Apocalypse Crucible

by Mel Odom

  “You’re no killer. Not in cold blood.”

  “Maybe I am today.”

  “Then shoot me,” Icarus invited.

  For a long moment, Goose held the pistol on the other man. Then he dropped his arm, opened the door, and slid out of the Hummer into the merciless heat of the afternoon sun. He leathered the M9 and pulled the M-4A1 over his shoulder.

  “First Sergeant,” Icarus called after him.

  Goose started walking, feeling the pain in his bad knee snap at him as if he’d stepped into a bear trap. He kept his eyes forward, willing himself not to think about anything. But he remembered in spite of himself.

  He remembered feeling Chris’s heart beat against his chest as his son slept with him in bed on lazy mornings, in a sleeping bag during camping trips, or on the couch when they’d both inadvertently caught a nap while watching superhero cartoons.

  “First Sergeant.”

  Goose ignored Icarus. He wasn’t going to think. He wasn’t going to allow himself to care.

  “You can’t just walk away from this.”

  I can, Goose thought. Then he heard footsteps moving up rapidly behind him. Icarus’s shadow joined his on the ground, squashed small by the midafternoon sun. In his peripheral vision Goose caught sight of the man’s arm lifting; then he felt the weight of Icarus’s hand on his shoulder.

  The anger and pain Goose had tried to lock away burst loose. He turned on his left foot, felt his knee protest, and snapped his right hand out in a jab that caught Icarus on the side of the jaw.

  Icarus staggered and nearly fell. Then, with a cry of inarticulate rage, the man threw himself at Goose.

  Goose lifted his left arm and blocked Icarus’s initial blow, set himself, feinted with a left, and followed up with a hard right that he’d intended to put squarely between Icarus’s eyes.

  Instead, Icarus stepped quickly to the left, brushed Goose’s right arm away and down, and drove a roundhouse kick to Goose’s ribs. Goose’s breath left his lungs in a rush, and white-hot pain ignited within him. He stumbled back a step, favoring his weak knee.

  Icarus came at him, stepping, kicking once in a faked attempt at Goose’s crotch, then followed immediately with a front snap kick that caught Goose in the face. Stunned, Goose nearly fell, but caught himself, then saw Icarus launching another kick. Goose slipped to one side, roped his right arm under Icarus’s extended right leg, and drove his left fist into his opponent’s face.

  Hammered down, Icarus hit the ground, but quickly twisted away from Goose. Still on his side, Icarus managed a sweep kick that knocked Goose off his feet. Goose tried to stand, but Icarus came up off the ground at the same time and threw himself forward again. They grappled on the debris-strewn ground.

  That was Icarus’s mistake. Goose had wrestled in junior high and high school. There wasn’t a more dangerous fighter in the world than a wrestler gone to ground. Still, hours of battle and combat stress as well as days of living on the run and prior existing wounds and injuries made for a short fight.

  Goose held Icarus in a choke hold when he felt the fight go out of the man. Goose’s breath whistled in his own lungs as he released the man and shoved him away.

  Icarus lay on the ground. He coughed and blew dust as he struggled to regain his breath.

  Forcing himself to his feet, almost unable to bear the screaming pain in his knee, Goose stood swaying. After getting his feet solidly under him, he walked over to Icarus and grabbed the man’s belt, lifting him from the ground.

  “Stand,” Goose ordered. He gasped, unable to speak at length.

  Wobbly and weak, Icarus stood. His face was bloody and caked with dust. He peered warily at Goose.

  “Get your … hands up.” Goose lifted his own hands up and clapped them on his head. “Easier … to breathe. Opens … lungs.” He worked on getting his own breathing back under control. The heat made the air thin and dry.

  They stood uncertainly for a few minutes, staring at each other.

  Pain pounded inside Goose’s head. Two teeth were loose. Every breath stretched his bruised ribs.

