Chapter 38: Assessment
Her next conscious memory was of hands unlocking the chains hanging from her wrists that kept her tethered to the floor. She was too weak, at this point, to try to fight them, too weak to try running; still dazed from the drugs, desperate for some clean, cold water but unable to force her numb tongue and bruised lips to shape the request, she just hung limply from the hands under her arms as she was dragged from the shipping container that had been her prison for God only knew how long. Her hair was filthy and matted and hung in tangles around her face; while the bruises had mostly faded from her skin (it had been a while since they'd beaten her) she was too weak and disoriented to fight anymore. She'd spent a lot of time just drifting in a drug haze. At least here there was no pain.
The voices around her now were saying something, and she managed to find enough awareness to try and pick out syllables. Not English, but longer syllable words. Dutch, she identified after one confused moment, trying to remember where she'd heard sounds like that before. She'd heard it at the ICC, at The Hague. She tried desperately to move her lips, to shape the word 'Help' in that language, but she simply couldn't; even that tiny movement was an enormous effort under the drugs, and then rendered impossible a moment later by the introduction of a rag in her mouth. A hand grabbed a handful of her hair, yanked it back until her mouth opened involuntarily, and stuffed the rough cloth into her mouth, effectively silencing whatever sounds she might have made.
"She's filthy."
"She'll clean up. I saw her when we picked her up. She was a beauty. Red hair and green eyes. Problem is she's also a hell of a fighter, got some kind of martial arts training so we had to keep her drugged and chained the whole trip."
"She has green eyes?" A hand roughly peeled her eyelid back, and a bright light was flashed into it, making her moan; a moment later someone stuck a finger in her eye, and she whimpered again, a formless protest at the pain. The hand let her eyelids close. "Real green eyes. Not contacts. She'll fetch a hefty price, wouldn't be surprised if she ran a quarter of a million." And then a hood was popped over her head, darkening her world again, and her wrists were chained together behind her back. "Load her into the truck, men, and be careful." As she was dragged off, she heard the Dutch voice behind her say, "We'll let the dealers figure out how to get her clean."
Then there was nothing but formless drifting for a time, as she lay on the floor of what felt like a panel truck that rattled and bounced toward an unknown destination. The drugs were wearing off, she noticed after a time as her overstretched, aching arms and legs made their pain known to her slowly through the drug haze. Right about the time that she was starting to feel the last of the haze slowly start to clear, the truck stopped.
She tried to gather herself to spring out of the truck, but her legs were shaking and she missed her chance. Hands grabbed her ankles roughly, yanking her backwards out of the truck, and she gave a tiny moan as she felt splinters from the rough wood plank floor dig into her skin, but she was helpless to do anything about it as two men each grabbed one arm and half-marched, half-carried her into what she guessed was a building. She tried to keep track of the tunings, of lefts and rights, but this was too much effort for her and even though a tiny part of her mind screamed at her with the need to identify where she was and how to get out of wherever this labyrinth was, there was still enough of the drugs left in her system to make her dull and drowsy and she could do nothing but let herself be escorted along until finally they stopped—and dropped her to a rough, cold concrete floor.
"Well. What do we have this time? I see a white woman."
"This one's a real moneymaker, boss. White, got fire red hair and real green eyes—I checked them myself. No contacts. Look at her skin, milky white and a few freckles, means she's a real-redhead, though I couldn't be completely sure because her hair's filthy. The African slavers that brought her in said she's some kind of fighter so they couldn't risk letting her free to wash her off, they figured we'd do it."
"Think she's a fight slave?"
"She can fight, though I don't think she's a slave. She's got a little tattoo on her hip, some kind of Japanese characters with braided lines around it." She was nudged roughly with the toe of a hard shoe, rolled over, and felt a hand on her hip, touching the tattoo there; Snake Eyes' name, surrounded by a Celtic knot. "Most likely someone who trained in martial arts."
"Take the hood off." The hood was yanked off her head a moment later, and the man sucked in a sharp breath as she blinked blurry eyes, tearing from the harsh, bright fluorescent light of this shipping dock.
"What's wrong?"
"She's a US Army officer, captured while on a humanitarian mission in the Congo a few weeks ago. Her picture was circulated all over half of Africa and Europe by INTERPOL; the Americans want their soldier back. I was in the shipping office yesterday turning in cargo manifests from Houthaven and I saw her picture posted on the bulletin board."
"We're in trouble."
"No we're not. How many people saw her face?"
"The African cargo ship captain saw her face, and so did his men. But as soon as I saw her I put a hood over her head because I didn't want anyone to see how pretty she is—I figured you'd want to keep the best merchandise under wraps until the auction."
