Chapter 7
Almost as soon as the air-raid sirens shrilling in the Basra skies broke the silence, Iranian Phantoms roared over the skyscrapers. Chet Bentley stood on the balcony of his Basra hotel enduring the ten minute holocaust of whirring Iranian rockets and Iraqi anti aircraft guns. Moments later silence fell, an eerie, untrustworthy silence. An hour later the sirens screamed anew. Seconds later two Phantoms streaked in 200 feet above the hotel. Its belly nearly scraped the upper floor of the hotel.
"Holy shit!" muttered Chet Bentley. At least in Viet Nam he had weapons; here anything in the way fell victim. Including foreign filmmakers!
He slunk dejectedly back into his hotel room and threw himself down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. His mind hadn't jarred from the worry of Karen. He was trapped here by the war and the fighting, and who knew how long it could take before he could even get back to Karen. God knows what could happen to her by then... Only one man could help him get back to Karbala in one piece—Abdullah. And who knew how even he could manage it in this kind of fighting.
Karen O'Malley lay on a gold-tasseled divan in an arabesque, vaulted room. The divan sat on a platform with mosaic swirled tapestries strewn with gold hung on the wall. She lay on a heap of pillows. The smell of incense was heavy in the air.
She could recall nothing of her journey—the fumes of hashish surrounding her, combined with the dulling effect of the drug Jibsen had shot into her hip to keep her quiet and docile, made the horror of his bestial rape a fantasy and nothing more.
CBS and New York and even Chet Bentley seemed distant, faraway and unreal as dazedly, she wondered if she would ever see him again, feel his warm, loving fingers touching her flesh. Her old life already seemed a distant thing in her drug-addled brain. Languidly she stretched out on the divan and crooked one naked leg to—naked! She hadn't even realized she was naked!
Her head turned slowly as a tall lean man in a white Arab robe pulled aside the curtain and floated into the room. His dancing dark eyes bored into her milk-flesh, bringing a whimper of fear to Karen's trembling lips So much had happened, so much to think about, if only she could think!
He spoke English brokenly through tensile lips. Mockingly, he bowed and said: "I have come on behalf of Faisal, your new master." As she lifted her wide, frightened green eyes to him, his own dark ones began to roam over the smooth, pale ripe curves of her naked white body, a sadistic smile playing over his thin lips. His face was long and swarthy-dark, his nose hooked so exaggeratedly the tip nearly touched his lips as he grinned lecherously down at her.
Karen shivered. "My m-master?"
"Yes, your master!" He said with a strength in his voice that left no doubt, even in her drug addled brain that she had heard him correctly. He settled down on the divan beside her and she could smell the heavy sweetness of his oil. Without ceremony, he reached out brazenly and roughly pinched one of her rosy nipples into a hard peak of tingling sensation. "I have come in my master's behalf to examine you and see if you are worthy of residing in his harem and attending his diffa."
Karen didn't listen to his words; her mind was centered on the tips of her breasts, burning with growing excitement. The effects of the hashish and the tranquilizer softened fear and heightened sensation, leaving her floating on a Persian carpet in unclouded skies. Her mind blocked out his voice, concentrating on his actions. A tiny moan escaped her throat as she felt hunger churning in her loins.
"You have a magnificent young body. The master enjoys American women with big white breasts."
To test her reaction, he squeezed hard on her milky tits until jagged spears of pain shot through the reddened nipples, wrenching her from dreamy arousal. His closeness was suddenly making her claustrophobic. She struggled frantically to pull herself free of his excruciating, biting grip. A rush of adrenalin flooded her veins and she managed to tear herself from his sweaty grasp and leapt up from the divan to dart for the curtain. But the Arab was accustomed to hysterical and frightened young women in harems, it was his job to control them, and he caught her easily before her tiny bare feet even hit the floor. He looped one arm around her slim waist and effortlessly dragged her back down on the divan, sending the pillows flying. She lay there quivering, naked except for the heavy gold ring piercing her nose and which lay heavily on her upper lip, a new addition to her appearance compliments of her master which was engraved in Arabic, French and English and identified her as the personal property of Sheik Faisal, the chieftain. She had just become aware of its presence and her fingers touched it timidly, exploring this new permanent alteration to her pretty face. Her nose was still very tender where it had been pierced and she took her fingers away, frowning as the reality of it sunk in. Her new master had pierced her nose like she was a prized pig at a county fair!
"Do not try to escape or the master will be most displeased. You will be beheaded for such attempts."
"Be-beheaded?" she gulped, forgetting all about her nose and the ring in her sudden fear.
"And disemboweled."
"Disemboweled?"
"Yes. Women in our country are property. You must learn to accept this idea or it will go very badly for you. You now belong to any man who possesses you. You were sold to your master, and he owns you now. You wear his ring permanently in your nose, marking you as his. If you tried to escape, you would be quickly identified and brought back to him for a sizable reward for whoever returns you to him again. If you displease him, he may do anything he likes to you to punish you. You may be beaten, you could be forced to live and work in one of his brothels where he sends his cast-offs to, or, if he is truly angry with you, he may simply do away with you!"
