by Mel Odom
“Ain’t nothing alive in that house,” one of the Rangers said.
Danielle silently agreed, but she knew she was racking up dead air on the newscast. “Even responding as quickly as the Rangers did, there isn’t much they’ve been able to do here.”
Suddenly a young woman sprinted across the open space, screaming. Both Rangers brought up their weapons. A cold knot of fear formed in Danielle’s stomach as she grew afraid she was about to witness the young girl’s death. She couldn’t fault the soldiers; they were in a land of hostiles.
“It’s all right,” the man shouted. “It’s my daughter!” He rushed forward and threw his arms around the girl, lifting her from her feet in his joy.
“What happened here?” one of the Rangers asked.
The man put his daughter down and turned to the soldiers. “It was the bandits. They came and they bombed the town.”
“They didn’t take anything?” the Ranger asked.
“No. Nothing. They just started attacking the village. Most people were already in bed. We had no chance to fight back.”
Danielle’s mind churned that new information into a working hypothesis. She didn’t like where her instincts were leading her.
Evidently the Ranger’s thoughts were following the same track as Danielle’s. He turned from the father-daughter reunion and put a hand to the ear-throat communications device he wore.
“Where’s Sergeant Gander?” he asked. He waited a moment; then his head swiveled in the direction of one of the hardest-hit homes. “Are you sure he went inside?”
Danielle stared at the whirling inferno that the house had become. No one could have walked through that fire, and if they had, she feared they weren’t coming back.
The corporal and his friend ran toward the building. Two young girls covered in a flaming blanket burst through the doorway. As one, the nearby soldiers grabbed the two girls and stripped the flaming blanket from them. Other soldiers beat embers and flames from their clothing.
“Where’s the soldier that went in after you?” one of the Rangers asked.
The girl shook her head.
“She don’t speak English,” another Ranger said.
The corporal grabbed his Kevlar vest, yanked on it, then pointed back to the burning house. The younger girl nodded, obviously getting the context.
“Good guy,” the girl said.
The corporal smiled. “That’s right. That’s our designation. Good guy.”
The young woman kept pointing toward the house.
Looking at the flames, Danielle knew there was no way anyone could live through that. If First Sergeant “Goose” Gander was inside that house, she felt certain that he wasn’t coming back out.
At that moment, the house’s roof collapsed. Flames and smoke belched out of the windows and the open door. Rangers started to run toward the house.
“Sergeant Gander’s inside the house,” one of them said hoarsely, and that brought them all. “We gotta get him out.”
“Back up,” a grizzled veteran squalled.
“But First Sergeant Gander is in there!” someone shouted.
“And it’s already too late. Stay back. We don’t want to lose anyone else.”
2
Village—Designation South 14, U.S. Army Rangers
Seven Klicks North-Northeast of Harran
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 2109 Hours
Goose’s senses swam. He knew he was supposed to get up, but movement was hard. Then fire bit into his left shoulder and galvanized his resolve. When he opened his eyes, the smoke was almost too thick for him to see through. Coals danced and gleamed along exposed wooden surfaces.
A flaming timber lay across his back. He wedged the M-4A1 under the timber with the buttstock braced squarely against the floor. He curled his body and shoved, forcing the beam from his shoulders. When he finished, there was no breath left in him. He tried to get to his feet and failed. He was going to die there.
Suddenly, that didn’t seem so bad. His youngest son—Chris, only five years old—had disappeared with all the rest of the children in the world. If Megan was right, God had taken Goose’s son. And there wasn’t anything he could do about that.
None of it made sense.
“Sergeant.”
Goose coughed and wheezed, unable to find any air in the room. His lungs felt like they were already on fire. But he recognized the voice.
“Sergeant, you’ve got to get up,” Corporal Joseph Baker said.
You’re dead, Goose wanted to say. I buried you weeks ago. The image of Baker’s torn body, mangled by a fragmentation grenade, had haunted Goose’s sleep nearly every night.
“Get up, Sergeant. It’s not your time to die.”
It wasn’t yours either, Corporal.
“How do you think Megan will feel to learn you just lay down and died?”
Goose knew the answer to that. Somehow, in spite of everything that had happened, she’d found the strength to keep going and to believe in God more fiercely than she ever had before. He’d heard it in her voice. Even if God forgave him for quitting, Goose knew Megan never would. He’d promised her on the day he married her that he would never give her less than what she deserved.
“Then get up,” Baker’s voice said.
Goose stopped thinking about dying. He stopped wondering how he was hearing from a dead man. He did what the United States Army had taught him to do every day for the last seventeen years.
He got up.
And he had his assault rifle in his hand when he did. But the smoke was so thick and his eyes tearing so much that he didn’t know which way was out through the flames.
“Here.”
Goose moved at once. He ran through the flames because he knew he wasn’t going to get a second chance. Arm across his face, he felt the heat of the flames surround him for two strides … then three …
… and then he was out, racing into the night in front of the house. Overcome by smoke and exhaustion, he dropped to his knees and tried to breathe. His lungs remained frozen for a moment, then kick-started to life. Without warning, he threw up and felt a little better. His lungs opened up.
