Apocalypse Crucible (43 page)

In the full light of day, Sanliurfa lay scattered and broken. If she hadn’t already been numbed by everything she’d seen over the past few days, Danielle felt certain she would have broken down and wept despite the professional distance she tried to maintain.

Sanliurfa was a historical city, one of the oldest around. Danielle knew from the background piece she’d done on the city soon after the retreating military forces had settled in Sanliurfa, that evidence of human habitation existed more than two thousand years B.C. Christianity had its roots there, and was followed by the Moslem beliefs and rulers that had constructed the architecture that still stood in so many places.

The city had worn many names throughout its life span: Edessa, Urfa, and finally in 1923—after the Ottoman Empire succumbed to the annals of history—Sanliurfa. Wars had torn the land all its life. Border disputes and issues over water rights regarding the Euphrates River—known as the Firat locally—remained high on the list of reasons armies fought or stayed prepared for war. Christian crusaders had traveled thousands of miles to sack the city in 1098, and it took fifty years for the Turks to take it back.

Medieval architecture stood shoulder to shoulder with modern buildings, hotels, and apartments. But the bazaars, the eight great marketplaces that still thrived on the agricultural business where people of several cities came to buy, sell, and trade vegetables, fruits, and meats as well as barter for handcrafts that included clothing, furniture, and dishes, had existed during all of that time.

Trade had been Sanliurfa’s lifeblood, no matter what name the city wore. But that was all gone now. Danielle had seen two of the great marketplaces in tatters. The Syrian pilots had deliberately targeted those, taking the chance that many of the populace would gather there as normal to swap news and bargain for the things they needed while selling the things they didn’t. The tactic had worked. Dozens of dead and hundreds more injured had resulted from the attacks.

Outside the courtyard area, Danielle walked south, following the natural boundary of the block. Even in the downtown area where she was, most buildings stood no more than two or three stories tall. None of them had windows. The glass had either been shattered during the first attacks or had been broken out later by soldiers or occupants so they couldn’t turn into deadly shrapnel during the next attack.

An earthmover, borrowed from a Sanliurfa construction business, dug a great gaping hole in the park across the street. The claw scrabbled back and forth with loud clanks that echoed between the buildings. A line of trucks bearing the dead that had been gathered so far waited to dump the bodies into the mass grave.

Other squads dug more mass graves around the city.

The heat, Danielle knew from the reports she’d given, spread disease from rotting corpses quickly. If the military teams hadn’t been ordered to delay Syrian occupation of the city and were on their way out, they probably wouldn’t have bothered with the dead.

Whenever possible, American dead were buried apart from the Turkish people and military as well as the U.N. forces. If things went well and the Syrians were forced back into their country, American military would return to the city and claim their dead. Forensics would allow them to ship the bodies home to families to inter at Arlington or in family burial grounds.

For a moment, Danielle stopped and watched the mass burial. Several Turkish families clung to the sides of the military trucks. Soldiers gently but forcibly removed some of them who were overcome with emotion at their losses or simply wanted to know if their family members were among the dead.

It was horrible, and Danielle faulted herself because she was able to keep her distance from those involved. Finally, unable to bear the impersonal sounds of the earthmover as the scoop carved the grave, Danielle turned away. Farther down the street, she saw a man loading a small car. Evidently he had lost faith in the military to hold their positions.

A woman who was probably his wife came forward. She cried openly, one knotted fist in her mouth. She carried a child’s car seat. Her husband joined her. He looked at the car seat and shook his head. Even though Danielle couldn’t hear their voices over the sounds of the earthmover and the truck engines, she knew the couple was arguing.

The man tried to take the car seat from the woman. She held on to it desperately and shook her head. Tears streamed from her eyes and pain wrinkled her face like a prune.

Taking the car seat, the man spoke softly. The woman shook her head, tucking her chin against her chest and not meeting his gaze. He spoke again, more harshly this time because the tendons stood out on his neck.

For a moment Danielle thought the argument was only over the fact that there wasn’t room in the tightly packed car for the seat. Suddenly she noticed that there was no baby or small child in evidence. Then she realized why there was no child: all the children were gone, taken away by whatever forces had made them vanish.

Danielle took a picture of the couple arguing over the child’s seat. The scene was intimate and personal, but Danielle knew the same confusion had to be felt around the globe.

First Sergeant Gander’s son had disappeared, too. Danielle had learned that Goose had a son through the bio information Lizuca was able to get from someone in Waycross, Georgia, Goose’s hometown. Danielle hadn’t been able to bring up his son’s disappearance the few times she’d talked with the sergeant, and she didn’t think he would have talked about his boy if she had.

She put her camera away again and kept moving. Walking through the smoke that clogged the streets, seeing all the debris from the broken buildings and the shattered trees and burned vehicles, she missed the RV. Inside the Adventurer, she felt removed from the threat and the agonizing aftermath of the attack.

Before she knew it, tears ran down her face as she thought about the young couple and the car seat and the mass grave surrounded by all the upset family members and friends. And First Sergeant Goose Gander who had lost a son and seemed at odds with his superior officer over the matter of the CIA team.

She’d noted that in the hallway. She didn’t miss much. From everything she’d read about the 75th, Captain Remington and First Sergeant Gander had served successfully together for years. Maybe they had their differences of opinions during downtime or when they were on a routine peacekeeping mission, but Danielle didn’t buy the possibility that the pressure of the war zone had put them at odds.

