Apocalypse Burning Read online

  In this life.

  That possibility ripped at Goose’s mind. He didn’t have a faith strong enough to allow him to accept that. He’d tried, but he couldn’t believe God would do that. Not to the point that he could give everything—his hopes and his fears—over to Him. Goose didn’t know how a person did that.

  Bill Townsend, his good friend and a devout Christian who had always talked about the end times and the fact that the Rapture might happen any day, had disappeared during the anomaly. If Bill were here, Goose was certain his friend would tell him that he’d see Chris again. At the end of the seven years of Tribulation. If he wasn’t one of those who would die long before the end of that time.

  But Goose couldn’t help hanging on to the possibility that all those disappearances had been man-made—or even, though the concept strained his credulity, of extraterrestrial origins—and that he could somehow find a way to reverse those disappearances and bring those people—bring Chris—back. God wouldn’t take his son away from him. The God Goose wanted to believe in couldn’t be capable of that kind of cruelty.

  “Over there.” Arnaud pointed toward a small café and brought Goose’s focus back to the present op. “I asked the people inside the café for help, but no one would help me.”

  That didn’t surprise Goose. Most people who had remained in Sanliurfa after the mass exodus that came on the heels of the SCUD missile launch had stayed because they believed they would prosper, that Turkish reinforcements would arrive at any moment—which wasn’t going to happen—and push the Syrians back. Or they simply didn’t have anywhere else to go. The ragged crowds at any local café were probably a lot more interested in avoiding trouble than in looking for it.

  “Were you dealing with the Bedouin?” Goose asked, peering along the street.

  “No. I did not see them until they attacked us in the alley. They were waiting for us.”

  “Why did they attack you?”

  Arnaud shook his head. “They robbed us. They took Giselle.” He swallowed hard. “I have heard that some of the Bedouin have been stealing European and American women from the city.” His voice broke. “I was told those Bedouin sell the women they kidnap.”

  Goose had known about the white slavery problems in the area before the Syrian attack. Women serving in the armed forces—in the United Nations Peacekeeping effort as well as in the Ranger support teams—had received warnings about the issue.

  “Giselle and I were trying to find someone to help us get out of the city.” He turned back to Goose and looked guilty. “For a time we believed that the combined militaries here would be able to hold off the Syrians. But after the attack last night, we could no longer hold out any such hope. I am sorry.”

  Goose met the man’s gaze. “I understand.” Last night’s attacks had only continued the assaults the Syrians launched against the city. And those attacks, Goose knew, would continue to come.

  Sanliurfa was a keystone for the Syrian aggression. If the Syrian military could secure this city, they could stage attacks elsewhere. Their second logical target was Diyarbakir City to the east. If that city fell, the Iraqi rebels who still fought American intervention in their country might be inspired to rise up and join with the Syrians, creating threats on two fronts for Turkey.

  Sanliurfa, after time enough for the U.S. and Turkish military to shore up defenses and build an offensive line, was considered an acceptable loss by the Allied forces. In fact, the American and Turkish commands considered every soldier in the city an acceptable loss if it came to it. The military commanders of both countries as well as the United Nations feared that the Turkish-Syrian conflict—it wasn’t officially referred to as a war yet—could ignite a conflagration in the Middle East.

  Throughout the history of humankind, and certainly since the creation of Israel in 1948, the Middle East had been a powder keg waiting to be touched off. With Chaim Rosenzweig’s discovery of the chemical fertilizer that had turned the Israeli deserts into lush farmlands and pulled the nation into a time of bountiful wealth, the enmity felt by the Arab countries of the Middle East toward Israel had increased.

  Even Russia had felt threatened by Israel’s newfound wealth. The former Soviets had launched an attack against the country. But only minutes before the jet fighters reached their targets, the Russian aircraft fell to the ground or imploded in the sky. Like the disappearances only days ago, no one knew the cause of that event. That sudden defeat of the Russian air force had come about as mysteriously as the massive disappearances that had occurred around the globe.

