Apocalypse unleashed

40

Downtown Sanliurfa

Sanliurfa Province, Turkey

Local Time 2116 Hours

“We shouldn’t be up here,” Gary said softly.

Danielle ignored the cameraman as she swept the building on the other side of the street with a pair of night-vision binoculars she’d gotten from a black market dealer.

“They said being in the upper floors was dangerous.” Fear tightened Gary’s voice. “If a missile hits up here, or below, there’s a good chance we’ll get buried in the rubble.”

“I know. But we’re this close to a story. I can feel it.”

“That CIA guy isn’t the story OneWorld NewsNet wants. They want footage of the arrival of the UN troops.”

“We got that.” Danielle increased the magnification, trying desperately to find Cody within the room. She’d spotted him for a short time earlier. He’d been fearlessly-though she was more prone to think of him as drunkenly — staring out the window at the battlefield in front of the city. Cody made no effort to involve himself in the rescue of the city.

That’s because his agenda is somewhere else, Danielle told herself.

“They want more footage,” Gary said.

“We’ll get it.” Danielle started to wonder about the pressure her producer was putting on her. To her, adding footage to what they’d already gotten was just busywork. The world already knew that Nicolae Carpathia had been voted in as secretarygeneral and that he’d sent reinforcements to Sanliurfa.

As innocently as she could, Danielle had tried to send a question through channels as to why Carpathia had ordered that when so much of the rest of the world was just as chaotic. No answer had been forthcoming. None of the other news agencies speculated about that move either.

On the surface, Carpathia was doing a humane act by shoring up the defenses.

That’s on the surface, Danielle reminded herself. But she couldn’t help thinking of Lizuca Carutasu and the way she’d been murdered in Romania for digging into the relationship between Carpathia and Alexander Cody. The surface isn’t the story. It never is. She studied the darkened window. So what are you protecting here, Carpathia?

“Look,” Gary said, “maybe you don’t care about your job, but I do. I think we should-”

Danielle cut him off. “Do you care more about your job than you do about getting back home in one piece?”

“No.”

“Then pay attention.”

“To what?”

“What’s going on around you.”

“We’re rescued,” Gary said belligerently. “All we gotta do is shoot some footage of the UN troops, and we’re home free.”

“Then OneWorld is sending you home?”

“I’ve asked to be sent back home.”

“Did they say yes?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Then they’re not going to send you home yet. They need a cameraman over here.”

“I told them I’ve had enough.”

“Have you stopped and wondered what this is about?” Danielle asked.

“What what’s about? The war? The Syrians have always-”

“No. The reinforcements. Why now?”

“Maybe this was as soon as Carpathia could make it happen.”

“Doesn’t reinforcing Sanliurfa seem like a lost cause to you? What do we need to hold here? There are no oil fields, no natural resources. Most of the civilians have cleared away, and the ones who have stayed can’t be viewed as our responsibility.”

Gary remained silent.

“And if reinforcing this city was a good idea, don’t you think the previous secretarygeneral would have thought of that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think he would have,” Danielle said.

“Maybe he had trouble selling it?”

“Then how was Carpathia able to sell it to the rest of the United Nations?”

“Don’t know. I’ve listened to the guy talk. He’s awfully convincing.”

Danielle silently agreed. “What if Carpathia wants Icarus?”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“Why?”

“Conspiracy theories aren’t my thing.”

“They’re not mine either.”

“Then we should be out there on the street interviewing some of those UN soldiers.”

“I can’t do that.”

Gary sighed.

At that moment, across the street, Alexander Cody stepped back into the wan moonlight pouring down from the darkened sky.

“Bring your camera over here,” Danielle ordered.

Outside Sanliurfa

Local Time 2116 Hours

Goose inched across the muddy ground. In his mind, he was just another layer of mud. And he moved slow as molasses, oozing across the slippery ground rather than sliding. Mud caked his face. Half the time when he breathed, he sucked in dirty water from the ground.

His first objective lay eighty yards away. He felt certain the burned and blasted remnants of the tank provided sufficient cover.

Unless those guys gunning for you have moved around. Goose tried to keep from thinking about that. Likewise, he tried to keep from thinking that the unknown gunners were even now creeping up on Miller and Icarus. There was no way you could bring them with you. They’re not trained for this.

Goose dug his boot toes into the ground and started oozing forward again. A sharp stone dug into his face. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t make an adjustment. He just slid over the stone and kept going.

