EXTRACT FOR
Pride And Perversion Part One
(Ted Edwards)

Chapter 1



      He was in a fawn tunic with its polished leather belts; that round his waist carrying his still-buttoned holster, the medal ribbons above the left breast pocket making a splash of colour against the drab material. The uniform cap was of the type much favoured by the military of South America, particularly in this country in which the men were of short stature: its peak was high, the badge above the polished brim sparkling gold, large and ornate. Below the skirt of the tunic his riding breeches belled out, terminating in knee-high boots, their sheen obscured by a film of dust.

      To be the epitome of the South American predator-sadist-coward and (of course)-bully-boy he needed gold braid, a riding crop, a thin moustache, cruel black eyes set under outwardly-sloping brows and a sneer that could express pleasure, contempt or cruelty with equal facility. He lacked the riding crop, gold braid and moustache but the rest was there. There were other things there, too; things that may have appeared in a piece of Hollywood make-believe, but which wouldn't have the smells that he was smelling, nor the sounds; at least not with the same sort of panic-stricken, desperation-driven life and death urgency that these sounds had.

      The smells came from the burning huts, about twenty of them in a huddle under the sparse cover of the trees in this high valley through which a young river ran. The sounds came from the screams of pain and despair of men, women, children and animals as they were hunted down and slaughtered or ??" worse for them ??" spared. Other sounds came from his men: the triumphant shouts and yells, the occasional bellow of pain or rage and the incessant snap and crackle of their Steyr AUG 9 Para sub-machine guns: he was proud of those guns, the only ones of their kind on the continent and acquired by special dispensation ??" and funds - from a grateful President.

      Now he leaned against the wheel-arch of the Humvee that the Americans had so thoughtfully provided to a friendly, supportive and admirably fascist regime and watched and listened, occasionally wetting his lips as a scream sounded. The sounds had been diminishing in pitch and volume for some time now, which indicated that the raid was coming to a close. It would soon be time to enter the second, more enjoyable phase of this operation, particularly in view of what he expected to happen very soon now. The temptation to look up the hillside was nearly overwhelming, but he managed to resist it; it wouldn't do to scare them off just yet; or to spoil the surprise that would give him, at least, so much pleasure.

      A figure broke out from the smoke, wiping a large knife on a piece of cloth as he came. He sheathed it as he walked over the ground towards his officer, his boots kicking up puffs of dust then hitched the Steyr from his shoulder-strap to carry it at the trail. A few feet away from his Coronel, he came to a rough sort of attention and raised a hand to his uniform cap in what passed for a salute. It didn't worry Coronel Eduardo Fernandez that his men looked and acted like the sort of joke soldiers that had gringos laughing and sneering: these were tough, hard men, killers and murderers; just what was needed when you were dealing with insurgents in this wild upland and in the jungles.

      "How's it going, Alfonso?" he asked, still itching to turn and look, but aware that his Sergeant Major's eyes had scanned the hillside a moment ago.

      "Just tidying up, my Coronel," said the other, who did have a moustache of the bushy, drooping sort. Once more his eyes flickered over his officer's shoulder to scan the hillside.

      "Can you see them?" asked the Coronel, aware that his voice was tight with anxiety and anticipation. But he couldn't hide some anxiety: he'd organised this raid for one reason and one reason only; and that reason wasn't the burning huts or dead and dying people who might ??" and probably were ??" or might not be insurgents. They came a long way second to the real reason, who was up there on the hillside with her video-camera, unconscious of the fact that the tip that had brought her here had been planted by the Colonel himself. 

      "Si, my Coronel. They are still in the same place and being careless with the reflections from their camera." He sucked breath through his teeth. "And I can see... Benito and Carlo, I think... about fifty metres from them. Ah! and Federico and Manuel are in position on the other side." He smiled. "They cannot escape, senor."

      A gush of breath left Eduardo's mouth as if he had been holding it for ages. "Good! Then I can have that aristocratic," he made the word a sneer, "English bitch just where I want her!" He composed himself and glanced at the huts. "What did we get?"