  Icarus’s nose was broken and crooked. He spat blood at his own feet. Both his lips were puffy.

  “That,” Goose said after a time, “has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen a grown man do.”

  Icarus glared at him belligerently. “Are you ready to listen now? Or do we have to do this all over again?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “We’re through talking,” Goose said. He spat blood as well, then wiped his swollen lip. He knew his face wasn’t in much better shape than Icarus’s.

  “You wanted to talk to me earlier.”

  “You’ve already told me everything I need to know. You said you don’t know how to get Chris back. I believe you.”

  “But that’s not all I have to tell you.”

  Goose shook his head. “You want to talk about the Rapture?”

  “That’s what happened.”

  “That’s what some people are saying is what happened.”

  “How can you doubt?” Icarus demanded. “You said you believed in God. Don’t you see His hand in this?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. God wouldn’t take my son. So it has to be something else. What I want to know is how can you believe?” Goose responded.

  “Because believing—” Icarus halted for a moment—“believing anything else is impossible.”

  Goose was haunted by Bill Townsend’s words. Before Goose had met and married Megan, Bill had talked to Goose about faith and the end times.

  “It’s all about believing, buddy,” Bill had said while they’d worked on Goose’s pickup truck. It had been a lazy Sunday afternoon, after Bill had persuaded Goose to go to church with him that morning. They’d scheduled the afternoon for changing oil and doing light mechanical work on their vehicles. “See, you’ve been around the world a few times now. Fought in more wars than most men have ever seen. And you’ve come away from all of them whole, Goose. Have you ever wondered how that happened?”

  Goose had. During those years, he’d seen good men die in the Middle East, in Bosnia, in Africa, and again in the Middle East.

  “Is it because you’re a good soldier, Goose?” Bill had asked. “I know you don’t think that covers everything you’ve gone through. Just lucky? Nah, luck runs out. It’s something more, and that’s what’s scaring you now.”

  Just when Bill had come into his life, Goose had struggled with his own personal problems. Despite his successes in the military, his life was empty. He’d supposed part of it was because Cal Remington had been accepted for OCS and was wearing lieutenant’s bars and moving in different circles.

  “Once you eliminate luck and superstition, get over all those ideas that you’re actually that good or are in any way responsible for your survival despite the odds against you,” Bill had continued, “then you come down to the hardest decision you’ll ever make in your life. At least, in this life. You have to start looking at faith, at the plain and simple fact that God has a plan for you and it’s not your time to check out.”

  As good-naturedly as he could then, Goose had argued against faith. Thankfully, Bill hadn’t taken offense.

  “Some people are just more stubborn than others,” Bill had said. “But you know what? No matter how long it takes, God will wear you down. You’ll be shown enough life, enough struggle and conflict, that ultimately you’ll see that faith is the only way to go.”

  Goose had argued more, pointing out that faith in something—or Someone—that couldn’t be weighed or measured went against everything he knew from his time in the military.

  “You’re looking at it wrong, Goose. Faith isn’t just harder because you can’t weigh and measure it. Faith is also easier because you can’t weigh and measure it. There’s no criteria you have to meet, no recon you have to do, no SOP to follow in order to become a believer and put your faith in God. All you have to do is open your heart
and acknowledge Him, let Him work through your life as He sees fit.”

  “I can’t believe God did this.” Only after the words had left his lips did Goose know that he’d spoken out loud.

  “I know. I had the same problem. Sometimes I still do.” Icarus wiped his bloody face with a sleeve.

  “I’ve got to go.” Goose bent down to pick up his helmet, which had fallen off during their fight.

  “Hear me out,” Icarus said. “Please.” He looked desperate. “I might not get out of this city alive. If Cody’s men find me, I’m dead. Someone else needs to know what is going on.”

  Goose stood, but he wanted nothing more than to get back to his unit.

  “Please, First Sergeant.”

  A truck rumbled by on the street at the alley mouth.