"Good thinking. All right. Inform our African contacts that that cargo ship's captain should never see land again. And anyone else who has seen her face. We can't have anyone possibly telling the authorities that we have this woman here, do you understand? You two I trust, but no one else." Shana's mind, slowly clearing, picked up the slight trace of disdain in this other man's voice; he was lying, and the two men who had brought her here were both going to die very quickly and very soon, to keep them from possibly telling anyone of her presence here. Only one person can keep a secret, went the old saying, and this Dutch port official was going to make sure he himself was the only one who knew who Shana really was. "In the meantime, take her back to the recovery room and chain her up. Securely. She's worth too much money to risk having her try to escape. I'm going to send a message out to some of our richest clients about the excusive merchandise we got in and invite them here to bid on her; we could get a quarter of a million dollars for her from the right person." You could almost hear the greed dripping from his voice.
Hands grabbed her arms and she was roughly dragged from the well-lit bay down a dark, narrow corridor. By now she'd gained enough control over her limbs and body to tense her muscles, and the moment they dropped her on the floor of a dimly-lit concrete room she tried to get her feet under her to run, but someone grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked, and she cried out at the sudden pain. "Not going anywhere, missy. You're worth a lot of money to the right people and you're not going to get a chance." She was dragged by her hair to one wall of the room, knees scraping on the concrete floor, and one of the two men held a knife to her throat. "Now, we're going to unchain your hands and re-chain them to the wall. One false move and I'll cut your throat." And since she still wasn't sure about her control over her shaking limbs, she acquiesced to their demands and sat with her back to the wall, then let them stretch her arms out, chaining each wrist to an iron ring set in the wall, the rings about five feet apart.
And then they were gone, leaving her alone, tears slipping hopelessly from her eyes. Someone had seen her, recognized her, knew who she was, but wasn't going to report her because she was worth too much money.
It was a long time later before the man who had identified her came into the room, long enough that the false calm that sank in after her mind cleared from the drugs was over and her limbs were starting to shake from the drug withdrawal. Fire-sharp cravings for the drug was sizzling down her nerves, her body having developed a physiological dependence on it in the time she'd been on the cargo ship from Africa, and she stared up at him, hopeless rage in her eyes mixed with pain and need.
"They had to keep you drugged so you wouldn't fight them." He saw the trembling in her thighs and correctly guessed the cause. "I suspect they overdosed you; don't worry, I'm going to give you more of what you need in just a moment." He stepped over to the wall and uncoiled a long hose. "Let's get you cleaned off first, though."
The cold water made her scream in sudden shock, but the filth running off her body leaving clean skin behind felt good. The crusted grime had been itching abominably and been driving her crazy, but even worse than that was the tormenting thirst. She recognized the dry mouth as a side effect of one of the 'truth drugs' she'd been administered and tried to angle her head to catch as much of the water on the cloth in her mouth as possible, an attempt to suck water from the gag.
"Thirsty?" He smiled, reached out, and yanked the gag from her mouth. For just a moment she thought about biting his fingers off, but as cold water flowed into her mouth she drank greedily, spluttering as she tried to swallow too much at once and choked, but she was able to take the edge off her thirst by the time he turned the hose off.
He went to a closet at the other end of the room, then, and took out what looked like a 2" ring with two straps on it. Before she could realize what he intended to do with it, he'd crossed the room swiftly, grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back until her mouth opened involuntarily, then jammed the ring into her mouth, positioning it until it was wedged behind her teeth and held her mouth open. She cried weakly in anger but was helpless to fight him as he tied the two leather thongs behind her head, and when he finally stepped back her mouth was being held open by the ring gag. She started to scream at him, to curse, but he came back with something that looked like a rubber balloon on the end of a squeezable air bulb, valve, and hose like she'd seen on Doc's blood-pressure cuffs, and he popped that into the ring, into her mouth, and inflated it. Three squeezes effectively cut off her protests, leaving her unable to do anything but produce incoherent screaming; another squeeze compressed her tongue to the floor of her mouth, effectively taking away her ability to form syllables; one more squeeze and she groaned frantically as she felt her jaw muscles creak. He saw the alarm in her eyes, and smiled.