      A dog, howling and yelping, burst from the line of huts with its fur smouldering. Without a word, the Sergeant Major swung at the hips and loosed a three-shot burst that bowled it over before turning back. "I think we caught them cold, Coronel; twenty men, at a guess."

      "All dead?"

      A shrug. "There may be one or two alive, just." He jerked his head back towards the huts. "There was one just behind that hut a moment ago, but I think he's probably dead by now. Or wishing he is, since I cut off his balls. Did you want any alive?"

      "It doesn't matter; they're vermin, the lot of them. What about women?"

      The man's eyes brightened. "There's about seven or eight in a hut, locked up good and tight. A couple of them are pregnant and there's a few kids left alive." He grinned, lips drawn back over his teeth. "You want them out here in the clearing where your bitch can get pictures of them getting it?"

      Eduardo responded to the grin with a faint smile. "We can do better than that: she can watch from here, tied to the vehicle. Get rid of the kids and the pregnant women, though; they're a bloody nuisance."

      The eyes were over his shoulder again, narrowing. "They've got them, Coronel." 

      As the man spoke, a burst of fire sounded from behind and Eduardo could no longer hold himself, he whipped round, a curse on his lips. "They haven't...?"

      "No, my Coronel!" came the voice, reassuring, "it was the man, the local. See, they have her!"

       He couldn't see at first, but then he spotted the figures, high up near a craggy outcrop: two men... no, two more joining them now and a figure between them, struggling. "Hah!" he cried exultantly, "got her!" He swung round to the other man, his face ablaze. "You've no idea just how much I've looked forward to this, Alfonso!"

      The other gazed at him impassively. He knew the reason for his officer's excitement and he knew that he'd never get within a hundred kilometres of the woman; she was going to be strictly officers and above only. No, he corrected: Coronels and above only. He consoled himself with the thought that the Coronel had chosen to come out on this job as the only officer present because of the gringo woman. That meant that he, as Sergeant Major, could bully his way to be first in the queue for the choice of the women and there was a nice little piece that he'd set eyes on back in that hut. "I am happy that my Coronel is happy," he said stolidly.

      The other calmed. "Are any of the women worth a second look?" he asked.

      'Yes,' thought the Sergeant Major, 'the one I've wanted to get into. But you're not snatching her from under my cock, my Coronel. I'll thump her in the face a couple of times before she's dragged out.' A broken nose would make sure that the officer looked straight past her and it wouldn't take anything away from the pleasure of her body. Not that there'd be much pleasure left after he was finished with her. "Nothing special, my Coronel," he replied.

      The last shot had sounded some minutes before. Now there was just the screams, one rising high as a man was found and put to the knife that would end his life slowly.

      Eduardo nodded, wondering if there really was nothing worth keeping in those ruined huts. The he shrugged mentally, his excitement rising again. What did those scraggy, poxed natives matter when he had such a jewel within his gasp? "All right," he said, "sort out the ones you want to have fun with and get rid of the rest. And don't forget the four who're bringing the gringo bitch down, will you?"

      The Sergeant Major had been doing some mental calculation: forty men and maybe six women, but he had forgotten the four men up the hill who were bringing their captive down. Fuck! That meant the bitches would have to take at least seven men each, plus any that went round for seconds. He toyed with the idea of putting the pregnant ones in, but then discarded the idea; he'd tried it before and the men didn't like it. By the time they were finished with them it would be past dark and there wouldn't be any time to indulge in any more of the games that he particularly liked, like cutting their tits off. Besides, the bitches would be too far gone to appreciate it anyway. Ah, well, you can't have a nunnery like Santa Christobal every day, can you? Now that had been real fun...

      

***

      

      Victoria thought the nightmare was bad enough when she was up on the hillside watching through the zoom lens and saw the savagery and butchery in that proxy close-up, so close that she thought that she could smell the blood. But that was imagination and revulsion, together with her high-strung nerves and, she had to admit, that frisson of excitement that always came with danger. Dear God! What must it be like to live in this damned country and have to endure this? How could people exist under tyranny, oppression, torture and wholesale murder? What was it like to be down there with the fires raging around you and those bastards with guns running around shooting and knifing everything that moved? Why didn't a thunderbolt come down and blast that elegant, uniformed figure leaning against the Humvee?

