Border Guards

"Come along ladies!" the forty-something chaperone urged her group of six coeds as they straggled out of the cabins into the warm and muggy pre-dawn air of the tropics. "You don't want to miss our bus or you'll have to walk to Columbia," she coaxed them, clapping her hands. "Now ladies, now! Get your butts on the bus!"

Two of the coeds glanced at each other, their backs bowed under the heavy packs of hiking and camping gear and sports equipment. "Slave driver," one muttered as they walked barefooted from their cabin. "Yes, Mistress Virgin-ya," the other muttered sarcastically and giggled. "You don't really think she's still a virgin, do you?" the second one asked. The other shook her head. "No way! She's been married at least twice and I've met one of her recent lovers," the first girl whispered. "A hunk," she glanced over her shoulder and motioned for her roommate to come closer. "And I've seen the coach naked, and for a woman her age, she's got a killer bod," she divulged conspiratorially. "Where'd you see her naked?" the other asked. "My secret, roomie. That's my secret," she answered with a grin.

"Today ladies," Virginia announced like a drill sergeant. "We've got a hundred miles to go before we can make the connection to the boat and our river cruise to the interior. You signed on to develop a team spirit and go mountaineering, so let's see some of that teamwork."

Virginia was an experienced tri-athlete and mountaineer, trained in survival and she'd had been hired to train a competitive team of women marksmen. Part of the weight of their sports equipment was the disassembled weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Part of their training was to rappel and belay mountain faces and run rivers, while accurately taking down targets. It was a sport designed by a former Green Beret to challenge civilians that had developed a small, but ardent group of supporters, some of whom were pushing for its recognition as a legitimate competitive sport. One former Green Beret colonel -herself one of only a handful of women officers to get through the rigorous jump-school, ranger and survival training programs -- had sponsored this women's team. Two mixed gender European teams had been formed and an Australian all-girls team was expected to join the competition in the mountains of Ecuador in two months. The mountains of Colombia were as close as the team could get to the weather conditions and geological features of the Northern Andes as the competition rules permitted.

Among the six coeds were four athletes and two support team members. The shooters were all in good condition, two were former gymnasts and two were swimmers. All four had good upper body strength and balance. Each of them was attractive in a healthy outdoorsy way, but like many gym rats a couple of them lacked basic social skills. The two cutest girls were sneaking into each other's bed out of convenience; the relationship was nothing more than good, convenient, no-hassle sex. One of the support team, an administrative assistant the other girls called 'ad-sis', was a cousin of the lead shooter and while she had a very pretty face, she was about twenty-five pounds overweight. For some the distribution of the extra pounds made her voluptuous. For others, Virginia included, the extra pounds made her a drag on the progress of the group; she just didn't have the stamina to keep up. Virginia had been after her since the trip started two weeks before. "Keep up, Jasmine. Hurry up, Jasmine. Let's go, Jasmine. Come on, Jasmine." Those phrases had become a group joke, even with Jasmine.

Jasmine was twenty, with shoulder length blonde hair, grapefruit sized boobs and wide round hips, her torso was a model of 18th Century sexuality. Unfortunately for Jasmine, she was living in the 21st Century and thin was in, but her doe-like brown eyes and easy going style drew people to her, men and women alike. Jasmine was just as willing to cuddle with either sex and so long as they liked her, she'd do what she could to make them happy in return. This morning, she was struggling to haul her own gear - instead of weapons she carried the logbooks, manuals and two laptop computers used to monitor progress of each shooter. The other girls had nicknamed her Jazz because she liked to listen to it on her portable CD player and because she often described her role 'as keeping tabs on everyone and all that jazz.' Jazz pulled up on her jeans with one hand and lifted the shoulder straps away from her boobs with the other as she plodded across the wide lawn from the cabins to the parking area.

