PROLOGUE

 

The young woman staggered out of the dense foliage. Her skimpy clothes were in shreds and droplets of her blood had dried on her skin where the thorns had torn her tender flesh. She ran towards the tall dry grasses for some protection, her breath came in short rasps and her tired body cried out for rest. She was sweating profusely in the heat of the morning sun and from the pain of her bare feet on the hot sand. Only the memory of her captors and what had happened over the last couple of days spurred her on. Lisa Carter thought back to how she had arrived in this humiliating predicament.

She and the three women had been captured and their Land Rover destroyed and they had been taken to the secret hideout of the Rebel Freedom Army of Ethiopia and put into separate cells carved into the rock face of the gigantic mountains.

A few days later, one of the guards had accidentally left the door to her cell unlocked in the evening; even though she was weak she had somehow managed to escape. She had crept along one of the many dark passageways and found an air duct that provided fresh air for the underground cells. The grid was loose and hanging off by only one of its screws. Though exhausted, she had managed to crawl through the long duct and found that she was outside of the wooded mountain face. Looking out into the moonlit night there seemed to be no sign of movement within the shadows of the sparse gnarled old Carob trees. She filled her lungs with the cool night air and staggered out into the rocky area and found a small niche in some of the tangled undergrowth some way away from the prison and fell asleep.

The hot early morning sun had awoken her and she was hungry and thirsty and she could feel a film of fine sand on her pale young skin that had blown on her during the night. As she looked around the semi desert-like area in front of her it looked desolate and sinister, there were dried-up tumbleweeds everywhere and wicked straggling weeds trying to trip her up as she made her way across the hot sand. Tears blurred her blue eyes as she squinted against the burning sun trying to find some other sort of shelter. Suddenly she noticed in the distance several palm trees looming, it looked vaguely like an oasis and she wondered if in fact it was only a mirage as she sat down on the hot sand, panting. Her long tangled blonde hair trailed down her back to the roundness of her pale smooth hips. She reached up and tied it into an untidy knot. The top of her skimpy torn garment revealed her pert breasts that were covered with numerous scratches from the thorny weeds, and her soft skin had started to burn from exposure to the already hot sun. As she surveyed the area around her she saw a light brown coloured vehicle approaching and she looked around for somewhere to hide, but now the sparse weeds were not sufficient enough to camouflage her and her hopes dropped as it came nearer and she realised that they were the Rebels looking for her and she could do nothing about it.

Five men jumped out of the old Military Hummer, with the soft top of tan canvas. Each one of them was dressed in desert camouflage combat outfits and had a Kalashnikov AK- 47 rifle in their hands as they searched for her. She ducked down and lay spread-eagled and trembling on the sand, but it was too late, she had already been seen by one of the men through his powerful binoculars.

The Commander of the band of rebels gave a shout as he caught sight of her and pointed his gun at her. Lisa knew there was no point in resisting him now and thought she would be better off dead anyway. He quickly approached her and then he bent down and grabbed her viciously by her right arm and pulled her savagely to her feet.

"British whore. Bitch, you do know that you have made it more difficult for the others, the Doctor will not be pleased with you, nor will the Sheikh."

He slapped her hard across one cheek with the palm of his calloused hand and her head snapped sharply to one side.

Lisa slowly turned her head to look at him and spat in his face and he slapped her again, this time more brutally and the strength of the blow knocked her down onto the sand and he kicked out at her with his heavily booted foot. The velocity of his savage kick as he slammed his right foot into her chest forced the air from her lungs and as she lay on the sand her body twisted with violent pain as she tried to regain her breath. She lay writhing at the cruel leader's feet. He poked his boot into her ribs and gave her another vicious kick. This time she heard a slight crack as if one of her ribs had snapped and knew that she was probably seriously hurt as she cried out loudly.

"So, British whore, you thought you could escape from me. You stupid woman," shouted the Commander, and his cruel tanned rugged face became distorted with anger as he yelled at her in excellent English, his dark brown eyes awash with disdain for her as he spat onto the ground with his contempt.

She looked up at him through her tear-glazed eyes. "I shall report you to the United Nations and Civil Rights Organisation and you have no right to treat me like this. I am a British Citizen." She shouted at him courageously though her stomach was churning with fear.

"Huh, they have no control over us; we are the law around here, you stupid woman. They do not care about you either!" He laughed cruelly as he looked down at her and spat again.

