Page 1 of Down and Dirty

Chapter 1

Sometimes life throws a rock in your path, sometimes a boulder…

“Stinkin’ American pig!”

“You don’t smell so good yourself, kiddo.”

“Don’t call me kiddo, you toad-sucking son of a camel’s ass.”

“Whoa! That’s some potty mouth for a five-year-old child.”

“I’m not a child.”

“Yeah? Can you spell brat?”

“Go hump a goat.”

“No thanks.”

“Take me back to my grandfather, and I’ll tell ’im not to chop off yer head. Jist put a bullet through yer eyes. It won’t hurt much… I don’t think.”

U.S. Navy SEAL Lieutenant (J.G.) Zachary Frank Floyd stood, walked around the small fire, and loomed over the dirty urchin who didn’t have the sense to flinch, not even when another round of munitions exploded off in the distance. They were hiding in a former Taliban cave in the mountains of Tora Bora. What does it say about the kid’s life, that he’s so inured to the sounds of battle? At his age, I was playing with Legos. “That’ll be enough, Sammy!”

The boy practically growled, baring his teeth… teeth that were stark white against his grimy skin. Zach had been forced to restrain the boy’s wrists and ankles with plastic cuffs for fear he would run away. Just call me Marquis de Floyd. A wool blanket was wrapped around him like a shroud. Although it wasn’t as cold inside the cave as it was outside, it was cold enough. The kid had been shivering moments ago. “Don’t call me that name. I’m not yer son.”

I wish! Zach shrugged and plopped back down on the other side of the small cave, the anger seeping out of him. Hell, he had no more desire to be a father to this gremlin from tango hell than the kid wanted him for a father. Tango was a SEAL word for terrorist. “That’s not what your birth certificate says. Your mother named you Samir Abdul Hassim Floyd. Doesn’t matter that your grandfather dropped the Floyd and added Arsallah. Either way, that’s too much of a handle for any man, let alone a little boy. So, Sammy it is, unless you can give me a better nickname.” Like Samir the Snot.

“My mother is dead.” For the first time since the boy had been handed to him yesterday by an Afghan friendly, resulting in Zach being separated from his SEAL squad, he heard a quaver in the boy’s voice. “I been livin’ with my grandfather for a long time.”

Zach supposed that six months was a long time for a child.

“Grandfather came for me when my mother died, praise Allah!” The implication was, Where were you, Daddy dearest?

“That’s only because I didn’t know about you sooner. Your grandfather is a butcher, and his hidey-hole is no place for a boy.” Mullah Ahmed Arsallah put on a religious face in public, all pious and phony-baloney, but everyone knew he was behind some of the worst Taliban attacks in history. It was one of his very camps that SEAL Team Thirteen, along with some Army Rangers and Air Force hotshot pilots, had just shot to smithereens as part of Operation Maggot. Thank God, the kid had been taken out beforehand. Unfortunately, the grandfather had escaped and no doubt set up camp somewhere else. These al-Qaeda tangos were like roaches. You killed them in one spot, and they showed up somewhere else, in greater numbers.

Sammy let loose with another volley in what Zach presumed was either Pashto or Dari, the primary languages of Afghanistan. He would have to get help from one of his fellow SEALs back at Coronado, Ensign Omar Jones, product of an Arab father and a Native American mother, who had been a linguist and college professor. Sammy had no doubt learned the expletives from Arsallah’s band of terrorists or the English-speaking mercenaries who worked with the rebels.

In the meantime, the kid’s English was pretty good, due to his mother’s teaching. Esilah had been a student at UCLA, but her premed studies had been interrupted when she’d returned to Afghanistan to fight against the hated Taliban, including her father, who disowned her. Zach had met her in Afghanistan, and, yeah, they’d had adrenaline sex in the middle of a bloody firefight.

The kid — who had Esilah’s black hair and Zach’s blue eyes — was still ranting on in a mixture of Arabic and English, but Zach just tuned the brat’s tirade out and checked his watch again. His buddies should be here soon to rescue him, or at least try. Their motto was and always would be “No man left behind.”

The wire bud, which had remained in his ear nonstop since yesterday, remained silent, as expected, after the initial message he’d sent pinpointing his hiding spot. It was best not to talk any more than necessary on an open line to avoid the enemy tracking his position.

“Why do they call you Pretty Boy?” the kid asked out of the blue.

“Who told you that?”

“My mother.”

Zach shrugged. “Because I’m pretty?” Although he couldn’t look too good now with his filthy desert BDUs and face cammied up.

“I think you’re ugly.”

I don’t look that bad.

“I have to piss,” Sammy said.

Isn’t that just swell? Zach narrowed his eyes at the kid. He’d tried every trick in the book so far to get away, and Zach wasn’t in the mood for more of his shenanigans.