Apocalypse Dawn

by Mel Odom

  Turning, Goose sprinted back toward the LZ he had marked off for the team. The landing zone was on the flattest terrain available, but the smoke and dust hanging in the air lowered ground zero visibility drastically.

  “Phoenix Leader,” an unfamiliar voice called over the headset. “This is Excaliber Leader. We are at your twenty but can’t find the LZ. Repeat, we do not see the LZ.”

  “Affirmative, Excaliber. Phoenix has you in sight. We’re rolling out the red carpet.” Goose switched over to the frequency his team was using. “All right, mark it off. Pop smoke.”

  In response, preset smoke grenades detonated electronically, marking off a trapezoid-shaped LZ that Phoenix team had verified as being clear of large boulders, broken ridges, or other landing hazards.

  “Excaliber,” Goose called, “do you have the target LZ in sight now?” A heartbeat passed.

  “Affirmative, Phoenix. Excaliber has your LZ in sight. We’ll rendezvous at your twenty.”

  “Understood, Excaliber. I’ll be the Ranger with the big grin on his face.” Goose ran, heading for the LZ.

  “Incoming!” Hardin yelled.

  Instinctively, Goose went to ground. He held on to the M-4A1 with one hand and grabbed his helmet’s chin strap with the other. His face skidded across the hard-packed ground, losing hide as well as the kerchief masking his lower face. He breathed in and choked on the dust an instant before the artillery rounds collided with the terrain.

  The radio communications crackled and spat through Goose’s headset. Making sense of the garbled lines was difficult.

  “Where is that artillery crew?”

  “Don’t know, Blue Falcon Leader. We’re searching.”

  “Find them.” The Marine pilot cursed. “Those men and those transport helos are going to get blown to bits.”

  “I’m hit! I’m hit!”

  More artillery shells continued to land, chewing into the turf. Craters opened up in the LZ. One of the CH-46E helicopters took a direct hit while the group held back rather than charging into the LZ the Syrians had targeted.

  Peering up with his arm shielding his face, feeling the sting of the skinned cheek, Goose saw the helo sag drunkenly. Orange and black flames whooshed from the cargo door, blowing the group of Marines from the cargo space like flaming puppets. Their arms and legs pinwheeled as they fell at least seventy feet. There would be few—if any—survivors.

  The CH-46E was distinctive because of the twin rotors, one at either end of the fat-bodied aircraft. The model was primarily a cargo helicopter, giving it the CH designation, but could be used as a troop carrier. Originally, the CH-46 had been built to carry twenty soldiers, but increased armor and structural upgrades had cut that number to between eight and twelve men.

  “Phoenix Leader,” Bernhardt called.

  Goose barely heard the man over the garbled dialogue coming through the headset. “Go, Echo. You have Phoenix.”

  “We’ve got the artillery company in sight, Goose.”

  “Understood. Can you shut them down?”

  Battling the indefatigable pull of gravity, the damaged CH-46 slid toward the merciless ground. An instant later, the rotors chopped into the hard earth and shattered on contact. Shards of composite metal sliced through the air.

  “It’s no-man’s-land out there, Phoenix,” Bernhardt replied. “Our air support has us cut off.”

  “Blue Falcon Leader,” Goose called. “Can you see those Rangers?”

  “Negative, Phoenix,” the Marine pilot replied. “It’s duck soup down there. We’ve stayed true to our line of demarcation.”

  Goose thought furiously as the fierce shelling continued virtually unabated. If the Harrier pilots had been able to see through the smoke and dust to see Echo Company, they could have targeted the enemy artillery. “Echo, can you put a smoke round near the artillery?”

  “That’s pushing two hundred meters, Phoenix.”

  “Understood,” Goose replied. The M-203 grenade launcher’s accuracy was only good out to a hundred and fifty yards. “Put a round out there.”

  “Will do, Phoenix.”

  “Blue Falcon Leader, did you copy?” Goose asked.

  “Affirmative, Phoenix. Blue Falcon will be watching for smoke.”

  “Your target will be fifty yards south of the smoke,” Bernhardt said. “Mark—now!”

  Turning, Goose peered back across the border. A second later, a plume of violet smoke shot up from the ground, coloring the dust and smoke like ink from a startled squid.

