04 Apocalypse Unleashed
Page 14
United States 75th Army Rangers Outpost
Harran
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 0736 Hours
Goose wished that Danielle and her cameraman had stayed back. Following him was dangerous. Then he realized that anywhere in Harran was dangerous for an American citizen. Even the people who lived in the town would be forfeit if the Syrians caught up to them.
“Falcon Three,” Swindoll called.
Goose didn’t respond. Two of the Bedouins still remained on the loose. He guessed that they would be listening for him.
When he reached the narrow alley ahead of him, he turned and looked down it. Nothing stirred, though the town seemed to vibrate with the rock and roll caused by the advancing Syrian cavalry. Then, from the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the house in front of him.
Goose whirled and hunkered down. His weak knee screamed in agony, but he somehow forced it to hold up under him. He brought the M-4A1 online and squeezed the trigger. Bullets ripped across the windowsill and through the thin curtains, where a rifle muzzle protruded. Rounds from the Bedouin weapon pocked the wall over Goose’s head.
The Bedouin tumbled backward without a sound.
“Goose!” Danielle yelled. “The rooftop!”
Glancing up, Goose barely made out another Bedouin atop the roof. Goose threw himself to one side just before bullets whipped through the space where he’d been. He fired again, emptying the carbine’s magazine in a final chatter of fullauto. The bullets stitched up the roof, easily piercing the thin cover, and tracked onto the Bedouin. The man lost his weapon and fell from the other side of the house.
Goose fed a new magazine into the M-4A1 and got up. It felt like a colony of fire ants had taken up residence in his knee.
“Falcon Three,” Swindoll tried again. “Goose.”
“Three reads you, Leader. I was sidetracked with a couple things.”
Goose limped forward and checked the two Bedouins. Both men were dead.
“We’re exfiltrating,” Swindoll said.
“Affirmative. I’ve got wounded here. I’ll get there when I can.”
Goose turned back the way he’d come. “Falcon Eleven, are you still with me?”
“Yes. I need help.”
“I’ll be there.” Goose walked past Danielle and the cameraman. “Ma’am, you two shouldn’t be here.”
Danielle didn’t say anything.
“Do you know where the airport is?” Goose asked.
“Yes.”
“Then get there. This town’s about to get turned inside out, and you don’t want to be here when it happens.”
“You’ve got wounded men back there.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll take care of them.”
“It’ll be easier if we take care of them.” Danielle fell into stride with him, easily catching up to him. His leg throbbed and felt unsteady.
“Ma’am—”
“The Rangers aren’t the only ones who don’t leave people behind, Goose. And if that’s the best you’re able to walk, you’re not going to be able to help those men much.”
Ruefully, Goose closed his mouth and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He kept the assault rifle across his chest as they went back to the house where Corporal Brett Rainier had holed up.
At the house, Goose held Danielle and the cameraman back from the window.
“Corporal,” Goose called.
“Sarge.” Rainier sounded weaker.
“Yeah. It’s me. Okay to come ahead?”
“Yes.”
Goose stepped through the door but kept the M-4A1 at the ready in case some of the Bedouins had made their way inside the building and were holding the two men hostage.
20
United States 75th Army Rangers Outpost
Harran
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 0738 Hours
Darkness and heat filled the house even with the windows open. If the windows had been larger, more light might have come in. As it was, they barely allowed light or a breeze.
The people who live here don’t stay inside much, Goose thought. They lived a lot like the backwoods people he’d grown up with in Waycross. There were a lot of houses back there that didn’t have airconditioning and got by on box fans.
Rainier and Johnson were hunkered down in one corner. Rickety, mismatched furniture occupied the small room, barely making a dent in the meager space. On the other side of the room, a small wood-burning stove had a hot surface that held cooking utensils.
The people who normally lived here were used to hard ways, Goose couldn’t help thinking. There were no pictures on the walls and no electronics.
Rainier was in his early twenties and had been in the Rangers for a couple of years. He was compact and neat, but his face was scruffy with whiskers, and his left arm was covered in blood.
Johnson was in worse shape. Blood saturated his abdomen and soaked his BDUs. He was black and gangly, no more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
Goose listened to Johnson’s raspy breathing. God help that poor boy.
“Hey, Sarge,” Johnson whispered. Both of his fists tightly clenched his shirt over his stomach. “I got shot.”
“You did, son,” Goose said, “but you’re going to be all right. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“I don’t want to die over here, Sarge.” A spasm racked Johnson. “I promised … my granny … that I wouldn’t die over here.”
“Promises to a granny are awfully important,” Goose said. “My granny would cut a switch if I ever didn’t do something I promised her I’d do.”
Johnson smiled. He was in so much shock that Goose doubted the young man felt much pain. He was just scared. “Then you know I can’t die over here,” Johnson said.
“No, sir. We can’t let you do that.” Goose listened for the approach of footsteps or vehicles. With all the noise outside, discerning either was problematic. He knelt beside the wounded man. “Let me see what we’re dealing with.”
Johnson didn’t let go of his shirt.
