Veiled by Coercion (Radical Book 2) Read online

  “America’s not sending more airstrikes, and if they did, they’d just find another way to screw it up like when they toppled Saddam. Save yourself. Don’t wait on the other guy. That’s how I’ve survived.” His voice rose loud.

  Rosna shrank into the passenger seat.

  “Er . . . sorry.” He shrugged his shoulders. He probably looked intimidating to her and she was in a sensitive state. Not the time to argue with her. “I just have a lot more faith in the Peshmerga than in some foreigners.”

  Rosna cast her gaze to the floorboards.

  In only a few more hours, he’d be dropping her off to face her fiance’s rejection. Each moment he lingered here was a moment she could anticipate joy instead of devastation. The poor woman.

  Ali eased back into his seat. Eyes shutting, he slid toward the oblivion of sleep.

  His pocket buzzed. With a groan, he shifted and dug his phone out of his back pocket. A text from the Saudi prince. I’ll pay fifteen thousand if you get me the alcohol by tomorrow night.

  Tomorrow night? Adrenaline shot through Ali. He grabbed for his truck keys. He needed to get this girl home and trek on back to Saudi Arabia. So much for sleep, but he wasn’t passing up fifteen thousand dollars.

  Unlocking the glove compartment, he pulled out a laminated map. Red marker highlighted daesh’s shifting battle lines and which roads were safe.

  He dragged his pen along the road he’d intended to use. That road would make for a six-hour drive at least. If he headed due north without the western jog, he’d shave off at least two hours. That route would take him through Salaam village, giving him only a two-mile buffer from daesh’s battle lines.

  Two miles wasn’t terrible, though he was out of machine gun ammo and explosives. He touched Salaam on the map.

  Grabbing his phone, he scrolled to the text app. He had a connection in Salaam village. His contact there would know if ISIS had any roadblocks up. He hit send. Safe to drive up from Basra?

  Beep. The contact’s text appeared on his phone. All clear. As beautiful a day as when Allah made the earth. Not even the sound of gunfire, which is unusual these days.

  “You’re not sleeping?” Rosna glanced at the map he held.

  Ali shook his head and turned his key in the ignition.

  Her gaze glued to the place on the map he pressed his thumb against. Her voice quavered. “We should go further west. We’re too close to daesh territory.”

  “How many times have I told you I’ve smuggled goods through this area without getting caught by ISIS?” He waved his hand over the empty coffee cups filling his cup holders.

  “A hundred.” Her lower lip trembled, fear radiating out across her features.

  “Stop worrying. You’ll be home by evening.” Ali turned onto the road.

  Three Hours Later

  Stifling a yawn, Ali turned the wheel, spinning around the little rill which Salaam village lay behind.

  Across from him, Rosna sat stiff against the passenger door. Her beautiful hair tumbled around her shoulders. Pain shone in her eyes.

  If only he could somehow take away the pain she’d encounter in forty-five minutes when he pulled into the refugee camp and she saw her former fiancé’s face.

  Ali glared at the road ahead. Another forty-five minutes until he zoomed back to Saudi for his next smuggling deal. Clearly, he’d gotten too emotionally invested with Rosna. This new deal would clear his head. Money, that’s what made the world turn ’round, not sympathy for the plight of daesh’s victims.

  A plume of smoke rose above the rill in front of him.

  What? Ali jammed on the brake as his truck sped around the corner.

  Not two dozen feet ahead of him, a stark concrete barrier rose as high as a man. Machine guns peppered gaps in the concrete. Dozens of soldiers manned them. One, a man in a black skullcap, motioned him on.

  Ali’s heart pounded against his tactical vest. That was a daesh checkpoint or his name wasn’t Ali the Wanderer.

  No! His contact had said it was clear. His hand on the steering wheel trembled.

  Rosna’s ear-splitting scream tore through the truck. “Turn around!” She struck her hand against the window and fumbled for the latch.

  Lurching over, Ali grabbed the door handle. The chalky white of fear painted Rosna’s features. She’d get shot for sure if she ran. “Stay in the car,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  His heart also pounded against his chest, but Ali forced his breathing to remain steady. Reaching under his seat, he yanked out a plastic bag. Black cloth overflowed from the bag. “Put this on.”

