In the Dark of the Moon. [Closed]

[BrazenFellow]

Throwing a dust-stained cushion by the front left wheel of the AML 245, Galinov sat. His assault vest didn't let him relax very well, filled as it was with ammunition and water, so he propped his shoulders against the wheel and dug his heels into the dust. Around him were forty others and several more vehicles, predominantly BTR-60PBs so filthy you couldn't see the paint underneath the grime, and another AML 245. The armoured cars both carried the GIAT F1 cannon, and these weapons were depressed to the maximum so their crews could force a cleaning rod looking like a fat broomstick on growth hormones down the barrel. An Abkhazi known as "Guram" crouched next to him, cradling his G3A4, and the two men from the Caucasus watched a trio of blacks affiliated with the Tonal Revolutionary Front start a fire. The heat wouldn't begin to fade until the sun had finished disappearing below the horizon, at which point the light of the fire would be more than welcome.

"It's-"
"Don't say it," Galinov interrupted. "At least with the dust settled we can breathe."
"Like breathing with your head in an oven." Galinov glanced at the newcomer, a badly scarred Portugese. "Aren't you used to this?" he asked.

The Portugese shrugged. "I am. I'm so used to comforting those FNGs that it's sort of like saying 'hello' now." Guram didn't look away from the fire as he responded. "Sorry to hear that." A pair of whites with burned-red skin laboured by a BTR, working on the unreliable petrol engine. The squad of TRF fighters that rode the vehicle tried to relax, though most were too excited to stay in the shade of the 'truck' for long. Pairs of sentries were set out before it became pitch black outside the light cast by the fire, with another trio detailed to randomly check on them. The subunit leaders gathered around to compare notes and map data.

Serowe was pencilled in on their objective maps in great detail, down to individual buildings. The charity office and any building displaying an antenna was marked with a yellow X. The school had a red circle surrounding it with an X of the same colour overlaid, and ultimately the index fingers belonging to six different men had traced around Tonal's most successful charity project before brushing up against the school. An Afrikaaner with the well-thumbed manual for his radio sticking out of one pocket crouched down next to Galinov and Guram. "You two feel confident?"
"All is paraat, Erik. How about you?"
"I like working with these again." Erik slapped the side of the Panhard AML. "Hard not to be confident. Remember, don't shoot the white girls." Guram smiled and held up the photo clipped from a woman's magazine. Erik nodded. "Especially not her."

Unfortunately for the petite Miss Scott, her father's bravado and the advertising campaign had brought her to the attention of the TRF's leadership, who were always in need of more funds. Given the disgraceful state of the Republic of Tonal's military the TRF had the freedom to move, so long as they stayed in no one place long and were careful to avoid chokepoints, which were almost always garrisoned. If not garrisoned, a one dollar bet would net you a twenty that it was mined. With relations between Tonal and the West being coldly unpleasant at best, charity efforts received no government security. Put simply, it was too good to pass up the opportunity to extort potentially millions of dollars, pounds stirling, or euros from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

They moved at 00:30, when the moon was covered by thin clouds. Erik felt cool night air flow up over the glacis and turret of the AML, looked around as he always did to see what else was there, and looked behind him. There, the squat and menacing shapes of BTRs and AMLs rolled through the dim, filtered moonlight, throwing up low-hanging clouds of dust in their wake. Turrets were turned outwards; Erik's armoured car was up front and therefore his turret was the one facing forwards. Serowe loomed ahead, behind well-tilled fields. Agricultural equipment made turrets whine as gunners made sure through their sights that it was in fact a harvester their commanders saw and not a potentially dangerous gun-armed vehicle. Erik glanced at his watch: 03:20. He toggled his microphone's transmit switch.
"Lights."
Immediately the driver flipped the switch and the AML 245's lights illuminated furrows and good farming soil to the front, and glowed from the rear. The column began to part, every second vehicle turning left as the remainder of the column turned to the right. They split into a roughly C-shaped formation that encircled the village. Sprung for much rougher ground, the suspensions of the BTRs and AMLs kept the men inside comfortable as they rolled over this easy dirt. 03:23. Erik flipped his comms toggle to the first radio preset.

"All callsigns stand by." The gunner beside Erik disappeared into the turret, his hatch clanging shut behind him. The gun picked up, the turret whirred as the servomotors cranked it around, and the muzzle settled on the charity office. Erik flipped back to intercom. "Gunner, report."
"High explosive loaded."
"Crew: Stand by." Erik looked to his right. A hundred meters away sat the BTR-60PB commanded by the scarred Portugese man who had been in Africa for all but five of his forty-five years. He could see the silhouette of the Portugese sitting on the rim of his cupola, pressing cheap Belarussian night vision binoculars to his face to survey the area around the village, as his machine's night vision set was broken. The infrared searchlight had been destroyed months ago and no replacement was possible. 03:25.
"Driver: Kill the lights. Gunner: Commence firing." Barely a half-second later, the concussion of the 90mm F1 gun slapped Eric about the face and the muzzle flash tore away his night vision. There was no tracer compound coating this shell, and the light flashed as a hole was blown into the charity office. Another round from the second AML cracked into the same building a moment later. Then the BTRs opened fire, KPVT machineguns smashing heavy rounds through the light construction of Serowe's buildings. That said, 'light construction' was a relative term when it came to the 14.5x115mm APT projectile. Thick bricks were light construction to that weapon. At 03:26 the mad minute had ended and the Portugese's BTR surged forward with two others into the village. Coaxial machineguns opened fire on buildings, keeping their rounds low.

