Author’s Note: I thought I put this story up several years ago. Which is why I kept referring to it in the last Hilley story (Hilley Ascending). What can I say ... I’m old, I drink, I forget things. A thoughtful reader pointed out that that assumption was dangling in thin air. So I am posting it now. It is from (yet to be posted) Book One of the series and I picked it out because I liked the action in it. I hope you enjoy this shorter piece as much as I did writing it.

We flew into Berlin Tegel on a Cessna Citation CJ. Due to that airport’s age the facilities themselves are not particularly convenient. But getting through customs was relatively simple because we were in a private jet. My people had arranged a car service to transport us to the Regent, which is ideally located on the Charlottenstrasse in the heart of Berlin.

It is one of the best hotels in that city, but its main attraction is that it was pet friendly. My old Legionary buddy Buster goes everywhere with me. It was also a ten-minute walk to the Tiergarten, which I knew Hilley would love. We had booked two Premier suites side by side. We had to do that because the Presidential suite was occupied for the duration of our visit.

The Regent is located in one of the best areas for people who want to soak up Berlin culture and history. Unter Den Linden is two city blocks to the north and the Brandenburg gate is a 15-minute walk west. The Reichstag is a little further along on the Tiergarten Park and the legendary “Checkpoint Charlie” is fifteen minutes south.

Berlin experienced some very dark moments; before, during and after World War Two. It was bombed extensively, and it had an all-out house-to-house battle fought in it. It was divided into four parts for almost a half century, and it was blockaded miles inside communist controlled East Germany.

Finally, and most strikingly it had a wall built through the middle of it that was designed to keep the residents of the East German part of the city from crossing to the west. When the Wall fell in 1989, that event marked the reunification of Germany. And the vital city that I saw around me arose in an astonishingly short time from the ashes.

It was early winter, but the weather was brisk and sunny and so Janey and I and Hilley walked up to the Café Einstein on Unter Den Linden for a late afternoon snack. Janey was wearing a pleated dress and sweater combination that looked like pure wool and cashmere and a little leather coat and lamb’s wool collar that had a stylish “bomber jacket” sense.

That was a little ironic given how extensively the area that we were walking through was bombed during World War II. Hilley had an expensive dark blue wool coat and matching knit beret combination, which she wore on top of another of her “school girl” dresses and tights. She looked exactly like what she was, a very intelligent and well-bred eight-year-old child of privilege. I would think about that impression the following day.

The main attraction of the Einstein besides its excellent location is the art. There is a gallery attached to it that displays the work of local artists. We browsed the paintings and photographs and sat on the sidewalk drinking afternoon tea and watching the traffic headed toward the Brandenburg Gate, which was a little further along.

The following morning was beautiful and sunny. We had breakfast at Einstein’s and walked down to the Tiergarten. The Great Tiergarten is a huge park in central Berlin, like central park is in New York. The Berlin zoo is there hence the name, “Animal Garden.”

Unter Den Linden, which is a lot like Fifth Avenue in the Big Apple, enters that park at the Brandenburg Gate. Janey was dressed in a pair of skintight jeans and her expensive lamb’s wool bomber jacket. The jeans showed off her magnificent butt and men were literally turning to watch her twitch her way down the street.

Hilley was in a pair of tailored kid jeans that must have set Janey back a couple of hundred dollars and a thick wooly fisherman’s sweater. She had a bandana wrapped around her head holding her hair back, which made her look like a little girl version of Cochise.

Her au-pair Ada was wearing her usual sensible pant and shirt outfit, but she had put on a light cardigan sweater over the combination. She was in particularly good spirits walking along with Hilley. The two of them were discussing their surroundings in German. Ada seemed to be drilling Hilley on the wording of the signs.

Buster was ambling along with me his usual air of martial arrogance on full display. All he needed was a kepi and a swagger stick and I would swear he was an extra, in Beau Geste. We walked through the gate and into the park. It has a forested feel to it, with well-groomed paths leading off into the “wilderness.”

