Apocalypse Crucible (28 page)

Still, the image of Gerry Fletcher plummeting from the rooftop only to disappear a heartbeat before he hit the ground bounced crazily through her mind. She had seen the boy disappear. Spotter lights manned by MPs had held the boy in their glare as he fell. Gerry was there one instant, and gone the next. Jenny had pointed out that God had taken Gerry then to prevent him from experiencing real death.

But Gerry experienced the horror of the fall, didn’t he, God? You let him feel that, didn’t You?
Megan didn’t mean to be so angry, but the longer she sat in the waiting room—not knowing if Leslie was alive or dead—the more frustrated and hurt she became.

What surprised her was the aching feel of loneliness that pummeled her. She’d never felt particularly close to God, not the way Bill Townsend talked about, but she hadn’t known she was so far away either. She missed Bill. If he hadn’t disappeared in Turkey, he’d still be with Goose. Having Bill watching Goose’s back would have provided Megan with an ease of mind. Now everything she cared about was scattered. Goose, Joey, Chris—all of them gone from her so she couldn’t immediately make sure they were all right. She felt broken and shattered and barely held back the tears.

What did I do, God? What did I do that was so bad?

“Mrs. Gander.”

Startled, Megan looked up at the young MP on her left, realizing that it wasn’t the first time he’d called for her attention.

“Yes, Private,” she responded in a voice tight with emotion.

“I was asking if you’d like some more coffee, ma’am.” He pointed to the empty paper cup she held in her hands, then held up his own.

“I was about to go get some myself. Thought if you could use some more, I could get it for you.”

Megan handed the private the cup. Getting her coffee would give him something to do. There was no reason for both of them to sit here while the anxiety built up.

“Yes. Please.”

The MP took the cup from her. “I’ll be right back.”

Megan nodded.

The private glanced at the other MP, who nodded only slightly to indicate that he was awake and knew he was flying solo for a time.

Coffee wasn’t going to make Megan feel any better and she knew it, but holding the cup at least gave her something to do with her hands, and the warmth would steep some of the chill out of her fingers. She wished she could hold Chris. Even though he was five and big enough to run through the house with a cape from an old Halloween costume as fast as any other superhero in the neighborhood, he still consented to being held by Mom sometimes. Occasionally, though only when he least expected it because he still fought against it, he fell asleep in her arms while they watched cartoons.

The thought of never having an evening like that again cut through Megan. She couldn’t remember how much time had passed since Chris had last fallen asleep in her arms. Her caseload as a counselor on base had taken up so much of her family time that sometimes days had seemed to blend into each other, becoming seamless. Family evenings often got hectic all by themselves, but the addition of the work she brought home cut into those precious hours. Before being deployed to Turkey, Goose had made the most of those times, playing with Chris in the backyard when it wasn’t raining or too cold.

Joey had, as usual, stayed in a funk, going to his room and separating himself with a wall and loud music. Even if Megan hadn’t spent years as an experienced counselor, she would have seen the jealousy that Joey had for his younger brother. A little jealousy was normal, but Joey had let his eat at him. He hadn’t shown those feelings to Chris, though, except for times when he built a little more distance between himself and his little brother. Becoming a teenager was hard enough, and the added strain of a little brother coming along so late in life had taken a toll as well.

If his father had stayed in his life after the divorce,
Megan thought,
maybe Joey could have better handled Chris’ birth.
Then she stopped, bringing herself up short. Her next leap of guilt would be to question her judgment about the divorce, whether everything was her fault.

Her first husband hadn’t involved himself in Joey’s life or hers for years, and he had always claimed he’d divorced her because she had never made space or time for him.
What if that was true? What if the divorce
was
all my fault?

Marrying Goose had trapped him in trying to raise another man’s son. At first, Goose had acted uncertain about that responsibility, and Megan’s own inability to simply let go and trust Goose with Joey hadn’t helped. When things were good, Goose was Joey’s best bud.

But when things had turned for the worse and Joey was a problem in school or around home, Megan had insisted on handling the discipline herself. Discipline was her responsibility as Joey’s mother. She hadn’t wanted to push that chore off on her husband as she’d seen so many other wives do with their children. And Goose didn’t handle things the way she did. Goose was sometimes too direct, too honest. He let people know how he felt about something instead of hinting at it.

After living with Goose these past eight years, she knew her husband to be fair and just, but she’d made excuses, telling herself that Joey wasn’t used to having a man around the house. For a while, she hadn’t let Goose have a free hand with Joey, and that choice had limited the relationship they could have had now.

I made a mistake there, too,
she told herself.

By the time she realized what she was doing and that Goose had followed her lead, all of their relationships were pretty much in place. But it was—for the most part—quiet, and they’d made the best of it. Actually, judging from so many cases she saw in her office, they’d gotten through the blended-family issues better than most.

