Apocalypse Unleashed (2 page)

He glanced around and found a blanket on a small pallet in the corner of the room. He let go of the girls long enough to retrieve the blanket, then shook it out and wrapped it around them.

Flames spat and cracked like live things. The smoke was now so thick that simply looking from one side of the room to the other was almost impossible.

“Hold on to the blanket.” Goose held the cloth over their faces and tried to get them to understand. “Hold on.”

Neither of the girls moved.

Feeling panicked by the increasing heat in the room and his own vision starting to go in and out of focus, Goose took one of the younger girl’s hands and put it on the edge of the blanket.

“Hold on,” he repeated.

She grasped his meaning and wrapped her fingers in the blanket’s edge.

“Good,” Goose said and started coughing. Tears blurred his vision. He started the girls back toward the wall of flame that filled the door.

They froze at once. Goose knew they’d figured out what they were going to have to do and weren’t happy with it. He pulled the blanket down over their faces.

“Hold on,” he said. “Just hold on.”
God, if You’re listening today, please help me get these girls out of here.
He prayed, but it seemed like his faith hadn’t been as strong as it should have been lately. He pulled the girls toward the door.

At that moment, the ceiling gave way and the roof of the house collapsed. Everything rushed down to fill the room, and a heavy weight crashed against Goose’s shoulders.

Local Time 2106 Hours

“Which house did Goose go into?” Danielle Vinchenzo swung from the passenger seat of the Land Rover before it came to a full stop. The tires crushed the baked earth of the dirt roadway that cut through the heart of the village.

“That one.” The driver pointed. “The one on fire.”

Danielle raked the houses and tried to figure out which one was “that one.” It was hard. The houses were all on fire. She turned to her cameraman, a young man in a concert T-shirt and shorts who was scrambling from the Land Rover’s rear deck with a camera over one shoulder.

“Are you ready?” Danielle smoothed her blouse and combed fingers through her short dark hair.

“Shouldn’t we be helping evacuate the people?” the cameraman asked.

“Believe me, Gary,” she said, “we’d only be in the way. Goose and his men know what they’re doing, and they’re much better at it than we would be. We’re going to do the guys here more good by letting the world know what they’re facing and that they need help. Now get that camera on me.”

“Get out from in front of the fire.” The cameraman settled the camera on his shoulder. “You’re going to be nothing but a shadow with that directly in the background.”

Danielle shifted to the side, took a deep breath, and exhaled the fear and anxiety of the last few minutes.

“Ready?” Gary asked.

“Ready.” She held up a hand and counted down. “Three, two, one.” Her hand fell to her side. “This is Danielle Vinchenzo of OneWorld NewsNet. As you can see behind me, we’re at ground zero of a recent attack in Sanliurfa Province in Turkey. The United States Army’s 75th Regiment out of Fort Benning, Georgia, is presently engaged in trying to keep back the encroaching Syrian military forces threatening to invade Turkey.”

Something in one of the houses blew up. Flaming debris lit the sky like a Fourth of July fireworks display. Men yelled, and someone screamed in terror.

“First Sergeant Samuel Gander, whom you’ve gotten to know through my previous broadcasts, is commanding a resupply convoy to Harran. The United States Army entrenched here has established observation points throughout southern Turkey for field spotters. Since U.S. forces have been in Sanliurfa, they’ve been under constant attack from Syria.”

One of the army Hummers rocketed by and closed on the exploded house. Rock and loose dirt sprayed from under the locked tires.

“I got wounded!” someone cried. “I got wounded! I need a medic for these people!”

Focus on your job,
Danielle told herself.
A reporter helps most by revealing where help is needed.

“Only moments ago,” Danielle went on, “Sergeant Gander’s scouts spotted this village blazing.” She turned dramatically to gesture at the houses. “Although the origin at this point remains unconfirmed, this appears to be an attack made by one of the local warlords. The warlords have torn through towns and villages in an effort to provision themselves. Water and food are in short supply.”

A Ranger corporal Danielle had gotten to know over the last few days barked orders at soldiers. They quickly formed a line and kept the villagers back from the worst of the burning houses.

“Since the mysterious event that caused nearly a third of the earth’s population to disappear weeks ago,” Danielle said, “the world has been in turmoil. I know that you—wherever you are—have gone through the same kind of turmoil these men now face. But I doubt many of you have the enemy beating on your front door.”

Below the camera’s view frame, Danielle pointed toward the line of burning houses. The cameraman swung instantly in that direction. She continued with the voice-over.

“In addition to the peacekeeping efforts they’ve been providing here,” Danielle said, “the 75th Rangers have also set up triages and camps to take care of the wounded and survivors of the Syrian SCUD attacks. But the army troops are hard-pressed and spread thin. Eighteen-and twenty-hour days are taking their toll.”

“Please,” a man called in heavily accented English as he staggered into the street. “My daughter. You must help me find my daughter.”

The cameraman picked up the man as he stumbled out of the shadows. He was covered in ashes and disheveled. Blood leaked from a cut over his eye.

Two of the Rangers approached the man. One of them held his assault rifle centered on the man’s chest. Frightened, the man raised his hands high above his head. The other Ranger quickly threw the man to the ground on his stomach and locked his arms behind his back.

