Soldier of Fortune

"Ok eighteen," she admitted. "But I'll be nineteen this year."

"Still at school are you," I sighed, deciding that our age difference, ten years, made her too young for me, which was a great pity. Still .....?

"No I'm not damn you," the girl hurled back at me. I'd heard women denying they were whores with less anger. Her recovery from her awful ordeal surprising me.

I sighed wondering how the hell I'd got into this position. Time for some details.

"Who the hell are you young lady and why are you here?" I shouted at her, shaking her gently to make my point. I'd had enough, but her explanation, interrupted by bouts of sobbing was sobering.

She was actually Belgian and had left school, an expensive, private boarding school in England just a few weeks previously. Her father, a Belgian diplomat had been en route for South Africa with her where she was due to be spending the summer with friends of the family in Cape Town. They'd stopped off on the way for the week end for her father to conduct some official business, secure in the knowledge that the rebel army were tied down in the south of the country and unlikely to survive the week.

Unfortunately for them, some clever bugger had taken the trigger mechanism from a heavy machine gun and changed the course of the war, but of course they didn't know that.

Her name it transpired was Florence!

"Our flight back out was cancelled, and then suddenly government soldiers were flowing into the city, fleeing from the rebels. Mon Papa argued with some of them and they shot him."

"They killed him?"

"No," she replied, tears pouring down her cheeks at the memory. He lost a lot of blood but the hospital was still functioning then and saved his life. There was a Red Cross plane flying out and they put him on it. I just pray that he's still alive."

"Why didn't you go with him?"

"No room. Papa was hardly conscious, so I just had to let him go," she sobbed and went on to explain how she'd gone back to the hotel they'd been staying at and kept a low profile till they'd thrown her out earlier that day, not being able to pay the bill. That's how she'd ended up at the bar earlier on looking for work to earn some money.

No chance of course, except on her back on some filthy mattress, where she'd nearly ended up anyway.

"So where are you sleeping tonight?" I asked her.

"Where are you sleeping?" She threw back at me nervously.

"We'll see about that," I grunted, trying not to look into those baby blue eyes, or more importantly the swell of her breasts that were peeping out from the gap down the front of my shirt that she was wearing. "Where is this hotel?"

Right there," she replied pointing out what could have been the best hotel in the place, just over the road from where we were standing. It looked pretty good considering where we were, though they would maybe have closed it down back in Europe.

I grabbed her arm and just about had to drag her over to the entry to the hotel, marching into the reception as if I owned the place.

"The lady wants her room back," I told the guy behind the counter, who looked Turkish, but probably wasn't..

"She hasn't paid her bill," he snarled back at me, ignoring me and openly ogling the gap down the front of her shirt, it being far too big for her.

"I said the lady wants her room back," I repeated, resting my hand on the hilt of my sidearm, and he showed distinct signs of changing his mind. Then a handful of local currency thrown down in front of him seemed to convince him.

"And a room for me," I went on, daring him to refuse.

"You don't need one," Florence butted in, and this time it was her who took my arm, grabbed the keys off the counter and dragged me over to the staircase.

I didn't resist. I could have claimed I was simply tired, but that wouldn't have been true. She had those big, beautiful, blue eyes and those delectable breasts bouncing around right there in front of me. Her ass was ....Her legs were....... I didn't stand a chance really.

Ok, so I undressed her, I showered with her, I went to bed with her and I enjoyed the feel of her lovely young body. I felt those lovely breasts, licked them and sucked them, and delighted at her reaction as I ran my finger slowly along the warm, wet slit between her legs. She lay there overwhelmed by sensations that she'd read about and giggled with her school friends about, but had never experienced until that night. She gasped, squirmed, squealed in delight and beat the heels of her feet on the bed in passion. She groaned out loudly as I entered her, as I made her a woman, as she willingly gave up her virginity to me.

