An Army of One Woman, part 2				
By Gersheimer   gersheimer77@seznam.cz
edited by michael-leonard


By that time, my mind had been running completely on autopilot and this
pre-determined my purely reflexive reaction. I mean, despite the
circumstances, what you generally do when an unknown woman tells you
something, in a language that you understand? You probably reply to her in the
same language. And, if she seems to reprimand you, you apologize first, don't
you?

So that was what I did, without thinking: "Izvinyite, Madam, shto ya richal na
Vas... i zval Vas yeti zhenoy... A ya i nye znal... (I am sorry, Madam, for
yelling at you... and for calling you a "yeti woman". I didn't know...)."
Whatever words were going to follow next, vanished from my tongue as I was
suddenly thrown back to the scary reality around me.

However, as a consequence, her initial cold sneer suddenly broke into a wide
smile and she shook her head in disbelief, asking: "Ty znayesh pa- Russki?
Otkuda? Kdo ty takoy? (You speak Russian? How come? Who are you?)"

This time I wasn't able to answer as quickly, and she probably attributed this
- correctly - to my fear. So, she did something totally unexpected. She
approached me with two long strides and then, right in front of me, lowered
herself to her knees and embraced me gently with her long arms. In that
position I was looking straight into her deep green eyes. And then she gave me
a short peck on my chin with those full and wide lips of hers. Sensing that I
was still insecure, she straightened up taking me with her and carried me to a
near cube-shaped stone where she sat with me in her lap.

My head went dizzy. Her skin was warm and velvety but the lean muscles below
it were hard as steel and, being still enveloped in her long arms, I couldn't
move a limb. But the body contact was quite comforting and warming in the cold
weather. Her hair and whole body intensely smelled of mountain thyme, as if
she had bathed in it. She kissed me again and asked again in Russian: "Who are
you, little man?"

Somewhat shakily, I briefly presented myself and my background. Suddenly she
started to giggle: "University in Novosibirsk... haha... Oh, that's quite
close to where I was born, only about 2000 kilometres away, Not that far, in
Siberian terms.

"Happy to know you, Joe, and I feel I should present myself as well," she
continued softly and merrily. "I am Lyudmila, 24 years old, and in case you
are wondering what I am doing here" ? I nodded silently ? "it's for basically
the same reason as your military friends. I mean, a kind of individual
training of survival in an unknown territory. I am quite happy that you and
your friends learnt about me and came to capture me; it made my training
experience a bit more interesting and challenging. Only it resulted in quite
the opposite than they had expected, haha."

I started to shake with fear again and she sensed it immediately, patting me
on my head. "No need to worry, Joe," she said softly. "I swear that I do not
intend to cause any harm, either to you or to your military friends. Unless
absolutely necessary, that is. But what I need now, as you have tracked me, is
to hold you all out of communication with the outside world for two more days
and nights, so as not to spoil my task... and my fun. I promise to release you
all just before I disappear."

"Does it mean that you are a soldier? Of the Spetznaz?" I asked, still
incredulous.

"Yes, from a very special unit. That's also why I absolutely can't afford to
be caught, you understand?"

"And... in your unit, is everyone as big and strong as you?" I asked. Being an
anthropologist, my question was obviously stupid, but she was a
personalization of many seemingly impossible things that I myself had
witnessed in the last few days.

She broke into intense laughter and then replied more seriously: "No, of
course not. Just me, my younger brother, and my father who is about to retire
soon. Now come with me, please, to my yeti lair... and don't be afraid, I made
it quite comfortable."

She kissed me once more, this time on the cheek, stood up, and started jogging
uphill to the mountain pass with me still in her arms. On the other side she
descended with long jumps till she reached the belt of dense shrubbery. She
passed through it backwards -- probably to protect me from thorny branches
with her own body -- and we appeared in a dense, but passable forest. "Almost
there," she said and continued down the slope of the cirque towards the
entrance to a horizontal tunnel.

