TO SERVE AND OBEY

Chapter 16

'Now!' Aleska commands into her communicative device to her troops.

Piercing gunshots ricochet around them. Her men drop to the floor firing at their respective targets. Chaos ensues amongst Nazario's men. They panic and return fire. A disturbing sensation envelopes her like something ominous was going to happen. She feels an intense strong physical and mental sense of danger. Aleska stills her mind and body using her thought process to engineer a quick win strategy. She springs into attack mode. Her pistol in her left hand fires two shots. Simultaneously her right hand removes a knife from behind her collar. She somersaults high into the air, aims the knife with precision at the knot holding Stone prisoner. Stone falls to the ground in an undignified bundle and instinctively rolls away from the line of fire. She silently hopes she's calculated her fall with equal precision.

With one eye watching Stone, Aleska falls with an agonizing thud between two pairs of heavy duty boots.

Poor landing!
She cringes from pain as somebody's boot, kicks into her ribs. That's why soldiers should not become emotionally entangled with each other. One tends to lose perspective, become distracted and one is not as objective as one would be if one is not distracted by emotion.

With excruciating pain, she rolls to the side, looks over her shoulder and throws another knife at Stone to free himself. She is under sustained attack again. Three assailants are keen to use her body as a football.

Even on her back, Aleska adeptly blocks most of the attacks to her head and face. But three against one is an unequal ratio in anybody's language. She uses her arms to effectively block the blows to her head, whilst her feet move with the speed of light to counter attack her aggressors. Her right leg sweeps out and with a fatal chop, drops one assailant. She agilely hops back onto her feet, uses her elbow to deliver a lethal knock into another's mid drift. She feels a thud ram into her back, spins around, uses her right foot to connect square onto the face of her third attacker.

They are not done with her. Quickly regrouping, they come on the offensive again. Aleska figures it's time to end the party and whips out her pistol. She is on her knees and fires three accurate and fatal shots. She looks around as she catches her breath. Scott is entangled with one of the men, but he looks in control. Chris is doing battle with another. She does a rapid scan and counts five dead bodies. Her eyes search for Stone; sees him trading blows with two men. Aleska smiles. Her Commander has a lot of pent up rage and a score to settle. She sees Stone pummel the men with his fists and boot.

There were more gun shots, then an eerie silence. Aleska rises to her feet, her weapon in the ready between her hands. She looks around. All her men are still standing. Stone has been robbed of his pleasure of beating his attackers to pulp. Aleska walks cautiously to where Nazario is lying on the ground. She kicks his weapon far away.

'I'm bleeding!' He screams, panic stricken.

'Hold your fire,' Aleska instructs her men. She cautiously pushes Nazario onto his stomach. He grunts with pain. She frisks him; finds him clean.

'I need a doctor,' Nazario growls like a wounded animal.

Aleska ignores him. She rushes over to where Stone is standing.

Stone's eyes rake over her. 'I don't always agree with the methods Spetsnaz employs, but I cannot argue with its propensity to achieve results.' His tone is emotional, appreciative, edged with irony.

She wraps her arms around him and for once, she is indifferent to the rest of her team watching. She boldly kisses her man.

'I love you,' she whispers in his ear.

'And I love you,' he whispers back. 'But why don't you ever follow instructions?' Stone breathes against her lips.

She blinks slowly. His eyes were drawn to the arc of her long lashes, sexily sweeping down over her eyes.