Summary

 

The Shia'ard and the Sunni'ard unions are at war.

The 1,500 years of hatred between the two Islamic sects has finally boiled over into a savage conflict marked by widespread genocide on both sides. Shia trapped inside the Sunni'ard and Sunni trapped inside the Shia'ard were being killed on a wholesale basis or enslaved. Those who managed to escape became refugees among their own kind. Impoverished cities, with millions of displaced persons, sprang up overnight on both sides. The atrocities and the refugee situation shocked the world, but no country would interfere. Not only was the Shia-Sunni conflict a quagmire of religious emotion but getting between the U.S. and the Patriarchy was dangerous.

The conflict in the Middle East was also a proxy war between the United States of America and the Patriarchy of Slavic Peoples-the successor to the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union. These two great powers had been fighting a second cold war for a generation over philosophies that one historian described as "individual freedom versus tribal obligation." The Shia-Sunni conflict gave them each a champion and a real fight within which to air these differences.

On the front lines, however, the Shi-Sunni War was not about ideas or philosophies, it was about longstanding hatreds and fears. Nor was it fought according to the civilized protocols of the Geneva Convention. It was a brutal and fierce battle for religious primacy, fought by 7th Century rules, where the only living survivors of a battle were the victors and their slaves. The world had not seen such a large scale, vicious headbutting since the Nazis had fought the Russians.

In fact, the war was responsible for the reemergence of sexual slavery. The Patriarchy had already institutionalized a form of sexual slavery to control to control its own restless population, but the Shia-Sunni War made the sex-slave commonplace. Military officers and government leaders on both sides began to expect the award of a female sex-slave in compensation for their service. After all, they argued, the slave was "an enemy" and therefore of no value within their society

To counter growing aggression, the U.S. had sent a new ambassador, Max Kavanaugh, and his beautiful advisor, Kira Ruslanova, to the Patriarchy. They were actively trying to moderate the Patriarchy's misogyny when the fight broke out in the south. First Secretary Boris Kasimov, the dictatorial leader of the PSP, enjoyed listening to their humanitarian arguments, but he paid little real attention. He found it amusing to spar with them while using the conflict in the south to foster a larger plan for the benefit of the Patriarchy...and for him. He also found it useful to use them, especially Kira, to funnel misinformation through the embassy to keep the U.S. off-balance. Max, unsure of the right countermove in Kasimov's game of global chess, was largely ineffectual in the contest.

In a calculated sub-strategy, Kasimov has Kira arrested, convicted of espionage, and assigned to "ponygirl punishment." To save her from captivity, Max agrees to keep a vital piece of information regarding the war secret from his superiors. Kira, appalled and disgusted that Max sacrificed the lives of perhaps thousands to save her, accuses him of treason. First Secretary Kasimov finds their falling out amusing and typically American.

While this was happening in Moscow, DAR Team Seven (Destruction, Assassination, Removal), led by Major Steve Altemeyer, continues to pursue U.S. interests in the Middle East on the side of the Sunni'ard Union, the U.S. proxy in the war. They plan to infiltrate the Shia'ard lines and collect intelligence by posing as slave traders and embedding a slave with a senior Shia officer. Major Mila Sokolovski, a former rab (slave) and insurrectionist fighting the Patriarchy, has volunteered to be their embedded slave.

The director of the CIA, Emmet DaVinci, had conceived of the risky operation, codenamed Honeypot, after the spectacular success Altemeyer and Major Sokolovski had escaping from Shia'ard territory. In this escape, Mila had posed as a slave and Altemeyer as her master.

At first, Altemeyer had nixed the operation fearful of inserting Mila so deeply into enemy territory. Even after DaVinci had threatened him with court martial and dismissal from the service for disobeying orders, he continued to refuse. It was only when Mila, desperate to save Altemeyer's career...and their budding romance, separately agreed to DaVinci's plan, did Altemeyer relent.