The tunnel was about ten feet high and wide, and some forty feet deep. Its
floor was reasonably flat, covered with macadam and, more lately, with
inflatable mattresses and some opened sleeping bags -- apparently those stolen
in the Boy Scout camp -- forming a crude bed where she probably slept during
the day. After some twelve feet it was partitioned by a dense grille of
massive rusty iron bars with even more massive latch. I learned only much
later that it had once been an explosives depot serving all the mines in the
valley, hence the bars.

There was hardly anything else to see so I looked through the bars where it
was, of course, much darker. There was a similar makeshift bed and on it,
three of my military comrades slept in the sleeping bags. Only Arthur was
awake, standing and looking at us, but he didn't utter a word.

Lyudmila set me finally on the ground and approached the latch. There was no
padlock but a massive loose iron bar twisted around it that made escape from
behind it impossible. She took both ends of it in her hands and started
pulling. It required obvious effort on her part, but in few seconds the bar
straightened and allowed the latch to be opened. In the process, her firm
breasts became even more prominent due to the exertion of her pec muscles,
literally tearing the T-shirt. She motioned me inside and then twisted the bar
back into a circle around the latch so that we couldn't escape.

"Now, please take some rest with your friends and let a tired lady take her
rest as well after a demanding night." Lyudmila smiled at all of us through
the bars. "There you have food, a bucket of water, and warm blankets. Toilet
is in a side tunnel in the back. I expect not to be disturbed from my sleep
until I wake up naturally in the afternoon and then we can have a little sweet
talk. I am happy to have an interpreter here now," she finished, yawning
deeply, waved to us with her oversized hand, and wedged her enormous body into
the pile of sleeping bags. In a few minutes we heard a quiet snoring.

I turned towards Arthur who looked a bit depressed at first, but then he
embraced me and his face lightened a bit. He motioned me to walk towards the
end of the tunnel and into a small side tunnel with some rusty utensils barely
visible in the corner. "Happy to see you again, Joe, but, no offence, even
happier to see one of our bags that you are carrying," he whispered.

"What, this? But it is mostly empty, I think..." I said a bit puzzled.

He helped me remove the rucksack and caught it by its upper handle. "What's
most important is here still. Even scary super strong blonde yeti women make
mistakes and we will use this one to our benefit," he grinned.

I didn't understand but preferred not to ask just then. Instead, I told him
the end of my story and what little information about our captor I learned
from her. "She wasn't completely honest with you, Joe", he said then, in full
seriousness. "There must be another, special, purpose for her to be sent here.
Imagine her being caught now, brought to the authorities and identified. It
could easily bring us to the edge of war. So there must be something worth
taking such a risk -- in the mind of her superiors. What could that be? If
only I had any communication with headquarters... Let's wait until she wakes
up and goes out, if only for a while. She kept leaving me here alone for short
periods during the previous day as well," he finished.

In some two hours Philip, Michael and Sharp Eye woke up as well and approached
us in the side tunnel. We didn't have much to do (of a kind that would not
wake Lyudmila up) so we exchanged the stories of our respective captures in
whispers. First came Arthur: "I heard suspicious sounds by the creek and went
there. I thought I saw a big silhouette in the bush and fired the rifle. A big
splash followed and I reloaded and went closer to see whether I hit her, still
pointing with the rifle. But suddenly it was kicked out of my hands and then I
received a terrible blow to the belly. I bent over and suddenly got caught and
hoisted up in the air and put over her shoulder. I tried to fight but she used
a pressure point in my neck and I passed out for a while. That repeated twice
or thrice at least, before she arrived here. What was scary was that she was
in full jog the entire time, uphill and downhill, with my 250-pound weight
upon hers, and when she arrived here and put me down, she seemed as fresh as
daisy after only some twenty seconds of hard breathing.

"She didn't speak a word to me and, before you came, Joe, we all thought she
was mute, communicating only with gestures. She had everything necessary
prepared here, the mattresses, sleeping bags, water, food and so on. When she
left the next night, I tried to straighten the iron bar that she had bent
around the latch but it didn't move, in whatever way I was pulling its ends
from all my strength. So I pulled threads out of my sweater and started to cut
the twisted bar in the old-fashioned prisoner's way..."

"Cut iron with a woolen thread? How could this be possible?" I asked
incredulously. ?

