“Good,” the girl said. “I like giving blowjobs. Otryad did not like them that much but he would let me give them since I enjoyed it. That is why I tried to learn to give them well, so he would enjoy them also.”
“You’re great,” Mike said, leaning back in the seat. “Very, very good, and I say that as a guy who has gotten a fair number of them in his life.”
“Is there any wine?” Anastasia asked, cautiously. “I like the taste of cum, but the aftertaste is… not so good.”
“In the back,” Mike said, thumbing over his shoulder. “There’s a wine cooler with white and a rack with red.”
“Would you like a glass?” Anastasia asked, getting up and looking to the rear of the plane.
“No thanks, I’m a beer drinker,” Mike said. “On second thought, see if they have a Johannesburg Riesling. I could do with a glass.”
“Then you will go to sleep, yes?” Anastasia asked, walking back to the gallery area.
“I could sleep,” Mike admitted. “It’s been a long day.”
Chapter Eighteen
As it turned out, Anastasia slept. Mike reclined both of the seats and the girl had snuggled down next to him, arms held vertically over her breasts so her hands were folded under her chin, pushed in hard against his side and in a few minutes was fast asleep. It had been a long, tough day for her too, Mike figured. Torn away from the only home she’d known since she was twelve, flying for the first time, possibly being with the first man other than Otryad that she’d ever had sex with. She seemed comfortable, though, content. She wasn’t having bad dreams, at least.
She was so fucking beautiful, it made Mike angry to think about her life. He knew that he had a blind spot when it came to beautiful women. Plenty of them, even in the West, had lousy lives. But a creature as visually perfect as Anastasia would have been able to write her own ticket in the States. Instead, she’d been sent off to be a harem slave. And she considered herself lucky, with reason. The whole developing world was awash with girls like Anastasia, ranging from her situation to the girls in the Alerrso brothel.
Without the economy and culture to support equality, women came out a distant second in the war of the sexes. Even the “lucky” ones who found husbands had lives of unremitting toil, popping out one baby after another until their bodies were worn out. The rest filled the brothels of the developing countries. The luckiest ones were the girls near Western military bases; the worst actions of the Western troops, by and large, were the norm in other cultures. American troops mostly just wanted to get it stuck in or sucked off. The few of them that were into pain paid for the privilege instead of thinking of it as a right.
But even those didn’t have much of a life. After they got old and worn, at all of twenty or so, they’d be shipped off to lower quality brothels, slipping down the ladder rung by rung. The bottom of the barrel were places around the Mediterranean waterfront, especially Istanbul. Trying to find a good looking whore in Istanbul was like looking for gold in a tarpit.
Mike wasn’t sure how long this gig in Georgia was going to last, but he knew damned well that none of his girls were ever going to wind up in a whorehouse in Istanbul. Not even Katya, although she deserved it.
Mike got up carefully at a chime from the sat phone, trying not to disturb Anastasia. She muttered but stayed in place.
“Jenkins,” he said, putting in the earphone.
“Mr. Jenkins, this is Lieutenant Timmons,” the duty officer said. “There will be a Georgian military helicopter at the airport in Tbilisi at two AM.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Mike said. “Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, it has room for two and some luggage?”
“It’s a Blackhawk converted for distinguished persons transport,” the lieutenant replied. “Plenty of room.”
“Great,” Mike said. “Thanks for the help. Hope the rest of your duty goes well.”
“All I have to do is stay awake,” the lieutenant said, chuckling.
“What duty officer stays awake?” Mike asked. “That’s what enlisted men are for.”
“Ones that work at embassies,” Timmons said, somewhat bitterly. “It’s not like regular SDO work. And guys on duty at SOCOM and the Pentagon for that matter. Norad, Cheyenne…”
“Got the point,” Mike said, smiling. “Well, come on out for a beer and some steak some time; I owe you that at least.”
“Will do, sir,” Timmons said. “Two AM.”
“Works,” Mike replied, “Have a good night.”
Mike covered Anastasia with a blanket, then pulled out a copy of the training schedule. Since he wouldn’t be staying over in Tbilisi, he’d be back for equipment issue. That was a two-day affair with basic uniform and field gear issue being in the morning and weapons issue the next day. Normally troops would get their weapons and then rack them. In normal militaries they’d spend a few months learning to clean the damned things and field strip them before they ever got to shoot them.
With the Keldara, Mike was taking another tack. They’d be issued on Friday right at the range. The only pretraining they’d get was on safety and aiming. Then they’d zero in the weapons. After that would be the class on stripping, cleaning and reassembly. One reason for that was that they were bound to mess up the cleaning. That meant nice dirty weapons to rag on them about come Monday and regular training. A weekend with a little grime here and there wasn’t going to ruin the guns. Hell, knowing the way that the Keldara did things, the weapons were probably going to be spotless.
Mike might or might not do a demonstration for the range day. The Keldara were only going to be firing on a twenty-five meter range for zero. The time to do that was when they did the full Basic Rifle Marksmanship class later in the training cycle. They were taking the Marine approach to that one, training them on marksmanship on the Known Distance range, then going to pop-up targets.
Marksmanship and combat engagement were two different mindsets, but the one was important to support the other. Training on pure marksmanship meant that the soldier was actually paying attention to the target. The two problems with that were he then tended to see the target as a human and not just a target and he tended to take too long in engagement. With the latter, he was paying attention to his shooting rather than the fact he was in a combat engagement. With the former he ended up more stressed by taking a human life. Training to simply engage pop-up targets and consider the shapes that the soldier engaged as nothing more than those tended to reduce both problems.
He put the training schedule away when he began to yawn and curled up next to Anastasia. He had to admit there were worse ways to fly.
“Mr. Jenkins?”
Mike had woken up the moment the cockpit door opened and now opened his eyes, to look at the copilot. He’d assumed the pilot was on his way to the rear for a drink so he hadn’t bothered before, just tracked his movements by sound.
“Yeah?” Mike asked, shifting upwards. Anastasia was still out like a light so he gently lowered her down so her head rested on his thigh.
“We got an in-flight advisory that we’re suppose to taxi to the military side of the Tbilisi airport and await a Follow-Me,” the copilot said, quietly. “Captain Hardesty thought you should know.”
“Thanks,” Mike said. “I should have told you guys I was picking up a helicopter for the rest of the trip. That’s all it’s about.”
“Okay,” the copilot said, nodding. “We’d… wondered.”
“No great adventures on this trip,” Mike said, grinning. “Maybe some other time. How long?”