There were more near hysterical screams from the hotel. “That will be Jackie. A new French girl. Always she makes a lot of noise.” “Do you have, sort of a regular boyfriend, as well as ...” He was saying the wrong things again.
“Frau Lilly discourages that, but some of the girls have. Mostly the men are posers, free-loaders. Always they expect presents.”
“You don't have one then.” Not that Hyde cared one way or the other. He asked her just to keep her there. For a while longer to have her to himself.
“There will be time enough, when I have put sufficient money away. Perhaps though I will not want anyone. Or like two of the older girls I might prefer to live with a woman. I have never done it with a woman, but I can imagine it, I think. It would have to be a pretty girl, not one of those smelly tweed-wrapped sacks of potatoes who try to be men.”
It felt like he was going to burst. He backed off the stone or he would have come, simply from hearing her talk of such things. The thought was in his mind of how he could grab her and take her right here. Even if she protested, fought him, it would be over so quickly that he could get away without her having seen enough to identify him. But that wasn't how he wanted it. A thousand times before this night he'd wished a similar fate on the unknown Russian gunner who'd destroyed his face. He was wishing it again now, with every fibre of his being.
In the darkness, perhaps there was a chance, they were all but invisible to each other. No, anything might happen, a beam of light from the hotel, the arcs being switched on again. Worse than not starting, to have her yell with fright when she saw him while they were doing it.
“How are you feeling now?” His mouth was dry, he had difficulty forming the words and they came out as a hoarse whisper.
“You mean you want me.”
“Yes.” He had been nodding like an imbecile for a minute before he could produce the word.
“Do you want to do it here?” She took his silence as “yes.” “The ground is hard, and this is a good dress. Do you like to do it standing up.”
Christ, he'd have done it standing on his head. He wanted so much just to ram himself inside here, but he had to be careful. He didn't want to frighten her off. “Can I do it from behind?”
“You don't want to do anything dirty do you? I don't like that. It makes me sore for days.”
“Oh no, no.” He struggled for the right words, had heard the disapproval in her voice. “I want to be able to touch you at the same time.”
“All right then.” She lifted her skirt and hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her panties, eased them down and stepped carefully out of them, not letting them touch the ground. “But no tricks. If you try to put it in the wrong place I shall be angry, and go back to the bus.”
“Whatever you say. I’ll do whatever you want.” And Hyde meant it. At this stage of frustration and anticipation he'd have done absolutely anything for her. Even go down on his knees in front and lick her until it soaked him. So long as at some stage she let him penetrate her and stay in her body until the release of the urgent pressure that was making his groin red-hot.
“I am ready.” She braced herself with her feet apart, palms resting on top of a low wall. The silky material of her underwear cushioned her left hand. “Pull my dress right up out of the way.”
In the darkness he had moved behind her and she felt hands bunching her clothes up over her waist. She tensed as the damp tipped warm hardness of an erection slid over her bottom, then relaxed as it moved down and began to urgently probe between her legs. Bending forward slightly she reached down and guided it in. There was a groan behind her and she felt the man's body shuddering as he penetrated as far as he could.
Her skirt wedged up between their interlocked bodies, fingers slid over her hips and glided gently over her belly to explore among her pubic hair.
Despite herself, her unwritten rule, she knew she was going to come. As she felt him climax she pushed against the wall to force his fingers to greater pressure and then she was gasping and moving uncontrollably as well. “Again. Do it again, the same way.”
Hyde's breath was lung-hurting gulps of air, like a man who had surfaced from deep under water. With hardly any break to the rhythm of their movements he started again. There was a sudden commotion from the hotel but he paid no attention to it. All there was for him was the woman and what they were doing together. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed.
“What the hell.”
The thud of the explosion was right over Revell's bed, and was accompanied by a shower of ceiling plaster that transformed him and the girl to white apparitions.
He'd got used to the yelling of the woman in the room above, but now her screaming went right off the audible scale. A barrage of French invective, gabbled so fast no words were recognizable.
There was the sound on the stairs of someone going down three at a time, and then the crack of a pistol shot accompanied by a braying laugh that could only be from Dooley.
