Apocalypse Crucible (19 page)

The wind whistled through the trees and the rain shifted, coming in from the north now, blowing harder and turning colder.

“I’m serving aboard
Wasp
right now,” Delroy continued. Lightning flashed and thunder pealed. The rain ran across the muddy ground only inches from his face. “I had a good friend pass away the day before the—the—” he couldn’t even bring himself to say “the Rapture.” “—before the disappearances. You’d have liked Dwight Mellencamp. The chief was a good man.”

Taking a ragged, deep breath and feeling the cold, wet night air crawl into his lungs, Delroy pushed himself up to a kneeling position. He stared at his father’s headstone.

“Dwight’s body disappeared, Daddy. I was there when it happened. I saw it and I still don’t know what it was that I saw.” Delroy’s voice caught. “He was a Christian man. He and I had long talks about the Bible. He knew about the end times, too.”

Rain slid down Delroy’s face. The flashlight brought out the headstone in sharp relief. More of the flower petals ripped free and floated away on the runoff.

“With Dwight’s body disappearing along with the bodies of all those other people, I knew I had to come here. I didn’t have a choice. Revelation doesn’t say that people would disappear when the Rapture came. The book doesn’t mention that they’ll leave their clothes behind. It just says that God will call His church.”

Delroy’s voice quit for a moment before going on. “There’s so much that we didn’t know. I wish I had known it would happen like this. But they
are
called the mysterious ways of the Lord, aren’t they? Maybe He judged that the whole truth would wreak havoc in His church. I just don’t know what to think. Not about my part in all of this. With my head I believe in God, Daddy, and I believe that this
is
the Rapture, but I can’t seem to find that faith in my heart. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that at some point we should just
know.
”

Slowly, Delroy pushed himself to his feet. He took up the shovel and the flashlight. “I’ve got to see, Daddy. That’s all. I’ve just got to see.” Delroy paused. “I raised Terrence the best I could. Watched my boy become a man, and then watched that man walk off to become a warrior. He died in battle. He was a hero, a man to be remembered. Like you. You would have liked him, Daddy. You would have loved him. I hope—I hope that the two of you have met by now.”

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 are 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.