  Goose pulled his thoughts away from that event. Thinking about that led right back to the unsettling conversation he’d had with Icarus. “God came and took your son up as He took all the other children.”

  For a moment, Goose remembered the peace that had settled over him as he’d almost come to accept that thought. But he hadn’t been able to swallow it, and in the end that peaceful feeling had retreated. Maybe Bill Townsend could have believed that God had taken those people, but Goose couldn’t. He wouldn’t believe it, either, not until he had proof.

  Goose was a good man. He believed in God as best he could, and he acknowledged Christ as his personal Savior. But Goose was also a fighter, a practical man used to meeting problems head-on, a man who resolved situations, problems, and the evils that men could do to one another. He believed more in himself and in finding a way to reverse the effects of the disappearances than he believed in divine intervention in the world.

  “Phoenix Leader,” a man’s voice crackled over the headset. “This is Sergeant Clay of Echo Company. We’re responding to your SAR request.”

  “Acknowledged, Sergeant,” Goose responded. Sergeant Thomas Clay of E Company was a solid soldier and a good man. “Glad to have you. How many strong are you?”

  “Seven. Myself and six. Base says others are on their way here. We’re still spread out and dealing with the problems left over from last night. We’re coming from the north, closing in on your twenty.”

  “Affirmative,” Goose responded. “Base, are you there?”

  “Base is here.”

  “Can I get a helo attached to the SAR?”

  “I’ll check, Phoenix Leader.”

  Goose stared along the streets. A number of alleys spread out through the area, all of them filled with hiding places. He hoped the Bedouin kidnappers hadn’t taken their prey and ducked into hiding. He wasn’t looking forward to playing cat and mouse with them in the debris-strewn streets and bombed-out buildings.

  “Who are we looking for?” Clay asked.

  Goose looked at Arnaud. “Have you got a picture of your wife?”

  Arnaud pulled his wallet out and flipped it open. He showed Goose a picture of himself and a younger woman. “This is Giselle.”

  “Her name is Giselle Arnaud,” Goose said, jerking his attention back to the alleys. “She’s French. I’m with her husband. He says she was taken by a group of Bedouins after they were robbed.” He glanced at Arnaud. “Does she speak English?”

  “Mais oui,” Arnaud answered. “She is very fluent in five languages. That is her specialty at university. She is also a teacher.”

  “Giselle speaks English,” Goose said, glancing back at the picture of the couple standing in front of a flowered archway that existed only in some photographer’s studio. “She’s a little over five feet tall. Dark hair down to her shoulders. Dark eyes. Thirties. She’s wearing—” He looked at Arnaud.

  “A red sleeveless blouse,” Arnaud said. “Tan pants. Walking shoes.”

  Arnaud, Goose realized, was a man who paid attention. The description made Goose feel guilty. He couldn’t remember what his wife had worn the last time he’d seen her. Megan had come to the airfield to see him off as she always had since they’d been married. He’d seen her, remembered her brave smile even though the separation hurt her, but he didn’t remember what she was wearing. With a pang, he realized he couldn’t remember what Chris had been wearing the last time he’d see
n him either.

  Mechanically swallowing the lump in his throat, Goose passed the information along. Just as he finished, Arnaud stood up in the seat and threw his arm out.

  “There, Sergeant! She is back there! I saw them!” Arnaud shouted. “You must back up!”

  Before Goose could say anything, Arnaud leaped from the Hummer. Goose made a frantic grab for the man but missed him. By the time Goose braked the Hummer, the worried husband was already rushing toward the last alley they had passed.

  “Sergeant,” Goose spoke over the headset as he pushed himself from the Hummer and dropped into the street. The impact cracked through his injured knee, but he ignored the pain and kept moving.

  “Here, Phoenix,” Clay responded.

  “We’ve got a possible ID on the SAR target.” Goose checked the street signs and relayed his location.

  “Acknowledged, Phoenix,” Clay said. “We’re only a few blocks away.”

  Goose ran, favoring his left knee and feeling the pain lance all the way up his side to detonate in the left side of his brain. It was projected pain. He recognized the sensation from years of dealing with the injury. He held the M-4A1 in both hands, high across his chest to keep his lower body clear.

