Tiger by the Tail (39 page)

Two hundred kilometers away, Katya was escorted out of the armored car and into a barracks. All the while, she looked around as much as she could, trying to give Vanner and the girls as much intel as possible.

She couldn’t understand a word the soldiers were saying, but their stares and the tone of their comments and laughter to each other told her volumes.
They plan to rape me, probably as a group, and when they are finished, they will probably kill me.

A few years ago, this situation would have scared her, although she would have hidden it behind a cold, bitter veneer. Now, she was able to recognize the fear and divorce herself from it. Above all, she refused to let it hamper her current mission, which was not only to get out of this alive, but to commandeer weapons and a vehicle, then try to find Mike and the others.

“Katya, we’re here. Is there anything you need to tell us?” Vanner asked.

Katya barely resisted rolling her eyes. “
If you want to find out what it’s like to be gang-raped, just keep watching,”
almost came out of her mouth, but she restrained herself.

“Just let me work. Will call when free.” The subvocalization was still hard, but getting better. Katya had been practicing with some of the girls back home, and she could now make herself understood most of the time. She hoped this was one of those times.

“Understood. Vanner out.”

Katya almost breathed a sigh of relief at not having the intrusive voice in her head. Instead, Jay’s training came back to her, almost as if she could hear the spymaster’s calm voice in her mind:

“When it comes to sex, most men are not that far removed from animals. In a group, there is a leader, just like in every unit or pack in nature. Whether you’re dancing at a bachelor party in Las Vegas, or stripping for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there is
always
a leader among men. Identify him. Make him yours. He will keep the others in line. Only then, when you are commanding him while still letting him think that he is calling the shots, that is the time to do what you must, whether it is seduce him, fuck him—and there
is
a difference between the two—or kill him.”

Fortunately, she had already picked the leader out. The sergeant who had “discovered” her exercised discipline over his men without any trouble. When one of the enlisted men had tried to lift her shirt again, The NCO had slapped him across the face and dressed him down in front of the others. Apparently the fun wasn’t to begin until they were back at quarters.

At the doors, two of the men opened them for the sergeant and the new woman. When he brought her inside, the rest of the men, all Burmese, and all getting ready for bed, came alive immediately, talking loudly and jostling for a chance to get close to her.

Spotting a six-pack of what she assumed was beer on the table, Katya shrugged her shoulder free of the sergeant’s hand. Grabbing a bottle, she climbed onto the improvised platform. One of the men started climbing after her, but was halted by his superior.

Running the cold bottle across her sweating forehead, Katya dragged it down the valley of her breasts.
That reminds me . . .
She reached under her shirt and unwound the gauze and tape holding her breasts down.
Thank God that’s over with!

The moment she finished removing the tape, her breasts began expanding, as if performing a stripper’s magic trick. The men were all over this, shouting and reaching for her. Katya evaded their hands, even slapping a few away from her. Striding to the other end of the table, she tossed the gauze to the sergeant, which brought an entirely new round of catcalls and shouts.
Enjoy it, pig—it’s filled with two days of sweat.
He didn’t seem to mind, picking it up off his shoulder and smelling what had to be a fairly noxious odor of sweat, body odor, and maybe a little musk if he was lucky.

The men were going crazy.
Time for stage two
. Selecting what she thought was a private from the crowd, Katya subtly shook the bottle, then bent over and held it out to him, indicating that he should open it. Goaded by the comments and smirks of the other men, he produced a bottle opener and popped the cap off. Immediately golden-white foam started flowing down the sides. Katya put on her best “oops” expression and began licking the foam off, ending up with her mouth completely over the top and neck of it and sucking down the weak liquid.
What disgusting swill.

The crowd went absolutely fucking crazy. Even the sergeant had trouble getting the men back into some semblance of order. Partly because they were getting too riled up, and partly because he was too distracted by Katya’s show.

“Katya, what the hell are you doing? They all look like they’re about to riot!” Vanner said.