He clicked his thumb and two fingers together on his right hand and beckoned to his other two men who were standing nearby. The sweaty ugly brutes came forward, handcuffed her wrists behind her back and blindfolded her then heaved her to her feet and with a firm grip on her bound arms they pulled her along blindly to the army vehicle and threw her into the back of it, chaining her to a steel ring that was bolted to one of the anti-roll bars of the Hummer. They drove off with her towards their secret hideout. She cried out and an angry Arabic voice shouted at her to be silent.

As she swayed around on the ring, she wondered where she was being driven to, she supposed back to the hideout, to be imprisoned again, interrogated, assaulted or tortured or even sent to her death, she knew what the evil men were capable of from stories that had been told to her by some of the workers at one of the Christian Missions across the border.

PART ONE

 

CHAPTER ONE - THE BEGINNING

 

Lisa Carter together with three of her colleagues who worked with Worldwide Aid had flown to Southern Sudan, to meet up with their main sponsor, Adam Stone, at the new Christian Mission just near the town of Malakal. His company Maxi-Med Pharmaceuticals had founded the charity several years before to help many of the underdeveloped countries. Lisa had been his Personal Assistant on such journeys over the past seven years ever since she had joined the Charity when she was eighteen. She would have followed Adam to the ends of the earth because she had been in love with him from the first time she had met him and she knew he felt the same way about her, but he had never shown her his true feelings.

***

Rebels from the Islamic north of the country had attacked the Christian village in the south where the Mission was situated and Lisa and her colleagues had watched, hiding in the long grass, as families were cut down by horsemen and burnt alive and young women raped. The two Land Rovers had turned and made their way back to Malakal, but the ladies' vehicle had got stuck in the sand and they had lost radio contact with Adam who was in the other Land Rover with two Frenchmen; a priest and a journalist from Paris, who had also journeyed over to the Sudan to review the situation.

The Ethiopian Rebel Forces had followed the women in a large covered-in American Army truck. When they caught up with them they had captured them and then quickly and quietly assaulted the four surprised women and threw them into the back of their vehicle. They also looted the Land Rover and then set fire to it and drove off with the women to their secret hideout in the Ethiopian mountains.

The large camouflaged steel doors that covered the entrance to the mountain rolled back silently as the driver pressed his remote control and he drove into a large hangar and they parked up. The giant doors to the entrance closed quietly behind them and the men jumped down from their vehicle and roughly hauled their prisoners from it, and then prodded them with their rifle butts, towards a metal lift cage.

The steel lift cage arrived at the bottom of a cavern and they were dragged along a dimly lit passageway and thrown separately into four iron barred cells that measured approximately four metres by three metres.

Lisa had tried to escape, but hands, arms and rifle butts had stopped her. She had kicked out and used what little knowledge of unarmed combat that she knew, but she was no match for the four strong hideous men.

***

Once back at the hideout, which was made up of a warren of rooms and subterranean passages cleverly cut into the enormous mountain face, two of the rebels later pulled her out of her small cell and dragged her along a short corridor to one of the punishment rooms and pulled her torn khaki cotton trousers off her leaving her standing in just a little pair of grubby white cotton knickers and a stained, torn, white T-Shirt.

After several moments the vicious leader Commander Habib Al Attar entered the room carrying a leather quirt. The two guards who had been standing outside also entered. They stood either side of her and held her arms up and the Commander raised the quirt and he brought it down backhanded on the cheeks of her smooth buttocks, her skimpy panties were no protection against the blows as he brought it down heavily and full on and sideways. He slashed it again and she screamed out loudly, then once more he hit her tortured buttocks that were now on fire and as she struggled against his men and turned slightly, her tempting breasts were now offering themselves to him. The two guards shoved her around to face him completely and grabbed her wrists and tied them tightly behind her back with a piece of thin nylon cord which dug into her soft flesh. Then the Commander focused on both of her unfettered breasts beneath the thin fabric of her soiled white T-shirt emblazoned with the words in red stitching - WORLDWIDE AID - across the front of it, with his quirt and brought it down with force and she screamed out with the pain.

He aimed at her left breast again and much to her chagrin, her nipples poked out insistently through the material of her torn T-shirt, which afforded little or no protection from the cruel leather stock whip.

Her body stiffened and shook but he had already moved to the other side of her and with a vicious whipping sound, struck her right breast, then he aimed at the left orb again and the T-shirt became entangled in the leather whip and was torn away from her left shoulder to expose the top of her well-shaped breast and her proud pink nipple.

"Oh my God, no!" She screamed out as she tried to protect herself, half turning away from him, but her hands were tied very tightly behind her back and there was little that she could do as she struggled to avoid any further stinging blows.