Our little group took the first turn on our left and headed in among the trees. Germany was very heavily forested well into modern times. In fact, in many places it still is. As a result, Germans seem to have an atavistic thing for trees.

As we progressed further along the little trail and the trees closed around us, we got less and less of a sense that there were 3.5 million people in the general vicinity. Instead, it felt like we were alone in the Black Forest. Ada, who could probably pass for “Heidi” commented that it reminded her of the mountains around her home. All she needed to look authentic was a herd of goats.

We came up to a little intersection in the paths and Hilley and Ada took a turn off to look at the huge flower bed that you could see in the distance. Janey, and I just kept walking, holding each other’s hand. Buster accompanied Hilley of course.

We told them that we would meet them back at that place in fifteen minutes. We had walked for most of that time, just gazing around and commenting on the uncanny impression of wilderness in the middle of the second largest city in Europe.

Then we heard a SHOT!

A noise like that in a peaceful place like the Tiergarten was terrifying. We both turned and with the same thought we raced back down the path toward where the shot seemed to come from. Then, we heard a second one. It kicked me into a hyper frenzy of anxious running because I had a premonition.

The kidnappers struck as Ada, Hilley and Buster walked down the path toward the flower garden. Hilley loves flowers and so she had separated from the group to explore the garden along with her faithful guardians Ada and Buster.

There were six of them. They must have been hiding in the trees as the three of them walked past. As soon as they saw the kidnappers approach Hilley, and Ada began to run back up the path toward the intersection. Their aim was to retreat toward where they had parted company with Paul and Janey, but the kidnappers had anticipated the move by stationing three more men at the intersection.

What they had not anticipated was that Ada would stand and fight. That was the point where their carefully planned abduction unraveled. Ada might be in her early twenties, but she is a Swiss woman, tall and extraordinarily strong and she had all of the fighting instincts of a Viking Shield Maiden.

Ada grabbed the first attacker by his tactical vest, lifted him off the ground and threw him backward into the one behind him. Then - while yelling to Hilley to flee - she turned with fists and elbows flying, to face the others.

The fight at the intersection took several seconds, as Ada was determined that nobody would pass and the attackers being men chose to try to wrestle her out of the way rather than simply go around her. No mere woman was going to prevent them from continuing down that path.

The six-against-one odds temporarily worked in Ada’s favor. It was basically Thermopylae all over again since only one man at a time could approach her and Ada’s heroic stand was delaying the kidnappers from their real target.

Finally, one of the black clad attackers produced an EpiPen. The contents of the pen were probably meant for Hilley. There was a hiss and Ada slumped to the ground unconscious. Still, she had bought Buster and Hilley the time they needed to retreat down the path towards the public road.

Hilley and Buster turned into a tight crescent grotto with a little cement memorial tucked into it. The statue was of the Virgin Mary. It sat at the base of a long U formed by the enclosing vegetation. Hilley could see the black van with its doors open waiting for them on the street at the end of the path. So, she chose to make her stand there.

Hilley has all of the heredity of her mother’s British ancestors in her tiny body. Those are the same valiant bloodlines that formed the steadfast squares at Waterloo, the “thin red line” at Balaclava and who fought the German panzers to a standstill on the causeways of Dunkirk.

Consequently, rather than panic, or curl up in a ball and cry as any child should have in that situation, Hilley had calmly and judiciously found a place that she thought she and her dog could defend. The foliage and passageway formed by the walls made the position a sanctuary of peace and contemplation. It was also good ground for a final fight because it channeled any attackers into a confined space.

La Legion could have engaged at the crossroads, but he knew his duty was to Hilley. He placed himself in front of her at the open end of the U. Hilley had grabbed a small tree branch and she was shaping it into a makeshift spear with her little carving knife.

Now, she stood poised behind her dog with her little weapon in her hand and the same steadfast look on her face that the Scottish pikemen must have had standing in their scheltrens at Bannockburn. Two of the kidnappers passed the grotto wrestling Ada’s limp body down to the van. Four men entered.

