After America (68 page)

“Is this hippo man and lady saying they have documents or classified source?” asked Milosz.

Cleaves could only shake his head in confusion. “Sorry?”

“Does not matter? What for you need to speak to us?”

“Command needs to verify these people before it’ll task airlift to get them out. The source says you can do that.”

Milosz, Wilson, and Gardener had a whole conversation without saying a word. Milosz had no idea what was going on but had to assume that the smugglers had found whatever they needed and had somehow lucked into a way of getting out of the free-fire zone. It was infuriating that he didn’t know for sure, but what was he to do? He just had to assume that if they could talk their way into an airlift, they could talk their way out at the other end, especially if they convinced this “source” to help out. He hoped that didn’t mean a further dilution of his cut. And if it did mean he got his ass kicked, so what? Soon enough Fryderyck Milosz would be a wealthy former soldier whose only care was how to get the wealthy former Technical Sergeant Gardener to show him a good time.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Tell battalion they should pick them up. These are good guys, this hippo and Jules lady. They saved my Polish ass from angry pirate asswits.”

“Good to know,” Cleaves said. “Do you, er, think I could get a little covering fire?”

Milosz and Wilson obliged, with a couple of the militia pukes throwing in for good measure as Cleaves exited the anteroom as quickly as he’d arrived.

“What the fuck was that about?” Wilson shouted.

“Ours is not to know, Master Sergeant. Ours is but to protect our investment in offshore oil field and not get fucking heads shot off like dopey militia unit inappropriately named Worthy.”

Another surge in fire from the reading room had them fucking the marble floor and Gardener demanding to know how much ammunition the towelheads had, anyway. As Milosz watched, she gave herself a meter of slack; taking the plug from the detonator well of one of the claymores, she slid the blasting cap through and with great care screwed the plug back into place, arming the mine.

“Got ‘em both,” she said. “Would have been quicker with a satchel charge.”

“This is the army, my friend,” Wilson said. “We go with what we got; now give me one bucket. And give Fred the other one. You keep the firing devices.”

She handed them over and allowed Wilson to connect the device, the “clacker,” to the firing wire.

“You motherfuckers had better knock that shit off,” Wilson shouted at the reading room.

The fire slackened momentarily. “Fuck you, George Bush!”

The Americans looked at each other in astonishment.

“Man,” said Gardener. “Some people just cannot get their heads out of the past.”

Milosz popped around the corner, sighted in on the loudmouth, and punched a single round through his forehead.

“Ha! Stupid nig nog!” Milosz shouted. “Second Amendment trumps First every time.”

Wilson stared at him like he was insane.

Milosz shrugged. “For what purpose is that look, Wilson? I am forced to learn civics classes for citizenship but not to use knowledge learned for taunting pirate asswits?”

Wilson shook his head. “Let’s just ram the corncob in the hole.”

He turned to address all the shooters he had at his command.

“Sergeant Milosz and I are going to save your worthless asses in just a second with a display of ranger awesomeness that will make you pee in your fucking pants every time you remember it for the rest of your lives. But first you got to give us covering fire when I say go. That means hauling your sorry asses up off the ground and actually sending some joy downrange on the fucking enemy. It also means fixing bayonets right now and following us into there when I tell you. Are we clear?”

The ragged response forced him to yell.

“
ARE
WE CLEAR?”

That drew a louder roar, and Wilson raised his eyebrows at Milosz.

“Good enough, you think, Fred?”

“Soon to be finding out, Wilson. Shall we go?”

Wilson tossed him the heavy bucket loaded with high explosives and shrapnel as the other men in the anteroom clicked their fighting knives into place at the ends of their rifles. When Milosz caught the can and set himself to take off, Wilson yelled.

“GO!”

The unexpected savagery of the Americans’ coordinated fire slammed a lid down on the jihadi defenses, giving the two rangers time to leap up and sprint for the door to the reading room.

