Apocalypse Crucible

by Mel Odom

  “Till when, Daddy?”

  Josiah had scratched his head. “Well, you right about that. No man ought to wait on something like this. Not if he’s smart enough to be askin’ questions about it.” He’d looked around, then pulled up a flat stone from the creek bank. With a practiced effort, he’d sent the stone skipping across the creek. Every time the stone had touched the placid water surface, it bounced upward again, getting a little closer to the other side with each hop.

  “Way to go, Daddy,” Delroy had crowed with childish glee. “That was a good one. You almost throwed that rock to the other side.”

  Josiah nodded. “Now, when I tell you, I want you to close your eyes. Then open them again when I say so.”

  “All right.” The exercise had seemed like a game. Delroy had always loved games. He’d closed his eyes and waited, hearing the whipsnap of his father’s shirt in the breeze.

  “Now, Son, open them eyes and tell me what you see.”

  Delroy had, and he’d seen the stone skipping across the creek even farther than the first one. “I see a stone hopping on the water.”

  “Yes, sir, you do. Now tell me who threw that rock.”

  Delroy had looked at his father warily. He hated it when people pulled tricks on him. The answer was so simple, so straightforward that there had to be a trick. But there also was no other answer. “Well, you did, Daddy.”

  “Did I now? Did you see me throw that rock?”

  “No, sir. You told me to keep my eyes closed.”

  “Then you believe I throwed that rock.”

  Delroy had nodded. No other possibility existed. “Yes, Daddy. I believe it was you throwed that rock.”

  “An’ you’d be right.” Josiah had smiled. “An’ you there talkin’ like you’re gettin’ stupid. I can’t fool you.”

  “No, sir.” Delroy had felt mixed up. He wasn’t quite happy with his success because he didn’t know what it meant. “I still don’t know how you learned to believe in the Lord.”

  “I know that, Son. That’s what I’m tellin’ you. When the time comes, the Lord’ll make a miracle for you. Something that only you an’ Him will know ever happened. Maybe you’ll be stubborn about it, because when you get down to it, most folks are. An’ maybe you’ll be blessed enough that the Lord won’t have to take time outta His day to come pound it into your head. Now, mind you, He will do that ‘cause He loves you an’ He knows some folks just need a powerful lot of convincin’ ‘cause they’s stubborn.”

  “What kind of miracle will He make for me?”

  “Don’t know. Miracles come in all sizes. Some big, some small. Sometimes you won’t even see ‘em till you’re well past ‘em an’ happen to look back one day ‘cause you know you up an’ missed somethin’ in your hurry.”

  “And then you’ll know, Daddy?”

  Laughing, Josiah had grabbed his son in a bear hug. “’Course you won’t know. Ain’t you been listenin’? You see your miracle, you still won’t know. If you see somethin’ that there ain’t no explanation for, why you’ll know an’ it won’t be faith no more at all now, will it? It would just be something you know. No faith there in that, Son.”

  “No, sir. I guess that’s not likely.”

  “Knowin’ ain’t the same as believin’. Never was supposed to be. It’ll be up to you to believe because you choose to. You got to learn to trust in the Lord, that’s all.”

  Delroy had thought about that for a while, long enough to watch his daddy miss getting a fish. “Believing seems like a lot of hard work.”

  “Well, Son, it is. But it’s kind of like goin’ up a long, tall hill. Once you get to the top an’ actually do believe, why the way just gets easier. ‘Course, that don’t mean there ain’t gonna be some rough spots along the way. Always gonna be rough spots. I never knew a time without them myself. That’s what keeps you strong in your belief.”

  “Seems like the easiest way for me to believe is for you to make me. Just tell me to.”

  “I have told you that, haven’t I?”

  Delroy had raised his narrow shoulders and dropped them.

  “Yeah, Daddy. I guess you have.”