La Legion had not done anything active up to this point. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t planning to do something now. He was simply falling back on prepared positions buying time. Finally, he knew that he had reached the place that he would have to stand and defend.

The first two attackers were laughing as they approached. It must have looked comical to see a petite little girl ferociously brandishing a makeshift spear behind a large, tousled dog. Even funnier, the dog seemed to be lying on the ground with his hindquarters in the air and his front paws out in front of him, like he wanted to play.

As soon as they came into range ... the lead attacker was hit by a barrage that had the brutal force of a full salvo of Legion artillery. Buster pounced like a huge cat with his jaws wide open. One hundred and ten pounds of canine muscle and inward curving fangs ripped the first man’s lower face and jaws in a way that guaranteed that he would be lot less popular with the ladies.

The guy was fortunate that the Legion gunners had been a bit high with their first salvo, because Buster’s aiming point was his throat. There was a mist of blood and the attacker catapulted backward into the one coming up behind him. They both went down in a heap of tangled limbs much further back up the path, both of them temporarily unconscious.

Then, with the artillery preparation out of the way, the Legion infantry came out of their trenches. A Bouvier has the same biting power as a Pit Bull but it’s much bigger and its neck is immensely stronger. So, Buster easily snapped the bones in the next attacker’s forearm. While at the same time, almost ripping his arm off.

Unfortunately, the attacker had a 9-mm in his right hand, which he fired point blank at Buster before he shrieked in agony, turned, and ran. His arm hung down as if it had been torn completely off his shoulder, which it probably had. The bullet went into Buster’s hindquarters and the brave fellow whimpered and slowly went down on his side.

The final attacker saw his chance and made a grab for Hilley over the prone body of La Legion. Hilley let out a little girl war cry and calmly and forcefully shoved her makeshift spear into his open palm. She might have been just 60 pounds of determined mademoiselle. But she had her mother’s uncanny strength. So, the tip of her little weapon actually protruded out of the back of the attacker’s hand.

La Legion’s infantry had been horribly decimated. But honor demand that it give the last full measure of devotion. So, the faithful old fellow launched a final desperate counterattack with the only weapon at his disposal, the canine equivalent of La “Rosalie,” the fearsome French bayonet.

Lying on his side Buster sank his already bloody fangs into the last attacker’s left ankle. The bite completely severed the Achilles tendon and almost tore the attacker’s foot off. He screamed in agony and fired reflexively down at Buster. The bullet grazed the top of the valiant old soldier’s skull, made a crease across the top, took a big nick out of one of his right ear and knocked him out. Nevertheless, La Legion’s last-ditch assault had done the job. The fourth attacker was just coming back to consciousness after having been knocked out by La Legion’s initial barrage. He was unharmed but he was all by himself. Hilley, whose fighting blood was up because of what they had done to her dog, shrieked, and then advanced on him, clearly intending to poke out his right eye with her little spear.

He could also hear the frantic sounds of an oncoming rescue party just up the path. So, he grabbed the other attacker, who was unable to use his left leg, turned and ran in the direction that the others had gone, while Hilley yelled after him, “Come back here! I’m not finished with you yet!!”

I arrived on the scene as the van doors were closing. Janey was a few steps behind me. Seeing the van roar off almost killed me. I was sure our daughter was in it.

I heard her cry, “Daddy” turned and there she was, standing in a little grotto behind the body of her dog. She had a short spear clutched in her brave little hand. It had a lot of blood on its tip. The area around them looked like a battlefield. Blood was everywhere.

Hilley dropped the spear, ran up the path and threw herself into my arms weeping. I held her tiny body to me thinking very dark thoughts. I was sure she had been so traumatized by events that she would never be herself again. Instead, she said through her sobs, “They killed Buster!!”

The bravery of my little daughter was awe inspiring. She was a 60-pound girl who had been threatened by a menacing group of male kidnappers and then witnessed an incredible amount of carnage. All she could think about was her faithful dog!!

