by Mel Odom
“A television, man. I swear it looks like a television screen.”
“Can’t be. There’s no power.”
“It’s a small set. Maybe a battery-powered portable. Gotta be something. Let’s take a look.”
Joey’s natural curiosity pushed at him to take a look too, but he shook his head. “Let’s leave it.”
“No way. If that set’s in there and is on, maybe there’s somebody in this mall with us.”
“That’s just another reason to leave right now.” Paranoid and starting to get really creeped out, Joey glanced around. His imagination immediately rewarded him with imaginary creatures that seemed to lunge out of the shadows at him.
“Without telling Zero?” Derrick shook his head. “No way. If he gets surprised by a security guard and finds out we didn’t take a look, he’ll probably kill us.” He sipped in a quick breath. “I say we take a look and find out what’s what. Then find Zero and beat feet.”
Joey wanted to argue, but before he could say anything more Derrick was dropping and slithering under the steel chain-link security wall that had dropped down to shut the shop off from the rest of the mall. The wall was a couple feet off the ground, offering proof again that someone might be in the shop.
Unwilling to leave Derrick alone and not knowing what else to do, Joey slithered under as well.
Derrick wasted no time getting to the back of the shop. He stood poised at the door with his crowbar in both hands as he gazed at the television screen.
Joey looked around the small office. The television sat on a desk built into the wall. Papers, neatly stacked, occupied the wall space above the desk. A coffee cup and ashtray sat beside the inert computer. A man’s gray sweater hung from the back of the office chair in front of the desk.
“C’mon,” Joey whispered. “We need to get out of here.”
“Hey, man,” Derrick said, “look. Your mom’s on TV.”
The statement, so inane and unbelievable, especially under the frightening circumstances he was now part of, almost paralyzed Joey’s brain. Then he stared at the screen and saw that his mom was on television.
Megan Gander’s picture was inset into the upper two-thirds of the screen. The main feed showed a platinum-haired lady reporter standing in front of Fort Benning’s main gates. The slug line under the picture read PENNY GILLESPIE. FORT BENNING, GEORGIA. LIVE.
Oh, God, please, Joey prayed, please don’t let anything have happened to my mother. He moved into the room and found the volume control on the TV. He turned the sound up.
“—Mrs. Megan Gander’s military trial begins in the morning, friends and viewers,” Penny Gillespie said. “Mrs. Gander stands accused of dereliction of duty, a serious offense under any circumstances when dealing with a military body, and possibly even more serious in light of everything that has happened since the disappearances.”
Joey couldn’t believe it. His mom, derelect? She was the most duty-driven person breathing. But at least she wasn’t, like, dead, or anything. Thank You, God, he thought when he realized that his mother wasn’t some kind of casualty.
“Mrs. Gander was taking care of a young boy in her charge the night of the disappearances,” the reporter went on. “That boy fled from the hospital and from his father. The father, Private Boyd Fletcher, arrived in what I have confirmed through the testimony of witnesses was a totally inebriated state, and attacked two military police officers in the hospital hallway.”
“Hey, man,” Derrick said, “sounds like your mom is in some serious—”
“Shhhh,” Joey ordered, turning the TV volume up again.
“The young boy, Gerry Fletcher,” the reporter went on, “climbed to the top of an adjacent building.”
The picture behind the reporter changed from Megan Gander to a blocklike building that Joey immediately recognized as one of the base’s residence complexes.
“Witnesses from that night,” the reporter said, “told me that young Gerry Fletcher was poised to hurl himself to his death over the side of that building. Only Mrs. Gander’s efforts—first through counseling, then through striving physically to hang on to the boy after he fell over the side—prevented him from plummeting four stories to his certain death.”
Joey stood amazed. He hadn’t heard anything about that. He’d known his mom was in trouble over Gerry Fletcher’s disappearance, which he thought was stupid given that all of the other kids in the world had disappeared, but he hadn’t known she’d done stuff like that. Joey felt ashamed at the way he’d left the house the next morning, not even talking to his mom about anything, just upset that so many of the post’s kids had come knocking on her door for help. He’d resented them, and he’d resented her. All he’d thought about was how he felt. Now he realized that maybe his mom had felt pretty ragged too.
“There is a difference of opinion about Gerry Fletcher’s disappearance,” Penny Gillespie went on. “The boy’s father contends that Mrs. Gander hid the boy and made it look like he’d hurled himself from the building’s rooftop by pitching his clothes over the side. Mrs. Gander’s defense claims that God reached down in that moment and took Gerry to heaven when He raptured all the others who are now missing.”
The scene behind the reporter switched to the base provost marshal’s office. Joey fully expected to see his mom there in chains, escorted by MPs. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
“The dereliction of duty charges brought against Mrs. Gander by the military seem to be triggered by the grievance Private Boyd Fletcher has filed in civil court against Mrs. Gander regarding her failure to notify him or his wife that his son was in the hospital. The legal advisors I have interviewed all believe that Mrs. Gander’s case should have been dropped, especially in light of the disappearances of all the children in the world at the moment Gerry Fletcher dropped from that building. And, given that Private Fletcher was heavily inebriated during the time that he’s complaining about not getting to see his son, they feel that Fletcher’s charges are driven by something other than parental feeling.”