Chapter 1 - Flight

 

Sonia Ahmadi stared out the attic window at the convoy of pickup trucks in the street below. The Shia-Sunni War had been raging for months with no end in sight and-from the number of trucks and fighters moving south every day-it didn't appear that the war would end anytime soon. She shuddered at the thought of spending more time along hiding in an attic then she considered the alternative.

Girls like her-young and attractive girls-had become hot commodities in the new Iran, now part of the larger Shia'ard Union. Every senior officer and government official now expected a female sex-slave as a reward for their loyalty. Even private citizens, rich men with power, were looking for a slave as their part of the "war dividend."

At first, the supply-girls plucked mostly from the surging ranks of non-Shia refugees fleeing persecution-had been sufficient. However, as resistance to the genocide had grown, the supply of girls had dwindled. Now, the government was relying on marauders and private slavers, sometimes even buying girls from the new slave markets in neutral Kuwait and Lebanon, to meet demand.

She backed away from the window and lay back on her cot. Her dream had been to return to her village and the simple life she had led before the war, but that was impossible now. Everyone in the village was dead except for a handful of slaves. The PSP, the Provisional Shia Militia had murdered them. She could still see the long lines of villagers kneeling in the streets waiting to have their throats sliced open.

They had always been persecuted, but never like this, never killed on a wholesale basis. Her hope now was that the Shia and the Sunni Muslims would kill each other so her people live in peace in their ancestral homeland. She was a Christian, a Presbyterian member of the Assyrian Evangelical Church, one of the two million or so Christians in Iran.

Two million...?

It was unlikely that there were still two million Christians left in Iran. The genocide promoted by the Shia'ard Guardian Council had resulted in the deaths of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. The streets literally ran red with blood. Only Shiites were welcome in the Shia'ard Union; all other minorities-Christian, Sunni, Kurds, Gilakis, Mazandaranis, Lurs, Tats, Talysh, Baloch...all others-were being systematically exterminated...or enslaved...or worse.

The militiamen who had destroyed her village had spared her, she thought for enslavement. They had thrown her into a makeshift pen along with a dozen other "prisoners" to watch as they killed everyone else. Not just killed...they allowed only the most innocent the mercy of a knife stroke across the throat. Those who had fought or who had been prominent, they killed in the most horrific and savage possible manner. It was as if every one of their Shia neighbors and countrymen had suddenly become a bloodthirsty savage. The population no longer viewed enslavement, even sexual enslavement, as an atrocity; it was a mercy, a pardon from the universal death sentence the Guardians had imposed on all non-Shia.

The militiamen only conferred this status on those whom they deemed "pretty." When one of her guards had mockingly told her that she was too pretty for simple enslavement, she didn't know what he meant. It was only after they had shipped her to the Semnan home of Doctor Professor Fazel Foroutan that she found out

Foroutan, she learned later, had once been a respected teacher at FLI (Future Leaders of Iran) College. For leading FLI's 50,000 students in "the rising," the new government had made him Caliph of the Yazd Region. He had immediately set about ridding, by means of murder, the region of all non-Shia...except for the most beautiful non-Shia girls, who he murdered himself in how own unique way.

The caliph's men had stripped off her clothing and caged her like an animal, shoved her naked into a small metal pen with half-a-dozen other select girls. There was no room in the pen to move, even breathing was difficult, pressed up against the other naked bodies. The pen was intended to hold them for the caliph, who enjoyed exterminating some of the "vermin" himself, but only if they were young and pretty...and thin. He had a predisposition for slim-figured girls with long legs and narrow waists. It was a nightmare, something she would never forget.

She had waited in the pen for two horrific days. Each night the caliph's senior wife, Ozraa, would select two or three girls, drag them out, and deliver them to their "judgement," as she called it. No one whom she took ever returned. Those left behind could not see what happened to them, but they could hear their screams and the sounds of strangulation coming from the other room. It was worse than watching them die; their imaginations assumed the worst-that the caliph was executing them in some excruciatingly slow and painful way. As it turned out, they didn't have imaginations gruesome enough to meet the reality of the caliph's executions.

In truth, Sonia had not thought a slow and painful death was all that terrible an option as she waited for her turn. Living like this was not living, it was an existential misery...and to what end, she wondered? If she made it out of the caliph's pen, she would become someone's slave, their pet.

