Authors: Sandra Hill
Rafi shrugged, as if he were only doing his job,
and stamped their paperwork, telling Trond how to get to the harem where the man
in charge, Hamzah bin Hamzah, would want to examine the women further to
determine if they would suit the master’s taste. Meanwhile, the women had donned
their burqas and shoes again. As they were leaving, he heard Rafi speaking into
a phone, no doubt alerting Hamie of their upcoming arrival.
Trond exhaled as if he’d been holding a long breath
and said, “Whew!” when they left the building and proceeded down another covered
walkway to the far side of the compound. He told the women, “You did good.”
“Hard to be bad when you’re scared spitless,”
Nicole remarked.
“Fear is good,” Trond said.
“Bite me,” Nicole said.
He smiled.
If only!
“Besides, you already quoted me that saying before.
You need to expand your repertoire.”
I have a repertoire? Please,
God, don’t let it be a repertoire of hokey skaldic sayings. Let it be
something cool. Something sexy. Something . . .
How’s this for a motivational
saying?
that infernal voice in his head intruded.
Hell is only one sin away.
Trond decided the wisest course was
not
to compete with an archangel on anything. Even
mind quotes.
So they were quiet as they walked now until Nicole
remarked, “Why does it smell so strongly of lemons here?”
“You’re right,” Marie said, sniffing. “I don’t see
any lemon trees. Actually, I don’t think lemon trees could grow in this
climate.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of Arab air freshener,” Marie
offered.
“Too bad Trond couldn’t put some in his socks,”
Nicole teased.
Trond had no time to react to the women’s comments.
For just a second, Trond thought he saw Zebulan sitting atop one of the walls,
watching them. But when he did a double take, he saw just the sun shimmering off
the barbed wire topping the concrete wall.
When they pulled out the plastic gloves, you knew you were in trouble . . .
T
hey’d come to the harem complex, and while they waited for the guard at the door to get another guard to escort them to the harem, Trond pulled Nicole aside. Marie and Donita were whispering to each other on his other side.
“Don’t speak when you get inside.”
“Take no chances.”
“Be discreet in sending messages.”
“Try not to show emotion . . . anger, pride, whatever, even with just your eyes.”
Then he smiled at her. “Whatever you do, no motivational sayings to anyone, not even the harem women.”
She smiled back at him. “Why are you looking so concerned? Did you hear or see something that alters our plans?”
He shook his head. “I just don’t like the idea of you being in such a dangerous situation.”
“Me personally, or all of us?”
“All of you, of course,” he said, but she knew he meant her.
She tilted her head in question. “You confuse me.”
“I confuse myself.”
It appeared as if the guard was returning with their escort.
Quickly, Trond took her one hand out from the folds of her robe and pressed his lips to the palm, closing her fingers over the kiss. The whole time, his eyes held hers. Then he whispered, “Later.”
She had no time to think about the import of that gesture, or of how a simple act could make her breath catch and her skin tingle, because they were inside now, and the heavy metal door clanged shut behind them.
And what a shock it was when they entered the women’s quarters. Mosaic tiled floors. Plastered walls decorated with frescoes of ancient Arabia. Inner courtyards with bubbling fountains and huge green plants. A spa complete with whirlpools and massage tables.
She could only imagine how palatial Najid’s living quarters must be at the other end of the compound if his women were treated so well. Materially, anyhow.
Of course, they only saw these things in passing as they were escorted to a room where they awaited the harem master, Hamzah bin Hamzah. A locked room. Oh, it was a comfortable room, with silky Persian carpets, low couches, and a coffee table soon laden with platters of fresh fruit, hummus, flat bread triangles, and iced glasses of pomegranate juice brought by a serving girl who avoided eye contact and said nothing, although Nicole sensed her curiosity. Before she left, the girl indicated they could take off their burqas, then showed them a rudimentary bathroom with basic toilet, bidet, and sink with a mirror above it.
Two hours passed slowly—they feared speaking in case the room was bugged—before Hamzah arrived to interview them. Accompanying him was a thirty-something woman whose gray-streaked hair hung in a neat braid down her back.
The heavyset, no-nonsense man of fifty-odd years carried a clipboard and a camera.
Nicole didn’t want to think what that camera portended.
“Salaam,” he said distractedly as he sank into a chair opposite the sofa where Nicole, Marie, and Donita were sitting. The woman eased herself down onto the chair next to him, waiting. Apparently, these kinds of “interviews” were nothing new for them.
Hamzah smoothed out the wrinkled fabric of his white thobe, placed the clipboard evenly on his knees that were pressed together, clicked a ballpoint pen, then asked them something in Arabic. When they stared dully back at him, he asked the same question in at least six other languages, including English, to which they schooled themselves not to react. The question he kept asking was: “What language do you speak?” Finally, he asked the question in French, and Marie jumped in with “
Oui!