  “Echo, Blue Falcon Leader marks your target designation and I have a verified lock,” the Marine pilot said. Target lock required laser spotting from another source. Goose guessed that one of the other Harriers or the Whiskey Cobras had pinpointed the target. “Pull your team back and take cover. Gonna be a big blast over in that twenty.”

  The Harrier heeled over in the air above Goose’s head, splintering sunlight for a moment, then diving back toward the battlefield. The pilot kept his deadly craft low, charging into the teeth of the artillery fire. Then a pillar of fire launched up from the ground whirling orange flames and black smoke from the Hellfire missile’s double detonation.

  The artillery fire stopped immediately.

  “Way to fire, Blue Falcon Leader!” Bernhardt called.

  “Phoenix, Excaliber is coming in.”

  “Come ahead, Excaliber. We’re clean and green as it’s going to get.” Goose pushed himself to his feet, feeling the weakness in his knee and shoulder.

  “Affirmative. We’ve got troops here that are ready to rock and roll.”

  “Goose! Goose!”

  Bill Townsend’s voice rolled out of the smoke and dust to Goose’s right.

  “It’s Dockery, Goose,” Bill said. Under the dust and blood, his face was ashen. “He’s hit.”

  Goose followed Bill as the thunder of the arriving CH-46Es filled the air overhead again. The pilots juked their helos around, bringing them down in a compact spread. Then the dust and smoke cleared in front of Goose. Seeing Dockery nearly took Goose’s breath away.

  Corporal Steve Dockery had eight years in as a Ranger and had seen some of the worst that the terrorist campaigns had to offer. He was a good man, a good soldier.

  Now Dockery sat on his knees in a mockery of obeisance. A two-inch-wide, six-foot-long shard of the downed helicopter’s shattered rotors impaled him, sticking through his back and nailing him to the ground in a crouching position. His assault rifle lay beside him. Blood colored the kerchief over his lower face. His hands gripped the piece of steel that jutted from his chest and into the earth between his knees. Crimson ran down his arms, darkening the sleeves of his BDUs.

  The man tried to speak. His mouth came open, but only blood poured out.

  Goose didn’t know why the soldier wasn’t already dead, but over the years he had seen men cling tenaciously to life because they were afraid there wasn’t anything afterward. His eyes made contact with Dockery’s.

  Dockery’s mouth moved again, pleading.

  Bill knelt beside the wounded man and took one of Dockery’s hands in his. “We’re gonna be okay, buddy,” Bill said, his voice unnaturally calm. “We’re gonna be okay. Just look up in the sky. Look at those helos coming in to us. We got help now. We’ll get you out of here.”

  Goose shouldered his rifle and dropped to one knee. He opened his medkit and took out an ampoule. Ripping the plastic away with his teeth, he stabbed the needle into a vein in Dockery’s arm and hit the plunger. He hoped the anesthetic was enough to knock the man out, but at the same time he felt bad that Dockery might not even be conscious the last few minutes of his life.

  Bill took out gauze and tried to stem the flow of blood around the wounds in the Ranger’s back and chest. “Sarge. Goose. I need help. Please.”

  “Excaliber, this is Phoenix,” Goose called, holding a bloody and shaking hand to his mouthpiece. “Are you prepared to take on wounded?”

  “Affirmative, Phoenix. Excaliber is ready, willin
g, and able to transport wounded back to Wasp. The cap’n has the ship’s hospital standing by if we can’t make use of local resources in Sanliurfa.”

  Not feeling in the least relieved, knowing that a great number of good men were going to be dead very soon and some were already dead, Goose looked back at Dockery. The Ranger’s eyes had glazed, but his breath still pulled at the kerchief covering his mouth. He was conscious, but barely so.

  Goose took some of the gauze Bill handed him. He took a deep breath and tried to steady his hands as he worked to staunch the bleeding. The shadows of the descending helicopters filtered through the swirling smoke and dust haze to cover them.

  “The shrapnel missed his heart and both lungs,” Bill said. “At least, I think it missed both—”

  When his friend’s words cut off abruptly, Goose looked up from Dockery’s back. Bill wasn’t on the other side of the wounded man. All that remained was a set of crumpled of BDUs, the LCE, the assault rifle, and gear.

