The Daughters of Artemis Part 4a
By Utrea
Operation Columbia


The Artemis agents now moved inland. They followed a track, cut into the rain
forest. It was wide enough to drive a truck along and it meandered as it
climbed up into the hills. Amanda led the way. The blonde English girl carried
a crossbow, black, made of carbon fibre and fitted with a night scope, through
which she peered. The darkness of the jungle was penetrated by the eerie green
glow of the scope as the operatives made their way towards Lopez' stronghold.
The track began to widen and realising that they were close, Amanda and her
Russian partner, Natalya, moved back into the rain forest to complete their
journey. At last the dense jungle foliage came to an abrupt end and the girls
found themselves staring at the high stone walls which marked the perimeter of
the Skorpion leader's fortress. They skirted the jungle's edge until they were
in a position looking onto the main gate. Two guards stood before the huge
wooden doors, recessed into the wall, Kalashnikovs in hand. They were dressed
in the same green fatigues as the soldiers the girls had neutralised on the
beach had been wearing. Another two guards circulated along ramparts at the
top of the wall. Moving in opposite directions, it took each man twenty
minutes to complete his patrol. From inside the compound, which lay beyond the
walls a wooden guard tower, soared upwards. Every now and then, the soldier in
the tower would switch on a powerful searchlight cutting through the dark and
transforming anywhere the beam touched into daylight.

Amanda and Natalya shed their equipment packs and as the blonde girl was
loading a bolt into her crossbow, so the dark haired Russian selected her
weapon. It was one of her favourites, not standard Artemis equipment, but
none-the-less devastating in her hands. Amanda saw what her partner had
selected and rolled her eyes comically at her friends' indulgence.

"What's the matter with you"? Natalya said with mock petulance, "Can't a girl
have a little fun"? She then became serious and said " I'll take him on the
right. Give me five minutes to get into position. I'll wait for you to act
first".

"Ok. Good luck", the blonde replied.

"Darling", Natalya said, stroking her weapon "With this in my hands, it is he
who will need the good luck".

The Russian girl kept just inside the jungle's edge as she set off on a course
parallel to the fortress wall. When she was sure that she was out of the sight
of the gate guards, she emerged from the jungle foliage, checked that the
neither guards on the rampart were there and sprinted the thirty metres of
dead ground that separated the rain forest's edge from the stone wall. Her one
piece black catsuit made of supple but durable leather provided her cover in
the dark and the rubber soles of her knee high, black leather boots ensured
her approach was silent. On reaching the wall undetected, the tall, lithe
Russian began to make her way back to the two gate guards. Both guards were
out of sight within the recess and for that, Natalya was grateful as it made
her approach that much easier. She reached the edge, crouched down and took a
quick look around the corner. It only took a few milliseconds but it was all
she needed to imprint on her mind the exact positions of the two soldiers. She
stood and glanced briefly toward the rain forest. She couldn't see Amanda but
knew that the blonde could see her and she readied herself for action.

Amanda, seeing her friend stand just to the left of the recess waited until
the guards on the rampart had passed before settling the sights of her
crossbow onto the gate guard nearest Natalya. She focused the cross hairs onto
her victim, steadied her breathing and pulled the trigger. The tungsten
tipped, carbon fibre bolt, flew through the air and struck him in the throat.
The power of the blow jerked the guard backwards off his feet and there was a
dull thud as the tip of the bolt struck the wooden gate, impaling him against
it. The guard's feet, barely touching the ground, kicked out as he slowly
choked. His hands were around the shaft of the bolt in a futile attempt to
remove it from his throat.

The short time that the remaining Skorpion soldier had to live was spent in a
whirlwind of confusion. He gaped in astonishment at the predicament of his
comrade, and then whirled in alarm as he caught movement out of the corner of
his eye. He turned to see Amanda break cover and started to raise the
Kalashnikov toward the charging buxom blonde.

At the same time that Amanda started her run, so Natalya commenced her attack.
Stepping round the corner, she raised her right hand and threw it forward.
Fifteen feet of supple leather bullwhip hissed through the air toward the
soldier. The end of the whip wrapped itself a couple of times round the stock
of the Skorpion man's assault rifle The Russian girl then jerked her arm back,
snatching the weapon out of her adversary's hands sending it spinning into the
jungle. He opened his mouth to shout a warning but before he could utter so
much as a sound, Natalya was sending the whip forward again. Her aim was
deadly accurate as she directed her bullwhip around the neck of her victim. As
the end of the weapon wrapped around his throat twice, the Artemis agent
yanked her end, tightening it and unbalancing the guard made him fall to his
knees. His beautiful assailant stepped forward and wrapped a third length of
leather around his neck, just to make sure that he wouldn't wriggle free. The
man's mouth opened and closed like a goldfish as Natalya strangled him He
pawed at the taut leather between he and the girl, hoping either to alleviate
her killing pressure, or to wrest the whip from her grip. He succeeded in
neither. Instead, the athletic brunette gripped her end of the weapon with
both hands and planting her right booted foot against his chest for leverage,
hauled back as hard as she could. All the choking soldier could do was stare
up at his killer with frightened, pleading eyes. Natalya merely stared back at
him with her cool blue ones. A smile played at the corners of her mouth as she
noted her victim's face had begun to darken. The Russian recognised the signs
of the stages of strangulation; she had executed enough enemy agents using the
method, to be something of an expert. It was her preferred method of
dispatching her opponents. Sure, she was deadly with all manner of weapons,
but there was something that never ceased to give her a thrill with an
up-close and personal kill using little more than her strength. The pleasure
she derived was sensual and on occasions, orgasmic as, through a combination
of deadly skill and surprise, she was able to overpower and destroy much
larger and stronger men. The Russian knew that her blonde friend shared her
passion.