No shit, that is exactly what I am going for
, she thought, but didn’t say.
Time for stage three.
Katya began slowly removing her button-down olive drab shirt. She eased it off her shoulder, then back on, then back off. After teasing them like this for a minute, she slipped out of one sleeve and dangled it in front of the men, whipping it out of their reach whenever anyone grabbed for it. Her coy act was riling the men up even more; she now had all of them in the palm of her hand.
They must be really repressed here—I haven’t even shown any skin yet.

Katya slipped the shirt completely off. Sashaying across the table to the sergeant, she draped it around his shoulders like a scarf while still holding on to the ends of both sleeves. She slowly drew him in for a kiss, but released the shirt ends at the last second and turned away. She strutted back to the middle of the table, leaving the man dumbstruck. The rest of his men pounded the table while shouting and catcalling even more.

Now dressed in a stained, wrinkled white T-shirt and fatigue pants, Katya thrust her hip out and threw her shoulders back. The pose drew every eye in the room to her splendid breasts straining against the flimsy cotton. All of this made the men even crazier. Spotting a chair at the end of the table, Katya motioned for it to be brought up onto the table. She watched with concealed glee as a fistfight nearly broke out over who would have the honor of performing the simple task. After a few clumsy punches and another chewing out from the sergeant, the chair was set on the table.

Katya turned it so she could sit in profile to the men. As part of her research, Jay had given her specific films to watch, regardless of when they had been made. He had assigned her to study the women and their interactions with others, particularly men.
“While understanding the psychology of how and why a woman strips is important, it is also important to understand the fantasy that the media, particularly in America, has always portrayed about women. To sell your role as the party girl/stripper, you’re giving your audience something that is twenty-five percent reality and seventy-five percent fantasy.
You,
however, have to portray it one hundred percent, all the time, every time.”

Katya had struggled with most of them. The one about the girl who had hitchhiked to Las Vegas to become a showgirl had been particularly awful. However, there was one film from the 1980s about a woman who was a welder by day and a dancer at night, It had intrigued her, despite being as unbelievable as anything else she had seen. The bottle in her hand wasn’t a cascade of water, but given how she had already got this group’s blood boiling, it would probably do.

Arching her spine over the back of the chair so that her proud breasts stood out in relief, Katya raised the beer over her chest and tipped the bottle down. A golden river poured out over her chest and legs, making the T-shirt transparent and revealing her magnificent tits for everyone in the room to see.

Katya thought she might go deaf from the whooping and hollering that erupted around her. After that, they were putty in her hands. Well, except for certain parts of them.

Finally the sergeant couldn’t take it any more. He pushed his way to the table, grabbed Katya’s hand, and pulled her off the table so roughly that she almost twisted her ankle on the way down. She just managed to get her feet under her, or she would have landed on her ass, and that might have been the end of it. However, he pulled her toward a door near the entrance that led to a smaller room in the building. Katya hoped it was the one she had noticed with a window in it.

The man pushed her into a small kitchen, complete with dirty tables, greasy counters, dusty cabinets, and a secondary exit on the side wall. The room smelled of burned rice and spoiled fruit. It was even better than she had expected.

The only problem was the three other men, all with one or two similar downward pointing black stripes with red edging around them on their shirt sleeves.
Fantastic—the senior men get to fuck me before throwing me to the others
. But she could work with this just fine.

Besides the exit, there were two more pieces of good news to this scene. The first was that one of the men had brought a rifle with him, and had set it down in the corner in preparation for the show. The second was that the other men were continuing the loud party she had gotten started outside, so anything short of full torture would be masked by the noise in the other room.

The sergeant pushed Katya toward the nearest counter, banging her hip painfully. She whirled around to see him drop his pants. Masking her pain and anger with a come-hither pout, she took stock of the position of her targets. The other three men were ranged around the room, too far apart for her to take them all out without one sounding the alarm first. She needed a way to bring all of them close to her. And when the sergeant dropped his drawers, revealing his thick, erect dick, everything fell into place.

