Mothers and Daughters Pt. 03

"I helped his son. By complete coincidence, I now live five minutes from his restaurant."

"What did you do – how did you help his son?"

Before he was in JTF2, Nate was in the last stages of a mission in Kosovo when they came across four young Polish peacekeepers trapped under a bridge, pinned down in a pitched firefight between the KLA and the Yugoslav Army. One of the Polish soldiers, Mazur's son, had been shot in the leg. The four soldiers had been separated from their unit. They had no comms, no ammunition, no medical support, and no way out.

NATO's role in Kosovo was primarily air support – Nate's team was not officially there. He was running a black-op mission on the ground that could not be discovered. Nate set up a defensive perimeter around the stranded Polish soldiers, and then set his combat-medic specialist to attend to Mazur's wounds. Part of Nate's mission was to direct air strikes from the ground, so he called in a NATO strike on his crypto-comms, and when a pair of USAF F-15E Strike Eagles dropped 16,000 pounds of ordinances on the Yugoslav Army only 300 feet away, Nate's team used the lethal distraction to evacuate the Polish soldiers to friendly ground. Before the Polish peacekeepers could properly thank them, Nate's team vanished into the urban backdrop, and completed their mission.

"I helped him out of a difficult situation," was all Nate said to Briana. Briana translated for Pavlina.

Six months ago, when Nate first came into this restaurant, a man in his thirties, whom Nate vaguely recognized, hurriedly limped over to Nate, shook his hand, then awkwardly fell to his knees with one bad leg, and he thanked Nate again and again. The whole restaurant fell silent at the boisterous commotion. When Mazur, the restaurant owner, came over to investigate, his son looked up to his father with tears in his eyes, and cried out in Polish "Papa! This is the man I told you about who saved my life in Kosovo."

Back in the present, the waiter returned with a silver tray holding a complete place setting for Nate, and he set the dinnerware, napkin, wine glass and water glass in front of Nate. The waiter explained in poor English that there would be no menu – that Herr Mazur had selected a special meal for them. In truth, Nate knew Chef Gunther would serve whatever was left over, but he was not about to argue. The waiter asked if anyone had special dietary needs or allergies. Nate and Briana shook their heads no. Briana translated into German for Pavlina, but she didn't know the word for allergies. The waiter took over, speaking German to Pavlina, who said anything would be fine. The waiter spun on his heel and marched back into the restaurant.

They each promptly received a consume soup, followed by a spinach salad with ginger soaked pine nuts, fennel, chevre, and a raspberry reduction dressing. For the main course, Nate received a veal parmigiana in a cognac cream sauce. Briana was served a spaghetti Bolognese with a delicious anise sauce, and Pavlina was presented an ossobuco. Their meals were excellent. Through Briana's translations, they enjoyed limited dinner conversation. With the kitchen closed, no dessert was possible except for some pastries, which they ordered with coffee.

Nate paid the bill with his credit card, and left an overly-generous tip in cash, knowing Gunther and the staff had stayed behind solely on their account. As they left, Herr Mazur unlocked the door, and thanked Nate for blessing his restaurant with his glorious presence, and shook all their hands as they stepped out the door. He invited the lovely ladies to return any time – they were formally friends of the restaurant. Nate heard the door lock behind him as they stepped into the empty courtyard.

The alley was dark, but a distant street light guided their way back to the twisty roads that would take them home. When they reached half way down the courtyard, two dark bodies entered the alleyway from left side, and one more from the right. The three men, dressed in black leather jackets, black T shirts, and black pants, took up a line across the 20 foot courtyard. Nate instantly recognized it as an attack formation, and they were standing in the kill zone.

Briana was slow on the uptake, but Pavlina instantly sucked in a sharp breath of panic as she understood the menace that was blocking their way home. Nate looked left, right, and then back. The glass in the door of the Italian restaurant was dark – the staff had probably already left by the restaurant's back door, and banging on the front door would bring no help. He had his cell phone, but Nate was willing to bet that reaching for his cell phone would only invite the three men to charge on Nate and the girls.

Now sensing the gravity of the situation, Briana took Nate's hand. She began shaking with fear. The three men neither advanced nor retreated – they held their positions. Nate knew they were trying to intimidate their quarry, and it was working on both girls.

