THE SPOILS OF WAR by Pete Brown. petebrownuk @ yahoo.com
Read all of Pete's stories in groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories
Part 30
It took a couple of weeks for Ali's father to notify us that the doctors had declared all of Ali's wives to be pregnant, with sons, and that he regarded our obligation to him as complete. And, as I had told Ali they would, our six coffle mates returned to the house - there was a lot of general rejoicing that first day back, but that evening a general air of melancholy prevailed. It was Faisel who voiced it - as we were all sipping our strong coffee after we had eaten, he turned to Ali and said "Chief, we have a difficult struggle ahead of us, I know that. And it was hard for me to leave my family. When I was dragged off as a slave and sent to America, I had to leave my wife and my sons, and I had no choice; but this time I had to walk out of the door myself, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I could have stayed and tended my land and seen my sons grow into men, and allowed them to fight for our freedom when they were old enough. But I had promised you, Chief, and Steve, and so I have returned. And I will fight with you until we are free again, or until I am dead."
There was a complete silence in the room at this point, and I could see all the other guys nodding in agreement, as they too felt the sadness of leaving their loved ones. And he had put into words what we had all been thinking: that we would probably be killed. But then Faisel spoke again "...but chief, if there's a choice, can you make sure that we only have to fight until we are free, and not until we are dead?" He slapped his thigh and burst into laughter, and we all joined in. When the laughter died down, Ali spoke. He had tears in his eyes, and no translation of the poetry of his Arabic can do justice to the way he thanked them all for remaining loyal to him, and promised them that "the brotherhood of our coffle" would never be broken. It was magnificent, inspiring, and I knew he was a true leader, not just an appointed officer, or a hereditary chief.
The second reunion that night, as once more we all joined our bodies together for sex, was even better. I loved sleeping with Ali by myself, but sharing six other men as well was even better: as I've said, there is just nothing that can beat eight hard, muscular bodies sprawled around, over and under you, waiting for you to smell, touch and taste them if you wake during the night.
Reality soon set in, though, as Ali was keen to start the struggle to get "his" slaves freed in the USA. There were some sympathisers in the country, and with their help we amassed weapons - nothing very spectacular, as the Southerners had pretty thoroughly stripped these out of the land - but rifles, a couple of sub-machine guns, some grenades, a small rocket launcher.... and a week later we killed our first two Southerners, knocking out a Jeep they were driving.
That night Ali whispered to me, so that the others would not hear "You are quiet, Steve, my lover - I thought you were a soldier, and yet you seem upset at the death of those soldiers today. It was an exciting ambush...."
"Yes, I am sad... It's hard for me, because those guys were Americans. And even though they were Southerners, and the Southerners enslaved me, and killed my folks as a result of their vile war, those guys were American soldiers, as I once was. It's hard for me to kill my own kind, Ali."
He lay there by my side, deadly still, for what seemed like an eternity. "Steve, I cannot have this. I cannot make you unhappy. I wanted you to join in our struggle, but you are not like us, you are not fighting for your country - you are right, these are your countrymen. You must leave us, Steve.... I will not make you unhappy, even though my heart will break when you go..."
I felt again those incredible pangs of love for this man, who so completely understood my problem. But I could never leave him, and I told him so. "You are involved in the greatest thing in your life, Ali, and I will help you. I could never leave you, not ever. Not if I have to kill a thousand American soldiers with my bare hands."
We made slow, passionate love then, with Ali stroking an caressing me and licking my skin so tenderly, all the time muttering "Oh Steve, my lover, who will kill for me...", over and over.
The next morning there was acute disappointment, as we tuned our TV to CNN and there was no mention of our killings! We had all been expecting it to be the main news, and were looking forward to hearing how the journalists described the start of our campaign for freedom. And three days later, when we took out another Jeep, this time with three men in it, there was still no story.
"They are censoring the news!", Ali shouted. "See, they are afraid of us! They need to hide the truth from their people...", and all his six men cheered, and I tried to be enthusiastic.
I never publicly pointed out the errors that Ali made to him at the time, as a leader needs a certain degree of appearing to be always right. But later that day I had a private meeting with him, and told him we ought to plan properly. "Look, there's a problem here... I don't think CNN were censoring the stories of the deaths of those five guys at all: the Southerners probably have more than twenty thousand troops here to keep your country under control. Five deaths from so many is hardly noticeable - probably on those same days a few more were killed in car crashes, or accidentally shot themselves, or whatever. This is not going to work, Ali - eight of us could kill perhaps ten a day, on average - how long will it take to get rid of twenty thousand invaders, even assuming they don't catch us first?"