Goose laid his rifle to one side and pulled at the young man’s hands. He paid no attention to the blood on his hands. On this battlefield, in this moment, the threat of HIV was so far removed that he refused to acknowledge it. He didn’t know if any of them were even going to make it out of the town alive.
“You’re going to have to let go,” Goose said.
Johnson swallowed hard. “I’m scared to let go, Sarge. I’m afraid if I do, I’m gonna fall apart.”
“If you do, soldier, then I’ll put you back together.”
“Okay.” Johnson’s hands shook as he released the stranglehold he had on his shirt.
Goose palmed his lock-back knife and slashed the straps holding the Kevlar vest in place. “You doing okay, Brett?”
“Yeah. Bullet hit me in the arm, but it’s already almost stopped bleeding. Just numb.”
“That’s normal. Nothing to worry about. You alert enough to keep a lookout?”
“Yeah, Sarge.”
“Then help me do that.”
Rainier nodded and sidled over to the nearest window. “Hey, that reporter woman’s gone.”
Goose looked back to where he’d left Danielle and the cameraman. Danielle was nowhere to be seen. “Where’d she go?” Goose demanded.
“Said she’d be back,” the cameraman responded with a shrug.
“You let her go?”
“Hey, one thing I know about her since I’ve been working with her: once she gets it in her head to do something, you can’t stop her.”
Goose forced himself to turn his attention back to the wounded man. Maybe problems didn’t come one at a time, but that was how he had to deal with them.
At the moment, Robert Johnson was his problem. The man’s stomach was a mess. An ugly tear showed where a bullet had ripped across his abdomen and came close to spilling his intestines outside his body. Thankfully the bullet hadn’t nicked an artery. There
was a lot of blood, but it was already starting to slow. He was still going to need blood or plasma to keep his heart beating.
Johnson shivered and watched Goose with frightened eyes. “How bad is it, Sarge?”
“Plenty bad,” he admitted, “but I’ve seen men with worse pull through just fine. You ain’t gonna look as good in a Speedo, though.”
“Man,” Johnson said, “I ain’t never wore no Speedo.”
“Well, then you won’t miss anything.” Goose looked around the room and found a threadbare blanket.
“Don’t see how that bullet got through my vest,” Johnson said.
“It didn’t.” Goose tore the blanket into strips. “You got kissed by a ricochet that slipped up under the vest.”
“Lucky me.”
“You’d have been a lot luckier if it had missed you altogether.” Working quickly, Goose slipped the strips under the young man and bound them across his abdomen. “One thing you can’t do is sit up.”
“I can’t. I already tried. I thought I’d been paralyzed. But I can still feel my feet.”
“Your stomach muscles have been cut,” Goose said. “Docs can fix ’em good as new, but you don’t have them right now. So you just lay back and let us get you out of here.”
“Yes, First Sergeant.”
Goose nodded and picked up his weapon. He adjusted his helmet and stood. Carrying Johnson back to the airfield wasn’t an option.
And he still didn’t know where Danielle Vinchenzo had gone.
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 0042 Hours
The Battle for Harran scrolled across the OneWorld NewsNet television channel.
Horrified, Megan stood in silence and watched Goose working on the wounded young man in front of him. The cameraman still had the video rolling, and the video link came through clearly.
“As you can see,” anchorman Vincent Terrell stated calmly, “things in Harran are not good for the Rangers out of Fort Benning, Georgia. You’re watching First Sergeant Samuel Adams Gander performing some kind of emergency procedure on a wounded soldier.”
The television monitor split into two equal screens. The other screen showed a downward view of the battlefield as Syrian tanks and vehicles drove into the town. Megan couldn’t believe the amount of devastation that filled their backtrail.
“At the same time that Goose, as most of this station’s viewers have come to know the sergeant by, struggles to save his fellow soldier, the Syrian army has arrived and is plowing through the town of Harran,” Terrell went on. “We’re being told that the Rangers hope to reach the makeshift air base outside the town in time to evacuate before the Syrians shoot them down.”
The view on the left screen tightened up and displayed the small, postage stamp–size airfield where a few cargo helicopters sat idling. Two of them lay spread across the terrain like a child’s broken toys. The Syrian jets had proven disastrous before the Rangers managed to retaliate.
A wave of jeeps braked to a halt and off-loaded wounded in gurneys. As soon as the helicopters filled up with wounded, they took off.
Watching them go, counting down the number of vehicles available, Megan knew she was watching Goose’s chances of escape and survival grow slimmer and slimmer. She took comfort in Evelyn’s strong embrace.
“Mom?”
Recognizing Joey’s voice, Megan turned toward the door. Joey stood there looking as frightened as she felt. Evelyn released her hold. Megan didn’t ask Joey why he was out so late, didn’t ask where he’d been; she just stepped toward her son with open arms.
“Is Goose … ?” Joey couldn’t finish.
Megan held her son close. “No, honey. Goose is fine. He’s just fine. Look there.” She pointed at the screen, where Goose was working on the young Ranger.