  “Well, then, an’ it ain’t workin’ for you, is it? Otherwise we wouldn’t be havin’ this here conversation instead of fishin’, would we?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Belief’s a personal thing, Son. Anybody you ask about it, why they got a different story for how it come upon them. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Men get together an’ talk about belief an’ witness about the power of it, women too, but belief’s about the most personal thing there is in all the world. Even after you get it, you’ll find it’s a hard thing to hold on to sometimes ‘cause you’re so busy tryin’ to find other things to shore it up so you don’t have to worry about makin’ a fool out of yourself for simply trustin’ in the Lord. That’s why so many people hang on to superstitions an’ such. ‘I ain’t blessed by the hand of God,’ they say; ‘I just got lucky today.’”

  “Like Mr. Childers and the pocketknife his grandpa gave him?” Roy Childers had raised cotton, and everytime the weather got too dry or too wet, folks saw him around town constantly rubbing the old pocketknife his grandfather had given him, summoning up the good fortune his grandfather had told him was in the knife.

  “Yeah,” Josiah had answered. “Exactly like Mr. Childers. I seen a lot of things durin’ my time in this world, an’ mostly I seen a lot of scared people makin’ excuses to themselves why they should believe in the Lord. Now that there, that’s too much work. Especially when all they gotta do is just let go an’ believe. That’s all you’ll ever have to do, Son: just believe in the Lord God Almighty an’ He will keep you in His grace when things turn bad, an’ He will give you direction when you feel lost.”

  Thunder startled Delroy from his reverie. He watched rain spatter the large stone that shouldn’t have been in his son’s grave. Mud dissolved and ran off the stone, leaving the smooth white surface behind. For the moment, his doubts and fears and feeling of betrayal dissolved as well. Peace settled over him, something he thought he’d never again feel.

  Shaken, Delroy knelt while using the shovel for support and touched the stone to make sure it was real. There’s no way this should be here. No way at all. And no way you should be here doing this blasphemous thing you’ve set before yourself, Delroy Harte. You got to get up out of this hole. Stop now before you dig yourself any deeper.

  The problem was that he couldn’t make himself step away when he was so close. At least, not immediately. He’d traveled so far, and the answer to so many of the questions he’d had for such a long time lay within his grasp. He stood, frozen, feeling the rain bead up on his skin and run under his clothing, chilling him to the bone. Believing, trusting, after everything he’d been through, was so hard.

  But the rock remained where it shouldn’t have been, as if guarding his son’s final resting place.

  Daddy, did you find believing easy day after day? I wish I could talk to you now. We never talked about this. You just always seemed so strong, and you always brought out the best in everybody around you.

  Delroy took a long, shuddering breath and released his grip on the shovel. For now, he was through. He couldn’t go any further without giving up everything his father had tried to teach him. He wasn’t ready to do that yet, to dishonor his father’s memory like that or to completely remove his trust in God.

  But at the same time Delroy knew that Terrence’s grave would remain here, and he would suffer from the temptation to come back and try again. If he could just make it back to the Wasp, the temptation would be removed at least for a time.

  God, please help me remain strong. Keep my feet on Your chosen path. Continue to show me the way as You have shown me this tonight.

  “A rock?” a dry, grating voice mocked from behind Delroy. “You’re going to get superstitious over a rock? You’re a fool, Preacher. Probably the biggest fool I’ve ever seen.”

  Recognizing
the voice, Delroy whirled around and raised the shovel defensively, holding the handle across his chest so he could use it to block an attack. The thing was here. It had followed him from Washington, D.C.

  10

  United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post

  Sanliurfa, Turkey

  Local Time 0524 Hours

  “My name is Alexander Cody,” the man told Goose as they stood in the hallway outside the hotel security room where Mike Winters was being held under arrest. “I’m with the CIA.”

  “You’ve got ID?” Goose asked. He framed the question politely, the way he’d been trained to do, but his curiosity had sparked considerably. He’d never met the CIA section chief who had asked Remington to send a squad to rescue Icarus, but he’d heard about him. Only Remington’s cyber teams and security detail had seen the man.

