04 Apocalypse Unleashed

by Mel Odom

  At 2308 hours, the laser range finder registered an incoming message.

  In position. Have your six. Remington.

  Goose took a deep breath and pushed himself up into a squatting position. His left knee screamed in pain. It had swelled so badly he had trouble getting it to fold properly under him.

  “Get up,” Goose said. He readied his M-4A1.

  Miller prayed aloud as he got to his feet.

  Icarus stood without comment. His face was solemn, streaked with mud.

  “We go slow,” Goose said, “until we have a reason not to.”

  “Is there going to be some kind of signal?” Miller asked.

  “When the bullets start flying, if you live long enough to see them or hear them,” Icarus said, “that’ll be your signal.”

  Goose didn’t think he could have put the situation any more succinctly. “All right, let’s go.” He led the way, staying with the brush line as much as he could, not taking a direct path toward the city.

  The enemy—all of them—would be watching for that.

  Local Time 2310 Hours

  Remington waited in the territory where he knew Goose was headed. Satellite recon had picked up Goose and the other two men coming through the trees on the southwest side of the city. There wasn’t much cover there, but it was enough. The Syrian scout forces kept trying to encroach from the southeast, where the trees were thicker. Snipers kept those efforts thinned out.

  In a prone position, Remington lay with a sniper rifle resting on a bipod and took aim 517 yards away. He was good with the weapon, better than many of the men in his unit. And there wasn’t anyone he trusted more to make the shots he needed to make.

  He swept the crosshairs across Goose, thought momentarily how easy it would be to erase that threat, then struck the thought from his mind. He could still use Goose.

  Instead, Remington tracked the two men who crept up on Goose’s position. The captain slid his finger over the trigger and let out half a breath. Then he squeezed.

  Local Time 2310 Hours

  A warning tingle ran through Goose and let him know he was in someone’s sights. The warning was more instinct than physical, one of those skills that tended to vanish as men got more civilized about their killing. But he’d honed it on dozens of battlefields and trusted it completely.

  Someone was ahead of them in the darkness, lying in wait in the scrub brush. And he had his sights on the three of them.

  “Down!” Goose whispered hoarsely, twisting and reaching for the chaplain behind him. He caught Miller’s Kevlar vest and yanked him down just as someone ahead fired. The muzzle flashes were almost invisible in the darkness, letting Goose know the shooter was using a flash hider, and the sound was barely audible, signaling the use of a silencer. The bullet smacked against the Kevlar covering Goose’s back. If the armor hadn’t been there, the round would have cored through his heart.

  Icarus cursed as he took cover behind a tree.

  Goose placed his free hand on the back of Miller’s helmet and forced the man’s face into the mud. The chaplain’s first response was to try to look up, but Goose held him down. Goose lay still and held his assault weapon in one hand. He kept his head pressed against the earth and scanned the skyline.

  In the next moment, a body pitched out of the darkness. A second passed, and another ambusher sprawled to the ground only a few feet away from the first. Goose didn’t know who the sniper was that had saved them, but he was grateful to be watched over.

  Then the sound of both shots echoed over the immediate area.

  Syrian soldiers yelled to each other not far away. Someone swung a spotlight in Goose’s direction. The light missed him by inches, but already Syrian troops massed to investigate.

  “Time to go.” Goose grabbed Miller’s harness and yanked him to his feet. “Stay up with me. You slow down, we’re both going to die.” He ran, keeping his rifle forward.

  He checked the first body he came to, wanting to make sure he wasn’t leaving a wounded enemy behind. He didn’t recognize what was left of the man’s face, but he knew he wasn’t Syrian. The battledress was black, and there were no markings. Goose took the extra magazines and moved on to the second man, all too aware of the Syrian troops dogging their trail.

  The second man had been shot through the throat and lay drowning in his own blood. He tried to raise a pistol when Goose came up on him. Goose knocked the pistol away and it flew from the dying man’s hand. The man gasped once; then his gaze dulled.

  Miller whispered something unintelligible behind him, but Goose ignored the chaplain.

  The Syrian voices continued, and the spotlight pierced the night, swinging closer and closer. The bright yellow beam splashed across Goose once, and then gunfire erupted.

  Almost immediately the yellow light winked out as the sniper scored again. Goose stayed focused on the intervening distance between him and the city. If they could close the gap, get inside the city, they’d be safe. His knee felt like it was shredding, coming completely apart. Everything the surgeons had done to it in the past was coming undone.

  He pushed himself through the pain and kept running. He dragged Miller after him, and that put an even greater strain on his knee.

  Bullets thudded into the ground around him. Icarus cursed as he ran. Miller prayed, reciting the Twenty-third Psalm in a jerky voice.

  A trio of Syrian soldiers formed out of the darkness, stepping into Goose’s vision like ghosts out of the night. They swung their weapons toward Goose.

  Aiming the M-4A1 one-handed while he dragged Miller with the other, Goose started a line of bullets at the knees of the man on the left and brought the rifle in a line across the men as he fired on fullauto. The first two men crumpled, but the assault weapon cycled dry before he could shoot the third.

