Sandra Hill

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Reader Letter

Glossary—SEALs

Glossary—Vikings

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.

“I mean it.”

Muttering with disgust, he walked over and picked up the kid with both hands on his waist. He was skinny and weighed no more than a pillow, which made Zach feel kinda queasy. Walking to the back of the cave, he stood him on his feet and proceeded to tug his pants down. He wasn’t wearing any underwear. That, too, made his stomach roil.

“Hey, untie me. I can’t piss like this.”

“You’ll piss like that or piss your pants. Your call.”

The kid made that growling sound again. “Don’t you know nothin’? A man’s gotta hold his cock when he pisses.”

Aren’t kids supposed to say tinkle or pee?
He turned his back on the scamp.
Mom would have killed me or Danny if we’d ever said piss in front of her. And cock…man oh man, we would have been tasting Irish Spring for a month if we ever used that word.

He turned around to see the kid glance up over his bony shoulder, an evil glint in his blue eyes, which, fortunately or unfortunately, mirrored his own. “What do you think of it?”

“Of what?”

“My cock.”

Holy shit!
Zach yanked the kid’s pants back up, then returned him to the blanket.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Is it big enough?”

Oh, boy!
“For what?”

“You know.”

God must be punishing me for something. Maybe it was the time I…
“Are you kidding? That little worm? You’ve got a few more years to worry about that.”

“How big is yours?”

I do not frickin’ believe this.
“Big enough.”

“Well, my cousin Taj says his is as big as a bull’s, but he’s seven, and he lies sometimes. Is yours as big as a bull’s?”

“It’s not good manners to ask someone that.”
Pretty Boy Floyd giving etiquette lessons? Hope the sky doesn’t fall down.

“Uncle Masood slapped my face when I asked him.”

Zach went stone still at that news. Was that bruise on the kid’s chin caused by a clip, too? And why was the kid so damn skinny? “I’ll answer any questions you have about anything…but not now.”

Thankfully, Zach’s earpiece staticked before the kid had a chance to argue with the delay.

“Raven to Eagle. Do ya read me, Eagle?” It was his good friend Justin “Cage” LeBlanc on the other end. Military men always used code names when on a live op, over communication lines that could be intercepted. In this case, with Operation Maggot, it seemed apt that they take on names of the worm’s natural enemy…the worm being al-Qaeda, of course.

“Eagle here.”

“Helo on its way. Oh nine hundred. Are y’all ready to boogie?”

Zach set the timer on his watch for fifteen minutes. “Roger.”

“There are tangos all over the place. Be careful.”

“Gotcha.” Zach was already standing and preparing his gear, including the collapsible stock on his M4 carbine, which he slung over his shoulder. It had an M203 grenade launcher underneath, which he hoped he wouldn’t need. He checked to see that he had two magazines left, which amounted to more than fifty rounds of ammunition. He would leave his backpack behind so that he could carry the kid, but he took out a couple extra grenades and his KA-BAR knife. The next inhabitant of this Better Homes & Caves dwelling could have the MREs.

“Pigeon, Tweety, and me will be on the ground, covering your six. Y’all have to make it to the ascender. Quick, quick.”

“Uh, problem here. Passenger. Need harness.”

“Whaaat? A prisoner?”

“Not exactly. A little boy.”

Sammy made a snorting sound, still trying to be the little man.

“No way! Ya cain’t take any unauthorized person outta the country,
cher
.” Cage slipped into his Southern Cajun dialect when he was nervous, as he had every right to be now.

“Bull!”

Cage sighed. “Who is it?”

Zach hesitated, but then said, “My son.”

There was silence on the line after that. Zach didn’t know if they’d been cut off or if Cage and the guys were stunned speechless. Probably a bit of both. Master Chief Sylvester “Sly” Simms was no doubt on the Motorola in the chopper right now, relaying all this info to CENTCOM. He would bet his Budweiser, the Navy SEAL trident pin, that there would be a band of MPs awaiting him when they landed at Kabul. On the other hand, Sly was a good man…a friend. Maybe he would let Zach do his own communicating on this issue.

“I have to put a gag in your mouth, Sammy. No, don’t give me any more lip. I can’t take the chance that you’ll shout or give my location away. I’ll remove it as soon as we’re on the copter.”

“Copter? We’re goin’ on a helicopter?” The kid’s eyes went wide, then immediately reverted to their usual surly cast. “I ain’t leavin’ here.”

“Wanna bet?” Zach gagged Sammy with a handkerchief and lifted him over the shoulder of his nonshooting arm, though he could actually shoot just as well from either hand. The kid squirmed and grunted stuff under his gag, but Zach had a firm hold. He waited at the entrance of the cave, his heart pumping so loud it felt as if it might lunge out of his chest. But then he heard the thwap, thwap, thwap of the Blackhawk’s propellers, followed by Cage’s cue, three short bird calls. “We’ve only got two minutes to get out of here and in the copter, kid. So work with me, huh?”

With those words, he dashed for the hanging rope and harness about thirty feet away. Out of his side vision, he saw Cage and Luke “Slick” Avenil off on either side of him and Sly in a crouch, rifle raised near the rappelling rope, ducking and firing at the tangos coming in on all three sides. Zach and these three guys had suffered through Class 500 of BUD/S training together seven years ago; a SEAL might change teams or squads as ordered, but he always identified with his class number. The members were bonded for life.

The terrorists, still a considerable distance away, were firing at the copter and the other guys, not him, because presumably they saw that he was carrying the boy and had orders not to aim for him for fear of collateral damage…collateral in this case meaning Arsallah’s grandkid. At one point, a bullet zinged a rock near Slick’s foot. With a curse, Slick did a ninja-style roll, landing on his feet. Cage was crab running toward the helo, urging him to hurry. “Go, go, go!”

Zach strapped a terrified Sammy into the harness and wrapped himself around him on the rope, which was already being raised up to the copter. Meanwhile, Cage, Sly, and Slick were shooting off rapid rounds. Just before they started ascending the rope, each of them lobbed a grenade in three different directions. The helo took off by the time the explosions hit. Sly had a thigh wound that would need care as soon as they landed, and Cage’s palms appeared raw from rappelling down the rope. He must have forgotten his gloves, or else the action had worn through the Kevlar. Other than that, they were in good shape.

They all sat on bench seats, breathing heavily, adrenaline almost popping out of their pores. Sammy sat on Zach’s lap, too stunned to protest…yet. Finally, when their heart rates were down to about a hundred beats a minute, each looked at the other, grinned, then said as one, “Hoo-yah!”

Zach took off Sammy’s gag but not his hand and wrist restraints. Immediately, the brat launched into a tirade that involved fuck, shit, ass, snot, piss, bastard, hell, damn, cock, prick, and dick in a dozen combinations, both in English and his native tongue.

The guys continued to grin.

“Are you going to introduce us?” Sly asked.

“This is Samir Abdul Hassim Floyd. My son.” Zach exhaled on a loud whoosh. “You can call him Sammy. Or the Snot.”

“You sure ’bout that,
cher
? I mean, that he’s yer son?” Cage was only looking out for his best interests, but Sammy didn’t see it that way and let loose with another volley of expletives.