Neal Stephenson - Reamde

It made a lazy swing over the back forty and then came around to the front and hovered above the driveway.

A streak of fire lanced up out of the trees near the gate and struck it near the tail rotor. The back half of the chopper disappeared for a moment in a spike of white fire. What was left of it began to pinwheel, descending rapidly. It dropped out of Zula’s view, and a moment later she heard it crash into the driveway, and fusillades of gunfire as the jihadists on that side poured rounds into its wreckage.

SOKOLOV UNDERSTOOD THAT the rocket-propelled grenade had been intended for him. Pinned down by his fire from the upper story of the cabin, the jihadists had sent a man back to get the device out of the trunk of a car. He had been stealing through the woods, trying to get into position to fire a grenade through a window, when the chopper had appeared overhead and presented him with an even more tempting target. And so he had played his hand and ruined the surprise.

The next RPG would be headed his way as soon as the jihadist could reload.

The back of the cabin sported screened-in decks on both the ground level and the upper story; Elizabeth, last night, had referred to the latter as a “sleeping porch.” Sokolov vaulted through a shattered window and landed flat on the deck of the sleeping porch. If any of the jihadists out back had noticed this—and they probably had—then they knew that they now had a shot at him. Not a good shot, for if they were close, they’d be firing upward through the two-by-four decking of the porch; and if they were farther away, their view would cluttered by furniture. But their surplus of ammunition would make up for many of these deficiencies. Sokolov’s life expectancy up on this deck was well under sixty seconds.

Or at least that was the state of affairs before the upper story of the cabin exploded. The man with the RPG knew what he was doing: with two shots he had brought down a helicopter and essentially decapitated the building that Sokolov had been using as a sniper’s perch.

Sokolov now became part of a large mass of rubble—mostly logs—finding its way to the ground. The sleeping porch peeled away from the side of the house and toppled, and he of course fell with it and struck the ground with less violence than might have been expected. But logs, and a considerable part of the roof structure, came after, and Sokolov’s world grew dark and confined, and when he tried to move his right leg, it budged not at all, but responded only with weird tingling sensations that he knew as harbingers of serious pain.

SEAMUS’S QUEST FOR nails to hit with his hammer had been petering out as the would-be nails either died or fled, making their way around the side of the cabin and taking cover behind the numerous trees, small structures, and woodpiles that complicated that swath of the property. It became obvious that he needed to relocate to a position farther down the slope. And yet he hesitated. He knew that Yuxia would insist on coming with him, and he did not want to bring her into what would clearly turn into a vicious, short-range, tree-to-tree kind of affair, your basic hatchet fight in a dark cellar. He was trying to think of some way to broach this topic with her when he noticed the chopper making its pass over the back of the compound, just above treetop level—which meant it was nearly on a level with Seamus. Had he been one of the bad guys he could have taken out both the pilot and the copilot with a single round through both of their helmets. As it was, he levered himself up on his elbows and simply watched it fly by with the cynical and helpless attitude of the experienced combat veteran. For it was obvious that the two troopers in the chopper had no idea how much danger they were in. They had probably flown up here in response to a vague, excited telephone report of shots fired in the woods: something that must happen all the time in these parts. Assuming that it was nothing more than poachers, or kids screwing around with their dads’ guns, they were making a low and slow pass over the area, just to put the fear of God into the hearts of the miscreants. After which they would fly home and spend the afternoon drinking coffee and writing up a very dull report.

They were going to die.

The copilot was swiveling his head from side to side, scanning the ground below, occasionally turning to an angle from which Seamus might—just might—show up in his peripheral vision. If only Seamus were not clad from head to toe in camouflage.

Seamus jumped to his feet and did a few jumping jacks. He unzipped his parka, turned it inside out, began waving it over his head.

The chopper turned its tail rotor toward him, like a dog presenting its ass to be sniffed, and began to cruise away.

Seamus noticed something red on his arm, just above the elbow, and looked down curiously to see that a chunk of flesh was missing from it.

Yuxia jumped to her feet and fired the shotgun. Pumped it, ejecting the spent shell, and chambering the last one.

ZULA HAD BEEN having miserable bad luck with the rifle. The jihadists seemed to be quite good at staying behind cover. She had fired another round but apparently not hit anything. She had just two left.

Olivia had sprung to her feet when the top half of Jake’s cabin had disintegrated, and she had taken a few paces toward its still-settling ruins before Marlon had jumped up and tackled her to the ground. He was lying next to her now, a consoling hand on her shoulder, talking to her.

Zula flinched, sensing movement nearby, and looked back to see that it was Csongor, approaching on hands and knees. He flopped down, pressing against her. Her body responded to the contact as if it were just him being companionable. But her mind understood that he was making himself a human shield to protect her from any shots that might come from the direction they were most concerned about.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“Ssh,” he said. “It is very logical.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. You have to use your rifle to get the guy with the big weapon—I guess it must be rocket-propelled grenade? But you can’t do that if this asshole over here”—he waved the pistol vaguely in the direction from which they’d been hearing the bursts of the submachine gun—“is shooting at you. So I’ll take care of him.”

She was about to take issue with this when a racket sounded from above their heads. They looked up, blinking their eyes against a descending haze of wood dust, to see a ragged line of fresh bullet holes in the wall of the shed.

Zula met Olivia’s eye for a moment.

“Scatter!” Zula cried, and rolled up and ran around to the other side of the shed. She heard Olivia relay the command to Marlon and then felt and heard their footfalls and their ragged breathing as they sought other cover.

She was looking around trying to figure out where Csongor had ended up when a fusillade, the longest and the loudest yet, sounded from the driveway, up near the gate. Cringing against the shed wall, she understood that this had to be Jake and the neighbors, mounting some kind of organized assault. They’d be moving up the driveway, which meant that the remaining jihadists on this side would have to retreat toward the house.

Had Jake and his group seen the RPGs? Did they understand what they were up against?

Zula, summoning energy she had no right to have, risked getting to her feet and running several yards to the cover of the woodpile that Jake had used earlier. Throwing herself down, she raised her head cautiously and tried to scope out the scene in front of her.

In this environment, so filled with irregular natural forms, anything straight and smooth captured the eye. She saw one such thing now, projecting outward near the base of a tree. Definitely a man-made shape. But not a rifle. She suspected that it might be the stock of the RPG launcher. It was wiggling around, as if its operator were getting ready to use it.