A picture of a hard-faced man smoking a cigarette while handcuffed and standing between two MPs took the place of the provost marshal’s office.
“Private Fletcher,” Penny said, “has hired a well-known attorney in this matter. Once the military court has finished with their case against Mrs. Gander, she will face Fletcher in the civil courts. Mr. Arthur Flynn of the Atlanta, Georgia–based law firm Flynn, Flynn, and Elliot has filed suit against Mrs. Gander for the loss of the time Private Fletcher would have gotten to spend with young Gerry.”
The television view changed to a well-dressed man speaking in court before a jury.
“Mr. Flynn is an accomplished attorney,” Ms. Gillespie said, “and is highly regarded in the field of civil litigation. He’s been successful in getting millions of dollars in judgments for previous clients. Experts I talked to in the legal profession say that it is Mr. Flynn’s expectation to secure a judgment against Mrs. Gander, and then leapfrog from that to judgment against the United States Army, and quite possibly the United States government itself.”
Joey tried to digest that, but it was too big, too strange. His mom had never been in any kind of trouble his whole life.
“Mrs. Gander ran afoul of the military again this morning,” Penny said, “by teaching a class on the Tribulation.”
The inset image this time showed footage of Megan Gander in a confrontation with a U.S. Army captain. Joey got mad instantly. He was protective of his mom. Joey knew that the man, captain or no captain, wouldn’t have stepped into his mom’s space like that if Goose had been around.
“During my interviews with Mrs. Gander,” Penny stated, “I have found her belief in God to be very strong, though she admits that her faith failed her as she dealt with Gerry Fletcher. However, she points out that we all have had quite an eye-opener recently regarding what God can do.”
Joey heard Chris’s voice in the back of his mind: “Now I lay me down to sleep… .”
“Mrs. Gander tells me that she believes those among us who disappeared were taken in God’s rapture of His church,” Penny said. “She also said that she went to the head chaplain here at Fort Benning yesterday and discussed the possibility of teaching special classes about the Tribulation—about the biblically foretold seven hard and dangerous years that will pass before Jesus Christ returns to this world at the Second Coming—to the young people she is responsible for as a counselor for the post. She feels that these young people will need this knowledge to find the Lord so they may hope to be delivered into heaven when their time comes.”
The blonde woman’s image was replaced by footage of a heavyset officer waving off cameras as he walked to a military Hummer. MPs stepped forward and kept the cameras back.
The reporter’s voice-over continued, and her image reappeared in a corner of the TV screen. “Major Augustus Trimble is in charge of those post chaplains. According to Mrs. Gander, he not only declined the suggestion but went so far as to tell her that he did not believe the Rapture occurred.” The reporter shook her head. “Unfortunately, Major Trimble would not agree to an interview with me, nor did he agree to respond to this report by phone.” She looked at the camera. “Friends in faith, I do believe that Mrs. Megan Gander has been pushed into a position to stand for us all in this regard. Scared and alone, she has gone forth with her message: that the Rapture has occurred and that we are now beginning the tumultuous times of the Tribulation. Many of us, as the Bible bears witness, will not survive these troubled times ahead. Now I come to you, as I so often have since this show began airing, in the service of the Lord our God, and ask that you make time in your hectic and troubled days to pray for Mrs. Megan Gander.”
The news channel cut to commercial, an advertisement for a book and audio book on the end times.
For a moment, Joey couldn’t breathe. How had his mom gotten into so much trouble? What could the army do to her? He got hold of himself, blowing out a breath and taking another one in. He had to get home. He couldn’t stay away with something like this going on.
Chris’s singsong voice whispered in the back of his head: “Now I lay me down to sleep… . C’mon, Joey, say it with me. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
“What are you doing here?” a man’s voice demanded.
Startled, Joey turned around, swinging so fast that the pry bar he carried slammed into the desk.
A slender Asian man stood in the doorway. He held a pistol in both hands, pointing it first at Derrick then at Joey and back again. The barrel looked huge.
In the back of Joey’s mind, Chris’s voice whispered, “If I should die before I wake …”
12
United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0521 Hours
Over the past few days, Danielle Vinchenzo had seen a lot of Sergeant Samuel Adams “Goose” Gander. She had seen him in command, confident and fighting fit, and she had seen him in his downtime when he didn’t realize she was watching, when his haggard face had shown her how much the death and destruction taking place around him had taken from him physically, emotionally, and—yes, even though it wasn’t something Danielle thought about much—spiritually.
One thing she was convinced about First Sergeant Goose Gander—there was a lot going on spiritually within him. She was sure of it. It wasn’t just the times she’d seen him at church or in the company of Corporal Baker. The spirituality she’d … felt surrounding him resonated within him. He was a natural-born leader, a man other men looked up to. But there was something more to him than that. Something that seemed to be growing. It had to be growing, she knew, because she hadn’t felt it about him as much when she had first met him during the rescue in Glitter City. And it wasn’t that she’d missed it, because she knew she would never have missed something like that.