Keeping their rounds low meant, in technical terms, that they were producing enfilade fire. Enfilade was simply when the round would not pass any higher than the height of a standing man, and thus no fire was wasted. By now the village was plunged into darkness with flickering firelight providing the only illumination. This meant nothing to gunners, who flooded the area with infrared light and picked their targets through their first generation night optics. A portly man flew apart under the hammering fire from the coaxial of the AML Erik commanded. 03:27.

In the back of the BTR, Guram stood at the door. Galinov was bellowing at the TRF fighters over the engine's noise, first in English - which in theory all spoke - and then in an African language Guram didn't know. The vehicle jolted to a halt and the Portugese commander screamed in Galinov's ears through the intercom. "Debus! Get out of my truck!" Guram was already forcing the door open and had leapt outside before Galinov had his headset off. TRF fighters poured after the Abkhazi, dismounting from the BTR. They began screaming their war screams and firing their rifles at anything not wearing the same uniforms they did, or anything that didn't have white skin. A black woman hurried away, was tackled by a man who was every part of six feet three inches, and was dragged away by the undisciplined TRF. Guram felt Galinov's hand on his shoulder, knew that he and Okame were behind him, and booted open the perforated door to the school.

"Stay still! Stay down!" Guram was bellowing over the noise of automatic fire and the crackling of burning buildings. He spat as acrid smoke tainted the air he inhaled. "Stay down!" A white man, confused - understandably so - was shot twice in the chest by Galinov. "Stay still!" He kicked another door open, boot landing beside the doorknob, forcing the mechanism. It jammed.
"Bitch! Okame, open this!"
A black hand pushed him aside before the muzzle of a sawn-down shotgun pressed against the door's handle. With one bang and the forceful persuasion of Galinov's boot, the door flew open. The three stormed in, checking their corners. Okame overturned the bed with a quick kick, keeping the stock of his G3A4 in his shoulder. Galinov and Guram hit everyone they could find in the gut, slamming the stock into their solar plexus to wind them painfully, and started checking faces. There. Guram smiled his makhorkha-stained smile and Galinov lifted the radio handset from the shoulder strap of his assault vest.
"All callsigns, all callsigns, Whiskey Niner. Found her, be out in a second." He paused, then added in Russian for good measure: "Gavorit Galinov: Ona nasha, priyom!" They paused, cataloguing the room's other inhabitants and ignoring Okame as he pocketed anything that caught his fancy.

 

[your_vice]

Meredith Scott's father had been unamused when she had decided to volunteer in Tonal. He told her it was a volatile area and that her safety couldn't be guaranteed. Edmund Scott, an Oxford graduate and now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of the highest flying ministers in the British government, had tried to dissuade Meredith from going there. Why couldn't she spend a few months cuddling Romanian orphans, comforting young British veterans who had been maimed in battle, or something similar that could be controlled in a safe area? When she had first suggested Tonal he had outright refused and it had taken Edmund a week or two to assimilate the painful knowledge that at 24, Meredith no longer considered his final word to be law. Her mother had proved useless in talking her out of it, uttering vapid platitudes about Meredith doing what made her happy.

Edmund seriously doubted his daughter would find happiness in the scorching, foetid toilet of Tonal that had once been a developing country. Following their independence five years ago, Tonal had fought with all their neighbours repeatedly but the worst damage had been wreaked by civil wars and unsuccessful attempts by various tribes to take overall control by coup. Now Tonal was a mercenary or radical's paradise and many of the most evil and unscrupulous organisations had seen fit to establish a faction over there. There were rumours of tribal genocides, brainwashed child soldiers, towns and villages where every female from the oldest grandmother to the youngest child had been raped and brutalised, even cannibalism but nobody wanted to venture far enough into Tonal to confirm anything. It was a sun-blackened crucible of indiscriminate hatred and some of the vilest atrocities were committed against its people every single day. Tonal was sadly politically unimportant. It was not oil or mineral rich, there were no assets there to tempt the west into enforcing some semblance of peace or prosperity. The seasons were capricious and food was scarce. Trade with neighbouring lands was discouraged by the heavy 'taxes' imposed by the militia controlling landlocked Tonal's borders. Tonal had become a whole new level of Dante's Inferno and the affluent west had left the country to quietly implode. They spoke occasionally with Tonal's current self appointed ruler, General Ambutu, who played the beleaguered statesman to the hilt. He gave them a suitably embellished and optimistic impression of Tonal's strength, stability and prospects and the west used it as an excuse to turn a blind eye and avoid wasting men bullets trying to dissipate tribal feuds that spanned generations.

