War Zone

Samir could hardly be called delicate in declaring who or what he was. I guess his blatant arrogance was what attracted me to him and had me submitting to him—that he seemed to have every reason to have supreme self-confidence. When he opened the door of the Dama Rose Hotel room in Damascus, Syria, on the first knock and our driver was standing there in the corridor, Samir Schwartz, a dual Lebanese and German national and one of Deutsche Welle's premier Mideast military reporters, was only in his briefs and I, Ryan Pelletier, his Canadian cameraman, was two steps away from him and retreating, stripped to the waist and tugging the zipper of my fly up.

Nabil, the driver, looked us both up and down with a sly little smile on his face. He, of course, wasn't the least bit fooled what was going on between us. It wasn't the first time in the three days we'd been in making arrangements to get to Homs, then held by the Syrian opposition and under siege, across contested territory, that he'd seen us in compromising positions.

It didn't seem to faze Samir a bit. To him a Syrian driver wasn't anyone to take into account in any way. He didn't give a shit whether Nabil knew—or strongly suspected—that he was spiking his cameraman. Which, of course, he was. He was the German international news agency, Deutsche Welle's, go-to reporter in going out on the edge of battle in the Mideast, so they gave him what he wanted to get that done. The tensions of the job were such that he needed release—sexual release—while he was on the edge. He needed a cameraman in any event, but I had been matched with him because I was known to be a gay bottom and he'd picked me out from cameramen DW had offered him. He was a star. He got what he wanted. On that basis I agreed to serve—and service—him. He was a star and he was a hunk.

"You didn't answer your phone, Mr. Schwartz," Nabil said, his gaze going between the half-dressed Samir and me. "I came to your room to let you know that I'm in the lobby and we have a narrow opening for driving to Homs."

"We'll be down in forty-five minutes, Nabil." Samir answered.

"That will be cutting it close, Sir," Nabil said. "The safe-passage agreements are limited." The driver gave me a despairing look and I gestured a "sorry, there's nothing I can do" back at him. Nabil and I had gotten along quite well. He wasn't the regular Deutsche Welle driver in Damascus, the regular one having gone missing and Samir had been short and rude to Nabil about getting lost in the Damascus streets a couple of times. But I had treated him with respect and even had talked to him in my broken Arabic, showing interest in him, recognizing him as part of the team. He seemed to appreciate that. And when he'd realized that I was there to accommodate Schwartz's sexual needs, he'd hinted that I shouldn't debase myself that way, but he hadn't gotten pushy about it. I'd even gotten the hint that he was interested in me himself, but I wasn't aroused by him and I had my hands full with Samir's demands.

"We'll be down in about forty-five minutes," Samir repeated.

"Yes, sir," the driver said, and Samir shut the door on him.

"Now, where were we?" the reporter said. "Ah, yes, a bit of relief. On your knees, please."

And, so I went on my knees in front of him by the door to the corridor, while he pulled his erection out of the fly of his briefs. When I'd worked him up with my mouth, he said, "Strip your pants off and bend over the bed."

He was the boss, and I was a submission. So, I stripped off my trousers and briefs and leaned over the foot of the single king-sized bed in the room. He knelt behind me, grasped my cock through my legs, and stroked it and alternated sucking it and eating my ass out.

I begged for him before he was finished preparing me, and, with a laugh, he stood, held my head down on the surface of the bed with one hand pressing down on the back of my neck, saddled up behind me, and used his other hand to guide himself into me. I yelped as he entered me, gasping and moaning. But I widened my stance to give him a more open channel and settled down to pushing back to meet his thrusts. He immediately went deep and set up a steady rhythm and I fell right into it. He was hunk—handsome and well built, with a German's sturdy build, inherited from his father, an exotic dark hair and eyes and an olive cast to his skin, inherited from his mother. Whoever he'd inherited the big cock from, it definitely complemented the package.

Despite the time pressure, he didn't hurry, but I came in not much more than ten minutes and he came on the small of my back, having pulled out of me and stripped off his condom before ejaculating, in not much longer. There was no passion involved. I didn't expect any. The goal was to release his tension, get him off, and that's as far as it went. It didn't matter whether I took pleasure or release from the act. I had to stroke myself off while he was doggy fucking me. To him, that was all that he needed, or required—to get his rocks off to keep the adrenaline going.

