After America

by John Birmingham

  Wilson had worked himself up into such a state that Milosz was actually drawn away from the spectacular bonfire down in the streets that had exploded behind the master sergeant at the end of his rant, lighting the room up considerably. Gardener was all over that detail, anyway. The man and woman—what did they call themselves, Hippo and June?—seemed relaxed and even amused by Wilson’s rant. But then, they were the only ones with loaded weapons in the room, and it was clear they wouldn’t be giving them up. Plus, Milosz thought, to wear such a stupid helmet with such large cow horns poking out, the hippo man was very obviously an individual who took his amusement where he could find it. He searched his memory for a literary character he might compare this hippo to—an old trick for passing the time and for fixing in his memory the details of books he wanted to remember. But nothing came. Watching them and their utter imperturbability—another Fitzgerald word—Milosz just knew there would be no getting these two evacuated anytime soon. Or ever. They were happy to stay and watch over the Americans until they were resupplied—the hippo, who looked like a former soldier of sorts, as well as a Disneyland Visigoth, had promised them that. But that was the only promise they had extracted from the pair.

  “Hey, Wilson,” he said in an easygoing, reasonable tone, “what does it matter what the lady and the hippo do? If they get killed, who will blame us? It is not as if they are supposed to be here. I don’t suppose anyone but this Rubin they speak of even knows they are still in the city, no?” He tilted his head at them, looking for confirmation.

  “It’s Rhino, son. Rhino A. Ross,” said the man he had mistaken for a hippo. Advancing on Milosz, the giant engulfed his right hand and pumped it three times. “Chief petty officer, United States Coast Guard, in my glorious youth,” he continued. “At your service. And you make a good point, son. You’re obviously a worldly and educated man. And Polish, too, if I am not mistaken. I served with a Pole once. Bochenski his name was. A marine engineer but a polymath of the first order. Had a gifted amateur’s interest in fifteenth-century Florence, which is by the bye, but of immediate and critical relevance is the very point you just made, sir. Nobody is going to care about us except our employer, and I can assure you his interest in our well-being extends only so far as his self-interest allows. In the event of misfortune, we will be quickly replaced and forgotten. No reason, then, we shouldn’t be on our way once you’re able to see to your own defense again.”

  Milosz took his hand back with a rueful grimace. The Rhino probably had not crushed it nearly as much as he could have.

  “Wilson,” he said, “I think we should not be too hasty with the bum’s rushing of these two back to rear echelon, no?”

  The master sergeant’s face clouded over with suspicion. “And why not, Fred? It’s bad enough we’re going to have to fess up about how they saved our asses. If we let them wander off after that, we’re toast whether they make it back or not.”

  “Not if they simply disappear and we never report them,” Milosz said.

  The English woman suddenly tensed. “Nobody’s disappearing us,” she protested, leveling her weapon in their direction.

  “Easy,” Wilson said. “Be cool, lady.”

  Milosz endured a second’s confusion before understanding suddenly dawned. “No, no,” he said quickly, wondering what he would disappear them with if he were so inclined. The only person with any firepower was Gardener, and calling in an air strike on their position was not logical. “I do not imply that we will make you disappear. Just that we will let you disappear. On one condition.”

  The Viking rhinoceros subtly shifted his grip on the P90, causing the barrel of the weapon to point a bit more in the general direction of Wilson and Milosz.

  “What sort of condition?” he asked.

  “I believe the American phrase is ‘a piece of the action,’” Milosz said, pleased with himself for remembering that vernacular expression.

  “Oh, fuck me, Fred. We don’t need this George Clooney bullshit,” protested Wilson.

  “No. You wait on a moment,” Milosz said. “I do not know this Clooney character. Perhaps he is your friend, but just think about this. You were nearly killed by pirate asswits last night, and for what? Not even for a lousy paycheck you can depend on. A hundred and forty new bucks that may not be paid you if we even make it back to battalion. Please to forgive my presumption, Rhino A. Ross and, sorry … English Lady Baldwin?”

