Memories of battles at sea came crowding in: a chromatic rush of images, remembered sounds, and foul smells and then a sudden tug of sorrow for the friends she had lost. All that passed in a twinkling as another explosion blew in the one remaining window. The heavy drapes protected her from flying glass but not from the remains of the broken lamp base, which fell heavily on her bare foot.

"Jules, you okay?" the Rhino yelled.

"I'm fine; stay out there. Dangerous," she called back as she frantically hauled herself into yesterday's filthy jeans, a difficult thing to do with slimy Vaseline hands. The Rhino kicked in the door anyway, and she looked up to find him staring at her, as confused by the bright pink latex gloves as by the attack on the Green Zone.

"Don't ask," she said tersely, stripping off the gloves and wiping her hands on the bedsheets. "What's going on outside? Pirates? A raid or something?"

The Rhino shrugged and then ducked instinctively as a rocket screamed in and detonated a few floors above them.

"This isn't some pissant little raid. They're blowing the shit out of us."

Jules nodded. It wasn't unusual for the occasional rocket or mortar round to come dropping into the Green Zone. That was why they had the navy guns on the roof: to catch some of that stuff. The freebooters did like to let Seattle know it wasn't getting the city back without a fight. But those attacks were small-scale and uncoordinated. This felt like they were being softened up for an invasion.

"I think our work here is done, Rhino," she said, hurriedly pulling on a pair of Carhartt work boots and a thick leather jacket. "Time to toddle off."

The floor bounced against the crump and blast of another round striking the side of the building. Glass and debris fell past the shattered windows of Jules's room as the building creaked and groaned in a high-explosive maelstrom.

The Rhino didn't seem convinced. "You think so, in this weather?"

Jules picked out the first crackling pops of small arms fire under the din. If whoever was attacking was that close, then yes, it was time to go.

"I don't think we'll be going to work today," she called out over the racket. "Or anytime soon. This is it, Rhino. Time to be about our own business. Let's go. We'll need our bugout bags."

"Fine," he said. "Down on my floor."

Jules took a few seconds to retrieve the small package of documents she'd stashed in her room after studying it the previous night, but she grabbed nothing else. There was virtually no chance she would return to the hotel and that meant leaving a few personal items, but there was no choice. They had to move quickly.

Hastening down the narrow corridor, she was at least a little safer for a moment. Unless the pirates let off some massive bomb directly under the hotel that brought down the entire structure, they were afforded some protection by the internal walls. She ran right past the elevators and wrenched open the door to the fire escape. The Rhino's room was two floors down, and she took the steps three at a time, holding on to the handrail and swinging around at each landing. The sounds of battle outside reached them as hollow booms and thunder, occasionally transmitted right through the fabric of the building as a rocket or mortar bomb made a direct hit.

"This one," the Rhino called as they made his floor.

There was nobody there, either. She checked her watch. Everyone would have been waiting in the bus when the attack commenced, and that caused Jules a momentary pang of survivor guilt. Many of their fellow workers undoubtedly had died in the last few minutes. In fact, their buses may well have been the targets. Eight or nine of them were lined up each morning on Duane Street to ferry the crews out to whichever clearance site they'd be working that day. They made a nice, tightly bunched target.

"Here we go," said the Rhino, stopping not outside his room but in front of the little cupboard where the hotel guests had been able to obtain ice cubes in happier times. The space wasn't used for anything now, not officially, anyway. The Rhino reached in and stood on his toes to retrieve something from high up over the door lintel. With a jump and a grunt he dislodged two small black backpacks. Jules caught the one he tossed to her. It was heavy. She drew back the zipper and removed a strange-looking firearm.

"What the hell is this?" she asked, holding it up to inspect it. The rear half of the gun was effectively a solid block, and the grip at the front was formed from a series of dark metal curlicues, giving it an overall appearance of something alien and wrong. It was obviously a weapon but unlike any she had ever fired.

A look of irritation crossed her face. "I asked you to get us some guns, not a bag of bloody Dr. Who props."

The Rhino allowed himself a guilty smile, removing a clone of the weapon from his own backpack.

"These are mil-spec P90s, Miss Julianne. I picked 'em up cheap, swapped 'em for those food vouchers we scored back in KC. Look here." He tucked the buttstock in against his left shoulder and swept the empty hallway with the muzzle. Jules bit down on her frustration as the barely muffled sounds of battle raged on outside.

"It was designed for support troops by the Belgians, you know, the rear echelon fucks. It's got fully ambidextrous operation," the Rhino said. "Bullpup configuration. Fifty-round mag. Specialized ammo, of which I have an elegant sufficiency, believe me, with much better lethal range, a flatter trajectory, and greater penetration against body armor than-"

"Okay, okay, I can feel the fucking love." She shook her bag up and down, pulling out an equipment vest filled with magazines and a set of black body armor. She set the weapon down and shrugged into the vest, nodding toward Rhino's weapon. "Where's the selector switch?"

He held up his own weapon and pointed out a dial under the trigger.

"You're safe in the S position. One is semi. A is full auto," he explained. "On full rock 'n' roll you have a two-stage pull. Semiauto on the half pull. Then you blow your whole wad with a full squeeze."

"Got it," she said, Velcroing the equipment vest into place. She hefted the unusual weapon a few times to get the feel of it. Despite its bizarre appearance, it did sit very comfortably in her grip.

"Take this and snap it on," said the Rhino, handing her a length of black piping.

Jules scrutinized the pipe. "Flash suppressor?"

"Nope. Well, sorta. But mostly for sound suppression," he corrected her. "P90's already a good deal quieter than, say, an M4. This makes it even stealthier. I'm guessing we'll be sneaking out of here today."

"Yes." She sighed as a heavy automatic weapon started grinding through hundreds of rounds somewhere below them. "Anything you need from your room?"

"Got everything I need right here," he said, nodding at his backpack as he snapped on his silencer. Soon his body armor and oversized equipment vest were in place, leaving his massive biceps exposed for a quick kiss.

"Did I ever tell that you that you don't get these pettin' kitty cats?" He grinned, before sticking an unlit cigar between his teeth.

Jules rolled her eyes as she slipped her arms through the backpack straps and they trotted back to the fire escape. The angry sounds of combat seemed to have settled into something like a rhythm beyond the walls of the hotel, a steady pounding of heavier weapons overlaying short, spasmodic gusts of small arms fire, single-shot three-round bursts, and the regular snarls of somebody letting off whole clips. That would most likely be the attackers, she thought. The militia and private operators protecting the Green Zone had better fire discipline than that. A pity their professionalism didn't extend to properly securing the perimeter.

The lights in the stairwell flickered briefly as they entered, but only once. Nonetheless, the two smugglers picked up their pace as they made the long climb down past the ground floor and into the service levels, where they hoped they could make their exit. Jules expected to run into drug-fucked pirates at any moment, and once or twice they did hear doors opening and slamming closed above them, but they enjoyed a clear run all the way down. It was only when she carefully pushed open the door on the lower ground floor that they ran into trouble. Two rounds slammed into the wall next to her, sending hot chips of cement into her face.