The Hotel

The Hotel.

Part One - Colonel Black

Within an hour, the hotel was filled with grubby tired looking but dangerous soldiers. They were all heavily armed and the Colonel leading them walked up to the counter. The Night manager tried to smile a greeting, but an icy hand took hold of his balls.

"I am Colonel Chernyy. We are commandeering this hotel. How many guests have you here?" His voice was rough as gravel and his eyes were soulless. It was clear he had seen too many campaigns and would brook no argument.

The night manager glanced at his small computer screen and punched the keyboard, "Twelve Sir but we have international press here and three government officials here overnight." His voice railed away as the Colonel set his rifle on the counter.

"Former government. I have just helped overthrow the Kovachev regime and our new President, President Milosevic is now running our country." The colonel looked at the manager hard, "Their room numbers?"

"Room 54 and 55" The manager stammered. The Colonel looked over to a second battle-stained lieutenant and nodded,

"Bring them to me now and have Sargeant Salarno, bring the press to the dining room in an hour." He ordered with a tired sigh. The manager, always able to find a way to ingratiate himself with his guests leaned forward,

"Perhaps I might have some refreshments for yourself and your men?" He found his smile again.

"Open up your kitchens and pantry and I will have my men see what you have." The Colonel retrieved his weapon and made his way to the dining room, "Bring coffee for three in the dining room."

Part Two - Sarah

With loud and furious banging on her door, Sarah Harding turned over and rolled off the bed. She was dressed in fatigued khaki pants and, a khaki shirt and slipped her feet into boots, placed on the floor. Through long months on assignment in the war zones of the region, she knew to sleep in her clothes. It was best to be ready to move in an instant, to avoid a firefight or evade a predatory section of soldiers who would view her with hungry eyes.

"Ein Moment!" She called out, tied off her boots, and opened the door after donning her PRESS bullet-resistant vest. Upon opening the door, a rough-looking corporal regarded her.

"You will come, Miss with me to see my Colonel." His voice was gravel and his eye had seen too much for a man barely into his twenties.

"Colonel Who?" Sarah turned and snatched her go-bag. She was escorted down the hall, where two other correspondents and a cameraman were also being roused from their rooms. The hallways were crammed with military personnel. The Corporal indicated that she should walk ahead of him,

"My Colonel will tell you all you need to know. Please no more questions." The Corporal nodded her to walk and he punctuated his words by hefting his Russian-made AK 47 rifle to a more comfortable position on his body.

Taking the stairs, Sarah walked down to find at least a brigade of soldiers in the foyer of the hotel. All grubby and tired looking but she noticed that their weapons were immaculate. Sarah had learned the military ranks and personnel deployment while in the region and immediately scanned for army recognition badges, cap pins or regimental colours.

To her dismay, these men wore few shoulder boards or regular army regimental badges. This was not good news. Armed men without discipline or leadership were too often bestial and would behave like armed thugs, especially to women in conflict zones.

Sarah tensed and felt the vulnerability of her sex. These men were either militia, soldiers gleaned from towns and villages given guns and allowed to operate with minimum army discipline or even worse, mercenaries who operated without restraint and were often the perpetrators of the worst kind of atrocities in a war zone. She followed the Corporal across the foyers, Sarah felt hungry eyes follow her across the the floor. Despite being in mannish army clothing, her body drew attention. Her slender, toned body gave the heavy cotton pants a pleasing shape and her small but pert bra-less breasts shifted within the shirt as she entered the dining room.

Inside, A table had been set up to one side, with coffee and pastries provided by the night manager and in the middle of the room, another table with a trio of men standing over a map. To one side, the men's weapons were stacked against a further chair. Every man was armed with a pistol and again their informs were dirty from marching and fighting. One man stood out, a tall man in black fatigues, stripped to the waist as he shaved his month-old beard off with a commandeered razor over a steaming bowl of water. Sarah regarded his lean and muscular torso, his pale skin was glistening from the water and as he turned, she glimpsed two long scars across his chest and one at his side. This man had seen a lot of war and bore the memories of it.

