by Sandra Hill
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 b
rothers 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?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk! I’m not that picky. Overall, since you’ve been here for the past eight and a half days?”
Zeb’s eyes widened at Trond’s knowledge of the demon presence here in Davastan, down to the exact day they’d arrived.
“Seventeen souls,” Zeb admitted, “but not to worry, you would not have been able to save any of them.”
“And that’s all you want . . . the already committed sinners?”
Zeb nodded, but his eyes did not meet Trond’s.
They both ate another apple in silence.
Finally, Zeb broke the silence. “So, is she the one?”
The fine hairs stood out on the back of Trond’s neck. “She who?” he asked. Then, “The one what?”
“The one you danced with.”
“Are you still harping on that dance thing?”
“We demons do not harp. That is an angel thing.”
“Pfff! What is it with you and the jokes today?”
“I get my jollies wherever I can.”
“Jollies? Are you going over the edge, Zeb? Jollies?” he mocked.
“My friend, I went over that edge a long time ago.”
“I am not your friend, Zeb. Nor am I fool enough to mistake your strange behavior as a sign of friendship.”
“Methinks you are wrong. Methinks we could be comrades if you came over to our side. Let me fang you. I’d bet my tail your blood is more potent than aged Damascan wine.”
Trond laughed. “Now you’re a wine connoisseur?”
“Just because you Vikings prefer beer does not make it the superior drink. Actually, I had a small vineyard at one time. Very small, but it served the needs of my small family. It was in the hills beyond Jerusalem.” He shook his head to clear it. “Suffice it to say, wine trumps beer any day.”
Trond stared at Zeb, slack-jawed with amazement. He’d known Zeb a long time. This was the first time he’d ever shared any personal information.
“Back to your woman, have you bedded her yet?”
Whoa! What was it with Zeb’s fixation on Nicole? “She’s not my woman.”
“I saw you kiss her palm today.”
Uh-oh!
“Now, if you’d given her a tongue-down-the-throat kiss, I would call it lust. And a handshake or little air kiss, friendship.”
“Air kiss?” he protested. “We Vikings do not do air kisses.”
Zeb continued as if Trond had not spoken. “But kissing the palm . . . ah, you revealed yourself, vangel. Love is on the way.”
“Idiot! A mere brush of lips over the palm leads you to think I’ve bedded her and am about to wed her?”
“Can vangels wed?” Zeb asked. He seemed to be jumping from one subject to another today. “Seems to me I heard that one of your brothers wed recently. Is that true?”
Trond stood and waited for Zeb to stand as well. Enough with this circling each other with irrelevant conversation. Were they going to face off now, a fight to the death . . . or something worse than death, if he lost?
No, Trond sensed that Zeb was here for some other reason.
“Jasper wants you, and the two SEALs.”
No surprise there. “The one SEAL you fanged has been saved, and the other is not here.”
“That is not good news. For me,” Zebulan revealed.
So Jasper was leaning on Zeb. He wondered why. And what the repercussions might be if he failed. “As for me, no thanks. Tell Jasper I’d rather not visit at this time.”
“You may have to reconsider if Jasper gets his other guest first.”
Not the two SEALs. Who then? He waited.
“Your woman.�
�
Trond’s head felt as if it would explode with all the lurid images flickering through his stunned brain, images of what a master demon like Jasper would do to a woman like Nicole. Satan’s disciple might not be able to turn Nicole into a demon since she was not in a state of sin or near-sin, but he could prolong her torture endlessly. For years. Until she finally died, which would be a blessing, or gave in, which would be hell on earth.
Trond’s fangs came out and he hissed his outrage, prepared to launch himself at Zeb.
But the demon was gone.
Eighteen
Did G.I. Jane have to work this hard? . . .
The three women had been scrubbed, exfoliated, creamed, and massaged until they were cleaner and looser than wet noodles. Now it was time for action.
They’d gotten to “meet” the wives and concubines and what appeared to be servants or slaves, though “meet” was a misnomer since none of the mostly Arabic women spoke English. There was a clear delineation of status here in the harem whereby the legitimate wives, assuming a wife could be legitimate when she joined four others, kept to one side of the small pool in the courtyard with a large spurting cupid fountain in the center. Apparently the wives’ rooms were on the other side, too. Nicole, Marie, and Donita kept to the lower-class side, gladly. In fact, Marie had taken to singing under her breath that old Garth Brooks song, “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places.”
Finally, they’d gotten a clue that the hostages were being kept in a locked, soundproof room down the corridor a distance when several servants were seen carrying trays of food and water. Not the succulent tidbits arrayed around the spa . . . fresh fruit, lamb kebabs, caviar, baklava, stuffed dates, and the like. Nope, the hostage trays seemed to contain flat breads, slabs of some kind of meat, several different cheeses, and plain water.
Nicole went into the bathroom first, and using the sense of touch and a wall mirror, was able to pull up the hairline filament tied to her molar, at the end of which, below her throat, was a slender plastic pod the size of a string bean. Inside was the liquid knockout drug she would put in all the drinks here in the spa. Also, she would hopefully be able to offer some drinks to the guards as well. Within fifteen minutes they would be fast asleep and stay that way for up to three hours, please God.