  “Balwyn.”

  “My apologies. But I presume you are to be paid much more than one hundred and forty newbies, yes? So if we were to help you toward completion of project, we too might be paid by this oil man Rubin, no?”

  “I can’t believe this,” Wilson said, shaking his head.

  The Rhino pursed his lips and shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said. “If we had Rubin’s papers, it wouldn’t be hard to get you a cut … a small cut,” he added. “But a hell of a lot better than a hundred forty newbies, yeah.”

  “I would like equity,” Milosz said.

  The English woman snorted, but more in amusement than dismissal.

  “Listen, if we have Rubin’s paper, he would negotiate,” she said. “But it would take more than just letting us walk out of here. We could do that right now.”

  She hefted her gun to remind him. Even disabled by some sort of wound to one arm, she looked more than capable of using it.

  “If you want a cut, you need to get us closer to his apartment,” she said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Wilson said, dropping his Kevlar helmet to the ground.

  “No. Jesus Christ of no use in this situation. But Fryderyk Milosz and Master Sergeant Wilson of U.S. Army Rangers very useful. Oh, and Technical Sergeant Gardener, too. She most useful of all.”

  “Just shut up and take the deal, Sarge. I didn’t get paid at all last month,” Gardener shouted from her couch before pressing her headset. “This is Halo. Talon, give me two more of the same on the original target, do you copy?”

  Julianne jumped out of the cabin of the helicopter and fought the rotor wash trying to sweep her off the roof. She stayed bent over as she ran forward, clutching the straps of her backpack lest it be ripped away by the furious downblast. She turned and crouched beside an air-conditioning unit and was almost bowled over by the Rhino, who was right on her heels. The dark green chopper snarled even more ferociously as the pilot fed power into the engines and lifted off again. Her dirty, unwashed fringe whipped stinging strands of hair into her eyes, but she watched and waved them off, anyway. The Polish soldier, Milosz, stood in the doorway, grinning hugely. With one hand holding a grab bar, he laid the tips of two fingers under his eyes and then pointed directly at her.

  I’ll be watching you.

  I’ll bet you will, Fred, she thought. I’ll just bet you will.

  The Blackhawk leaned over and dropped away below the roofline. Within a minute it had disappeared completely, flying back toward the enormous column of black smoke rising high into the sky above the southern end of the island. It was nearly a mile across at the base and shot through with great tongues of fire and the flashes of exploding bombs, looking for all the world as though a volcano had erupted in Lower Manhattan.

  “Well, I must say, I would not have imagined that helping people could turn out to be so fulfilling,” Jules said. “And to think my father warned me off it for life.”

  The Rhino lit up a cigar and took a few puffs with evident satisfaction.

  “Damn, that feels good. You know, I had but a few goals in life, Miss Jules. To own my own boat and run charters out of Acapulco, which I’ve done. To drive an RV around the country having adventures with my dog, Sidney, and our mentor, a ninja master, which, I’ll admit, I’m still working toward. And to work for the covert ops section of the CIA and save an ungrateful world on a regular basis, which I can now cross off my list.”

  Julianne stood up and walked over to the edge of the skyscraper.

  “Almost,” she corrected him. “The CIA is now the NIA. And you don’t ac
tually work for them. Those crooked fucking spec-ops guys just requisitioned a helicopter by claiming you did. The actual agency is probably hunting you down as we speak. And you’re not saving the world; you’re chasing a fucking quid.”

  “Close enough!” he said. “Now let’s get inside and have a look at that map.”

  “In a minute,” she shot back.