Long minutes later, he reached the tank. Smoke, diesel, and the distinct odor of burned flesh clung to the broken metal. Goose remained low and got his bearings. The muted moonlight splashed across bodies of the dead. The rain had washed the blood from the corpses, and the thirsty ground had drunk it in. But the horrible wounds remained visible. Torn flesh, limbs that had been ripped away, incomplete heads-all of them lay before him.

Goose steeled himself against the sight. He’d seen worse, but there in the darkness, with only the whisper-soft voice of the rain all around him, he couldn’t remember the last time death had affected him so deeply.

He thought of Chris and the way his son had vanished. He thought of the young Rangers he’d seen die. They were just boys. Not much older than Joey.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. They weren’t supposed to be abandoned behind enemy lines. They weren’t supposed to be left here to die.

My son was not supposed to be taken from me. The anger that had nourished Goose since the beginning of the Syrian attack simmered inside him. His hurt and uncertainty dwindled, but he knew it would be back. As soon as his thoughts turned back to living past the moment, he’d regard the future with as much fear and hate as he had since he’d learned of Chris’s disappearance.

“God took your son,” Joseph Baker had said. “ He took that little boy on up to heaven to watch over him till you get there.”

There aren’t any guarantees that I’m headed there, Goose thought. I got left behind.

“I’m going to heaven,” Baker had told him. “ When I die, when my time comes, even if I last through these next seven years, I’m going to heaven.”

Did you? Goose thought. Is that where you ended up, Baker? He moved toward one of the bodies and searched the man’s assault rifle. It was an AK-47, standard issue. The rifles of the next three corpses were the same.

Lord, You’re gonna have to cut me some slack, Goose thought. Reason dictates that at least some of the men accompanying these tanks as they moved forward would be snipers. Gotta be a range-finding laser here somewhere.

He searched three more mutilated bodies before he found a Russian sniper weapon equipped with a range-finding laser.

Cautiously Goose used his Swiss Army knife to remove the range finder from the weapon. Then he started the laborious trip back to Miller and Icarus.

Downtown Sanliurfa

Local Time 2120 Hours

Excitement flowed through Danielle as she studied the CIA section chief. Her heart thudded.

Cody was barely visible in profile against the doorframe leading to the balcony. Moonlight made the man’s face look bone white. He smoked a cigar and drank straight from a bottle as he stared out through the rain.

For a moment Danielle thought he was staring at her; then she realized he was still focused on the battlefield. His lips moved. She increased the magnification.

She wasn’t an expert lip-reader, but the skill wasn’t as hard as many people believed, and she’d starting picking it up as a girl while spying on her older brothers. It just required concentration, visibility, and some experience. Most people could pick it up easily, which was one of the problems sports networks faced when they stayed in close on an upset player.

Cody’s lips moved again.

“Gary?” Danielle said.

“Yeah.”

“The camera?”

“I’m on him.”

“Tight on his face. I want to see what he’s saying.”

“’Kay.”

Danielle hoped the night lenses could filter in enough light to illuminate the scene.

Cody wasn’t alone. Another man, one Danielle hadn’t seen in the bar downstairs, stood beside Cody. She concentrated on the men’s lips.

“-out there,” the man said.

“You’re positive?” Cody asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cody said something else, but he turned his face away from Danielle.

“We haven’t given up, sir. We’ll find them.”

Cody nodded. “ I want Hander” — no, that had to be Gander — “dead. I do not want him back in this city.”

“Yes, sir.”

Excitement rose in Danielle again. Goose was alive. The thought thrilled her. Tears burned her eyes. Then she concentrated on Cody again, mentally cursing him. There was no guarantee that Goose would stay that way for long.

Across the street, Cody took another drink from the neck of the bottle. “ Tell them to get to it.”

“Yes, sir.” The other man faded out of sight.

Danielle turned to Gary. “Did you get that?”

“Yeah, but without audio, all you got is one guy talking to another guy in a dark room.”

“Didn’t you read his lips?” Danielle opened her notebook computer on the room’s table.

“No. I’m not a lip-reader.”

“Hook the video feed into my computer. Download that piece.” Danielle stepped back and let the cameraman work. She tried to ignore the infrequent small-arms fire and missiles. The Syrians evidently used them as reminders, ensuring that no one in the city would get a good night’s sleep.

When Gary had the video uploaded to her computer, she played it back. This time she made notes of what she’d read.

Danielle was relieved to know Goose was still alive. She’d felt guilty ever since she saw him fall from the helicopter. She kept playing it back through her mind, realizing how she could have simply grabbed him and halted his fall.

“I want Gander dead.” That reverberated in Danielle’s head in Alexander Cody’s voice.

Danielle copied the video file to her flash drive and headed for the door. “C’mon. We’ve got to find Remington.”