'Such spunk!' The Rhino grinned. 'I like her, Miss Jules. I like her a lot. This is the reason America is still chewin' gum and kickin' ass.'
Julianne sighed. 'What's your name?' she asked.
'Irrelevant.'
'Okay. Fine. Look, mystery girl, you've got all sorts of whiz-bang-looking comms gear hanging off your spanky little outfit. If you can talk to the military, get hold of some special forces bods we ran into; they'll vouch for us. We did save them from their own unpleasant incident of ass fuckage, as you put it so very well. We can carry your papers back if they okay us. As you said, there's nothing here for us now, and frankly, I'd like to get the hell out of New York. It's all been a very bloody fear-and-loathing trip, to tell the truth.'
'Hell yes!' said the Rhino. 'We were somewhere around the edge of the city when the drugs began to take hold and the giant bats swooped down. Remember that, Julesy? The giant bats?' He grinned maniacally.
Jules couldn't help but giggle at the incongruous fucking madness of it all.
The woman with the gun shook her head. 'I hate this fucking city.'
50
New York 'Down, down, down!' Wilson shouted, taking cover behind the splintered, pockmarked doors leading to the public reading room of the library.
'I am down, Wilson,' Milosz yelled back. 'And I am staying down now until stupid asswits and ragheads get bored and go home. This is not so much fun anymore.'
Tracers spewed out of the vast reading room into the smaller catalogue area where the rangers and militia troops were holed up. They poured through in a lethal torrent of tracers, cutting down anyone foolish enough to stick his head in the way. Milosz kept himself well out of the line of fire, which was coming from a makeshift stockade constructed of dozens of upturned wooden desks and the wreckage of a large, dark wooden booth that appeared to divide the vast cavern of the room on the other side of the doorway. The uproar of gunfire and screaming from inside was so loud that you had to shout into someone's ears to make yourself heard.
'Worthy's had it,' Gardener hollered, dragging the militiaman back toward them, using the cover from the old catalogue files. Worthy had lost his melon and most of his gray matter trying to throw a frag into the main room. The same grenade had gone off a few yards away and clipped two exposed members of the New York militia, who were screaming as a medic did his best to shut them up.
'Got one critical here,' he yelled.
'Get some of those militia pukes to drag his ass out of here,' Wilson shouted. 'Fred, we need to gather up some claymores. And a bucket. A big fucking bucket. Gardener, can you handle that?'
'Holy shit,' she protested. 'Sex discrimination case? Would you like me to come back barefoot and pregnant, too?'
'No, just fetch me a fucking bucket, zoomie.'
The Polish NCO snaked forward, his ass puckered and his head down. Hundreds of rounds zipped and cracked through the air just above him. 'You have a cunning plan, Wilson?'
'I always have a plan, Fred.'
Milosz stuck his carbine up over the ruined cabinet behind which he was sheltering and popped off three rounds. Elements of their ad hoc team were trying to break into the reading room from multiple points of entry, but where those other points were, Milosz had no idea. He tossed another precious frag into the reading room, where it went off with a cracking roar that seemed to interrupt the volume of fire coming at them for a second or two. Charred and burning pages of God only knew how many good books came drifting back into the anteroom.
Milosz shook his head.
This was not right. Destroying a library like this. Libraries were sacred places-his father had taught him that. Hallowed halls where silence and stillness and modest learning was the order. Not screams and gunfire and crazy fucking schemes involving explosive mines and big fucking buckets that Master Sergeant Wilson would not even bother to explain to him.
More hammering automatic fire started up somewhere behind and above them, but he had no idea where.
'Motherfuck-'
'Man down!' someone shouted.
'Worthless fucking militia,' Wilson muttered, using his 203 launcher to plunk another 40-mm HE grenade into the reading room. The boom sent another dirty snowstorm of shredded, smoking paper into the air but this time it did very little to turn down the volume of fire coming their way.
Gardener's feet squealed and skittered across the marble floor as she returned with two steel buckets and a mop.
'Damn, we didn't need the mop,' Wilson shouted over the din.
'Sorry,' Gardener cried out. 'Couldn't hear you. Fred, give me your claymore, buddy.'
Milosz unlimbered the olive drab bandolier holding two M18A1 claymore antipersonnel mines. He fired a burst of suppressing fire through the door and tossed it underhanded to Gardener across the deadly gap between them.
Tech Sergeant Gardener spilled the contents of the bandolier onto the floor.
'You're supposed to leave the mine in the bag,' Milosz said, regretting it instantly. He simply couldn't help himself.
'I didn't know this was a common task test, motherfucker!' Gardener shouted back.
'It is just that I have investments now,' he called back. 'A reason to live. I plan to die as wealthy oil tycoon, not stinky-ass soldier with head blown off.'
She ignored him and unrolled a copious amount of slack from the spool of firing wire. 'How much do you think we need?'
'Thirty feet,' Wilson said.
'Right.' She unspooled thirty feet of slack and set the wire at her feet before jamming the mine into the bucket. Milosz smiled as he read the words FRONT TOWARD ENEMY. That always made him smile. Perhaps they should have had a tag at the end of their rifle: BULLET COMES OUT HERE. VERY FAST.
Using 'hundred mile an hour' tape, the air force lady fixed the mine firmly in place and opened the detonator well.
The tracer fire abated just a little, and Milosz could hear voices through the ringing in his ears. The sound of a muffled footfall reached him. A lieutenant from the 82nd Airborne dived and slid across the floor to fetch up beside him.
'You Sergeant Milosz?' he asked at full volume.
'Not if you are from Immigration.'
'What?'
'Sorry. Bad joke. Relieves tension of waiting for pointless death. Yes, yes, I am Milosz. You bring good news for me, yes? Otherwise, you will please to be fucking off backward out door through which you slid. Nice work, by the way.'
'Thanks. I'm looking for you and a Master Sergeant Wilson and-'
'Present!' cried out Wilson.
'And T.S. Gardener.'
'That's me,' she yelled without stopping her work on the improvised mine. Milosz was beginning to worry about the punch she was trying to pack into those two buckets. Wilson had collected another three claymores from the militia troops scattered about the room.
'I'm Lieutenant Cleaves,' the airborne man explained. 'I got sent here by battalion. They need to confirm you met a couple of civilian contractors, a-' He checked a small piece of folded paper and frowned. '-a Mister Rhino A. Ross and a Ms. Julianne Balwyn.'
'That's Lady Julianne,' Milosz corrected as Wilson looked up and gave him a warning look. 'Her family once had castle and everything. Not so much now, though. Why you ask?'
'We've had flash traffic from a classified source. Says they have some documents and need airlift