Florence was young, just eighteen years old and totally without previous experience. But she was legal, not that it would have mattered in that God forsaken country, but it did matter to me. It was perhaps the most one-sided sexual coupling that I'd ever taken part in, as she let me take complete charge, leaving everything to me, but responding wonderfully to the tune I was playing on her young ripe body. I thought it was wonderful, but have doubts whether my pleasure matched hers.

I have memories of her asking when my dick eventually gave up the ghost, whether it was true that if she sucked it, might it go hard again, like her friends from school had told her. I fell asleep too knackered to know whether she tried it or not, but early the following morning, my sweet Florence discovered to her joy, that it was indeed so.

Florence was a special type of girl, her beautiful watery blue eyes which would have been natural on a blonde girl, simply more stunning on her with her dark, almost black hair. Her mouth was a little too large maybe, her nose a bit on the small side, and her face too round to be perfect. None the less she was beautiful!

Her body verged on the thin side, even at eighteen perhaps not having yet filled out properly, her legs long and slender, athletic perhaps rather than conventionally shapely. It was only her tiny waist that gave shape to her smooth slim hips, but it was her breasts that signified that she was indeed no longer a girl but a woman. They sat high on her chest, testimony to her youth, but their fullness dismissed any doubt that they weren't ready to be enjoyed. Like two ripe, overly plump pears they sat there needing no support, the smooth, creamy underside sensually curving up and pointing her soft pink nipples upwards at a mouth-watering angle.

I could have fallen in love with her, and maybe I did in reality. But when I arranged for her to phone her parents back in Belgium, no mean feat in that awful place, seeing her break down in tears when she discovered her father was still alive and well, and hearing the screams of joy from her mother when she found her daughter was also, then I sadly had to let her go.

I put her on a plane to safety six days later, telling her that I'd got the ticket cheaply, not letting on that it had cost me a month's wages. She wept copiously from the moment we arrived at the airport till she boarded the plane. I held my tears back till she could no longer see them.

There was a war to finish and we moved out the next day.

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The war petered out rather than ending in a bang; we all got our promised rewards, or the next of kin did for those that didn't make it. Myself I walked away with more money than I could have earned in ten years back home, with no tax to pay, all safely tucked away in an offshore bank.

The question was, what to do with it.

Well some of it I spent on stopping off in Dubai, my flight this time in something somewhat plusher than Vladamir's old rust box. My quest was to try to track down the lovely Neha, only to discover that she'd been transferred over to Europe to take over a restaurant there a month or so before.

I consoled myself with another Russian girl, perhaps not quite as pretty as Olga, but none the less equally enthusiastic. She was cheaper as well, but perhaps that was because I opted for the three-day deal.

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Campion turning up at my new company, JS Components Ltd., that I'd joined a year or so after my return from Africa was a complete surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have been. We built specialist gearboxes and axles, and Campion's company had previously been a client. Indeed I'd dealt with JS myself when I'd worked for Campion, shortly before Tom had taken it over. They hadn't dealt with JS for some time, but then we hadn't had such an advanced gearbox available for some time. We'd agreed a deal with an American company and we'd been making a unit under licence from one of their designs, and that gave us a leg up in technology and gave them entry into the European market. Good deal for both of us. We had in fact come up with a clever modification to their Mk 6 box that we'd shared back with the Americans, and we'd entered into an agreement to market it between us as the Mk 7. Things were actually looking extremely promising.

Then Campion turned up and all those thoughts that I'd bottled up for years came back to haunt me. Things that I thought I had put behind me were suddenly battering me, and battering me hard!

I hated the bitch, Jenny that is of course, but the reality was something well beyond the obvious. Something that I had difficulty coping with. Trying to hold that hate after what I'd seen and experienced was becoming very difficult. After showing him round the factory I escaped as soon as I could, and

Campion acted as keen as I was to put some distance between us.

Trouble was, he needed our gearbox and the truth, unpalatable though it was, came down to the fact that a good order from his company would solve our expansion plans. So Tom, good old boy that he was, jovially left me to work out a deal with my old pal George. George bloody Campion that is of course.

