Authors: Sandra Hill
“That is so chauvinist,” she said, but he could
tell by the little smile she flashed at him that she was pleased. She must like
the idea of being his woman. But, no, he was soon relieved of that opinion when
she added, “If I were your woman, you couldn’t be gay.”
Gay, gay, gay! I am sick up to
my fangs of the subject.
“You have a point there.”
Now can we drop the subject?
Slick yelled out, “Everyone, stand ready. Two
minutes.”
Followed soon by “One minute.”
“Thirty seconds.”
Just then, the helo went into hover mode, the doors
slid open on either side, and Slick waved his hand, motioning for everyone else
to come forward. “Are we good to go?”
They all answered with a resounding “Hoo-yah!”
“God be with us all,” JAM called out then, which
caused a few eyebrows to rise, but no protests.
A rope was tossed out on either side and Slick
yelled out, “Go, go, go!” as the sixteen bodies on board, minus the pilot and
his assistant, quickly fast-roped or were lowered to the ground, Slick going
down last. The goal was to have them all on the ground close together in an area
no bigger than half a football field. Within seconds, the helo was gone, and
they scurried to gather together and find the designated hiding place for their
military gear, a small cave with an overhang, partially hidden by bushes. It was
not yet daylight. So, for more than two hours all sixteen bodies crowded inside
the space that reeked of old cook fires and dried animal dung. No one seemed to
care, their focus on the mission to come.
By mid-morning it was time for Trond to get the
three women inside the harem compound. They were in full purdah, while he wore a
dirty
shalwar kameez
, the traditional tunic and
drawstring, pajama-type pants whose legs were wider on top and narrower at the
ankles. On his head was a red-and-white-checkered keffiyeh with a braided cord
igal
covering a shoulder-length black wig. His
face sported a mustache and straggly beard.
“You look good with long hair,” Marie told him.
“Ah, you should have seen me in my day. Hair like
black silk. War braids laced with crystals on either side of my face.” He
pretended to preen.
“In my day?” Nicole mimicked. “Why do you sometimes
talk like you’re ancient?”
Because I am?
“You know what they call a beard, don’t you?” Marie
teased.
Actually, I do.
“Marie! I’m surprised by you,” Nicole said.
I’m not.
“A thigh
tickler?” he guessed.
“Trond!” Nicole pretended shock.
“Would you like to know what a Viking man calls his
mustache in the bed furs?” He winked at Nicole.
“No!” she exclaimed, and they all burst out in
laughter.
“I must say, though, that I really like your head
cover. Stole someone’s tablecloth, did you?” Donita teased.
He could tell they were all bantering with him
because they were nervous. He understood that. And, frankly, he was nervous,
too. Not for himself. But that window of time when the women would be on their
own, unarmed, inside the women’s quarters . . . well, anything could
happen. And so he bantered back, “It’s my own tablecloth. Notice the syrup here.
I had waffles this morning.” He waggled his eyebrows at the three women.
Nicole leaned up to whisper in his ear, “Bless you
for making us smile.”
He felt the whisper of her breath against the inner
whorls of his ear, and felt blessed in a way she had not intended. He could see
one benefit of the Arab attire, lots of hiding places for weapons and other
. . . stuff.
Trond rode a donkey, and the three women walked
docilely, eyes downcast, behind him for almost a mile until they approached the
compound gate. The two guardsmen immediately raised rifles. Trond dismounted and
began speaking rapid Arabic to them, with much gesticulating of hands,
explaining that he’d been invited to bring these three women for their master’s
harem.
Much of the resistance was just for show. First
came the traditional bribery known as baksheesh that had to be handled with
finesse, even though it was an expected practice. Once Trond got through the
arguments and the slipping of money into “greased palms,” the guards looked the
three women over and leered salaciously.
“I hope she has big boobs,” the one guard said in a
regional version of Pashtu. “Our boss, he likes the big boobies.” The way he
cupped his hands in front of his chest needed no translation for the women, who
pretended embarrassment when they really felt like slapping the jerk up one side
and down the other of his fool head.
