Soldier of Fortune

"And 'our' man is?"

"Omah, the present leader's cousin, and not that much better than he is by all accounts, but it's him and his backers who are paying the wages."

"Sounds fair," I nodded my agreement, which seems to go down well. "But why do they need me?"

"They need some engineering expertise and the last two didn't last too long," he informed me, becoming serious again which was a fair clue as to what may have happened to them. "They need someone who can look after themselves this time. Someone who can shoot straight and won't hesitate to do so when the chips are down."

"When do I leave?"

Damn it, I really wasn't the same Mike that I had been, not all that long ago.

--------------------------

So a few days later, and with the bonus in the bank actually big enough to buy a Ferrari, found me and five others, on an executive jet bound for Dubai to make our various connections. The others going back to Europe and maybe beyond, and me to some God forsaken war torn country in central Africa, somewhere east of Nigeria, and North of South Africa. I'd had a two-hour stop over on the way out but was having a four-day break described as R&R, but I suspect more due to the lack of willing airlines that were prepared to fly out to where I was going.

They did do me proud on the hotel though, and I was soon sat on my private balcony in the 5 star Grosvenor, a glass of something in my hand that was illegal back where I'd just come from, looking down on the small boats as they plied their trade up and down the Creek.

A quick dinner and I made my way to one of the clubs the hotel had discretely recommended, where I discovered that my scar gave me a roguish look, that led to other guys moving out of my way. As my ex boss had suggested, it also acted like a magnet for the women, or maybe it was just the money I was flashing around. I ended up with a professional as it happened, a tall blonde Russian girl, who proved value for money, and who was either a remarkable actress or really did enjoy her work, and was more than willing to put the hours in.

I was always led to believe that whores don't kiss, but perhaps that doesn't apply out there. Either that or Olga was new to the game and hadn't learnt all the rules yet. Her tits in particular, I feel obliged to mention, were spectacular and definitely of the home grown variety, rather than paid for.

It was good and better than I'd hoped for; my new friend allowing me to do whatever I fancied and suggesting a few things that I would never have thought of.

The new, wonderful romance ended however after breakfast the next morning when Olga, the new, if temporary love of my life, took my money, kissed me and left me with her card in case I wished to enjoy her remarkable assets again.

The next day was spent exploring Dubai, including a boat ride, the rugby ground where my uncle had played a decade or so before, and even getting myself two, new, twenty-four hour shirts made by a back street tailor.

After making my way back to the hotel and enjoying a long relaxed shower, I took the long trip down in the lift intending to take an early dinner in one of the excellent looking hotel restaurants and have yet another night out on the town.

That night started not dissimilar to the previous, except that the girl was Indian, from Kerala, not charging and exquisitely beautiful but in a different way, and seemed to have a healthy desire to take her clothes off. I could see straight away that she wasn't wearing very much to begin with, and our first dance provided me with evidence that she had on even less than was immediately obvious. The dress was very small and flimsy, a lack of bra very obvious, and once I let my hands roam then the likely absence of panties also became a strong possibility. Considering how minimal her dress was, then I considered that to be pretty daring.

"Pull the back of my dress up," she whispered to me, her huge, seductive, dark eyes flashing with excitement as I held her in my arms in the middle of the crowded dance floor.

"Your wish is my command," I agreed, and slowly bunched her dress up in my hands, raising it just the three or four inches which is all it took to expose her lovely, rounded, brown ass to the world in general.

"You're drawing a fair bit of attention," I told her, aware that the crowd around us had drawn back a little to allow a better view.

"Take it right off if you want," she, Neha was her name, dared me, with a measure of amusement in her voice, her beautiful, delicate features belying what she was saying.

"Later on maybe," I chickened out, though I don't think she would have, and she settled for me exposing her bare bottom for the next short while. Much, I have to say, to the pleasure of a whole load of guys who wished they were in my place.

"Maybe I'll hold you to that," Neha teased me, almost absently rubbing her small but surprisingly firm breasts up against my tummy, which with her five foot nothing was as far up as they reached, even in the sexy high heels she was wearing.