"Well, it happened many times in history and it's described in a number of
adventure stories recounting a flight from a prison," replied Arthur. "Apart
from a thread -- preferably woolen, and lots of it -- you need just a bit of
sand or other hard grit, and some oil or fat that you wedge into the thread.
And a lot of time, of course. You mix the grit and fat together, mingle with
the thread, make a loop around a grille bar and start pulling the loose ends
of the thread alternatively. After about an hour a small groove appears and
then it is just a matter of time.

"But I found out I would need dozens of hours, so I gave up and looked for
other possibilities. I saw there various remnants of mining devices here...
and that's why I was so happy to see you, Joe, with this bag."

Arthur concluded and started to peel the textile cover from the handle of the
rucksack. In a moment a short wooden bar functioning as an armature was
revealed, but that was not the end. Arthur broke it in his hands and a kind of
red clay appeared inside the hollow wood bar.

"Yes! Half an ounce of plastic explosive," said he. "Enough to break an
inch-thick bar, I am sure". ?

"But don't you also need a fuse, detonator and a source of electricity to blow
it?" I asked incredulously. ?

"Yes, but fortunately, all is here provided for. If mixed with ordinary
crystal sugar -- and there's plenty of it in the supplies she stole in the
scout camp -- this plastic can be ignited with just a spark of electricity.
And here, in the box right above me, are the remnants of a primitive static-
powered telephone with some isolated wires."

The faces of the remaining three SAS soldiers brightened at the thought but I
was somehow still insecure. "And what you want to do next, when the gate
opens, Arthur?" I asked. "Would we try to kill her, or capture her? And what
if we don't succeed? Should we then run into different directions so that at
least some of us escape and inform the authorities?"

"No killing. Even if it would be, obviously, the cleanest solution bringing no
troubles to anyone in this situation. Let's hope that the responsible
authorities have some kind of protocol how to solve such an intrusion -- if
revealed -- peacefully, to our country's benefit. From what we all have
learned ourselves, it wouldn't be easy to fight her even in five-against-one,
so we would have to organize the attack well, using the moment of surprise to
the maximum, as well as improvised weapons. There are some rusty devices with
iron or wooden handles, let's use them as clubs. The rest we will plan later.
In case of failure - Joe was right - it would be the best to run into
different directions, preferably different valleys, so that at l east one of
us succeeds to inform the authorities in time..."

Also Michael, Phillip and Sharp Eye described -- reluctantly -- how the
giantess had overpowered them during the last night. "I was adamant at the
beginning that we would need at least one real rifle, not just the
tranquilizer ones, but our superiors didn't listen," said Phillip in disgust.
"Even in natural conditions in Africa the park rangers use their tranq guns
only from secure posts like jeeps or copters. The charges are slow and can be
seen in flight and avoided rather easily, and recharging the rifles takes some
time... And that's precisely what happened when we shot at her from twenty
yards' distance once we saw her approaching. She avoided both charges and,
with a few jumps, was on us before we could reload," he finished.

Michael took up after him: "Then, all we could do was to club her with the
rifle butts but it didn't have much effect. After that... you can't imagine
what an advantage it is, in any type of fight, to have arms and legs that
long. Her kicks and punches were neither particularly strong nor fast, but we
simply had no chance to retaliate because our attempts didn't even come into
her range. Once she grabbed us with one hand each and we all fell on the
ground. She put Phillip into an intense hold between her legs with her ankles
crossed; and enveloped me with her arms wrapped twice around my body and both
of my arms. We both twitched and resisted with all our strength for a while
but she then freed one hand and pressed my neck artery and then Phillip's. And
that was all. We simply felt like eight- year-olds trying to fight an adult
all the time."

"Unlike Michael, I first came to when she was still carrying us both, one
under each armpit, over the pass. Almost four hundred pounds total but still
she wasn't even breathing hard... Not even after I started fighting her hold
again, trying to escape. Only by intensifying the press of her arm while still
walking, she disrupted my breathing until I passed out again," finished
Phillip. The memories of Joe the tracker were almost the same in this regard.