  Julianne simply wanted to savor the moment. They had passed through, or over, the worst of the fighting thanks to the intervention of the rangers, although mostly thanks to the quick-thinking avarice of that sneaky Pole. The flight had been a short hop but a useful one, carrying them over the heads of any number of villainous types who might have otherwise interfered with their passage. It would have been nice to have been dropped right at the doorstep of Rubin’s apartment, but the Pole had explained he was already pushing things by getting them the lift on false pretenses. He had done as she had asked and gotten them that much closer. She had no doubt that if he survived the next few days, he would come looking for her, assuming she, too, survived and managed to retrieve the Rubin documents. And he was right. Once she had those papers, there would be no problem renegotiating the package with the businessman. Cutting in the rangers as silent partners was simply a cost of doing business in a market as chaotic and challenging as New York. She would see to it that they got their due reward.

  But for now, she simply wanted to take a moment before leaping back into the fray.

  The air on top of the skyscraper tasted remarkably clean. She had expected to smell the petrochemical reek of burning buildings and military ordnance, but a northerly wind had pushed the ash clouds and general stink of war down toward the bay and the Statue of Liberty, which was just visible beyond the western edge of the towering smoke column. From here, Jules felt as though she stood atop the whole world. The impossibly fast jet planes shrieking down from the heavens, the dark insectile shapes of the helicopters, they were all so far removed and so tiny as to be nearly abstract. Not real things of steel and fire, flown by men, but almost mythical enchantments, tiny airborne fascinators, toys. Gray warships as small as bathtub toys lobbed shells into the ruins, attempting to root out the hard cases. She shook her head.

  “Sound, sound the clarion,” she said to herself as deadly orange petals of fire blossomed from the top floors of the Flatiron Building. “Fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim …”

  “What’s that, Miss Julianne?” the Rhino asked as he drew up beside her, removing his helmet and rubbing his scalp.

  “One crowded hour of glorious life,” she said softly, “is worth an age without a name.”

  “Huh,” grunted the Rhino. “Well, shit, yeah. Can we go now?”

  “You really don’t have the soul of a poet, do you, Rhino?”

  “No, ma’am,” he answered. “Just the horn of an irascible, endangered pachyderm. And two spares on this excellent fucking helmet.”

  34

  New York

  Yusuf Mohammed had taken his first woman a few years after joining the Lord’s Resistance Army. Before then he had been only a child and incapable of being with a woman in the way some of the older fighters so often were. But one day, not long after the Wave had swept over North America and brought chaos and murder to the rest of the world, Yusuf had taken his first living prize after Captain Kono’s men had ambushed a small convoy carrying medical aid workers back from the wastelands of Egypt. He did not remember the experience fondly. The woman, a young French nurse, was not broken in spirit and fought him bitterly. Indeed, he still carried a few faint scars from her fingernails on his left cheek.

  This young infidel woman, however, was much more pleasing. She submitted willingly to his advances, and although he suspected her enthusiasm was feigned, he did not much care. After the horrors of Ellis Island and his trip down the river and then through eastern Manhattan, it was a comfort to have a woman give herself to him, even though they both knew she had no choice.

  Afterward, he felt sorry for her and even, to his surprise, a little ashamed of himself. He’d had good reason of late to recall his capture by Captain Kono and his unhappiness at being pressed into service by the LRA, and as the girl lay next to him in the hotel suite that formed part of the emir’s personal harem, Yusuf could not help but wonder what ill fortune had delivered her to him.

  She was a young American woman, almost perfectly fitting every preconception he had of young American women: blond and fair-skinned and sweet-smelling. But though Yusuf was unfamiliar with American women, he had the better part of a lifetime’s experience of fear, and this woman, for all her pretense of arousal and excitement, was very obviously afraid.

  Yusuf had enjoyed having his way with her, but as he lay in bed watching the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders as she pretended to sleep, he realized he had no great wish to be around her much longer. He was unsure what to do. It was a great honor and privilege the emir had given him, and he was profoundly grateful not just for the rest, the food, and the attentions of the slave girl but also for the forgiveness it signaled. Now, though, he found himself eager to return to battle and prove himself. There would be no flinching from the enemy next time. If he was fated to die, it was Allah’s will that he should die and he would give up his life willingly.