Karen blinked at that clear cut philosophy and cowered into the cushions against the wall, crossing her arms over her breasts in a feeble attempt at modesty.
Her weak defenses curled his lips in amusement. A couple more tugs with his large hand and he'd grasped for his penis that poked out from under his robe like a snake crawling out of a hole. It jutted out menacingly as his fist pumped at its blood-fed length.
No... he wasn't going to take her from behind, she prayed.
Dear God, Chet!
A crooked smirk creased the Arab's face as with a sudden movement, he wagged his penis at her with one hand and eased her back down on the divan with the flat of his palm.
"I want you to suck my cock," he said flatly. The young naked woman cringed at his crude words, just one more torment in an endless nightmare of rape and pillage.
Wide-eyed, paralyzed with fear, she watched him hold onto his robes and knee his way up to straddle her naked breasts, pinning her arms to her sides with his knees. She saw the blood fattened head of her Arab master's penis thrust forward and press wetly against her tightly clenched parched lips.
"Oh, God, Chet!" she wailed.
"You must take my cock in your mouth or suffer the consequences," he panted lewdly. He grinned lewdly and with his sweaty thumb and forefinger, reached down and pinched the be-ringed nostrils of her finely chiseled little nose tightly together until she sputtered out in a desperate need for air.
"Mmmmphhhgghh!" Karen groaned, dizzy from holding her breath and the unctuous smell of his heavy oil. It was either open her mouth and accept that stiff tube of Arabian meat, or die. The choice was an easy one to make.
Finally, her lungs burning for air, her eyes blinking against the stars flitting before her dizzy, drug-dulled eyes, her lips popped open wide, sucking in great gulps of long denied air.
"You are being sensible now. The chieftain has paid a great deal of money for your favors."
For an Equal Rights Amendment supporter like Karen O'Malley, that hardly made sense. Dear God, why had she asked for the Middle East assignment? Why couldn't she have taken the Mt. Hood assignment instead! She'd rather lose her life in a flood of scalding lava than to drown on Arab cum, and that's what the choice was, pure and simple.
With a cruel lunge, he shoved it into her helplessly gasping mouth, ramming it down deep inside her parched throat until it seemed to brush all the way back against her open throat. She gagged and tears filled her eyes as she fought wildly to expel the rock hard protuberance that filled her mouth to bursting, so unnaturally. The smell of his genitals stung her nostrils, pungent and unclean. The telltale smell and taste of women's love juices was distinct in her mouth and she wondered how many women this detestably ugly man had raped that day. God, it was sinful, disgusting and unclean what he was doing to her! She would suffocate on the smell of him if the length of his drubbing cock didn't kill her first.
Viciously, the Arab grasped Karen's tumbles of coppery-red hair in his dark, gnarled, knuckled hands and yanked her head cruelly forward. Karen broke free just long enough to suck in more of the genital-scented air, and panted with relief. Then the triumphantly grinning Arab sank his lust hardened pole deep into her mouth again, in... in deeper... up to the kinky curls of black pubic hair. The short, wiry hair around his penis grazed and tickled her lips, while his sperm heated balls slapped lewdly down against her chin, beating a lewd tattoo. Now he began to fuck in and out of her widely ovaled mouth with long, quick strokes, and strangely, partly due to the drugs numbing effect and the aphrodisiac effect of the hashish she'd been forced to smoke, and partly due to the rising tide of masochistic acceptance of the debasing act she was being forced to perform in this godforsaken country, Karen began to feel a whispering wind of unwanted passion again rising in her that took possession of her body, leaving her helpless to fight against this obscene defiling of her cock-stretched lips.
He rammed his Arabic cock so hard into her tiny mouth that Karen could feel the tight, parched corners of her lips stretch, then split painfully. Chills of damning excitement whipped up and down her goosebumped spine, little sparks of lascivious delight seemed to explode, fluttering like butterflies in her blood. With a terrible shame masked by the threat of death, she felt the sticky moistness seeping wetly between her now wide spread legs, felt the warmth of it suddenly hotly flooding her pulsing pussy, felt the ache and throb of desire down there between her legs.
How could it be that she was surviving this obscene act? Sucking an Arab's cock, she thought dully. It was wonderfully horrible! Wicked and evil. In a sudden of love for life, she shed her self-degrading inhibitions about this strange race of people and their morals, and threw herself into the act of cocksucking. She ran her shamelessly searching tongue back and forth over the sensitive length of his huge prick, teasing the tiny slit into the tips, licking the drops of sticky fluid that oozed from it, tasting it, savoring it for dear life... as he jerked his hips forward and fucked deep down inside the saliva filled cavern of her mouth. It throbbed there like a heartbeat in its hotly clasping liquidy warmth for a moment, then withdrew, and plunged in again.