After some time we started to feel hungry and went through the small pile of
supplies stolen from the Boy Scout camp. Apart from other food there was a
portable gas cooker and two tubes of coffee and tea so we could boost our
energy balance with caffeine as well. The food was just what could have been
expected in a Boy Scout camp, but we boiled some rice and put some canned meat
into it, to get rid of dire hunger and also to prepare for whatever might
follow afterwards.

Apart from the supplies -- and the ladies' manicure set that went missing on
the night before we arrived to the National Park -- there was even a portable
magnetic chess set, apparently also stolen from the Boy Scout camp, and I
asked my companions if anyone played the game, just to kill the time.
Unfortunately not; Arthur and Phillip barely knew how each piece moved, and
the other two not even that. So I spent some two hours alone silently checking
some strategies for myself, while the SAS guys, working in pairs, once again
tried to untwist the rusty inch-thick iron bar separating us from freedom.
After an hour or so they gave up without success.

It was about three p.m. when Lyudmila finally woke up. She jumped off the heap
of bags in the best mood possible. A waft of thyme smell overpowered us again
as she rose from her improvised bed and stretched her extra long limbs. In the
daylight she was a sight to behold, even if still clad in the dirty and torn
military underwear. Her long and quite slim limbs rippled with lean muscles
with every move and the fair skin upon them was flawless, only with exception
of a few superficial cuts covered in dried blood. Seeing her for the first
time in full daylight, there was no denying that she was beautiful. For better
picture I would mention her close similarity to Maria Stepanova, the former
basketball player and Lyudmila's compatriot. Except that that our captor was
over a foot taller.

She approached us flashing us a wide smile, with the following words that I
was trying to translate as fast as possible: "Hello, boys! Did you sleep well?
Is everything fine with you? I am so happy that I have here an interpreter now
and that I can communicate with you! Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience and
welcome to a nice new day! Did you eat something?"

Just as I tried to come up with a proper answer for all those questions --
totally absurd under the present circumstances -- she cut me short, still
smiling: "Oh, I know, I am a terrible hostess. All those tin cans and hardly
anything else. I promise to do better this evening, so that you don't remember
me that bad after all. I am about to leave you alone for a while and go steal
a sheep, and then we would enjoy some fresh meat for dinner. I am sure that we
all might enjoy a shashlik in Lyudmila's Siberian style." Again, she didn't
wait for our reaction at all, but turned and ran out of the tunnel and out of
our sight.

"No sheep in this valley," said Arthur, finally in full voice after I trans-
lated to him what she meant. "That means she has to go over one of the passes
and thus, she won't be able to hear the explosion. That is fine, just wait
some twenty more minutes to be sure", he added, starting to knead the
explosive with sugar in his hands. Michael, in the meantime, cleaned the
corroded Van de Graaf generator inside the antique telephone set, rejoined the
isolated wires leading from it, and started to revolve the main wheel of the
generator with his hands. It made terrible screeching noises and the work was
visibly very demanding, but after a while a series of small sparks appeared at
the other end of the wires. Arthur put the sugar-laden clay in a semicircle
around the bar, short-circuited the wires and pressed the loose ends of the
wires into the bulk of the explosive.

Michael then started to turn the wheel again and we others retreated to the
end of the tunnel, covering our ears. It took over two minutes and I already
started to think that our plan would not work when there was a sudden loud
explosion, repeated by many strong echoes in the limited space of the tunnel.
We rushed to the gate and, to our relief, the bar twisted around the latch was
indeed broken into two parts. Arthur opened the gate and we all exited the
tunnel to breathe a bit of fresh air outside and to consult about what to do
next. The first action was to send Sharp Eye back to our last camping place to
find at least one of our spare tranquilizer charges: "It's probably our only
chance to immobilise the damned big woman, who apparently has more strength in
just her arms than all of us put together."

"We have to set a trap right at the entrance of the tunnel," said Arthur after
reasoning for a while. "One of us should be hiding under the sleeping bags and
one a few yards nearby, perhaps behind that crag. I myself would take cover in
that rift above the tunnel. If nothing else, my own 250-pound weight falling
from the height of over twelve feet should pin her down. And Joe here, and the
other Joe if he returns in time, would best wait as a last resort back behind
the bars in the tunnel, I think. They should have some improvised clubs ready,
as well as Michael and Phillip. Any other ideas?"

