Time to visit the local watering hole

Liam held the door for her, an almost antiquated gesture that still made her feel warm and cozy. Or maybe it was just stepping out of the 5°F temperature outside. The bar was nice and warm, crowded during the peak hour that was winter evening. During the summer, the sun was almost always up, and the local miners spent every minute of the precious few summer months working when the ground wasn't too frozen to dig through. Luxuries such as going out for a drink had to wait for winter, when the the dark reigned supreme most of the day, and people caught up with each other over some fish and drinks. The place was minimally decorated. The walls were covered with the simple wood that seemed to be the inside of every Alaskan building, a bar, a set of double doors to the kitchen and grill, and a massive American flag as tall as a man over a sign proclaiming
"FREE BEER...

...Tomorrow"

The bar looked pretty good, the kind she would frequent. The food smelled great, the mood was cheery, and there were ten local beers on tap. Small towns always had the best bars. With just a quick glance, however, their target stood out. Occupying a group of tables pulled together in the corner was a large group of men in arctic camouflage, rifles at their sides.

Jamie and Liam took seats at a table near the bar. Liam caught the eye of an attractive young brunette who was looking a little flustered, running around and sweating lightly.

"New on the job, huh?"
"Yeah I just started working here a week ago trying to make some extra cash you know?"
"Yeah I've been there too. Tell me Ms..."
"Monica"
"Monica," he jerked his chin in the direction of the corner tables "since when have these folks been here?"
She answered without a beat. "They're running security over Christmas for the Gold Lake dredges"

Jamie interjected, feigning ignorance. "Gold Lake?"
"Oh this German rock star millionaire guy decided to get into gold mining so he bought some dredges a few years back and" she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper "they say he hit the motherlode"
"Really?"
"Ooh yah! My cousin's friend's brother said he was there during one of the prospects of the ground and they were doing 15 flake Pans consistently!"
Jamie let her eyes light up with excitement, as if she knew what a fifteen flake Pan was.
"You don't say?"
"Oh that's not even the start of it, ever since they finished getting the dredges up and running, he's never hired any of the locals. They say there's a lot of no good business going down at them dredges". Monica's voice was so quiet they practically had to lean in to hear her, and she looked at them with visible excitement imploring them to ask what she meant by 'no good business'.

"What do you mean by no good business?"
"Well..." She made a point of looking left and right "...I'm not saying anything, but I heard that last year they-"
A potbellied head chef chose that moment to interrupt "MONICA!! Do I run a fucking charity over here?!"
"No sir!" Monica shouted back at the manager.
"Gotta go!" And she sped off to the kitchen.

Jamie turned to study the mercenaries sitting in the corner.
They were all in their late twenties, ex military by the look of it. She counted thirty of them, all but two male, and one obvious leader of the squad, a black man with a large frame, a badass goatee, and a tab on his chest reading "SMITH".

Jamie sighed in relief when she recognized the red patches on their biceps. Carriço Internacional, founded in 2003 by a Portuguese - American called Joãozinho Carriço, and a favorite among lower level criminal masterminds not yet connected or established enough to acquire the services of The Union. She had already taken them on at least half a dozen times, and by now she could probably do it in her sleep. They were going to have an easy time Christmas Eve. She turned to Liam and smiled. "I'm buying drinks".

In Asia..

"Lovely evening isn't it?"

Nong Yao's heart leapt out of her chest.
"What do you want from me Beran?"
Havel looked down at her sadly, like a schoolteacher disciplining an unruly child.
"It's not about what I want, Nong Yao, but what you're forcing me to do. And please, call me Havel."

Understanding dawned on her.
"This is because I failed to **** the governor, isn't it? You brought me here to be" she spit out the word "purged."

Havel was in ecstasy. No matter how many times he did it, every fresh victim made his heart race in excitement like nothing else. He loved absolutely everything about killing, from the moment they realized what was going to happen to their final screams of agony.