"You are correct, Steve. What can we do? Is my cause hopeless, are you saying?"
"No, it isn't. But all recent wars have not been won by mere force of arms, by killing troops. They have been won by the force of public opinion. We must change Southern opinion, and I think we can do so in a way that shows that we're humane and so gets us international advantages, that gets us more fighting men, and which thoroughly demoralises the South to the point where they wish to leave us alone!"
"Truly you are a genius, Steve. How is this to be achieved?"
"We will stop killing the troops. Instead, we will capture them, and announce that they are not prisoners of war, but the spoils of war, and as such are now enslaved. Then we will offer to sell those slaves back to the Southerners - or, rather, to their families back in the South, and the price will be measured in coffles of our enslaved fighters. For every Southerner we enslave, the price to free him will be a whole coffle of our men. And it's a positive feedback loop - the more of them we capture and enslave, the more we will have for 'sale', and the more coffles will be returned, so the more fighters we will have, so we will be able to capture more of them... And, at the same time, we will show the Southerners how utterly humiliating and cruel it is to enslave free spirits, fighters, their own fighters, and, by implication, ours."
As we discussed it a whole host of problems started to appear, not least of which was where we were going to keep the men whilst we were waiting for them to be ransomed, and how we were going to make sure that the Southern government did not suppress news of our activities: as I pointed out to Ali, to have the maximum impact we needed everyone in the South to be somehow involved. The first of these problems was resolved when Ali remembered being taken by an uncle as a child to a copper mine the family owned, deep in the desert. It had been defunct for many years as they could not compete with the Australians, but Ali remembered that deep down, at the bottom of the shaft, there was a natural cavern which in mining days had been used for marshalling the material to be sent to the surface, and so on. We drove out to see it, and it was really hard to find, even though we knew it was there - the entrance was a tunnel leading into a rock escarpment and the ground all around was rock and rubble, rather than the conventional "sand" as one thinks of desert being made of. As I pointed out, it would be difficult to locate vehicle tracks, or to see a reasonable amount of activity because of the deep shadows cast by the rocks, and so we would be relatively safe from the Southerners' spy satellites.
When I came to the question of publicising our activities, we asked around and found a research student at the university who was very much in sympathy with our cause. I realised the power that Ali exerted as the son of a ruling council member when this sophisticated looking guy, dressed almost as a westerner, fell to the floor and kissed Ali's feet at our first meeting! It seems that although was a burning patriot he had chronic asthma and so had never been able to fight in the army, and consequently had now been taken with all the other young men back to the USA as slaves. It had been good for his career, he confessed: as one of the only students left of his generation he had rapidly gained a position of power and influence in the university, but this had added to his feelings of guilt. He was therefore eager to help us, and his speciality was in the technology of broadcasting.
I talked to him about our plans to make captured soldiers into slaves, and how important that it was that this should be seen in the South, and he at once suggested "acquiring" one of the unused channels on the satellites that broadcast TV. We had no money, but he explained that using his knowledge he could send command signals to them, using the special command codes, and gain entry to their transponders. And when I pointed out that the South would be listening to our transmissions, he simply laughed. "You soldiers are so unsophisticated", he told me, "We will uplink to the satellite with a very highly focussed tight beam, and unless a Southern aircraft is actually flying through it - unlikely, as they have little fuel to spare - it will be undetectable."
That wasn't all, though - he suggested that as well as our broadcasts via the satellite, we should have webcams constantly monitoring the captives, and provide bulletin boards for folk to show their support. He seemed confident that by using sufficient "hops" across the Internet and by constantly changing them, the Southerners would not be able to trace their source.
Ali was seething with impatience as all this was going on: we had work to do in constructing cages to hold the captives, we had to buy stocks of slave collars, and a big quantity of slave chow, and we needed to acquire all the TV equipment and get it installed, and lots of other stuff like that. Although he was fully engaged in all of this, Ali still wanted to get out there and actually "fight" the occupiers, and try as I might, I could not persuade him to hold off - in bed one night he slyly confided to me that he had personally gone out and slit the throat of one of the occupiers when he had found the man on sole guard duty at an isolated control valve on one of the many oil pipelines in the country. I felt slightly sick - look, I was a soldier, and that's what soldiers do: kill or be killed. And I had no love for the South. But I still felt concerned about the death of another American.