The other support person was a feminine young man named Rigoberto, a Cuban-American who was selected for his nurse's aid training skills, his command of Spanish, and his willingness to live and work as the only male at the bottom of the totem pole below six women. He seemed to love it. He was tall and slender but very strong for his size and he was the first one to the "tourismo" bus at 4 AM and was standing on the roof helping the driver pack the teams' gear. Virginia smiled up at him and he smiled back, knowing that she could - and would - look right up the gap of his hiking shorts and see his 'personal gear' as he liked to call it. So far, four of the young women had been 'exposed' and none had accepted the offer, which didn't seem to bother Rigoberto at all. Most of the girls, Virginia included, figured his forwardness was overcompensation for his real sexual preference. Everyone treated him like 'one of the girls' up to a point; they wouldn't shower with him or share their bunks with him. But like most athletes they often found comfort in doing personal things with their teammates. For lady athletes, isolated and in a rigorous international training regimen, sometimes those were very personal things.

Virginia glanced at her reflection in the tinted windows of the fifteen-passenger Toyota microbus. Her long brown hair was prematurely gray, which she'd dyed silver, pulled back and tied in a bun that gave her the look of a librarian, especially when she was seated behind her portable worktable wearing her glasses and working in the logbooks. She had a great figure, worked out everyday either swimming or running or lifting weights, sometimes all three. Her legs were sleek, muscular and tanned and her butt a firm volleyball shape. She inhaled and winked at her image. "Now if there was just a real man around," she said teasingly to herself. She hoped that one of the other teams had a stud for a coach who wasn't getting his horns trimmed by his athletes. But another two months without a good fuck? It was going to be tempting to see what Rigoberto might actually be able to do with his 'personal gear.' Then again, she could always find one her young women who was more than willing to keep the coach in a good mood. "Ah, well," she sighed and turned her attention back to the last of the girls. "Jasmine, I'm just going to have to beat a few of those pounds of your cute butt so you can keep up!"

"Promises, promises," Jazz stuck out her tongue as she reached the bus, shrugged out of her pack harness and stood with her hands on her hips. "Oh, Rigo," she said in her best Scarlet O'Hara imitation. "Darlin' could you help poor little ole me?"

Rigoberto nearly slipped off the roof hurrying to climb down to do her bidding. Virginia chuckled to herself when Jazz brushed her hair back, smoothed her hands over her ample bosom and tucked her tee shirt into the loose waistband of her jeans. He easily tossed the bulky pack up to the Texas-born Mexican driver and then climbed back up to help secure the load and to cover it with a green, waterproof tarp.

"See, Mz Virginia," Jasmine said holding her jeans out from the curve of her belly, exposing a wide gap of pale white skin and the waistband of baby blue bikini panties. "These britches were tight when I left Memphis." Her fingers slipped under the waistband and tickled across the top of her panties. She was looking right at Virginia as she mock-masturbated.

"You should have done that earlier," Virginia said flatly nodding at Jasmine's hand as it strayed lower down into the gap of between her legs. "But if playing with yourself in public turns you on, girl, just be careful about where you are when you submit to the urge." Virginia reached out, firmly gripped Jasmine by the wrist and pulled her hand out of her jeans. She spun her around, slapped her on her butt and pushed her towards the door to the van. "Now get that butt in a seat."

Virginia noticed that Rigo was watching intently when she slapped Jasmine's butt. The force of the blow surprised both women. Virginia was surprised when her hand stung and she looked down to see the redness on her palm. Her hand tingled up to her elbow and it felt strangely erotic. Jasmine was surprised at how warm it made her butt feel. The initial shock quickly wore off and left an erotic tingling that she was thinking about as she slumped in her seat, pulled her knees to her chest to hide the rapidly hardening nipples. She braced her knees on the back of the seat in front of her and closed her eyes fantasizing what it might be like to let Virginia spank a few pounds away.

Virginia and her six coeds each had a double seat to themselves. Rigoberto sat up front next to the driver, separated by the motor and the communications console built into the van. The owner of the van had 'loaned' it to the Green Beret colonel as his part of sponsoring the team and it was equipped like a military recon vehicle with compass, altimeter, three different radios and even a GPS locator. Everyone settled into the comfortable seats, most staring out at the darkness. Jasmine appeared to be napping. Two of the girls were curled up at the back of the bus, their bare feet touching intimately in the aisle. The others were reading or writing their private journals under the tiny overhead halogen spots designed for that purpose.