      She dragged the view back from the smoke, flames and figures that rampaged through it, panned to the dark-green vehicle and then zoomed in on that figure. His back was turned, but she knew who he was: Coronel Eduardo and about a dozen other middle names Fernandez, mass murderer, indiscriminate torturer and the President's trusted confidant and executioner. Trusted absolutely, rare in any such situation and particularly in one in a country in which coup had followed coup since time immemorial, almost every one led by the incumbent President's closest friend/adviser/general and once even /wife. Trusted because Eduardo Fernandez was the nephew of Juan-Pedro Guarano, El Presidente of this country for the last fifteen years, which was three times longer than any of his predecessors.

      He was vain, pompous and arrogant, this Fernandez, besides being cruel, vicious and sadistic. The former she could vouch for, but the latter she had only heard and didn't quite believe it could be as bad as they said. Until now; now that the flames danced and the smoke billowed and the screams issued from the frantic, hopeless throats of men, women children and animals alike. 

      She'd met the man at a reception at the Presidential Palace, a place of glittering white marble surrounded by a thick belt of trees that hid the sight of the thousands of huddled shanties that surrounded it. Four time the bulldozers had razed them, not caring if there were people in them or not; four times in fifteen years the people had been driven out by rifle butts and whips and every time they had crept back and built anew because there was nowhere else. He had approached from behind, touched her arm and looked up at her; up, because she was four inches taller than him despite his specially built-up boots and high-peaked uniform cap. She'd let her gaze flicker briefly over the collection of medals on his chest with a disdainful look and seen him flush because he'd heard her deliberately loud comment to the military attaché only a few moments ago about tin-plated goose-steppers with too many plastic gongs and too few balls. It had earned her a reproving look from the ambassador and a quickly-hidden grin from the attaché, but she knew he'd heard it. Despite that, he smiled up at her, clicked his heels and bent over the hand that she hadn't been quick enough to get out of the way.

      "Senorita, you are the loveliest woman in the room," he said, his voice low and husky in what she imagined he thought was a seductive tone. But although they said he spoke good English ??" which is why she'd phrased her comment as she did ??" she was still surprised that it was almost accent-free, "please grace me with a dance."

      She'd pulled her hand back and allowed ice to enter her eyes because they'd told her what was happening out in the jungle and in the mountains and who was doing it. 'This one,' she thought, 'can be for all the poor bastards who haven't the means to fight back at you jackals.' She smiled. "I'm so sorry, she said, stepping back, "but I have a subsequent engagement." 

       He was frowning in puzzlement as she turned away, but just as he moved out of her line of sight she saw him catch on. The look that he shot her then was very far from pleasant. The military attaché had seen it and heard her and drew her away from the man, into the safety of the crowd. "Take it easy," he hissed, "you may be a privileged guest in the country and immune from retaliation, but if you're going out into the sticks you'll be moving into his territory. People have a nasty habit of vanishing out there."

      She'd smiled at him fondly, because she'd shared his bed last night. "Don't be silly, Peter: I'm British... and an aristocrat, remember? People like me don't go missing; just think of the fuss. Besides," she smiled and took a button of his dress uniform jacket into playful fingers, "I've got you to look after me, haven't I?"

      He was worried. "That's all true, my dear Victoria, but I'm going back on leave next week and H.E.'s not mad keen on journalists, whether they're aristocrats or not. And believe me, the one person in this country you don't want to be on the wrong side of is that bastard: he is very bad news indeed." His handsome face had twisted in distaste. "And he's not like the usual run of these swine, either: he's El Presidente's nephew and still just a Colonel, which means either that he knows his limitations or he's a smart piece of work who's aware of the level at which he can operate best. Either way is bad news, because competent officers in these parts are as rare as hens' teeth; couple that with his reputation and ... well, for Christ's sake watch yourself!"

      She'd sneered. "He's a jumped up, evil little worm in a fancy uniform and," her face twisted, "bad breath. It's time he was taken down a lot of pegs."