The only catalyst she could point to was the CIA man she couldn’t identify. Yet. But she was willing to bet she could change that.

She took her satphone from her chest pouch and punched in the number. Military vehicles and civilian transport rolled by in the street, crunching through debris. In addition to the number she had for Lizuca Carutasu at OneWorld NewsNet, she also had the young woman’s home number.

After getting the job at OneWorld, the first thing Lizuca had done was put in a phone. Her mother had protested the expense, the young woman had told Danielle, and the stories of how her mother had tried over the past years to manage her money had made Danielle laugh. Mrs. Carutasu’s efforts reminded Danielle a lot of her own mother’s micromanaging attempts when she’d first moved out on her own.

The phone rang four times before it was answered.

Danielle ducked into an alley and turned toward the wall so the street noise wouldn’t sound so loud.

Mrs. Carutasu answered in Romanian.

Not having knowledge of the language other than to say hello and good-bye, Danielle said in English, “Hello, Mrs. Carutasu. This is Danielle Vinchenzo.”

“Ah, hello. Hello.” The woman’s English was limited, so even a polite conversation was difficult. “Danielle Vinchenzo. Yes.”

“Yes. Is Lizuca home?”

“No,” the old woman said. “Lizuca not home. She should be sleeping. Is time for bed. She work very hard.”

“I know,” Danielle said. “I apologize. If it wasn’t important I wouldn’t have called.”

“Oh, no,” the woman disagreed. “You call. You call.”

“I know I called.” Danielle glanced out at the street. “I need to speak with Lizuca.”

“Lizuca no here. She say she working. Say, tell Danielle … working. She know you call, yes.”

“Yes.”

“She say, tell working on
peek
-ture. Call you when she done. Then sleep, yes?”

The news heartened Danielle. Over the past few days she and Lizuca had managed to develop a rapport and get a few things past

Stolojan, including Lizuca’s overtime, which came out of Danielle’s budget. It didn’t surprise her now that Lizuca would undertake to work on the picture on her own time.

Of course, Danielle didn’t intend for the young woman not to get paid for her trouble. She knew from conversations with Lizuca that she was sole support for a number of people in addition to her mother.

“Thank you, Mrs. Carutasu,” Danielle said.

“Okay. Good-bye.” The phone hung up with an abrupt click.

Danielle put the satphone away in her vest. She took a deep breath and tried not to choke on the trace elements of chemicals in the dry air. She felt better. If Lizuca caught a break, Danielle knew she’d be in the middle of whatever game the CIA team was playing in Sanliurfa.

All Saints Hospital
Marbury, Alabama
Local Time 0743 Hours

“Well, there you are.”

Blearily, Delroy opened his eyes in the dimness of the hospital waiting room. Although a line of people had been at the hospital, most of them dealing with anxiety attacks or chronic medical problems such as asthma and weak hearts aggravated by the confusion and panic of the last few days, he’d finally been examined, judged healthy—although perhaps not mentally sound—and sent on his way. The hospital beds were full of accident victims and people needing sedation till they came to grips with everything that had happened.

Unfortunately, he had nowhere to go and all Delroy had to wear was the backless pink hospital gown, covered by a lime green bathrobe intended for a much smaller man. They had no slippers his size. Sitting in the waiting room, trying to figure out his next move, he’d drawn a lot of suspicious stares. The fact that his personal items—his wallet, his rings, and his watch—were in a clear plastic bag in his lap didn’t help matters.

Turning his head at the sound of the booming voice and the blunt declaration, Delroy spotted the deputy who had brought him to the hospital standing a short distance away. He wasn’t wearing his rain coat now, though he still wore boots that had been mostly wiped clean of mud. The sheriff’s badge on his chest stood out and attracted the attention of the people in the waiting room.

The deputy came closer, eyeing Delroy skeptically. “They tell me you’re gonna live.”

“I am,” Delroy admitted.

“Must be a lotta tough packed in all that tall.”

Personally, Delroy didn’t feel all that tough. He felt cold and weak. A headache slammed ceaselessly at his temples, and his eyes and nose burned.

After the triage nurses had started Delroy on the paperwork, the deputy had left. That had made Delroy feel somewhat relieved. He wasn’t sure if he could be arrested for trying to dig up Terrence’s grave, but if the deputy wasn’t around to arrest him that was a good thing.

Only now the man was back, not ten minutes after the doctor had pronounced Delroy fit enough and sent him to the waiting room. All it would have taken was a brief phone call to let the deputy know Delroy had been released and outfitted in a bathrobe. His wet clothing sat in a plastic bag next to his chair.

Delroy hesitated. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

The deputy rubbed his chin thoughtfully as if giving the question real consideration. “A man sleeping in a graveyard in a rainstorm. When he ain’t drunk—I know that ’cause I asked the doc about your tox screen, by the way—I figure that man must be in some kind of trouble.”

“I wasn’t drinking,” Delroy said.

“My first assumption was that you’d gotten out there and tied one on,” the deputy admitted. “These here times, why they’ve been purely tryin’ on everybody. Seen a lotta good folks these past few days trying to find some way to just get through it all. Drinking seems to be high on the list of some of ’em.” He rubbed his hands together and shrugged. “Imagine my surprise when you hadn’t been on a bender.” He paused.

“But you have been in a fight.” He sucked on his lower lip, and sharp accusation gleamed in his eyes. “Yes, sir, you have been in a fight.”