Chapter 4

Just at the crack of dawn, the driver stopped long enough for my captor to put a dark heavy hood over my head, and then we drove some more. Eventually I heard the sound of a large metal gate opening. I could smell the fresh sea air and heard the sound of a few gulls. No bets, this was probably the old sewage plant that May had spoken of.

Taken inside, my hood was removed we walked seemingly forever down repeated flights of stairs, across catwalks and finally down a long sub-basement corridor with irregular lighting. Finally at last we came to a shut metal door with a well-armed rifle-toting thug guarding it. I was immediately admitted into a fairly large and well-lit room with no other doors and no windows. I think once this had been a living area for the plant's maintenance crew but it definitely now served another grimmer function, interrogation.

Hanging tied and suspended from pulleys on the cement ceiling, feet dangling a foot off of the floor were the nude and wretched forms of both Allison and May. Neither of them were moving ... not a good sign at all. Unfortunately for the next few moments I had problems of my own.

I was order to strip, which I slowly did, my clothes, faked identity papers and the roll of Fed cash were place on a table. I had spent most of my personal pocket money last night at the bar. I've never been in habit of carrying much cash on me. I was then handcuffed with my hands behind me and for at least the next hour I had the pleasure of being beaten, kicked and punched by a pair of sadistic goons without necks until my skin had a nice rich purple glow all over and my teeth were all thoroughly loosened (none lost, thank heaven for small favors).

I briefly considered trying to get a kick or two in myself to restore a little dignity but the facts were that I wasn't going to win this particular fight anyhow and I should save my strength for later in case there was a fight I could win. Plus making these two goons mad seemed like a really bad idea at the time.

When they had judged that I had bruised their knuckles enough, they dragged me over to a metal chair and sat me down facing the suspended Allison and May and secured me to the chair. I took a few minutes (ok, rather more than just a few minutes) to recover, and started to look around the best I could with two rather swollen eyes that didn't seem to want to work or focus well. Foggy or not, I didn't like what I saw at all.

Allison seemed to be in the best condition at the moment, but she was none too healthy to begin with. Her eyes were closed and her head hung down and her body was utterly limp. She didn't even seem to breathe; it was so slow and seemed slightly irregular. She had been well beaten and whipped all over with professional precision and didn't look like she could handle much, if anything, more. At least she was alive.

May I was much less sure of, and until I eventually heard her emit a bloody air breath gurgle and she quivered ever so slightly. She also had been worked over by professional sadists and for a very long time. The phrase beaten half to death was not just an expression. I guessed that they had only stopped beating, whipping and cutting her when they feared that she would expire on them. There was a frighteningly large pool of blood and urine under her and a slow but steady blood drip seemed to emit from her rectum. Definite internal damage ... not good at all.

A metal medical table, covered by a clean white sheet, was nearby and in the far corner was a large chain link security cage maybe 8' square suitable for locked prisoner storage. There was a metal trap door in the center of this floor with a heavy iron ring that explained the fair smell of sewage. This must be where the bodies were dumped afterwards, in the outbound sewage drain into the bay. No other doors, no windows, no chances of anyone anywhere ever hearing our screams.

I discarded Plan W, shut my eyes and prayed for divine inspiration for a workable Plan X. Otherwise it was obvious that none of us were going to leave this room, at least alive anyway. Apparently we were all heading for that last swim in San Diego Bay after all.

Time passed slowly, minutes seemed like hours. I rested the best I could, the beating had taken enough out of me that if I hadn't been tied to my chair, I'd have probably fallen off of it long ago. I checked on the girls regularly and they at least seemed no worse. Allison was now twitching and occasionally emitting a moan but wasn't quite conscious yet. Good let her rest and recover if she could. May's slow blood drip never stopped but had slowed down just a fraction. She was now deathly pale.

Time continued to crawl.

Eventually the door opened and an older well dressed man entered the room with two armed goons discretely by his side. This was one the big bosses, I guessed. He gave curt orders to have the women taken down and they were unbound and dragged off to the holding cage, still unmoving and unconscious. He pulled up a chair and straddled it, sitting facing me, looking me over.

"Do you know my name, Mr. Peter Wells?" He asked. I said I didn't, and he then hit right to heart of the situation. "Why are you interfering with my business and exactly what is your association with these two women - why did May contact you?"

