Apocalypse unleashed

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.