'What does it matter?' Raab asked. 'One dead fucker's the same as any other, right?'
'Angolans or Yemenis most likely,' Milosz replied, ignoring Raab's contribution.
'Why do you say that?' Wilson asked.
'Those states operate that particular model of BM-21,' he said. 'They have many to spare and run big looter gangs here, no? It is nothing to loan one to these so-called pirates. That is why I say this.'
'Could be anyone,' Wilson said, examining the scene below as they banked around to the west.
'We shall see,' Milosz said. He watched a U.S. Army AH-64D Apache Longbow come to a hover over the water, outside the reach of the few on the ground who noticed it.
'Stand by,' Viper one-three said over the headset. 'Engaging. Missile away.'
'Put a hurtin' on them fuckers,' the Blackhawk pilot said.
Smoke and the flame of more steel javelins climbing away from the launchers in the parking lot obscured the enemy, but as Milosz watched, a barrage of 2.75-inch folding-fin Hydra 70 rockets sliced through and struck the vehicles, tearing them apart in a maelstrom of explosive fire. The cabin of one truck went spiraling high into the air, lazily describing a tumbling flight path back toward a big patch of cleared ground on the Jersey side of the bay but falling well short, dropping onto the causeway that ran out to Ellis Island.
Milosz heard the words 'chain gun' through a rush of static just before dark charcoal-gray bursts of smoke began chewing over the parking lot, which quickly disintegrated into a storm of torn steel and fleeing men. Meat and metal swirled in the air, caught in a tornado, as the 30-millimeter cannon fire set off secondary explosions in the wreckage of the Katyusha launchers.
'Yeah!' the Blackhawk pilot whooped. 'No one's coming back from that party.'
Weapons fire winked at them from one of the larger buildings, a rather beautiful and ornate structure to Milosz's mind, somehow reminiscent of a wedding cake, with four green domed turrets, at least two of them occupied by hostiles. He instinctively reached for a grab bar as the chopper dipped and turned to avoid a line of tracer. The brutal ripping noise of the chain guns sounded again, and when the helicopter had leveled out and he had regained his balance, Sergeant Fryderyck Milosz could see that those turrets were no more.
So much for not shooting up historical monuments, he thought wryly.
'It is good, yes,' he said to nobody in particular. 'Better that monuments get shot up than Milosz.'
An RPG spun forth from a window on an unerring heading, straight toward the Blackhawk.
'Incoming!' Milosz shouted.
The chopper banked and surged, and his stomach felt as though the patron saint of alcoholics had reached inside him and tried to rip it out through his ass. G-forces pressed him down into the deck, and he had trouble holding his head up to watch the action below.
His efforts were rewarded by the sight of another Blackhawk taking an RPG round in the cockpit.
The fast rope insertion went without incident. The four-man team dropped onto the flat roof of what looked like the second largest building, under the shadow of a towering water tank and northwest of what Milosz continued to refer to as the wedding cake building. He thanked the Lord that no shooters had thought to position themselves up there, although he had to admit, that if they had, the Apaches would have reduced them to pink gruel by now.
'On me,' cried Master Sergeant Wilson, and the operators rushed to follow him across the roof toward the small cabin that would give them access to a stairwell dropping down into the structure. It was maybe a hundred yards, but it felt like a mile to Milosz, who could not help glancing over at the smoking wreckage of the nearest turrets on the wedding cake. What chance that some new hobgoblin would suddenly pop up there and start spitting fire at them? The hammering thud of an orbiting gunship providing them with cover allowed him to wrestle his thoughts back to the here and now. He fingered the safety on the matte black Mossberg 590 shotgun he had substituted for his M14 back on the chopper. The first shot in the chamber was a breaching round, a shell filled with wax-bound metal powder that would be no good in a fight unless you jammed the muzzle right into the face of your man. It was, however, purpose-built to destroy deadlocks, hinges, and door handles. The team made the entry point as a stray bullet caromed off the sheet metal roof structure. Milosz heard the sudden roar of the Apache's chain gun but did not turn around to see the results. Wilson and Raab took up positions on either side of the door.