Master knew, he suspected, but he had put him in charge anyway, giving him the thin veil of "just taking care of business". No matter what his Lordship's reasoning was, at the end of the day he had to kill traitors and he got to do it in person.

The driver slowed to a stop and turned to face them. "Reā mā t̄hụng."
Havel shot a questioning look at the local to his left, the one with the least broken English.
"He say that we are arrived, Mr. Beran."
Havel grinned.
"Get her out."

The two goons unshackled Nong Yao from the floor of the van and lifted her effortlessly out into the hot night air. They had parked at the end of an abandoned street in an industrial zone, and she could hear the rumble of a cargo train nearby.

Presently, they were wrapping a rusty chain around her hands, leaving about three feet as a sort of leash to lead her with.

The driver, who had disappeared around the corner, returned and nodded. Havel added gestures to his words. "He's asleep?" Another nod. "Let's go then."

They rounded the corner the way the driver went, and Nong Yao saw that they were at a railway crossing, the train she heard was in the middle of passing by, and a commercial tractor trailer was waiting for it to pass.

Havel leaned into her ear and whispered as she was led toward the back of the trailer. "Every Monday night, a certain truck driver makes sure he gets stuck waiting for a train at this crossing, making his company pay him for taking a nap. None of my business really. But as you can see, speeding trains make quite a cacophony, so Mr. sleep-on-the-job over here works his whole Monday-night shift wearing earplugs."

"Now, that isn't very safe, as the earplugs don't only block out a roaring train, but also the sounds of an approaching car, an exploding tire, or..." He leaned even closer and she shied away from his wolfish leer "... a screaming bitch."

They had reached the truck by now, and the men locked the end of the chain onto the back of the truck.

"You know" he continued, "I've always wondered whether being burned or dragged to **** was more painful, and yesterday I **** a burning man into a woodchipper. Guess we'll see if you scream louder than him."

Nong Yao stared daggers at him. "Fuck you Havel."
He smirked. "Let's begin then, shall we?"
He spoke the words of the ceremony he'd performed countless times.

"The condemned, Nong Yao Narkhirunkanok (he struggled with her last name), has been determined to have betrayed our lord. By the trust his glory has vested in me, I condemn her to **** in a brutal fashion, for the sake of being heard and feared."

He grabbed her face in his hands, forcing her to look him in the eyes. "Well Nong Yao, here's what's going to happen. In three minutes and forty seconds, the ass end of that train will finish passing through. About twenty seconds after that, the driver will wake up and put his truck into drive. Seeing as you're chained to the back of the truck... well I'm sure you've figured out the rest."

One of the henchmen turned to him. "The flight to Shirahama is in an hour." Havel seemed almost devastated by the interruption of his kill. "Well, as much as it pains me to not get to watch you die, it is dolphin season and I have a plane to catch. Fuckin' Nips banned hunting them this year but that's never stopped me before has it?"

And with that, he was gone, leaving Nong Yao all alone for her last five minutes on earth.

Back to our heroes...

"And I wouldn't let go of his ankle until James promised to never step foot in my room again. Shit, he probably has the bite marks to this day"

Liam laughed heartily, wiping the tears from his eyes.
"Knowing you, I can never be sure, but there's no way that story's true."
"Oh but it is! Ask James to show you his scars and when he finishes, just go "you forgot one" and point at his ankle."
Liam laughed even harder, then let his eyes wander over her body. Jamie Bond was quite an exotic woman, and he fondly thought back about their passionate lovemaking session that noon. She was wearing a red plaid shirt and jeans which he couldn't wait to get into.

He had prepared her clothes for her and made sure that they were a few sizes too tight, "for his eyes only". Her jeans were very constricting, especially in her nether regions, where it formed a nice cameltoe.

Blood rushed to his penis, and he quickly forgot all about any Lukas Beck or gold dredges. He had a gorgeous redhead spygirl half-drunk in front of him, and he'd be damned if he missed this opportunity.