by Mel Odom
“Yeah,” Whitaker agreed. He grinned a little. “When we give ’em the fall line, they’re going to be in for a nasty surprise.”
Under Remington’s direction, a line of claymore antipersonnel mines lay beyond the first defensive barrier outside the city. Holding that position long enough to convince the Syrians they were determined to keep it was risky and would undoubtedly prove costly.
The Rangers and the United Nations troops held solid, but Remington recognized fear in those mud-streaked faces. The rain continued unabated and washed out gullies across the barren land the earthmovers had left.
“Sparrow Leader,” Remington called over the com.
“Sparrow Leader reads you.”
“Ready?”
“We were born ready.”
“On my go,” Remington stated quietly.
“Sparrow Unit is standing by.”
Remington watched the line taking shape. Despite the torrential downpour and the quagmire of mud pits that had formed in front of them, the cavalry of the Syrian army advanced. Tires and tank treads churned through the loose soil. Men marched beside them. The grinding roar of machinery came closer.
Someone opened fire. Remington didn’t know if it came from the defenders or the Syrians, but the shot escalated the approach into a fullfledged firefight. He remained behind cover and took aim with his M-4A1. He snapped off tri-bursts at the human targets. They fell, tumbled, and twisted away.
Bullets ripped across the heap of sandbags and through the air only inches from his ear. One slammed into his helmet and startled him. Controlling the fear that writhed within him, he shook the rain from his eyes and took aim again.
Syrian soldiers trailed the tanks, APCs, and mobile artillery pieces. They were exposed and knew it. Handfuls of them fell at a time; lifeless bodies and wounded were left behind. The advance was inexorable. Without the reinforcements, Remington knew his soldiers wouldn’t have been able to hold the city from the invaders.
Timing, he reminded himself. It’s all about the timing. He fired again and again. One of the soldiers he aimed at went down.
The trick, Remington knew, was to reshape the front line. Then he had to attack before the second wave followed. Once the Syrians had their full momentum up, the city could still be overrun.
“Sparrow Leader,” Remington called.
“Ready.”
“Hit ’em. Hit ’em hard.”
Immediately a dozen attack helos lifted up from the streets back in the middle of the city. They thundered by overhead and divided into two groups of six, then launched rockets and 20mm cannon rounds at the ends of the advancing line.
Devastated by the withering fire, giving in to their instincts for self-preservation, the units on the ends of the Syrian line pushed in toward each other, and the front lost a third of its width. The helos came under fierce attack. One of them exploded in midair, struck by a surface-to-air missile that rained down debris. Another lost its main rotor and went down, smashing against an APC before exploding and taking out the tank and several infantrymen.
Remington cursed. Even with Carpathia’s promise of still more machines and troops, losing hardware like the attack helos chafed him.
The second wave of Syrians formed but held their positions.
“Sparrow,” Remington called, “get out of there.”
The remaining helicopters swooped around and streaked back toward the city.
“Keep firing till I call for the retreat,” Remington ordered his men.
The first wave of Syrians kept coming. They smelled victory even though they took steady losses. All they had to do was secure an anchoring position. Then they’d be inside the city.
The second wave started forward.
“Fall back,” Remington ordered. “Fall back now.”
As one, the city’s defenders retreated from the forward line and ran into the city. Syrian bullets followed them. Some of the soldiers didn’t make it. Remington stumbled twice as rounds hammered his body armor. He went down after a third round struck, his face digging into the mud, then got back to his feet and ran harder.
Less than a minute later, the advancing line of Syrians reached the sandbags. The antipersonnel claymores opened up as the invaders reached them. Solid steel shot chopped into human flesh and tore it to pieces. Tankbuster bomblets blew apart the treads on some of the Syrian vehicles. The ones still capable of moving rolled into the sights of artillery teams.
Destruction opened up along the forward line. At the second line of defense, taking cover behind a section of a building wall that remained standing, Remington watched as his enemies died. Savage glee filled him. This was why he’d been born: to be a warrior, a winner, a survivor against all odds.
His talent for bringing death and mayhem to his enemies stood him in good stead. He loved his calling, and he embraced it wholly as he watched his counterattack take shape.
“Hound Leader,” Remington called.
“Hound Leader standing by.”
“You’re up.”
“Roger that. We’ll clean and set the table, sir. Count on us.”
“Artillery,” Remington went on, “light ’em up.” He ducked around the wall and shot a Syrian who burst into view. The enemy soldier took two more steps, then went down and didn’t get back up.
Across the front of the second line of defenders, laser target designators painted the enemy vehicles that milled around in confusion at the line of sandbags. TOW and Hawk missiles launched, taking out the targets in quick succession.
The Syrian survivors tried to pull back. The second wave had frozen in its tracks.
Then the Hound units swept by from the outskirts of the city, flying toward each other at speed. The six cargo helicopters crossed over the empty land behind the first-line Syrians and the empty space that separated them from the other troops hidden within the treeline. The Hound helos spewed bomblets, spreading hundreds of them over the space in less than a minute.
The bomblets were tankbusters and antipersonnel pressure mines. Remington had found a storehouse of Turkish military equipment and had put it to good use.
