by Mel Odom
Almost overcome by the emotions that raged within him, Delroy tilted his face up at the dark heavens, letting the rain pock his face. He felt the cold drops burst and spread against his skin.
“There’s a war coming on, Daddy,” Delroy said softly. “The hosts of heaven and the demons of hell. They’re going to fight right here and right now. For seven years, the people left behind are going to see some of the greatest evil atrocities ever committed. Souls hang in the balance. Not all of them will know the love of Jesus and His salvation, and they will be lost. It’s already too late for so many.”
Thunder hammered the skies. Lightning flashed again and another roll of thunder followed in its wake.
“I brought Terrence up in the church, Daddy. The same way you raised me up. But—” Delroy stopped and brushed the hot tears from his eyes—“but I know how weak a man sometimes is. I’m weak. Not nearly as strong as you thought I was.” His voice didn’t work for a moment. “I raised Terrence in the church, but I don’t truly know if he knew the Lord. Just as I don’t know if I ever truly knew the Lord. I baptized that boy and I heard his prayers, but maybe I failed him. Just like I failed myself.”
Thunder cracked and pealed.
“Daddy, here I am in this graveyard, wet and without you or the Lord. I am miserable, and I know now that I am lost. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Delroy fought back the pain that threatened to choke him. “I know you believed I was saved, too, but I wasn’t. I know it has to be a terrible thing to see me here like this, to know that I doubted God so much that He left me behind. I’ve shamed you, and for that I hope you’ll forgive me.” He wiped the tears and the rain from his face with a big hand.
“I hope you’ll understand why I’ve got to do what I’m going to do.” Rain pelted Delroy, smashing hard against his face and getting into his eyes. “I hope that you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.” Taking a fresh grip on the shovel, Delroy turned and walked to the grave two plots down. The one in between was reserved for his mother. Etta still lived in Marbury in a self-assisted home.
At the foot of the chosen grave, Delroy shone his flashlight over the headstone:
LANCE CORPORAL TERRENCE DAVID HARTE
SON, SOLDIER, HERO
BELOVED ALWAYS AND MISSED DEARLY
Delroy stood at the foot of his son’s grave for a moment. He heard the sound of the rain all around him. Tears coursed down his cheeks.
“God, forgive me,” he whispered. “I know what I’m about to do is an affront to You. I know I can’t ask Your blessing in this, but I do beg Your understanding.”
Firming up his resolve and his conviction, Delroy set the flashlight on the ground so the beam spread over the grave. He pulled on the gloves that George had lent him; then he took up the shovel. He placed the keen blade on the ground, then leaned on it and plunged it deep into the dark, wet earth.
9
United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0510 Hours
Goose swept his gaze around the makeshift operating theater set up inside the basement of one of the city’s more prestigious hotels. Beds filled every available space, but severely wounded and dead still lay in the floor in places. Cries of injured men and women filled the large room, while doctors and nurses shouted information to each other across patients. More litters arrived, transferred from the triage stations on the first-floor level.
The wounded weren’t just military; a few were citizens and tourists who hadn’t yet found a way or a time to depart. Some were journalists that Goose had seen working over the past two days. Recognizing them, Goose wondered what had happened to Danielle Vinchenzo. The young journalist tended to insert herself and her team into the thickest action. He had no doubt that reporting from the front lines where the Syrian tanks had crashed through was her idea. But he hadn’t seen the woman or her team since then.
While making the rounds, Goose also checked in with standing security teams, making certain they held the line. The combined military forces in the city had immediately elected to set up their own surgery areas instead of using the Turkish hospitals. Sanliurfa’s hospitals became targets for the Syrian air force the next night after their retreat and had taken major damage during each successive raid.
Triage teams manned the doorways into the building. Incoming wounded were marked before they came inside. Shorthand written across their foreheads with washable markers indicated to surgeons and nurses what had to be done, whether to attempt to save a life or administer painkillers till they passed. Life and death was reduced to a symbol or two. In the middle of bloody and pain-filled chaos, the surgical teams somehow managed to eke out a sense of professional care and compassion that amazed Goose even after his other battlefield experiences.
“Control,” a man called over the headset Goose wore, “I’m starting to see movement along the Syrian front line.”
“I do too,” Remington replied.
“They appear to be pulling back.”
“Affirmative, Tango Leader,” Remington replied. “Stay on them. I want laser-assisted targeting for the howitzers for as long as you can. We’ve earned their respect for the moment, but they’ll be back. We’re standing between the Syrian war machine and everything their generals need to control. I want to take down every unit of their armored cav that we can while we have the chance under the cover of darkness.” “Roger, Control. Tango Team will continue to flag ’em and tag ’em.”
Tango Team, Goose knew from the defense briefing Remington had put into effect nineteen hours ago when news of the Syrian armored advancement was received, was a scout team lead by Lieutenant Carlos Mendoza of the 75th. The team all rode Enduro motorcycles tricked out with infrared lights for night riding. They also carried Litton PAQ-10 Ground Laser Target Designators. The GLTDs used by Lieutenant Mendoza’s team marked targets and relayed coordinates to Captain Mkchian’s artillery teams, allowing them almost pinpoint accuracy. Judging from the communications traffic Goose had been privy to, Mendoza’s team was turning the Syrian armored cav into sitting ducks for the Turkish howitzers and mortars.
