Veiled by Coercion (Radical Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Radical Trilogy

  Glossary

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Other Books by Anne Garboczi Evans

  Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without express permission from the author except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

  Veiled by Coercion is a work of fiction and is set in a fictionalized version of Yemen and Iraq. All characters, names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, events, organizations, places, locales, religions, religious practices, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental and is beyond the intent of the author. All characters are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  Koran quotations courtesy of J.M. Rodwell’s 1876 translation of the Koran.

  Scripture quotations taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by iCreateDesigns

  Clip art licensed Creative Commons CC-0

  Veiled by Coercion

  By Anne Garboczi Evans

  CHAPTER 1

  Ali looked at the gray-mustached man. “Give me a picture of the girl.”

  The man tugged a tattered photo out of his right breast pocket. His sun-weathered hand trembled in the blazing heat. “My niece’s name is Rosna Jaziri. We’ve had word that she was sold to terrorists in Yemen. You must rescue her.”

  Yemen, that was far. Ali rubbed his palm against the custom Colt Python on his hip, the skin of his palm light compared to the black of his hands. To get the girl, he’d have to cross Saudi Arabia and risk his freedom skirting Saudi authorities.

  The warty leaves of Syrian rhubarb bruised beneath Ali’s boots. He did know a Bedouin in the Arabian desert. The man had helped him get $20,000 worth of contraband scotch across the border.

  On the other hand, Saudi patrols were renowned for their efficiency and he’d no wish to languish in a Saudi jail. He fingered the curved knife on his belt. He’d have to skirt ISIS territory too, getting back. Ali laid his hand on his silver Nissan Titan, the truck’s hood hot in the baking sun. “For thirty thousand, I’ll do it.”

  “You said fifteen thousand. Thirty is too much. I cannot pay.” The Yazidi man threw both hands in the air. His red-checked turban slid across his wrinkled cheeks.

  “My price is thirty thousand dollars, am I not risking my life?” Stinging sand blew across Ali’s eyelids as he stared down the man.

  Behind the Yazidi man, a small garden sprouted in precise rows. The older man gestured to a younger man in a button-down shirt. “I have five nieces in captivity, a mother-in-law, two aunts who I’m trying to save up money to rescue. Have mercy. Khadir, my niece’s fiancé, will tell you, I cannot pay.”

  Rosna’s uncle would pay. Desperate people always did and he’d worked with enough desperate people in the last ten years of smuggling to know. Ali pushed his key fob and his truck’s engine roared into life. “No deal then.”

  Khadir, the girl’s fiancé, drew his eyebrows down to match the angle of his black goatee. “It is too much.”

  Ali shrugged, shifting his designer leather jacket. “There are many other Yazidis around who will pay a lot more than thirty thousand to get their beloved female relative back.”

  “Help me raise the money, Khadir.” The older Yazidi spun to the younger one. Pain burned in the man’s worn face. “You are her fiancé.”

  “Not anymore.” Khadir crossed his arms across his chest, his rolled-up sleeves taut against his tan shirt. “She’s brought shame on our family by losing her honor. I’m not going to marry that kind of girl.”

  The girl’s uncle fisted his hand tight, tears glistening in his clouded eyes. “But we must rescue her from these monsters. Pay your share.”

  The girl’s fiancé swallowed, contorting his Adam’s apple. He hardened his narrow features. “Better for Rosna to die in captivity and not bring back the shame on our people. Besides, she has nothing left here. No one will marry her now.”

  Blindness, Ali cursed under his breath and shifted toward the girl’s uncle. If the fiancé wouldn’t help pay, he’d never get the thirty thousand he’d asked for. Maybe he should pass up this job, smuggle some opium to Iran instead?

  The girl’s uncle stood white-faced and motionless. The fiancé shifted his feet in this remote refugee camp.

  Oh, whatever, he’d driven all the way out here. He might as well take the job. Ali hooked one thumb in his leather jacket. “Fine, I’ll take twenty thousand, though I’m a soft-hearted fool for offering you such a bargain.”

  Rosna’s uncle bobbed his head. “Yes, I will pay you twenty thousand.”

  “I’ll take the pittance now.” Ali flipped over his palm.

  “We’ve had no word from my niece. What if you cannot find her?”

  Ali spread his feet on the rocky soil, towering over the high cab of his truck. “I’m the best smuggler this side of Jordan.”

  The Yazidi coughed, a breathy sound of displeasure. “What is the name of your people, Ali?”

  “Ali the Wanderer” men called him for he had no tribe, no people, no father’s house. No, he’d grown up inside the stinking walls of the Basra foundling home. He didn’t even have his name to call his own. The name Ali had been shoved on him by some thin-nosed Shia Muslim warden, though his parents had been Sunni Muslim. Ali spat on the dirt. “It is none of your concern.”

  Khadir, the girl’s ex-fiancé, ran a suspicious gaze across him. “We do not see many black men this far north.”

  Yes, he was of African descent. Ever since he was a child in Basra, Iraqis had called him abd, slave, for that. Ali held the tattered picture of the girl high. Its ragged edges fluttered in the desert wind. “I’ll have your Rosna back here by the end of the month. Give me the money.”

