Chapter 9: This means war
Bohner’s acquiescence was purely a tactical move. He had no intention of giving
up without a fight. Minutes after his conversation with Taggart, he used his
cell phone to call Stepford in Delta-City. He explained the situation tersely.
“An interesting challenge,” said Stepford. “I think we can handle it. This
fellow Taggart has how many men?”
“No more than a dozen.”
“And their arms?”
“Shotguns. Semi-automatic pistols. I think I saw a submachine gun or two.”
“What about body armor?”
“I don’t think they have any,” said Bohner.
“Good. Our SWAT team can handle this. Since it’s outside the city, I’ll need to
get authorization from the county commissioners. That shouldn’t be a problem.
They’re all in Moulton’s pocket.”
“Yes,” said Bohner, “but Moulton’s dead.”
“The commissioners don’t know that. In fact, Moulton’s death will give us cover
for this operation. I’ll announce after we’ve taken out Taggart and his men that
they were responsible for Moulton’s death. I’ll say you and Moulton were being
held hostage at the estate, but you managed to make a secret call on your cell
phone.”
“Which led to the rescue mission?”
“Exactly,” said Stepford. “We’ll just have to made sure none of Moulton’s
security detail survives.”
“And that our twin treasures aren’t harmed.”
“Oh, right, the girls,” said Stepford. “I had nearly forgotten about them. I’ll
instruct our boys to be very, very careful. And discreet. Now, where are the
girls being held?”
Bohner explained the layout of the estate, and how to reach the security
headquarters. “I’m pretty sure that’s where they are,” he said.
# # #
But Bohner was wrong. MA and Flag Girl were not at the security headquarters.
Taggart and his men were bored with headquarters and decided it was time for
rape alfresco. They forced the women to march into the woods. After a while,
they came to a clearing with redwood picnic tables and benches. They started
with MA. She was bent face down on one of the tables, and six men took turns
fucking her from behind. Taggart himself used a different approach. He took of
his thick leather belt, with its heavy brass buckle, and beat her bare ass until
it was a mass of welts. Then he used the ribbed handle of a two-foot-long police
baton to rape her.
Flag Girl had the cleanup detail — sucking the dicks of the men after they had
fucked her mentor. Taggart made her lick the baton clean.
“All that talk about some magic wand,” said his partner, Lee, “but it seems to
me that the old-fashioned ways are best. What do you think, honey?”
Flag Girl turned her tear-stained face away.
“She don’t seem very friendly,” said Taggart. He slipped the tip of the baton
under her chin and forced her to raise her face to them.
“My friend here was talking to you, bitch.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I heard him.”
“Then answer, cunt,” Lee shouted. He grabbed Taggart’s baton and started beating
her.
Taggart pulled him back. “Watch it. These girls are gonna make us rich. You can
fuck ’em all you want, but like the Doc said, no permanent damage.”
“Yeah, yeah,” muttered Lee. “But I sure would like to finish this one off.
There’s something about her drives me wild.”
MA, who had been lying face-down in the grass, managed to get up onto her hands
and knees. One of the men took this as a signal that she was ready for more
abuse. He kicked her over, onto her side, then knelt and slid his hand into her
pussy. “Hot damn,” he said. “This one’s wet again.” He turned her onto her back,
spread her legs, and fucked her while gnawing on her ear.
“Control yourselves,” Taggart yelled. “You boys are going into some kind of
goddam frenzy. You get carried away, and we’re not going to have anything to
sell but a couple of beat-up whores.”
He was right. The men seemed to have gone berserk. They punched and kicked the
two battered super heroines, then began fighting each other.
Taggart pulled out his nine-millimeter pistol and fired it twice in the air.
It got the attention of his subordinates, but not in the way he wanted. The one
who had been fucking MA rolled off of her and reached for his holster, which he
had placed on a bench.
Taggart shot him in the chest before he could reach his gun.
# # #
This display of leadership by intimidation — actually, by homicide — did nothing
to boost morale among the remaining members of Moulton’s security force. They
didn’t know, of course, that they would shortly face a far more serious threat
than internal dissension.
Taggart, for all his impulsiveness, had enough sense to figure out that Bohner
was probably up to no good — and that the doc had important connections back in
Delta-City. Still, he didn’t expect what hit them at 2 o’clock in the morning: a
full SWAT team that used a battering ram to smash into the security building, a
stun grenade that left everyone, including MA and Flag Girl, dazed and
temporarily deafened, and enough tear gas to leave a fair-sized town weeping
uncontrollably.
Not one of Taggart’s men had enough time to squeeze off a round. Taggart himself
took a load of Number Two shot in the chest and died instantly. Lee dove under a
cot. He was dragged out by two cops wearing full body armor and gas masks. They
dispatched him with a bullet in the back.