“Do they speak Arabic?” the other guard asked. A
little late for asking, if you asked Trond, which no one did, of course.
Trond shook his head. “Two of my sisters come from
Sweden,” Trond said with a wink, “and the other is from Somalia.”
“Sisters!” The guards hooted with laughter, not
just because of Donita’s ebony skin, but because of the two blonde, clearly
non-Arabic women, as well.
“And virgins . . . ah, if your ‘sisters’
are virgins, you will get a high price. The master does like a tight sheath for
his sword. Ha, ha, ha!” The guard who was speaking made a rude gesture with a
tightly closed fist and a forefinger.
By the tension emanating from the women, he decided
a slap or five would be too mild. The women were thinking more in the vein of a
steel-toed boot kick to the balls.
Trond tied the donkey to a post and patted the
animal on the rump, which actually was a signal to his teammates through a mic
under the tail that they were going in. There had been lots of jokes about what
message would be transmitted if the donkey farted or performed some bodily
function.
“Pigs!” Nicole muttered under her breath once they
were allowed to go through the gates.
“Well, pigs they may be, but we have two more
‘sties’ to go through,” Trond murmured to them.
“Oink, oink!” Marie said.
At least they still had their sense of humor.
Trond was surprisingly calm as he gazed around the
compound, which was built up against a mountain riddled with caves, thus leaving
the occupants a series of secret exits when under siege. Although Najid
considered himself a prince of sorts, he clearly had not built a palace for
himself in his Muslim fundamentalist homeland, where the kind of ostentation he
favored abroad would be frowned on here. Still, it was large and could house
hundreds of people, when necessary. At the moment, it was believed there were no
more than seventy, including the women and children.
Najid was not in residence at the moment, and the
OctoTiger team had mixed feelings about that. Rescuing the hostages might be
easier without Najid here. On the other hand, it would be a major coup to
accomplish both his demise
and
the rescue.
Most everywhere Trond looked there was concrete.
Concrete walls . . . in fact, three concentric walls to reach the
inner courtyards. Concrete buildings. Concrete cisterns. In the middle of all
this concrete was a pounded dirt courtyard in the midst of which was an
incongruous helipad. Concrete, of course.
Nothing fancy here, although Trond suspected things
would be different inside. Najid did not strike him as the type to sacrifice his
lavish lifestyle totally, even in his homeland.
There was something else Trond noticed. The scent
of Lucipires, though faint, indicated they had been here, or were nearby. Plus,
the strong scent of lemons. Lucies had been feeding here. In fact, he would bet
his almost nonexistent wings they had been gorging on some of the evilest men in
the world. When they were done draining a body, it disappeared and went
immediately to Hell, or Jasper’s version of Hell. Unless huge numbers of people
had disappeared so far, Najid’s commanders would just think the men had fled to
the hills, or been killed while engaged with some enemy.
The fur was going to fly soon, though, and Najid
would have to be aware of something happening in his home compound.
The largest of the concrete buildings, Najid’s home
and headquarters, was connected by open-sided, roofed walkways to other
buildings. The one at the far end, of substantial size, must be the harem. Thus
far the diagrams they’d studied back at Coronado appeared to be accurate.
“Don’t speak,” Trond warned the women as they
approached the second gate that they needed to get through if they wanted
ultimately to enter the harem sector. The first guards must have alerted the
guards here because they waved them through with little interest as they watched
some men rolling dice on the ground nearby.
When they got to the next building, Trond stepped
inside the open doorway, waving for the women to follow. He sensed instinctively
that this next hurdle would not be as easy as the first. Several men in Arab
attire sat before computers at various desks, but this was not the usual office.
Nope, these guys had pistols sitting next to mouses, ammunition belts
crisscrossed over their chests, flex cuffs attached to belt loops, a machine gun
propped in one corner, and a wall-mounted TV playing an unending stream of
speeches showcasing Najid bin Osama in Arab attire against an Afghan mountain
backdrop. Through a half-opened door at the back, he saw bars. Presumably jail
cells.
