Page 109 of Down and Dirty

“What?”

“It’s bad.”

There was an increasingly loud buzz in Zach’s ears.

“Britta was here, and she’s gone, too. There was a struggle. And… and blood.”

The buzzing exploded in his head, and he went off to the side of the parking lot where he puked his guts out. Once he rinsed his mouth with the bottled water Cage handed him and was reasonably calm, he told the men, “Get us on a transport ASAP. Arsallah has fucked with the wrong guy this time.”

“No, dude,” Sly corrected, putting a hand on his shoulder, “Arsallah has fucked with the wrong guys, as in plural. We are Navy SEALs, and we are covering your six, all the way.”

I am woman, hear me… kick your butt…

The plan was to take her and Sammy out of America immediately after their capture.

They were taken to a parking arena of the airport. Sammy cowered behind her, his arms wrapped around her thighs. Arsallah and a half dozen other men were there, wearing long Arab-style gowns and head coverings. Two of the balaclava-covered men were there, too, including the one whose nose she must have broken. When he yanked the hood off his head and glared at her, she saw that his nose still dripped blood. All of them, except Arsallah, carried weapons.

Face rigid with anger, Arsallah snapped some foreign words at Sammy, who whimpered to Britta, “I do not want to go to him. Help me.”

Arsallah repeated his order, and Sammy walked up to his grandfather, feet dragging with reluctance.

The grandfather stared with contempt at his grandson, who came only as high as his thigh, then spat on him.

Sammy, bless his brave little soul, just stood still, tears welling in his eyes.

When Arsallah yelled some other words at Sammy, the boy replied but apparently made the mistake of speaking English, not the Afghan language. For his sin, his grandfather slapped him hard across the face, knocking him to the ground.

“You son of a camel’s arse!” Britta tried to go to the boy, but two guards held her back. One of them punched her in the shoulder, causing her to bend over and go unseeing for a moment.

Upright again, she heard Arsallah snapping questions at the boy and Sammy answering him back in the “correct” language. Arsallah obviously did not like the answers and shoved him aside, stalking up to her.

Glaring, he asked in broken English, “You are the whore of the infidel?”

“Which infidel?” That answer merited her a slap as well. Being taller and stronger than Sammy, she at least was able to stay on her feet. She bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from telling this evil troll what she thought of him.

“The infidel Floyd who soiled my daughter and bred this American cur.” He nodded his head toward Sammy, who was at her side now. Why he saw only the American half of his bloodline and not the Afghan side as well, Britta did not understand.

“I am no whore.”

“You were found in his bed.”

“A guest bedchamber.”

He waved a hand as if it was the same thing. “Has he fucked you?”

Britta knew that he used such vulgar language to insult her. Still, she flinched. Then she made the mistake of revealing, “We have made love.”

Arsallah grinned maliciously and told a man at his side, “We will use them both, the harlot and the mongrel, as hostages.”

They were then pushed and punched, even kicked repeatedly, for the next hour or more, but nowhere that bruises could be seen by outsiders… outsiders being members of something called Aljazeera, who talked at length to Arsallah and pointed black boxes, called cameras, at her and Sammy.

At one point, they brought Sammy forth and forced him to say he hated America, hated his evil father, and wanted to go home to Afghanistan. They took pictures of Britta with their cameras but did not ask her questions, no doubt sensing she was unwilling to speak the words they fed to her.

In the end, Arsallah and the Aljazeera people shook hands, like old friends, and the Aljazeera people left “to catch a plane.”

Some new people came, clearly Arsallah’s followers, to report a problem. Sammy whispered to her, “They can’t get us on an airplane to Afghanistan. They need to find a hiding place till they can hire another private plane to take us away.”

For that reason, they were brought to a basement room, and their stay grew longer and longer as the problem of getting out of the country continued. And their treatment grew increasingly worse, as well.