  His tinted windows would only shield Rosna from an acid burning for her state of undress a few seconds longer.

  She shoved back against the window, fear icing every rigid muscle.

  “Quickly,” Ali hissed. The daesh murderers swarmed out from the barricade as his truck crawled closer to the inevitable. Ali willed himself to press down on the brake, the tread of his boots grinding against the ridged plastic of the pedal.

  Sweat stuck his hands to the wheel. He’d lie himself out of this one. He’d lied himself out of tighter spots before.

  Did he have any contraband in the truck that would make daesh label him an infidel? No drugs or alcohol. No porn. He should be good. His truck bumper touched the concrete barrier. With a jostling noise, his truck stopped in front of daesh.

  Wait, he had two packs of cigarettes in the glove compartment! Ali dove for the lock. A slamming motion locked the key inside the compartment. He only prayed that lock would hold.

  Beside him, Rosna yanked the black bag over her head and shoved her arms through the sleeves.

  Surely Allah had commanded women to cover their modesty, unlike the profligate Yazidi manner of dress, hair undone, but Islamic State took it way too far. A woman couldn’t even see with the clothing they required.

  The pounding of boots grew louder as daesh soldiers approached his tinted windows.

  “Daesh will enslave me again.” Rosna shook.

  “Shh, Rosna.” Ali touched her hand. Her skin drew tight against her fine bones.

  Very bad. He grabbed an oil-stained pair of work gloves from the console and shoved them at her so as to preempt daeesh from chopping off those naked hands. “No one will recognize you. We’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”

  The daesh murderer gestured with a gun, slapping a bandolier of ammunition against his chest.

  Ali’s truck made a churning noise as he turned off the ignition.

  The clank of guns against tactical vests grew into a cacophony of noise as the daesh soldiers marched ever nearer. On the wooden pole above the barricade, a push pin held an 8 ½ by 11-inch paper in place.

  Ali’s stomach dropped to his boots. Rosna’s face emblazoned the paper. Only, she looked so different than in her uncle’s tattered photograph. Blue eye makeup plastered her eyelids. Shiny makeup outlined her eyebrows and a prostitute shade of red smeared across her lips. Her collar bone showed as the revealing dress in the photo cut down to cleavage.

  That girl had never willingly donned such an outfit.

  A gasp came from the veil of blackness over Rosna. Had she seen the image too through that shroud?

  “Shh, you’re covered. They’ll never recognize you,” Ali hissed. One advantage to the hide-your-women daesh policy.

  As the daesh soldiers circled his truck, Ali relaxed into his seat. With his finger, he pushed the window button. The glass rolled down with the slick whirr of gears.

  They were gonna get out of this fine. He kept his breathing shallow as he focused his gaze on the men.

  “Step out of the truck.” A red-bearded man in a black skullcap waved his Kalashnikov.

  Ali pushed the door open and set one foot on the ground. “I am just taking my wife home, bismillah.”

  The barrels of nine machine guns pointed from the barricade. His Colt Python would be no match for that.

  Dozens of men swarmed him. They searched him, filthy hands tearing his desi
gner clothes. His pistol fell against the dirt. His longest knife clanked against the pebbles. Semi-automatics stared at him from the barricade.

  The red-bearded man turned Ali’s pockets inside out. A thin bound copy of the Islamic hadiths fluttered to the dirt.

  “You see.” Ali wrenched away from the stench of death and sweat. “I worship Allah. I am a good Muslim, please let us pass.”

  The red-bearded man lowered his hairy eyebrows, pudgy eyes narrow. “Our new brother, Kamal Al Harbi, has issued a warning. A black man, six foot five, with a scar beneath his neck stole his sex slave.”

  Ali’s heart dropped to the dirt. This couldn’t be happening. Al Qaeda and ISIS hated each other, yet somehow they knew about Rosna. He forced air past his dry lips.

  “I shall see if your woman is the sex slave.” The red-bearded man reached into the truck, over the console, and grabbed Rosna’s face veil.

  No! Ali seized the man by the waist and threw him away from the truck.

  With a smash, the man’s round body bounced against the ground.