  Suddenly aware that they were standing out in the open, Goose motioned toward the shade on the west side of the alley. “There.”

  Moving painfully, Icarus walked to an uneven stone wall, then slumped to a sitting position.

  Goose sat beside him. He freed his canteen, cracked it open, then handed it to Icarus. They both drank.

  “I’m a spy, First Sergeant,” Icarus said.

  “You’re CIA,” Goose said. “I knew that.”

  Icarus shook his head. “More than that. I’m also Mossad.”

  That surprised Goose. The CIA agent Alexander Cody hadn’t said anything about that. The Mossad was Israel’s spy group, one of the best in the world, and one of the most ruthless.

  “Cody found out?” Goose asked.

  Icarus shook his head. “No. That’s my secret. But it was important that I tell you.”

  “You’re a double agent.”

  “A triple agent, actually. I was Mossad, pretending to be a CIA agent, pretending to be a PKK terrorist.”

  Goose digested that with difficulty.

  “In my assignment for the CIA,” Icarus said, “I was supposed to infiltrate the PKK and set up a computer network inside their systems that would allow the CIA better access into the terrorist organizations.” “Terrorist cells don’t communicate with each other much,” Goose said, remembering all the training he’d had in counterterrorist measures. “That’s one of the things that makes them so dangerous.”

  “But they’re making more and more contact with each other,” Icarus said. “Terrorist organizations are made up of men. Men are fallible. The erosion of the terrorist cells is a natural occurrence with the advent of the Internet and other electronic communications. The program I secretly installed into the PKK cell’s computer systems allowed the CIA to better monitor that cell’s activities as well as others they contacted. The progression of the program spread with each contact. The program is an amazing piece of work.”

  “But you were also spying on the CIA,” Goose reminded.

  “Yes. The Mossad have been on the alert ever since Dr. Rosenzweig invented his fertilizer. Israel’s increased capacity to produce and provide crops in the Middle East as well as parts of Europe has greatly impacted markets the United States has controlled for decades. The possibility of Dr. Rosenzweig’s fertilizer formula getting into the hands of the world was even more problematic.”

  “Do you think the U.S. government would—”

  “Do anything they could to control the distribution of Dr. Rosenzweig’s formula?” Icarus nodded. “Yes, I do. So do the Mossad commanders I work for.”

  “Have you been in touch with the Mossad?” Goose wanted to know how complicated the situation brewing in Sanliurfa was.

  “No.”

  “So you haven’t been able to arrange exfiltration?”

  “No. For all I know, they believe I’m dead. The means I had of contacting them is gone. I can’t get a message out.”

  “Would they come if you did?”

  “Possibly,” Icarus said. “Or send a sweeper team in to eliminate me and whatever I might give up.” He paused. “Just talking to you like this, I’ve put your life at risk if they ever find out. So it would be in your best interest to limit who you reveal this conversation to.”

  Goose nodded.

  “The reason the Mossad was watching the CIA,” Icarus went on, “was due to some intelligence work they were doing in Romania.”

  “Romania?”

  “Yes. Over the last several years, there has been a push in the intelligence circles around the world. When these new networks could be traced, which wasn’t often, they led back to Romania.”

  Goose thought about the way OneWorld NewsNet happened to be on hand when the Turkish military effort as well as the U.S. and U.N. needed them most.

  “Romania,” Goose said, “doesn’t seem like it would be a hotbed of international spying. For one thing, what could they hope to gain?”

  Icarus was silent for a time. “What about the world, First Sergeant? Would that be enough?”

  “This is insane.” Goose tried to wrap his mind around the idea but couldn’t. “How could Romania hope to take over the world?”

  “Not Romania,” Icarus said. “One man … no … I mean one being.”

  Goose looked at the other man.

  “The Rapture has happened, First Sergeant,” Icarus said in a soft voice. “Your son was taken by God, as were all the other children and all those believers who knew He would come and trusted in Him and accepted Him.”