I wasn't quite happy with my position, which could have been described as bait
rather than as a fighter of last resort, and I knew it would be better if I
left immediately and tried to inform the authorities. But I was equally afraid
of the prospect of leaving the tunnel alone, so in the end, I didn't raise my
word against. The three soldiers then took their respective positions -- I
kind of envied Michael who wedged himself into the fragrant bed formerly
occupied by Lyudmila's immense body -- and I sat behind the bars pretending
once again to play chess with myself.

Lyudmila was back long before we expected her, and also before Joe the tracker
returned from the valley where we had spent the horrendous last evening.
Suddenly, we heard soft steps and then I saw her in person approaching the
tunnel barefoot, holding her boots by the laces in one hand and a dead grown
sheep in the other, over her shoulder. She saw me sitting in the partial
darkness behind the bars, smiled at me and said in her musical voice in
Russian: "Hey, gentlemen, I am back with enough fresh meat for dinner for all
of us! Still playing chess with yourself, Joe? I am looking forward to playing
some games with you! But what about your friends? What happened? Are they all
on the toilet?"

Receiving no answer from me (and probably sensing some slight shaking of my
body due to my nervousness), she dropped her cargo from her hands and turned
towards the latch, with her back to her bed where Michael waited, still
standing about a yard out of the tunnel. All three attacks came right away
and, in my opinion, they were perfectly coordinated.

Arthur's massive body fell on her shoulders. At the same moment, Michael hit
her hard just below her left breast with a terrible blow with an inch- thick
iron bar about three feet in length and Phillip came at her from the other
side with a low side kick aimed at her ankles.

Still, all this wasn't enough and this combined attack didn't even succeed in
bringing her to the ground. She bent over in pain but straightened after a few
seconds with Arthur still hanging by his arms around her neck and strangling
her apparently with all of his strength. With a similar side kick that she had
received, only aimed at his mid-section, she threw Phillip about five yards
back through the air, from where he continued rolling down the steep slope
below the mouth of the tunnel, banging his head and legs repeatedly into tree
trunks.

She then raised one hand to her neck, attempting to ease the intense strangle
hold still held by Arthur, and turned towards Michael, who was repeating his
blow with the iron bar, now aimed straight at her face. Her other hand clasped
the bar with a thud, stopping it in mid-air with its end just about an inch in
front of her eyes. The energy of the bar and Michael's force behind it hasn't
affected her a bit, but Michael, having received the force of its suddenly
stopped momentum back into his hands and arms, gave an intense yelp of pain
and let the bar go. She threw it away and, with a fast crescent kick of one
long leg, hit Michael in the shoulder, forcing another loud cry of pain. Yet
he remained standing and immediately tried a counterattack.

Simultaneously, I saw a movement on the opposite side of the tunnel's
entrance; it was Sharp Eye, who was just then returning. He was holding a
tranq charge in his closed fist so that the needle protruded between two of
his fingers (tranq rifle charges lack a piston as they function with high
velocity instead, and he apparently knew he would have to put a lot of force
behind it to make it effective upon contact with the target's skin).

She seemed oblivious to both Michael and Joe, concentrating on removing Arthur
from her neck. But he held his stranglehold with all of his considerable
strength, and after a while her face went seriously red. As a last resort, she
suddenly jumped backwards, slamming Arthur's body forcefully into the bars. He
twitched but maintained his hold and a split second later, Michael and Sharp
Eye attacked in unison.

And that's exactly when, to my horror, Murphy's Law came unexpectedly into
play. Lyudmila managed to take a breath of air as she forced Arthur to ease
his hold for a moment, and her depleted vision returned to normal. Not
watching me and the other Joe at all, she turned sharply towards Michael,
calmly receiving in the process his strong kick to her thigh. At that same
moment, Sharp Eye struck with his needle-holding fist. As a consequence of her
twist, though, the charge emptied not into Lyudmila's unprotected side, but
into Arthur's back! In a few seconds, his hold loosened and he fell to the
ground like a sack of flour.