Nate scanned his surroundings again. To Nate's left were the heavy wooden, bare tables that merchants used to sell their wares during the day, and to his right was a single set of stairs against a wall that led down, below street level, with a wrought iron railing lining two sides of the rectangular stairwell. Nate took Pavlina's hand, and without saying a word, rushed both girls toward the stairs, and looked down. The stairs descended 12 stone steps to a rectangular landing that turned left to an underground doorway, beneath the building. Nate shepherded Briana and Pavlina down the stairs as quickly as their high heels would permit them to click- clack down the hard stone steps. As he did, two of the men from the alley converged on the stairwell, and were at the railing overhead just as the girls reached the bottom landing.

Nate pushed the girls into the doorway. It recessed two feet into the stone wall, offering the girls shallow cover. Nate was counting on the assailants not having guns – very few handguns are found in this part of the world. Knives are the choice weapons among most common criminals and gangs. If the unknown men at the top of the stairs had guns, Nate and the girls were done. Even a lousy shot could kill them all with a pistol in this confined space.

Nate's gamble paid off. One man moved to the head of the stairs, and looked down at him with a menacing, dark stare. The girls cowered behind the corner, out of his view. Another man stood at the side railing, looking straight down over Nate's head, and the man could easily see the girls tucked into the recessed doorway across from him. The third man held a long way back, and was out of Nate's sightline. Nate guessed he was the lookout – the lowest man in the pecking order.

Nate stayed in the middle of the archway into the doorway, putting as much distance between himself and the assailant above him without losing sight of the man at the top of the stairs. Most attacks on unarmed civilians use terror to manipulate the situation to their advantage. The man at the head of the stairs reached his right hand behind his back, and pulled out a knife with a six inch serrated blade. The steel glinted off the poor light as the man moved it about.

The thug took down step down the cold, stone stairs. "Give me all your money, and walk away from those two bitches," the man growled in German with a thick eastern European accent. Briana was too terrified to translate the German's words, but Nate didn't need the translation. He knew exactly what the man wanted. Nate guessed the accent was Romanian. The armed man stood took one step down from the top, and then stood still.

Nate was prepared to wait it out as long as circumstances would allow. He was in a relatively defensible position, and time was on his side. Eventually someone had to walk past the courtyard, inquire at the three men, at which time Nate would prompt the two girls to scream as loudly as they could. Someone would call the police. Unfortunately, these men have calculated similar odds in their favor, and they knew the streets were deserted on this bank holiday evening. Nate's luck might well run out before anyone happens to pass by.

Meanwhile the other man – the man standing overhead Nate behind the railing – started blowing kisses at the girls with loud smooching noises. When he had their attention, he brought his right hand toward his face, and configured his second and third fingers in a V formation against his lips, and waggled his tongue through his fingers as he made loud slurping sounds. Briana shrieked at the obscene threat, and that made the man smile with erotic gratification. Nate ignored him. Unless he was going to jump over the railing or throw his knife, he was not an immediate threat. He was trying to unnerve his prey, provoking them to panic for his own sadistic pleasure.

"I mean now," the man on the stairs hissed in German without yelling, and he took another step down. Nate kept the man standing overtop in his peripheral vision, who grabbed his crotch and rocked his pelvis toward the girls. Nate figured this man was in charge. The man coming down the stairs was his number two, and the lookout was the most junior member of the gang.

Keep them off guard. Don't fall into their trap. Instead of cowering, Nate stepped two steps up toward the man, closing their distance to 8 hard stone steps. He kept his right shoulder in contact with the stone wall. The man showed surprise, but no fear, and next he extended his right arm straight toward Nate, pointing his knife at Nate's face.

"Are you stupid?" the Romanian German on the stairs called down to Nate. "I'm going to cut your belly open, and then I am going to make you watch while I fuck your pretty girls all night long. And then I will cut their tits off and slit their throats, and you will watch them bleed out in front of your eyes." The man took one more step down. Nate matched him with one more step up, and now only six steps lay between them. If Nate were to reach up, he could grab the knife, but he didn't. The man standing at street level, overhead, started moving. Nate needed to keep his eyes locked on the man above him, but concentrated on the man above in his peripheral vision.