Ali seemed really pissed off that I did not share in his delight at the death of "another one of the invaders" as he put it, and went on to start to question my loyalty to the cause all over again when he saw that I was not as enthusiastic as he was. I pushed him over onto his back, and straddled him, lowering my ass onto his belly. Before he could resist, I grabbed his wrists and held them immobile above his head, then I put my head down towards his chest and bit into his nips, hard and sharply, so that he screamed out, and tried desperately to get away from me (useless, of course, as there was no way he could dislodge my solid muscle from him, or free his hands as he was at such a mechanical disadvantage). I bent my head down towards him again and he shouted for me to stop before I bit him again, and I glared down at his face.
"Listen, Ali, and listen well. Don't you ever dare question my loyalty to you. Not ever. Not in even the slightest way! But what you did was fucking stupid - you were never a soldier, someone who had proper training: you were just a guerilla fighter, and now you think you can carry on getting away without a proper strategy. It was stupid to kill that soldier - for one thing, we're going to need captives soon, lots of them, and he could have been the first. As we capture more and more of them and they find out what's going to happen to them, it will get harder and harder and you've just thrown away a potentially valuable asset. For another, the South will try to brand us as terrorists, but we want to be known as freedom fighters, guys who are only concerned for the freedom of this country and the repatriation of the slaves. Terrorists kill soldiers randomly, freedom fighters only do it when absolutely necessary. And finally, you've reminded the South about just how vulnerable they are when they put a lone soldier on guard duty in some remote place - they'll start to send out a whole detachment now, and it will make our job of taking captives even more difficult."
He glared at me, and I made a feinting attack with my teeth at his left nip - just grazing it with my lips. I know Ali's nips are incredibly sensitive, and he thrashed around again, trying to avoid me, as I repeatedly bobbed my head up and down in mock attacks on him. He was crying out now not in pain, but in the hope of avoiding pain, and with laughter, almost. As his body writhed under me I could even feel his dick, rock hard against my ass. I raised myself for an instant off his belly, then crashed down again, trapping his dick in-between my ass and his belly, and he screamed once more with the sheer erotic pain that must have gone through his dick as it was crushed and trapped. But then, slyly, he tried to work himself backwards and forwards under me so that his dick head was massaging my ass hole. It was my turn to give little cries of pleasure now, and I pushed my face close to his. "So.... You think you're going to fuck me, do you?"
His tongue ran over his lips, as it did when he was sexually charged, and his pupils were wide open as he stared up at me. "Yes, Steve... You want it, don't you? You're enjoying my hot dick sliding over your moist ass... Get up again and sit down on me and I'll fuck the brains out of you..."
"Typical!", I replied, laughter breaking out, "You not only want to fuck me, but you want me to do all the work! I've been busy all day, and now you want me to ride your dick. And yes, although your dick feels really good against me, my own needs exercise more...."
As I said this, I let go of his hands, flipped him over on to his belly, and pushed his face down into the bed as I gripped his neck with one hand, squeezing my fingers in-between his hard sinews so that he knew I was in control. I then fucked him, being particularly strong and fast, so that he knew I was still mildly displeased with him, but that I also still loved him.
The next morning, Ali showed another example of being a leader. After we'd breakfasted the guys all wanted to go out and kill another occupying soldier, but Ali stood there and said "You imbeciles! We need these soldiers as captives. There will be no more killing, unless they resist us. We must work to make ready for our scheme...." No mention of me, no "Oh, I was wrong..." - he just made them feel that they were not thinking as clearly as he was. I guess that's what leadership is about, really.
Still, for all that day, and the next, and the next, we toiled away clearing out the copper mine, dragging the heavy sacks of slave chow down there, welding the metal cages... sweat was pouring off us and we were all exhausted. As ever, Faisel joked and said that we were working away like slaves!
Ali continued to seethe with impatience, though, and in spite of his fine words I was worried that he might lose his cool and actually go and kill some more of the occupiers. So I contrived it so that we all focussed on building the cages - for maximum effect they stood in the centre of the chamber, about eight foot tall, with the bars no more than six inches apart curving over at the top to make the roof. They were utterly bare inside, so we knew that once the captives were in them there would be nowhere they could conceal weapons or anything.
Even as we continued to work away on installing the cameras and communications stuff, Ali took a couple of the guys and they came back four hours later with two captives - a young guy who can't have been more than nineteen, and someone I took to be his sergeant as he was n his mid thirties. They were cuffed with their hands behind them, and the men were none too gentle as they pushed them along, unwillingly, down the steep ramp into the mine. As they were forced into the first "holding" cage and the door was slammed and locked, a cheer went up from our guys. But I wasn't pleased to see that both men appear to have been beaten up, judging from the amount of blood on their faces and clothes - somehow that didn't square with Ali's description that their capture had been "a piece of cake" as he and our guys had simply pulled them out of their Jeep when it stopped at a water hole in the desert.