  Click. Every machine gun swiveled toward Ali. His heart beat in his throat. “Um . . .”

  “You!” The red-bearded man raised a revolver. He squeezed his finger tight against the trigger.

  “Hold.” An emir stepped from behind the barricade. He held a ragged-edge knife.

  People told stories about daesh cutting men’s intestines out while they were still alive, writhing in pain. Should he just lunge for his pistol and end his life in a haze of bullets, bringing some daesh soldiers with him?

  As the emir strode nearer, Ali glanced to the truck bed. He could probably fight his way through the men clambering into his truck bed.

  What about Rosna? She’d die in the blaze of gunfire.

  Turning his back to her, Ali looked into the emir’s eyes. Only darkness looked out of the emir’s face. Ali stabbed his finger at the red-bearded man. “He was going to uncover my wife’s face, emir.” Ali clenched his hand and willed his skin to turn an angry shade of purple rather than the blood-drained white it wanted to. His heart skipped beats. One movement of that veil and they’d recognize Rosna. Daesh would put a bullet through him then recapture her.

  The emir waved his hand toward the red-bearded man. “You deserved the blow, my brother. It is as Allah wishes. You should not have tried to unveil his wife.”

  Relief sagged Ali’s shoulders. Now to get out of here.

  The red-bearded man gestured with his gun. His Arabic accent was atrocious. “He’s lying. That woman is our brother’s sex slave. Take him to Mosul and have the Al-Khansaa brigade there search the woman.”

  No! Mosul was a death trap. Ali looked toward his truck.

  The soldiers pried open his toolbox and seized his unloaded machine gun. Their faces darkened.

  “Isn’t there a woman closer than Mosul to search my wife?” Ali tried to project confidence. He just needed time to escape.

  The red-bearded man stabbed his thumb toward a repurposed school bus. “Get in.”

  The cold metal of Ali’s keys dug into his clenched palm. “My truck is expensive. Let me bring it with me.”

  Three men jammed guns into his back. He dropped the keys into a man’s outstretched hands. A younger man hopped in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. He smiled as the brand-new engine revved into life.

  Ali’s fingers itched, but his guns were locked up in his truck. The thieves! That was a 50,000 dollar truck, let alone all the special improvements and his guns. He had three thousand dollars stashed in the back that they’d steal too.

  Rosna’s breathing blew the face veil in and out. Her gloved hands trembled. Once the Al-Khansaa brigade unveiled Rosna, the jig was up. Any ISIS fighter in Mosul would know Rosna’s face, and her body.

  The wind carried the smell of smoke and blood from the north. Ali raised his gaze over the rill. Salaam village smoldered, dead bodies spread on rooftops.

  The man in the skullcap jabbed his gun into the small of Ali’s back. “If you have lied to us, you will not live to see another sun set.”

  Duct tape stuck to his arm hairs as the fighter wrapped it tight around his wrists. A guard shoved Rosna into the black curtained area of the bus behind him.

  He should have attempted to shoot his way out of the barricade on the fool’s chance he might survive because that fool’s chance looked better than his chances now.

  CHAPTER 6

  Mosul, Iraq

  Black-clad women surrounded Rosna. Through the haze of the face covering, the concrete walls of the former post office blurred in and out. Rosna’s fingertips tingled as she struggled not to scream.

  Painted signs surrounded the shiny metal of mail receptacles. What used to be a cartoon about delivery hours stuck to the white wall, but someone had scribbled over all the cartoon faces with black marker.

  Around her, the women armed with Kalashnikovs and knives circled closer—the Al-Khansaa brigade.

  Sweat gushed from Rosna’s pores. These same women had stood guard around the empty Christian church hall where daesh had brought her three long years ago. These Al-Khansaa brigade women had stripped her and her cousins and neighbors naked, painted their faces, and forced them into revealing clothes before daesh soldiers came to take them to the slave auction.

  A female soldier brandished a whip the same color as the black clothes she wore.

  An ear-piercing scream filled the room as a local woman clutched her toddler to her chest.

  Grabbing the child by the collar, the Al-Khansaa soldier threw the child against the concrete door and shoved the woman into a different room. An acidic burning smell exuded from the doorway.