Two hours later after two detours around a washed out bridge and another with a broken down bus on it, plus a fifteen minute wait for a bull to decide to give up his space on the dirt road they used to get from the weekend, lakefront camp to the highway, the otherwise uneventful trip pulled into a roadside restaurant for breakfast just as the sun was climbing over the treetops. Two young dark skinned girls behind the counter and kitchen window were looking at the group and shaking their heads. They still weren't used to groups of women - even they discounted the presence of Rigoberto - traveling alone in Central America. No one, not even the driver picked up a local paper or they would have known that skirmishes had broken out in the nearby provinces between so-called freedom fighters, who were mostly narco-traffickers who wanted to be left alone, and the local militia. Not that knowing the government had called for increased security along its porous border with Columbia would have altered their plans. They had a goal to be in Ecuador training in two days, and in two days they expected to be there.

The girls finished their meals of eggs, rice and beans and trudged across the broken pavement of the normally very busy road to process their passports and present their international athletic credentials for passage into Columbia. A powerfully built black woman in a multi-colored skirt and yellow blouse that left her pierced navel exposed was pacing back and forth watching the group. Another younger, slender black girl with loose unfettered breasts that swayed under her NYPD tee shirt as she walked was providing them with one-dollar 'municipal tax stamps' and a gap-toothed, silver haired scrawny old man was selling the $5 tourist visas. The girls were pleased that the process seemed so simple and since they were the first ones to the windows when they opened, they were joking and pushing and playing as they headed back to the bus.

The driver started the bus, pulled out onto the highway and drove less than a hundred meters and stopped in front of a triangular shaped building. He got out of the bus, stepped inside and disappeared behind the drapes of the office window facing the street. He hoped to try to clear the luggage with charm and a little 'mordita' (a bite) as the locals called the common practice of bribing low-level officials to do what they were supposedly paid to do. He returned shaking his head and he and Rigo climbed up onto the roof, loosened the tarp and began to hand down the packs to the grumbling girls. They'd been through five or six border crossings since starting their journey and each one seemed to be more of a pain and pointless harassment to folks used to driving thousands of miles across state lines without so much as a 'hello how are ya?' from the authorities. They had no appreciation of national borders or the interest of small nation states to stand their ground and jealously defend their right to decide who came and went in and out of their country.

Virginia admired the tall, husky black man wearing a black tee shirt with a DFA logo, snug fitting black jeans, and a NY Yankees baseball cap came out of the building with a small dog which sniffed at the bags, knocking over one of them and pawing at it. The man had a smile like Samuel L. Jackson that disarmed everyone, and Virginia momentarily wished she had more time to make friends. He asked a question in a mix of Patois and Spanish, which sounded like a strange blend of French and English. They knew he wanted to know who was the owner of the bag. Jasmine raised her hand.

"Bring the bag in here," he said is simple English. When Virginia stepped towards the building he put his hand out and blocked her way. "Alone," he said firmly.

"Now see here, young man," Virginia had managed to intimidate most of the Latin men she'd challenged up to now, so she felt like she was on a roll. "I'm the coach and the responsible adult supervision of this group of athletes and we have special visas authorizing us to carry our equipment. I demand to know what you are planning to do with my team member. And I insist on being present when you interview her," Virginia announced confidently. She was unprepared for the impact of her bravado on this man. Usually her physical charms were enough to gain respect, but not this morning.

"Then I guess I'll just have to inspect your stuff too," he said firmly. "Bring your gear in here," he barked and spun around on his heel and held the door partially open.

Rigoberto carried Virginia's pack to the doorway, but the border guard pushed him aside. "Let the boss-woman carry her own gear," he hissed and Rigo scurried back to the safety of the group.

Virginia hoisted the back easily to her shoulder, straightened her back and strode past him into the private room. She saw a small metal desk against one wall, a torn hospital privacy screen standing across the apex of the triangular shaped room and a red "x" painted in the middle of the floor. The room smelled like a dirty back roads gas station bathroom and what little air passed through the narrow windows at the ceiling did nothing to change the scent. She turned and stood proudly, then smiled politely. He was such a hunk, she thought. Too bad he's into his machismo mode this morning; I'd like to see what's under those jeans.