Of course, there were humanitarian efforts made but Tonal could not be fixed by dropping rice on it, digging a few wells or bandaging a few limbs. Hundreds of thousands of civilians had trudged to refugee camps in neighbouring lands but the people there did not want them drawing from their own limited resources and so only token gestures were made at feeding these people locally, leaving wealthier countries to grudgingly meet the deficit. Tonal itself was largely lawless but some of the townships nearer to the borders had prospered and many civilians would rather remain just inside their country than face the hostility of the locals across the border. Tonal's military groups rarely ventured there because they were never far from the armies of neighbouring countries or international peacekeeping forces. There was the occasional smash and grab but border skirmishes were generally kept to a minimum. Tonal was at war with itself, it didn't need any assistance from outsiders.

And this was where Meredith Scott had decided to teach school-children. A hastily registered charity called the Tonal Crisis Aid Group had been trying to attain a semblance of normal life for border inhabitants. In the five years since Tonal's worst troubles began, children had been left uneducated and vital skills and knowledge were gradually being lost. Tonal now had one of the lowest life expectancies of an African nation and something had to be done to preserve Tonal's native population and give people the tools and skills to rebuild their land when the militia had finished with it. Serowe was their flagship project and were it not for the chaos surrounding the little model township, you could almost imagine yourself to be in a more peaceful part of Africa.

Edmund had finally accepted Meredith's determination and as usual, had seen ways to raise his own public profile by association. Meredith was interviewed by a couple of women's and students' magazines about her decision to volunteer and the situation in Tonal. Edmund set up these meetings and ensured the reporters had pictures of himself as well as her. There was even an interview on a breakfast television show and Meredith had agreed to it happily in the hope of raising the profile of Tonal's plight and encouraging donations to the crisis fund. On the same day, Edmund chose to sport a bright red and green plastic wristband, a charity bracelet in the colours of Tonal's flag. Unsurprisingly, Edmund and Meredith got page 2 of London's Evening Standard newspaper that day.

Meredith had fallen in love with Serowe on sight, everyone was so welcoming. Once she was over her jetlag, she had cleaned up her school room and gone to work. The children were so keen to learn and the older ones would help her manage the younger ones, who were less accustomed to sitting and studying. Meredith lived in a small building adjacent to the schoolroom along with Amos, the local Christian minister, a quiet and solemn teenager called Ruth who was her teaching assistant and 5 orphans of varying ages who needed foster care. Amos slept in one small room with the 3 boys and Meredith had the other with the girls. Meredith had been their a couple of weeks now and was thoroughly enjoying herself.

They were all fast asleep when the township erupted with explosions and gunfire. Meredith barely had time to scramble from her cot and ignite an oil lamp before someone was kicking at the door. The lamp proved to be virtually empty and did no more than emit a dull glow. Amos came charging into the room with the boys and they all huddled together. Meredith thought of putting Ruth out the window with the children but it was quite obviously no safer outside and there was no time. Suddenly three tall men were bursting in, kicking over beds and beating adults and children alike until they were all doubled up against the walls, their escape route blocked. Meredith's chin was wrenched upwards and a tall white man with a black painted face grinned savagely. Meredith had primarily been concerned about the children but that predatory smile was like another punch to the gut. She was suddenly very aware of how she must look; a young, blonde white woman in cotton pyjamas. The man barked into a radio and his accent was east European of some kind.

"All callsigns, all callsigns, Whiskey Niner. Found her, be out in a second." He paused, then spoke again. "Gavorit Galinov: Ona nasha, priyom!"

Meredith could not identify or understand Russian. It was his English that got her attention. 'Found her.' Had she been the sole target? Had she brought about all this carnage and devastation? Was this a political motivated abduction or did they just want her because she was young, white and attractive? Would telling them who she was improve things or worsen them?

His comrades kept their guns trained on them, their free hands sacking the place of anything vaguely valuable or useful.

Meredith opened her mouth but found she lacked the courage to address the guy with the radio, who was still standing too close to her. Amos seemed equally speechless. The silence dragged for a moment until she filled it, scared that one of the children might draw attention to themselves and get shot. The children were eerily quiet, despite being small. Clearly they had seen this kind of thing before.

"We have no weapons here. You don't need to kill anyone." She ventured as rapid fire gunshots continued to rend the sky outside. "This place is peaceful. We have nothing you would want." She added, to see if he would confirm that they wanted her.

 

[BrazenFellow]

"Okame, to me." Guram lifted Scott off the floor by the hair and Okame wrapped an arm around her legs, throwing her over his shoulder. Galinov led the way back to the BTR with Guram following, leaving the others in the room - alive. Someone needed to be at the end of this to tell the world. It was better to let the aftermath be noticed before making contact with the appropriate persons. For dramatic effect, of course.