All of her previous screams were insignificant as she howled with the extreme pain. Her body went rigid again and then shook with fear, but he had already moved to the other side of her and with a vicious whipping sound, struck her rib cage and she clenched her teeth together as the blow stung her intolerably and ripped through her lithe young form.

Commander Habib Al Attar gave her a few seconds to recover and lifted the short leather riding quirt once more and lashed out at her even more viciously across her rib cage, this time breaking her tender skin, which started to bleed from the blow and her body jerked backwards with the excruciating agony of the blow.

Lisa cried out arching her back and the pain was so severe she nearly fainted, the muscles in her body convulsed as the intensive agony rippled through her body. She could not think, she did not want to think, she started to tremble and her eyes rolled back into her head and the Commander thought that she had passed out, but after a second or so she gave out another dreadful piercing scream and collapsed on the hard stone floor of the chamber and he kicked out at her as he looked down. He had kicked her so hard that her body moved across the hard ground.

She curled herself into a ball covering her head waiting for another beating. But it did not happen and she tilted her head and turned slightly to look up at the vicious man.

Habib looked down at her and realised that he had maybe been too zealous with his whipping, after all he did not wish his cousin to see that he had hurt her too much, or he would be the object of his wrath.

"Well, where are the arms, the drugs and where is the money?" He shouted savagely in English.

As she turned her head she noticed that there was someone else in the room. It was the other girl Joanna Albright, she was also tied up, but she was hanging naked by a rope under her armpits and around her wrists, her head flopping onto her chest, from a set of wooden gallows set into the rock face of the hideout and she called out feebly.

"Tell him Lisa. Please tell him, please."

"I do not know," Lisa, cried out, " I do not know, I have told you, I do not know. I do not handle that side of things."

Commander Habib knew she was lying and could see that the English woman was torn between her professional duty and a growing concern for her colleagues and the people at the Christian Mission.

Once more he raised the crop threateningly and then paused for thought, he did not want to damage her too much as his cousin had expressed extreme interest in her and he knew that he would pay him well, and he wanted the younger one for his own interests, she would earn him plenty of money in his brothel with her fine young looks and pale skin.

"I will ask you one more time or you will suffer. Where is the money?"

Lisa hung her head trying to buy some time, hoping that Adam would come and save them all, little knowing that he and the two Frenchmen had already been captured and were below them in one of the other rock faced rooms.

"OK, I'll tell you. But first you must untie me and my friend," she pleaded, wondering where the two older women who had also been captured were.

He clicked his fingers and one of the guards cut her bonds and then pulled her into a sitting position on the floor. Another guard stepped forward and undid the ropes holding the other girl's wrists and she dropped down heavily to the hard floor.

"OK, now tell me then bitch," he shouted at her as he bent down and leaned into her face. His face was scarlet and contorted with rage.

Lisa rubbed her painful wrists and then tried to cover her semi-nakedness with her hands.

"I have already told you, we do not have any guns, we only have medicines, and you do not seem understand do you? We are here on a mission to help the people. The poor people that you and your men terrorise. We work for Worldwide Aid; it is a charity that has been set up by donations from various companies and Governments all over the World. We do not have any arms or drugs on us and we only have very little money with us, the bulk of the money is sent to the Government Relief Fund in Khartoum, by electronic transfer to a bank. Do you not understand me?" She tried to explain as she studied him.

The leader, Commander Habib grinned maliciously, displaying a mouth full of large nicotine stained teeth and he sucked his gums with a loud click.

He was obviously a throwback, she thought as she stared up at him. He was quite pale skinned, dark Negroid curly hair, tinged with grey at the temples and dark blue eyes. His lips were thin and cruel looking and he had an aquiline nose. Yet he was reasonably handsome, in a sadistic looking way. Lisa guessed he was about forty years old.

"So you are another of those stupid women, who think they can save the world, well you are mistaken, those people are savages and they will never be saved. All the money your company and others pour into this country is taken and used by us to buy arms and drugs that we either keep or sell on. They are scared of us. Don't you understand? What do you mean you have no money with you?" He struck out savagely at her with his right hand and caught her across the cheek. Her head snapped to one side viciously from the blow.

"How can you say that? What do you understand? You are the savages, not the poor people who have no food or education," Lisa shouted at him putting her hand up to her sore cheek.

"What? What are you saying that I am stupid? We shall see about that," he shouted back at her as he approached her and grabbed her quivering breasts in his calloused hands and pinched her tender nipples and then he ran his hands over her young body salaciously as his eyes devoured her.

"Take them away; put them in the basement with the others, the doctor will be here in two days' time to see them." He commanded to a soldier standing nearby and he stormed angrily out of the room.