Mostly she remembered the stark images of the first sergeant, the way he had looked when he’d swooped in and taken charge of Glitter City after the initial SCUD attack, announced himself and his unit, and told everyone there that the U.S. Rangers were there to save them. And she remembered the image of him when he’d carried that wounded marine from the fallen helicopter, the image that OneWorld NewsNet had turned into an icon for the Turkish-Syrian conflict news footage.
And wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants, she thought as she stood there in the darkness of the alley less than an hour before dawn, if OneWorld found out their chosen hero-guy is the one working to bring their little empire of assassins to the ground?
Just as quickly as that thought occurred to her, Danielle dismissed it. If OneWorld NewsNet discovered what she and the first sergeant knew, if Nicolae Carpathia had any inkling that they were trying to put their hands on materials that could possible damage his bid for international attention—and maybe the office of secretary-general of the United Nations, if the scuttlebutt Danielle had heard was true—she and Goose would be killed.
It’s not like all the Rangers are in on this, Danielle told herself. There’s no safety in numbers. So far, the resistance movement consisted of an unknown computer hacker, herself, and First Sergeant Goose Gander.
Despite all the ways she had seen him—on the battlefield and off, winning and losing—Danielle had never seen Goose like this. She hid in the shadows across the street from the two-story building Goose had identified as one of the hidden headquarters of Alexander Cody’s CIA team and watched him, barely able to make him out in the darkness and through the rain that continued to assault the city. The storms to the south hadn’t stopped either, nor did they show any signs of slackening.
Goose was dressed in all black, a drenched shadow out in the night. The black suit he wore was standard night wear for these kinds of operations. His pants fit into high-topped combat boots. A mattefinish combat knife rode in a black sheath at his right ankle. He still carried an LCE, but instead of the M-4A1 he normally carried, he’d switched to an MP5 SD3. The small machine pistol was fitted with a suppressor to prevent any gunfire from being heard very far over the falling rain. He carried his M9 on his hip, but it had been outfitted with a suppressor as well.
Danielle had noted the change in weapons but hadn’t asked him about them. She knew why the first sergeant carried them. Alexander Cody and his men were killers. Goose didn’t intend for them to kill him.
Without warning, Goose vanished on the other side of the street.
Anxiety ripped through Danielle. Goose had taken charge of their escape from the three-agent CIA surveillance team two hours ago. They’d managed a two-hour nap in one of the public areas in the downtown sector after leaving Baker’s church, then lost themselves in the maze of alleys and side streets Sanliurfa was full of.
Goose’s knowledge of the city’s layout was staggering. They’d gone on foot, making better time and passing relatively unnoticed. When she’d asked him how he knew so much about the city, he’d told her it wasn’t a city; it was a battlefield. A sergeant’s job was to know a battlefield, every natural feature that could be turned to an advantage, every structure that offered a brief staging position, and everything that moved through that zone.
He’d had to learn the strengths and the weaknesses of the city, and know the strengths and weaknesses of his men. Then he had to be able to convert those things on a sliding scale on the fly as ground was lost or gained, as men were moved forward or brought back.
Goose was the one who had thought of the way to get Mystic’s information through a satellite burst transmission. Looking back on it now, Danielle guessed that the first sergeant had known how he was going to do it—how they were going to do it, Danielle corrected herself—the instant she had told him of the information packet.
Getting the packet through OneWorld NewsNet’s satellites was suicide. Getting it through another news service’s satellite link wasn’t secure and probably not very likely, given the troubles they were still having. Danielle had hoped Goose would tell her that
he could get access to the army’s computers, but he’d shot that down when she’d finally asked him about the possibility.
The option she hadn’t thought of, the possibility that had brought them here now, was the existence of the CIA’s computers. If Alexander Cody was running a covert operation within the CIA, he had to have satellite access. As it turned out, Goose had known he was being spied on, and he’d tracked the CIA back to their hiding holes in the city. He’d admitted he might not know where they all were, but he knew where three of them were, and this one had a communications link to a satellite.
Goose hadn’t wanted to bring Danielle here tonight. But she hadn’t given him a choice. She knew the Web address where Mystic could be reached. She had refused to give it to him when he’d pointed out calmly how dangerous it was for her to come, or when he’d gotten irritated and told her that her presence was going to be a danger to him as well.
That had almost gotten her. Knowing that she might be responsible for his death had almost been too much. But she wouldn’t have the story she needed if she wasn’t there to get it firsthand.
And if push came to shove, no one would know how First Sergeant Goose Gander had truly died in the back alleys of a doomed city.
She breathed through her mouth, trying to be as quiet as she could. She stared through the darkness so hard that her eyes hurt. With the distance and the rain, she barely saw the satellite dish mounted on the building.
On the second floor a door opened, and light from inside the room spilled out over the covered patio area. Some of the light touched the first few steps of the stairs that led up to the patio from the ground. Beyond the small roof, the light turned gray in the rain and created a misty bubble, vanishing before it reached another surface.
The man was tall and medium built, dressed in khaki pants and a dark golf shirt. He wore a pistol in a shoulder holster under his left arm.
Danielle drew back a little farther into the night. Looks like Goose’s information was correct. Then she caught herself. Intel. Military guys call it intel.