As Galinov stepped outside, he fired a green flare into the air. Rifles were still barking and light machineguns were chattering, but the hammering reports of the heavy KPVTs or the deeper thudding of the coaxial GPMGs was absent. Several of Serowe's buildings were set alight as subunit leaders began gathering TRF fighters back together and herding them into their BTRs. They came back several kilograms heavier than they had left, all carried some form of loot. Some were carrying women, some of whom were resigned to their fate and others who insisted on kicking and clawing and were clubbed for their troubles. Others were shot and left on the ground. All of the whites who could be found were herded together around Okame and his blonde burden and made to board the BTR. The TRF who had ridden it into Serowe were to hang onto handholds on the exterior as they made their withdrawal.

In the commander's cupola of his Eland, Erik saw the green flare and cued his counterpart on the radio. As the Whiskey elements - the BTRs who had advanced into the village - withdrew the AMLs opened a steady fire again, assisted by the KPVTs of the BTRs that remained outside Serowe. Under the green light of the hanging parachute flare, green tracers slapped into and through already-perforated walls, kicked up plumes of dust, started new fires and added to old ones. The other BTRs departed and then the AMLs followed, racing up the sides of the column to take their assigned places. Fighters whooped, slapped each other on the back and clutched assault rifles with hot barrels. In the back of the Portugese driver-mechanic's BTR, Guram, Galinov, Okame, and Meredith Scott, amongst a handful of others, sat in silence. Galinov began reloading his partially depleted magazine, ignoring the stink of sweat, motor oil, petrol, and cordite from the spent casings that rattled and rolled around on the floor of the troop bay. There were clattering noises as the gunner fed a new belt into the KPVT, and then Guram pushed Meredith into Galinov's side to get at the box of coaxial ammunition under her seat. Galinov pinioned her arms with one of his own.

In the other vehicles, captured women were having their clothes cut off. Some were raped. The Tonal Revolution Front didn't count women from tribes outside their constituent three as 'comrades', something that would turn the stomachs of many of the Trotskyists and raise the ire of anybody with a soul, but this was how Tonal was. Tonal was Tonal, and politics stopped at tribal lines. Tribes composed of clans, and more than one of Tonal's hundreds of tribes had destroyed itself in a spectacularly brutal and short spasm of intra-tribal violence as the clans decided they could no longer tolerate the existence of their cousins. Such was Tonal. Serowe had existed for as long as it had and as well as it had because they were centered in the territory of one tribe which was friendly to the idea of help from outside. A tribe that was cynical by anybody else's standards but hopelessly optimistic by the standards of Tonal. This tribe could do nothing to stop the mechanized smash and grab executed by the TRF and their flotsam-of-war advisors and mercenaries, lightly armed and as poorly motorised as they were, and in any case to do so would invite instant and massive retaliation.

Galinov set his hand between Meredith's breasts, pressed her back firmly against the unforgiving metal of the benches they sat on. He shouted at her over the roar of the twin engines. "You are Meredith Scott?" Okame quickly checked her for weapons. Finding nothing he turned to pat down the other captives in the back of the BTR. The Portugese shouted over his shoulder, Galinov shouted back. Okame laughed, and the noise from the engines seemed almost tolerable now that heavy machineguns had stopped hammering away scant feet from everybody's ears.

 

[your_vice]

The vehicle she was bundled into was malodorous in the extreme. The men who crowded in with her stank of sweat, dirt and oil and even their hot weapons added to the stench. The cramped space within the vehicle made her feel claustrophobic, which was just ridiculous given that it was among the least of her problems. She was searched for weapons despite the fact there was nowhere in her pyjamas to conceal any and the man's hands lingered on her longer than they needed to. They knew who she was and Meredith was getting the impression they had come specifically for her. She had never imagined herself to be important enough to endanger an entire township but now that her mind was racing ahead to guess what their next move might be, she felt hopelessly naive. She had assumed she was a virtual nobody and that assumption had caused the annihilation of the very people she had come here to aid. That knowledge made her stomach lurch and twist, adding to the nausea caused by the movement of the foetid truck she was in. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed hard. Vomiting in here might well be the last thing she ever did, whether she was the Chancellor of the Exchequer's daughter or not.

She looked around forlornly at the other whites that had been rounded up. There was Ricky, their charity rep who coordinated the distribution of aid within Serowe. He was also British, a veteran aid worker in his mid thirties who appeared calm despite their predicament. Meredith had been attracted to him when she first arrived but Ricky had a wife and kids back home who he doted on so she had done nothing more than admire him from afar. Amos, a South African missionary, had also been brought along and he was sitting with his eyes closed, presumably praying for their safety. On balance, Meredith had more faith in Ricky's quiet composure than Amos's capricious God. She turned to the Russian beside her, figuring someone had to start somewhere. If one of the men questioned their captors, violence might ensue but if she opened her mouth that was unlikely. She was clearly considered valuable right now so Meredith figured she might as well use that to her advantage.

"Where are you taking us?" She yelled over the roar of the military vehicle's engine.