"Where did you get the scar?" she eventually asked me, the newness of it pretty obvious.

"Terrorist bullet," I replied, grinning, surprised as I realised I was actually telling the truth ...... Sort of.

"Pull the other one," Neha laughed, assuming I was joking. "More likely caught your cheek on a nail or something."

"Or something," I agreed, enjoying the feel of her gorgeous, tight, little body to worry too much. She was truly tiny, but beautifully perfect, my two hands encircling her trim waist with a fair bit to spare.

"Do you want to see my other wounds?" I asked when it became clear how enthusiastically Neha was pushing back against my erection that was in turn pushing up against her.

"Where are they?" She giggled sexily.

"Where I can't show you in public," I retorted, lied actually, not really having any except for a scratch on my knee where I'd bumped into a desk a few days previously.

"Coward," Neha teased me again. "You show me yours and I'll show you mine."

"My hotel's just down the road," I challenged her.

"What are waiting for?" my petite Indian beauty accepted the challenge, took my hand in her tiny delicate one and led me through the crowded room straight towards the exit. Just watching the way her cute bottom swayed was a delight, her dress having fallen back down again, but a whole lot of toned, bare thigh on show.

Things were looking good, and only got better, as she started to undo the buttons down the front of her dress, one by one, her truly cute little breasts peeping more into view as she did so, apparently unfazed that we were strolling down a busy street. A street in a Muslim city at that, and she didn't even have her head covered!

"Here we are," I gasped at last as we reached the entrance to my hotel, by then a firm, little brown breast popping into view with each step we took, wondering what might happen when I led the by now half naked woman through the busy ornate reception area, not wanting anything to spoil my dream from happening.

But it did!

It was becoming a habit.

"Mike Jones?" demanded the big, smart looking guy stood in the entranceway.

"Who's asking?" was my obvious reply when asked such things in such places.

"Karl sent me, and there's a plane sitting on the tarmac at the airport waiting for you."

"You're kidding me," I growled in frustration.

"Sorry but I'm serious Captain Jones," he sighed with some sympathy, eyeing up the lovely slip of womanhood, cute boobs and all, that was still clinging to my arm. "Afraid you'll have to take a rain cheque."

"I'll have to get my stuff from my room," I pointed out, hoping I might be able to fit in a least a bit of a fondle with the gorgeous Neha.

"Your stuff's all packed and in the car Captain," he spoilt my plan with. "Sorry but the plane really is waiting. We've got two other guys out searching for you."

"That really was a bullet wound then," Neha spoke up for the first time, gazing up at me with a slightly different look.

"It nearly missed," was all I could think of to say.

"It nearly killed you," Neha pointed out.

"Sorry but the plane really is waiting on the tarmac Captain," the man repeated, trying not to sound agitated, so with an exaggerated sigh I took Neha in my arms, kissed her, and then had to let her go.

"My card Mike," she said, passing me a very posh looking visiting card. "Look me up when you're next here."

And that was that basically, me finding myself being whisked away in a huge black Mercedes, trying to forget what pleasures I had just missed out on, the lovely Neha waving me goodbye, as she tucked one of her tits back inside her dress.

"Sorry about that Captain," the man, who hadn't mentioned his name, spoke up after a while. "Some woman that Neha."

"You know her?" I answered in surprise.

"Only by sight and reputation unfortunately," he grinned back at me. "She'd be quite a catch for any man."

"But she only works in a restaurant," I grunted, looking at the card she'd given me.

"Look again," he instructed me, so I did.

"Christ," I responded. "She's the manager. She only looks about twenty."

"She's twenty seven," he informed me, looking amused at my surprise. "Indian girls do tend to look young to us Europeans, and she not only manages it, but her family own it, and it's one of the best in Dubai. They've got places in half of the capitals of the world."

"As you say, quite a catch," I sighed, and that was the end of our conversation, me wondering whether I was doing the right thing.