The constant thunder of the artillery cascaded over the city, echoing hollowly down in the basement.
Pain ratcheted through Goose’s knee as he walked, causing a slight limp. He tried to remain distant as he recognized the Rangers who were wounded or dead, but he had difficulty doing that. He knew most of them personally, from ops out in the field to basketball and volleyball games back at Fort Benning. So many of them were young men, and too many of those were dead and dying, or horribly wounded.
“Bleeder,” a surgeon called out as a line of blood shot up from a patient’s open chest cavity. He ignored the stream of blood splashing his chest and neck, reached into the man’s body, and closed the artery with his fingers. “Forceps. Close that off. I’ll suture once we get him stabilized.”
A young male assistant leaned in with something that looked like scissors. The stainless steel gleamed until the moment the blood pumped onto it when the surgeon released his hold.
Goose kept moving, listening to the chatter across the headset. Teams were shutting Sanliurfa down section by section, taking out Syrian soldiers trapped behind the lines. Many of the enemy soldiers fought to the death when cornered, but there were already a few prisoners in custody. There was a chance the intelligence teams could gather information about the Syrian army’s strength and movement.
An orderly hustled by Goose with an IV rig in his hands. Glucose and blood were in short supply. The surgical teams would struggle to get through the night.
And tomorrow’s still coming, Goose reminded himself.
Feeling useless and guilty for coming down into the main operating theater, Goose walked out of the room. He’d arrived only a few minutes ago and his thoughts had immediately turned to Icarus. The man had stated that he would make contact at the hospital.
Could have been a mix-up, Goose told himself. There a
re other triage areas in the city now. Maybe Icarus went there. He couldn’t get the man’s cryptic warning out of his head. Finding the CIA agent in the alley so near to where Icarus had confronted him had left Goose unsettled. The possibility existed that the CIA team had intercepted Icarus, and the man his squad had found in the alley was a casualty of that encounter.
But why leave a man behind? That didn’t make sense. Unless the other CIA agents had believed the man dead—or they’d been pressed for time by one of the teams Remington had in the field searching for Icarus. Few soldiers were aware of the tension between Remington’s covert teams and the CIA agents. Goose knew about them, but he also knew Remington deliberately kept him out of that action. The only time the captain had ever assigned Goose to a private mission like the search for Icarus was when Remington was certain Goose believed in what that mission’s goal was.
Icarus’s choice to make contact with Goose hadn’t set well with Remington from the outset. If the man was looking for a safe house from the CIA, he could have asked Remington. Goose had pointed out that Icarus had talked to him under duress, claiming that he was armed with an explosive device.
That hadn’t mattered to Remington. Goose knew the captain considered him tainted as a result. Goose also had a tendency to think for himself at times too, and Remington never assigned him to a mission that Remington totally wanted to control. Remington sometimes used information he got from unconventional sources to his own benefit. Goose had never been comfortable with that, though several times that information had provided key turning points in an engagement or op.
Goose was distracted from pursuing the line of logic concerning the man his squad had found by a squawk from the headset.
“Phoenix Leader,” Hershel Barnett called.
“Go.”
“The prince came by and kissed Sleeping Beauty. He’s about nine kinds of mad about being held for questioning. Throwing around his threats about us infringing on his constitutional rights and so forth.”
“Has he identified himself as an American citizen?”
“Says he is. Accent’s about right. But you know that the spies they turn out of spy school these days sound like Kansas City radio DJs.
Maybe he’s American and maybe he ain’t.”
Goose knew Barnett was deliberately baiting the man they’d brought to the hospital. Judging from the sheer torrent of verbal invective unleashed in the background, Barnett had succeeded.
“I’m on my way.”
Another series of artillery blasts reverberated through the building. The thunderous roars were partially muted so it was impossible to tell if they were made by howitzers firing or warheads landing within the city.
Goose navigated the long stairwell up to the main floor. He favored his injured knee by using the handrail and leaning part of his weight on it. What he most needed was rack time and a chance to get his knee elevated. Though they weren’t part of the original construction, the building had elevators. Getting stuck between floors in case of a power outage wasn’t an ideal situation, so he’d opted for the stairs.
Goose stepped into the service area and took a left. He passed by the arched doorway to the huge hotel lobby.
Trimmed in classic art deco, the hotel lobby stood out immediately as a fantasy landscape for tourists, a trip back in time to a foreign land where Lawrence of Arabia and The Ten Commandments had been set. Posters of both movies, as well as Cleopatra and Ben-Hur, held positions of prominence in the lobby. Palm trees in ornate pots reached for the main chandelier high above the floor.