” and told him that she and Nicole spoke passable French, but Donita spoke only Somali.
He nodded, taking notes. “Where are you from?”
“Nicole and I are elementary school teachers from Sweden. We were attending a conference in Paris when we were kidnapped. But not for ransom. No, these bad men sold us to slave traders.” She began to weep.
Nicole joined in with the weeping and begged in French, “Can we go home now? I want to go home.”
Hamzah waved a hand dismissively. “Your wants no longer matter. Allah will decide your fate now.”
Or Najid
, Nicole thought.
Like God, or Allah, would have any wish to be involved in human trafficking!
“And this one?” Hamzah pointed his pen at Donita, who was staring ahead dully.
“She was taken in Somalia and sold to the same slave traders, that’s all we know,” Marie said. “Someone said she’s some kind of African princess.”
They all looked at Donita then, and she did resemble some regal black woman of importance, her back ramrod stiff.
“Hmpfh! That’s what they all say,” Hamzah remarked, writing on his clipboard.
The woman said something to him, to which he nodded. “Stand and take off your clothing,” Hamzah ordered then.
“No, no, no!” Marie said on behalf of them all.
“Yes, yes, yes. It is necessary to see if you meet the master’s requirements.”
“Which are?” Nicole asked in her schoolgirl French.
“Beauty, of course. If we find you flawless, then we will take pictures and send them to Master Najid.”
“Flawless?” Marie squeaked out.
“Pictures?” Nicole squeaked out, having no doubt he meant nude pictures.
“This is my daughter Layla. She is a nurse.” He looked at the woman in the other chair with a smile of pride. “She studied in Germany.”
Whoa! Why do we need a nurse?
Her unspoken question was answered immediately. “Layla will take blood samples to make sure you are AIDS free. And she will examine your bodies for viruses, like herpes, and yeast infections. Routine exams.” He waved a hand airily.
Routine for him, maybe.
There was a short knock on the door and in came two guards wheeling a gynecological table. Layla was already pulling on a pair of plastic gloves.
The implications of that table caused Nicole and Marie and Donita to go into immediate, sphincter-tightening mode. The fact that the two guards stayed added a tightening of the fists as well.
They’d known this might happen. They’d prepared for the eventuality. And, thank God, in the bathroom a short time ago they’d removed the tampons that contained a C–4 mini explosive for taking down a metal door, a thin, razor-sharp switchblade that could slit a man’s neck if necessary or substitute as a lock pick, and a stun gun . . . yeah, a real mini stun gun that could do the work of one of the big boys if aimed just right. They were taped in a hiding place under the sink.
The ordeal that followed was humiliating and even painful, but the three women bore it stoically and in the end were pronounced fit for an Arab dictator, barring any bad news from the lab. It didn’t help that they’d been deemed nonvirgins. Even so, they would be taken to the spa shortly, where they could bathe, and then to a sleeping chamber.
But then Hamzah told them something as he was preparing to leave that changed everything. “Master Najid will be arriving tonight. Late tonight, around three a.m. We should know by noon if he is interested in any, or all of you.” He smiled then, as if he’d bestowed some gift on them.
Once the women were alone, they crowded themselves into the bathroom, turned on the water, flushed the toilet, and began to whisper urgently.
“We need to find the hostages ASAP,” Marie said.
“We have to be out of here before Najid sees us,” Donita added.
Nicole was the one who tapped the skin between her thumb and forefinger on her left hand three times, four times in a row, with pauses in between the sets. Then she spoke into her hand, “Tiger, Tiger, are you there?”
“Roger that,” a voice said in their three ear mics.
“Cat here.”
“Roger that.”
“King Rat arriving oh three hundred.”
A telling pause, then, “Have you located the kittens yet?” He referred to the hostages.
“Not yet. Going to try now.”
“We’re moving in. We have your six.”
She sure hoped so.
When she ended the call, Marie said, “Well, ladies, shall we roll a few stumps and see what crawls out?”
“Hoo-yah!” Nicole and Donita replied at the same time, using the traditional Navy SEAL response pretty much meaning “Hell, yeah!”
Now it was time to see if they had what it took to be true-blue, female Navy SEALs.
He lost his ass . . .
Trond no sooner left the compound gates than he realized he had a problem. His donkey was gone. Not that he couldn’t jog back to the bivouac site, or teletransport, but this particular donkey had been souped up. What he didn’t want to do was chase the stubborn, braying animal all over the place, wasting time he didn’t have to waste.
Thus, he was not in a good mood when he approached one of the guards, who was picking his teeth with the point of a stiletto. “Where’s my frickin’ jackass?”