  Tears stung Goose’s eyes as he thought of Chris again.

  “Don’t feel too sad for your son,” Icarus advised. “He’s safe. No evil can ever touch him. He was an innocent. You need to believe that.” He paused. “The people you have to worry about now are those who were left behind. For the next seven years, they’ll be subjected to trials and tribulations that will kill many of them and put others through the most fearful things that a human can endure.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s the time of the Tribulation, First Sergeant. The time of final decisions of whether to believe or not to believe.”

  Goose remembered the times Bill had mentioned the Tribulation. The events that followed the Rapture were supposed to be horrific, but that was all Goose really remembered. Wait … there was something about the four horsemen and seals and trumpets … but he couldn’t remember much else.

  “Talk to Corporal Baker,” Icarus advised. “I was raised in the faith of my country. The concept of Christianity as Baker follows it remains new to me. I am trying to learn, though.”

  “This can’t be possible,” Goose objected.

  “Talk to him. He will be able to explain it better.”

  “You said the CIA alerted the PKK that you were a spy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d discovered the other spyware program in the terrorist networks,” Icarus said. “I wasn’t supposed to do that.”

  “Other spyware program?”

  “Yes. The one put there by the being in Romania.”

  “You keep referring to the person as a being.”

  Icarus worked his jaw gently. “Yes. That is what he is. While researching the CIA records, I found out that Section Chief Alexander Cody has had extensive dealings with that being.”

  “So Cody—”

  “Isn’t pursuing a wayward CIA agent.” Icarus smiled. “He wants to kill me before I can reveal what he’s been doing. Though if you told him I was a Mossad agent and he could find the information he needed to make that stick, he’d have all the excuse he needed to get away with my murder.”

  Goose struggled with all the concepts that were being dumped on him in addition to the loss of Chris. It was overwhelming.

  “First Sergeant.”

  Goose shook his head. “I can’t buy what you’re telling me.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “If I believe it, I also have to believe that I’ll never see my son again. I can’t do that.” Goose felt selfish as soon as he admitted that.

  “Not true,” Icarus said. “You just won’t see him again in this life. Chr
is is with God, and he’s waiting for the time when you’ll be reunited. All you have to do is listen to the God you believe in before it is too late. He has a plan for you.”

  Goose thought of what he’d been through in the past few days. Tears welled in Goose’s eyes. He pulled his knees up and buried his face against his forearms. It’s too much, God. You’re asking too much. You can’t expect me to give this much.

  “First Sergeant,” Icarus said. “Goose.”

  Goose ignored him.

  “Chris isn’t hurting,” Icarus said. “Everything I’ve talked to Corporal Baker about tells me that your son is in no pain. He’s with God. He is happy. He knows that you will make the right decisions. He can wait, just as you must learn to. Isn’t that what you would want for him? That he is happy and safe?”

  A long time passed. Icarus sat beside Goose without speaking.

  Gradually, Goose was able to push the pain and confusion away. He knew that Megan was getting through the situation back in Fort Benning, and that it was bad back there, too.

  Icarus had a point. Chris wasn’t in the middle of the mess at Benning. But Goose needed his son. He needed him, and he missed him with an ache that just wouldn’t go away.

  He had to be strong. For his men. For Chris. And for Megan. She had to know the things he had learned. Together, as they’d always done, they’d grow in their hope.

  And in our faith, Goose thought. God, please help me with my faith. I’m looking for You. I just can’t seem to find my way to You right now. Even as he prayed, though, part of him still felt foolish. But he did at least feel like he knew where to start asking questions.

  After a time, he lifted his head. “So who is it?” Goose asked.

  Icarus gave him a questioning look.

  “The being in Romania,” Goose said. “Who is it?”

  Icarus hesitated. “A man named Nicolae Carpathia. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

  “Yeah,” Goose said. “I’ve heard of him.”