of the job where starting to get the best of her he had made some calls and pulled some strings for her and finally gotten her the post of commander of the Thassos Police department, which would both give her time to relax a bit and would look good in her record as a very early command for a year or two. Of course he had every intention of pulling her back to her old job, with a promotion, in no more than two years. That was as much paid vacation as he was willing to grant even the daughter he’d never had!
The morning was developing like most of the mornings on the island for her until that phone call from a hotel in Alikes came through and it all went downhill from there. Some hotel employ called them about a shooting in the hotel with one, possibly two victims and one or two or three shooters. The man was hysterical and it was next to impossible to make sense of his ravings. In any case she rushed to the spot accompanied by Marina, of course, in uniform and another six uniformed officers in two patrol cars. The drivers were eager to show the new boss their WRC-level driving abilities and the drive through the narrow winding streets of the island turned out to be a harrowing experience for Chrissie, who had never in fact been altogether comfortable at high speeds.
When they finally reached the hotel, much faster than she’d have liked by far, they were amazingly enough still in one piece. That was just about the only good thing about the situation there. The hotel was in an uproar with hotel guests and personnel shouting and crying hysterically and everyone trying to give his expert opinion of what had transpired all at once.
The only good news was that an elderly French gentleman, a guest at the hotel, who in his youth had been a gendarme, had prevented both the guests and staff from approaching the scene of the crime. “Of course I couldn’t stop the doctors and emergency crew from going in there”, he added with an apologetic smile.
Chrissie’s eyes rolled heavenward and she rushed upstairs to prevent the paramedics from totally contaminating the crime scene. Of course it had been too late, way too late. The scene she was faced with when entering the floor where the shooting had taken place was so unreal that she didn’t know whether to start laughing hysterically or break down and cry right out.
The two eager paramedics had already hoisted one body on their gurney while an idiot of a young doctor, probably straight out of med school was maniacally resuscitating the nude body of a young woman, who had, quite obviously to everyone but him, been dead for quite a while before they even got to the scene. His paramedic assistant was looking at him wild eyed and trying to convince him that they ought to better stop and maybe call a priest. It was just too much, way too much. Chrissie took one very deep breath and then another in a vain effort to control her temper.
She had almost managed it when the young idiot in the white coat looked up from the cadaver he was molesting and quite pompously told her to clear the area and let him work at saving that poor soul, and should she not comply he would call the police. The angry scream that followed could clearly be heard in the hotels garden, and was followed by a young doctor and a paramedic crew fleeing in abject panic.
After that things went relatively well, but it still took her inexperienced colleagues quite a while to cordon the area off effectively, photograph and catalogue everything and collect the evidence. While watching the crime scene for a while Chrissie became increasingly certain that this was a hit, a strange one at that, but definitely a hit. Lots of stuff didn’t add up, as some things pointed to a professionally executed job, like the lack of shell casings, while others, like the strange weapon used for the execution of the second victim pointed to an amateur approach, albeit a skillful one.
Chrissie was baffled. She could not be sure yet which of the two victims had been the intended target and had not the faintest clue what sort of weapon had caused the entry wound on victim number 2.
After approximately three hours she left the scene to return to the station, where she found the chief of the local first aid station waiting outside her office to protest the way she had treated his crew. Irritated, Chrissie spared no vocabulary in explaining at some length what his crew had done to her crime scene. In the end she couldn’t help but inquire exactly what criteria his younger doctors used to distinguish between dead, dying and alive patients!
She spent the next hour or so trying to deal with trivial but crucial details of maintaining proper procedure in a police station that had never before dealt with something like this. Finding an available medical examiner to travel to Thassos from Thessaloniki and a fridge to accommodate the bodies proved to be especially difficult problems. When she had finally thought she had a tight grip on the situation one of the local pharmacists turned up with a young and bleeding American girl on his arm to report a second murder in a bungalow at the island’s most prestigious resort. Their story was independently confirmed by a phone call by the said resort’s manager only moments later. Another double murder. Chrissie thought she’d better start crying…
Toni made herself comfortable on top of some supply crates, in the cargo compartment of a RAF C-130 Hercules. She knew the flight would be long, but try as she might, she just couldn’t bring herself to sleep. The flight in the helicopter from her outpost to Islamabad had been uneventful. The military intelligence colonel could not or would not give her any more details about the operation so she had spent the time lost in thought.