      Now she was seeing it with her own eyes and her stomach churned while she held the eyepiece of the video camera to her eyes, its padded eyepiece slippery with the sweat that oozed from her brow. A lot of the sweat was from the heat of the sun, but much of it was fear. It was happening, here and now, all those things that people had hinted about but had been too afraid to talk; all but that one man who had said that something was going to happen in this area. 'Just look for the American trucks,' he'd said: which is what she'd done, waiting in a clearing in the jungle just off the road until they'd gone past and then following the dust-cloud.

      Suddenly there was movement beside her and a hand tugged at the elbow of her shirt: Manolo, her guide and driver, who'd been nervous even before they set out and had needed a fist-full of dollar bills to get him going and a promise of a lot more of them once he saw what was going to happen down in the valley below them. Since then he had been begging her to get out every few seconds, disturbing her concentration and arousing her ire.  He was making panicky whimpering sounds of absolute terror and she took her hand off the lens controls just long enough to wave him away from her when she saw the man break from the cover of the huts and walk across to the Coronel, wiping what looked like a knife on a piece of rag. As she put her hand back on the controls, he un-slung his gun and held it at the length of his arm as he came close to the other man, where he came to a sort of attention and gave a sketchy salute.

      Had he looked up here? She couldn't be sure, but he was making a report of some kind. Then she felt a tug on her shirt-sleeve than almost pulled her over, the camera skittering sideways across the sun. Damn! Bound to make reflections! She turned on to her side, mouth drawn in a snarl, ready to blast the unfortunate man for his lack of balls, but then she saw his face: he wasn't just terrified, he was gibbering with horror, his shaking arm stretched to point up the hill. She followed the direction and froze, bile rising in her throat: two men with guns were coming down the hill towards them! They were of more than thirty yards away and would be on them in a minute!

      "Madre de Dios!" jabbered Manolo as she scrambled to her feet, the camera dropping to swing heavily on the wrist-strap.

      "Up!" she cried urgently. "Run! Run!"

      She might have made it if she hadn't stopped to help him up when he slipped; by the time she was moving again, they were a bare ten yards away with their guns at hip-level and pointed at her. They looked as if they knew how to use them, too. So did the other pair who broke cover from the direction in which she had been going to run, something she realised with a cold, sick feeling as she stopped, trying to slide the camera strap off her wrist surreptitiously with the idea of dropping it into a bush.

      Manolo, now on his feet with a wild look of utter panic in his eyes, inadvertently came to her aid. Staring at the man just a few yards away, he began to back away, shaking and making tiny moaning sounds. They made no move to stop him. But then he hadn't looked in the other direction, so didn't know about the other two, both of whom had seen what was about to happen and had stopped, the barrels of their guns cocking up that couple of inches that said that they were ready.

      The warning cry was rising in her throat just as he broke and whirled away from the threat that he could see. Suddenly he was running, his arms flying and with a wail of what could have been pain as he stumbled blindly up the hill. Three shots spoke in a rattle so short that the finger must barely have brushed the trigger and he stopped, drew himself upright and then began to stagger and whirl back towards her. There were three holes across his stomach, she saw as he turned; his eyes were wide and wondering.

      "Nooooooo!" she yelled as his body crumpled, instinctively going to rush to him.

      Strong hands stopped her; they'd closed in while her attention was diverted. She swung, the forgotten camera, the opportunity lost, swinging up. A hand batted it away then grabbed it, the strap pulling against her wrist as he tried to tug it free.

      "Get off me!" she shouted, struggling against their hands, desperate to get to the wounded man. "I have to help him!"

      But she couldn't fight them. They'd slung their weapons over their shoulders so that both had two hands free to handle her. One of them had one arm round her while the other held the camera, still strapped to her wrist, like a prize. She was pulled round away from Manolo and frog-marched down the hill, craning her neck to see what was happening.

      The other two had also slung their weapons and come down the hill. They paused at the body, bent to examine it, held a short conference and then stooped to take it under the armpits and began to make their own way down-hill, the apparently lifeless body hanging limply between them, its feet dragging on the ground. Was he still alive?