 

[BrazenFellow]

With the first faint glow of light on the horizon - false dawn - the vehicles slowed. The crew commanders of each radioed their 'slant' to Erik. The Afrikaaner picked up a red-lensed flashlight and began scribbling a passenger list in three columns in his notepad. The high value target, that being Meredith, would ride with his element of three steps. The remainder of the prisoners would be more or less equally distributed amongst the other elements of roughly equal steps, a step being a slang term for an operational vehicle much as "truck" was slang for a BTR, which was hardly a truck in the correct sense of the word. Meredith would eventually become familiar with it by necessity. For now, bent double in the confines of the BTR's troop bay, Galinov cocked an eyebrow at Ms. Scott.

"When we get there I'll tell you."

For political reasons the TRF would not allow Erik to do the safest thing, which was use the poorly disciplined TRF fighters as decoys and keep the Europeans with him and those mercenaries like him, who had a far greater degree of discipline and combat experience than the TRF fighters. Being mercenaries, there was the possibility they could be bought off and the TRF would see none of the undoubtedly large ransom for Ms. Scott. So Erik kept a BTR-60PB of TRF fighters close to his AML, and the Portugese driver followed faithfully, echeloned to the left of the Panhard armoured car as Erik signalled the halt. Prisoners were cross-loaded and ammunition levelled quickly, as the vehicles should be under concealment if not under cover by dawn. Amos was given to the TRF-heavy element that did not include an AML 245 amongst its steps. He was shot shortly thereafter, well out of sight and earshot of the contracted mercenaries and Meredith. Perhaps Amos's god was mildly benevolent, his alternative was weeks of torture for preaching the unwanted word of god in the vicinity of doctrinally atheist Maoists and Marxists.

Ricky went with the second group. Most of the few prisoners from Serowe were women, who were divvied up between the elements. The TRF with Erik's detachment got two, already naked, forced into a far more crowded BTR than the one Meredith rode in. With Meredith and the bulk of the skilled fighters were now in Erik's element. Raising rooster-trails of loose topsoil as they pulled away from one another, the elements split to wait out the daylight hours under camouflage netting in treelines and valleys. Galinov settled down across Meredith from Guram, freed a canteen, and passed it and its tepid contents to Meredith. "I am Galinov. That," he said, pointing a hand with fingers held straight and together at the Abkhazi, "is Guram." Thirty minutes later the element had halted with their bows facing outwards from a rough triangle, and camouflage net was being strung as food was prepared and comfortable seating was found. Meredith was kept near the white mercenaries, as it remained to be seen whether or not her market value would decrease with abuse. A few of them strung up a tent and this was appropriated by Galinov, who roughly forced Meredith under the khaki drab canvas.

What she was wearing would never do. Galinov shook his head. "Take off your clothes." He turned his head to the door of the tent and the stark sunlight outside, mottled by the overhead net. "Guram, throw me my rucksack and post this door!"

A moment later a battered rucksack soared through the door and Guram's shadow fell across the ground lit by dawn's sun. Galinov pulled his hat off, ran fingers through sweat-matted hair, and looked back to Meredith. "Now," he added.

 

[your_vice]

Meredith moved back inside the tent, keeping as much distance between herself and Galinov as possible. Her fingers trembled and fumbled as she hastily stripped for him, keeping her legs tightly closed and her pelvis turned slightly away from him. Once she was naked, Meredith folded her arms across her breasts and eyed him warily. She did not know what his intentions were. Despite knowing these people wanted her for a ransom her safety and wellbeing were by no means guaranteed. She had already witnessed what these men did to African women who crossed their path and she could hear the screams and protests of a woman some short distance away. Galinov was filthy. He stank of sweat and metal and Meredith did not want him touching her.

"What is going to happen to me?" She asked, failing to keep a tremor from her voice.

 

[BrazenFellow]

He shrugged, rooting around the depths of his rucksack until he came up with a black drawstring bag. This he untied, and from this bag he pulled olive drab combats. Crouching under the low roof of the tent he was thankful for the shade but knew as the sun rose higher the heat would make the air stiflingly muggy, so much so that it would seem as if a leaden weight was all one could inhale. By then he intended to be resting out in the moving air in the coolest patch of shade he could find. Galinov advanced on Meredith quickly, turning her away from him with two firm hands on her shoulders to inspect her ivory back.

This was all for the sake of the objective. When wounded, some people's adrenaline kept them going for so long that they simply bled to death before realizing they'd been injured. He saw no wounds. He answered her in an attempt to make her slightly more compliant. "First I am going to check you for any wounds." He took hold of her leg just above the ankle and straightened it, tugging her out of that self-conscious ball. "Then we'll get you dressed." He checked the other, not bothering to resist the urge to admire her body, particularly the curve of her hips and the inviting shape of her mound and sex. His fingers were grimy and the professional in him stopped him from exploring further. For now. Sitting back on his haunches he tossed the jacket into Meredith's lap, keeping the pants for now. He pulled a canteen from its holder on his belt and rinsed his hands, offering her the thick plastic container before working the worst of the dirt and grime out from under his fingernails and off the hardened skin of his fingers.