  A car that had been following the Hummer honked impatiently. With all the debris in the street, there was little room to pass. The earthmovers had worked only to clear a vehicle-wide path, not two lanes. A few pedestrians, all of them civilians, stopped to stare at Goose as he ran.

  At the mouth of the alley, Arnaud shouted, “Giselle! Giselle!” He started forward again. Before he’d taken his second step, he jerked and spun to his right. Pain etched his features, popping even his swollen eye slightly open with surprise.

  The flat crack of the rifle report reached Goose’s ears just before Arnaud hit the ground. The echoes of the shot rumbled in the narrow alley between the three-story buildings. Chunks of rock jumped up from the street as three more rounds landed near the fallen man but miraculously did not touch him. Arnaud scrabbled weakly to right himself. Blood darkened his shirt on his upper chest.

  Moving quickly, Goose slammed into position with his back against the building to the right of the alley mouth. He pushed his weapon vertical, then curled around to peer down the alley.

  A group of Bedouin men, all dressed in flowing robes and burnooses, hurried along the alley nearly eighty yards away. Goose saw that three of the eleven Bedouin carried a woman whose appearance matched the picture Arnaud had shown him. The Bedouin closest to their position racked the slide back on the heavy-caliber rifle he carried, then took deliberate aim at Arnaud.

  “I’ve got targets at my twenty. Shots fired.” Goose lifted the M-4A1 to his left shoulder, switching hands easily because he’d trained himself to be ambidextrous with the assault rifle, and got himself into a straight line with the weapon. He leaned his shoulder into the building, kept both eyes open to view the battle zone, looked through the scope with his left eye while his right took in everything, swapping fields of vision inside his head, and squeezed the trigger.

  The 5.56mm round caught the Bedouin in the center of his chest just before he fired again. Driven back by the tumbling bullet, the Bedouin fired his weapon into the air, knocking stone chips from the second floor of the building.

  Staying locked on his target, Goose drove a second and third round into the center of the Bedouin’s upper body, wanting to make sure his opponent was down. Switching to his right eye, he picked up his second target: a man turning to bring up his rifle.

  Goose knew the sound of his weapon firing had alerted the other Bedouins to his position—and not just to his position, but also to his nationality—but there had been no way around that. The M-4A1’s sharp report was a lot different than the heavier detonation of the Russian SKS chambered in 7.62mm carried by the Syrians. Flicking his vision back to his left eye between heartbeats, Goose centered the crosshairs above the Bedouin’s rifle, almost looking down his opponent’s barrel, then squeezed the trigger.

  The M-4A1 chugged against Goose’s shoulder almost recoil-free, but a spray of stone splinters and dust blinded him almost immediately as the Bedouin’s bullet struck the wall in front of him. Withdrawing, Goose kept himself from instinctively trying to wipe the stone grit from his eyes. Rubbing at them now might scratch one of his eyes, or even both of them. He looked down, letting the tears come naturally to wash the grit and dust from his eyes.

  Footsteps pounded down the alley toward Goose.

  Arnaud lifted his head, eyes big with fear. “They are coming,” he whispered in a hoarse, panicked croak. “Giselle.” He tried to crawl but couldn’t move.

  His vision still partially blurred and his tears cool on his face, Goose swung around the corner again. He slid the fire selector to three-round-burst mode, then centered the rifle at the lead Bedouin’s waist and squeezed the trigger. He rode the slight recoil up and to the right, stitching the man from hip to shoulder in two three-round bursts and knocking him back.

  The assault rifle rode naturally, carrying over to the second man in the alley. Goose squeezed the trigger again, holding the weapon steady and putting a three-round burst into the center of his chest.

  As this target went down, Goose saw that his initial round at the second man in the alley had sprawled another man out. Four men were down. Seven were up and moving. Giselle Arnaud remained among them.