I insisted that the men were uncuffed, as there was no danger of their escape, and they stood there, rubbing their wrists, and glowering at us through the bars. The young guy looked scared out of his wits, but the sergeant was angry, and almost ordered us to notify the occupation authorities as "provided you all act sensibly I'll do my best to make sure you're not mown down like the rats you are when we're rescued." Well, that wasn't a really cool thing to say, was it? And after I'd translated it, the men all roared with laughter.
We had to leave the two of them there that night as we went back to the city, and Ali was about to post guard over them. "No", I told him. "We need all eight of us to search out new captives.... And, anyway, it will be a good test: without any of us there they'll do their damned best to get out of the cage, and if they're still there in the morning, we can know it's totally secure."
The following morning we took two individual soldiers off the streets in two separate incidents - we just kind of surrounded them, and then, before they could draw their weapons, we had them cuffed, gagged ,and rolled into the back of our light truck. All the guys were laughing and congratulating themselves on how easy this was, but I advised caution. "Look, my friends, they are Americans, but they are not stupid! These men were only alone because they have had three years or more when all the you fighting men were away, taken as slaves. So they had nothing to worry about. They did not even carry their weapons cocked! As it becomes known that we are taking prisoners, it will get harder: they will always patrol in pairs, they will be ready to use their weapons, and some of us may be shot just for approaching too close...."
I always tried to get the men to see the bigger picture like this, but their enthusiasm for fighting was often too strong. Still, it was with good heart that we went back down into the mine, and there, standing dejectedly in the cage, were the young soldier and the older sergeant still. We pushed the other two captives in and uncuffed them through the bars, then I reminded everyone that we needed these men alive, so they'd better be fed and watered. We gave them a container of slave chow, and a big demijohn of water, and the sergeant at once started to complain: we were required under the Geneva Convention, he said, to feed prisoners properly, and this was slave chow. What was more, they had nothing to eat it with, and no way of taking the water. And they needed what he so quaintly called "sanitary facilities with adequate privacy."
Some of the other guys had a smattering of English by now and I did not need to translate everything, and before any of the men could strike out at him in anger for his insolence, I went up to the bars and called him over.
"You are a sergeant, you are older than these other men, and you have been a soldier longer?"
"Yes, but they are not my men, not in my unit..."
"You are still the ranking person, and the most experienced. So let me give you a piece of advice: we are all freed slaves, and for the past three years all we have eaten is slave chow. And we ate it with our hands. So you would be well advised to tell your men to do the same thing. And to share the water - you are all men, you can simply share the one container: if some of your spit gets into it, it is of no consequence to us, and it should not be to you: you will soon be used to more than each others saliva!
But you are right about the sanitary facilities: the rock floor here does not allow us to dig a shit hole, as we often had to use, but we will provide you with a covered bucket. But as for the privacy.... well, as you will see, as slaves you have no right to expect that."
"We are not slaves! We are soldiers, prisoners of war...."
"You are not prisoners of war, sergeant. You are the spoils of war, a war for the freedom of our country. And the spoils of war are turned into slaves, as you in the South did. Now, I advise you to remain calm and not to annoy my men: as ex-slaves they have no love of the men of the South, and if you provoke them, things could be very difficult for you."
"You are not allowed to ill treat prisoners of war..."
"Any you have not understood that you are no longer soldiers, no longer free men. You are not prisoners of war, as I have explained: by being captured you have taken the first step to becoming slaves."
I turned and walked off, and ordered a bucket to be placed in the cage. Our men made a point of standing there and watching the prisoners as they squatted to use it, just as we had often been watched as, totally naked, we had to use a shit hole in the corner of our own cage. The sergeant and the two most recent captives seemed to be able to manage it, but I felt really sorry for the young guy who had a real problem in pissing in front of an audience, let alone crapping. If only he knew, I thought, what was going to happen to him, he'd be truly terrified.
My memory fails me about the precise details of how we captured the next four men, but as I was present, it was done as humanely as possible without undue and unnecessary violence. When we had them hog tied on the floor, I do remember that one of the men went to kick out at them viciously, and I grabbed him and in turn slapped his face - hard (we tended to use physical means of reinforcing our orders). "There will be time enough for punishing them", I snarled at him, "without stupidly damaging them: think of these men as slaves already, who are worth a lot of money. You would not damage other things you own, would you? We need them whole, preferably unblemished, for when they are exposed on TV."
We watched the TV to see if our exploits were being reported, but still there was a stony silence. As I explained to the men, this was understandable as the Southern army would be contacting the men's families and so on before releasing the news. And it would anyway sound bad to inform the public that there had been four separate kidnappings!