  Moving carefully, evidently aware of the way Goose had positioned himself so that he blocked the view of the three men with him, Cody reached under his jacket and took out a slim Italian leather wallet. He flipped it open and revealed a photo ID that declared he was Alexander M. Cody, a special agent with the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Goose sincerely hoped Icarus wasn’t anywhere near the makeshift hospital in the hotel. If the rogue agent got picked up, Goose figured he’d never know what the intrigue was all about. The CIA or Remington would make the man disappear.

  “What can I do for you?” Goose asked.

  Cody put his wallet away. “You’re holding one of my men.”

  “Where?” Goose chose to play the blockheaded military personality, the no-nonsense, no-imagination riff that gave the military a bad name at times. In his occasional experience with government spooks—National Security Agency, Drug Enforcement Agency, as well as the CIA—the agency people acted elitist, presenting themselves as far superior to men in uniform. They liked to cut through rank and file to get special services from men in uniform.

  “In there.” Cody pointed to the security office. “That’s my man.”

  “Mike Winters is one of your agents?”

  “That’s not Mike Winters.”

  Goose shrugged. “Then we have a problem, Agent Cody. That man says his name is Mike Winters.”

  “Winters is his cover identity.” Cody spoke slower now, as if he guessed the concept was more than Goose was capable of easily handling. “He doesn’t have CIA ID like you do. In fact, he doesn’t have any ID.”

  Cody sighed. “Of course he doesn’t have ID that states he’s a CIA agent. You send an agent out in the field with ID where he’s going to run the chance of being apprehended, you might as well put his ID on a toe tag. It’ll save you a step when you have to recover his body from the morgue.”

  “I’ll need to see proper ID on him before I cut him loose.”

  Cody massaged his head like he was getting a migraine. “Look, Sergeant, I really don’t need this. What I need is my man. And I need him right now.”

  “No can do,” Goose replied. “Not until I can positively ID him for my report.”

  “What report?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Agent Cody,” Goose stated, “we were attacked tonight. Hostiles battled their way into this city and made straight for our hospital and fuel stores like they had a road map. Someone told the Syrians those locations.”

  Cody looked perplexed for a moment; then understanding dawned in his cold gray eyes. “You think my agent had something to do with that?”

  “I think the man in that room might have.”

  Cody pointed into the room. “That’s my agent, and my agent didn’t have anything to do with leaking strategic information to the Syrian army.”

  “I don’t know that. I don’t even know for certain that he is your agent. As a matter of fact, you don’t know that he is either. You haven’t been in to talk to him, and I’m betting he looks different than he did the last time you saw him.”

  Angrily, Cody pointed to the man sitting in the chair inside the room. “I’m telling you that is my man.”

  “Yes, sir,” Goose replied. “I’m hearing you loud and clear. But maybe you’re not hearing me: I want that man identified before I release him to you or anyone else.”

  Another artillery wave blasted through the city, sounding closer than the last. The waves had slowed, but they hadn’t become less deadly.

  Cody flinched, drawing back to the safety of a nearby wall.

  Goose thought that was interesting. Evidently the man hadn’t often been on the battlefield, yet here he was in the thick of one of the worst Middle East engagements the U.S. had taken part in. Goose also didn’t miss the fact that the three men who accompanied Cody had reached under their jackets out of reflex. They were wired and ready to go.

  Cody cursed as he recovered, raking the walls with his gaze as if they might give way at any moment. He returned his attention—and his ire—to Goose.

  “I don’t want that agent IDed in your report,” Cody said.

  “That’s your prerogative, Agent Cody,” Goose replied. “But if you don’t identify him, he’s staying here till I can prove to my commanding officer that this man had nothing to do with the information the Syrians got tonight.”

  “Just because you don’t know him?” Cody glared at Goose. The CIA section chief’s left eye twitched.

  “I’ll start with that,” Goose said. “I’ll add to it that the circumstances surrounding his discovery by my squad and me were suspicious.” “What would not be suspicious tonight, Sergeant?”

  Goose nodded as if in agreement. “Exactly my point, sir. I’m glad you understand my situation.”

  “No!” Cody exploded. “I’m not here about your situation.”