  Alarm jarred through Goose. He’d only taken his eyes off Bill for an instant. There was no way Bill had time to get out of his clothes and then—then—then what? Take off across Turkey?

  The superstitious paranoia that Goose had grown up with as a child, part of that feeling stemming from stories of the Old Testament and part of it from all the tall tales of ghosts and monsters that lived in the Okefenokee Swamp around Waycross, Georgia, raised goose bumps across the back of his neck. He fisted the pistol grip of the M-4A1 and glanced around.

  “Bill?”

  “He … vanished,” Dockery croaked.

  Goose glanced at the wounded man, noting the pinprick-sized pupils, symptoms of the drugs in his system.

  “’S’truth, Sargh. Saw ‘im … disappear.”

  A dozen questions filled Goose’s mind. Before he had a chance to ask any of them, metal screamed overhead. He glanced up, spotting the black silhouettes of the helicopters through the dusk and smoke haze framed against the sun and the blue sky. Tears ran down his cheeks, brought on by the stabbing brightness of the sun.

  But then he saw at least half of the CH-46Es slide out of control across the sky. They collided with other helicopters, shredding rotors and sending deadly shrapnel through each other and the vulnerable troops inside.

  Then the troop transport ships rained from the sky like dying flies, breaking open and scattering troops and gear across the hardpan. In a handful of seconds, the relief effort sent by USS Wasp had become a broken necklace of casualties spread across the battlefield.

  United States of America

  Fort Benning, Georgia

  Local Time 1:20 A.M.

  Megan threw her upper body out across the roof’s edge. She’d moved before she’d thought about the action, and she knew that was the only thing that had saved Gerry Fletcher. She had never moved so quickly in her life. By some miracle, she managed to grab the boy’s left wrist and stop his plummet down the side of the building to the hard ground four stories below.

  Men cursed in the parking lot below, in stunned amazement as well as fear. Megan recognized those emotions because she felt them within herself as well. She couldn’t believe she’d caught the falling boy.

  At the same time, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep Gerry from falling. She didn’t have the mass or the strength. Her arm felt torn from the socket.

  The spotlights from the vehicles trained on her and Gerry, pinning her shadow and the boy’s against the side of the building in hard-edged relief. The MPs broke loose first, sprinting for the fire escape.

  “Somebody get up there!” Boyd Fletcher squalled. “She’s going to get that boy killed!”

  Megan tried to pull Gerry up but couldn’t. She lacked the upperbody muscle it would take to pull the boy up. At the same time she wondered who had brought Boyd Fletcher out into the parking lot. If the man hadn’t startled Gerry—

  But he did, she told herself. You’re dealing with that now. No! God, we’re dealing with this! You and me! You helped put Gerry out here on this roof tonight, and You’re going to help me get him back down!

  Metal rang as the MPs pounded up the stairs. “Hold on, ma’am!” one of them called. “Just hold on!”

  I am! Megan thought. God help me, I am! God, please help me!

  Megan could see an explosion of fear go off inside Gerry as he dangled above the waiting ground. Whatever he’d thought when he stepped off the roof, he’d clearly changed his mind now. He kicked and whipped his other arm up to grab hold of her forearm.

  “Pull me up, Mrs. Gander!” the boy pleaded. “Pull me up! I don’t want to fall! Please don’t let me fall!”

  At least we’re on the same page now, Megan thought. She pulled at her arm. Abruptly, she slid across the roof’s edge. Her shirt buttons rasped against the rough surface. No! God, no!

  She kicked her legs back and barely managed to stop herself from continuing to skid over the edge. From the sound of their steps on the metal treads, the MPs had reached the second landing now. She breathed as deeply as she could, forcing herself to be calm.

  “Somebody stop her!” Boyd Fletcher yelled. “She’s going to get my son killed!”

  My son. Megan heard the words, but she didn’t believe it. Boyd Fletcher hadn’t ever called Gerry by his name in her hearing before. He’d referred to the boy as a possession; the same as saying “my car.”

  Pain burned through her arm. She focused on Gerry. His eyes were wide with panic. His fingernails clawed into her arm, leaving bloody furrows. Her own fear allowed her to ignore the burning pain of the deep scratches, as if it were someone else’s flesh that was getting torn.

