Apocalypse unleashed

26

United States 75th Army Rangers Outpost

Harran

Sanliurfa Province, Turkey

Local Time 0803 Hours

Goose reached into his combat harness and took out a smoke grenade. He armed the grenade and whipped it toward the building on the corner as he prepared to make the turn. As he went around, the grenade unleashed a torrent of red smoke that partially masked the intersection.

The first Syrian jeep missed the turn and went too wide. On a direct course with the building on the other side of the street, the driver overcorrected and lost the vehicle. It skidded sideways for a moment; then the wheels caught in a pothole and on debris. The jeep flipped and went sideways.

The second jeep crossed bumpers with the first, swerved wildly for a moment, then made it through. It sped up again, quickly eating up Goose’s short lead.

“Corporal,” Goose said.

“I’m on it.” Because of his injured arm, Rainier turned awkwardly in the seat, but he got into position. He shoved his M-4A1 through the window and aimed behind them. He fired in short bursts, just the way he’d been trained. Return fire came from the Syrians and peppered the van.

Goose heard bullets whiz by his ears as he went into serpentine evasive action that made it difficult to watch the street and control the van. Then something struck him in the back with bruising force. He struggled to get the air in his lungs again, hoping the bullet hadn’t made it through his Kevlar vest. He pushed his panic aside and concentrated on his driving.

Two blocks farther on, Rainier’s bullets must have hit the driver or wrecked something in the steering column. The Syrian jeep pulled sharply to the left and planted into the side of a home. The mud bricks held for a moment, then buckled, and the jeep disappeared from view.

“Better to be lucky than to be good.” Rainier drew his weapon back into the van. He held the carbine between his knees and managed to feed in a fresh clip with his good hand.

“Sometimes.”

“Sarge,” Reilly said over the headset, “you got two hostiles coming up on your right side. We missed them in all the excitement.”

“What are they?”

“Jeeps.”

At the same time the corporal answered, the Syrian vehicles roared into the intersection. Both of them carried machine gunners on the rear decks.

Goose knew if he tried to brake or shift directions he’d expose everyone in the van to hostile fire that would cut them to ribbons in seconds. Instead, he kept the accelerator pinned to the floor and pulled his M-4A1 up to aim through the hole in the windshield before him.

The machine gunners took aim, but they were slower than Goose because they were still rocking to a stop. Driven by adrenaline, Goose steered the van toward the gap between the jeeps and hoped it was as wide as he thought it was. He fired the M-203.

The 40mm fragmentation grenade slammed into the windscreen of the jeep on the left. The shrapnel killed or seriously wounded the two soldiers in the front seats and swept the gunner from the rear deck.

Stunned by the explosion, the machine gunner in the second jeep hesitated. By the time he remembered to fire, he was aiming behind the van. As Goose passed between the jeeps, discovering that it was wider than he’d believed, he steered the van into the jeep, bumping it enough to knock the machine gunner from the rear deck.

“Oh, man,” Rainier said, “those machine-gun barrels looked huge.”

“At this end of them, yeah,” Goose agreed.

“Left, Sarge,” Reilly called over the headset. “There’s your left.”

“I see it.” Goose made the turn, but he knew something had gone badly wrong with the van’s front end. Either the rough road and high speed had finally gotten to it or the collision with the jeep had broken something. He barely made the turn.

The Black Hawk was just settling to ground in the large intersection two blocks down. A miniature dust storm rose around the helicopter.

“First Sergeant Gander, this is Sergeant Cooper Gordon. You’ll be flying the unfriendly skies with me today.”

“I remember you, Cooper.”

“Then come on ahead. Black Angel Eleven has got your six.”

Armed men deployed from the Black Hawk and prepared to bring the wounded man aboard.

“I got five with me counting the wounded man.” Goose screeched to a halt.

“Roger that,” the helo commander said. “We were on a hit-and-git mission to unload mines. We’ve got room to spare on the way back.”

The Black Hawk crew sprinted forward with a medical gurney.

When he got out of the van, Goose’s bad knee nearly went out from under him. He grabbed hold of the door and remained standing with effort.

“You okay, Sarge?” one of the Black Hawk crew asked.

“Just a little shaken up,” Goose answered. “I’ll be fine. Let’s take care of my soldier back there.”

The crew members cut Johnson free of the door and moved him to the gurney. One of them set up an IV and started a glucose pack.

“Let’s go; let’s go,” their team leader ordered.

“Goose,” Remington called over the headset, “it’s time to go. The Syrians are closing in on your twenty.”

