by Sandra Hill
He just smiled and shrugged.
“Are you afraid?”
“More like excited. Death doesn’t scare me so much anymore. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be watching your back,” he assured her.
“Not always,” she qualified. “Remember, once I’m inside, I’m on my own. With Donita and Marie, of course. But we’ll be weaponless, for the most part, at least initially.”
Trond shook his head. “You’re not on your own. Ever. You might not see us, but we’ll be there ready to jump in.” He stared at her for a long moment, “I’ll tell you this, though, if you were my woman, I would be scared shitless on your behalf. I would do everything in my power to keep you home under lock and key, safe and protected.”
“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?”
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 ju
st the sun shimmering off the barbed wire topping the concrete wall.
Seventeen
When they pulled out the plastic gloves, you knew you were in trouble . . .
They’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.