Apocalypse Burning (10 page)

3

United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0549 Hours

Riding in the passenger seat of the Ranger Special Operations Vehicle, Captain Cal Remington stared out at the city he’d been ordered to hold no matter what the cost, while the U.S. Rangers, the U.N. forces, and the Turkish army shored up the next line of defense against the coming Syrian invasion. The fact that these combined troops had survived this long was nothing less than amazing. The only good thing about it, Remington told himself, is that
amazing
looks good on a military résumé.

But he hated the idea that he’d been assigned to a mission he had no hope of winning. Losing wasn’t an option in Remington’s personal or professional plans. He didn’t compromise, either. In his opinion, compromise was the first step toward acknowledging an upcoming loss. Accepting the inevitability of a loss was intolerable and unacceptable to him. He believed that there was always a way out if a soldier looked for it. There was always a way to win.

Although dawn was just a pale smear of pink and gold against the indigo sky to the east, Sanliurfa was awake. As far as Cal Remington could tell, the city never slept anymore. Occasionally it passed out for fitful rest or unconsciousness that passed for sleep, but mostly the city lay awake and fearful in the night. No one relaxed.

During the day, all the people in the city had to work constantly just to maintain some crumbling level of survival. At least during the day they didn’t have to worry about turning on lights that could be seen and used as targets by the Syrian military. Also, if Syrian aircraft chose to stage another air strike, the air force in Sanliurfa could scramble in time to meet them, driving up the Syrian cost of such a venture. Their SCUD missile use had dropped after Allied forces had deployed Patriot antimissile systems along the front lines. The Patriots weren’t exactly the highest of high-tech systems these days—but then neither were the SCUDs. And when Syrian artillery squads got close enough to launch, they were also close enough to the battle lines to become targets.

For the last fifteen and a half hours, Sanliurfa’s defenders had kept the Syrian aggressors and their terrorist allies, who were looking to rack up trophy kills fast, at a stalemate.

Remington wanted to change that, wanted to take the fight back to the Syrians and keep them off guard. He figured such an attack would buy them more time. He’d already put all the key people into play that he needed to make the necessary changes. However, the plan he had in mind would require sacrifices.

Cal Remington didn’t mind sacrifices. At least he didn’t mind them up to a point. He’d sacrificed others now and again to further his own ambitions and for the good of the units he’d commanded. Therefore, he could understand the orders he was presently under, but he also counted himself clever enough to survive those orders.

He knew First Sergeant Gander wouldn’t deal with the compromises that would have to be made. Goose was the most uncompromising man Remington had ever met. That was both Goose’s greatest strength and his worst weakness.

When Goose had a viable plan of action laid out before him, there was not a better soldier in the field. But when things went ugly and sacrifices had to be made, Goose hesitated before making those choices. Only after fighting against all odds, fighting until he finally realized he was going to lose even more if he didn’t back away, only then would Goose make the necessary sacrifices and get out.

That was why Goose would never have made it through OCS. Or, if he had gotten through Officer Candidate School, Remington felt certain Goose would have never risen through the ranks.

Goose was hard as nails, but when it came to his men, he was soft. Too soft.

The RSOV slowed to allow an earthmover to trundle across the street ahead. All the heavy construction equipment in the city had been rounded up, and operators for all of the machines had been selected from the ranks of all three military contingents. As soon as the all-clear echoed over the radio links fifteen and a half hours ago, work had begun to clear the bombed, congested streets so the supply runs could be made and fallback positions within the city could be reinforced.

“Talon. This is Smoke.” Corporal Dean Hardin’s voice carried clearly over the encrypted channel of Remington’s headset.

“Go, Smoke,” Remington replied.

“Just wanted you to know we’re in position, sir.”

“Affirmative. I’m en route. Hold our interviewee in place.”

“Understood, sir. But this guy, he’s getting antsy.”

“If you have to put a pistol to his head, get it done.”

Hardin’s reply was instant and crisp. “Will do.”

“Outstanding,” Remington said. He knew his irritation sounded in his voice.

The earthmover cleared the street. The private put the RSOV back into gear and sped around the big machine. The earthmover lowered the box blade and scooped up a pile of broken rock and mortar from the street. The thunder of the engine and the crash and crunch of the broken rock bombarded Remington’s hearing as they passed.

The parks and garden areas of downtown Sanliurfa mostly looked like someone had torched Eden. Several areas still smoldered, covered in piles of debris where the construction teams had dumped broken chunks of buildings and burned-out vehicles. In other places, surplus tents stood out under trees. Remington knew vast numbers of Sanliurfa’s people were living in the streets in makeshift homes like these. It seemed they thought that the Syrians would rather target buildings than open areas with their missiles and aircraft attacks, though how they could believe that with all the smoking evidence to the contrary, Remington didn’t know.

Only a few blocks farther on, Remington spotted the huge tent area where Corporal Joseph Baker kept his makeshift church running 24/7. Acidic anger burned through the Ranger captain’s stomach as he realized the church had grown even larger since the last time he’d seen it.