“Your frickin’ brother took it,” the guard replied, repeating his expletive back at him.
“My brother?”
“Yeah.”
Trond recalled then that his brothers were already here in Afghanistan. Of course they would want to connect with him.
“The one with a tail,” the other guard explained. “Ha, ha, ha!”
Were these two drunk, or maybe suffering from sunstroke? It
had been
an especially bright day.
The first guard gave his friend a disbelieving glance. “He thinks your brother has a tail, but when I looked, there was no tail. Just the donkey’s. Ha, ha, ha!”
Yep. Drunk.
But then, the guard’s observation sank in.
Zeb . . . it must be Zeb. Not my brothers.
“What direction did . . . um, my brother go?”
Both guards pointed west.
So Trond jogged along the dirt road, for once thankful for all those practice runs back at Coronado. To his surprise, when he turned a bend in the road, he did in fact run into his three brothers and about twenty other vangels camped behind some boulders about thirty or so yards off the road.
“Where’s my damn donkey?” he asked Mordr right off.
“Huh?”
To Ivak, who was rucked out in so much military gear he could barely walk, he observed, “No tail?”
“Huh?” Ivak said, too.
“It’s about time you got here,” Harek said from his position where he sat on the ground, cross-legged, a mini computer resting on lap. “According to my data”—he pointed to the graph on his screen—“you should have been here a half hour ago. We’ve had a helluva time avoiding Najid’s patrols.”
Trond nodded to the various other vangels whose fangs were out, special weapons at the ready, anxious to do battle. They all sensed Lucies and their potential victims in the area. In great numbers, would be Trond’s guess.
With only a few moments to spare, Trond updated his brothers on the OctoTiger project, and they told him what they’d been up to.
“I know I promised you backup, but we’re going to leave you to the SEAL business, Trond. There is more than enough for us to handle with the Lucies,” Mordr told him. “In fact, there are so many Lucies here, and victims who carry the sin taint, that I’ve called for more vangels. Saving these sinners is a tough job, they are so far gone, but we’ve managed to turn back a dozen of them.” He pointed to a group of obviously confused Arab men and women huddled in the center of the clearing.
Trond noticed then the good color on his three brothers and some of the other vangels. They’d obviously fed on saved humans.
“As to the Lucies,” Mordr continued, “the only haakai we’ve seen are Haroun al Rashid and Zebulan of Israel, but we haven’t been able to get close yet.”
Zeb was the one who’d taken his donkey then, Trond concluded.
“We have taken out a dozen mungs, though,” Harek pointed out. “And at least twenty imps and hordlings.”
“This is big, brother.
Big!
” Mordr said.
“So, your emphasis will be on the Lucies, and mine will be with the hostages,”
and the safety of the three WEALS, Nicole in particular
, he summarized.
His brothers nodded.
Joining hands, they said a brief, silent prayer for heavenly support in their endeavors. Trond took off then, still searching for his donkey.
Finally, he caught up with Zeb sitting under a tree, munching on an apple. The donkey was munching on a dismal patch of grass. Zeb wore a baseball cap, jeans, white athletic shoes, and a pure white T-shirt with the logo “Devil May Care!” which usually meant carefree. Yep, that was Zeb. Happy-go-lucky demon, despite his all-American appearance.
Trond should just “kill” the demon. He knew he should. Instead, he asked, “Where’s your tail?”
“Huh?”
“The guard said my brother took my donkey. The brother with a tail.”
“Oops,” Zeb said. “The tail comes and goes. Like our fangs. And your wings.” Zeb glanced pointedly at his shoulders. His wingless shoulders.
“You stole my donkey,” Trond accused.
“Oh, is that your ass? I thought it was a homeless ass. A sorry ass, at that.”
Trond shook his head at the demon’s warped attempt at humor and dropped down to the ground beside him, taking an apple from the basket on Zeb’s lap. Both of their legs were extended to an almost identical length. They must be the same height.
“Are you sure we aren’t related?” he asked of a sudden.
“Since when do Jews go a-Viking?”
He had a point there.
And wasn’t that the oddest thing in this odd day in his odd life . . . an angel and demon, sharing an apple? Or maybe this was like the apple in the Garden of Eden offered by the satanic snake? Maybe he was going to turn bad after taking a few chomps.
He looked at the apple, looked at Zeb, then back at the apple, and shrugged. It was a really good apple. Plus, he’d already done the bad.
“What are you doing here, Zeb?”
“Harvesting sinners.”
Trond arched his brows.
“There are a lot of sinners here, Trond. Mortal sinners. Some of these terrorists . . .” He pretended to shiver, with distaste or relish, it was hard to say. “Let’s just say, they are irredeemable sinners.”
“How many have you taken so far?”
“Personally?”