Apocalypse Unleashed (3 page)

“Then get up,”
Baker’s voice said.

Goose stopped thinking about dying. He stopped wondering how he was hearing from a dead man. He did what the United States Army had taught him to do every day for the last seventeen years.

He got up.

And he had his assault rifle in his hand when he did. But the smoke was so thick and his eyes tearing so much that he didn’t know which way was out through the flames.

“Here.”

Goose moved at once. He ran through the flames because he knew he wasn’t going to get a second chance. Arm across his face, he felt the heat of the flames surround him for two strides … then three …

… and then he was out, racing into the night in front of the house. Overcome by smoke and exhaustion, he dropped to his knees and tried to breathe. His lungs remained frozen for a moment, then kick-started to life. Without warning, he threw up and felt a little better. His lungs opened up.

“Sarge!” someone yelled. “You’re on fire!”

Looking down at his pant legs, Goose saw flames clinging to the material. He raked up a handful of dirt and smothered the flames. Then he stood on shaking legs. His left knee, damaged so long ago and never quite right since, ached and felt infirm. He looked around at the villagers and the Rangers gathered there in the firelight. When he spotted the two girls he’d gone in to rescue, he felt better.

“Thought we’d lost you, Sarge,” Private First Class Billy Hendricks said. He was in his early twenties, new to the army and to the area.

“Not yet,” Goose said. “We’re going to be all right.”

“I knew that when I saw you come out of that burning house.”

Goose spotted Corporal Jamal Donner, his second on the transport assignment. Donner was an African-American in his early thirties, only a couple of years younger than Goose. He kept his head shaved clean, even managing to do so in the confusion of these past few weeks.

“Where do we stand?” Goose asked.

“We’re all present and accounted for,” Donner said. His voice was soft and smooth with the Southern accent he’d acquired while growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. “We got lucky.”

Goose looked at the handful of bodies lying on the ground. Some of the other villagers sat beside the corpses and wept without restraint.

Thank God there are no children,
Goose thought. They would have been among the casualties for certain. Then he realized that God was exactly the reason why no children were there. That only brought up thoughts of Chris again, and he tried not to go there.

“Not everybody got lucky,” Donner said.

“Does anyone know what happened?”

“Got a man over here who says he saw the whole thing. Ain’t had time to talk to him.”

Local Time 2112 Hours

The man’s name was Achmed. Sixtyish and frail, he spoke English well.

“They came out of nowhere,” Achmed told Goose. The village continued to burn. There was nothing anyone could do to save it.

“Who?” Goose asked.

“Niyazi.”

Goose reached into his BDU pouch and took out his PalmPilot.

He brought up the file they’d assembled on the local warlords and showed the image they had of Niyazi to Achmed. “This man?” Goose asked.

Achmed nodded. “This man. Very bad man. He likes to kill.”

The files Goose had read on Niyazi agreed with that. Although the Turkish military hadn’t liked sharing all their information with the United States Army, they’d done so once it became apparent that sharing was necessary.

“Why did he attack the village?” Goose asked as he put the PalmPilot away.

Achmed shook his head. “I don’t know. Normally he is not in this place.”

“Not in what place? Here?”

“Not here,” Achmed agreed. “Niyazi stays to the north. Many kilometers away.”

“Something brought him down here,” Donner said.

“I don’t know what that might be,” Achmed replied. “We are a very poor village. It is known. Everyone knows how poor we are.”

Goose looked around the village and silently agreed. Except for a few goats and little patches of vegetable gardens, there wasn’t much to the village. Over the past weeks, he’d traveled with a convoy by the village at least a dozen times. They’d never bothered to stop.

“You ask me,” Donner said, “and I don’t mean to be rude about it, but this place ain’t worth the powder it would take to blow it up.”

A bad feeling twisted through Goose’s gut. He turned to Donner. “Gather the men. We need to get rolling. If Niyazi didn’t hit this village out of spite or to get something, he was just using it as a diversion.”

Understanding filled Donner’s liquid eyes. “The convoy.”

“Yeah,” Goose agreed. “And we ran off and left it unguarded.” He turned toward the nearest Hummer, ignoring his aches, bruises, and burns.

United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 2114 Hours

“Captain Remington.”

Tired and frustrated, Cal Remington looked up from the computer screen he’d been studying. The army captain was six feet four inches tall with broad shoulders and short-clipped dark hair.

“What is it, Private?” Remington snapped.

“Got a problem with the convoy, sir.” The private was young and baby-faced, one of the geek army that had moved up quickly as the military had become increasingly reliant on technology.

“Which convoy?” There were currently three out. Remington checked the time on the bottom of the computer screen.
Two,
he amended. One of them should have reached its destination by now.