I probably was little more to him than Nabil, the driver, was, albeit I was younger and a whole lot better looking. We both served a function for Schwartz—no more, no less. I didn't expect more. He was a hunk and was an international star in journalism. It was a privilege to be working with him, and, as an acknowledged submissive, it was a privilege for me to service him on his terms. I didn't require any more from him than to service him this way and be able to work next to him as he spun his journalism magic. It would look good on my résumé and would help me get on higher-level coverage teams. And I didn't have to say I had to open my legs to him to work with him; the important people in the business would already know, and it would just add to my skills with them.

I knew that later, after a successful mission, he'd be even more hopped up. Then I'd get a good fucking and would be able to celebrate a well-completed mission in more than one dimension. He'd take no prisoners and I'd be one happy captive.

Forty minutes after Samir had closed the door on the driver, we were entering the lobby.

We were met in the lobby by Deutsche Welle's Damascus bureau chief, who was nearly wringing his hands.

"It might be too late to try the run now," he said. "It's already later than the timing on the passes." It was quite understandable why the passes were so hard to obtain—permission of transit to Homs to do news coverage there had had to be obtained from the two main sides of the civil war conflict in Syria, the capricious and brutal Syrian regime and its major enemy, FAR, the Free Army of Syria. And there were other marauding bands out there too that couldn't even be approached to obtain safe passage permission. Both sides wanted to have a statement about the status of Homs established in the international news—the Syrian government that they had taken control over the city again and the FAR that the Syrian government had committed genocide in the city to regain it—so there definitely was a narrow window for this reporting.

Samir Schwartz hadn't gained his international reputation for not taking chances, though.

"How easy will it be to get documentation again, and when are we likely to get it?" he asked.

The bureau chief just shrugged his shoulders. Samir turned to the driver, Nabil, who also just shrugged his shoulders. But he was bold enough to say, "We needed to leave when I came to tell you we needed to leave."

"Will you still drive us?" Samir asked.

Nabil shrugged his shoulders.

"For more money? Twice what you were going to be paid?" Samir asked. He turned to the Damascus bureau chief. "It will be an exclusive. No reporter has been in Homs since the government retook it. You'll pay the driver double, right?"

The bureau chief shrugged again, but it was one of acquiescence. He pulled out his wallet and started dispensing pound notes into the driver's outstretched hand.

Giving a smile, Nabil opened the doors of the old Mercedes sedan and smiled. Samir took the front passenger seat, which left me in the back. And then we were off, up the coast from Damascus toward the next city of any size in Syria, Homs.

* * * *

The road distance between Damascus and Homs was slightly less than 100 miles and would normally, before the civil war, have taken an hour and a half to drive. Now, though, they were a world apart and it was iffy to be able to drive between them at all. It took us more than a half hour just to get out of Damascus from the hotel. We were stopped twice at Syrian army checkpoints, and, although they honored the safe passage documents we had, at both checkpoints we were advised that we wouldn't be able to reach Homs, do our business, and get back to Damascus within the time constraints of the document and given current conditions on the road. It was clear they didn't really appreciate war correspondents nosing into their business and they'd really rather we left Syria altogether.

Samir was having none of it. He was imperial and rude, which, interestingly enough, seemed to work with the checkpoint soldiers. He completely ignored their advice on time constraints, as well. That undoubtedly was because he'd told me, in confidence, that we weren't planning on returning to Damascus from Homs today. Unbeknownst even to the Deutsche Welle bureau chief in Damascus, Schwartz had made other plans. Homs was only miles away from the northern Lebanese border, and Samir had many and significant contacts and supporters in Lebanon. He planned to stay in and report from Homs for several days and then make the short drive to the Lebanese border, where we would be admitted and helped onward.

