Free After America by John Birmingham

could hear the pounding
thrum
of the helicopter that had swept in immediately after the first one had gone down. It must have been very close, because the sound of its miniguns spewing thousands of rounds into the space where his comrades had stood, living and breathing just half a second ago, seemed to fill the world right out to its very edges. Though he couldn’t see it, he thought it must have been one of the small egg-shaped helicopters from the gunfire, which sounded like the ripping of a great sail. They had warned him about those metal devils. Giving no conscious thought to his actions, Yusuf moved with animal quickness, crawling through the nearest open door and getting a couple of inches of solid brickwork between himself and the lethal rain of fire. Not that he had any illusions about the safety of hiding behind a wall should the Americans turn one of their satanic cannons on him, but by hiding at least he might escape their attention.
    His skin felt as though he were on fire. He realized he had soiled his pants, but it did not matter. At least he was alive. The frightening hammering sound of the helicopter’s machine guns trailed off, and with it the dull thumping beat of its rotor blades. He gave himself a minute to recover from the shock before crawling out of the room and into the corridor, where all that remained of Ali and the other man whose name he did not know were a few bloody rags and scraps of smoking meat. Yusuf kept his head down and his weapon in front of him as he belly crawled away from the horrible scene as quickly as he could. He was certain he could hear harsh flat voices shouting in English somewhere nearby, and he imagined the whole building filling up with cruel American soldiers. There was nothing for it but to get himself away from here so that he might fight another day.
    Reaching the stairwell up which they had just climbed, he dragged himself back to his feet and hurried down unsteadily. He knew that to run out of the building was to invite almost immediate death from the circling helicopters, and so as soon as he reached the ground floor, he turned down another hallway and ran as fast as he could on rubbery, shaking legs and with his lungs burning as though he were drowning in blazing gasoline. He did not see any other fighters, which was probably a good thing. If they were as traumatized and unbalanced as he, they were likely to kill one another. Hurrying away from the part of the island where the rocket launchers had been parked, he found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. The noise of battle dropped away just a little, but his confusion increased. He soon found himself at the end of the hallway where a door, apparently shattered by gunfire, opened onto an area of concrete tarmac and beyond that the water. Driven by fear now, and humiliation, Yusuf threw his assault rifle away and sprinted out the door and into daylight, covering the short distance to the edge of the water in just a few seconds. A single loop played in his mind. He could not let himself be captured. None of the fedayeen were to allow themselves to be captured. Gunfire cracked somewhere behind him, and it felt as though every muscle in his back was clenched tight in anticipation of the bullet that must surely be coming for him, but he ignored it and ran on, launching himself into the air and out over the dirty green water. He did not expect to survive.

Chapter 6
    New York
    “Incoming fire!” the Blackhawk pilot shouted.
    Milosz winced as his headphones amplified the man’s cry to painful levels.
    Between the crackle and chatter of the headset and the hammering blades of the helicopter, Sergeant Fryderyk Milosz could not hear the distinctive and all too familiar sound of the BM-21 rockets that were pounding Castle Clinton. But he didn’t need to. He could easily follow the bright arc of their flight paths as they zipped in over the river, and the results were laid out beneath him like a grotesque work of art