This was not a good sign, my cover was obviously worthless and any lies that I could even begin to conceive of think of seemed less than useless. The man was smart anyway and probably knew enough that nothing less than 99% pure truth was going to have even a hope of saving us. I also caught the emphasis he placed on 'exactly', so I took the deepest breath my bruised ribs would let me manage, looked him direct in the eye and I unloaded with both barrels, figuratively speaking.

"Alright, Allison, my fiancée, was kidnapped about five years ago outside her apartment by her loser of an ex-boyfriend who wanted a hostage for his escape to Mexico, just one step ahead of the heat. He cuffed her to his car and poured booze down her throat until she was a helpless puddle by the time they reached the border. The useless asshole then proceeded to piss off one of your drug dealing associates who planted the worthless shit into a shallow grave. He was no loss, but it was decided that her flesh was slightly worth more alive rather than dead. So, for the last few years she's been dancing, stripping and fucking in your clubs or whorehouses while we've been searching for her. Nasty things adventures ... make one late for supper!" The man relaxed just a little. I was sure he could read me like an open book and would know of the slight hint of flummery on my part.

Taking this as a good omen of hope I continued, "It wasn't until May contacted me that I had any idea where Allison was, and I still didn't know where she was until the other night when I found her in the Blue Velvet. My intentions were to somehow obtain her release. I have some money, as you have undoubtedly discovered and I would have spent every dime if necessary to recover her.

I have not the slightest concern or interest in your business arrangements. My one and only concern was, and remains, the health and well-being of the woman I love. May was her friend and my only association was her was when she contacted me with Allison's whereabouts." All absolutely true statements, not a drop of duplicity anywhere.

The boss relaxed some more, smiled and for a moment I thought he might even laugh but then his face tightened up and he asked one final question. "Alright and well enough ... then you will have no problem at all in telling me where May has kept the money? Tell me where the fifty million is and you can leave with Allison now, unharmed with my personal pledge of safety."

Fifty Million? What the fuck? What money? And why did he think I might even have the slightest clue to its whereabouts? Now I knew we were truly and utterly doomed.

I think he recognized that my surprise was indeed utterly genuine. I hadn't the remotest idea there even was any missing money, let alone where it could conceivably be. May had spoken of many Syndicate activities and had seemingly withheld nothing from her questioners, but never had she uttered a word about any money of her own (or Alfred's), which made me suddenly realize the true situation.

Being the Syndicate accountant, Alfred and May had been diddling the books and skimming off of the top of the endless money flow for their own little private retirement plan. It's a cliché, but why are all mob accountants always a bit dirtier than even the murdering thugs they work for? They made the usual mistakes of getting a little too greedy and not knowing when to say 'enough', and pull their disappearing act. For them there was always a fatter pig just waiting to be slaughtered, right over the horizon, and of course they stayed too long.

Alfred was killed, murdered; apparently without giving out his secrets. They let enough time go by to give May the false sense of security that her actions were not being as closely watched, and they waited for her escape attempt, and her recovery of her ill-gotten loot. May was being followed everywhere, even to the library the day she emailed me, and copies of her message to me recovered (probably from the computer's cache records, according to our resident HFD computer geek that I asked about this later).

Prepared with the foreknowledge of my true identify, they had undoubtedly been watching me too since the moment May and I left the club that night, and probably saw May entering and leaving the other motel room, obviously speaking with law enforcement. She was doomed the moment she walked back into the club, and so was I, apparently.

The boss, thought quietly for a moment, stood up and started to turn away from me and uttered these last words. "Then you are no longer of any usefulness to me"

He departed from the room, taking his two bodyguard goons with him. I fully expected to be shot or stabbed and then flung down into the sewage hatch, but to my surprise I was roughed up a little bit more but without any meaningful enthusiasm, and was then dragged over to the security cage. Allison and May were soon cut down and were tossed inside with me. The cage door was locked and the last of the goons left the room. We seemed to be all alone, but I doubted it.

These folks were too clever and seemed to want that money too badly. I was willing to bet any sum that there was a microphone and/or a camera hidden nearby ready to catch our every word. That's fine, I didn't have any secrets at this point, and wasn't really in the mood to talk anyway.

Triage time. Allison was ok for now and still unconscious, her wounds were largely superficial. Now for the first time I had a good look at what I had thought was her butt tattoo, but instead turned out to be a 2 inch long brand mark into her flesh of a stylized letter "M."