“Isn’t he supposed to be getting out of there?” Joey asked.
“He will. He will. Goose just can’t leave anyone behind.”
“We have temporarily lost video contact with Danielle Vinchenzo, our reporter there on the ground in the beleaguered town of Harran,” Terrell continued, “but we’ll bring you more news of Harran as it develops. Right now we’re going to take you live to the United Nations building in New York, where Nicolae Carpathia, the newly elected secretarygeneral, wants to say a few words.”
“No,” Megan said.
Mercifully, the screens remained split, and the one depicting Goose stayed in place.
Carpathia looked unimpressively ordinary yet somehow natural on camera. He was thirty-three years old and broad-chested. His hair was neatly in place, as was his hesitant smile, and his dark suit looked fresh despite the late hour in the day.
“Good evening, Mr. SecretaryGeneral,” the news anchorman greeted. “Thank you for agreeing to speak to us concerning the continuing unrest in Turkey.”
“Please,” Carpathia said good-naturedly. “Address me as Nicolae. I am not comfortable standing on titles.”
Despite her attention to Goose, Megan couldn’t help watching the Romanian leader. There was something … not quite right about him. Something that bothered her. It was also something she hadn’t noticed till recently. When the man had first started appearing on television, she’d been taken in by the warm generosity he exuded.
“For a person not comfortable standing on titles,” Terrell said, “you’ve certainly acquired a number of them in short order.”
“I have been very fortunate and very diligent about the opportunities that came my way. But everything I do, I do for the good of the world and the people who are in it. We should all pay more attention to each other. Especially these days when there is so much confusion in the world.”
“I agree,” Terrell said. Then he smiled. “And not just because OneWorld NewsNet is one of the corporations you have a big interest in.”
Carpathia smiled as well. “I am glad to hear that. I came here to New York today to talk about the violence running rampant in the world. Before the disappearances, so much of the violence we have seen in recent days was barely kept in check. While I was living in Romania, I remained constantly aware of the tensions in Kosovo that threatened to spill over onto us, as well as the Russian-Chechen problems. Israel has always been a source of contention, and I fear that nation’s newfound wealth has only made her a greater target for her enemies.”
“He’s right,” someone said.
Megan looked around the room, amazed at how many people had gathered and were focused on Carpathia. There was something almost sinister about that.
21
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 0046 Hours
“These wars and all the infighting have to stop,” Carpathia said from his half of the split television screen. “We must find a way to live in peace with each other if we are going to survive whatever has happened to this world. A third of the people who had lived on this planet are now among the missing.”
Not missing, Megan thought. They’re with God. Her eyes never left Goose as he labored to save the life of the young soldier.
“I am working now on a new plan that I think will benefit all the nations of the world,” Carpathia said. “Many changes will come directly through the United Nations. President Fitzhugh and I have talked about what part he and the United States are going to play in this new world I am envisioning.”
New world? Megan thought. We don’t need a new world. We need to figure out how to live in this one. But she noticed that several of her fellow workers were nodding their heads in agreement. A chill crept up her spine at Carpathia’s words.
“The United Nations has put military forces in many nations across the globe,” Carpathia went on, “but these forces have seldom been allowed to act. I propose to change that. I am going to empower the men and women in those military forces to work more vigorously to make changes in the nations that have struggled to get along. I feel certain that a way can be made.”
Carpathia grinned like a little boy. “I know. It sounds very much like a dream, but it is a dream I have had since I was very small. My mother brought me up to love peace, and she helped bring peace and wellness to the house I grew up in. I can only hope that my own efforts will honor her in some small way.”
“What do you visualize doing?”
Megan shook her head. Terrell’s questions might as well have been scripted.
“I want to change the United Nations into another entity, one that I propose calling the Global Community. I think that name better communicates what we can expect of the world we live in these days. With the access we have to the Internet and wireless devices, and with news media scattered around the world—”
“Especially OneWorld NewsNet,” Terrell interjected during Carpathia’s pause. “We can’t forget the tireless work that goes on behind the scenes here.”
“No,” Carpathia agreed. “We cannot. I am very proud of the work that the news agency does. I only wish I could claim credit for it, because you people have certainly racked up a lot of awards.”
“Thank you.” Terrell beamed. “Danielle Vinchenzo is surely going to be up for an award for her work in Turkey.”
“If she is not,” Carpathia said, “then there is no justice in the world.” He paused just a moment, then went on. “I will be in touch with you more as my plans for the Global Community solidify. But for the moment, let me say that I am very proud of those men— United Nations soldiers as well as Fort Benning’s own Rangers—who are assisting Turkish troops in trying to keep the peace in Turkey. From what I have seen today, that is a very hard thing to do.”
On the screen in Harran, Goose retrieved his weapon and stood. He spoke, but his voice had been muted.
“One thing I would like to tell the families of those Rangers serving in Turkey,” Carpathia continued, “is that I have taken steps that should see big changes occurring there. Turkey is an important linchpin between East and West, and that division needs to be maintained until I can deal with it.”