"A dislocated jaw is extremely painful, but also easy to pop back in place and leaves no marks. We do it a lot here. If you continue to fight me, I'll dislocate your jaw with just a couple squeezes." She was afraid of that, and she stopped fighting. "The Africans don't know how to punish a woman without leaving marks. Believe me, we have ways of punishing you with pain here that won't leave a single mark on your skin. Now, since you are a US Army officer, I'm sure you're intelligent enough to figure out that cooperation will be easier on you." He smiled, then reached down."I want to take a look at this tattoo of yours. Hmm. I read a little Japanese, so…snake eyes? So you're a gambler, hmm? A roll of the dice." He smiled. "Normally if a slave comes in with someone's name tattooed on them except their own, we burn it off their skin or cut that patch of skin off together." Her eyes widened in fear, and he laughed. "Don't worry; having seen it, we won't do that to you. It's not traceable like someone's name, and besides, your body is so magnificent that we're not going to risk bringing down your value by permanently scarring you. Whoever buys you will be making that decision."
He frowned now. "Your hair is filthy. I don't suppose you'd cooperate if I unchained your hands and asked you to wash your own hair? No? A pity." He shrugged. "I'll get a couple of slaves to come in later to wash it. In the meantime…" He squatted in front of her, reached down, slid his hands between her thighs, tried to pull them open.
She kicked out, catching his wrist sideways, making him fall backward with the sudden impact. He tumbled over but regained his feet quickly, and she stared at him in undisguised hatred as he slowly climbed to his feet, cradling his kicked wrist. "Damn bitch," he spat, the first time he'd lost his temper in front of her; a small victory.
Some of that triumph must have shown on her face, or in her eyes, or maybe he was just pissed. He reached forward, grabbed the bulb dangling from the rubber inflatable in her mouth, and gave it a fast squeeze. She screamed as the muscles in her jaw protested, tears filling her eyes, then screamed again, in fear, as she saw his hand muscles tense. As if in slow-motion, she saw his fist clench, then an incredible popping sound filled her head, her ears, as the bladder in her mouth expanded to the point where it popped her right lower jaw out of its socket.
And now a different sound filled her head and ears, the sound of her own screams, trapped inside her head and barely audible to anyone else except as a high-pitched howling from the back of her throat. Tears of agony streamed from her eyes. She'd never felt pain like this before, never felt anything like it; it was so sharp and sudden that her stomach heaved, upset by the volume of water she'd drank on an empty stomach and now this incredible, acute pain in her jaw. She tried to scream, retched instead, and for a few seconds could think of nothing else as her body fought for air to breathe even as her lungs screamed for that same air to express the level of agony she was feeling. Stomach acid mixed with the water she'd drunk came from her nose, having no other outlet than her sinuses, and she fought for air for a while, her body shaking in the chains that held her. By the time she was able to get her lungs and body under control, he'd left the room, presumably to tend to his wrist, leaving her alone with the acute agony from her partially-dislocated jaw.
It seemed like forever before he came back; by the time he did, this time with two other men and a woman, she was exhausted and all she wanted was for the pain to stop. She begged him with her eyes, pride and defiance gone in the face of this new, overwhelming agony, and he laughed as he released air from the valve. The hiss of air escaping as the gag in her mouth deflated corresponded to the release of pressure in her jaw, and she sobbed, grateful for even this much relief. Agony flared again as he untied the straps that held the ring behind her front teeth and took the ring from her mouth, and she screamed weakly a moment later as he touched her lower jaw, but then relief followed the pain as he snapped her lower right jaw back in place, a sharp click followed by the sudden absence of pain.
She was so stunned by how suddenly the agonizing pain had stopped that she was barely aware of the two men he'd brought with him unchaining her wrists; she was given no chance to escape, however, no chance to gather herself to try; she was dragged to her feet, ignoring how her legs were shaking now from withdrawal, and rechained standing, facing the wall.
The next thing she felt was the woman's hands on her hair, cold water on her scalp. She shivered, but the hands were working shampoo into her hair, fingers carefully combing out the worst of the tangles and mats. By the time she was done, everyone in the room could see the bright flame-colored mass of her long hair, unbound, unconfined, flowing to her waist.
"Truly a beauty. I think this is the best we're going to do to get her clean without her cooperation, but we'll see if a week with us will help change her attitude." The port official snapped his fingers at the woman. "Now. You, wash her everywhere."
The soap and water felt good on Shana's body, but she made an inarticulate sound of protest as she felt the woman's hands between her legs. "No," she whimpered, twisting in her bonds. "Please…don't…" but her protests were ignored.
"So. She is responsive," The port official smiled as the woman stepped back from Shana's body. "We can sell her for a lot of money. Let's start contacting the upper-class clients and let them know we have some very high-end merchandise."
One of the watching guards snickered. "Red hair. The word for redhead in my language, Italian, is testa rossa. It also happens to be the name of one of Ferrari's vintage exotic sports cars."
The port official smiled. "Good. Let's set up the brochures for next week's slave auction as a car auction and put her on it as a Testarossa."