May on the other hand needed medical treatment ASAP. There were a pair of old very thin blankets on the floor, and I tore some pieces off of the end of one and tried to bandage the worst of May's bleeding wounds and then wrapped her the best I could with the rest of the blanket for at least a little warmth against shock.

As I finished, May cracked one eye at me and said "Thanks Doc, looks like we're fucked, doesn't it. At least I've been well fucked. I came like a banshee while they were whipping me. I've never been worked over so well before in my entire life and I almost enjoyed parts of it."

She smiled and shut her swollen eyes but not before I replied, "May, I don't know what sort of game you've been playing, or why, but I'm too angry at you right now to care and unless you feel like telling us what this business is about some missing fifty million dollars and, why we are now somehow involved with it, I couldn't give the slightest shit. If you can't help this situation then just shut up." She did.

I wrapped myself up in the other blanket and held Allison close, under other circumstance, I would have been thrilled and ecstatic with holding her close to me again (especially nude) but this was neither the time nor the place. I hurt in more places than I could count and I was so terribly tired. I fell asleep with her in my arms almost immediately.

I felt like I had slept for hours, and I awoke almost entirely pain-free to the moist sensation of a warm mouth engulfing my rapidly stiffening cock. Before my eyes were open, I assumed that it was May sucking me and I was about slap the head away when I opened my swollen eyes in the nick of time and saw that the woman sucking my cock was Allison! She was still unsteady and had a hard time holding her head properly to suck up and down on my cock. She was mostly over the effects of whatever they had drugged her with but she wasn't nearly mentally all together yet. She gave up suckling and instead forced herself back upwards to lie against my chest, her now smaller breasts pressed against mine. Her nipple rings were cold at first from the chilled subterranean air, but warmed quickly. We began to slowly and softly talk.

She had prayed for this day to come for longer than she could recount. She had prayed for her white knight to ride in and rescue her. This wasn't quite the rescue she had hoped for - but it would do. We cuddled and gently reaffirmed the love we each had for the other. It had been almost fifteen years since I had last held her, and it seemed like only yesterday.

Her hand began to caress my cock and it responded at once, I was softly kissing her pierced nipples (I had to admit that they were attractive) when she made a most startling demand. "Peter, while we still can, I need you do something for me before we die. It's important, more important to me than you can realize. I need you to fuck my ass, please fuck my ass now. Please."

I whispered that we were surely being watched and was this really the time? But she was adamant in her quiet pleading and nearly in tears so I acquiesced — it wasn't like we had much of a future anyway. She rolled unto her back (she didn't have the energy or the coordination to get on all fours. I raised and spread her legs and entered her cunt to get a bit of lubrication first. We fucked conventionally for a few minutes and she again begged, "Do my ass, please."

I tilted her legs a bit further back and entered her ass smoothly until I could push no farther. Sensing no discomfort on her part I began to deeply fuck her ass in earnest. It was looser than I had remembered it but it had undoubtedly received a good deal of attention in recent years and was well accustomed to taking cocks probably even a good deal larger than mine.

"Oooh, yes," she whimpered, "Fuck my whore ass, cum in it, fill my slutty ass with your cum, please cum in it for me." How could I resist such an invitation, if I was going to be soon killed I'd go out with a bang so I might as well have a good bang first and filled her ass with the last cum load I was every likely to have. I was about to roll off of her when she hissed, "Now bring it over to me, let me suck your cock, I need to taste my ass on your cock and clean you the way I once used to." She did just that and how.

Resting together afterwards she explained, that she had been forced to do so many sexual acts for strangers that in order to keep some faint semblance of her sanity she decided, that in memory of me and our love, she would never again suck on a cock right after it had been in her ass. That way, there was always one act of "love" left that couldn't be perverted in memory by the other things she had done to survive. Ass-to-Mouth was Allison's one last remaining mental barrier and, by performing this act out of love for me, it marked her as being mine once again. She now once again belonged only to me and was mine forever regardless of whatever happened next.

I was speechless at this, and we held each other in silence for a very long time, until once again the door opened. The boss returned, accompanied this time by three guards, one of which stayed by the door while the other two unlocked our cage and dragged us back to the center of the room by the covered table (and close to the sewage disposal trap door). We were arranged on our knees on a row, Allison, then May, last me, hands all tied behind our backs. This was it; I was prepared for and expecting the worst.