As he saw her enter, The Colonel asked his men to leave, set down the razor and retrieved a fresh shirt from behind his chair. Sarah decided to adopt a forthright stance and hope this man was not who she feared he was.

"Colonel, I protest at the treatment I have received so far. I am Sarah Harding, Associated Press and I expect to be released from your custody immediately and conducted to a safe zone." She watched the man buttoning up the shirt, and he smiled nonchalantly at her.

"Miss Harding, it's a great pleasure to meet you. I am a great admirer of your work. Your reports are most colourful but usually factual, though not always as precise as you might be. Please be at your ease, I am Colonel Adam Chernyy, or Colonel Black if you prefer," He reached out an open hand for her to shake.

Sarah decided to take it and then found a seat next to the table.

"I trust, Colonel Black, that you know the rules regarding members of the press?" Sarah insisted.

"Of course and I shall be happy to have you escorted to a safe zone, once the situation here has become less....fluid." The Colonel smiled and sat across from her.

"Very well, I must insist that you have your men respect my privacy." Sarah sat forward, tense and alert.

"My men have been instructed to treat you with all due respect." His tone curt now and less amiable, as if she had insulted him and his men.

"To be frank Colonel, from your reputation, I am less than comforted by your words." Sarah stopped short, the colonel's demeanour had changed, and so she bit her tongue, unwilling to goad him any further but he wasn't willing to let her accusation hang in the air like a bad smell.

"Ah my reputation, how very disappointing you simply accept the rumours and gossip and the propaganda spread by my enemies." The Colonel sighed.

"Enemies, you?" Sarah was genuinely surprised, as he was renowned for his military accomplishments and success in being raised in rank in less than two years.

"Oh, I have many enemies, mainly within the government that I have been fighting for and against. I have been very easy to hate as I will not simply follow orders blindly or give in to those with powerful and wealthy patrons. Fighting a war is evil enough, and the taking of any life is not a noble thing."

Sarah was not suddenly captivated by the honesty and eloquence of the man before her, "Tell me what evil you have been accused of?"

"Oh, that story would take longer than I have, but if you would honour me by being my guest for dinner this evening, I would be willing to share a story or two. The Night Manager er has promised us the best food, he can manage from his kitchen."

Without hesitation, she agreed to the dinner date.

As she walked back to the room, she couldn't believe her good fortune. In an interview with the 'Black Colonel', she almost skipped down the hallway. Upon reaching her door, another member of the press emerged from his room, Klaus Donitz had been in the region a week or two after she had arrived. He was a younger, ambitious Austrian reporter with the Reuters agency and had tried to sweet-talk her into bed after a night in the capital, but she had simply pecked him on the cheek and closed the bedroom door, leaving him on the empty doorstep.

"Sarah, I thought you might be in trouble. I saw the Black Knights take you away!" The Black Knights, under Colonel Black's immediate command, is a playful euphemism for the brigade.

"Klaus, please don't worry about me. I have it all in hand. Sarah patted him on the shoulder and went into her room. In the remaining hours, Sarah was a whirlwind of activity, she broke out her laptop and contacted her editor, with the news of her interview and then tried to find out as much as she could about her host. After two hours, of sifting through the online material, she found a brief biography of the man, before he became the Black Colonel.

There was a lot of clear propaganda about the Colonel, and a lot of rumoured involvement in ethnic cleansing, civilian atrocities and utter ruthlessness in the face of his enemies. There seems to be a lot about the man, but remembering his barbed comments about her work being factual but not precise and the fact that he had enemies. She delved further into the man's rise to a colonelcy in the past two and half years. Staring at the screen, she uncovered a lot more than she expected,

"So you were a teacher before the invasion, that's a surprise. Did you simply neatly stack your books and go out and fight for your country?" The question was rhetorical, as there was no mention of him until he was awarded a gallantry medal by the former president, for holding off an armoured column with a squad of men, small arms and a few anti-tank rockets. She found a picture of him and whom she supposed was his wife in a national paper, the clipping translated to Mr and Mrs Adam Hannowitz, attacked upon his return home from school, in their home by invasion forces. This had been dated nearly three years ago.