  The older man bobbed his head, but no respect filled his eyes. “I do not know your family. I do not know your people. How do I know I can trust a stranger’s promise?”

  Ali dropped his arm. Numbness spread through his fingers, which clenched the wrinkled photograph. He excelled at his trade, but everyone still despised Ali the Wanderer, an orphan and a black man. No man invited him to eat at his table as an equal. No man offered Ali his daughter in marriage or invited Ali into his tribe.

  Ali kicked the dusty ground. He’d been his own keeper since before he could remember. Soon, he’d build his riches so high that men would covet his wealth and bend the knee for a taste of his largesse. “Fine, I’ll collect the money when I return with your niece, as promised.” He leaped into his truck and slammed his foot on the gas pedal.

  A plume of exhaust fumes spewed from the tail pipe as he jammed his fifty-thousand dollar truck into gear.

  Her owner, that’s what the man in the black skullcap titled himself, but she would never submit. Rosna gripped the letter opener she held behind her back. Her moist fingers slid across the brass handle as her golden hair hung in strings around her shoulders. Only a wooden kitchen table separated her from the fiend. “Do not touch me!”

  “Why are you still whining about this?” The man advanced past the ragged carpet
that divided the front room from the kitchen. His wiry beard stank of grease. “You lost all honor three long years ago. You’re nothing more than a prostitute.”

  “Get back.” The rusted stovetop dug into Rosna’s skin as she held the letter opener high.

  “Drop it.” He glared into her eyes and fisted his hand. A combat knife hung at his belt, the black handle even darker than his clothes.

  Three years ago, she’d gripped a splintered broom handle and defied the terrorist who’d come to claim her honor. That man had whipped out his knife and slit it across the throat of her six-year-old sister. She’d heard her sister’s dying breaths and watched the little girl writhe on the blood-soaked carpet as that former “owner” raped her within her little sister’s sight.

  The current fiend advanced another step, his hand raised.

  The letter opener shook in Rosna’s limp fingers. A deadness spread through her limbs as her every muscle quaked in front of this inhuman evil.

  “You’re mine, little devil worshipper.” His eyes looked as cold as the grave. He seized her wrist.

  “I follow Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. You are of the evil one.” Lurching forward, Rosna tried to summon the strength to strike him. Her emaciated limbs trembled from twenty-four hours without food. Her weak blow slid right and glanced off his nylon shirt.

  He threw her against the counter. Her head bashed against the stone countertop, her body cracking the wooden cabinet behind her. With a clang, the letter opener fell from her hand. The metal bounced against the linoleum floor.

  Seizing a cutting board, he beat her until her blood streaked the wood. Agony pierced her, but the physical pain wounded her less than when the terrorists dishonored her, forced her into this fate worse than death, and shamed her family.

  Tears ran down her cheeks. Her cracked lips trembled. In a few minutes, ribs would break. She’d experienced such beatings dozens of times before. Her gaze fixed on the heavy metal door that her “owner” locked from the outside each time he left. The fiend had sworn he’d break her femurs if she even so much as attempted escape in this terrorist-infested village in the Yemen mountains where she’d not make it more than a hundred yards before being picked up by an Al Qaeda patrol.

  The terrorist dropped the cutting board. “Last time I beat you, I had to drive for hours to find a hospital and pay their bill. I’m selling your worthless hide to a new owner. He can drive the rebelliousness shayton from your heart.”

  Head lolled back against the broken cabinet, Rosna looked up at the fiend. Her trembling knees and bloodied ankles refused to give her strength to stand.

  Then the fiend raped her there on the blood-stained linoleum, the act as atrocious as every other time and every other terrorist. At age sixteen, she’d not even known what occurred between a man and a woman except for a few hidden whispers in the night. Thirty months of captivity later, she knew all too much.

  When he allowed her up, she struggled to her knees. Her blood dripped onto the counter as she groped for the kitchen drawer and the pills a local nurse had given her.

  Every day, she slid the tasteless blue pillow underneath her tongue, each pill the only barrier between her and carrying an ISIS fiend in her womb. The doctor who had handed her the first of these pills thirty long months ago had told the man who titled himself her owner to have her take one every day at the same time each day. Missing even one day would create a child. The owners didn’t want that because the fatwas of their cursed religion said you couldn’t rape a pregnant sex slave.

  Rosna yanked the drawer farther open. Her finger touched air. Panic shot through her limbs. “Where is it?” She lunged toward her captor.

  The man threw her to the ground. Swiping his arm across the littered counter top, he launched a plastic disc at her. “Here.”

  She dove for the precious plastic ring. Her hands trembled as she pried at the container’s lid.

  The ring of pills looked back at her, empty. Rosna cried out, but her voice made no noise. Her entire body shook as her blood, and nakedness, and the empty box consumed her. “Buy me some now. Now!” Her voice turned to a shriek as she rose to her knees and waved the empty plastic circle through the air.

  “I’ve wasted enough money on you, ungrateful dog.” He kicked her hand. With a clack, the plastic ring skittered against the tile. He turned to the barricaded door.