----------------------------------

The plane was indeed waiting for us on the tarmac when we got there, and to be honest my first thoughts were to wonder if it was capable of ever leaving it. It turned out to be an east European equivalent of the DC3 Dakota, but not nearly as pretty, and not looking half as well preserved as the DC3's I'd seen.

I didn't panic but I sure as hell considered it, and my first impression of the pilot did little to dissuade me. He, Vladamir, looked like something left over from the Second World War, which the plane may well have dated from, and his conversation left a lot to be desired.

How wrong was I?

I knew a bit about dodgy planes and drunken and worse pilots by then, but Vladamir, despite his lack of conversational skills, proved to be a master behind the controls of his machine. I joined the other three passengers who were already aboard the plane, but didn't get much out of them other than a grunt from two of them and a look of pure hatred from the third. Maybe they were pissed off at me for keeping them waiting.

The take off was perfect, the note from the twin engines suggesting that the beast was perhaps in better nick than it's appearance let on. Maybe there was a reason but I decided it would be better not to dwell on what that might be. We flew for several hours without a word being spoken, though the racket that the aircraft made would have made that difficult anyway. Then the nose dipped, the plane throttled back, and the only way that I knew we had landed was because the pilot would have hardly turned off the engines if we were still in the air. I hoped!

Vladamir crawled his way back, told me to stay put, opened the door and all but kicked out the other three, who left without a great deal of enthusiasm, and to this day I've no idea who they were, or for that matter what country we'd left them in. My trusty pilot trundled back up the fuselage, passed me a half bottle of Vodka, actually honoured me with a smile of sorts, and went back to the cockpit. Ten minutes later and were trundling back down the unknown runway and then away like a bird. With nobody to talk to and not enough light to read by, I reluctantly let my mind wander back to that day when Jenny had dropped her bombshell. That and what I'd discovered when I went to confront bloody Campion.

-------------------------

I'd stormed out of the house, frightened of what I might have done if I'd stayed. By the time I got home that night, somewhat worse for wear of course, Jenny was already in bed so I slept on the sofa. She got up before I was awake and obviously must have decided not to wake me. Maybe a mistake on her part, as if she had then maybe, just maybe we might have worked something out.

I eventually got up, showered, dressed and then sat there wondering what the hell to do next. My beautiful little world had been shattered, and shattered by the person I loved most in the world.

I went for a 'hair of the dog' at lunchtime, unreasonably biting the head off the barman who was being too chatty. It was then that I made the decision to go and confront George bloody Campion. To get his side of the story maybe, though with no real idea how that might help. Maybe I had something else in mind!

I drove to the plant, past the security at the gate, half expecting them to deny me entry when I showed them my pass. In through the entry, nodding to the receptionist and to a few colleagues, almost unable to understand how they could be acting so normally when the world had changed so drastically.

I didn't bother going to my office but made straight for the Directors suite, ignoring the woman at the desk as I sailed by, hardly hearing her calls that Mr Campion was busy and couldn't be disturbed.

Better that I had perhaps?

Yanking the door open, I marched straight in, and came to halt!

Campion was indeed there, arguably in conference with his three other directors, it not therefore being surprising that his PA was also in attendance. The three men's attire was formal, as one would expect, not even their ties out of place. The PA, Jenny, my wife of course, had her work high heels on, a pair of not too flamboyant earrings and that was about it. Where the rest of her clothes were, I had no idea.

"Fuck!" growled Campion when he spotted me, the others in the room, including me shocked into silence.

"Nothing's going on," Jenny choked out, which seemed a pretty stupid thing to say, since she was standing there encircled by four fully clothed men, while she was completely naked. Oh shit ..... She was so bloody beautiful and I was never going to enjoy that superb body again. Never going to fondle those tits again. Never again going to stick my prick inside that beautiful body.

"It's not what you think Mike," she pleaded, tears already rolling down her cheeks as she took a step towards me.

And it wasn't as it happened, Campion delighting in exposing his beautiful young mistress off in all her glory to his fellow directors, somehow regularly persuading her to serve then drinks topless or even in the nude, but not allowing them so much as a quick fondle, never mind any actual sex. But I didn't find that out till much later, not that it would have made any difference, and not that it would have prevented me from turning on my heels and walking out of the door and out of their lives before I broke down with grief out in the car park.