With her strongest opponent out and our only effective weapon used in vain,
the "clash of Titans" was practically decided. When Michael tried to kick her
again, she caught his foot with one hand and pulled sharply, sending his body
against Sharp Eye, who also lost his footing and fell on the ground. Then
Lyudmila jumped upon them and tackled them on the ground. After some
maneuvering, while they both were still winded from the impact of her immense
and hard body, she had two perfect one-armed headlocks, pressing the front of
their necks firmly against her crouched knees. And now it was their faces
becoming more and more red under the pressure, despite intense pulling exerted
by their four strong arms against Lyudmila's two lean ones.

At several moments I had been tempted to join the fight in some way, but I
also knew that due to my lack of fighting experience and proper training I
would be of a very little help to my military friends. They obviously didn't
even expect any help from my side but now, when the fight was practically
finished, I saw both Michael and Sharp Eye motioning me with their eyes and
silent mouths to flee. I jumped up, opened the latch and, being narrowly
missed by a swing of Lyudmila's ultra long leg, started to run away from the
tunnel as fast as I could without looking back.

After a few yards downhill I saw Phillip in a corner of my eye. He was just
beginning to stir and I hissed at him: "Run, Phillip; run uphill and over the
pass! At least one of us would make it!" And then I was at the belt of dense
shrubbery, and without looking back I plunged into it. After some sixty yards
or so, I expected to see a clear meadow on the other side. But in fact, when I
appeared outside -- bruised all over my face and body and totally exhausted --
the valley floor was covered in boulders and I immediately slipped on one and
twisted my ankle very painfully.

I stood back on my feet in a few seconds, but was only able to limp away now;
my position was obviously hopeless. I wondered how long Lyudmila would need to
finish the remaining three soldiers, lock them inside, and catch me after
following my tracks. And it took her just some two minutes; she emerged from
the shrubs just a few yards behind me, grabbed me wordlessly with one long arm
around my mid-section like a forgotten cloak and started jump-running back to
the tunnel totally unmindful of my 160- pound weight suspended on her single
arm.

When she got there, she stood at the bars and put me down, pinning me
painfully between her long legs so that I couldn't escape again. My companions
were already behind the bars covered in various bruises, but - - with the
exception of Arthur -- conscious and sitting or standing. Opening with great
effort the twist-locked gate, Lyudmila shoved me inside and again, with the
same effort, twisted not one, but two thick iron bars around the latch. Only
then did she kneel on the ground gasping for breath for a while. The gasps
were short and superficial, indicating that at least one of her ribs was
broken. Apart from some new superficial cuts on her pale skin, this was
probably the only damage we inflicted on her with our combined forces.

After a while she straightened again and looked at us through the bars,
watching us with a stern glance for a while. "Kromye sluchayev apsolyutnoy
neopchodimosti..." she murmured to herself repeatedly. I already took a breath
intending to translate it to my comrades, as has gradually become my duty, but
suddenly I froze when I understood the meaning of the words. "Unless
absolutely necessary..." those were the words she had used upon our first
encounter the previous day, when assuring me she had meant no harm to any of
us.

It seemed to me then that the same expression was contained in the commands
she had received from her superiors while being sent into action. And now she
was probably considering whether the conditions were fulfilled or not... with
the obvious results for us, her momentary captives!

After a few seconds her stare fell on, of all possible things, the chessboard
still lying open near the bars, unaffected by the recent fight. "Who is the
best chess player among you; is it you, Joe?" she asked now in an icy tone. I
nodded, as it was obviously true, realizing in the same moment with dread what
terrible kind of responsibility I have probably just assumed.

"Then set up the chessboard and put it close to the bars. We will play one
game; a decisive one, I would say," she sneered coldly. "You don't mind if I
take white and go first?" And she lay on the ground on her belly so that her
beautiful, but now so menacing face was just a foot from the grille, extending
her hand through the gap between the bars and moving the white King's pawn two
squares ahead.

to be concluded