Milosz wasted no time, calling out 'Clear!' as he ran up, took aim, and blasted a melon-size hole where the door handle had been. Racking another round into the chamber, a man killer this time, he kicked in the door and fired into the interior.
'Frag out!' Raab called as Miloz sidestepped and the corporal tossed a grenade into the breached doorway. They all took cover from the explosion, which seemed to shake the entire roof structure beneath their boots. Sievers entered with his M249 squad automatic weapon up and ready to hose off any resistance, but no answering shots came from below.
'Man in left,' he called out, and Milosz entered, his finger with a half pull on the trigger, the muzzle pointed down the dark musty stairwell. The rangers switched on their tac lights, illuminating a small world of mold, peeling paint, and pigeon shit. The stairs were slick with four years of inattention to care and cleaning.
Wilson and Sievers followed him, the team moving down the steps like a death adder with its teeth out. The crash and uproar of the battle outside fell away only marginally, and Milosz could tell from the heavy drilling sounds below them that at least one heavy weapon was still firing from this building. Every so often, he could hear the whoosh of an RPG climbing away.
Wilson held a closed fist up to halt the squad in place in the stairwell while he queried the enemy's position via his headset. Milosz moved up with Sievers to cover the door leading to the top floor.
'This is Romeo one-one to any element,' Wilson said. 'We've effected entry. Request location of hostile elements, over.'
Milosz could not hear the reply on Wilson's headset. He watched the black soldier nod his head once, twice, then a third time.
'This is Romeo one-one, verifying. North side, one floor down from the top floor, one heavy machine gun and an unknown number of RPGs. Is that correct?' Wilson asked the unseen, unheard voice.
After a fourth nod, Wilson signed off. Milosz often wondered why, in the American Army, he could get a headset in the Blackhawk but they did not have individual headsets for soldiers. Delta Force had them, those few he had encountered, GROM had them, and even the British doled them out to their troops, but not the Americans. And so in this way the Americans wasted vital time yet again.
'Okay,' Wilson said in a low voice. 'Like I said, one floor down, at least halfway along the northern face of the building, we got a crew-served machine gun, something heavy and nasty, and a couple of RPG launchers, which are pinging our birds. Some prisoners would be good but not essential. Let's go. Sievers, you've got the SAW, so you got the lead.'
'And lovin' it,' Sievers said without any real enthusiasm.
The team moved out behind him, sweeping the hallway in front of them as they went. Milosz brought up the rear, pausing and turning to cover their asses every ten yards or so. There was no indication of any hostile activity on this floor, no sounds of gunfire or voices. Outside the building, though, all was murder and bedlam. They turned the corner at the end of the corridor and flowed around into the next hallway. Rocket fire had struck heavily on this side of the building and opened it up to the outside, collapsing part of the floor between this level and the one below. Small fires burned here and there, and Sievers brought the team to a halt well short of the worst of the devastation. Milosz could see the sky through an enormous hole that looked as though some hungry giant had taken a bite out of the top floors of the structure.
A rocket-propelled grenade whooshed away into the air from somewhere below. Milosz heard a babble of excited Arabic that he lost in the roar of a heavy machine gun from the same location. The team perched silently, their weapons trained on the enormous breach. Wilson signaled to Milosz to ready a couple of frags, and they all inched toward the opening. The thunder of battle rolled on outside, with the crump of rockets and the pounding of guns drowned out by the percussive roar of close-quarter Blackhawk and Apache flybys. The ranger fire team took up position just back from the ragged edge of the collapsed floor and wide-open facade, every man tossing his grenade at a signal from Wilson. The detonation hammered at the floor underfoot like a short, spastic tom-tom beat, and when Milosz's ear stopped ringing, he could hear nothing of the men below.
'Clear,' called Raab, who had moved up to take a quick, furtive look over the edge.
'Right, let's keep moving,' said Wilson. Milosz was exhausted. He had not been this tired at any time in Iraq.