Reluctantly he swung his legs over the side of the bed, and remembering in time that his companion didn't speak a word of any language he'd ever heard, pointed to his watch, held up five fingers and gestured her to stay there and wait.
As evidence she understood, the Arab girl threw aside the cover and arching her body in the air began to finger herself.
“That's right. Keep it ticking over. Back soon.” Failing to find any of his clothes, Revell grabbed a corner of the sheet she'd discarded and wrapping it about himself sarong style, went out onto the landing.
“So what the hell is going on.”
There was no answer, but from the flight above came another burst of donkey- like noises. Revell started up, dragging a long white crumpled train in his wake.
“Share the joke then.”
Dooley had gathered quite an audience. He sat on the top step with tears of laughter streaming down his face. “It's that jerk Garrett. He chucked a thunder flash under Carrington's bed while he was on the job.”
From the room drifted wreaths of grey smoke and anguished sobbing punctuated by vitriolic swearing.
“I thought Carrington was the great unflappable, so why's he chased off after the young prat with a Colt.” Scully was minus his shorts, but still had the chefs hat and army boots.
“Carrington might be, but his broad isn't. First thing she did was jump hard enough to almost yank his prick out by the roots, then when the bed burst into flame she shit herself.” Dooley dissolved in uncontrollable laughter. He was still laughing and holding his chest when a big naked girl came out and dragged him back to his room.
“Anybody know what kind of state Carrington was in?” Revell made it an open question to the assortment of partially robed figures gradually drifting back to bed.
Scully, with both hands cupped over his privates was edging away with his back to the wall. “I saw him about an hour ago. He was well away, at least a couple of bottles inside him. Garrett's safe enough if he keeps more than ten feet from him.”
With that Scully reached an open doorway, and was suddenly gone.
Faintly, from the direction of the lake, came the sound of a shot. Revell pretended not to hear it, and after disentangling his sheet from the stair rails, re- turned to his own room.
NINE
The dawn revealed long tendrils of mist creeping in off the heath to surround the hotel. Its sickly yellow light did nothing to dispel the chill in the air.
A fire had been lit in a small ground floor lounge, after a long-dead flower arrangement had been removed from the hearth. It lay crushed under the pile of table legs and chair backs that had been broken for fuel.
Garrett sat on the arm of a couch, wincing as their medic dabbed at a cut on his forearm.
“Stop making a fuss.” Sampson threw the wad of cotton toward the fire. It missed and slowly frizzled until a spark caused it to be consumed in an instant. “Doesn't even warrant a suture. Come to that, it's hardly worth bothering with a tape, but if you want to try for a purple heart ...”
“The mad bastard was shooting at me all night. Every time I thought he'd finished, he reloaded.” Steering himself, Garrett waited for the wound to be taped. When it didn't hurt he pulled a face anyway, then saw that Sampson hadn't been looking.
“Serves you right.” The medic repacked the first-aid kit. “A man doesn't like a strange lady shitting in his bed, no matter what the reason.”
“She wasn't a stranger to him.” Very gingerly Garrett rolled down his sleeve. He was pleased to see the light-coloured bandage showed through the tear in the cloth of his camouflage top. “He'd been bonking with her since two minutes after she'd arrived. I expect he'd have been at her sooner, but it took him that long to run her to his room.”
“That's not the point. Doesn't matter how long he's been screwing her, a gentleman doesn't like his companion using his bed as a latrine. Anyway I reckon all the ladies who belong to Frau Lilly's mobile whorehouse are a mite strange. She said as much herself.”
“Who? Carrington's broad?”
“No, Frau Lilly. Me and her got to talking last night, sort of an intellectual exchange.” Sampson saw the sneer of disbelief in the young PFC's face. “And not that it's any business of yours, but that's all we exchanged. Seems she only involves herself with the administrative side of things.”
“Wouldn't catch me wasting time with an old wrinkly.”
“You didn't see her, did you. By the time she came in you were already playing mummies and daddies with that puffy faced little tramp with the tattoos” “She was OK ...”
