Page 74 of Deadly Aloha
My body was not made to be covered up by clothing.
We encountered little resistance as we made our way up. There was one guard taking a nap by the cellar door and two more on a smoke break in what was probably once a chapel. Another was taking a leak out a window. He followed his piss stream out into the night, his throat slit.
It was what we found when we entered a large open room that must have been a gathering place, maybe even a dining hall, that froze us in our tracks.
A dozen women were bound naked to steel cots. Six on one side of the room, six on the other. The ones we could see were completely strung out. Likely a sedative or something stronger. Men rutted over top of them while others waited in line to get to them. The fact that a good number of the men wore guard uniforms did not pass my notice.
The six of us stood in the archway, shock locking our legs. It was a brothel, but nothing like Yooko’s. I highly doubted any of these women were here willingly.
I turned my head, catching Tommy’s eyes on my left and Tangaloa’s on my right. As one, all six of us started stripping off our jackets. Some of the men in line for the cot closest to us saw us, but must have thought we were here to join in.
Big mistake.
When we were all down to just our pants and boots—because that would take too long to remove—I shouted out, “Baranov!”
Some looked to me at what might have been a butchering of the man’s name while others turned towards the back of the room. A stout man who looked as tall as he was round stood up off of a cot at the end of the row. We had no picture of Denis Baranov, but I’d bet good money that that was him.
I pulled a dagger from my thigh holster and pointed the blade. “Keep him alive,” I told my men. “The rest, kill quickly.”
“Watch your back,” Tangaloa muttered to me as the others started to realize we weren’t friendly. One or two might speak enough English to have understood my words. “Lu’ll murder us if you get hurt again.”
“Watch your own fucking back,” I grumbled at him. I could take care of myself. Lu should be worrying about herself and our baby. She did not need to be stressing about me.
I lost track of how many men I killed. And fuck it all, some of the stitches on my back came loose. My hip even started bleeding. I blamed the boots.
Most of the men were naked. Which normally, I was cool with.You do youand all that bullshit. But not in this case. Not for this reason. The only good thing about it was that they didn’t have their weapons handy. Some did, and the occasional gunshot was fired. One of the twins took a nasty gash to the shoulder. A few minutes later the other twin had a matchinggash. I didn’t see who did it, but with the accuracy and the location, I had to wonder if it had been his brother.
Tangaloa took down a large man who got in some hits to his face, but my ex-brother-in-law managed to prevail. Tommy had a bloody nose, though I didn’t see what caused it. Spirit had not followed us into the room and managed to get around to the other entrance to block off any who wanted to escape.
Baranov was scrambling to get dressed of all things, letting his men fight for him. The coward.
We were all bloody and sweaty by the time the last man fell. Baranov was pressed up against the wall by an old stained glass window depicting an angel. If there was a god, He’d long forsaken this place. That was fine with me; I didn’t mind doing some smiting for Him.
Baranov was barely five feet tall. He was now wearing a red robe with gold argyles and fucking slippers. As in actual nighttime slippers, like the man was just getting his dick wet before he went to bed.
Short of breath and sweltering in my boots, I looked to the others. “Help the women. We’re going to need to get them medical attention.”
As my men left to work on freeing the women, I turned to the sniveling weasel in front of me. The fucker actually had tears running down his chubby cheeks. The things I would do to make this man bleed for the countless women he’s hurt, both inside and out of this room.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time. Getting to Nishi was my goal, even if it meant giving this man a faster death than he deserved.
I pulled out the mini English to Russian dictionary I had in my cargo pants’ pocket. “Do you speak English?” I asked. “Trust me, this will be a lot less painful for both of us if you do.”
“Nyet,” he replied, using the one Russian word I knew.
“No?” I repeated, flipping through the dictionary. “Funny, you seemed to be able to understand me well enough to answer the question.” I took out a printed picture of Nishi. It was from a few months before she was taken. Lu wanted me to use a picture from the night Nishi disappeared, but like hell was I using a picture that had Lu in it too. “Where is this woman?” I found the word I was looking for, and paused. Well, here goes nothing. “Ga-dey? G-de?Um,ga… Fuck.” I looked up at the man, who had an entirely dumbfounded look on his face. I scowled. This was getting me nowhere.
I looked for another word, hoping it had a few more vowels. “Zhen-sh-chin-y,” I said slowly, butchering the Russian word for ‘woman’. “Hawai‘ianzhenshchiny. You,” I pointed at him, “um,” I flipped through the dictionary, “kupilHawai‘ian women. Shit, I mean,zhenshchiny.YoukupilHawai‘ianzhenshchiny. For,” I flipped to another section, “geroin.” I glanced up at him, skeptical. “Really? ‘Groin’ is your word for heroin? Fucking ridiculous.”
The man just stared at me.
I sighed. “Trust me, this isn’t going any better for me than it is for you. Now, where are the Hawai‘ian women? Who, um,” I went to the back of the book. “Voz? Who did you sell them to?” Fucking hell, this was going to take forever. The fucking smugglers helped get us supplies, but they couldn’t spare a fucking interpreter? I was getting frustrated enough that I was going to want to speak to their manager when we got back to the airport. “Pro… Pro-da-vat,” I stumbled. “Sell. You sold the women. Who or where did you sell them?”
Baranov just continued to stare at me like I’d sprouted two heads.
“Fuck it.” I shoved the dictionary back in my pocket and pulled out my blade.
But the moment I started towards him, the weasel started protesting, “Nyet! Nyet!I speak English!” in a very heavy accent.
