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. But then, he had not been involved in such dangerous, close-quarter battles there.

An hour after the last shot sounded in anger, Miguel lifted a cigarette to his lips with a badly shaking hand.

Why didn't I stay in Poland?

He knew the answer to that. There was no future in Poland. But having just nearly been killed in a room-to-room firefight with three dozen doped-up pirates who weren't worth… what was Wilson's phrase? Ah yes, hen shit on a pump handle. A good phrase. He would note it down in his little book of useful American words. Yes, having nearly been killed by these fools, he did have cause to question his decision to move out here with his brother's family. They were safely tucked away in some big homestead down in Texas where the cowboys lived while he was being shot at by pirate fools who did not even have the decency to allow him to get close enough to stick his fighting knife in their gullets to settle the score.

When Raab and Sievers had attempted to capture one of the wounded pirates, the crazy man had blown himself up, killing Raab and crippling Sievers and very nearly doing the same to one Fryderyk Milosz, too.

Perhaps he would be better off behind a mule, like his brother. Perhaps it was preferable to holidays in the woods of Washington State trying to harden soft volunteers into rangers who were less soft. Perhaps behind a mule would be better than filling out requests for the Special Forces qualification course, the next step on his journey toward Delta Force. A maddeningly slow journey since the U.S. Army made him go through the hoops regardless of his GROM service.

But farming was not an option, of course.

He was here because his service had bought the ticket that allowed his brother Stepan and his family to join the federal settler program down in Texas two years ahead of time. He hoped his brother appreciated it, Milosz thought as he manhandled a naked and wounded Somali out of the building and toward the Manhattan militia patrol boat.

The Somali was naked because neither Milosz nor Wilson would take his surrender without proof that he had not booby-trapped himself like his crazy-ass Arab friend. Two civilians in khakis and dark polos took the man without comment, probably superspooks from the National Intelligence Agency. He was not the first naked pirate they had carted off, apparently. Milosz gladly washed his hands of the African fighter and made his way over to the ruins of a barge, stepping over the guts and brains of a recently departed combatant without batting an eye. A pair of Navy SEALs were in the debris, sifting through it all.

"Anything?" Milosz asked.

"Who the fuck are you?" one of the SEALs asked.

"Fryderyk Milosz, staff sergeant, army rangers," he growled back. "That's who the fuck I am, you dolphin-fucking dickwad. So. Did you find anything?"

"No, Sergeant," the SEAL said, not much chastened. "Aside from some old Soviet-era manifests, we haven't found shit. Some of these crazy fuckers preferred blowing themselves up to giving it up for us. Ended up shooting most of them. Anything else, Sergeant?"

Milosz grunted and walked away. He sometimes grew tired of the xenophobia of some Americans, especially ones who should know better. Did he not just prove himself to this man? Had he not been proving himself since he set foot here and took up a rifle for his new country? Seemingly not.

He left the SEALs to do their work and returned to the Blackhawk, where a subdued Wilson was sitting with his legs dangling from the cabin, pouring the contents of a Tabasco sauce bottle into an MRE meal pack.

"Want some, Fred?" Wilson asked. He set the bottle on the floor of the Blackhawk with a badly shaking hand and started to turn the food over with a shit-brown spoon. "Got chili mac for once. They are getting harder to find."

"No thank you," Milosz said, squatting down beside Wilson. He removed his kevlar helmet and proceeded to rub his scalp until the blood flowed again.

"Don't let that asshole bother you," Wilson said. "I'm glad you've got my back."

"Yes." Milosz nodded wearily. He jerked his thumb back toward the barge. "I am not to be upset by asshole who eats the pussies of rotting beached whales, no. I am tired and upset by Raab and Sievers. They were good guys, yes?"

Wilson exhaled raggedly, "Yes, they were. I only knew them since getting out here from the West, but they were a good team. We all were, Fred. You were a big part of that. Still are."

"Thank you," the Pole said as he leaned against the chopper and felt waves of lassitude roll over him. "Is it normal, these pirate bitches blowing up themselves and good guys like Raab and Sievers? It reminds me of crazy men in Iraq, yes? Before Jews turn them all into melted glass."

The senior NCO gave two empathetic shakes of his head.

"No way," he said. "I was here for the sweep and clear of Lower Manhattan. Didn't see nothing like that. Didn't see much resistance at all, really. Pirates just sort of melted away."

"Have you heard anything yet about who these brazen nig nogs were to be shooting rockets at President Kipper?" asked the Pole.

Wilson pursed his lips and shook his head.

"Fred, you're gonna have to learn to watch your words, my brother. You're an American now. You cannot say things like that."

Milosz tilted his head, genuinely perplexed. Does Wilson think I am referring to him as well?

"Like what?"

Wilson looked as though he'd been struck by a bout of the squirting assholes and was straining to stay puckered.

"You know, the N-word."

"Nig nog?"

Wilson winced yet again. "Yes, please. Don't say it anymore."

Milosz shrugged. Never mind that he heard many black soldiers saying far worse to each other. He had seen more than one confrontation erupt when someone who was not black also said it. The rationalizations and counter arguments made his head spin. What was the saying?

Oh, yes: not the hill you want to die on.

"If you say so."

They were strange, these Americans, he thought as he dug a half-melted chocolate-covered cookie, a track pad as they called them, from one of his pockets.

They would think nothing of killing a thousand nig nogs in a morning's work but became entirely discomfited if you referred to the nig nogs in any but the most delicate of terms.

He had come to a very peculiar place.