Apocalypse unleashed

32

Downtown Sanliurfa

Sanliurfa Province, Turkey

Local Time 1036 Hours

“Staring at the screen isn’t going to make that program go any faster.”

Danielle glanced at Pete Farrier, the audio-visual tech assigned to the OneWorld NewsNet team. He was gangly and looked young despite being in his early thirties. His dark hair was cut short enough to let him pass as one of the soldiers in the Ranger unit. He wore khaki shorts and a T-shirt advertising a video game popular five years earlier.

“I know,” Danielle admitted.

They sat at a table in the foyer of a small hotel. The old building had weathered the test of time and had survived the Syrian assaults over the last few weeks. The decor was Old World with Moorish influence in high arches over the doorways. The electrical lighting barely held its own against the darkness lurking by the covered windows. Original paintings adorned the walls.

A dozen men and women sat around the tables. Small children, sharing the tension felt by their parents, hunkered under the tables. None of them looked confident to be there.

No, Danielle silently amended, none of them look safe. They all looked pensive and ill at ease. Every time an explosion or a long string of gunfire sounded, they flinched.

On the notebook computer screen in front of Danielle, an image constantly pixilated. She’d taken a still from the video her cameraman had shot aboard the helicopter before Goose and two others had plunged from the cargo door. Danielle had recognized one of those other men as Icarus, the mysterious rogue agent CIA Section Chief Cody was hunting. There was no way that Icarus being on board the helicopter that had been shot at could be coincidence.

“You could rest,” Pete suggested.

Danielle looked at him and shook her head. “In the middle of a war?”

“Hey,” Pete said, “over the last few weeks I’ve discovered that I can sleep anywhere, anytime. You’re tired enough. How about you get horizontal for about five minutes and see what happens.”

Danielle shook her head. “I can’t.”

“You ask me, you’re foolish not to.” Pete sipped a little of the dark, sweet Turkish coffee at his elbow. “When this image gets cleaned up-although I’m still not certain that it will-I’ll wake you.”

Jets screamed by overhead, followed almost instantly by a string of explosions. The heavy bellow of antiaircraft guns chattered through it all. The ease with which she identified the military hardware and weapons surprised Danielle.

It’s because you’re in survival mode, she told herself.

Many of the adults joined the children under the tables. A little girl started crying. Her mother gathered her into her arms and tried to shush her.

“I feel too guilty to sleep,” Danielle said.

“Why?”

She shook her head, trying to keep a lock on her emotions.

“Because Sergeant Gander was knocked out of the helicopter and you weren’t?”

“Maybe. I keep thinking that I was standing right there, that I could have just reached out and grabbed hold of him.”

“And maybe gotten pulled out yourself.”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t see how any good would have come from that.”

“At least Goose would know he has someone on his side.” Danielle clung to the thought that Goose was alive. Some of the Rangers she’d talked to after the helicopters reached Sanliurfa had assured her Goose had the training to survive a fall like that. In her mind, she pictured Goose holed up somewhere awaiting rescue. She knew that wasn’t the case, though. If Goose Gander was able to walk-or drag himself-he’d be on his way to the city. To his unit.

“No,” Pete disagreed calmly. “If you’d fallen and survived, he’d have one more person to look after.”

Danielle frowned at him.

“Hey.” Pete spread his hands and smiled. “You’re not exactly Survivorman out there.”

Danielle took a deep breath and let it out.

“You don’t even know if Goose is still alive,” Pete said quietly.

“I know. But somehow I can tell he is.”

“How?” Pete studied her.

She shook her head, trying to figure out how to put into words what she knew instinctively. The problem was, it didn’t make sense even to her. “I just… I just know.”

“Spider senses?”

“No.”

“I haven’t seen a crystal ball.”

“No crystal ball.”

Pete smiled. “Are you crushing on the sergeant?”

Feeling guilty, Danielle started to say no, but Pete’s arched brows told her he already knew her answer before she said a word.

“Maybe a little,” she replied.

“He’s married.”

Danielle nodded. “Very married. He talks about Megan all the time. Doesn’t stop me from wishing I’d meet someone just like him. Or that he had a brother.”

“I suppose not.” Pete took a breath. “You’re not the only one. Me? I look at him, watch him, I wish I had a friend just like him. He’s just that guy, you know? That guy who, no matter how tough things get, will never let you down.”

“That’s why the viewers love Goose. He’s got that solidness about him. Honor.”

“Makes you wonder,” Pete said, “if all those religious people are right and all of us who have been left behind are locked into some kind of Tribulation, what is Goose doing here?”

“I did an interview with Corporal Baker right after we got to Sanliurfa,” Danielle said. “None of the television stations were interested in airing it. Corporal Baker said that some of the people were left behind because they were guilty of sin and had fallen away from God. But the majority were left behind because they weren’t true believers-they hadn’t brought God into their hearts and accepted salvation through Jesus.”

Pete studied the computer screen. “You put any stock into that?”

Danielle thought about her answer. She didn’t like talking about things like this, and she felt increasingly uneasy doing so. “I’m not sure. More so than before.”

“What about Goose?”

“He’s focused on getting through this war and keeping as many of his men intact as he can.”

“So he’s not a big believer either?”

“Not that I can see.”

Pete shook his head. “I wish I knew what to believe.”

“I know. Baker told me that even with everything going on around us, a lot of people still aren’t going to believe this is the Tribulation. They’re going to deny it and look for other reasons for what happened.”

“I suppose.”

“Baker also pointed out that faith is based on what you believe in, not what you know. If we knew the answers, we still wouldn’t have faith.”

“Sounds like you’ve been thinking about it.”

Danielle wanted to deny that immediately because that was how she’d always handled discussions about religion. Like the topic was beneath her. Especially since there was no clear-cut answer in her mind. She started to deny it again, then stopped. “Maybe I have been thinking about it,” she agreed. “But I still don’t have any of the answers I need.”

At that moment, the computer screen blinked, and the image came into clearer focus. Danielle leaned forward and studied the men in the vehicles below the helicopter. The image came from the footage shot just before Goose and the others had tumbled from the chopper. The focus was almost there.

“I got to admit,” Pete said, “this software package your friend put together is impressive. He could probably sell it to motion picture studios out in Hollywood.”

The software was designed to clean up images. According to Mystic, the computer hacker Danielle had struck up a relationship with a few years ago while pursuing a story, the program filled in missing details based on references gleaned from the rest of the image as well as a large data bank.

“I don’t know that much about software,” Danielle admitted.

“Well, take it from me-what this guy is doing is computer magic. Not impossible, and other people have probably got similar software, but I’d hate to have to pay for it.”

Another SCUD hit nearby and caused the building to shake. Ceiling tiles smashed against the floor. This time the ceiling fan that had threatened to tear loose since the beginning of the attack crashed to the floor. Jagged glass shrapnel flew in all directions.