In Islamabad she had boarded the RAF Hercy bound for Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. There she was met by Lady Ashley Croft, Commander Royal Navy and her mother’s replacement in running the re-established Vendors.
They both boarded another RAF Hercy for the Royal Air Force Base in Akrotiri in Cyprus, where, she was told, she‘d meet the rest of the team. It was during this flight that she finally got briefed.
A month after her mother’s and sister’s murder the Vendors had been rebuilt under Ashley’s command. They had of course been frantically searching for Pulyakov, but the man had vanished into thin air. After a few months they finally got a tip from a Palestinian source that a big deal was being arranged in Greece, between a not so clean Russian businessman and an extremist Muslim group called Furusiyya. The source was not entirely trustworthy and the information had been classified as dubious. However they had linked the Russian, called Plechanov, to some small arms deals to the Middle East in the past.
With some effort they’d traced his whereabouts to the island of Thassos off the northern coast of Greece, a fashionable summer destination for a lot of upper class Russians. He owned a villa there and usually spent 6 to 8 months a year there, conducting business while the family enjoyed the sun.
As a result the Vendors had dispatched a couple of operatives there, who managed to infiltrate the Villa and just a week ago had struck gold. One of the two operatives had monitored Plechanov talking with an unknown source in Russia concerning a deal with an again unknown third party for a component of a project called ‘Red Orchestra’. It was this code name which had set off the alarm.
Whatever ‘Red Orchestra’ was, Pulyakov had been involved with it for a long time now. It was during a deal for components for it that the Vendors had staged their
ill-fated attempt at arresting him.
Just earlier today they had received confirmation from their assets on Thassos that the deal was going to go through in the next couple of weeks, either on the island or close by. The analysts believed that this deal was important enough for Pulyakov to warrant his own personal appearance, or in the least the appearance of his ‘right hand’ woman, a certain Victoria Lustovna.
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... age002.jpgSince both the Vendors’ current strike teams were already committed in the field elsewhere with no possibility off pulling them out so quickly without compromising their missions, a third team was being set up from scratch.
Despite her youth SIS had used Toni, on “lease” from the Royal Marines three times in the past for surgical strike missions in the Middle East. They had been delighted with her performance and there was support for offering her a permanent job with them at some point in the future. When going through the personnel database for this mission her name came up first, but of course her possible emotional involvement, due to her relatives’ murder made the service reluctant to give her the job. Lady Croft on the other hand believed that most of the time a personal motive to see a tough job through could be a very strong advantage. So since this was a Vendor’s op, Toni got the job of leading the team.
The operation’s objective was fourfold: interrupt the transaction, find out more about red orchestra, establish Pulyakov’s location and, surprisingly, eliminate not apprehend both Pulyakov and Lustovna. Toni shrugged her shoulders when she heard that. She could live with that, in fact she could live very well with that.
The Subbasement, Ministry of Law and Order, Athens Greece
In a very small and dark room full of brooms, mops and containers of cleaning solvent, with barely enough space left for a small metal desk a chair and a metal locker, with a sign on its door reading “cleaning supplies”, a man sat reading intently from an old fashioned CRT monitor. He was a man in his late 40’s, with black hair with quite a bit of white mingled in it.
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae11 ... ckhawk.jpg He wore it very short, almost a crew cut. His face, tanned and wrinkled from countless days in the sun, was grim. He was tall, lean, very fit and dressed quite shabbily in an old pair of jeans and a black t shirt that had obviously seen better days, long ago. He picked up the phone, “This is Triton, yeah. Put me through to the President. Yeah that’s right the President of the Republic. Yeah I know what time it is.”
His voice was calm and deep and had an authoritative quality about it. It was hard to say no to him. While waiting for his call to go through he quickly tapped in a few commands, bringing an old and well known file up to his screen. Finally the grim features were softened by the hint of a smile, a very wolfish smile. “Yes Mr. President. Sorry to wake you at this hour, I think I’ve got a lead about the matter we discussed. I am off to Thassos. I am leaving this very minute.”
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