  Goose yelled inarticulately, anything to scare the man facing him. He never broke stride, not even with the trembling rattling through his knee. The joint felt spongy and loose, and he feared it was going to fail under him.

  He lowered a shoulder and ran headlong into the man. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Miller joined them in the mud.

  Then everything was madness. Goose scrambled for his life, unable to get to his pistol because the Syrian soldier grappled him and rolled him onto that hip. Abandoning the pistol, Goose went for his knife. He ripped the blade free, rolled his opponent over, held the man flat with his own body weight, and drove the knife home between the man’s third and fourth ribs.

  Miller lay nearby, watching in stunned horror. “God help us.”

  “You start out by helping yourself,” Goose said. “God takes over from there.”

  Bullets tore at the earth. Icarus had dropped to a knee nearby and fired controlled three-round bursts at targets. A nearby Syrian tank lurched into motion. The turret spun around.

  “C’mon.” Goose pulled Miller to his feet. “You stay here, that tank will mash what’s left of you into the mud.”

  Miller started running.

  With his knee throbbing painfully, it was all Goose could do to stay up.

  “Goose!”

  Remington’s voice came out of the darkness. Immediately Goose steered straight for it. His body hurt from exertion, and he was operating purely on autopilot, but his trust in Remington was there. In times like this, that had been one thing he’d always been able to count on.

  But a small fear quavered through him, causing him to wonder if he was running into a bullet this time.

  The tank got off a round that exploded several yards away. The concussion nearly knocked Goose from his feet. He steadied, put a hand on Miller’s shoulder to steady him as well, and ran harder.

  The tank turret swiveled again as the gunner adjusted. A pair of Syrian jeeps streaked for the rendezvous point. In the next few seconds, all of the vehicles turned into whirling fireballs as the artillery lining Sanliurfa’s walls opened up.

  Only a few yards short of his goal, surrounded by the heat of the explosions
, Goose’s knee finally gave out. He felt it snap, felt the burning pain explode so fiercely that it almost swept his senses away. He went down at once, releasing Miller so the chaplain could keep running toward safety.

  Instinctively Goose pulled his rifle up and looked around. Icarus was at his side, grabbing him by the arm and trying to haul him to his feet.

  Shadows came at them out of the night. Goose recognized Remington at once.

  “I’ve got to go,” Icarus said. “Maybe you trust your friends, but I don’t.”

  Stunned and in more pain than he could ever remember, Goose heard Icarus’s words, but they sounded strangely distorted. Like he was speaking through water.

  Goose wanted to tell the man to stay, but before he could speak, Icarus had vanished. Evidently he’d chosen to go his own way rather than risk capture by Remington. Goose leaned onto the rifle and tried to force himself up. It was no use. The leg was gone. The knee wouldn’t hold him.

  Footsteps slapped through the mud toward Goose. When he looked up, he saw Remington’s face tiger-striped by combat cosmetics. Before he knew it, Goose had his weapon loosely pointed at Remington. Remington had his weapon centered on Goose’s chest. Then Remington offered his hand. “Need help?”

  “Yeah.” Goose got to his feet with Remington’s help. Together, they limped back to Sanliurfa as the other Rangers around them provided covering fire.

  43

  Downtown Sanliurfa

  Sanliurfa Province, Turkey

  Local Time 0006 Hours

  Remington strode up to the hotel door and kicked it open. The hinges shrieked as they ripped free of the wood.

  Cody lay on the king-size bed smoking a cigar. He had a glass of liquor in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  Remington looked at the man. “Put that away or I’m going to make you eat it.”

  Cody didn’t look convinced at first; then Remington stepped toward him. The CIA agent laid the pistol aside.

  “What are you doing here?” Cody demanded.

  “I came to let you know I killed two more of your playmates outside the city. They were planning on ambushing Goose. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “You could have.”

  “I didn’t want it to.”

  “Where’s Icarus?”

  “Gone. Disappeared while we were swapping lead with the Syrians.”

  Cody cursed.

  “I wanted to clear up the situation between us regarding Goose,” Remington said, venting some of the rage he felt roaring around inside him. “So I thought I’d come here and deliver the message in person.”

  Cody stared at him without saying a word.

  “Goose is mine,” Remington said. “He lives or dies by my decision. On my time. In my way. If you try to touch a hair on his head before I say otherwise, I’m going to kill you. Do you read me?”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  With blinding speed, Remington drew the pistol from his hip and pointed it at Cody. He fired. Cody closed his eyes as the sound filled the room. Then he opened them, obviously surprised to find that he wasn’t dead. Instead, the pillow next to his head bore a smoking hole.

  “I’m not going to tell you again,” Remington said. “This is your one pass. Do you read me?”

  Cody nodded.

  Barely able to restrain himself from killing the man anyway, Remington backed out of the room, then turned and walked down the hall. Letting Cody live was a mistake. He felt it in his bones. But he didn’t know how much Carpathia cared about the CIA section chief. Yet. Once Remington had a better idea, once he knew Cody could disappear without Carpathia becoming too upset, he was going to make that happen.

  In the meantime, he needed to speak with Goose as soon as the first sergeant was up and around.