  “You have to. The imam religious man said you have to!” Her breath came in hysterical gasps, mucous pouring down her upper lip.

  “Tomorrow, your new owner will provide you some.” With a shrug, the man in the skullcap glanced back at her. “Unless he wishes you with child.”

  The surroundings blurred in front of Rosna as spots appeared in her vision. She fell forward. Her head cracked against the floor. Surely whatever new fiend titled himself her owner would give her birth control. These monsters’ own fatwas and religious teachings said it was haram, forbidden, to rape or sell a pregnant woman. These men reveled in rape, so they provided birth control.

  Their fatwas also said one could not beat one’s female slave on the face, yet blood even now streaked her cheekbones. Despair coursed through Rosna. Her starved limbs refused to obey her commands and she lay on the floor, her cheek pressed against cold linoleum. Her own blood stained the yellowed tiles surrounding her.

  “Oh, Khadir, I need you,” she whispered. Her heart cried out. She had finished the last stitch on her bridal veil and slid the cloth over her hair to smile in the mirror that day Islamic State came to her village. Khadir’s family’s house had a garden with roses creeping up the trellis. She could see him yet as he’d looked the day he’d taken her hand for the betrothal.

  Unlike so many other betrothed couples in her village, Khadir and she had loved each other. Romantic love, most of her people thought it was only a tale to be told of in poetry and love ballads. She had considered herself so lucky to be entering into a marriage with love. Then, three days before her wedding, Islamic State, or daesh as her people scornfully referred to ISIS, had come.

  In her mind, she pictured her village again. Red flowers clung to Khadir’s house, little green tendrils creeping up across brick to the flat roof above.

  A smile to light the darkest of nights tugged up Khadir’s mouth. He had the sunshine of Melek Taus in his golden hair. He pointed behind him to where his father, mother, and brothers lived. “By the time these flower blooms are spent, you’ll live in this house with me as my wife.”

  She’d smiled back at him. “By the time they bloom next year, perhaps we’ll have a son.”

  Khadir laughed. Reaching across the summer’s heat, he’d brushed his fingertips against her fingers. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips. She glanced to the house, hoping his mother had not seen such a bold move. She did not need her mother-in-law thinking she was a loose woman.

  No face appeared at the window, so she’d gazed up into her fiancé’s eyes. “Ten sons, I’ll give you. Ten sons to build our house. This I promise.”

  Good brown earth had stained every crevice of Khadir’s large hands. He brushed his calloused thumb against her wrist as the scent of him surrounded her. “Good.”

  “And a daughter to bring the smiles of Melek Taus in her laugh.” Her heart had danced with happiness as the Peacock Angel poured out sunshine to bless this moment.

  “I love you, Rosna.” Khadir clasped her hand in his. “Ever since I watched you make daisy chains at the Feast of the Assembly in the Lalish Valley with your little sister, ever since then I loved you.”

  Her smile had rivaled the legendary love-struck heroine, Zin, as her soul danced within her. In her heart, she’d known Khadir would be a good husband to her, and not a harsh one.

  With a moan, Rosna curled her legs up to herself on the bloodied tile of her reality.

  Had Islamic State, daesh, shot Khadir like so many of the men of the village? She’d seen Father shot before her eyes. She had rushed to hear his dying words, when a daesh terrorist had grabbed her hair
and yanked her to a stop. Praise heaven, Mother had died before the horror of daesh had descended on their village.

  “Please, Melek Taus, let Khadir have lived. Protect my cousins in captivity.” She looked to the black curtain that hung over the window, but not a sliver of Melek Taus’ sunshine shone through.

  A girl should weep and mourn and gnash her teeth when she thinks of her dead father, mother, sister, but after thirty months of hell, she had no more tears left.

  Who would the man who called himself her owner sell her to? She’d already been sold to and raped by most of the men in this terrorist camp, the married along with the unmarried. A few of them, like the young one, Kamal, spared her the beatings, but none spared her the shame and the rape.

  Shivers shook her body. Her stomach churned within her.

  Rosna glanced to the empty box of pills. Three hours ago, she should have taken another one. Even now the vile terrorist’s filth could be attempting to spawn more terrorists inside of her.

  Her fingernails cut into her palms, drawing blood as she squeezed her fists tight. She had to find more blue pills.

  A sliver of moonlight illuminated the barracks where Kamal Al Harbi stretched out, surrounded by Al Qaeda recruits. An hour ago, Rosna’s owner had told him that he would sell the sabaya, sex slave, at market tomorrow.

  As he lay prone on the narrow bunk, Kamal looked at the fatwa shining on his phone’s screen. He drew his knees up tight against his AK-47. A cold chill ran through him.

  It is not permitted for a mujahideen to allow others to have intercourse with his female slave. Only the owner may have intercourse with her.

  Islamic State had released this fatwa. Allah had given Islamic State a caliphate so surely Islamic State spoke with the voice of Allah.

  Chills ran through Kamal. He had broken that fatwa six months ago with a sabaya, sex slave, who belonged to another man. Rosna, the girl’s owner had called her. Cold sweat built beneath Kamal’s tactical vest, but even with his eyes open, he could see the flames of hell-fire. He shook in the narrow bed.