Allison could barely keep upright on her knees and still wasn't focusing very well. May was fully conscious and she had her game face on. Any secrets she might have were going with her to the grave. I figured I would be executed first then Allison and finally May in a last effort to make her speak. The boss had a similar but different plan. Holding a .45 in his bare hand, with one of the armed guards in front of us and another in back, I saw no chance to overpower him or affect any sort of rescue. We were done for.

The boss spoke, his gun pointed directed at me, but spoke mostly for the benefit of May. "May, there is little point in continuing this charade much further. You would not show or tell us where Alfred has hidden our money. Frankly you will be pleased to know that we believe there is no limit to the amount of pain or suffering you would tolerate or endure to keep your precious secret. You would happily die first, even if it would set your friends free and their lives spared. But what would you tell them on your deathbed, would you really let the secret die with you? Lets find out." With one swift movement he fired the .45 and shot May right in the stomach.

Other than head wounds, the nastiest wounds for a medic to treat are abdominal ones. The stomach, intestines and bowels are tricky areas to repair. Before modern antibiotics the odds for survival for even a clean gut wound were at best one in five. Unless she could be gotten to a hospital immediately her odds weren't even that good, especially with all of the blood loss she had suffered earlier. The boss had another surprise in store for me and with his free hand he yanked the cloth covering the nearby table off to reveal a full surgical kit. The thug by the door dumped my possessions off of the larger table that they had been placed on and dragged it to the center of the room, where there was the best light.

"Ok, my would be Doctor, let's see you operate. If she dies in the next half hour, you and your bitch will join her."

Keeping his gun in his hand, he sat down in chair to watch. One of the thugs cut my bonds with a large knife and unceremoniously picked up the bleeding body of May and dumped her (not particularly gently) onto the makeshift operating table. Allison remained bound and kneeling in place, probably not completely comprehending what was now taking place.

I opened the wound which wasn't bleeding nearly as much as it should have been and got down to work. It was Army Medic 'Goat School' all over again, with a simple pass/fail test. If May died, so would Allison and I. Now I was not just a highly trained and experienced EMT Paramedic, I had to now perform surgery as if my life depended on it, because it did! I started immediately to work.

Time passed in a flurry of vague but frantic activity. I was operating in some odd zen-like state, with my hands moving as fast I as dared, clamping broken blood vessels and trying to clear the wound cavity enough to see the full extent of the damage. My concentration was interrupted about ten minutes later when there was a loud banging on the door outside. The boss was summoned and a short message delivered. He then rushed from the room taking two of his three stooges with him. I now only had one guard to deal with, and he seemed to be edging closer to better watch what I was doing. Curiosity was replacing alertness and an idea in desperation came to me as he edged almost up to my shoulder.

"If you want to look, you can ... but not there, you're blocking my light. That's better ... and can you hold this skin flap open so I can get some more light here to see what I'm doing? Yes, thanks, much better." It was much better, May was now relatively stable for the moment and my guard had switched his gun to his off hand and it was now not aimed at anyone.

It was child's play to cut his jugular vein on his throat with one smooth stroke of the scalpel that I had hidden in my hand the moment he again became distracted by looking into her wound with fatal, but fascinated curiosity.

I grabbed for his gun hand and he was too surprised to raise it and shoot. Forcing him to the floor I tried to keep his arms pinned until he bled out, which thankfully didn't take long. He did reflexively fire off one round that ricocheted off of the floor (much to close to Allison for my comfort) and then hitting the far wall near the cage.

When he had no pulse, I grabbed his gun and ran to Allison to cut her loose. I had had patients die on me on many occasions, in both my Army and civilian EMS careers, but I had never before taken a life in anger. This act did change my life forever, being one I would have much preferred never to have ever done and it caused me a little bit of later guilt. Still, given that choice to make, I'd do it again ... every time.

Releasing Allison's bonds, I pulled her onto her feet but she could barely stand. I shook her as hard as I dared and gently slapped her cheeks a few times to try to get her a little bit more alert and spoke firmly at her while I walked her toward May's operating table.

"Allie, you've got to snap to it, now. I know you're hurt and your head isn't thinking right but I need all of the help you can give me."

She nodded, shook her head a few times and tried to get herself into mental gear. I checked May, she was still stable but her wound was filling up again with blood. I grabbed Allison's hand and gave her a small sponge and made her understand that I needed the wound open and clear. As almost an afterthought I remembered the guard's body and quickly drug him over to the sewage door and with a little effort opened it, shoved him in and closed the trap door. The extra blood seemed to fit right in place and I doubted anyone would notice the difference.