In his peripheral vision Nate noticed the man above him reached behind his back. The situation dynamics were changing rapidly. If the man above was going for a knife, he would have to go over the railing. Nate decided that would be a clumsy stab, and Nate would see it coming in his peripheral vision, so he remained focused on the man on the stairs. But his peripheral vision didn't detect the flashy glint of a knife blade – Nate's peripheral told him it was a gun, but not just any gun. It was big, nearly two feet long, round, hard, and black. Nate realized he was about to face a business end of a sawed-off shotgun.

This new threat demanded Nate's immediate attention, so looked away from the Romanian with the knife on the stairs, and he tracked his vision across to the man pulling out the shotgun. And that's when he realized it was not a shotgun. The Romanian knew it was infinitely more terrifying than a shotgun.

The man overhead pulled from behind his back a massive black dildo and held it firmly in his hand against his crotch. It was easily 18 inches long, maybe two feet. He pointed the gargantuan cock directly at the girls in the doorway below, and holding the dildo against his own crotch, he started humping his pelvis in an unmistakable sexual gesture. Both girls screamed at the horror of being brutally savaged by this heartless, repulsive man wielding such a terrifyingly sadistic weapon. Simple rape and murder was no longer Briana and Pavlina's biggest fear – this man was going to take depraved pleasure in grotesquely and painfully disfiguring their delicate, feminine anatomies.

Realizing the man overhead was harmless, at least for now, Nate returned his attention to the threat on the stairs. The knife brandishing Romanian shot a crooked smile, as if saying "I told you so." While the sexual sadist continued dry humping his gigantic dildo overhead, Nate planted his right foot two steps up, just against the wall, but kept his left foot firmly on the fourth step. Although Nate's body did not rise toward the knife wielding Romanian, this simple provocation enraged the man, and he came down two more steps, thrusting his outstretched knife perilously close to Nate, and started cursing at Nate.

Anyone who has been in a real knife fight will tell you never to hold your knife way out front, the way the Romanian criminal was doing. He was using his knife as in instrument of fear, and that probably worked with everyone he faced. But not this night. An experienced hand-to-hand combatant fights like a scorpion – he holds his blade back, waits for the right moment, and then strikes with blinding speed, and instantly recoils his arm back just as swiftly, ready for the next lightning stab.

In his position, the Romanian assailant couldn't strike so much as wave his extended arm from side to side, which is exactly what he did. When he descended those two more steps, waving his knife, Nate perfectly executed three maneuvers simultaneously. First, he crouched low with his hind left leg two steps below his front leg. At the same time, Nate reached with his left hand grabbed on to the man's knife wielding wrist. Third, Nate planted his right hand just above the man's crotch – directly on the front of his hard pubic bone. Nate's movements were so quick – just like the scorpion – that the man only saw Nate's head lower when he crouched – he didn't realize Nate had locked onto his knife wielding wrist until it was too late, and he was too distracted to even feel the heel of Nate's hand land on his pubic bone.

Nate pulled the man's wrist forward, over his own head, dragging him down the stairs. The Romanian tried to brace and prevent himself from falling forward, but that was when Nate's coiled left leg exploded upwards from its crouched position, thrusting through Nate's spine, through his locked right arm, and vaulted the man two feet straight up in the air. Before he even realized what happened, the Romanian knife fighter became airborne as Nate lifted the man's hips skyward while simultaneously pulled his wrist forward, down the stairwell. The man's own forward momentum worked against him, and he couldn't prevent his body from taking flight. Nate's straight right arm pivoted the man's body through an arc high over Nate's head, like an Olympic pole vaulter arcing over the cross bar.

As the man's center of mass passed over Nate's head, Nate reversed his pull on the Romanian's wrist, and now pulled the man's wrist up the stairs. This reverse motion caused the airborne Romanian to tuck his arm and head under, and he began a mid-air summersault.

Gravity took over as Nate simply let the man continue his pole vault arc the rest of the way over his head toward the landing at the bottom of the stone stairs, but Nate still pulled the Romanian's wrist up the stairs, forcing the man to complete a mid-air roll. It was all over in less than a second. The Romanian slammed his back hard on stone floor, but his head landed short, cracking his skull wide open on the sharp corner edge of the bottom stone step. An involuntary rush of air burst out his lungs with a deep "Ooofff" as the man's chest compressed under the impact. His knife fell harmlessly out of the Romanian's hand. The man lay motionless. Nate couldn't tell if he was unconscious or dead, and didn't have time to check.