In any case, Trond would have to notify Harek about
the computer systems here. Maybe he could do something to botch up the works, or
use them to their advantage. Or maybe he should notify Geek of their existence.
Yes, that would be the better way to go. Geek might be able to learn something
about the Najid organization by studying the hard drives. Not that Trond knew
how to remove a hard drive. Harek and Geek would know, though.
Bracing himself, Trond walked with confidence up to
the first desk, where he handed the glowering man a packet of papers. Sitting on
the desk next to his tapping fingertips, beside his Sauer, was an
industrial-size bottle of Rolaids. Would seem some things about America weren’t
all that bad. A nameplate identified him as Rafi al-Hafiz, chief of security
operations. There had to be an irony in rebel insurgents with the life span of a
gnat going to the trouble of nameplates, but, wait, those were removable,
sticky-backed gold letters, weren’t they? Made sense. If anything in this
volatile part of the world made sense.
“What you want?” Rafi barked out, causing his
assistants to jump in their chairs.
“A thousand pardons, good sir.” He did a salaam
type greeting, bowing slightly and touching his chest, mouth, and forehead. “I
am here to make a delivery.” He glanced meaningfully to the three women.
“Pfff!” Rafi said with disgust after scanning the
fake documents Trond had given him. “More women!” Motioning to one of his
assistants, he ordered, “Frisk him.” All this in Arabic, of course.
Trond had been expecting no less, and a routine
sweep of his body by the guard who stood up from the second desk, Zafir bin
Tahir, would reveal no weapons. Trond stood stiffly while Zafir ran his hands
over and under all his various limbs and possible hiding places. They even made
him take off his boots, but when they got a whiff of his specially malodored
socks, they decided he’d taken off enough. The whole time Rafi and the other two
guards in the room were sitting up with alertness, their hands close to their
weapons.
Satisfied, Rafi turned to the women. “Now, the
women. Burqas and shoes off!”
The women had been taught certain code words and
body signals. Right now, Trond repeated the guard’s order and blinked twice, a
signal for them to begin weeping, as if mortified to be asked to remove their
protective outer garments. It wasn’t as if they were naked underneath, and
hopefully would not have to be.
Rafi sneered with distaste at their tears and
yelled, “Off! Now!”
With more softly spoken Arabic words to the women,
only a few of which they would understand, the women removed their burqas and
held their folded garments in front of them. The women kept their eyes lowered,
which was a good thing. The eyes often revealed too much. Trond wasn’t sure what
would be more alarming if revealed, their fear or their rebellion.
They now wore full-length . . . to neck,
wrist, and ankle . . . gowns of bright-colored silk, belted at the
waist. Although they were modest by Western standards, they revealed plenty of
the women’s curves, and the hair, of course, which was considered a sexual
temptation in some cultures. Nicole and Marie’s blonde tresses hung down to
their shoulder blades, while Donita’s tight black curls glistened like a cap
against her well-formed head.
“Strip them!” Rafi yelled, popping an antacid into
his mouth.
“No!” Trond yelled right back and proceeded to
argue, “You can’t strip them. Only Najid or the harem master has the right to do
that. They are an investment for me. If you shame them, they are worthless.” He
made a spitting gesture. “Less than camels. Less than my donkey outside. I will
leave with my women if you insist. You can explain to Najid why the women were
not delivered.”
He motioned for the women to don their burqas again
and turned toward the door.
The women had no sooner shaken out the outer
garments than Rafi changed his mind. “Frisk them,” he ordered Zafir, who smiled
widely, displaying several rotten teeth.
The women stood stiffly—tears leaking from Marie’s
dark eyes, Nicole sobbing, and Donita staring straight ahead—while Zafir ran his
fat hands over their bodies, sticking fingers in places they had no business
being. The other two guards, still at their desks, watched avidly, wishing it
was them. When Zafir was done, he winked at Nicole, who was probably restraining
herself from doing him a favor by knocking out his bad teeth, and told Rafi,
“They are clean.”
Trond raised his chin with arrogance. “Did I not
tell you they would be?”