“Sarge!” someone yelled. “You’re on fire!”
Looking down at his pant legs, Goose saw flames clinging to the material. He raked up a handful of dirt and smothered the flames. Then he stood on shaking legs. His left knee, damaged so long ago and never quite right since, ached and felt infirm. He looked around at the villagers and the Rangers gathered there in the firelight. When he spotted the two girls he’d gone in to rescue, he felt better.
“Thought we’d lost you, Sarge,” Private First Class Billy Hendricks said. He was in his early twenties, new to the army and to the area.
“Not yet,” Goose said. “We’re going to be all right.”
“I knew that when I saw you come out of that burning house.”
Goose spotted Corporal Jamal Donner, his second on the transport assignment. Donner was an African-American in his early thirties, only a couple of years younger than Goose. He kept his head shaved clean, even managing to do so in the confusion of these past few weeks.
“Where do we stand?” Goose asked.
“We’re all present and accounted for,” Donner said. His voice was soft and smooth with the Southern accent he’d acquired while growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. “We got lucky.”
Goose looked at the handful of bodies lying on the ground. Some of the other villagers sat beside the corpses and wept without restraint.
Thank God there are no children, Goose thought. They would have been among the casualties for certain. Then he realized that God was exactly the reason why no children were there. That only brought up thoughts of Chris again, and he tried not to go there.
“Not everybody got lucky,” Donner said.
“Does anyone know what happened?”
“Got a man over here who says he saw the whole thing. Ain’t had time to talk to him.”
/> Local Time 2112 Hours
The man’s name was Achmed. Sixtyish and frail, he spoke English well.
“They came out of nowhere,” Achmed told Goose. The village continued to burn. There was nothing anyone could do to save it.
“Who?” Goose asked.
“Niyazi.”
Goose reached into his BDU pouch and took out his PalmPilot.
He brought up the file they’d assembled on the local warlords and showed the image they had of Niyazi to Achmed. “This man?” Goose asked.
Achmed nodded. “This man. Very bad man. He likes to kill.”
The files Goose had read on Niyazi agreed with that. Although the Turkish military hadn’t liked sharing all their information with the United States Army, they’d done so once it became apparent that sharing was necessary.
“Why did he attack the village?” Goose asked as he put the PalmPilot away.
Achmed shook his head. “I don’t know. Normally he is not in this place.”
“Not in what place? Here?”
“Not here,” Achmed agreed. “Niyazi stays to the north. Many kilometers away.”
“Something brought him down here,” Donner said.
“I don’t know what that might be,” Achmed replied. “We are a very poor village. It is known. Everyone knows how poor we are.”
Goose looked around the village and silently agreed. Except for a few goats and little patches of vegetable gardens, there wasn’t much to the village. Over the past weeks, he’d traveled with a convoy by the village at least a dozen times. They’d never bothered to stop.
“You ask me,” Donner said, “and I don’t mean to be rude about it, but this place ain’t worth the powder it would take to blow it up.”
A bad feeling twisted through Goose’s gut. He turned to Donner. “Gather the men. We need to get rolling. If Niyazi didn’t hit this village out of spite or to get something, he was just using it as a diversion.”
Understanding filled Donner’s liquid eyes. “The convoy.”
“Yeah,” Goose agreed. “And we ran off and left it unguarded.” He turned toward the nearest Hummer, ignoring his aches, bruises, and burns.
United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 2114 Hours
“Captain Remington.”
Tired and frustrated, Cal Remington looked up from the computer screen he’d been studying. The army captain was six feet four inches tall with broad shoulders and short-clipped dark hair.
“What is it, Private?” Remington snapped.
“Got a problem with the convoy, sir.” The private was young and baby-faced, one of the geek army that had moved up quickly as the military had become increasingly reliant on technology.
“Which convoy?” There were currently three out. Remington checked the time on the bottom of the computer screen. Two, he amended. One of them should have reached its destination by now.
“Harran, sir.”
Goose’s convoy. The thought that something had gone wrong there irritated Remington. Then again, he didn’t know if it was the thought that something had gone wrong or the thought of Goose that irritated him most.
“What’s wrong with the convoy?” Remington asked.
“It’s under attack, sir.”
“By whom?” Remington stood and walked out of his office. The private led the way through the computer workstations that had been set up and now ran off noisy generators.
“We don’t know, sir.” The private gestured to one of the large LCD computer monitors.
Remington studied the screen and saw satellite imagery of the convoy racing across the rugged terrain toward Harran. Only the four supply trucks and two support Hummers remained together. Six units were MIA.
“Where is the rest of my convoy?” Remington demanded.
“Sergeant Gander pulled most of the support vehicles off the convoy, sir,” the private said.
“Why?”
“There was a village on fire, sir. Sergeant Gander wanted to see if they could help.” The private gestured to another monitor.