Syrian men and machines tried to retreat from the brutal attack that faced them. When they rolled back over or stepped on the mines, the vehicles blew their tires or their treads. Men died in bloody ruin, tattered by the shrapnel.
When they realized they were trapped, the Syrians tried to make use of the sandbags. Remington gave the order to detonate the plastic explosives they’d planted within some of the piles. The barrier vanished, and more of the enemy died.
“Not exactly playing by the Geneva Convention, are we?” Rebreanu asked over the com.
“I didn’t come out here to get my butt kicked,” Remington responded. “I came out here to win.” He stood and surveyed the battleground, watching as the Syrians died.
“Not going to ask if they want to surrender?”
“No,” Remington said. “I don’t want a mass of prisoners inside the city. We can’t look after them anyway.” He paused. “When those people have had enough, they can take their chances fleeing back to the main forces.”
The Syrian tanks and artillery located within the treeline continued firing, but they made fine targets for the laser painters as well. Three Syrian soldiers tried to dash back across the open land. Unfortunately for them, the mud had swallowed some of the bomblets. Two of the men blew up almost instantly. The third one made it almost halfway when his luck ran out.
All right, Remington thought, we’ve earned some distance and respect. What are you people going to do now?
39
Outside Sanliurfa
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 2105 Hours
Goose waited in the darkness. After the sun had set and the moon slid behind the cloud bank, he’d crept toward the city. Miller and Icarus trailed after him. The rain, which had been a blessing earlier because it had reduced visibility, turned the terrain treacherous. Thick mud sucked at his boots a
nd added several pounds to his feet. The extra weight also made traveling silently even harder.
Hostilities had come to a stop between the U.S. and UN forces within Sanliurfa and the Syrian forces outside the city. Fighting at night in the rain was risky. However, it perfectly masked efforts to get into the city. None of the forces on either side of the deadly no-man’s-land chose to keep lights on. Those only made men targets for snipers.
The problem was that Goose and the two men with him weren’t the only ones attempting to get into Sanliurfa. Instead of advancing toward the city in a straight line across the dangerous stretch of corpses and ragged earth, Goose had decided to circle around farther to the west. He noticed the shadows east of their position before they left the treeline.
Goose held a hand up and waved Icarus and Miller to ground.
“What’s wrong?” Miller whispered.
“Quiet,” Goose ordered. He used his peripheral vision to track the shadows he’d spotted through the falling rain. His M-4A1 slid easily into his hands. But using the rifle would immediately draw the attention of every Syrian soldier camped nearby.
Miller lay belly-down in the mud and didn’t move.
Icarus held up one hand and showed three fingers.
Goose waited a moment, checking the movement of the shadows. Then he nodded and held up three fingers. Three Syrian soldiers.
Almost effortlessly, Icarus pushed up into a crouch and slid a knife from his boot. The dulled matte finish didn’t gleam.
Goose passed his rifle back to Miller. “Hold that,” he told the chaplain. “Me and Icarus will be back in a minute.”
“What if you’re not?”
“Trust me. You’ll know about it. If this goes bust, hightail it to somewhere safe.” Goose pulled the knife from his harness and made certain his sidearm was secured in its holster. Then he stayed low and went forward, toward the three Syrians.
Local Time 2108 Hours
Goose moved slowly. In the dark, he knew he could remain almost invisible as long as he stayed low and didn’t move quickly. He took a fresh grip on the knife in his hand. The rain turned the handle slick.
Almost twenty feet away, moving parallel to him, Icarus remained hunkered down. Goose thought about how easily the man had taken on the role of assassin. There hadn’t been any time to think about it. Icarus had just shifted into killer mode without a second thought.
That was enough to give Goose pause. Then again, he realized he’d done the same thing. When it came to survival, people made choices quickly about living and dying.
The three Syrians carried backpacks. Goose figured they were loaded with plastic explosives. Something to provide a quick punch back at their enemies. The three men concentrated on watching in front of them, obviously expecting any trouble they might experience to come from the direction of the city.
Icarus waved his free hand to get Goose’s attention. Goose nodded at him. Icarus pointed to the man at the end of the Syrians, then at himself. The meaning was clear. Goose nodded again.
Without another gesture or word, Icarus rushed toward the Syrians. Goose did the same. When he reached the man he’d set his sights on, Icarus wrapped a hand around the man’s mouth to stifle any outcry, then slipped his knife between the man’s ribs. The Syrian soldier shuddered and died.
By then Goose had reached the man he had chosen. He clapped a hand over the man’s mouth as well, then drove the knife point into the back of the man’s neck at the base of the skull. It was a clean, immediate kill when the blade separated the spinal cord. The body sprawled in the mud.
After yanking his knife free, Goose moved forward with long strides. His knee quaked and throbbed, pain hammering at the inside of his head. He came up behind the third man, then saw the man’s head jerk backward.
Something warm and wet splashed across Goose’s face. As the Syrian suddenly went limp and fell, Goose knew the man had been shot.
“Down!” Goose told Icarus.