"You poor bastard! You come home from school and find your wife, Katya, being raped by a squad of soldiers and then they beat the shit out of you!" Sarah thought back to the shirt with the scars on his chest. After the hours of work, she lay back, undid her belt, and closed her eyes. She had already set an alarm on her phone, so risked a couple of hours of sleep.

Laying on the bed, she drifted off and with her mind full of her research, her dreams twisted and writhed and now she found herself in a small, simple house like so many in the region. She was lying on the table when a loud knocking from her front door caused her to stop and go to it. Opening it she was faced with three dull serge uniformed men, all armed. All at once, the door was forced, and the frame knocked her back to the floor. The three men entered and shut the door behind them. One man grabbed at her pulled her up, flung her onto the small, low sofa and tore at her thin patterned summer dress. The sky was bright and the sun warm, but the house was cold with the men, stripping her of her dress, bra and panties.

Soon, she was dragged to her bedroom, and thrown on the bed. With two of the men holding her arms and legs each, the third pulled off his uniformed jacket and undid his fatigue trousers and pulled out a stiffened penis.

Sarah tossed and turned on her hotel bed, sweat now peppering her brow as she relived the treatment meted out by the invading soldiers on Adam's pretty wife.

Only it was she that was being roughly fucked.

The third man callously spat on his rough, dirty fingers and pushed two of them into her trimmed pussy, Sarah tried to cry out but another man stuffed the remnants of her panties into her mouth, stifling her. He held his hand over her mouth, leering at his comrade take his erect penis and push it into Sarah's pussy. She looked up and saw the unshaven Slavic features of a soldier roughly thrusting into her. His cock was thick and with no lubrication, Sarah could feel her vaginal walls being rubbed by his member. As she dreamt, the other soldiers took their turns with her. One at a time, they shoved the previous man off the bed, after he emptied his ball sac into her. Each new penetration stung as much as the first, the misleading belief that after the first, the pain lessened- it was completely untrue. The sensations did not lessen. The most disturbing was her final assailant, as she thrashed on the bed, she looked around avoiding the heaving breath of the man on top of her.

She looked up at him, as she saw Colonel Black watching her.

With a start, Sarah woke and sat up, "Oh fuck!" She looked around the room and then lay back. Her files were now scattered on the floor, as she'd thrashed around while asleep. She stripped off and dove into the shower.

Part Three - Colonel Black.

With his sergeant at hand, the table had been set for two in the large dining room. The other tables were filled with a variety of soldiers both in casual wear and in uniform. A smattering of civilians also was sharing the tables. The atmosphere was pleasant, their chat was amicable. The Colonel could almost believe this room was not still in a conflict zone, that these people were happy to talk, eat and spend some time being humans and even find commonalities between them.

At 7:30 pm. Sarah clad in her only dress and flat shoes, came into the dining to find the Colonel, also in casual attire a with form-fitting shirt well-cut jeans and trainers. He had the unnerving ability to look like a soccer dad on the way to the match.

"Good evening, Miss Harding. You look quite lovely." The Colonel smiled warmly and held out a hand for her to sit.

"Thank you, Colonel. That is kind of you." Sarah smiled and they sat.

The meal was typically Eastern European but tasty. Sarah found the Colonel's company quite amusing, and Sarah found it hard to compare this man with one that had been presented to her in the news clipping, and video stories that permeated the online news feeds. Ever the profession, Sarah steered the pleasant conversation to the burning questions she had.

"Forgive my bluntness Colonel, and I hate to spoil a lovely evening but..." Sarah announced, feeling quite guilty.

"Your professional interest will not allow you to sit with me, without asking the questions? Please ask away." He smiled. He regarded her with interest, she was the first woman to hold his interest since his lovely wife, had been taken from him.

"Thank you," Sara produced a small digital voice recorder and thumbed the record switch on.

"Ah, I must watch what I sat!" He joked.

" Your men have been accused in many atrocities perpetrated on civilians in the Lomensk region, I refer to a report that your men rounded up women and children aged from 14 to 70 for a rape rally in the Spring of last year," Sarah looked up and saw the pain twist across his face.