The other seven men in the building died similar deaths. MA, stumbling through
the tear gas, found herself staring at the business end of a twelve gauge
shotgun, but the officer holding it quickly called out, “Follow me.”
Flag Girl, who was in worse shape, was grabbed and thrown over the shoulder of a
burly cop, who hurried outside. She was choking from the gas, and the EMT who
checked her out yelled, “Get her to the chopper fast. She may not make it.”
Someone threw a blanket over MA’s shoulders. It was all she was wearing when an
officer came up to her and said, “Looks like we saved your ass, hot stuff.” He
pulled off his helmet. It was Sam, the blond haired cop who had set her up for
the beating and rape at police headquarters what seemed like ages ago.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said in a low voice.
“Hey, guys,” said Sam. “Believe it or not, this sorry piece of shit is Ms.
Americana. Yeah, the same hot-shot bitch who was always making us look bad. Only
this time, she ain’t the one nailing the bad guys. Looks like they nailed her —
over and over.”
MA looked around for Sam’s commanding officer. She just wanted someone to shut
him up and get her out of here.
An older officer with a salt-and-pepper mustache came up to her. “I’m Captain
Bacon,” he said. She sighed with relief.
Then he added, “You’re under arrest for the murder of Charles Moulton.”
# # #
Bohner entered Stepford’s office unannounced. A good-looking blonde secretary
was on her knees in front of him, and he was fumbling with his zipper.
“What the hell do you mean, barging in like this?” he yelled.
“And what the hell do you mean, fucking up a multi-million-dollar deal?” Bohner
yelled back.
The secretary wiped her lips, closed her blouse and hurried out.
“We had a plan,” Bohner said, lowering his voice. “Your cops were going to rush
in, dispatch Moulton’s security guards, blame them for Moulton’s murder, then
turn the bitches over to us. Now you’ve charged Ms. Assfuck and Flag Tits with
murder. How can we auction them off when they’re in jail?”
“Money has its uses,” said Stepford, “but political power is the ultimate
turn-on. Consider this: ‘Security guards turn on their employer’ — interesting,
but not much of a story. But ‘Ms. Americana and Flag Girl involved in murder of
billionaire’ — now that’s a story.”
He waved a copy of the Daily Democrat. Under a banner headline proclaiming
Moulton’s murder was a four-column picture of MA and Flag Girl, their heads
bowed, as if in shame, flanked by two of Delta-City’s finest.
“The TV has been even better. I was great — subdued but firm, announcing sadly
that these two superheroines had gone bad and expressing regret we hadn’t gotten
to Moulton’s estate before they and Taggart murdered him.”
“You’ll never make this stick,” Bohner said angrily.
“Of course I will. Moulton’s security guys are all dead. Except for you and this
guy Tasher, there are no witnesses to contradict my story about how all this
happened. And I think I can count on you two not to fuck things up, since my
version leaves you in the clear.”
“You’re forgetting the two bitches. They’ll say they had nothing to do with
Moulton’s death. Hell, I don’t know how the old man actually died, but I’m
damned sure neither these two nor Taggart and his bunch were responsible.”
Stepford smiled. “The two bitches won’t protest their innocence. At least, Flag
Girl won’t. We’ve already got a confession from her.”
Bohner appeared shaken. “What did she say?”
“Oh, it made no sense — something about creatures with human bodies and animal
heads. The important thing is that she says she was involved in Moulton’s
murder. In fact, she says she feels real bad about it.”
“Was her lawyer present when she said this?”
“No, and I know what you’re thinking: The confession would never be admitted in
court. Well, it doesn’t have to be. I intend to win in the court of public
opinion. I think the bitches are going to the pen. But if they aren’t convicted,
I’ll blame the judge and legal technicalities. The important thing is that Don
Stepford and his cops brought the jugs to justice. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”
# # #
Things didn’t get any better when Moulton’s lawyer read his will. He called
Bohner with the bad news: Not a dime for the Clinic.
Not a dime for any other charity, or for Moulton’s nieces and nephews.
The whole goddam estate, $2.6 billion worth, went to Marietta Boudreaux, the
sexy little housemaid who Bohner remembered serving drinks and food. Uncle Sam
would get an enormous cut, of course, but the little French tart would still
pocket at least a billion.
He wished he had been nicer to her while staying at Moulton’s. He tried to
recall if he had ever said a pleasant word to her during the six weeks he was
there. No, not a one. He had complimented her once in a comment to the old man,
but she was out of earshot.
He thought about how her lace panties showed under her short black skirt when
she bent over to serve Moulton his croissant. Funny, he thought, he had spent
weeks looking at and abusing two beautiful women, mostly while they were naked,
yet the sexiest thing he could remember was Marietta’s behind in lace panties. A
strange thing, the human psyche.