The deal was to equip forty of their armoured response vehicles for an obscure North African subsidiary arm of a French company. To those in the know, that could mean they could end up anywhere from Syria to North Korea. Money talks of course.

He wanted the MK7 box, but I persuaded him that due to delivery times he'd be better off with the MK6, and of course it was somewhat cheaper.

He went for it, or perhaps I should say he fell for it. I may not have been the great military tactician that I'd been made out to be, but businesswise I'd just laid a classic trap for him. One that if he hadn't been so uptight about dealing with me, and had done his homework, he probably wouldn't have fallen into.

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Four months later I again found myself back in Tom's office, with a rather annoyed looking Tom at his desk.

"What the hell were you thinking of Mike," he spat out at me. "You must have known."

"That Campion's vehicles were due to end up in Syria?" I grinned back at him. "No, I didn't know for sure, but I did guessed it would be somewhere like that. Worked out quite well I reckon."

"But for God's sake man," he carried on. "The Mk6 is under license, and the Americans have an embargo on their equipment going out there. How are you going to cover that up?"

"I'm not," I agreed, trying not to smile too widely. "They're not getting them."

"Damn it man, who gave you the authority to do such a stupid thing?"

"Do I really have to answer that?" I asked, keeping my manner suitably respectful.

"Ok so maybe you do," Tom sighed. "So you may now be the majority shareholder, but I'm still the managing Director until I retire."

That's right. That's where my hard earned wages and bonus had gone. I'd invested my bundle in JS Components, and with Tom's agreement had opted for shares in lieu of a percentage of my wages for a while till I obtained a controlling interest.

"But you'll be retired and sitting on some sunny beach somewhere with your wife by the time all this blows up." I reminded him.

"Maybe," he relented. "But this could send us bust. What the hell are we going to do with forty semi obsolete gear boxes?"

"Three," I chuckled back at him. "And they were already in stock."

"What?"

"All the gear boxes going through production are actually mk7s, and as you know they fall outside the license and are not subject to the embargo."

He did know of course. Though not too much had been made of it at the time, both us and the Americans well knew when we'd signed our agreement, of the advantages to both of us of having equipment not falling under their own embargo rules.

"So you're going to substitute the MK7 boxes for the older ones, when the problem comes to light," he mumbled almost to himself.

"That's right," I agreed.

"But not at the normal price I suppose," Tom concluded, no fool him, the trace of a smile appearing for the first time that morning.

"Extra production costs, cancellation costs, resetting up the production lines etc etc. All cost money. The price would have to be a lot higher."

"All costs that we won't actually incur."

"Exactly," I confirmed. "More profit for us and a bigger leaving bonus for you Tom."

"But why Mike?" He eventually demanded. "This isn't like you. The money will be welcome, but it simply isn't the way that JS Components operate."

"Let me tell you a story Tom," I sighed, slumping a little at the thought of having to relate the relationship between Campion and I and a certain woman called Jenny. But I did, and in all its gory details, Tom actually wincing as he felt my pain as I told him about my last visit to the office and finding my wife naked with him and his cronies.

"I think I understand Mike," Tom told me when I'd finished my story. "But don't let this change you. Don't let this warp your view of the world.

I promised him that I wouldn't, we broached the liquor cabinet, and he left me to it.

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Things came to a head almost to the day, three months after my meeting with Tom. Campion's company had already received the three Mk6 boxes and had done all the engineering to make their vehicles accommodate them. They called for more to get their production line going and that's when I dropped the boom on them.

"Got a bit of a problem on supply," I hit their production manager with, fortunately a man who I didn't know too well since he'd been bought in after I'd left.

"Hope there's not too much of a delay," he responded. "We've got everything set up, and the first delivery is due in a few weeks."

When I suggested that he might not be getting them, he blew a fuse of sorts, and I had to wait for him to calm down before continuing. What I suggested was that I came to see his boss to sort the problem out, which he readily agreed to, not knowing that I wanted my revenge in exactly the same place as the problem had originated.

And so it came to pass.