Then, having been in Tonal too long, Galinov seized her ankles and dragged her towards him. Against her youthful strength he applied his, born of years of hardship and the most physical of all labour. Forcing her legs apart he lay between them, cruelly pinning her to the dirt floor of the tent with a forearm across her upper chest, his weight on that and one leg. The other was hooked under hers, holding it away from the other. Mostly clean fingers traced up along the join of her thigh and hip, then quickly towards her labia. One dipped inside her heat, slick from the tepid contents of the canteen. He was feeling for resistance, her hymen. Galinov's breath was hot, washing across her fair skin. With a pistol at one hip and a knife hanging from his shoulder, not to mention fused grenades in their pouches, he was very careful to keep track of her hands lest she tried to turn the tables. It would take but half a second to slip his forearm up onto her neck and demand compliance if she tried to be anything less than submissive.

He didn't quite know it yet, but he was enjoying this. The brutality of it appealed to his Tonal-attuned psyche and seemed natural for the flow of this land.

 

[your_vice]

Meredith had not been convinced when Galinov had announced he was checking for wounds, surely if she was injured she would know? Her suspicions were swiftly confirmed. As soon as he had let her pull on the khaki jacket she was dragged under him, kicking and struggling while he pinned her with his weight. Because he was so much taller than her, Meredith found herself pretty much staring at his chin, unable to glare into his eyes. His rough fingers moved up her thigh and pressed against her sex, probing gently... searching.

"Get off of me." She hissed, her tone the voice of a high ranking government minister's daughter, a young woman who was accustomed to being respected and obeyed.

Her fear crystallised as Meredith figured out what he was searching for, knowing he wouldn't find it. She had had a few boyfriends during her time at university. Her most recent relationship had ended a few months before she came to Tonal. Meredith was most definitely not a virgin and that might make the difference as to whether Galinov raped her or not. Meredith started to shake with terror, having seen what his men had done to the local women. Even as she prayed her fair skin would save her from such a fate, Meredith actually felt bad about how glad she was not to be a black African right now.

The equipment on Galinov's belt dug hard into her and Meredith's flailing hand found the hilt of a knife. The blade was wedged between them however and they both knew she would never manage to extract it. Her fingers flew along the belt but didn't immediately identify anything specific. His weight shifted and she tensed, not knowing what he was about to do and unwilling to be heard screaming the place down like the other female captives.

 

[BrazenFellow]

Even though Meredith quickly released the hilt of his knife, Galinov shifted his weight up onto his forearm and shoved it forward under her chin, growling at her. "Don't."

Two fingers dug deeper, he stretched his wrist as he turned it over, palm to the faded and wear-thinned roof of the tent, and curled upwards. His fingertips dragged across the back of her mons, not for the pleasure, just because he wanted to. His fingertips were hardened of course, but not to the point where he couldn't feel the difference in texture. Slowly he withdrew his fingers and did his best to ignore the urge to take her there and then.

If she'd screamed Erik would have ducked into the tent and kicked Galinov off her, but because she'd made no noise Erik passed by without bothering to glance inside and conferred with the other Panhard commander. Guram didn't care; he'd 'get a canter on the filly' at some point he was sure and right now his only concern was making sure the TRF didn't feel like a taste of white meat, because their sadism was such that it seemed they couldn't get off without mutilating their victim, something that disgusted the mercenaries assigned to work with them.

He held her down with a hand on her chest, planted between her breasts, and dropped the trousers on her lap. By now he was kneeling beside her, equipment well out of easy reach.

 

[your_vice]

Meredith snatched up the trousers and wriggled into them, glaring up at Galinov, who insisted on keeping her upper body pinned. It was awkward and undignified but eventually, she had them on. Her face was flaming but more at the knowledge he had had his filthy fingers inside her. She had a strong urge to scrub her pussy raw but there was likely to be no place where she could do that and Meredith was in no hurry to removed the trousers now she was clothed again.

"So... I'm white, British, it seems you've done your homework so you know I'm the a cabinet minister's daughter... and you've just ascertained that I'm not a virgin. So what does that mean then? What happens to me now?"

Despite her self consciousness Meredith kept her voice calm. These people had acted with a swift professionalism and that gave her hope that there was a specific gameplan. A ransom demand wouldn't be too bad and they wouldn't be able to mistreat her much. Political motives of some kind would be worse; to threaten her execution in return for some act by the British government or worse than that; simply to publicly kill her as a warning to interfering western nations. Meredith swallowed hard, wondering if she could even believe a word he said. If he was smart he wouldn't start monologuing like a Bond villain but giving her some idea of what was going on would probably keep her calmer and more cooperative.

 

[BrazenFellow]

With a tone that made it obvious Galinov thought it was the most natural thing in the world, he replied: "You stay with us.

"Don't go near the blacks. If one tries to grab you, scream and one of us will come get you. They don't like your kind." The missionaries - and therefore, whites in general who didn't carry guns, because those who did were often mercenaries, and frankly they were usually better at killing than the tribal blacks or the TRF, so they were given a wide berth - were bringing, albeit with aid, a religion that had tried to gain roots in Tonal and had been shrugged off by the locals for centuries. Attempts at widespread slavery had come on the back of religious European imperialists, and those memories were enshrined in tribal lore. Missionaries built churches where no churches were wanted. Secular aid organizations usually worked alongside theist organizations and thus guaranteed themselves rough treatment as well.

