Apocalypse unleashed

39

Outside Sanliurfa

Sanliurfa Province, Turkey

Local Time 2105 Hours

Goose waited in the darkness. After the sun had set and the moon slid behind the cloud bank, he’d crept toward the city. Miller and Icarus trailed after him. The rain, which had been a blessing earlier because it had reduced visibility, turned the terrain treacherous. Thick mud sucked at his boots and added several pounds to his feet. The extra weight also made traveling silently even harder.

Hostilities had come to a stop between the U.S. and UN forces within Sanliurfa and the Syrian forces outside the city. Fighting at night in the rain was risky. However, it perfectly masked efforts to get into the city. None of the forces on either side of the deadly no-man’s-land chose to keep lights on. Those only made men targets for snipers.

The problem was that Goose and the two men with him weren’t the only ones attempting to get into Sanliurfa. Instead of advancing toward the city in a straight line across the dangerous stretch of corpses and ragged earth, Goose had decided to circle around farther to the west. He noticed the shadows east of their position before they left the treeline.

Goose held a hand up and waved Icarus and Miller to ground.

“What’s wrong?” Miller whispered.

“Quiet,” Goose ordered. He used his peripheral vision to track the shadows he’d spotted through the falling rain. His M-4A1 slid easily into his hands. But using the rifle would immediately draw the attention of every Syrian soldier camped nearby.

Miller lay belly-down in the mud and didn’t move.

Icarus held up one hand and showed three fingers.

Goose waited a moment, checking the movement of the shadows. Then he nodded and held up three fingers. Three Syrian soldiers.

Almost effortlessly, Icarus pushed up into a crouch and slid a knife from his boot. The dulled matte finish didn’t gleam.

Goose passed his rifle back to Miller. “Hold that,” he told the chaplain. “Me and Icarus will be back in a minute.”

“What if you’re not?”

“Trust me. You’ll know about it. If this goes bust, hightail it to somewhere safe.” Goose pulled the knife from his harness and made certain his sidearm was secured in its holster. Then he stayed low and went forward, toward the three Syrians.

Local Time 2108 Hours

Goose moved slowly. In the dark, he knew he could remain almost invisible as long as he stayed low and didn’t move quickly. He took a fresh grip on the knife in his hand. The rain turned the handle slick.

Almost twenty feet away, moving parallel to him, Icarus remained hunkered down. Goose thought about how easily the man had taken on the role of assassin. There hadn’t been any time to think about it. Icarus had just shifted into killer mode without a second thought.

That was enough to give Goose pause. Then again, he realized he’d done the same thing. When it came to survival, people made choices quickly about living and dying.

The three Syrians carried backpacks. Goose figured they were loaded with plastic explosives. Something to provide a quick punch back at their enemies. The three men concentrated on watching in front of them, obviously expecting any trouble they might experience to come from the direction of the city.

Icarus waved his free hand to get Goose’s attention. Goose nodded at him. Icarus pointed to the man at the end of the Syrians, then at himself. The meaning was clear. Goose nodded again.

Without another gesture or word, Icarus rushed toward the Syrians. Goose did the same. When he reached the man he’d set his sights on, Icarus wrapped a hand around the man’s mouth to stifle any outcry, then slipped his knife between the man’s ribs. The Syrian soldier shuddered and died.

By then Goose had reached the man he had chosen. He clapped a hand over the man’s mouth as well, then drove the knife point into the back of the man’s neck at the base of the skull. It was a clean, immediate kill when the blade separated the spinal cord. The body sprawled in the mud.

After yanking his knife free, Goose moved forward with long strides. His knee quaked and throbbed, pain hammering at the inside of his head. He came up behind the third man, then saw the man’s head jerk backward.

Something warm and wet splashed across Goose’s face. As the Syrian suddenly went limp and fell, Goose knew the man had been shot.

“Down!” Goose told Icarus.

The younger man went to ground at once, barely beating Goose. Something zipped through the air over his head, and another bullet pocked the mud only inches from his hand.

None of the shots made a sound.

“Sniper,” Goose whispered to Icarus. “He’s using a silenced weapon. Move.”

Together, they headed back the way they’d come.

Local Time 2113 Hours

Miller was still in position where they’d left him. He gazed at them anxiously.

The pain in Goose’s knee felt like shark’s teeth grinding into his flesh and bone.

“Why aren’t we going on?” Miller whispered. “We’re practically to the city.”

“Because there are men hunting us out there,” Icarus said. Both men locked their gaze on Goose.

“That’s the way it is,” Goose said. He quickly recounted what had happened.

“Syrians?” Miller asked.

“Not with silenced rifles cycling subsonic rounds. They’re more like those men hunting us earlier,” Goose replied.

Miller sat down with his back to a tree. The fifteen-mile trek that had taken place throughout the day had almost done him in. He stayed active, but it was different when adrenaline spiked in a man’s system all day from being surrounded by enemies.

“Who’s sending those men?” Miller asked.

Goose didn’t answer. He didn’t want to lie, and he didn’t want Miller to know everything he knew.

“It doesn’t matter,” Icarus said. “We have to get around them if we’re going to survive.” He glanced at Goose. “And waiting isn’t going to make it any easier.”

Goose nodded. He took a sip of water, tasted the earthy flavor that came from refilling the LCE bladder in pools of rain, and got into motion. “We gotta get help if we’re going to get inside,” Goose said.

“How do you plan on doing that?” Icarus demanded.

“By letting Captain Remington know we’re out here.”

Icarus shook his head. “You’re a fool, Goose. Remington’s as much a part of this as those men out there hunting us.”

“I don’t believe that.” Goose knew he was being stubborn, and he knew that Cal Remington was following his own goals at the moment. Those goals, Goose was painfully aware, were different from his own. “The captain wouldn’t leave us out here to die.”

“He’s been sending you to the hot spots,” Icarus said. “He’s been expecting you to die. He had you under lockdown only a few hours ago. I’d say that Remington isn’t your greatest fan.”

Goose knew that was true. But he knew something else too. “Those men inside that city, they’re Rangers. We don’t leave a man behind. If they know we’re here, they’ll tell the captain. The captain won’t have any choice but to try to save us.”

Rain dappled Icarus’s tight features. “You put a lot of stock in this captain of yours.”

“Yes, sir. I do. I’ve worked with him for a long time.” Goose knew that if pressed, he wouldn’t have been able to say exactly when his and Remington’s paths had started to diverge. “It’s not just the captain I’m putting my faith in. It’s those Rangers inside as well.”

Icarus shook his head. Jagged lightning traced a white-hot vein across the sky.

“If you see another way of doing this,” Goose said, “I’m all ears.”

Miller looked from Goose to Icarus a few times. “Staying out here isn’t an answer. When morning comes, the Syrians are going to start moving again.”

“Once they do that,” Goose said, “they’ll flush us out of hiding. Come dawn, we’re not going to have a chance at all.”

Icarus gazed at the city.

Goose knew how the man felt. Safety was so close, but it was still a world away.

“How do you propose to signal them without giving away our position to the Syrians or to the men out there hunting us?” Icarus asked finally.

“I’m working on that,” Goose replied.