Chapter 1: Rats!

Khudabah, Pakistan - First night of capture

SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!

Mother-fucking-son-of-a-fucking-bitch!!!!

Things were certainly not supposed to work out this way. I'm waking up for what must be the third time tonight, and the fucking rats are biting my feet and ankles again. How many of those bastards have I already killed tonight? How many are left to kill? I need to swing my legs up and hook them over my hands again.

Did I mention that my hands are tied to the ceiling and my feet are barely able to reach the floor? Ah yes, I should go back and explain to you why I'm in such a dire situation.

I'm Sergeant Major Bennie Blaine, known to all my friends and my enemies that are still living as BB (Banzai Ben), a proud member of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children (USMC), and a sniper currently based in Iraq. I'm around 28 years old, 5'10" tall, weigh 205 lbs, and have nine percent body fat. In short, I'm a lean, mean, fighting machine.

My father was full-blooded Cherokee and my mama was Brazilian, so I have a dark and mysterious look that drives women wild. This is my fifth tour of duty and I have an impressive number of one shot kills. But those numbers are classified — if I told you, I would have to kill you. This tour of duty has been so very different than the rest because Jack, my longtime spotter, is gone. The bastard up and retired after our last tour of duty, so I had to break in a new — and green — spotter.

I tell you what, I don't know what the hell has gotten into the Marines, but they're not the same as when I joined ten years ago. They've changed and become all politically-fucking-correct. I couldn't believe it when they gave me a woman for my spotter last time I was stateside. Shit. And not just any woman, but the daughter of General Donaldson.

At first, I resigned over it, but after a couple of months of being bored, some serious begging from my old Commanding Officer, and a big bump in rank, I came back. Besides, where else can you get paid to go hunting for the "most dangerous animal in the world?"

They made me agree to at least try this woman out as my new spotter, which really sucked. I figured she had used her daddy's name and pulled some strings to get this assignment, but I sure as hell wasn't going to let it fuck up my chances at setting a new kill record. So before they were going to ship us out, I requested two full months of training so 'we' could learn to work as a team. However, my real plan was to make it so fucking miserable and nasty for her that she would crawl back to Daddy and request a discharge. She's just a little princess; shit, she's Daddy's little princess.

I'm getting sleepy again, and the rats aren't bothering me right now. Maybe I can sleep and have dreams of home...

Many thanks to my editor Elle! Her editing has taken what was a good plot full of mechanical errors. And like a race car mechanic tuned the text so it purrs like a kitten.