Galinov just knelt there, hand on her chest, and the reality of what he'd just done caught up with him. There were no repercussions. He had, for the first time in five years, a white woman who could be expected to be free of disease, something cultured and seemingly delicate. Simply, he was fascinated. He was no stranger to power, but this was a different kind of darker, more primal power, just as old as his usual life-and-death power, but subtly different. Just as combat was mankind's history, so was raw sexuality.

In the darkness and heat of the tent, Meredith was inundated with the sort of appeal that turns men's heads on the high streets of London. That though was diluted. This was unadulterated and visceral.

 

[your_vice]

His hard, assessing gaze seared her flesh as he stared her down, daring her to argue or try anything stupid. The sweat, grime and tanned skin that framed the whites of his eyes laid bare his lust for her, even in the gloom of the tent. Had his intimate assault of her been a minor lapse of control or had he fully intended to rape her and only at the last moment reined himself in? Meredith could not decide. She had never been examined like that, at close quarters, so blatantly filed away in minute detail, presumably for masturbatory fodder once Galinov was alone. He obviously wanted her and yet he appeared to be holding himself back. This gave Meredith the desperate hope that he was not sanctioned to rape her, whether by some anonymous paymaster or his own professionalism she did not know or care.

It occurred to Meredith belatedly that she had said nothing in reply to Galinov's instruction. He seemed to be waiting for something so Meredith parted her parched lips, her mouth dry from terror and her voice pitifully hoarse and weak. She was shocked at the way she sounded.

"I understand. What will you be asking for? Is this just about ransom money or something more involved, more political?"

Meredith needed little inducement to avoid the black mercenaries who were still partying loudly some short distance away. That they could treat their own countrywomen with such violent contempt shocked her deeply. Women were being subjected to the most appalling sexual violence, torture, mutilation, circumcision... death was a mercy and one withheld until a number of attackers had had their fun. She had studied Tonal's history and knew tribal feuds ran generations deep but to witness the utter objectification these people were capable of when tribe membership was a mere accident of birth in the first place... it was totally incomprehensible to Meredith's liberal, western mind.

He did not immediately respond and she would not have expected him to. He did not glance away like a man deciding what to tell her about her fate however. Galinov's piercing stare continued to roam her body, almost as though he hadn't heard her at all. Meredith tried to lift her upper body, hoping he would take the hint and let her up. His latent, raw desire for her was palpable and Meredith desperately wanted to shatter the moment before Galinov got lost in it.

 

[BrazenFellow]

It was her cracking, fear-hoarse voice that did it. Galinov snapped and smacked her hard, instinctually wanting her afraid. And he wanted to punish her. Tonal wasn't a joke. Did she know how people died here? There were no peaceful deaths in Tonal. At last she was beginning to genuinely show fear but for all the wrong reasons and he hated her for it. Stupid bitch!, he raged silently, as he tore the fastening of her pants open. They were rugged and did not tear, but they did open. And they did trap her legs together as he hauled them down around her knees.

Roughly, he flipped her over and then he was atop her, hips raised long enough to free his length from his trousers. Pressing Meredith into the dirt, Galinov smacked her ass, hearing the same whip-crack sound of calloused palm on flesh that he had when he had struck her face. The hand that was on her chest was now on her back, not hard enough to completely choke off her breath but close, and he knew just how far he could push her. His other hand laid the head of his steel-hard cock at the entrance to her sex, then gripped her hips and held her steady as he forced his way inside. Further, then a little more, until he was totally encased. He growled, something he was unaware of.

He took what he wanted. He wasn't done yet, only seconds had passed. Why did she insist on learning more about why they held her? All she needed to know was that they did and that she was not to do anything that would endanger her life in the short term. His hand left her back after a few rough thrusts, taking her arms and harshly jerking them around under her head. His weight went onto one hand and his knees, holding her arms down away from his equipment. A full grenade pouch sitting beside a magazine pouch with a pair of hard-angled metal magazines inside jammed into Meredith's lower back. He worked his jaw, realized he was growling, and suppressed it.

Biting her shoulder roughly, he lifted chapped lips to her ear, whispering harshly through her blonde hair. "Why," he said, biting off every word, punctuating with hard thrusts that slammed her pubis off the dirt, "the fuck do you want to know?" He cuffed her when she jerked, reached up and jerked his knife from its scabbard. The edge was nicked from a rib long ago, the tip broken in someone's spine. The remaining edges were wickedly sharp, so sharp that to split hair was accidental, not intentional. It dragged across her skin. "This is Tonal." The heat of her soft flesh wrapped around him hit him then, and she felt as good taken as others felt giving themselves. "You could be mutilated but they would still pay to have you back."