Remington made out the burning houses and the six Hummers parked in front of them. His irritation with Goose turned into fullfledged anger.
“Who authorized this?” Remington demanded.
“No one, sir. Sergeant Gander radioed us, said he’d take a quick look-see and be back to the convoy.”
“Did those people ask for help?”
“Not that I know of, sir.”
“How did Sergeant Gander know they needed help?”
“Sergeant Gander saw the burning buildings from the route they were traveling.”
Remington cursed. “And he didn’t think that maybe they were being set up?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Are we in radio communication with Sergeant Gander?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Hand me that headset.”
The private passed the headset over, and Remington put it on and pulled the chin mic into place. “What’s his call sign?”
“Drifter Leader.”
Remington pushed a button on the mic and opened the radio channel. “Drifter Leader, this is Base. Do you copy?”
“Sir,” the computer tech next to him said, “I’ve got bogeys vectoring in on the supply convoy.”
Remington flicked his gaze back to the computer screen and watched as seven … eight … nine speeding vehicles closed in on the convoy. He cursed and queued the mic again. “Drifter Leader, this is Base. Do you copy?”
3
United States Rangers Convoy
Three Klicks North-Northeast of Harran
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 2116 Hours
Private First Class Jimmy Robinson sat in the back of the cargo truck and sipped metallic-tasting water from his canteen. He rode on an ammo box and swayed with the motion of the truck lumbering across the uneven terrain. Through the parted canvas partially covering the rear of the truck, he constantly watched the terrain.
“Man,” Butch Strahan complained from the other side of the truck. “You couldn’t ask for a bumpier ride.”
“You could,” Robinson said, “but I’d shoot you on account of you being too sadistic to live.”
Strahan laughed. “I’m just glad it isn’t so bumpy that some of this ammo goes off.”
“Wouldn’t do that. This stuff’s packed all right. I helped get it done.”
“I guess if you’re wrong, we’ll never live to know about it.” Strahan shifted, obviously trying to find a more comfortable position. “I heard you got to talk to your girl.”
Robinson nodded and tried to keep the smile from his face. The other men teased about such things. “Got Pablo’s Xbox 360 up and running. Hooked it into the Internet coming out of command. Captain Remington finally okayed that.”
“Good thing you guys didn’t get caught using it before he allowed it.”
“Tell me about it. But that Xbox just sips bandwidth. Even when you’re talking back and forth over the gamer network.”
“So what did your girl say?”
Robinson’s happy thoughts fled. “Her parents are missing.”
Strahan looked suddenly solemn. “Well, if Joe Baker was right in what he was saying, that God came and took all the Christians home to begin the Tribulation, that’s a good thing.”
“Maybe. But right now Nikki’s alone.” Robinson hesitated, wondering if he should say anything about what was really on his mind. “And she’s still here.”
“Oh,” Strahan said, suddenly understanding.
“I’ve known her since I was fourteen,” Robinson said. “Used to sit behind her in algebra. Her parents were always involved with the church. So was she.”
“You’re wondering why she’s still here while her parents are gone?”
“She says it was because she didn’t believe as much as her parents did. She thinks she was just going through the moves.”
<
br /> “I think a lot of us were like that,” Strahan said. “I have to admit, I ain’t always played things on the straight and narrow, and maybe I’ve been too interested in other things than God’s Word, but I didn’t think I’d be left behind like this.”
“I never gave it any thought,” Robinson admitted. “I treated everybody fairly, tried to get along, but I didn’t make much time in my day for thinking about where I might end up when it was all over.”
“That’s because it’s not normal to sit around thinking about everything being all over.”
“Nikki’s parents did. Every Sunday and Wednesday at church. And I’m sure they didn’t forget about it during the rest of the week either.”
“But it’s not over. Not if what Joe Baker was saying was right. About how we can redeem ourselves in God’s eyes now.”
“I know. I’m hoping.”
Strahan shook his head. “You gotta do more than hope. You gotta believe.” He paused. “I don’t know about you, but before I hit my rack every night, I hit my knees and give thanks for getting through one more day.”
“I know. Me too. Nikki and me, we even prayed together on that Xbox hookup the other night. I mean, she doesn’t even have an Xbox. She was over at a friend’s house. They were logging on and staying on whenever they could because Nikki knows I like to play. She said that she knew if I was still alive, sooner or later I’d log on.”
“Then that conversation you two had was meant to be.”
“God wanted us to talk.” Robinson sipped his water again. “Nikki and I both believe that.”
Strahan abruptly sat up a little straighter and peered out the back of the truck. “Did you see that?”
Robinson put his canteen away and picked up his M-4A1. “See what?”
“Thought I saw movement out there in the brush.” Strahan pushed the canvas aside and swiveled his head. Then he jerked back.
Robinson stared at the other man, wondering what had happened, when the sound of the gunshots caught up with the cargo truck. He ducked immediately and scrambled over to Strahan as the truck’s driver floored the accelerator and started evasive maneuvers.