by Mel Odom
People, dead and dying and badly broken, covered the ground. Other people hunkered in the false safety of the few remaining buildings or behind boulders on the ground and the hillsides. Several people shouted and cursed and cried out for help. Incredibly, some of the reporters were still working, standing in front of cameramen who had managed to hang on to functioning equipment.
A familiar sickness twisted greasily through Goose’s stomach. He’d been on battlefields, had scenes etched inside his skull that he knew would never leave him. Today was going to add to that library of carnage.
“Base,” Goose called over the headset.
Only white noise answered. Remington and his support staff were off-line.
Goose wasn’t surprised. Any staged attack against the American site would include strikes designed to take out the communications relays. It wouldn’t last, though. Cal Remington was nothing if not a man who planned for every eventuality. Backup systems were in place; they would be on soon. Goose believed that. Until then, though, they had their orders.
“Stop here,” Goose ordered.
Tanaka ground the big vehicle to a halt.
A single road running north and south bisected Glitter City. Everyone who arrived there was on their way somewhere else.
“Off,” Goose yelled. Raising his voice was almost unfamiliar after being accustomed to the headsets. He unbuckled and jumped to the road.
Flames crackled around the broken and battered husk of a van that had been gutted and made over into a small restaurant on wheels. A Turkish man had operated the van, parking somewhere within the vicinity of Glitter City every morning and selling the borek and doner kebab lamb rolls his wife made every night. The borek—thin rolls of pastry filled with cheese, minced meat, or spinach and potatoes—was one of Goose’s favorites and he’d always stopped by the man’s van when he was in town. The menu had also included pilaf, baklava and kadayif pastries, and thick, dark Turkish coffee.
Although the man spoke only rudimentary English and Goose spoke no Turkish at all, they’d communicated well enough to conduct business. During those times, Goose had also seen the man’s two sons, looking perhaps eight and ten, who worked inside the van with him. Both boys had been bright and energetic, their eyes shining and quick, picking up English words and phrases like sponges. Every time they had seen Goose and other Rangers in uniform, the boys had yelled, “Hoo-ahh,” just like a Ranger, letting Goose know that the van had evidently become a favorite feeding place for the 75th.
The man lay on his back, half covered with sand and rock from a nearby explosion that had left a ten-foot-wide, three-foot-deep crater in the ground. Blood covered the man. One arm was missing and one leg half gone. He stared sightlessly at a sky that couldn’t be seen through the dust and smoke hanging in the air.
Goose walled himself away from the panic and fear that vibrated within him. Soldiers knew fear, but they also knew control.
A few feet away, the oldest of the two boys lay in a crumpled heap.
Heart thumping in his chest, Goose crossed to the boy. He knelt, eyes scanning the surrounding area as his personal combat radar, developed through training and on battlefields in the Middle East and Africa, kicked into life. Cupping his left hand around the boy’s small shoulder, Goose pulled him over gently.
From the slack way the boy moved, Goose knew immediately he was dead. As the body came over, the metal shard that had pierced his chest showed, standing out from his flesh nearly a foot.
Goose’s mind screamed. Images flickered behind his eyes, scanning visual data into his brain, contrasting the boy’s slack, dead face with the grinning kid he had seen only a couple days ago. The boy couldn’t be dead; he had been too alive to be dead like this.
It isn’t fair, Goose couldn’t help thinking. God, there’s no way You can make this right. Children are not supposed to die like this.
But children did die. Goose had seen it in countless other operations. Children were always some of the first to die when war touched civilized areas. They were too weak and vulnerable to protect themselves, and they were so unskilled in taking care of themselves. Professional soldiers died in those circumstances. Goose had seen them. What chance did a child have?
“Sarge.” Bill Townsend’s calm voice came from behind.
Goose didn’t answer, drawn into the dead boy’s dark brown eyes that were cold and distant and lifeless now. The Syrians had known there were children in Glitter City, and women, too. And they had brought their war to those innocents just the same.
“Sarge,” Bill said again.
Trapped by the violence before him, feeling guilty because he hadn’t managed to stop the PKK terrorist from placing the sat-phone call, Goose had to struggle to tear his attention from the dead boy. He couldn’t help thinking about his son, Chris. How would it feel, he wondered, knowing that Chris would never again offer a hug or a smile or a turn at one of his favorite video games? Goose banished the thought. It was unthinkable.
Goose glanced at Bill. “He’s dead.”
Bill nodded. “I know. A lot of people are.”
For the moment, the SCUD shelling seemed to be on hold. Goose knew that starting up the second wave would take almost an hour and a half. In addition to being terribly inefficient as WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, SCUDs took a lot of reload time.
“Then let’s save the ones that are left,” Goose said, more for his own focus than his team’s. “This boy had a brother. If we can, I want him found.”
Bill nodded.
Goose glanced back at the dead boy. “This isn’t right, Bill.” His voice caught at his throat.
“He’s in a better place, Sarge,” Bill stated quietly and politely. “That’s what you have to focus on.”
“It’s hard.”
Bill was quiet for just a moment; then he said, “Not if you believe, Sarge. It only gets hard when you have doubts.”