  Local Time 0643 Hours

  When Goose woke, he was exactly where he thought he would be: in a hospital bed. His leg was elevated on blankets in front of him. Pain, wrapped in cotton by painkillers, nevertheless throbbed at his temples.

  He pulled his leg from the supports, tried to get up, and couldn’t. His knee lacked the strength. The pain was so unbearable that he was on the verge of losing consciousness again.

  “You need to get back into that bed.”

  Goose looked up at the nurse who entered his room. “I got men I need to be looking after.”

  The nurse shook her head. “You’re going to need to spend all your time looking after yourself for a while, First Sergeant.” She paused. “I would wait until the doctor got here, but he’s dealing with so many wounded right now that I don’t know when he’ll be in here to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That your knee is gone. You’re going to be lucky if you can walk with a cane after you heal up. They might be able to outfit you with an artificial knee at some point, but we can’t do it here. And with the extent of the damage, you’re not going to be able to stay in the military.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry.”

  Goose nodded. “Thank you, ma’am.” He lay back on the bed and tried to think about what he was going to do, then realized there was nothing he could do, so he tried desperately not to think about anything at all.

  The painkillers helped. He let them drag him down into the darkness.

  Local Time 1612 Hours

  Goose dozed, surprised at how tired he was. Despite the erratic artillery fire, with the narcotic in his veins, sleep came a lot more easily than he’d thought it would.

  One of the nurses walked into the room carrying a cell phone. She looked tired and disheveled, but she flashed him a warm smile. “First Sergeant Gander?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The woman’s smile grew bigger. “I didn’t know if you’d be awake.”

  “You caught me napping, but I’m awake now.”

  “If you weren’t awake, I was going to wake you. The woman on the other end of this line sounds like she needs a reassuring word.”

  Goose said thanks and took the handset. “Hello.”

  “Goose,” Megan said, “it’s me.”

  “Hey,” Goose said, feeling his voice suddenly get so thick that he couldn’t force any more words through his mouth.

  “Cal called and let me know you were still alive. He told me you were wounded.”

  “Not wounded. A few scratches and bruises, maybe. But my knee went out on me. I’m glad the captain gave you the update. I’ll have to thank him.” Goose stared at his immobilized knee. He wanted to talk things over with Megan, but he didn’t. From everything he’d heard, she’d been staying busy as well. She didn’t need to worry about him on top of everything else she was handling. And there was nothing she could do.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “I am tired.”

  “But you’re going to be all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m fit as a fiddle.”

  “Goose …”

  He waited. After all those years of marriage, he knew not to hurry her. She’d say what she wanted to when she got good and ready.

  “I’ve asked for permission to bring civilians over there in support positions. Families here are going crazy with the need to do something for the soldiers stationed there. After reviewing the offer from those civilians, the general has agreed.”

  “There’s no call to involve civilians in this situation. A lot of people have already gotten hurt. A lot more are gonna be. This isn’t a good place for civilians to be, Megan.”

  “It’s not a good place for you, either.”

  “No, it’s not.” Goose gazed unhappily at his injured leg. He’d never before felt so helpless. “You’re going to be lucky if you can walk with a cane.” The words had cycled endlessly through his head and haunted his dreams.

  “I’m coming too, Goose,” Megan told him. “Over there. As soon as we can set up a schedule.”

  Fierce pride filled Goose as he heard her. From the time he’d kn
own her, Megan had never backed down from a challenge. She’d never cut and run.

  “Nothing to say?” she asked.

  “I know when to steer clear of trouble,” Goose replied. “But I don’t like the thought of you being in this mess.”

  “I don’t like the thought of you being over there. I guess we’re at a stalemate, First Sergeant. So if you can’t come to me, I guess I’m going to come to you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” But Goose hoped it wouldn’t be anytime soon or that the commanding officers would reconsider. He understood the sense of what Megan was proposing, and God knew they needed the help, but he didn’t want families on the firing line.

  Megan interrupted his thoughts. “They’re telling me I have to keep this call short.”

  “I understand.” Goose squeezed the phone more tightly than he’d intended. He didn’t want to surrender the contact he had with her. He wanted to feel her close to him. He wanted her to understand that he was going to walk again. More than that, he was going to soldier again. The doctor was wrong. He had to be wrong.

  “I love you, Goose,” Megan said.

  “I love you too.”

  “God willing, I’ll see you soon.”

  The broken connection clicked in Goose’s ear. He swallowed hard and struggled to keep his emotions in check. Then he folded the cell phone and handed it back to the waiting nurse.

  “Sounds like you’ve got yourself a good woman, First Sergeant.”

  “Yes, ma’am. One of the finest women I’ve ever met.”

  “Excluding present company.”

  Despite the fear that gripped him from the debilitating effects of his knee injury and the thought of Megan being anywhere on the ground in Turkey, Goose summoned a smile. “Of course, ma’am. Excluding present company.”

  “You see if you can get some more rest, First Sergeant. If you need anything, just let me know.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Goose lay back and closed his eyes. Even though he felt certain sleep wouldn’t come, it took him under its wing so softly and suddenly he wasn’t even aware of it.