He hadn't asked me if I was good with these plans. He obviously thought that my ambition to gain a reputation for taking wartime risks and his sexual hold over me were enough to marry me to his plans. I'm somewhat ashamed that he hadn't thought wrongly—particular when he came to his sexual hold over me—but he hadn't, in fact, thought wrongly. I hadn't told him "no" and I hadn't told the Damascus bureau chief what Samir had planned. I'm sure Samir didn't even think of telling the driver, Nabil, what he planned to do. Once in Homs, Samir probably thought Nabil could make his own way back to Damascus if he didn't want to stay. Samir had made arrangements for concealed transport between Homs and the Lebanese border.

As we moved into the countryside, the terrain became desolate and desert like. The sense of desolation and abandonment was emphasized by the infrequent mud-brick hovels, or small groups of same, we passed on the road. They uniformly were deserted and had been burned out. This was a civil war zone and had been so for some time, with more than just internecine fighting on the ground, with territory sacrificially gained and quickly lost again. Foreign powers—the Russians, the United States, and the French—had strafe bombed to support whatever faction was in favor with them for that week and on that particular battlefield.

Forty miles outside of Damascus—and more than an hour of driving over potholed asphalt that would have been more usable left as a dirt road—we approached the only established village between Damascus and Homs on National Route 5, An Nabk. We were stopped at a checkpoint at the entrance of the village and held up there for a half hour by Syrian army soldiers before being permitted to proceed. We then drove through a section of the village that was inhabited, but only sparsely, with dirty and forlorn children and old women coming out on the road and, with dull-eyed expression, begging for alms.

Samir, who had been interviewing Nabil on his perspective of the civil war ever since we'd left Damascus, with Nabil obviously not wanting to declare his views, swore at the driver to quickly drive through the beggars on the street. But Nabil had obviously known what we'd find here and had come prepared. He took a canvas bag from underneath his seat. The sound it made told me that it contained coins. He rolled down his window and tossed coins out as we slowly passed by. There were beggars on my side of the car too. Nabil tried to hand the canvas bag with half the coins to Samir to dispense, but Samir just swore at him. I leaned over the seat and volunteered to take the bag. Nabil smiled at me and handed me the bag. And that was how we progressed into the center of the village, keeping villagers away from the car by tossing coins far out on either side the vehicle.

There was another Syrian army checkpoint in the village square. After another delay and clearing that, we entered a no-man's zone, as the opposition forces, the Free Syrian Army, the FAR, held the outskirts of the other side of the town. From there to Homs, we would be in contested territory. Our luck held when we got to the FAR checkpoint. The rebels were more interested in getting our news coverage out than the Syrian government was, and they waved us through quickly, with smiles on their faces and declarations of "America."

I found the declarations disturbing, as we'd done everything we could not to identify ourselves with the United States, which supported the FAR in this battle with arms and air support. I was Canadian and Samir was traveling on a German passport, both countries that were neutral in this fight.

Five miles out of An Nabk, we were stopped by another, unexpected, checkpoint.

"There shouldn't be a checkpoint here," Samir said, his voice nervous.

"Checkpoints come and go," Nabil said.

"Are there other forces in the area than the Syrian army and the FAR?" Samir asked.

"Sometimes, yes," Nabil answered. "The FAR is breaking up. The offshoot forces are against the government too, but they aren't happy with the U.S. support given to the FAR."

"Shit," Samir said. "Do you think we can run the checkpoint?"

"If you want to die," Nabil said, and he brought the Mercedes to a stop. The vehicle was surrounded by men in camouflage. I couldn't see any indication of affiliation identification.

The solider who obviously was in charge barked for us to get out of the car. Nabil and I responded immediately. Nabil came around the trunk of the car, took my hand, and guided me away from where Samir had, slowly, reluctantly, and with curses and rattling our transit documentation in hand, opened his door and exited.

"Come," Nabil whispered, and he pulled me around to the other side of the car. The soldiers didn't stop us. Samir was putting up quite a spectacle and all eyes were on him. The soldiers all had rifles, pointed at the sky, except for the man who obviously was his commander. He held a pistol in his hand.

Samir was blustering still, when the commander lifted his pistol and shot Samir right between the eyes. He came down in a heap beside the car. My knees gave way and I started collapsing to the broken asphalt too. Nabil grabbed me and kept me from falling. That was when he whispered to me, "Cooperate fully. Give Afram whatever he wants and you will live longer. He has a fetish for small, slim Western men with reddish hair."