A kernel of anger exploded inside Goose. His voice came out sharper than he intended. “Then I’m a doubter.”
“I know, amigo. I’ll pray for you. Acknowledge that and work on it, but never accept it.”
For a second, Goose thought his anger was going to spill over onto Bill. He barely restrained it. He knew Bill was right, but believing he was right was another thing entirely. Acceptance was a small thing to talk about, Goose knew, but it was a chasm in spirituality.
“Hey!” someone called. “Marines!”
“We’re Rangers,” Dewey Cusack called back automatically.
“We’re the 75th.” The Ranger hailed from Kansas, a corn-fed country boy with an easygoing manner and a fierce pride in his unit.
Goose stepped forward, the M-4A1 still clenched tight in his fist. He peered through the haze of dust and smoke, brushing at the mask of wet sand that impeded drawing his breath through the kerchief.
“I need help,” the speaker went on. “My friend has been shot.” He was young and compact, carrying sunburn from recent exposure to the harsh desert climate that stood out starkly against his white-blond hair. His accent was Australian.
“Break out the medkits, Bill,” Goose said.
“You got it, Sarge.”
Using every iota of command that he had learned in his career, forcing a calm he definitely didn’t feel, Goose stepped into the center of the wreckage of what had been Glitter City.
“I’m First Sergeant Samuel Gander of the United States Army Rangers,” he declared in a loud and proud voice. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
6
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 12:13 A.M.
Megan held up her ID as she stopped at the military checkpoint in the base hospital. Since the recent terrorist attacks around the globe, security on base had become a big issue. She carried Gerry Fletcher’s file in her hand. After dropping Chris off, she’d stopped by her office to pick up the file. If she was going to have to argue with Boyd Fletcher, she wanted to have every weapon in her arsena
l to do battle with. Nothing she had weighed as heavily as the man’s history.
The uniformed Rangers working the security desk checked for her name in the computer while she waited.
“Cross-check with the ER list,” Megan suggested when they didn’t find her name immediately. “Helen Cordell called me in for an emergency. This wasn’t a planned visit.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the young corporal replied. His name badge identified him as Grady.
The soldier was, Megan knew, only a few years older than Joey, and yet the young corporal already carried an air of responsibility about him that her eldest son rarely showed. That’s not fair, she chided herself almost as soon as she had the thought. The military trains that air of responsibility into the soldiers it turns out.
Many of the younger Rangers were still kids in some respects. In her counseling capacity, Megan had talked with some of them, helping them get over failed relationships and relaying news about deaths in the family and other tragedies. Those same young men looked rigorous and potentially lethal in the BDUs, helmets, and Kevlar vests while carrying assault rifles. But she’d also seen them crowd the base basketball and volleyball courts in their downtime discuss video games and PC games over lunches in the cafeteria. She had counseled them as they dealt with life’s setbacks and pain during the lonely hours.
Megan used her cell phone again, dialing Joey’s number and again getting the mailbox. She didn’t bother to leave a message. She glanced back out the door she’d entered, spotting her reflection and staring through it. She couldn’t help wondering where Joey was, if Goose was all right, and if Chris was still asleep.
She also wondered what Boyd Fletcher was going to do when he found out they had his son in the ER. As a matter of fact, she wondered what she—
“Ma’am.”
Startled, Megan turned to the young corporal. “Yes.”
“Your ID checks out, ma’am. You’re on the list for Ms. Cordell. You can proceed.”
“Thank you,” Megan said. The television behind the desk caught her eye. A FOX News anchor was talking, the flags of Turkey and Syria on the wall behind him. SPECIAL BULLETIN hung ominously on the screen. The audio was too low to hear. “Are you watching what’s happening in Turkey?”
The corporal grimaced. “We’re trying to, ma’am. We’re not getting much from over there right now.”
“What’s the problem?”
An uncomfortable look covered the young soldier’s face.
“My husband is over there,” Megan said. “I’m concerned about him. He hasn’t told me much about his circumstances, but I know my husband, and I know when he isn’t telling me something he thinks will worry me.”
The other soldier glanced at her, then at the roster the corporal held. He looked back up. “Mrs. Gander?”
“Yes.”
“Private Malone.” The young soldier rose to his feet and took off his black beret. “I know Goose, ma’am. He’s a good man.”
“Yes, he is.”
Malone hesitated for just a moment. “We received a phone call at oh-four-hundred advising us not to talk about the trouble over there. In case the media showed up. I doubt we’ll see anybody here, but general orders are passed around to everyone. Scuttlebutt moves through the ranks pretty quickly, as you probably know.”
“I do,” Megan said. That was why she had asked.
“Right now, ma’am, we don’t know much more than the media does. There was an attack along the border. There are casualties. We don’t know anything more than that. The Syrians evidently took out the communications systems, including Glitter City.”
Megan remembered Glitter City from her conversations with Goose. “That’s where the reporters and media people are gathered.”
“Yes, ma’am. There have been casualties there, too, but we haven’t got much information. The Department of Defense has satellites keeping an eye on things there, but they’re only giving out information on a need-to-know basis. I wish I could tell you more.”
“So do I, Private.”