Karen's lust-distorted brain brushed aside all rational thought except for the will to live... all memories of Chet and their life together fled, and she gave herself completely over to her subjugated and humiliating task of being fucked in the mouth by a foul smelling Arab... an utter stranger whose swarthy face she'd never seen before and hoped to God to never see again! No! She'd never sucked anyone's cock but Chet's and that was only to please him... never herself. Irish Catholics were raised that way, and Karen O'Malley, despite her perfect curves and proportions, was no exception.
Now it seemed she could not get enough of the stabbing of this swollen dark penis deep into her throat, as if she could not bear to wait for him to shoot his foamy white sperm, filling her mouth with the searingly pungent flavor of his male cum—pouring it down her throat, letting it flood out over her parched lips, dribbling down her dimpled chin while she thrashed in erotic bliss below him.
Madly, insanely now—she sucked on that rubbery knob, her cheeks of their own volition contracting, tightening around his fleshy staff that moved in and out between her tight, pursed lips like a well-oiled oil rig. And then, suddenly, the man's faceless body above her went into a violent spasm, and his abruptly jerking testicles sent the hot stream of thin, milky sperm gushing warmly up into her tightly clocked mouth, welling up and over her young lips like a fountain of half whipped cream.
Karen gulped to swallow every precious drop, her throat constricting and relaxing in turn to squeeze it dry. The captive American mewled and cooed and gurgled and swished her tongue hotly around the now slowly deflating penis, while the Arab threw back his head and ground his teeth together in pure joy. Her lips clung possessively to it, her ovaled lips elastic and tight in a last desperate effort to prolong the moment. At last he grunted and pulled away from her mouth with a wet, sucking sound, and reeled backwards, a thin, glistening strand of his sperm following him away and across the firmly rounded melons of her shimmering, heavy breasts. Karen's exhausted head sank heavily down onto the divan.
"You are a beautiful and talented American woman," she heard him say with a satisfied amusement as she buried her head in the cushion and sobbed in utter despair. "The chieftain will be very pleased to make your acquaintance, and partake of your considerable charms, I am sure. Be sure to please him as well as you did me, and you will be well cared for as one of his concubines!"
Chet was almost jubilant! The Minister of Information had finally decided that because of heavy air raids, culminating in the bombing of Basra's petrochemical plant and the subsequent hurried expiation of American families, all but a handful of foreign correspondents covering the war, would be asked to leave Basra.
He stuffed his dirty socks into his satchel, gathered his shaving equipment and paid his hotel bill. A special courier bus would pick up the reporters from UPI, AP and the major television networks and deposit them in safer Karbala.
The journey from Basra to Karbala is a long one. A single highway joins the two cities, a lonely ribbon cutting through seas of sand rippling under the orange sun. Now and then an oil rig added a touch of spontaneity to the monotonous arid wasteland; clusters of buildings housing foreign oil drillers sat in inanimate testimony to life in the barren land.
The ride was tedious, temperaments rang from despair to tension with reports of fresh attacks drilling further into the heart of Iran. There was talk of foreign involvement and fear of the United States entering the war.
One man ignored the heated chatter of rumors and sat alone with his chin cupped in his hand, staring out into the sensuous wind-whipped wastelands of a country he'd come to despise. The smooth outline of sand dunes, curved and smooth as a woman's body, sparked heated reminder of what lay ahead in Karbala.
The idea of Jibsen being involved in foreign terrorism both amused and terrified him. And what of Karen? What was this crazy intrigue over his baggage, he wondered, his head spinning around as a white Toyota pickup truck hauling two camels in the back, whizzed by in reminder of changing times. Funny, he cogitated, now time moves differently in foreign countries. Bedouins hauling camels to their diyarat, traditional grazing areas, white slave trade, sheiks in Halston suits wearing the traditional turban.
A weary load of travelers debarked in Karbala. Hotel rooms were made available in a downtown hotel not far from where Chet and Karen had spent one night before his instructions to leave for Basra. Chet checked in his luggage at the Hussein Hotel with the instructions to keep it under lock and key, and headed straight for the Hotel Americana.
The buxom old Frenchwoman at the reception desk sat sipping mint tea. She studied the handsome American's face behind the rim of the delicate tea cup and set it down with a clatter. No, she had not seen Miss Karen O'Malley since she'd checked out of the hotel room two days prior, and no, she had left no forwarding address or message.
"The room is vacant, sir, if you wish to look for yourself," she encouraged, reading the distress on Chet's tired face.
"A large American with red hair?" Again a negative. A finger touched her lip then. "Wait... yes, I do... I believe he was carrying her luggage."
Second guessing Jibsen's Marine mentality, Chet accepted the large brass key and headed for the marble staircase. He slipped the key in the lock, turned it and
eased open the door.
And stood dead still in his tracks.