Chapter 1 (part 1)

[chilly658]

85 Levels of Deception

Very rarely are things exactly as they appear to be,
The mind sees what the mind chooses to see....

1
Indonesia, Saturday July 23rd 2012

The battered old green military truck kicked up a cloud of dust as it sped around the dirt track roads of the Indonesian island and it's dusty green canvas roofed back danced from side to side in tune to each and every bump that the wheels found on the dusty and uneven road.

Although the truck was heading toward a secret Indonesian army base it was not from this country, it had earlier that day disembarked from the Australian cargo vessel The Indigo which was now docked at the southern port of Binamu for the next five days.

The truck, like it's owner was from Spain, Miguel Sanchez was from the small town of Soria, west of Saragossa and north east of the city of Madrid.

Miguel was thirty nine years of age and stood at five feet eight inches in height with a head of full black Spanish hair which was greasy, and he sported a thick black bushy moustache above his top lip.

Miguel wiped beads of sweat from his brow as the mid day Indonesian Sun baked the rusty pale green cab of his truck, it had been the hottest Indonesian summer for seventy years.

He was not a well built man but managed his truck expertly around the twists and turns of the dirt track roads on this perilous mountainous trip, a trip he had made a hundred times before today.

Around thirty five minutes ago the truck had passed through the small town of Pasangkaju on the eastern coastal road of the island so Miguel knew that they were close but the road for  this last twenty minutes was by far the most dangerous, one of the reasons that the undisclosed army barracks was situated in Banawa was because it was so difficult to get to and therefore just as difficult to overrun, but it's main purpose was to defend the city port of Palu just north east of the barracks if Malaysia ever did decide to invade and Palu would be the first target without a doubt.

The two countries had been at a stand to for two decades now and the Indonesian army was on a permanent state of red alert.

Miguel Sanchez peered through the bug smeared windscreen and concentrated on the dust climb ahead of him but suddenly his front right wheel found a large boulder at the side of the road which sent the truck skidding across to top of a high ridge and Miguel almost lost his truck and his cargo but managed to correct the wheels and the truck began to travel on it's correct route.

There were three heavy thuds now coming from the back of the truck, a fist thumping on the back of his dusty green cab.  "Miguel tener cuidado idiota!"    A muffled woman's voice could be heard.   "Miguel be careful you idiot!"   

In the back of the truck beneath the dancing canvas roofed shelter Theresa Sanchez, Miguel's thirty five year old wife sat back down on the wooden bench which thankfully for her was bolted down onto the steel floor and it was the second time that he had almost killed her today.

She slid across the wooden seat on her backside and pulled the canvas flap see see if she could determine roughly where they were on the island as she too had been here many times before and the terrain was familiar to her.

Theresa Sanchez was a plump woman who stood at five feet and six inches tall with a main of jet black hair tied back into a tight pony tail high at the back of her head.

She was wearing a khaki short sleeved military style shirt with the top three buttons unfastened with a dirty black vest underneath, knee length green cotton shorts and her faithful beige desert style boots with equally dirty white socks visible at the tops.

She released the flap which returned the back of the truck to it's relatively shaded condition and then slid back across the seat to where she had been sitting prior to her husband almost throwing her from the truck thanks to the rock in the road.

Once she had recomposed herself Theresa looked down on the floor to the cargo that she and her husband were transporting to the barracks in Banawa. 'La Ganado'  She called them with no emotion.  'The Livestock.'

Laying on the steel floor of the truck were three women all with blonde hair and all of them had their hands tightly tied behind their backs with red rope and tied also just above the knees and again by their ankles tied very tightly together.

Two of the bound women were unconscious, wearing dirty white paper masks which had been doused with Chloroform to keep them completely sedated for the trip but one, the closest to Theresa had her mask removed prior to the beginning of this trip from The Indigo in the southern port and the mask had been replaced with a strip of silver coloured extra strong duct tape, but she was conscious and looking up at Theresa Sanchez with utter disdain.

Early that morning Theresa had been standing in front of the large black steel cage where the three women had been kept in the same unconscious state since leaving the UK sixty one days ago but she, Theresa Sanchez had a streak of sadism inside of her and often roused one of her captives for long journeys, to taunt on the drive to their final destination and she had chosen this woman for this trip and had removed her mask and replaced it with the duct tape before she had finally woken.
And now Theresa had been having her fun, satisfying her own sadistic needs and the blonde woman was completely helpless, all she could do was hear what Theresa graphically described would happen to her and her two sleeping travelling companions when they arrived at Banawa.

The blonde woman had no idea which country Banawa was in, she had already figured out that they were no longer in or anywhere near the UK because the last thing she remembered England was that it was cloudy and she had been pruning her prize rose bushes in the garden and yet here it was stifling hot and very dusty.

She looked down to see that she was still wearing the same beige shorts, black T shirt and brown sandals that she had been wearing in her garden on that morning but everything from that moment that she was walking back in through her kitchen door is vague.

She scowled up at Theresa Sanchez and the Spaniard taunted her once again.  "In Banawa they love the blonde hair of European girls."  She told the blonde.  "You will have many, many lovers there."  Theresa added with her Spanish accent clearly evident and the blonde considered that maybe they were in fact in Spain.

The truck bounced off another rock but this time kept it's course although Theresa stared at the back of the cab with disdain and cursed her husband under her breath.

Miguel caught a glimpse of the white roof tops at Banawa as the truck struggled to the apex of a hill and the roof tops disappeared again as they now rolled down the other side toward the long straight where the optical illusion would occur as it always did and he removed his foot from the accelerator, allowing the engine of the four tonne truck to roll down, earning a temporary well earned rest until it reached the bottom and they were now at the beginning of the long straight road to Banawa to offload the cargo.

On the long straight road ahead Miguel put his foot down onto the accelerator, all the way to the floor and then the optical illusion occurred as it did every time he made this trip.

Suddenly right in front of him, three large white rooftops seemed to climb up from beneath the ground and grow in front of his eyes but of course they didn't come up from the ground and he knew that, the long straight road to Banawa was on a slight incline and so the buildings as he neared just rose up in front of him, an illusion that Miguel always enjoyed witnessing because it meant the end of his journey, they could unload the cargo, get paid and begin the seven hour drive back to Binamu in the south of the island and back on board the Indigo.

Thirty feet from the large white iron closed gates Miguel took his foot off once again and allowed the truck to slow down before he eventually applied the brakes and halted it.