“Sure, whatever you fancy, but for your information Frau Lilly is just forty and she is elegant. Used to be a model ...”
“No boobs then.” Garrett grinned, pleased to have scored what he saw as an important point.
“Not everyone likes jugs so big they can suffocate you. But tits or no tits I'd rather have spent time with her than be chased around the garden all night by a vengeful drunk with a gun in one hand and a bottle in the other. You know, you're going to get yourself a peculiar reputation in this outfit if you're seen too often being pursued by men wearing nothing but their webbing and bulging ammunition pouches.”
Throwing more wood on the fire, Garrett looked for a change of subject. “Who was on guard last night. I don't remember anyone missing out on the party.”
“Burke and Old William. Boy, have they got a stack of markers they can call in when they like.” Sampson stretched out on a deeply padded Chesterfield, the heels of his boots scuffing the dust from the dark brown leather. “They took it turn and turn about. Old William because he couldn't bear to be associated with all the debauchery going on, and Burke because he's so head over heels for that little Karen he's gone all prim and proper.”
Lieutenant Vokes put his head around the door, saw the fire and came in. As he crossed to it he slapped Garrett on his bandaged arm. “He didn't get you then. Pity.”
From his pocket he took four small blackened discs, and balancing them on a small ornamental shovel, thrust them into the heart of the spitting fire.
“Some burgers left over from the barbecue. I took them up with me to bed. Sometimes I am hungry in the night. But as it happened I was too busy to think of food.”
Noticing the lieutenant had a split lip and a gap between his front teeth, Sampson wondered whether to mention it. Garrett saved him from the dilemma.
“You lost your gold tooth, Lieutenant.”
Vokes grinned, and his lip began to bleed. “No I haven't, it's in my pocket.” With a splintered table leg he poked the leftovers on the improvised griddle. “One of the girls got over playful. I had my revenge though. When she was going off to sleep I poured something over her lovely little fanny and told her it was superglue. You have never seen panic like it. Took me ages to calm her down and convince her it was only the dregs of a wine glass.”
“How many did you have in there? That was only a single room.” Garret was awed, but tried not to show it.
“Just the one at first, but later we were joined by a puffy faced little girl with tattoos.”
Sampson burst into a laugh, and was still laughing after Garrett had stamped from the room.
Revell stood by his battered old Hummer command car. He couldn't get used to not being surrounded by the usual mass of armour. The general had been taking no chances of their trying to hang onto some of it. Every last APC and armoured car had been collected by transporters at first light.
Looking over the men who were assembling nearby, he missed a familiar face and form. “Any one seen Andrea this morning?”
“Going through the empties,” Hyde turned from marshalling the company into ranks. “Looking for dregs to drink off a hangover.”
The information didn't surprise the major. The girl was becoming more and more of a liability. He would not be able to postpone dealing with her drinking problem for much longer.
There was a lot of squealing and giggling from the direction of the garishly painted transport of the mobile brothel. Frau Lilly was ushering the girls on board. She saw the officer watching and walked over to him.
“There is a little matter to be settled, Major.” While most of the girls were in jeans and sloppy jumpers, or voluminous track suits, Lilly was in a tailored jumpsuit. And instead of the sneakers sported by the others, she wore short high heeled boots.
From a pocket Revell took the cloth wrapped packet whose contents they had jointly gone through the previous evening. As he handed it over he placed on top the thick wad of notes that made up the agreed price.
Ignoring the stack of a paper, Lilly uncovered the small parcel's contents. She prodded through the assorted gem-set items of jewellery. “No offence, Major, but I learned long ago that in business one can never be too careful.”
“None taken. It's all there.” Despite his reassurance he noticed that she continued her inventory until satisfied.
“Good, I do not have to ask if your men had a good night.” She smiled as she surveyed the bleary eyed and haggard soldiers now finally drawn up in two ragged ranks.
For the first time Revell noticed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes that skilfully applied make-up couldn't quite conceal. They did nothing to detract from her looks. Blue-green eyes, perfect teeth and skilfully cut and tinted hair made her outstandingly beautiful.