"What the fuck do you mean you can't supply the gearboxes," Campion blasted me with. "You've had them in production for several months. If you let us down we'll sue you."

"Embargo problems," I replied quietly.

"What embargo problems," he exploded. "The French are our clients. Us Brits don't have a problem with them."

"But our Mk6 is manufactured under license from an American company, and they do have a problem with a certain party in Syria."

Even as I spoke the words, I saw the colour leave his face.

"How the fuck ......" He started to demand, but fell silent, knowing full well how I would find out about such things.

"But you must have suspected when we signed the order. Why didn't you say something?"

"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't," I smiled back at him.

"You bastard," he spat out at me, at last realising that I'd set him up. "You planned this. You damn well planned this."

"Much as you planned the end of my marriage," I growled back, intent on inflicting my fury on him. "I hope you and the bitch are still happy because it might not last when I'm finished with you."

I'd not thought out what his reaction might be, but what I got was not what I expected.

Campion, the big macho man, ex Royal Marine, ex boxer, simply burst into tears!

My anger disappeared and I stood there feeling little else but embarrassment. I'd seen grown men break down in the heat of battle, but this was different. This simply left me feeling awkward with none of the glow of revenge that I'd been expecting.

"Jenny," he sobbed eventually. "We're not together anymore."

"I didn't know that," I told him, my emotions thoroughly confused.

"I caught her cheating," he explained. "I forgave her but six months later she went off and did it again. She promised to end it, but I put an investigator on her and found out she'd been carrying on with one of my suppliers. Had been for a couple of years and the other pair, and others maybe as well, were just a bit of fun on the side."

"Sorry," I mumbled, not knowing whether I meant it or not, but not knowing what else to say.

"We had a huge bust up and I threw her out and she went and lived with her lover. I couldn't let them get away with that so easily, so I bankrupted the bastard. Now the pair live in a cheap rented house and drive an old banger of a car, and by all accounts are pretty miserable."

"Serves them right," I remarked, wondering if he'd even thought of the similarities of his situation with mine.

"But I still love her Mike," he started to sob again. "I miss her every day."

"Poetic justice," I mumbled, but if he heard me then he didn't respond. I decided that our meeting was over with nothing else to be achieved that day. I turned and left his office, and have some doubts whether he'd even noticed me going.

I spent the next day trying to get my thoughts together; my previous plans shot to hell by my meeting with Campion. He obviously really did love her, probably more than I ever had? What did that mean? I'd planned to cause him serious financial problems and maybe even send him bankrupt.

But now I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure of anything anymore. My days in Karl's employment had changed my view of the world, and all things in it.

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

We had another meeting, and in fact we had several of them, and yet again my plans and intentions took another unexpected turn. So much for being the great tactician. I never had to push for the higher price for the more advanced gearbox, and in fact the two of us hardly even discussed that. Instead, to my surprise, I found myself discussing the workings of Campion's business.

"I've just found out that you actually own JS Components," He opened our next meeting with. "How the hell did you manage that?"

"Came back with a shed full of money from Africa," I explained without offering any further information on exactly how I'd earned it. "I invested in JS and took over as MD from Tom a couple of weeks back, but I only own a controlling interest."

"The other shareholders?" he queried.

"Old family members of the original owner. As long as they get their dividend they don't interfere."

"Looking to expand?" He asked, seemingly casually, and suddenly he had my full interest.

"Could be," seemed to be appropriate.

"Since Jenny moved on I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for the business. Five years ago you wouldn't have caught me out with that embargo business. I'm approaching retirement age, Ginny's still a child and far too young to take it over any time soon, so the business could be up for sale."

"How much?" I asked not beating about the bush, but aware that my heartbeat had risen considerably.

He mentioned a figure that seemed surprisingly reasonable, but I pulled a bit of a face anyway. Campion suggested a slightly lower figure, and I pulled a face again but it didn't work a second time. He wasn't quite that desperate!

"I'm not sure I could raise that figure but I'm certainly interested."

"Banks would help," he offered.