The younger man went to ground at once, barely beating Goose. Something zipped through the air over his head, and another bullet pocked the mud only inches from his hand.
None of the shots made a sound.
“Sniper,” Goose whispered to Icarus. “He’s using a silenced weapon. Move.”
Together, they headed back the way they’d come.
Local Time 2113 Hours
Miller was still in position where they’d left him. He gazed at them anxiously.
The pain in Goose’s knee felt like shark’s teeth grinding into his flesh and bone.
“Why aren’t we going on?” Miller whispered. “We’re practically to the city.”
“Because there are men hunting us out there,” Icarus said. Both men locked their gaze on Goose.
“That’s the way it is,” Goose said. He quickly recounted what had happened.
“Syrians?” Miller asked.
“Not with silenced rifles cycling subsonic rounds. They’re more like those men hunting us earlier,” Goose replied.
Miller sat down with his back to a tree. The fifteen-mile trek that had taken place throughout the day had almost done him in. He stayed active, but it was different when adrenaline spiked in a man’s system all day from being surrounded by enemies.
“Who’s sending those men?” Miller asked.
Goose didn’t answer. He didn’t want to lie, and he didn’t want Miller to know everything he knew.
“It doesn’t matter,” Icarus said. “We have to get around them if we’re going to survive.” He glanced at Goose. “And waiting isn’t going to make it any easier.”
Goose nodded. He took a sip of water, tasted the earthy flavor that came from refilling the LCE bladder in pools of rain, and got into motion. “We gotta get help if we’re going to get inside,” Goose said.
“How do you plan on doing that?” Icarus demanded.
“By letting Captain Remington know we’re out here.”
Icarus shook his head. “You’re a fool, Goose. Remington’s as much a part of this as those men out there hunting us.”
“I don’t believe that.” Goose knew he was being stubborn, and he knew that Cal Remington was following his own goals at the moment. Those goals, Goose was painfully aware, were different from his own. “The captain wouldn’t leave us out here to die.”
“He’s been sending you to the hot spots,” Icarus said. “He’s been expecting you to die. He had you under lockdown only a few hours ago. I’d say that Remington isn’t your greatest fan.”
Goose knew that was true. But he knew something else too. “Those men inside that city, they’re Rangers. We don’t leave a man behind. If they know we’re here, they’ll tell the captain. The captain won’t have any choice but to try to save us.”
Rain dappled Icarus’s tight features. “You put a lot of stock in this captain of yours.”
“Yes, sir. I do. I’ve worked with him for a long time.” Goose knew that if pressed, he wouldn’t have been able to say exactly when his and Remington’s paths had started to diverge. “It’s not just the captain I’m putting my faith in. It’s those Rangers inside as well.”
Icarus shook his head. Jagged lightning traced a white-hot vein across the sky.
“If you see another way of doing this,” Goose said, “I’m all ears.”
Miller looked from Goose to Icarus a few times. “Staying out here isn’t an answer. When morning comes, the Syrians are going to start moving again.”
“Once they do that,” Goose said, “they’ll flush us out of hiding. Come dawn, we’re not going to have a chance at all.”
Icarus gazed at the city.
Goose knew how the man felt. Safety was so close, but it was still a world away.
“How do you propose to signal them without giving away our position to the Syrians or to the men out there hunting us?” Icarus asked finally.
“I’m working on that,” Goose replied.
40
Downtown Sanliurfa
Sanliurf
a Province, Turkey
Local Time 2116 Hours
“We shouldn’t be up here,” Gary said softly.
Danielle ignored the cameraman as she swept the building on the other side of the street with a pair of night-vision binoculars she’d gotten from a black market dealer.
“They said being in the upper floors was dangerous.” Fear tightened Gary’s voice. “If a missile hits up here, or below, there’s a good chance we’ll get buried in the rubble.”
“I know. But we’re this close to a story. I can feel it.”
“That CIA guy isn’t the story OneWorld NewsNet wants. They want footage of the arrival of the UN troops.”
“We got that.” Danielle increased the magnification, trying desperately to find Cody within the room. She’d spotted him for a short time earlier. He’d been fearlessly-though she was more prone to think of him as drunkenly — staring out the window at the battlefield in front of the city. Cody made no effort to involve himself in the rescue of the city.
That’s because his agenda is somewhere else, Danielle told herself.
“They want more footage,” Gary said.
“We’ll get it.” Danielle started to wonder about the pressure her producer was putting on her. To her, adding footage to what they’d already gotten was just busywork. The world already knew that Nicolae Carpathia had been voted in as secretarygeneral and that he’d sent reinforcements to Sanliurfa.
As innocently as she could, Danielle had tried to send a question through channels as to why Carpathia had ordered that when so much of the rest of the world was just as chaotic. No answer had been forthcoming. None of the other news agencies speculated about that move either.
On the surface, Carpathia was doing a humane act by shoring up the defenses.
That’s on the surface, Danielle reminded herself. But she couldn’t help thinking of Lizuca Carutasu and the way she’d been murdered in Romania for digging into the relationship between Carpathia and Alexander Cody. The surface isn’t the story. It never is. She studied the darkened window. So what are you protecting here, Carpathia?