“Are you going to be on the premises for a while, Mrs. Gander?”
Megan thought about Gerry Fletcher and the coming confrontation with his father. “Yes.” Unfortunately.
“Right now,” the private said, “all the media seems to be off-line, too. Maybe it’s just the confusion.”
And maybe it’s something more. Megan was certain they both thought that, but neither of them wanted to say it.
“I was thinking that if I heard something,” the private said, “I could let you know.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Megan said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Walking away from the young private, Megan began to focus her thoughts on the task at hand. She couldn’t do anything about Goose’s situation except pray for him. She was helpless to do anything more right now about Joey’s actions except pray for him—and ground him for life the next time she saw him. And she had done her best by Chris. Her baby was sleeping in a warm bed, well cared for. She’d done all she could for her family. Now it was time to do what she could to save the kid she’d been called in to help. Megan strode down the hallway toward the ER.
Gerry Fletcher, she reminded herself. I can help Gerry Fletcher. It was important to focus on the attainable things in the face of chaos. That was, she remembered, one of the things she’d learned from Goose—and one of the things she liked best about her husband, and most respected. Goose was bedrock, and he’d had to be patient to teach her to trust again after everything she had gone through with Tony, her first husband.
The waiting room outside the ER held a handful of people. Two soldiers sat in army sweats and looked worried. Another soldier, who looked about thirty, sat with three small children in chairs on either side of him and a little blonde-haired girl asleep in his lap. Another young soldier paced the floor.
Megan said a quick prayer for all of them. Whomever they were waiting on and worrying over, those people were in good hands. The doctors and nurses at the base hospital were well trained and they were committed to their jobs.
“Hey, Mrs. Gander,” the young, redheaded receptionist behind the desk said cheerily.
“Hi, Tammy,” Megan replied. “Still got you on nights?”
Tammy frowned and rolled her eyes but couldn’t sustain the effort and grinned. “Yeah, but I’m getting used to the hours, and I’ve learned how to program the VCR. I’ve worked a few of the day shifts, subbing for other people. You know, the nights are a lot quieter.”
Most of them, Megan agreed. But tonight, she felt certain, was going to be different. “Do you know where I can find Helen?”
“Here.” Helen Cordell stepped out from behind the wall at the back of the receptionist’s office. She was trim and neat. Of African-American descent, her skin was so dark it appeared blue-black under the fluorescent lights. She kept her hair cut short and straightened. Her patterned dress, in deep greens, blues, and occasional purple, fit her perfectly.
Besides being a fantastic hospital shift supervisor, Helen was also a seamstress. She claimed to have learned the knack purely through self-preservation. Her husband was a drill instructor on base nearing the end of a thirty-year hitch. Together, Helen and Marvin Cordell had raised five sons and two daughters, and Helen had sewn all their clothes, making up with her skill the budget deficiencies of an enlisted man’s pay. She also tailored her husband’s uniforms and sent him out every morning bristling with fresh-starched crispness.
“Coffee?” Helen raised the cup she held.
“Please,” Megan said.
Helen disappeared around the corner. “Cream. One sugar.”
“You’ve got a good memory.”
“Nope. I’ve just learned that good people like to be appreciated in little ways. Remembering how a person takes his or her coffee is a small courtesy.” Helen reappeared with two full cups. “The good male doctors that I work with? They never have to remember their anniversaries or their wives’ or girlfriend
s’ birthdays. I do that for them. I hate pulling a shift with a good doctor dealing with heavy guilt or last-minute-gift panic. Of course, the bad ones can just live with their problems. I figure it’s a learning experience for them.”
“Where’s Gerry?”
“In the back. Out of the way so you can be more or less alone for a while.”
“His parents haven’t noticed he’s missing?” Megan followed Helen through the twists and turns of the hospital corridors.
“Please,” Helen said with a sarcastic tone that Megan had heard from her only a handful of times over the years they had known each other. “They’re not going to know Gerry is gone until somebody tells them.”
“Gerry’s still sticking with the story that he fell off the roof?”
“Tighter than a tick on a hound’s ear,” Helen replied.
“But you don’t believe him?”
“I raised seven children with a husband who was in the military and gone from home a lot,” Helen said. “I know every way there is to fib. When something got broken in the house, it didn’t take me long to find out who did it. And once my Amazing Mom powers—more powerful than Superman’s X-ray vision or Spider-Man’s spider sense—were a proven thing to my kids, they gave up trying.”
Megan believed that, too. Helen had a reputation as a straight shooter around the base hospital. Sometimes, though, she was painfully so.
“Even my husband, whom I love with all my heart and who never did anything to hurt me, was sometimes known to stay out with his buddies a little longer than we agreed on. I knew when something had really come up and when he’d just gotten pressured into staying longer by being afraid of losing guy-points.” Helen glanced at Megan conspiratorially. “Sometimes I let Marvin get away with it. Just to throw him off, you know. It’s okay for a child to know how Mom’s going to react every time, but a woman has to retain part of her mystery for her man.”
In spite of the tense situation ahead of them, Megan couldn’t help grinning. She and Helen saw each other professionally, and those times usually were seldom and short. Still, the rapport that existed between them was real.