“Fire in the hole!” Wilson shouted as he heaved his bucket through the door a fraction of a second before Milosz. The heavy improvised bombs arced up high into the air over the improvised palisade from which the jihadis were fighting. In the surreal silence that seemed to hum inside Milosz’s head he distinctly heard Gardener give both clackers three squeezes.

Detonated by a small electric spark, the tightly packed C-4 of half a dozen claymores detonated over the heads of their enemy, unleashing a steel rain of more than four thousand ball bearings all traveling at 3,995 feet per second. The explosion was far louder than any other noise in the confined space of the library building, and the concussion was enough to knock Milosz to the floor, even shielded as he was by the thick walls of the reading room.

“Go, go, go!” Wilson shouted. “Off your asses now!”

Milosz was dimly aware of glinting steel closing on him from behind as he spun around the corner of the great double doors and opened fire.

“Fuck you, George Bush!”

Selim the Algerian was the last man of his
saif
to die, shot through the forehead, his brains and half his skull spraying out behind him, blinding Yusuf with a foul, hot organic gruel that stung his eyes as he wiped it away.

He could not believe anyone would be so foolish as to martyr himself for the momentary satisfaction of taunting the enemy. Yusuf Mohammed shook his head and burrowed farther into the small foxhole he had built for himself inside the massive chaotic fort fashioned from dozens of desks and chairs and heavy wooden cabinets. Thousands of pieces of paper and cardboard notes and handbooks spilled out, strangely reminding him of his days in the mission school back at the village where he had lived simply and, he supposed, happily until Captain Kono had come and taken everything from him.

It was odd the way that memory worked. All his life he had never been able to recall anything but the merest fragments of dreams from that time. But just in the last hour or two, as he had come to realize he would probably die in this room, he had found himself able to recall what he had to believe were intensely remembered images and moments from a life he had never really known before. A woman with huge soft arms and a big belly on which he bounced and giggled as she sang to him and tickled him until he was nearly sick with laughter. An old man, gray around the temples and thin, led him down to a river, carrying two poles strung with fishing line. He ran across a bare dirt field, squealing with happiness as he kicked a ball, and other children chased after him, calling out his name. He knew they were calling out his name, but no matter how hard he concentrated, he could not quite make it out.

“Fuck you, George Bush!”

And then Selim died so foolishly and wastefully as he sprayed the memories of whatever childhood he had known in Algeria all over Yusuf’s face. The former child soldier, all grown up now, screamed in rage and hoisted the familiar weight of his AK-47 up above the rim of the overturned table behind which he was hiding, firing off the remainder of his clip until the hammer clicked and clicked and nothing happened.

His head swam and his ears felt as though somebody had jabbed a sharp stick in them, so loud was the noise of the battle reverberating around the huge empty space of this room. It must have been beautiful once, he supposed, before war came to it. The mural on the ceiling was smoke-damaged and pitted and gouged with bullet holes and long dark scorch marks that all but obliterated the original artwork. It was a shame. He knew some members of the faithful looked disapprovingly on all forms of art, taking the Prophet’s admonitions against such images much more generally that Yusuf imagined the Prophet intended.

He ducked as he saw the small, dark shape of a hand grenade come flying through the door. It detonated with a great crash and showered his barricade with deadly shrapnel. How much had changed in such a short time. Not so long ago he would not have dared to advance his own opinions or interpretation of the Prophet’s works, especially not when they did not agree with those who were his elders in the faith. But as he wiped a sharp white fleck of bone from his cheeks and contemplated his own demise, he thought he understood much more of what the Prophet wanted from his followers and even the leaders of his people than some of those leaders did.

Honesty, courage, modesty, righteousness, even kindness and mercy—they all had their place in life. Yusuf shook his head again in bitter despair as he saw the bodies of the women and children they had come to protect. There were only three of them left alive. The fedayeen had done what they could to construct a bunker inside where the innocents might shelter, but the Americans had thrown so many explosives in there with such abandon, and some of the children had panicked and broken away from their mothers, and …

His stomach contracted mightily, and he dry wretched for half a minute.