“Yes, sir.” Goose looked back down the street but didn’t see anything. Perspiration covered him from head to toe, and dirt caked over that. His clothing stank from his having been in it for two days solid. His throat was raw and parched. He felt like he would collapse if he took another step.

“You’ve got Rangers coming up from the west side,” Reilly said.

Goose brought his weapon up and stared in that direction. Captain Miller and three other men stumbled out of the alley.

“Have you got room for four more men?” the chaplain asked. Blood smeared his face.

“How’d you get separated from your group, sir?” Goose asked.

Miller shook his head. “I don’t know. I was with them till the Syrians broke through. Then everything got confused. We took a vehicle, but they shot it out from under us.”

“Sergeant Gordon,” Goose called, “do you have room for four more Rangers?”

“We’ll make room,” Gordon responded.

“Goose,” Remington said, “get out of there now. That’s an order.”

Quickly the Rangers loaded everyone aboard the helicopter. With Johnson sacked out in the middle of the cargo area, it was standing room only. Goose felt the wind and dust whip around him as the rotors increased speed.

“Stand ready,” Gordon called from the cockpit. “We’ve got hostiles headed in our direction.”

Through the dust-stained, bullet-cracked window, Goose saw a wave of Syrian assault vehicles speeding toward them. The door gunners opened fire, and hot brass tinkled into the catchers. A Syrian T-62 tank muscled to the forefront of the array of vehicles. The main gun lifted to fire.

Gordon fired a salvo of rockets from the ESSS that turned the Syrian line into a death zone. The tank remained functioning, though, shedding the flames easily. Before it could fire, two other Black Hawks arrived on the scene and targeted the tank. Rockets and missiles struck the tank repeatedly and left it in ruins.

Rotors roaring, the Black Hawk screamed skyward. Goose stood in the doorway and watched as Harran fell away. Most of the town was in ruins. Black smoke clouds drifted up from battle zones and burning buildings.

“It’s terrible, you know.” Miller stood at Goose’s shoulder. Behind him, Danielle and the cameraman were at work.

“What?” Goose hoped they were out of range of small-arms fire.

“That town had such a wonderful history.”

“If you say so.”

“It goes all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. After Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many biblical scholars believe this is where they came with their family.”

The Black Hawk swept away from the city. Goose held on to the door. A line of Syrians had massed below and shot at the American helicopters, but the attempts went wide. In the next moment, a trio of Black Hawks peeled away from the group and returned to wreak havoc among the Syrians.

A cheer went up from the Rangers on board the helicopter.

“Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have important roots in this area,” Miller went on. “Abraham lived here after he left Sanliurfa. His father, Terah, died here. Ongoing archaeological digs have found evidence of several civilizations and cultures in this town. Even the name has significance. Loosely translated, it means ‘the road.’”

“The road to what?” Goose asked.

“To Damascus.”

“The capital city of Syria?”

Miller nodded.

Goose mulled that over. “You think there’s any special significance about the Syrians trying to take it over?”

“Everybody’s fought in Harran.” Miller shook his head. “If you were able to open every grave that’s out there, where men have been buried or where the dead were simply left after a battle, you’d find Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Parthians, and a dozen others. These lands all throughout Turkey and Syria have been hotly contested almost since God put man in this world.”

“Doesn’t look likely to change, does it?”

“Sadly, no.”

Goose tried to find a comfortable way to stand. His left knee continued to ache fiercely, and the pain echoed inside his skull. He knew things weren’t going to get any better once they got back to Sanliurfa. The Syrians had gained a toehold in southern Turkey. They’d pull their forces together, get everyone healthy and their equipment squared away, and then mount another offensive to try to take Sanliurfa as well.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Danielle was continuing to report. She interviewed some of the soldiers standing around her. Given the restricted confines, the Rangers were shoulder to shoulder with her, but Danielle held her own. The cameraman struggled harder to find room to use his equipment.

“You people hold on to whatever you can,” Captain Gordon called over the PA in the cargo area. “We’re going to be running nap-of-theearth on the way back to Sanliurfa. Try to stay out of the sky in case the Syrians light up some of the SCUD missiles they’re packing in by truck. With the heat and the thin air, the ride’s going to be a little bumpy.”

As he finished talking, the Black Hawk hit a thermal, bounced up into the air a few feet, and swung side to side. Gordon leveled his craft off again, holding steady some thirty to forty feet above the ground. The landscape sped by dizzyingly.

Fingers numb from holding the doorframe, Goose reached for a new hold. When he did, he caught sight of a familiar face standing beside him.

Icarus.