immediately.'
Milosz leaned around the corner of the cabinet and squeezed off a round. The tracer fire resumed, impacting against the marble wall above his head, steadily chewing through the masonry and showering him with stinging chips of hot rock. The small clutch of militiamen hiding over there scurried away to find better cover.
'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.
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