"Let me be clear, the trucks were mine, commandeered by a Militia Brigadier General, serving with the regular army, to transport the women you mentioned. Once I had been informed of the condemnation, I raised three platoons and set off. It was myself and my men that broke up the rally and arrested over forty men, including the Brigadier General. If you check your sources, you should find it was my second-in-command who posted the footage onto the internet, under my order.

"Oh, I didn't know that. I will check again." Sarah felt a flush of embarrassment, she had been deftly short-footed by the Colonel. Determined to recover, she quickly asked him about this conduct in his military exploits, " Can you comment on the accusation, made by your government, about your excessive force used in the campaign on the Loiska bridge in April?

"I would be happy to, but before I do, I would like to take this moment to inform you that the patron of the same Brigadier General, I was forced to release after the rape rally incident is also the Minister of Information of the late administration. I am reliably informed my exploits made me a marked man. As to my conduct, I was ordered to hold the bridge at Loiska at all costs. The engagement cost me a third of my men, we were ordered to hold that position for two days, awaiting reinforcements. We held it for 9 days and only after my ammunition was depleted, did I order a tactical retreat. The fight was brutal, often hand-to-hand. I shall never forget the courage and determination of my men, and I will never forgive the regime that left us there to die. The bridge was blown into a thousand pieces after our aircraft fired a flurry of missiles into the supports. I and my men had to stand and watch it." The Colonel's voice was bitter and his eyes were hollow.

"I'm sorry," Sarah's eye softened and she reached out to touch his. He looked over at her and accepted the unexpected intimacy.

"I suppose that was when you allied yourself with the break-away forces that engaged the former government in civil war?" Sarah pulled her hand away, and her reporter discipline kicked in.

"I was forced to find allies in the other units, not all of them regular army, as there was a warrant for my arrest made out. The arrest of myself, my officers and the remaining survivors of that engagement was already made out for summary execution, by order of the Interior Minister. I would not allow my command to be executed with a fair trial. Out here due process is a bullet, Miss Harding and my command had suffered enough."

"So..." Sarah was about to ask another question, then stopped.

"You were going to ask another question?" The Colonel sat back and glanced around the room, nodding to his subordinates.

"Colonel?" Sarah started. He held up his hand,

"Surely, after such searching questions, we can dispense with any formalities. Please call me Adam if I might presume to call you Sarah?" His voice was animated now, and his smile returned.

"Of course, call me Sarah. I would like that." She smiled back, but then thought and chanced her arm for one final question,

"Adam, please one final thing," She lowered her voice, "the day you return to your house.." She stopped as she saw the look in Adam's eye.

"Ah, I wondered when you might get to that!" Adam's face was passive, thinking back to that moment when his life changed.

"I'm sorry, I should've asked," She regretted her words immediately.

"No, perhaps it is better to breathe some fresh air into my bad memories. I think it best if you hear the whole story and perhaps you might not think of me as some moustachioed silent movie villain and like me a little more." He scolded her. But a wry smile broke across his face.

"I like you a little already," Sarah replied coyly.

"Well, you no doubt have the gruesome details of the three men that attacked and abused my lovely wife but what is not widely known is that as the last man climbed off her. I entered my home and saw the three men in various states of undress. I stood like a fool, rooted to the spot until I saw my darling Katya staggering from our bedroom, bruised and naked.

"Oh, you poor man." Sarah reached out to him again and held his hand.

"The next moment, the three men seized me and battered me nearly half to death. I sometimes wish they had completed the job and finished me off. But the last thing I remember was trying to reach Katya, as one of the soldiers grabbed her and cut her throat with his bayonet." The Colonel pulled his hand away. His hand went to his eyes and he squeezed the bridge of his nose and wiped the wetness from his eyes.

"You shouldn't blame yourself. You couldn't do anything." Sarah blandly attempted to soothe the Colonel's anxious face.

"I should have protected her, but I failed. So, to complete my pathetic story, once I recovered I enlisted into the militia, and four hectic training weeks later I killed my first soldier. I never did find the men responsible for Katya's death and I have given up trying." The Colonel sighed, finding some relief in his story and then looked at Sarah.