It was a place, Goose knew, that he would like to have brought Megan to, the kind of place where normal life and all its problems evaporated at the door. They’d never had a real vacation since their honeymoon. Because money had always been tight, they had never felt comfortable with spending so extravagantly. Now, however, Goose wished he had taken Megan someplace like this. The chance might not ever occur again.
And Chris wouldn’t be there with them.
Goose’s heart ached at the thought. Desperately, he pushed the troubling thoughts away. He couldn’t afford to think about Chris’s absence now. He had to survive; then he’d see what he could do about seeing Chris again.
The allure of the hotel was conspicuously absent at the moment. Patients without life-or-death wounds lay on the marble floor on makeshift litters and mattresses culled from beds throughout the hotel. The living shared space with the dead, which were covered with sheets. Some of those sheets bore bloodstains that testified to terrible wounds and painful deaths.
A mix of Rangers, marines, Turkish military, and U.N. forces guarded the hotel’s doors. Rangers held command there at Captain Remington’s insistence. Heavy plywood covered all of the elaborate windows on the main floor. Guards posted on the top three floors made constant security sweeps. So far, none of the Syrian forces had managed to reach the building. Patrols had stopped the closest tank less than a block away. The south end of the hotel had taken a couple of severe hits. Military firefighters had put out the blaze that threatened to consume the building.
The hotel security office was located behind the main desk. Two Rangers stood guard at the entrance. A simple desk took up the back third of the small office space. The desk held security camera monitors that rotated through all four upper floors of the hotel and the basement. Two Rangers sat at the desk watching the camera sweeps, keeping constant radio contact with security teams throughout the building.
The unknown man Goose’s squad had picked up in the alley sat in the center of the room in a straight-backed chair that didn’t look comfortable to any degree. His bruised face had swelled considerably. Black-and-purple splotches covered most of his features. Dried blood mottled the long tears and split skin. He held a chemical ice pack along his jaw.
Barnett lounged against the wall and smoked a cigarette.
The man glared up at Goose. “You in charge of this operation?”
Goose returned the man’s gaze full measure. “Yes.”
The man nodded, but the movement looked painful. “They’re not letting me leave.”
“They were told not to.”
“Why?”
“Because we found you, unconscious, in the middle of a battlefield.”
“So what?” the man asked belligerently. “You put me under guard to make sure I stick around long enough to say thanks? Well then, thanks.” He started to get to his feet.
Barnett leaned forward casually and shoved the man back into the chair. He landed heavily, and the chair legs screeched across the stone floor.
“What is wrong with you people?” the man demanded. “First you save me; now I’m getting the tough-guy treatment.”
“What’s your name?” Goose asked.
The man didn’t hesitate. “Winters. Mike Winters. I’m an American citizen. From Newark, New Jersey. You don’t have any right to hold me here like this.”
“Well, Mr. Winters,” Goose said, “at the time we found you, you didn’t have any ID.”
Winters made a show of reaching into his pants pocket. He looked surprised when he came up empty. “My wallet must have fallen out.” Then he glared suspiciously at the Rangers in the room. “Or maybe someone stole it.”
“At the time we found you,” Goose repeated in a slower, more forceful voice, “you didn’t have any ID.”
“Then I guess I lost it while I was running for my life,” the man said. “Just my bad luck. That doesn’t explain why you’re holding me.”
“I notice you normally carry a couple of sidearms.”
“Not normally.”
Goose shrugged and acceded the answer. “You did tonight. And if you don’t normally go armed, tonight was a special occasion.”
Winters shifted a little, rocking from side to side and grimacing. The holsters he wore offered mute testimony that he had carried weapons.
“I like to be safe,” the man said.
“Safe would have kept you inside tonight,” Goose said.
“The building I was staying in was bombed. Killed a whole room full of people. I was lucky I wasn’t killed.”
The man was lying. Goose’s sergeant’s nose for trouble and falsehoods told him that. “Safe would have had you out of the city days ago.”
“I got trapped here during the attack.”
“A lot of people left immediately afterward. Before the Syrians started running jets through Turkish airspace and taking out convoys headed north.”
“I wasn’t in the city then.”
“Where were you?”
Winters waved a hand. “South.”
“What were you doing?”
“Business.”
Goose waited a beat, took a look at the empty shoulder holster the man wore, and asked, “What kind of business are you in, Mr. Winters?” “Photography. I’m a photojournalist.”
“Whom do you work for?”
“I’m independent. I work for myself.”
“You didn’t have a camera with you tonight.”
Winters hesitated. “I did. It must have gotten stolen.”
“I thought so,” Goose said. “An attack like this, there’d probably be a lot of news agencies willing to pay for pictures.”
Shifting the ice pack along his jaw thoughtfully, as if suddenly realizing he’d stepped out onto dangerous ground despite the innocuous line of questioning Goose had introduced, Winters nodded.
“Yeah. A lot of ‘em.”
“How much film were you carrying?” Goose asked.
Winters shrugged. “Don’t know. A bunch.”
“Where is it?”
“I suppose it was stolen with the camera.”
“And your pistols.”
“Yeah. And my pistols. Maybe you should be out there looking for whoever jacked me instead of giving me the third degree.”