I handed her to her mother, who was standing there with a look of indescribably fury on her face and went to check on Buster. Buster had regained consciousness and was struggling back to his feet, ready to make his final stand.

La Legion was down to its last few rounds. Its artillery was completely out of action and it had suffered horrible casualties. His blood dripped down his head and into his eyes and his hindquarters were completely covered in it. Now, he braced himself for the supreme honor of dying to protect the person he had sworn his life to. It would be a death worthy of a hero.

The last remnant of La Legion’s infantry was gathering itself to launch a forlorn hope assault when he recognized me. He relaxed his attack posture. I looked at him with anguish. He laughed and said casually, “It is but a scratch mon ami. How is the little mademoiselle?!” I said, “She’s fine soldier” and watched the look of relief wash over him as he toppled back over on his side.

The first call I made was to an air ambulance which landed in the clearing six minutes later. The medics were none too pleased when they found that they had made a helicopter run for a dog. Nevertheless, money can be very persuasive, and I was not in a mood to take “no” for an answer.

I had my people working on where my valiant old friend would be delivered as the helicopter was inbounded to pick him up. They had already lined up a drop-off at the SMARTVET just up the Bismarkstrasse from the Tiergarten. A surgeon had been alerted and was standing by.

I made it plain ... and with no possible room for misunderstanding ... that the heroic medical measures that he was expected to take in order to save the life of such a gallant warrior would receive an exceptional reward. As the helicopter lifted off, I turned to Janey. The extraordinary rage on her face would have been frightening if I did not know that I had the same look.

Just as we have always done when faced with adversity, Janey and I assessed the situation together as we made our way back to the hotel carrying our crying daughter. I didn’t need to speculate what this was all about. We are very wealthy, and we travel without a large security detail. Somebody somewhere had noticed that and planned to help themselves to some of our wealth by kidnapping our child.

The fact that the attempt had occurred in a place that was ideal for such an act indicated to me that they had been watching us. The length of time that surveillance had taken place was not clear but what WAS obvious was that this was a premeditated crime, not a random event.

When that plan had broken down the would-be kidnappers did the next best thing. They kidnapped our au pair, Ada. We both knew that we could expect contact soon and probably the usual list of demands. So, with my second call I had phoned my security team. They were already on a NetJets flight, due in in the next hour.

That team was composed of people who I had served with and who I respected. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was a crew chief and door gunner on the H-53 Pave Lows of the 160th Aviation Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division; commonly known as the “Night Stalkers.”

Besides hauling the occasional airborne rangers, the Night Stalkers are the taxi service for the Army Special Operations Groups, Delta, and Green Beret. So, I had worked with soldiers who were the finest in the world. And five of the best-of-the-best work for me now.

They arrived within two hours, without fanfare, carrying nondescript bags. I was in the lobby to “greet” them. We didn’t know who was watching so the ruse we chose was, “rich guy and five of his sales employees.”

Our behavior reeked of “late afternoon business meeting.” We talked for a while then all six of us drifted off in random directions. We met fifteen minutes later in the room next door to our suite, which was now the command center.

My operators were competent and well-paid professionals. They set about opening boxes and cases and assembling things with cool proficiency. There were five of them. Steve McAuliffe, my security team leader, was smart, experienced, and strategically and tactically incisive. I had dropped him off in a number of places where I never expected to see him again.

Then there was the sniper. Every Delta team has a sniper. Mine was nothing like the movie cliché of the rabbit hunting hillbilly. He looked like a CPA nerd, with a receding hairline, grey suit, and actual Clark Kent style glasses. It wasn’t until you looked into those uncanny pale eyes and saw a stone-cold killer that you realized what he actually was - a sophisticated and savage bird of prey.

There were two “door kickers” who were highly trained and experienced combat entry specialists. Those two averaged 250 pounds of elite fighting muscle and they could probably take on an NFL team in a hand-to-hand situation and win. They particularly liked zero knowledge entry situations, which meant they were either very brave or very crazy. That kind of mentality needs the adrenaline rush like a junkie needs drugs.