What were they even doing in the city?

What fool had sent them here into a battlefield?

The Americans’ fire tapered off for a moment, giving him hope that they might be withdrawing, but it soon returned with increased intensity.

Surely the emir could not have done so, knowing how dangerous it was? Not when there was so much preserved food and even wild roots and vegetables that could be harvested away from the fighting.

He swapped the clip on his Kalashnikov, the last of his ammunition. There had to be some explanation, some mistake, he told himself. Unfortunately, mistakes were as common in war as death and sorrow. Perhaps the emir had been misinformed. After all, he was only a man.

Yusuf lifted the gun above the line of the barricade and fired two single shots in the general direction of the little room where the Americans were trapped. He scolded himself for his lack of faith. Not in God, of course, but in the messengers he had sent to earth. The emir, Ahmet Ozal, all the other fedayeen commanders—they were but men and so subject to the failings of all men. He himself had more than enough experience to understand that. After all, his failure on the island at the start of this great battle had not been a failure of judgment but one of heart, of courage. He had failed his god and his comrades because he was a coward. And now here he was, having been given a chance to redeem himself, and he was blaming others for yet another failure of his own.

Yusuf Mohammed resolved to do better in what little, little time he had left, to stop questioning and doubting and forever finding fault elsewhere when the fault lay within. So many had died for the dream of this new home, where the light and grace of Allah might shine on all who opened their hearts to his love. And yet Yusuf still lived. To what end?

None.

He felt the sickness steal over him again. The nausea of an existence without meaning.

He tightened the grip on his weapon, drew in a deep breath, and prepared to die with God’s name on his lips. He pushed himself up from his hiding place and, standing tall, aimed his rifle into the darkened room from which a river of deadly fire was now pouring.

“Allahu akbar!”
he cried out as he fired again and again at the enemy.

Flashing lines of tracer zipped past his head while unseen rounds cracked and fizzed all around him. Allah smiled on him, however, protecting him from harm. At least for a brief while. The Americans’ fire was a terrible wind that swept over his comrades, cutting down more of them even as he stood in the storm, untouched.

“Allahu ak—”

The cry died in his throat as he saw the strangest and most unexpected of things in all his time in this city of wonders: two large metal buckets covered in tape slowly arcing through the air, turning end over end, trailing a pair of wires as they flew.

Yusuf Mohammed eased off on the trigger of his weapon and stood staring at the flight of those most unusual objects. He had another moment of intense dislocation, a feeling that he had somehow lost his tether to this world and slipped back into another he had lost many years ago. He was a small boy again, standing at the edge of a stream that ran near the little village. The tall thin man with the patches of gray at his temples stood by him, teaching him how to cast a fishing pole. He was not very good, this being his very first time, but the man was not just patient with him, he seemed to take joy in the little boy’s squeals and giggles of delight as his brightly colored lure flew everywhere but where it was intended. The sky wrapped itself around them, an endless blue, soft and resplendent with a warm sun.

The old man told him not to look into the sun, but Yusuf Mohammed did not listen. He smiled and smiled, and the sun smiled back on him, filling the whole world with bright, white light.

“Cease fire!” Milosz shouted. “Cease with the fucking fire already!”

The clatter of weapons fire died down in much the same way his tractor at home wound down after he shut it off. A few bursts stitched the walls, followed by sporadic single pops, finally punctuated by a single hollow thump.

An ear-piercing wail reverberated off the marble interior of the reading room. Milosz could just barely make out, through the smoke and mist, a woman cradling a child in her arms. She rocked back and forth, adding her own screams to the baby’s protests.

The fighting had shattered the cathedral-like windows, letting the driving rain pour inside. As the rain dispersed the smoke, Milosz could see them.

Bodies. They lay strewn amid the tables and chairs of the reading room. They held children close, curled up with their backs to the door he and Gardener had just fought their way through. Along the walls were stacks of canned goods, jars of sauces, meats, and other food that was still edible, if a bit questionable.