  It was unworthy and probably sinful, but he envied many of the fedayeen who had brought their families with them. When they were not fighting, they probably enjoyed this sort of ease and pleasure back at the settlements. Yusuf couldn’t help but dream about a future in which he lived in a nice house tended by his boys. Maybe his wife would even be a young blond like the one in bed with him. After all, though they were fighting the Americans now, it was only because they resisted the message of peace brought by the Prophet. One day, when this was done, Yusuf hoped all the peoples of the world would live together peacefully. A girl like this, he thought, gazing at the sinuous curve of her spine, might even love him for bringing that message, which, Allah willing, would be almost as good as dying in battle.

  They were fighting for more than just revenge, he knew. They were fighting for a new home, a place untouched by the atomic evil of the Jews. They were fighting for the future.

  He shook it off. If he was to have a family of his own, then Allah would provide.

  The question on his mind now was how to get back to the front. Was he to simply walk out and request transport to the front? Did they intend him to join a new saif? Yusuf had no idea.

  He rolled out of bed and padded across to a window. The deep, rumbling growl of war reached him even up here, miles from the front. The room overlooked the great park in the center of the city, which appeared to have exploded in a riot of plant growth that spilled out into the surrounding streets. Many of the larger, older trees had died some time ago, probably from the great chemical storms that had drifted over the city when the rest of the continent burned. Their stark skeletal forms stood out like witches’ claws against the gray clouds that hovered low over the city, obscuring the upper floors of some of the higher towers. Thousands of saplings had sprung up in the deep grass between them, and a dense understory of vines and bushes had crawled over the wall around the park and appeared to be advancing on the hotel in which he was staying.

  The emir, in his benevolence and wisdom, had not merely armed and trained his followers for war. On the long voyage here, besides lessons in the art of city fighting and lectures on the tactics and weapons of the Americans and the bandit gangs of the city, there had been some time set aside for more civilized learning. A teacher, a refugee from the Balkan wars, had told Yusuf how the faithful had first come here many hundreds of years ago, how they had settled near this park and set up gardens, markets, and even a mosque. Why had Allah chosen to let his message wither in this place? Yusuf wondered. Why had so much bloodshed been allowed to come of it?

  He could see the ragged edges of human habitation on the western side of the park, on the undeclared border with the areas controlled by the Slavs. They woul
d be swept into the firestorm for certain soon enough. A savage people, all but barbaric from what he had been taught of them. They seemed to revel in cruelty.

  The Americans, in contrast, killed with the flip of a switch. If they gave a thought to murder, it was before or after the act, not during. And they flipped that switch as far away from their victims as possible, as if they thought themselves little gods. Too good for the ugliness they brought into the world.

  He should be out there now, he thought, with his comrades or even with the janissaries, whom he had to admit were just as deeply invested in this fight as the faithful. Their aims were not righteous by any means, but they served God nonetheless.

  He should be there.

  A knock at the door drew his attention away from the park. He was surprised and not a little embarrassed to find Ahmet Ozal standing at the entrance to the hotel suite. Yusuf was naked and felt his face grow warm with shame. Ozal just laughed.

  “You are recovered from your adventures, then?” said the fedayeen commander before grinning mischievously. “These American women, they do not have the modesty of good Muslim women. But they have their uses, yes.”

  Yusuf also grinned, unsure of himself. He moved toward the bed to put his pants on.

  “Yes, get dressed,” Ozal said. “We have much to discuss, and then we must both get back to the fight. There will be time for this later.” He waved a hand at the the American girl.

  Yusuf could see her eyelids fluttering as she desperately tried to maintain the façade of being asleep. He dressed as quickly as he could. His clothes, a black battle dress uniform, were new and unfamiliar, but his old keffiyeh had been laundered and returned to him. It was torn and a few bloodstains still showed, but he was glad to have it back. His boots took a few moments to lace up, and he worried that Ozal would lose patience with him, but whenever he looked up, he found the giant Turk smiling indulgently.