That was me.

Afram? Nabil obviously was referring to the commander who had shot Samir and was using his name. And Nabil knew of the man's sexual interests? This wasn't a random checkpoint stop. And I doubted that these soldiers were from either the Syrian army or the FAR or that Nabil didn't know exactly who these men were.

Commander Afram directed two men to drag Samir's body off onto the verge of the road, which they did, and he walked around the car to where Nabil and I were standing. He was holding his pistol at the ready in his hand. I felt my knees go weak again, but Nabil held me up.

"Is this the man you told me about?" he asked, addressing Nabil in Arabic. "He is good?"

"I think he is good, Commander," Nabil answered in Arabic. "The journalist used him frequently and looked quite satisfied when he had done so."

"He does look good," the Commander said. Then he turned to me and said, "American?"

"No, no," I stumbled in saying. "Canada. Canadian. Neutral."

He extended his arm, pushing the barrel of the pistol into my stomach, between the buttons. Quaking, I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable, but, with a jerk, he pulled the barrel upward, popping the buttons off my shirt and flaring it open. I felt his hand on my chest and opened my eyes. I looked into his eyes and saw lust—lust for man flesh. I then understood what Nabil had meant by pleasing the man in order to stay alive longer. The commander wanted to fuck me first.

There was more than that, though. He had made a deal with Nabil.

"You may have him as agreed," the commander said to Nabil in Arabic. "But make it quick. We have to get off the road."

I stood there, trembling and both dumbly and numbly, as Nabil opened the rear door on the driver's side, turned me and gently pushed me onto my back on the backseat, my buttocks on the edge of the seat at the door. He pulled my trousers and briefs off and then lifted and spread my legs, positioning my still-booted feet, my legs spread, on the ceiling of the car. He unzipped himself and pulled out his cock. He was in erection. He moved his torso into the car, over me, positioned his cock head at my entrance, and started working it inside me.

It was hard go taking him. Not because he was particularly big, but because he was fucking me dry, without preparation—and without a condom. It took a few minutes, with the commander demanding that he hurry up, for him to adjust to me and me to him. But then we were fucking. He was groaning and I was moaning, and we were setting up a rhythm, one guided by instinct on my part because I was still scared shitless. When I was sheathing him fully and had opened enough for the friction to arouse us both, he brought his face to mine and we kissed. His mouth then went to my ear. "Give him all that he wants; make him want more," he whispered. "Do what you must to remain alive. And don't let him know you know some Arabic."

After that, we both got into the fuck. The commander entered the driver's side, knelt in the seat, and leaned over the seat and watched. I did what I could to show that I was into the fuck and that I'd go willingly submissive in even these conditions. The commander got a hand between us, grasped my cock, and stroked me off while Nabil was fucking me. I turned dreamy eyes to him, conveying that he was handsome and desirable, which, in any other circumstance he would be, being tall, well built, olive-skinned, and dark eyed and curly haired. He had a silky two-day-old beard and a chiseled face.

I could tell that, as he was stroking my cock, he had his out and was stroking it with the other hand. The older soldiers were gathered around outside the Mercedes and watching the fuck.

I came in Afram's hand. He laughed and exited the car, Sure enough he'd had his cock out and he was in full erection. His cock wasn't particularly thick but it was long and cruelly curved up, a regular Saracen sword, crowned with a particularly big, purple bulb.

Outside of the vehicle, he roughly pulled Nabil, who hadn't come yet, off me, thrust him aside into the clutches of two soldiers, and replace him on top of me. I cried out as he thrust up inside me, reaching far deeper than Nabil had. He ran his hands up my arms and grasped my wrists, holding my arms above my head on the backseat of the car. He fucked me swiftly, vigorous, pounding me hard with full withdrawals and thrusts forward and up. Gasping and groaning, my eyes flashing, my body writhing, and my pelvis going with the fuck as I leveraged off my feet pressed into the ceiling of the car, I gave him a first-class ride. The words of admonishment Nabil gave me and the memory of Samir's dead body collapsing on the road were running through my mind again and again.