Crossing her arms at her waist, Katya slowly drew her beer-soaked T-shirt off over her head. When she could see again, every man’s eyes were on her. She would have to be very careful when poisoning the sergeant, as she needed him to live for about a minute afterward.

She ran a finger around her lips, then put her hand on his stiff cock. He nodded, grabbing the back of her head and shoving her toward his crotch. Katya took him into her mouth and began vigorously fellating him. While doing that, she also kept one hand stroking his shaft while she manipulated the valve at the base of her finger on her other hand to ready the poison. When that hand was ready, she began massaging his firm balls, slowly increasing the tempo of all three movements in a pattern guaranteed to make a man come in minutes.

Curious about the toxin she could inflict on others, Katya had done enough research to get a pretty good idea of what it was. The doctor who had installed the system had said it was modified cobra venom. Katya had learned that different venoms of various cobras had one or more deadly effects. Some were neurotoxic, attacking and incapacitating the nervous system to cause paralysis in the victim. Some also had a cytotoxic element as well, causing swelling and necrosis in cells near the bite area. And lastly, some venoms also had a cardiotoxic effect, weakening the heart muscle and causing it to be unable to pump blood efficiently, causing general weakness throughout the body.

Katya didn’t know exactly what kind of poison cocktail they’d given her, but she did know it was seriously neurotoxic, which was exactly what she needed. Increasing her pace on the sergeant’s cock, she felt him about to climax, which was the last thing she needed to go to work.

He threw his head back as he spasmed into her mouth. Lost in the climax, he didn’t feel her stab a fingernail into the base of his testicle and inject the toxin. As his semen squirted into her mouth, Katya was careful not to swallow any of it. After all, she needed all the weapons she could get. She kept the injector right where it was, pumping the man full of poison while sucking him dry.

When the first full-body spasm hit, Katya pulled away, making sure to look puzzled. The man jerked again, lurching against the counter while stammering to his subordinates for help. Katya backed away while activating the other chemical reservoir inside her body, the one that heightened her strength, speed, and reflexes.

The three men all came forward at the same time.

Perfect.

As they moved to their stricken leader, Katya looked the nearest one right in the face and spit the mouthful of semen into his eyes. Caught by surprise, he staggered back, wiping at his eyes and saying something she assumed was a curse.

The drug kicked into full speed, and Katya saw everyone around her slow down while her own vision, movement, and reactions remained swift and crystal-clear. She had carefully trained herself to ride the heightened rush the drug gave her and channel it into devastating attacks against one man or a group. The training had been remarkably effective. Even Mike, the only one who would take her on while in this state, had suffered bruises and muscle sprains through his padded suit. This was the first time she would be trying those methods in the field, however.

With one man temporarily distracted, she was already moving to the other two. Both were still trying to help the sergeant, who had started convulsing as he slid to the floor. One turned his head toward the door and opened his mouth to call for help. Katya drew her foot back and kicked him in the apple, crushing his larynx and trachea. The blow was so powerful it knocked him off his feet and onto his ass. Both hands clutched at his swelling neck as his face began turning red. His mouth opened and closed silently, like a fish trying to breathe out of water.

The last soldier was just turning to her, one hand dropping to the pistol on his hip while he also opened his mouth to yell for help. Katya fired the heel of her palm into his jaw, slamming the lower mandible into the upper maxilla hard enough to fracture both and splinter a few teeth. The man grunted through a spray of blood as Katya pistoned the same palm heel into his solar plexus, paralyzing the large bundle of nerves there and sending him crashing to the floor.

Hearing a footstep behind her, she whirled to find the first man charging her. To Katya, it looked like he was running against a strong wind. Grabbing his closest outstretched hand, she pivoted and used his momentum to flip him over her hip to the ground with a breath-stealing
thud
. Katya followed up with a ram’s-head punch to the temple. She hit him so hard that his head bounced off the tile floor. The blow crushed the temporal bone, creating a hemorrhage in the temporal lobe directly underneath. Immediately knocked unconscious, the man would never wake up again as he slowly bled to death inside his skull.