-----------------------

Again I eventually felt the engines of the DC3 lookalike throttle back, the nose dip and yet again a faultless landing, which considering the state of the grass runway which awaited me when I alighted was some considerable achievement. In the failing light, I was led to the edge of the runway into the cover of the surrounding foliage, only to hear the roar of the plane's engines rise, and for it to charge back down the grass strip and take to the air again. I was about to ask why he'd left so quickly when I got my answer, a shell, probably a mortar, exploding with a blinding flash not a couple of hundred yards from where I was standing. It wouldn't have hit the plane, but the second one might well have done.

"Let's got out of here," my guide suggested. "And welcome to hell by the way."

I didn't need a second invitation.

--------------------------

It was truly awful!

We lived in tents that we had to move frequently unless 'they' got a fix on us. The temperatures were actually a little less than I'd experienced in the Middle East, but with the high humidity was close to unbearable. There were insects everywhere, some of then as big as chickens. Ok, so I'm exaggerating about the chickens, but you get the picture, and with all that we also had to endure regular incoming fire while our enemy tried to get that worrying fix on us.

This wasn't the best time to be told that things were not exactly going that well for us, though I could have worked that out myself pretty quickly. The 'double the wages' pretty quickly lost its shine, and the prospect of that mouth-watering bonus seemingly a bit of a pipe dream.

Trouble was of course you couldn't just say, "I've changed my mind. Please take me home." If I wanted out of it, I'd have to try to survive the six months I'd signed up for and pray that Vladamir and his old plane was still in one piece, or hope against hope that the tide would turn.

It got better and then it got worse again.

My team of mechanics, some of them locals, a German, two Frenchies, and two guys of dubious extraction had basically lost their enthusiasm for the job. More accurately they were pissed off, and doubting whether they'd ever see any form of civilization again, their futures seemingly not very bright. If I was going to get out of this in one piece then I had to give them some hope and that didn't prove immediately easy.

We toured the base, such as it was, and I was surprised to find that our man Omah was actually right in there with us, when I'd half expected that he'd be back somewhere in a palace somewhere, keeping his distance from where the fighting was going on. Perhaps he wasn't so bad after all?

It soon became obvious that most of our heavier weaponry was out of service, or H/S as my French second in command told me, with no spares to speak of to make them operational again. Without them we had little serious answer to attacks from the 'goons' as our side referred to our adversaries. They of course were beginning to realise this and their attacks were becoming more and more daring and direct.

"You've seen the problem Captain. Now what the hell can you do about it?"

That was the first words Omah said to me when I was led in front of him, as he sat there flanked by his two senior officers, one black one and one white one.

"Well I can get maybe one extra medium machine gun going if I strip down all the others but then all those will be written off. Same thing with the mortars, though we'll have to jury rig some sighting mechanism, as they're all buggered. Maybe I can get that old 75mm working but I doubt it."

"That's more or less what your predecessor said, but he never managed it," the white officer remarked.

"Didn't stay alive long enough to find out," pointed out the black one, not exactly very encouragingly.

"It's not enough anyway," pointed out Omah, smiling despite the bad situation he found himself in. "We need more."

"We haven't got more," grunted the white guy who I was starting to take a dislike to.

"There might be a way," I sighed, almost wishing I'd kept my mouth shut, soon discovering the three of them staring at me waiting for me to tell them how I was going to achieve the impossible.

"The heavy machine guns that are u/s, the Russian ones, mostly have the same problem. It's part of the trigger mechanism that has failed. If I had five of them, then you'd have five more heavy guns."

"We haven't got five spare trigger mechanisms you fool," the white guy spat back at me.

"But we might be able to make them," I offered. "There's a lathe and some other equipment in the workshop, and Rene claims he's experienced at using it. It might be possible."

"And the problem is?" asked Omah, smiling at me resignedly, more than aware that there was more to it than that.