  Moving quickly, Goose hooked the fingers of his left hand in the back of Arnaud’s shirt and dragged the man clear of the alley’s mouth. From Goose’s quick look at the man, he noted that the wound in his shoulder wasn’t life threatening.

  Goose took a compress from his field medkit and covered the wound. “Hold this on your chest,” he ordered. “Tight. Slow the bleeding.”

  “My wife,” Arnaud whispered. “Giselle—”

  “We’re going to get her,” Goose said and hoped that he told the man the truth. “But you need to take care of yourself.” He pushed himself up, feeling the weakness in his bad knee, then positioned himself at the corner of the alley again. He swapped magazines in his weapon, shuffling the partially spent one to the back of his LCE.

  The Bedouins ran for the other end of the alley.

  “Sergeant Clay,” Goose called over the headset.

  “Here,” Clay responded immediately. “We heard gunshots over your headset.”

  “There was an exchange,” Goose said. “Four Bedouin are down. Seven remain viable. They do have the woman. She’s alive. Let’s keep her that way.”

  “Affirmative,” Clay replied. “We’re on top of your twenty now.”

  “Base,” Goose said, pushing himself forward into the alley.

  “Base is here, Phoenix Leader.”

  “I need a medical team here.”

  “Already en route.”

  “What about air support?” Goose passed the first two men in the alley’s mouth.

  “Negative. The captain doesn’t see the need to risk a helo at this time.”

  Not for a civilian, Goose thought, feeling angry with Remington. At the same time, though, he recognized that Remington’s reluctance was good military strategy. Helicopters were hard to come by in these tough times. They were a limited resource not meant for squandering. Plenty of civilians had taken refuge throughout the city, too afraid to brave the open expanse back to Ankara, Turkey’s capital to the north and west. As far as Remington was concerned, they weren’t his problem. Only holding this line against a superior force of invading Syrians mattered.

  “Affirmative, Base.” Goose kept going, watching as the Bedouin juked into another alley to the east. “Clay, our targets broke east. Along an alley.”

  “Acknowledged,” Clay replied.

  “I see them,” another Ranger said.

  Gunfire broke out in a steady staccato roar.

  “Keep the woman clear.” Goose broke into a run, passing the final two Bedouin bodies, then positioned himself beside the alley the group had disappeared into.

&n
bsp; Gunfire continued, filling the air with harsh cracks and accompanying echoes.

  “They’re turning back,” Clay said. “Coming back your way, Leader. Two more are down. Five remain.”

  “Understood.” Goose glanced around the corner. The other end of the alley was too far to reach, and he didn’t want to expose Arnaud to enemy fire again. “What about the woman?”

  “She’s alive. We picked targets we could take without endangering her.”

  Goose flattened himself against the building. “Come up quick, Sergeant. I’m about to be in the middle of them. They’ve caught me exposed.”

  “Understood,” Clay said. “Look over your shoulder when it goes down. That’ll be us.”

  Footsteps pounded the asphalt, drawing closer. Hoarse shouts in a language Goose couldn’t understand punctuated the sporadic weapon blasts. Despite the Kevlar armor he wore, he knew he might die in the coming encounter.

  Will I see Chris if I do, God? I believe in You, but I don’t believe You took my child away from me. I don’t believe those disappearances were by Your hand. I don’t believe that was the Rapture. I refuse to believe that. But if I die right here and right now, please let me see my boy again and know that he is all right.

  Then the first Bedouin broke from the alley, coming into view and passing Goose all in the same instant.

  Goose let the man go and prayed that the man would not notice him. Another followed. The three Bedouin carrying the kidnapped woman brought up the rear.

  Settling into the moment, knowing surprise was his greatest weapon, Goose shot the first of the three men through the head, aiming for the base of his skull as he passed. The bullets severed the spinal cord and the vagus nerve, destroying all motor control immediately. He dropped like a rock, causing the two men following him to stumble and fall and drop Giselle.

  Goose spun, switching the fire selector to full-auto, and opened up on the two Bedouin farther down the alley. He emptied the magazine in less than two seconds, not even enough time for the two survivors to recover from their fall.