“Harran, sir.”

Goose’s convoy.
The thought that something had gone wrong there irritated Remington. Then again, he didn’t know if it was the thought that something had gone wrong or the thought of Goose that irritated him most.

“What’s wrong with the convoy?” Remington asked.

“It’s under attack, sir.”

“By whom?” Remington stood and walked out of his office. The private led the way through the computer workstations that had been set up and now ran off noisy generators.

“We don’t know, sir.” The private gestured to one of the large LCD computer monitors.

Remington studied the screen and saw satellite imagery of the convoy racing across the rugged terrain toward Harran. Only the four supply trucks and two support Hummers remained together. Six units were MIA.

“Where is the rest of my convoy?” Remington demanded.

“Sergeant Gander pulled most of the support vehicles off the convoy, sir,” the private said.

“Why?”

“There was a village on fire, sir. Sergeant Gander wanted to see if they could help.” The private gestured to another monitor.

Remington made out the burning houses and the six Hummers parked in front of them. His irritation with Goose turned into fullfledged anger.

“Who authorized this?” Remington demanded.

“No one, sir. Sergeant Gander radioed us, said he’d take a quick look-see and be back to the convoy.”

“Did those people ask for help?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“How did Sergeant Gander know they needed help?”

“Sergeant Gander saw the burning buildings from the route they were traveling.”

Remington cursed. “And he didn’t think that maybe they were being set up?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Are we in radio communication with Sergeant Gander?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Hand me that headset.”

The private passed the headset over, and Remington put it on and pulled the chin mic into place. “What’s his call sign?”

“Drifter Leader.”

Remington pushed a button on the mic and opened the radio channel. “Drifter Leader, this is Base. Do you copy?”

“Sir,” the computer tech next to him said, “I’ve got bogeys vectoring in on the supply convoy.”

Remington flicked his gaze back to the computer screen and watched as seven … eight …
nine
speeding vehicles closed in on the convoy. He cursed and queued the mic again. “Drifter Leader, this is Base. Do you copy?”

3

United States Rangers Convoy
Three Klicks North-Northeast of Harran
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 2116 Hours

Private First Class Jimmy Robinson sat in the back of the cargo truck and sipped metallic-tasting water from his canteen. He rode on an ammo box and swayed with the motion of the truck lumbering across the uneven terrain. Through the parted canvas partially covering the rear of the truck, he constantly watched the terrain.

“Man,” Butch Strahan complained from the other side of the truck. “You couldn’t ask for a bumpier ride.”

“You could,” Robinson said, “but I’d shoot you on account of you being too sadistic to live.”

Strahan laughed. “I’m just glad it isn’t so bumpy that some of this ammo goes off.”

“Wouldn’t do that. This stuff’s packed all right. I helped get it done.”

“I guess if you’re wrong, we’ll never live to know about it.” Strahan shifted, obviously trying to find a more comfortable position. “I heard you got to talk to your girl.”

Robinson nodded and tried to keep the smile from his face. The other men teased about such things. “Got Pablo’s Xbox 360 up and running. Hooked it into the Internet coming out of command. Captain Remington finally okayed that.”

“Good thing you guys didn’t get caught using it before he allowed it.”

“Tell me about it. But that Xbox just sips bandwidth. Even when you’re talking back and forth over the gamer network.”

“So what did your girl say?”

Robinson’s happy thoughts fled. “Her parents are missing.”

Strahan looked suddenly solemn. “Well, if Joe Baker was right in what he was saying, that God came and took all the Christians home to begin the Tribulation, that’s a good thing.”

“Maybe. But right now Nikki’s alone.” Robinson hesitated, wondering if he should say anything about what was really on his mind. “And she’s still here.”

“Oh,” Strahan said, suddenly understanding.

“I’ve known her since I was fourteen,” Robinson said. “Used to sit behind her in algebra. Her parents were always involved with the church. So was she.”

“You’re wondering why she’s still here while her parents are gone?”

“She says it was because she didn’t believe as much as her parents did. She thinks she was just going through the moves.”

“I think a lot of us were like that,” Strahan said. “I have to admit, I ain’t always played things on the straight and narrow, and maybe I’ve been too interested in other things than God’s Word, but I didn’t think I’d be left behind like this.”

“I never gave it any thought,” Robinson admitted. “I treated everybody fairly, tried to get along, but I didn’t make much time in my day for thinking about where I might end up when it was all over.”

“That’s because it’s not normal to sit around thinking about everything being all over.”

“Nikki’s parents did. Every Sunday and Wednesday at church. And I’m sure they didn’t forget about it during the rest of the week either.”