When the Rangers had first arrived in Sanliurfa, the stories about the freak earthquake that had broken the Syrian pursuit of the Allied retreating border troops just as they were about to overwhelm them had captured the immediate attention of the media and the locals, not to mention a good percentage of the Allied troops. Remington still didn’t know what had triggered Corporal Baker’s decision to lead the troops trapped there in saying the Twenty-third Psalm. But he had. And in that moment, after the earthquake wiped out the first of the Syrian armor, Corporal Baker had become a man of mythic proportions in far too many people’s minds.

The talk in Sanliurfa was that Corporal Joseph Baker had God’s ear.

Remington didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Even before the retreat from the border had begun, Baker had baptized soldiers from all three armies as well as media personnel, Turkish citizens, and nomadic traders. He’d been out there in that stinking river for hours. Remington still caught occasional video bites of the event on the news channels.

The baptisms had continued even after their arrival in Sanliurfa, as more soldiers came forward to give themselves to God, followed by a goodly chunk of the city’s civilian populace, who heard of the man of God who could lead them to salvation, even in a war zone. Baker and the men who believed in him—some of them military chaplains!—had dragged under the makeshift church tent a metal tank that held enough water to dunk a man deep enough to baptize him.

Remington thought the whole process was nothing more than religious mumbo jumbo. As far as he was concerned, baptism was simply a get-out-of-jail-free card for losers convinced they were about to die.

The Ranger captain had never been baptized. Nor had he ever wanted to be baptized. He didn’t believe in God. He believed in himself.

So far, he’d managed his life so that believing in God hadn’t been necessary. Anything Remington wanted, he went out and got for himself. So far, nothing he had ever wanted had been completely out of his reach or his ability to change his circumstances so that whatever he wanted became available. The instant he started believing in something outside of himself, some higher power, Remington knew his life would be over. What point was there in believing in God in a world where man made the rules? He figured he might as well believe in luck. And he did. In his own luck.

As the RSOV passed the tent, now offering supplies, light medical treatment, and care to wounded soldiers as well as to any civilians who needed help, Remington got a glimpse inside. Soldiers wearing Ranger uniforms, marine uniforms, U.N. uniforms, and Turkish army uniforms knelt together on the ground with their heads bowed and their weapons within easy reach. Civilians knelt beside them.

The lion shall lie down with the lamb.
The thought came unbidden to Remington. He was irritated that the biblical phrase should even occur to him. Religion was not his deal. All his life, all he’d ever had to believe in was himself. And in the military, all the belief in the world wouldn’t save a man from superior weapons or superior tactics. All these people thinking about God were wasting time they should have been using to develop plans of action. The Syrians were coming. If there was a God, He’d shown no sign of stopping it.

Surprisingly, Baker wasn’t at the pulpit that someone had fashioned from ammo crates covered with a sheet of plywood. One of the Ranger chaplains stood there leading the prayer as another man dunked a soldier into the large metal water container. A line of men obviously waiting their turn for a dunking stood to one side of the container.

The religious convictions of Baker’s followers had created friction among the Rangers as well as among the other military units. Most of those who were baptized by Baker or one of the chaplains seemed to believe that they were somehow divinely protected. Remington had seen one instance himself, though he noticed that those men died just as readily as any other soldier in his command.

But their belief in the hereafter—that they were going to survive somewhere else even if they were killed in the city they held on to by the skin of their teeth and bled dry to keep—offended other soldiers. Remington believed that having someone constantly in the next trench harping about saving his immortal soul simply reminded a fighting man that he could be dead in the next heartbeat.

And where do you go once you are dead?

Remington hated that the question was even formed in his mind. Death would catch him someday, but until that moment he intended to live like he was going to live forever. He wouldn’t allow himself to get distracted by Baker or his converts. They were all idiots, all soldiers too weak to face death and spit in its eye. They were spineless.

Turning away from the tent, Remington made a mental note to check on Corporal Joseph Baker’s hours. Maybe there was a way to cut into Baker’s free time even more. That’d disrupt the church schedule. Then Remington focused his thoughts on his upcoming meeting. If everything worked well, he’d have a chance to strike back at the Syrians within the next few days, maybe even the next few hours.

And maybe he’d be able to work out his situation with First Sergeant Samuel Adams “Goose” Gander at the same time. After all, the holding position in Sanliurfa was all about acceptable losses. Somebody was going to have to take them. And Remington knew just who he was going to toss into the next desperate situation.

United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0611 Hours

“First Sergeant.”

Startled, totally engrossed in what he was reading and struggling to make sense of, Goose looked up from the Bible. His mind reeled from the prophecies contained in the book of Revelation, partly because of how huge and sweeping they were, and partly because he had trouble understanding many of them.

Corporal Joseph Baker stood in the doorway of the makeshift barracks. At six feet eight inches tall and built like a Kodiak bear, the corporal was both a threatening and an awe-inspiring man. His face was round beneath his blond crew cut, and his china blue eyes held innocence as well as fatigue. Bruises from the fighting he’d survived still marked his face, but they were green and yellow with age now. He wore BDUs and carried an M-4A1. He hung his helmet by its strap over one broad shoulder.

Goose dragged his feet from the small cot and dropped them to the floor. He wore his boots, though he had taken the time to change his socks. Going without his boots wasn’t something he was prepared to do, but, as a soldier, he knew fresh socks meant he had less chance of catching athlete’s foot or some other bacterial infection. In a battle zone, an infantryman without healthy feet was only one quick step away from being a dead man.