While Natalya was throttling the life out of her victim, Amanda reached them.
She glanced briefly at her friend and then turned her attention to the guard
impaled on the gate. He was far from dead and the assassin noted that
miraculously, the crossbow bolt had not penetrated anything vital. In fact she
had performed a kind of tracheotomy on him, as the soldier's weight being
suspended from his neck, had opened up his airway. Although her shot had
crushed his voicebox rendering him unable to scream or call for help and he
was stuck fast against the wooden gate, he was very much alive and kicking.
The soldier's legs were flailing, his feet desperately searching some purchase
to relieve the pressure on his neck. His face screwed up into a grimace told
Amanda that he was in considerable discomfort.

"We can't have that", she murmured as she approached him. She placed the palm
of her right hand against his chin, grabbing the back of his head with the
left. Smiling, she said, "I can't bear to see dumb animals suffer" and began
to twist his head to the left. The soldiers eyes opened wide in alarm as he
realised the beautiful blonde's intention and his mouth tried to say "No!"
only no sound came out. His head was being twisted slowly but surely in the
girl's hands and he was powerless to stop her. He stopped trying to remove the
crossbow bolt and his hands grabbed at her wrists, but Amanda had the
leverage, which proved superior to the man's raw strength. He tried to kick at
her and Amanda countered this by standing between his legs, her leather clad
crotch, pushed tight against his, pinning him. The girl felt the tension in
her victim's neck as he tried to resist her but slowly and surely she twisted
his head further and further.

The guard was now looking over his left shoulder, the tendons and muscles in
his neck screaming as they began to tear and separate. He was then looking
past his shoulder at the wooden gate when he was aware of a grating sensation
in his neck and suddenly all the pain vanished.

At the same time Amanda felt all resistance to her efforts disappear as his
neck broke. The blonde could have ended the guard's life much quicker but
there would have been too great a risk of someone hearing the sound as she
snapped his neck, so she had had to do it slowly and methodically. Instead the
soldier's demise had been heralded with nothing more than a muted grisly
popping. Amanda now twisted his head through one hundred and eighty degrees
until she had succeeded in severing the man's spinal cord. His hands
immediately fell away from her wrists and his entire body shuddered once then
went limp. She released his head and it untwisted to hang limply down, chin on
chest. The English agent felt against his neck for a pulse. There wasn't one.
The very moment Amanda had severed his spinal cord, the Skorpion soldier's
brain had stopped telling his heart to beat and his lungs to breath. All he
could do was hang paralysed from the crossbow bolt and wait for death to claim
him. It didn't take long.

Natalya tugged on her end of the bullwhip, not allowing her victim any
respite, her foot planted firmly on his chest held him in place. The soldier's
eyes bugged out from his head, his tongue protruded from his mouth and spittle
ran down his chin. He had tried everything to escape the Russians lethal hold,
at one point grabbing at the shapely, leather clad leg in an attempt to
unbalance her but it was no good. Natalya, looking down on her victim,
imagined what was going on in his airless world and began to feel a familiar
stirring in her loins as she realised that she was probably going to orgasm
before she had dispatched the Skorpion man. The sensations within her grew
just as the life in her victim ebbed. She had to bite her lower lip to keep
from moaning as the orgiastic waves of pleasure washed over her as she came.
It coincided almost exactly with the guard's death. His hands fell limply to
his sides and the bulging eyes glazed over and stared sightlessly from his
purple face. Natalya removed her foot from his chest and he fell to the
ground. Quickly she unwound the stranded leather from the strangled man's
neck, coiled the bullwhip and clipped it onto her utility belt. She turned to
Amanda, her face still flushed from her exertions and of course, her orgasm.

"I recommend that you try that", she told the blonde, "It was wonderful".

Amanda smiled at her friend, "I might just do that before this night is over.
In the meantime do you mind if we get back to work?"

The brunette shot Amanda her look of mock petulance and replied, "I suppose
so".

Whilst Natalya had been pleasuring herself at the expense of the guard, the
English girl had been monitoring the progress of the two sentries on the
parapet. She had fitted a bolt with a grappling attachment into the crossbow.
When Amanda had calculated that the two soldiers were out of earshot, she took
aim and fired. The bolt flew up into the night and over the wall taking with
it a length of nylon rope, rapidly uncoiling at the girl's feet. When it had
landed on the parapet, the blonde pulled on the rope dragging the grappling
hook back until it wedged between two of the crenellations at the top of the
wall. She pulled the rope taut, tested it with her weight and began to climb.

To be continued.