  Metal implements jangled behind the old post office counter. A dark stain of dried blood smeared across the countertop.

  Memories washed over Rosna. Her face veil twisted around her neck to strangle her as her pounding brain cried for relief. They mustn’t discover her identity! She couldn’t go back to this.

  She forced herself to breathe. Ali was a Muslim. Daesh would let him go. Any moment now Ali would come for her.

  “You did not wear socks. Your ankles showed.” Another Al-Khansaa soldier screamed the words into a hunched grandmother’s face and raised her whip high.

  “I collapsed from heat stroke. I need to go to the hospital.” The grandmother waved her bony hand across her red face. Sweat poured from the grandmother’s gray skin, but the Al-Khansaa woman swung her whip.

  Rosna gripped the edge of the counter. Her knees gave way. Her elbow bumped a propane heater. Metal implements heated to red hot in the heater’s flame. Her heart stopped.

  An enormous woman, veiled even here in the company of only women and children, towered over the rest. She looked at the phone she clasped in a chunky black glove.

  On her glass screen, glistened an image of Rosna labeled: sex slave, one hundred and thirty-four dollars.

  Rosna’s insides froze. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t breathe. One glance at her unveiled face and they’d recognize her.

  The enormous woman grabbed her arm. Only the woman’s eyes stared out of the shroud, evil in those dark pupils. The woman propelled her into an adjacent room. “Undress.”

  No! Rosna dug her fingers into the black face veil, clinging to its darkness.

  “Jessica, you search her.” The enormous woman stabbed her finger at a young woman. Red curls protruded from the woman’s pushed-back headscarf.

  “I?” Jessica paled beneath her freckles. The black covering gave her sun-deprived skin an unearthly hue, highlighting the timidity in her green eyes. If not for the Kalashnikov slung over the woman’s shoulder, Rosna would not have taken this woman for an Al-Khansaa soldier.

  “Strip her naked.” The large woman stabbed her finger at Rosna. “Then beat her.” She shoved a whip into Jessica’s hand. Blood already stained the braided leather along with the dried skin of who knew how many others.

  Then only she and this Jessica stood in the tiny, windowle
ss cupboard. Rosna pressed back against the cold wall. Black-painted concrete blocked out Melek Taus’ benevolent sunshine.

  “Unveil yourself.”

  Rosna clamped her arms to her sides. The black face cloth swished around her ears with each breath she took.

  “You are dressed modestly.” Jessica shoved her head cloth off and lowered the whip a few inches. “Umm Sultan should not have ordered a beating.”

  Mortar ridges in the concrete wall dug into Rosna’s back. The only exit was the closed door that a dozen armed women stood behind. Was there any chance they’d not recognize her face?

  Jessica dropped her voice. “You need not fear. I will not beat you hard. You will be home cooking dinner for your husband within the hour.” The girl smiled, moving the tiny mole on her right cheek. “Make sure to cry out loudly though, so that Umm Sultan shall think I struck you viciously.”

  Rosna shook. Panic rose over her senses as the room blurred in and out.

  Jessica took hold of Rosna’s veil.

  All the blood left Rosna’s hands.

  The Al-Khansaa soldier yanked the veil. The black fabric slid across Rosna’s face, revealing naked skin.

  A gasp escaped Jessica’s lips, her green eyes as wide as poisonous wells. “You’re the sabaya.” Rather than exultation, fear burned in Jessica’s eyes. Her Arabic had an appalling accent, as if she’d come from a European, not a Middle Eastern country.

  A tiny sliver of hope pushed back the desperation swelling over Rosna. Falling to her knees, Rosna clasped the woman’s hand. She looked up into the European woman’s eyes. “Do not turn me over to them.”

  Jessica’s flaming red hair fell loose around her, her very complexion a reminder of the principles of equality and religious freedom she must have been taught as a child. Surely some part of Jessica must tell her that killing the Yazidi people and enslaving their women was wrong?

  Rosna’s chest sucked in and out with breath. “Please!”

  The woman shifted to her right foot. Her gun clanked against her shoulder. Jessica scraped her nail against the pink gun strap. Her red curls moved as she shook her head. “I have no choice.”