There was no pressure on the blade. He'd not cut her, not damage her beyond what he was already. But the leather haft in his hand felt comfortable, as comfortable as she did, and the knife traced intricate patterns, its steel cold on her skin.

 

[your_vice]

His weight was heavy on her back, not letting her drag enough air into her lungs to emit a scream. By the time the initial shock had passed at being slapped and stripped, Galinov was already forcing his way into her. A low, guttural growl rumbled up from his throat as he bottomed out inside her dry, sore sex and Meredith actually trembled. He seemed to have the same mindless hatred of her that many of the blacks did, as though her colour, nationality and affluence were not also an accident of birth. His powerful hips set a punishing rhythm from the outset, powering into her body as though he wanted to fuck right through her and into the dirt. Meredith's hands were dragged beneath her head and his larger frame loomed over her own, slamming his equipment laden belt into the base of her spine. She yelped and he shoved her face into the dirt, clearly she was expected to endure this in silence.

He bit her shoulder to get her attention and then growled into her ear.

"Why the fuck do you want to know?"

His thrusts got more urgent, battering her against the ground as he forced cuffs over her wrists and closed them tight enough to pinch. Meredith gasped as she heard a blade slide from it's sheath. She tried to stay still but terror was making her shake violently, her body spasming and quivering beneath him as she fought blind panic with ever decreasing success.

"This is Tonal." He elaborated enigmatically, dragging a jagged blade over her skin. Meredith tried hard to remain still, tensing her muscles and unwittingly flexing on Galinov's cock in the process. Her pussy was lubricating itself belatedly but there it was still too swollen and sore from the shock of his forced entry to cause her any inadvertent pleasure. "You could be mutilated but they would still pay to have you back." She could hear the smile on his face, see the triumphant leer in her mind's eye.

Galinov traced the knife over her back, the pressure light, for now. Meredith held herself as still as she could to avoid being cut accidentally. Her pelvic muscles were also tensed, heightening his pleasure but she could do nothing about that and the sooner he was done the better really. Adrenaline sang in her veins pointlessly, making her heart race and her skin tingle where he had smacked her.

 

[BrazenFellow]

He felt her moving around him, underneath him, and misinterpreted this as some instinctive attempt to pleasure him. He spoke in her ear with his coarse, gravelly Russian. Good girl. Keep going.

Keeping the same steady pace Galinov felt her dampen and the knife's point, of its own accord, slid upwards onto her neck. His thrusts became much more deliberate and controlled as the damaged metal scraped along her skin over her carotid. Galinov closed his eyes, let the weapon fall flat onto her shoulderblade and remembered the last time he'd lain with a willing woman. The sensations weren't so different - even taken, Meredith felt better than his former fling. He was taking longer strokes now, sliding back until just the head was encased in her bruised flesh and then pushing forward until she had the full length of him jammed uncomfortably against her cervix. It was just her poor luck that the shallow bend of his shaft and this position combined allowed him to press that deeply; Galinov wasn't above average in length, just girth.

Twenty minutes after she'd first been forced face-down into the dirt floor of the tent and without any other words passing between them, a shudder ran from Galinov's lower back to his shoulders, his hips jerked hard against her, and he finished. He didn't pant, he didn't gasp, he just lowered his head and nuzzled the back of hers gently as he was completely lost in his fantasy of a well-tanned girl on the Sochi coast. Her brunette hair moved as she looked over her shoulder at him, he opened his eyes, and found the warm dirt of Tonal and a terrified blonde under him. "Fuck." He was lifting himself from her when the stark daylight blinded the two of them and an roared Afrikaans curse filled the tent.

A boot connected firmly with Galinov's midsection, just below his ribs, throwing him off her. "You fucking idiot!" A rough, oil-marked hand lifted Meredith bodily off the ground and roughly shoved her behind him. Erik advanced on the Russian and just outside the entrance, Guram could be seen standing ready, fending off curious TRF. They didn't need to see any discord between the whites; it was mostly fear that kept them obedient. Historically, whites were good at killing. And nowheres was this more true than Tonal, where the "Chickenskin Devils" had skills no militia fighter could hope to acquire. "What the fuck are you doing? Do you know how much she's worth?" Galinov forced himself to stay on the ground and made every effort to sheath his knife before Erik stepped in to deliver another kick, if he did.

He did not. He saw the knife and did not want to risk a serious fight with the Russian; he was under no illusions who'd win a proper brawl. Erik spent most of his time in, on, or around his beloved Eland, not using a dagger and rifle on the enemy. Galinov, wisely, put the weapon away. Erik's authority was unassailable and the Afrikaaner took very poorly to insubordination. There was no telling what kind of rondvok the Russian would experience for something more severe. He sat up and watched Erik warily.

"Get dressed," he told Meredith. "Unfuck yourself, Galinov. I don't care how long it's been - I want my money, I want the fuck out of Tonal. Don't get in my way. You're a good troop and I don't want to rondvok you maatjie, but don't fucking try me." He took Meredith by the shoulder and guided her out of the tent, speaking soothingly. "Let's get you cleaned up."