“Please,” the man begged. “My daughter was in the house when we were bombed.”

Danielle spoke quickly. At home, the scene could easily be misinterpreted. “Due to the constant threat of Syrian militia, terrorists that have targeted the Turkish government for their pro-America stance, and the warlords, the Rangers aren’t able to let their guards down. Everyone outside their tightly knit unit is suspect.”

“How old’s your daughter?” The Ranger frisked the man quickly, then looked up at his teammate and shook his head. The other Ranger lowered his weapon.

“Seventeen,” the man wailed. “She’s only seventeen.”

“All right. Stay calm. We’re gonna help you find her.” The Ranger helped the man to his feet. “Which house?”

The man pointed to a house that had flames shooting twenty feet and more above it. More flames gushed from the windows and chewed into the house’s exterior.

“There,” the man said. “That one.”

“Ain’t nothing alive in that house,” one of the Rangers said.

Danielle silently agreed, but she knew she was racking up dead air on the newscast. “Even responding as quickly as the Rangers did, there isn’t much they’ve been able to do here.”

Suddenly a young woman sprinted across the open space, screaming. Both Rangers brought up their weapons. A cold knot of fear formed in Danielle’s stomach as she grew afraid she was about to witness the young girl’s death. She couldn’t fault the soldiers; they were in a land of hostiles.

“It’s all right,” the man shouted. “It’s my daughter!” He rushed forward and threw his arms around the girl, lifting her from her feet in his joy.

“What happened here?” one of the Rangers asked.

The man put his daughter down and turned to the soldiers. “It was the bandits. They came and they bombed the town.”

“They didn’t take anything?” the Ranger asked.

“No. Nothing. They just started attacking the village. Most people were already in bed. We had no chance to fight back.”

Danielle’s mind churned that new information into a working hypothesis. She didn’t like where her instincts were leading her.

Evidently the Ranger’s thoughts were following the same track as Danielle’s. He turned from the father-daughter reunion and put a hand to the ear-throat communications device he wore.

“Where’s Sergeant Gander?” he asked. He waited a moment; then his head swiveled in the direction of one of the hardest-hit homes. “Are you sure he went inside?”

Danielle stared at the whirling inferno that the house had become. No one could have walked through that fire, and if they had, she feared they weren’t coming back.

The corporal and his friend ran toward the building. Two young girls covered in a flaming blanket burst through the doorway. As one, the nearby soldiers grabbed the two girls and stripped the flaming blanket from them. Other soldiers beat embers and flames from their clothing.

“Where’s the soldier that went in after you?” one of the Rangers asked.

The girl shook her head.

“She don’t speak English,” another Ranger said.

The corporal grabbed his Kevlar vest, yanked on it, then pointed back to the burning house. The younger girl nodded, obviously getting the context.

“Good guy,” the girl said.

The corporal smiled. “That’s right. That’s our designation. Good guy.”

The young woman kept pointing toward the house.

Looking at the flames, Danielle knew there was no way anyone could live through that. If First Sergeant “Goose” Gander was inside that house, she felt certain that he wasn’t coming back out.

At that moment, the house’s roof collapsed. Flames and smoke belched out of the windows and the open door. Rangers started to run toward the house.

“Sergeant Gander’s inside the house,” one of them said hoarsely, and that brought them all. “We gotta get him out.”

“Back up,” a grizzled veteran squalled.

“But First Sergeant Gander is in there!” someone shouted.

“And it’s already too late. Stay back. We don’t want to lose anyone else.”

2

Village—Designation South 14, U.S. Army Rangers
Seven Klicks North-Northeast of Harran
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 2109 Hours

Goose’s senses swam. He knew he was supposed to get up, but movement was hard. Then fire bit into his left shoulder and galvanized his resolve. When he opened his eyes, the smoke was almost too thick for him to see through. Coals danced and gleamed along exposed wooden surfaces.

A flaming timber lay across his back. He wedged the M-4A1 under the timber with the buttstock braced squarely against the floor. He curled his body and shoved, forcing the beam from his shoulders. When he finished, there was no breath left in him. He tried to get to his feet and failed. He was going to die there.

Suddenly, that didn’t seem so bad. His youngest son—Chris, only five years old—had disappeared with all the rest of the children in the world. If Megan was right, God had taken Goose’s son. And there wasn’t anything he could do about that.

None of it made sense.

“Sergeant.”

Goose coughed and wheezed, unable to find any air in the room. His lungs felt like they were already on fire. But he recognized the voice.

“Sergeant, you’ve got to get up,”
Corporal Joseph Baker said.

You’re dead,
Goose wanted to say.
I buried you weeks ago.
The image of Baker’s torn body, mangled by a fragmentation grenade, had haunted Goose’s sleep nearly every night.

“Get up, Sergeant. It’s not your time to die.”

It wasn’t yours either, Corporal.

“How do you think Megan will feel to learn you just lay down and died?”

Goose knew the answer to that. Somehow, in spite of everything that had happened, she’d found the strength to keep going and to believe in God more fiercely than she ever had before. He’d heard it in her voice. Even if God forgave him for quitting, Goose knew Megan never would. He’d promised her on the day he married her that he would never give her less than what she deserved.