The other Romanian, who was still dry humping with the massive dildo overhead, dropped his dildo into the stairwell, and screamed in wide-eyed, open mouthed horror at the sight of his fallen comrade. His visceral, primeval reaction surprised Nate – it was not that of a seasoned criminal – but then Nate considered the Romanian he had just crumpled into the hard stone floor might be the boss's brother. "Keeger!" he yelled and stood straight, looking down into the stairwell, first at his fellow Romanian, then at Nate. In his blind rage, the perverted Romanian drew a six inch blade from his side belt, bent forward, and thrust his knife downwards towards Nate's head, threading his outstretched arm through the wrought iron bars. His panic stricken motions were clumsy and awkward. He had to first straighten his arm behind on the far side of the railing before jutting his extended arm through the bars. The maneuver took way too much time, and Nate was ready for it. The tables had turned – the vile tormentor had lost his advantage, and in his brotherly rage, the Romanian attacker was making critical mistakes.

Nate was still halfway up the stairs and easily dodged knife thrust at his head, although one of the girls behind him briefly shrieked as the knife stabbed the air harmlessly by Nate's left ear. Now Nate grabbed the attacker's wrist with both hands, and twisted hard, forcing the Romanian's arm to over-rotate in his shoulder socket. Appreciating his self-inflicted vulnerability, the attacker tried to withdrew his arm, but Nate used his leverage against the stairs to shove the man's captured wrist sideways, away from Nate, jamming his elbow into the wrought iron railing baluster. The Romanian cursed in pain just as Keeger, the third Romanian, arrived on the scene. Keeger stood beside his crouching leader with wildly confused eyes, taking in his fallen gang member at the bottom of the stairwell and his trapped leader. Nate backed one step up the stairs, which doubled his leverage against Romanian's trapped arm, and he put his whole body behind one hard, two-handed shove. Nate snapped the Romanian's elbow backwards – bending it completely the wrong way – with a sickening crackling of bone and cartilage. The Romanian bellowed with searing pain as his knife fell from his useless hand, and the weapon bounced harmlessly into the stairwell with a metal clatter.

Nate released the Romanian leader's arm. The gangster was no longer a threat. His broken elbow was bent so far backwards that he could not even pull his arm back through the railing.

Nate retreated down the steps to the landing beside the dropped knife and dildo. Nate crouched low, with his legs ready to spring. Keeger, tried to help his boss unthread his tortuously fractured arm from the railing. Weary of Nate, Keeger looked over the railing, and seeing Nate too far below to intervene, reached over the railing to grapple the stricken Romanian's arm. Again, like the scorpion, Nate's crouched legs exploded upwards, and he grabbed Keeger's wrist with both hands, and then Nate fell back down into a crouch position, nearly pulling Keeger completely over the railing. Keeger's survival instincts dropped him to the cobblestone ground on the other side of the railing, preventing him from toppling over, but now his left shoulder was trapped, resting on the top rail, with his body on one side, and his arm hanging down the other side with Nate's full body weight pulling down on it. Nate used both hands on Keeger's wrists to rotate Keeger's arm, and then Nate yanked it down hard, and Keeger cried out in brutal agony. Nate twisted Keeger's wrist even more, and this time then Nate yanked down so hard his legs came off the ground. Even though Keeger was screaming with pain, Nate could still hear the sickening 'pop' when Keeger's upper arm separated from his shoulder socket.

Nate released the useless arm, and without delay bolted hard up the stairs four at a time. In half a second he was at street level, and in another half second he had circled behind the two stricken Romanians. Nate pinned the leader's good arm behind his back, and held it there with his left hand. Then Nate reached his right hand around the leader's throat, and squeezed the Romanian's windpipe closed. The leader struggled, but Nate drove his right knee hard into the man's back, pressing him against the railing, which caused his backwards broken arm to move against the railing with searing pain. Unable to breathe or scream, the leader fell quiet. Keeger reached his good arm behind his back for his knife, but Nate saw him. Keeger looked at Nate, and Nate just shook his head with a menacing stare. With only one good arm left, Keeger had the good sense to reconsider his options, and he returned his good arm in front of him, away from the blade. The girls, standing in the stairwell below, looked up through the railing in wide-eyed shock.