Finally, there was the hacker. He was a short, muscular African-American guy, who was not your usual nerd. He could own your computer system with one hand while doing one armed pushups with the other. I had actually seen him do that. And he was also an expert in combat entry.

My guys finished setting it up and we all got down to a council of war. Janey insisted on being part of that council and all of us could see from the look of pissed-off determination in her eyes that she was not going to stand for any argument. She had put Hilley to bed in our suite after calling a person who we consider a family friend. Our friend just happens to also be one of the leading authorities on child behavior, with PhDs in both education and psychology. More important, she is a kind and generous person. Hilley thinks of her as her grandmother.

My parents are dead, and Janey’s mother stopped speaking to her when Janey’s father left his money to Janey, rather than to her. So, Hilda has been the only older woman who Hilley has ever known. She calls her “Nonny.” Nonny has been at every Christmas and birthday since Hilley was two and our little daughter loves her.

We wanted Hilley to wake up to Hilda’s face. So Nonny was inbound on the Cessna Citation that we had hired to get her from her home in Geneva. She had literally walked out of a high-level academic conference when she got the word about what had happened and gone directly to the airport. We expected her within the hour.

We knew that the kidnappers would contact us sooner or later. It took much longer than we had imagined, almost four full hours. Because we didn’t know what method they were going to use we were monitoring every communication channel, cell phones, e-mail, even Skype.

Our hacker had all of the electronic channels filtered into a single monitor display. And one of the door kickers was stationed in the lobby in case they went the old-fashioned ransom note approach. As it turned out they chose e-mail. There was a message sitting in the inbox of my public account. This is an account that we publish on my personal website as a means of encouraging people to talk to me.

There was a simple note. It said “10 million Euro ... Keine Polizie...” There was a link embedded at the bottom of the message. I clicked on the link. It took a while to load. We all stood there wondering what we were going to see. Then it opened to a live feed.

Ada was in the middle of the picture. She was out cold, lying drugged on the bed. I watched as a skinny little man went around the room closing the blinds. He then turned and looked at her. She had her entire body lying on the bed. Her chubby legs were hanging off the edge.

He went to where she was sleeping and picked up one arm and dropped it. There was no reaction. Then he slapped her. She rolled her head to one side and opened her eyes momentarily. They were glazed and lifeless. Then they closed. The man looked significantly at the camera. Then he unbuttoned her pants, lifted her legs, and began to work them down by pulling on the waistband on both sides of her hips. She didn’t move or react.

The pants came off leaving her in her panties. The man then sat her up. She was not able to hold herself erect and her head hung forward with her face hidden by her long blond hair. He eased her sweater and shirt off by pulling the neck up over her head and then off over her arms.

He then dropped her back on the bed laying there in her simple bra and pants. She was sleeping, her huge tits rising and falling regularly. They were so big that they looked like she had two halves of a watermelon lying on her chest. Her vulnerable white body was on abject display. Ada was not fat as much as she was very round and sturdy.

The man then carefully eased his own pants down and left them puddled on the floor. He was not wearing underwear. He stripped his own t-shirt off and stood there skinny and naked for a second, sporting a highly aroused cock that looked like it was a foot long. It was sticking out in front of him like a bowsprit. He then turned back to Ada. He pulled her panties over her hips by their waistband and along her legs to lie between her feet on the floor. He stopped and savored the sight of Ada’s full peasant bush and virgin pussy.

She remained unmoving, breathing slowly and rhythmically, deep asleep. Finally, he reached between her giant tits and unsnapped the front clasp of her utilitarian bra. Ada was now lying completely naked and helpless on her back on the bed.

Two huge, firm white tits were revealed, which only slightly puddled out over her chest and arms. The aureoles were big, perhaps six inches in circumference and pink. At that point the nipples in the middle of those circles were two small bumps. But as the outside air began to revive them, they grew.