  “Why are you here?” Goose asked. “And if that man is your agent, what was he doing out on that street by himself?”

  Cody drew himself up. “I don’t answer to you, Sergeant.”

  “No, sir.” Goose emphasized the imaginary rank, knowing his refusal to comply with the man’s authority would rankle him further. “I was just thinking that if I knew why one of your agents was out there by himself, obviously the victim of some kind of violence—”

  “There’s violence taking place all over this city,” Cody objected. “— the victim of personal violence,” Goose stated. “Maybe that would be enough for my report.”

  “You’re interfering with a CIA operation, mister.”

  “I don’t see it that way. Holding this city, that’s a military operation—” Goose paused—“sir.” He counted on the polite and calm yet firm manner he maintained to get under the man’s skin.

  “I’m here to take care of my operation.”

  “And I’m here to take care of mine.”

  “My operation—”

  “Doesn’t take precedence over the 75th Rangers’ peacekeeping efforts at this moment,” Goose interrupted.

  “Captain Remington wouldn’t have you stand in my way like this, Sergeant.”

  Goose frowned. “I don’t know that, sir.”

  “I did you guys a favor by hooking your captain up with Nicolae Carpathia to get you satellite access when you needed it.”

  That was something Goose hadn’t known. Remington had never revealed his sources or how he had managed to pull the feat off. Until Carpathia had provided the satellite access, Goose hadn’t been aware that Remington had known the new Romanian president drawing all the media attention with his trip to the United Nations in New York. Remington liked rubbing elbows with the upwardly mobile, people who could do things for his career. But Goose didn’t know when Remington would have gotten the chance to meet Carpathia.

  “We appreciate the favor,” Goose said. “Those satellites made a difference. Saved a lot of lives. Probably would help now if we had access to them again.”

  “You guys owe me,” Cody said. “Big-time. If I hadn’t intervened, you might have all gotten killed.” He blew out his breath in obvious disgust. “You guys sure don’t have much of a spirit of cooperation, do you?”<
br />
  Goose refused to be baited. “When the situation eases up, we’ll contact the captain and get his opinion. Until then, we do things my way. The way I think Captain Remington would want them done.”

  “Then let’s contact Remington.”

  “The captain’s busy, and this situation—for the moment—is contained. I’ll wait for him to contact me.”

  “This is insane. You’re standing in a city filled with strangers, and you pick one man out of that city—my agent—to take into custody?”

  “Fewer and fewer strangers all the time,” Goose pointed out. “We’ll get them down to a manageable level.”

  The privates guarding the door looked at each other and silently cracked up just behind the three CIA agents keeping Cody under surveillance. The Rangers stopped laughing and straightened their faces when they saw Goose had noticed them.

  Cody stepped away, put his hands on his hips, and paced three long steps away like a baseball coach who couldn’t believe the call an umpire had made. Then he paced back. He put his face closer to Goose’s, drawing himself up to take advantage of the handful of inches of difference between them.

  “What would you do if I just took that man, Sergeant?”

  “Won’t happen.” Goose kept his voice crisp and clean. He gave no indication of the tension or curiosity he felt, and he didn’t back away from the physical intimidation game the CIA agent was trying by invading his personal space.

  Goose considered his options. Icarus was supposed to meet him here at the hospital. The possibility existed that Cody and his team had already apprehended the rogue agent. If they hadn’t, though, Goose intended to make enough of a scene that Icarus would stay away. Goose had no reason to trust Icarus, but his instincts about the younger man had been good, and his gut told him now that Cody didn’t have the young agent’s best interests at heart. As a career sergeant, Goose had learned to pay attention to his instincts.

  Cody eyed Goose speculatively. “What are you saying, Sergeant? Would you shoot me if I stepped into that room and tried to take that man?”

  “No, sir,” Goose said. “Not without first warning you that was going to happen if you chose that course of action.” He paused, leaned forward to invade Cody’s personal space, and stared deeply into Cody’s eyes. His voice was calm and polite when he spoke. “Just so you know, sir? This is that warning.”