Still, when her time came, she had resisted Ozraa with all her might, but the woman was not to be put off. She grabbed her hair and pulled until she was free, screaming and twisting, but free of the pen. She had continued to resist, but not as much as she could have. It just seemed easier to go along; death no longer held the same fear it had. She continued to be strangely passive even when the caliph had tied her wrists behind, put a noose over her head, and lifted her onto her toes. It was only when he put his hands under her bare thighs and impaled her on his cock that she had rebelled.

By then, of course, it was far too late. Her struggles, her screams, the spasmodic clutching of her muscles was exactly what the caliph wanted. She could see the insanity in his eyes, the self-justification that somehow, she deserved his worst, that somehow, him deriving pleasure from her death was okay. She kept waiting to die, but the noose didn't slip and tighten-that would have been too merciful-it just closed her airway for the fleeting period that he wanted...just enough to remind her that her strangulation was coming.

She had been twisting wildly and screaming when the black-clad men had burst into the caliph's judgement room. One of them had slammed his rifle butt into the surprised caliph's head, knocking him unconscious. Another had used his hands to hold her up while his colleague untied the noose. She could still feel his desperation as he pulled at the noose, pushing her drooping head out of the way. She didn't remember much from that night, but she did remember his frantic efforts to save her life. She also remembered what he had said to all those he had freed from the pen...

"Get as far from away from here as you can before morning then find a place to hide until the search is over. Use this money to get the help you need to escape. If you manage to get out of the city, head south towards Kuwait and Saudi Arabia..."

Saudi Arabia... That was good advice for the Sunni Muslims among them, she thought at the time, but not for her. The Sunnis would kill or enslave a Christian like her just as fast as the Shia would. She needed to flee to someplace where the people would welcome her. Mostly, she just wanted to stay with her rescuers, but they made it clear that that was impossible. There were a dozen of them from the cage, including the caliph's young wife Parisa. The rescuer's escape vehicle was an SUV, too small for such a crowd.

She had looked down at the roll of bills he had given her and made her decision. She turned and ran as fast as she could into the darkness. It was a chance...the black-clad man had given her a chance to live, and she wasn't going to waste it feeling sorry for herself. She had seen evil up close in the caliph's eyes and had rejected it, fought against it with all her strength. She was not going to give up so easily, not ever again.

She had run for hours that night, keeping to the shadows until she found herself in a familiar neighborhood. Her mother's friend, Yekta Atlasi, a Shia woman, lived there. She knocked urgently on her door, but a heavyset man with a dark beard answered by. For a panicked moment, she thought she had the wrong house.

"Is Yekta home, please?"

The man stared at her meanly than started to close the door, suddenly, Yekta appeared behind him.

"Who is it Rasoul?" she asked.

Staring out into the darkness she had a moment of recognition.

"Sonia...? Is it you, Sonia?"

"I...I need your help, Mrs. Atlasi. I'm sorry to..."

"Of course, we will help you," she yelled, pushing the man out of the way. "I owe it to your mother. Is she...?"

She slipped inside without answering. Talking in the street was dangerous. Rasoul was still grumbling, still voicing his objections in the background, but Yekta ignored him.

"She is dead, murdered," Sonia said evenly, still numb from her near hanging.

"I am so sorry... Come in, come in."

Yekta hugged her and Sonia used the opportunity to hand Rasoul her roll of bills. He stopped grumbling and moved away inside the house.

Over the next few days, Yekta nursed her, helping her to recover from her ordeal with the caliph then she fixed the attic for her to use to hide from the militia.

"Bandits...!" she called them. "Nothing more than bandits with guns."

That had been six weeks ago. Every night now, she could hear Yekta and Rasoul fighting over her, and she knew her time with them was nearly over. The black-clad man's advice to "head south towards Kuwait" was no longer possible. The militia and the army assumed that any civilian without papers was a sarsul, a cockroach and either exterminated or enslaved them on the spot.

She had no intention of ever letting the militia take her again.