Black wind

into the chair facing him.
    “Hello, Joe. Be a friend and buy me a drink?” she purred.

“Glad to,” Catana stammered in reply. She was definitely in a different league from the normal A-Town hookers, he thought, and not the type that caters to enlisted servicemen. But who was he to argue? If the heavens intended to drop this creature in his lap on payday, then good fortune was indeed smiling his way.
    It took only one quick beer before the harlot invited him back to her hotel room. Catana was pleasantly surprised that the woman didn’t wrangle about price, or, in fact, mention it at all, he thought oddly.
    She led him to a cheap motel nearby, where they walked arm in arm down its seedy hallway that was complete with red lights. At the end of the hall, the woman unlocked the door to a small, hot corner room. Sleep wasn’t the major draw of the room, Catana could see, as evidenced by a condom machine mounted near the bed.
    After closing the door, the woman quickly stripped off her top, then embraced Catana in a deep, passionate kiss. He paid little attention to a noise near the closet as he soaked in the warmth of the exotic woman, intoxicated by a combination of her beauty, the alcohol,
    and the expensive perfume she wore. His pleasurable delirium was suddenly jolted by a sharp jab to his buttocks, followed by a hot, searing pain. Whirling unsteadily around, he was shocked to find himself facing another man in the room. The stocky bald man grinned a crooked smile through his long mustache, his dark cold eyes seeming to penetrate right through Catana’s skull. In his hands, he held a fully depressed hypodermic needle.
    Pain and confusion overwhelmed Catana as his body suddenly went numb. He tried to raise his hands but his limbs were useless. Even his lips refused to cooperate with his brain in voicing a cry of protest. It took just a few seconds before a wave of blackness rolled over him and all feeling departed his senses.
    It was hours later when the incessant pounding jarred him from a state of unconsciousness. The pounding was not in his head, as he first imagined, but came externally, from the motel room door. He noticed a warm stickiness enveloping him as he fought to clear the fog from his vision. Why the pounding? Why the wetness? The dimly lit room and cobwebs in his mind refused to reveal the mystery..
    The banging ceased for a moment, then a loud blow struck the door, bashing it open with a flood of light. Squinting through the brightness, he saw a company of policemen storm into the room, followed by two men with cameras. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden infusion of light, he was able to notice what the wetness was around him.
    Blood. It was everywhere: on the sheets, on the pillows, and smeared all over his body. But mostly it was pooled about the prone figure of the nude woman lying dead beside him.
    Catana instinctively lurched back from the body in shock at the sight of the corpse. As two of the policemen pulled him off the bed and handcuffed his wrists, he cried out in horror.
    “What happened? Who did this?” he said in a daze.
    He looked on in shock as a third policeman pulled back a sheet partially covering the woman, fully exposing a body that had been brutally mutilated. To Catana’s further bewilderment, he saw that the body was not that of the beautiful woman he had met the night before but rather was of a young girl whom he did not know.
    Catana sagged as he was dragged out of the room amid a flurry of photographs. By noon that day, the story of the rape and savage murder of a thirteen-year-old Korean girl by a U.S. serviceman was a countrywide horror. By evening, it had become a national outrage. And by the time of the girl’s funeral two days later, it was a full-blown international incident.
    The high noonday sun shimmered brightly off the sapphire waters of the Bohol Sea, forcing Raul Biazon to squint as he gazed toward the large research vessel moored in the distance. For a moment, the Philippine government biologist thought the sun’s rays were playing a trick on his eyes. No respectable scientific research ship could possibly be emblazoned in such a lively hue. But as the small weather-beaten launch in which he rode drew closer, he saw that there was nothing wrong with his vision. The ship was in fact painted a glistening turquoise blue from stem to stern, which made the vessel appear as if it belonged under the sea rather than bobbing atop it. Leave it to the Americans,