Our technical advisor had apparently been "seeding" the Internet chat rooms and so on with news of what was about to happen, and although we had announced the captures, it was being met with cynicism and disbelief as there was almost an official denial from government sources. Nevertheless some dedicated "conspiracy theorists" had been starting to make a noise about it, and our expert was able to deduce that there were over one hundred thousand "viewers" when we started to process the men later that day - I had decided that we would do it in batches of eight, as that was a good number to control, and it had a resonance for us with the numbers in a standard coffle.
I had our men dress in typical "guerilla" costume, to heighten the effect of us being an army. Normally we wore Arab robes to blend in with the mass of the population, but now we dressed in drab fatigues and T shirts, with scarves wrapped around our necks. The whole outfit emphasised how strong and tough we were, especially as we were all still deeply tanned form all those years of working naked. I talked to the men and told them how important it was to be disciplined and professional looking. "We are all used to working together closely, and we need to maintain that now. I do not want the viewers to see us arguing, or ill-treating the prisoners, or anything like that: we are an army of liberation, and we will act as proper soldiers."
Ali stood there, and added "Steve knows about this. Obey him, or you will feel my wrath. Although you are my men, I will not hesitate to deal harshly with anyone who wilfully disobeys orders - these soldiers in the cage may need a guide to show them how slaves behave, and if you disobey me or shame me, you may find yourselves fulfilling that role."
The men all laughed as he said this, but I wasn't so sure that he was joking - this was a serious business for Ali. Still, it was time to begin. I ordered the men to place a small table and a chair in the middle of the chamber and had the cameras focussed on it. Then commanding them to hold their weapons cocked and ready, and not to hesitate to shoot if there was any risk of one of the men trying to escape, I ordered the cage to be opened and for them to drag the first man out. As I expected, it was the sergeant who presented himself, almost pushing aside one of his men who happened to be nearest to the gate.
I sat there on the chair at the table, and had a notebook and pen in front of me. The men pushed the sergeant with their gun buts so that he was standing in front of me.
"Name, serial number, and home town...."
"I only have to give my name, rank and serial number.... that's all that's required under the Geneva Convention", he almost spat at me, and reeled off the details.
"No matter, sergeant. As I have explained, you are not a prisoner of the war. You are a slave. But I expect we will soon find out where you come from soon enough, as this scene is being broadcast and I expect one or more of our viewers will recognise you and e-mail us. Now, unclothe."
I had agreed with Ali that I would be the interrogator this time as my English is of course perfectly clear, whereas his has a distinct Arabic accent, and we did not want any possible confusion either in the minds of the captives, or of the viewers. "You heard me, sergeant. Unclothe. Remove your uniform. Get naked!"
I could see all the other captives watching, their faces pressed to the bars of their cage. Turning slightly towards them, so they would be sure to hear, I said "I will say it once more: Strip!. If you fail to obey my orders, I will do what we do to all slaves... You will be punished."
"You cannot punish prisoners of war...." he began, until he was struck to the floor, his limbs twitching uncontrollably and his cries echoing around the chamber: I had motioned to one of our men to prod at him with a slave prod, albeit at a power level that one would not generally use as it was normally too incapacitating.
The camera turned to watch the sergeant as his spasms gradually subsided. He painfully struggled to his feet, and before I could say more, I spoke to him calmly, and directly into the camera. "That was a slave prod, sergeant. A standard slave prod, such as is in use many times a day all over the South for disciplining unruly slaves. You are a slave now, property of the Army Of Liberation, and if you do not behave as a slave, you will be punished. We have slave prods aplenty, and of course canes, tawses, and whips. If you do not want to experience these, you should learn that when your owner gives you a command, you obey."
"No, I'm a soldier, a prisoner of war...."
I nodded, and he was prodded again, and this time it took considerably longer for him to recover.
"You are wrong, slave. You are not a prisoner of war.
You are part of the spoils of war, captured by the Army Of Liberation. And just as you did to the men of the North, as spoils of war you are going to be converted into slaves, and sold. Let me advise you to obey my orders, or you will feel the slave prod again - and after a certain time, because we can continue this all night and you will tire of it before I do, you will obey me. You are my property, and I will not hesitate to have you prodded until you understand that - and I will also caution you that after a certain number of prods, it is not unknown for slaves to suffer catastrophic heart failure! You cannot escape, you can only obey. You must learn to obey, as all slaves must, totally and completely. Now, remove your clothes - it is perfectly proper for an owner to wish to inspect his property, and I want to see your body."
End Of Part 30