The skinny man began to tweak each of them. Soon they were prominent and red and the size of the tip of your finger. Ada’s breathing seemed to pick up at the stimulation as her huge tits rose and fell more rapidly. Her boob flesh took up most of the space on her chest as those massive jugs folded over on top of her ribs.

The man sat on the bed next to her and took one gigantic tit in both of his hands. The tip of the breast and the nipple plumped up above where he had his hands closed around it. He took one of his thumbs and rubbed it back and forth across the nipple. It doubled in size and turned a bright angry red.

He began sucking and biting the nipple. Ada made the first sound I had heard her make. It was a faint groan. The man played with both of her breasts in the same fashion. This went on for a little while. During that time Ada’s helpless pale body got pinker and pinker and a reddish flush began to appear on her neck and upper chest.

Ada made several small moans. I thought to myself, “Is he turning her on?” Then the man dropped her boobs and went to kneel between her naked spread legs. He raised them and held them apart so that her pussy was completely exposed to him. He then began to lick up and down her slit stopping on each pass to run his tongue over her clit.

As he did so Ada’s face, which to this point had been completely blank, started to change. She was still lying limply on the bed, but she began to get that furrow in her brow that is an indicator of sexual arousal in women and her lips opened and her breathing immediately picked up.

Her giant jugs were now rising and falling very rapidly. The man dropped her legs and looked at her lolling there. She was completely naked and totally defenseless, lying mostly on the bed with her legs open in that classic “froggy” position that female hip structure dictates when a woman’s legs are spread like that.

The man stretched himself over Ada and lay down on top of her, without actually inserting himself. Instead, he allowed his cock to rub back and forth against her pussy with the tip thrusting in the space between her ass cheeks. Returning her to me without her virginity intact would damage the goods and he knew that. So, that was as far as the violation would go.

Then he began to slowly hump her. Her unconscious face took on a look of increasing arousal and the man’s cock was clearly getting very slick with her juices. He picked up his pace and Ada began to moan softly again.

He held his upper body off her as he humped her, and her giant tits were bouncing on her chest. He was watching them bobble and jiggle. She was moving her head from side to side as if fighting off a bad dream. His skinny ass was thrusting at her faster and faster and she was moaning regularly and loudly now, a cocktail of pleasure and pain written on her face.

As her moans got louder and more urgent, the man suddenly jumped up and shot a load of sperm on her stomach and chest while looking smugly into the camera. He then moved out of the camera’s view and you could hear a door close and lock. Ada lay there totally naked and exposed. Her moans became softer and softer. Then she succumbed back into her drugged sleep. All was quiet again. They had made their point loud and clear.

Janey, who had suddenly appeared beside me, began to cry. I shut off the picture while keeping the link open. At this point all we knew was that there was a live feed coming from somewhere and the link was still open.

So, our hacker did a little tapping. Then he began to laugh. Nobody in the room was in a mood for nerd humor. The hacker said, “It’s a regular IP. Those dudes didn’t even bother to anonymize it.” His tone of voice said that he didn’t like amateurs.

The team leader said, “Where is it coming from.” The hacker told him Lichtenberg over in the old East German section, a lot of bad neighborhoods over there. The hacker did a little more tapping and the factory building that the feed was originating from came into view. I was wondering what law enforcement did before Google Maps.

I knew we should turn this over to the police, but I wanted those motherfuckers with every fiber of my body. For obvious reasons, at this point the current situation only included me and my team. And the bad guys had told us to not involve the cops. So, my little voice said, “Maybe we can give them what they asked for.”

There was no way that the kidnappers could know that I had five of the best Special Forces operators in the world sitting in the room with me, every one of whom possessed the talents that this situation demanded. My little voice said, “You know that you have the people to totally light those guys up; so why not do it!!?”

I wanted some serious payback for what I had just seen. So, I nodded to my team leader, who was watching me intently. He reacted like an eager hunting dog who’d just been told to “fetch.” And we began the serious planning for what would happen next.