"Put your bag on the table, unlock it, open it and step back. Don't move from the "X" unless you're told to," he said as he pushed the door closed.

So, you're gonna keep up the hard ass attitude even when we're alone, she thought. Okay, cowboy, if that's the way it. Virginia though she heard the door lock snap shut as she spun the two combination locks and released them. She opened the halves of the bag. She pushed the locks closed with a defiant snap and folded open the interior cover on one side of the black bag. The guard stood waiting, his arms folded across his strong chest. Virginia realized he was waiting for her to step onto the mark and did so.

He stepped to the desk and began to slide his hands under all the clothes and into each pocket. As he began unzipping the side pockets a door behind her opened and Virginia heard someone else step into the room. The heavy footsteps approached her and she twisted at the waist and saw the large black woman who'd been pacing outside. "Buenos dias," Virginia said pleasantly, relived to have a woman in the room with her.

"Take off your sneakers please," the woman said. Virginia untied the $200 pair of sports shoes and handed them to the woman who looked carefully at them, poking her fingers inside and removing the laces and folding back the tops. She sniffed them and then tossed the shoes into the corner. "Your socks, please." Virginia pulled her thick soled hiking socks off and handed them to over. The concrete floor was gritty and damp on the soles of her bare feet. A small sharp edge sent a chill up her leg. The woman turned the socks inside out, sniffed them and tossed them onto the shoes. "Your blue jeans, please."

"Now wait a minute," Virginia complained.

The border guard stopped his searching of the interior compartments of her bag, leaned back against the wall, and folded his arms over his chest again. Virginia could see the muscles of his forearms twitching and the clenching of his jaw muscles warned her not to object. She briefly imagined she was stripping for him, enticing him, and seducing him. She unsnapped her button, pulled down the zipper and wriggled the jeans down over her hips, past her knees and stepped out of them. She handed the denims over and adjusted the crotch of her beige bikini panties with her finger tips and silently cursed to herself about letting her pubic hair trimming be one of the things she'd given up in the interests of getting back to nature.

The matron pulled all the pockets inside out, dumping out the coins and bills and credit cards into a plastic box then she inspected each seam and studied the jeans as if she were trying to memorize the design techniques. She tossed the jeans onto the pile in the corner. "Your shirt, please."

Virginia unbuttoned the military-style blue shirt and handed it to the matron, and folded her arms loosely under her breasts, then realized she was lifting them and the gesture might be mistaken as some kind of come-on, so she dropped her arms to her sides. As an athlete, Virginia had stood practically naked for medical inspection before, but this was different. This was intimidation, plain and simple. She bit her tongue to keep from complaining and making it worse. The matron opened each of the dozen pockets and sub pockets and emptied the film canisters, tissues, pens and postcards into the box. Virginia was aware that perspiration was running down her ribcage and her inner thighs but she refused to wipe at it. She was reminded of the motivational speaker's adage: never let them see you sweat!

The border guard emptied one side of the large bag onto the table and searched carefully along each edge for secret compartments.

"Your bra, please," the matron said and held out her hand. A moment later Virginia felt her breasts settle slightly and the warm air brush across her nipples. She folded her arms protectively across her chest while the matron inspected each seam in the sports bra. She tossed the bra onto the pile and held out her hand. Virginia pushed her beige panties down over her hips and handed them over. "Hands on the top of your head, please," the matron said as she studied the now-naked woman. The matron ran her fingers over the crotch of the panties and smiled. She nodded to her partner. "Senora complains and makes ugly sounds," she said in broken English. "But her nipples are hard and there's a wet spot in her panties," she added in a strong voice that Virginia knew was meant to carry outside to the group.

The matron tossed the panties to the border guard who ran his finger over the crotch and nodded then tossed them onto the pile. "Keep your hands on your head and don't move, Senora," the border guard said flatly. "The matron has her orders. Do not interfere. Do you understand?"