  “Mrs. Gander! Mrs. Gander! Please help me!”

  “I am, Gerry. I am.” Megan tried to keep the tears from her eyes but she couldn’t. She was going to drop him. She’d never be able to hold him till help arrived. He seemed to get heavier with each passing second, a weight like a blacksmith’s anvil kicking and yelling at the end of her arm.

  “Stop her!” Boyd Fletcher yelled. “She’s going to kill him! She’s crazy!” He struggled, trying to break away from the two MPs who had stayed with him, even though his hands were cuffed behind his back. One of the MPs slapped his stick at the backs of Fletcher’s legs, knocking the man into a crumpled kneeling position. He leaned down, pinning Fletcher with one hand against the small of his back.

  Fletcher screamed curses.

  “Calm down, Private,” one of the MPs ordered.

  To Megan the voices, even Fletcher’s yells, seemed like they came from a million miles away.

  “Mrs. Gander!” Gerry hung on to her desperately.

  Megan slid another couple inches, getting dangerously close to losing her scant purchase at the roof’s edge. “God,” she shouted, “please help me! Please help me with this!”

  But there was no answer.

  There had never been an answer when she had asked for help. Sometimes, most of the time, she had to admit, the situations she prayed over had gotten better. Bill told her that God acted in the world, gave signs that built faith if people trusted enough to look for them. Even in the Old Testament, when God had spoken to His prophets on a regular basis, those ancient men had struggled more to disbelieve and discount than to accept. Bill had suggested that was why idolatry had sprung up, that man had a self-defeating need to reach out to things that didn’t exist rather than admit God’s love was there for them.

  Idols couldn’t hold a person accountable for his or her actions. A person couldn’t break faith with an idol. An idol was a fabrication, a thing a person chose to believe in because she could exercise some control over the idol by choosing to worship it or not worship it.

  Blame could be placed on an idol, payoffs withheld from that idol, a new idol found. But what about God’s love? Megan asked herself frantically as she slid another inch. Where is His hand in this? I’m going to lose this boy, God! I’m not strong enough to hold him! Please! You can see this! You have to be able to see this! Help me!

&
nbsp; “Mrs. Gander!” Gerry slipped another inch.

  Megan’s grip on the boy’s hand loosened. Her hand grew numb and ached miserably from her sustained effort. Goose could have pulled the boy back up. She felt certain of that. Goose was strong, stable. He could handle anything the world threw at him and keep going. She had seen that.

  Gerry slipped again, and Megan slid forward across the roof’s edge. She knew that if she didn’t release him his weight was going to drag her into a free fall with him. Part of her—the animal part that lived in the lowest recesses of her brain, still afraid of fire and storms and any kind of change—screamed at her to let go. No one could blame her for saving herself. She had already risked her life. Saving Gerry Fletcher was impossible—Nothing is impossible with God’s help—it would have been better if she had missed him—Why didn’t I miss him?

  Gerry’s hand slipped from her forearm, no longer able to hang on, his clasp sliding from her arm to her hand.

  “Mrs. Gander!”

  “I’ve got you, Gerry. I’ve got you. Just hang on. Just hang on a moment longer.”

  The MPs were on the final landing, headed for the rooftop. They were big and strong. They could hold Gerry and make him safe. All they had to do was—

  “We just have to hang on a few more seconds.” Megan’s arm felt like fire had invaded the joint. “Just a little longer.” Tears blurred her vision and she knew she was crying. God! Why? Why have You abandoned us?

  The blood from the scratches along her forearm threaded down her hand and onto Gerry’s. The grip they shared became slick and uncertain.

  “I’m falling!” Gerry screamed. “I’m falling!”

  “No,” Megan said, stifling the urge she had to scream as well. “I’ve got you, Gerry. I’ve got you.” She felt the rooftop shake under her as the MPs raced toward them. “Just don’t let go. Don’t let go, Gerry.”

  Thin as a whisper, silent as snow, gone in the blink of an eye, Gerry’s hand slipped through hers.

  “No!” Megan screamed as she felt his fingers glide through the blood that coated her hand.

  Gerry wailed in terror. And he fell, plummeting toward the unyielding concrete in front of the apartment building.