The family dynamic had worked well enough until Chris was born. Then Goose stepped into the role of father with a natural ease that had proven surprising. Megan had noticed the change, the closeness between Chris and Goose, at once. There was no distance between Chris and his father. Megan hadn’t stood between them in any way. Goose wouldn’t have let her, and she’d never felt the need to protect Chris the way she had Joey. She knew that Joey had seen the difference, too.

Blended families, Megan knew from studies as well as from experience, were the hardest things to make work. Roles and rules seemed to operate on a sliding scale, shifting constantly on a day-to-day basis as everyone concerned tried to find commonalities, a set of rules they could all live by, and goals to make it worthwhile. The stress increased when the natural triangles that occurred worked two-on-one against each other.

Joey had lost a step in the family. Nothing Megan or Goose could do could have prevented that from happening, and she knew that now as she took herself apart with every piece of psychological ammunition she could lay hands to. Watching Leslie injure herself brought Megan’s insecurities to the forefront until it was almost too much to deal with. All her own shortcomings, all her failures, seemed strung together in Megan’s eyes. She’d pieced them together with quiet and thorough skill as she awaited word on Leslie Hollister and remembered the events in the room again and again.

When it came down to it, Joey wasn’t an only child anymore. After eleven years with his mother and three years with Goose, Joey had been forced to make room for his brother since Chris’s birth.

Goose had tried to stay close to his stepson, but being raised in the country outside Waycross, Georgia, then spending his next years as a career soldier, he lacked experiences he could share with Joey. Joey had grown up in the city, in malls and arcades, in a high school that had more students than the whole populace of the small town Goose had grown up in. If they weren’t involved in sports events, they hadn’t had much in common.

It’s all your fault,
Megan told herself.
You let Joey slip through your fingers. Now he’s out there somewhere, all alone and hurting.

Arms aching for Chris, wishing she could listen to his soft breathing and know that he was all right, Megan looked out the hospital window and wondered where Joey was. Her family was missing in action, and she’d never before needed the comfort and support they could offer so very much.

The private returned with two cups of coffee. Megan took one and thanked him politely. She held the cup in both hands, feeling the warmth and knowing the liquid was too hot to drink for the moment. Wearily, she closed her eyes, breathing out to clear her lungs and working on a relaxation technique she taught in classes. The effort didn’t work. Leslie Hollister, bleeding and still, lay waiting in her mind’s eye.

United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0537 Hours

Goose stood in the center of the security office and watched the security cameras the Ranger team used to manage surveillance all over the hotel. Litters of wounded continued to flow into the building, get marked for surgical attention by the triage teams, and get carried away to the appropriate waiting areas.

As he watched, Goose silently prayed that numbness would kick in and take away the horror and frustration that filled him. A soldier best served on a battlefield when somewhat detached from his immediate emotions. He’d experienced the battlefield calm several times before, but those times were generally during the heat of an engagement, not in the aftermath. Once a battle was over, the true cost of the action showed up on the bottom line in spent lives and wounded.

Later, he knew, other squads would bring in their dead. Detail leaders would assemble lists of Killed In Action and Missing In Action. Then the process of sorting the KIAs and MIAs out from the new wreckage of the city would begin.

Artillery continued to boom and fill the hotel with noise, but the frequency had dropped. Captain Mkchian and the Turkish artillery units obviously wanted to make a definitive statement to the retreating Syrian troops. But the ammunition they used was precious and possibly irreplaceable before the Syrians gathered for their next attack. All communications over the channels open to him indicated that the Syrians were in full retreat.

The CIA agent, Winters, sat in his chair. He continued to hold the chemical ice pack to his jaw. Beads of condensation ran down his neck.

Since Cody had appeared in the hallway, Winters hadn’t said a word to Goose. Maybe he was confident that Cody could get him released.
Or he’s afraid,
Goose thought. He didn’t know which.

Barnett stood behind Winters and leaned against the wall. His presence next to the smaller man remained a constant threat, but Winters didn’t acknowledge that either.

The CIA team was hiding something, Goose knew, and his mind kept prying at what it might be. Icarus’s abduction, the satellite phone call that might have precipitated the Syrian strike into Turkey, and the game of cat and mouse playing out through Sanliurfa’s war-torn streets danced through Goose’s mind.

Icarus was a key player. Keeping the rogue agent out of CIA hands was important for the moment.

“First Sergeant.”

Goose looked at the Ranger private manning the security station. “Yeah.”

“Captain Remington is here.” The private pointed at one of the screens.

Crossing the distance to the security desk, Goose looked at the screen. Electronics teams had moved some of the security cameras outside the building when they’d converted the hotel into a makeshift hospital. The fields of view overlapped so no blind spots existed.

Captain Remington stepped from the Hummer’s passenger seat and walked purposefully into the building. The private made the necessary adjustments to the camera feeds to stay with Remington.

Interest and a little trepidation thrummed inside Goose. The captain hadn’t mentioned that he planned on visiting the hospital.

Remington hadn’t communicated on the way over either. Usually the captain stayed with the nerve center even after the close action was finished. And usually nearly every move Remington made Goose knew ahead of time, either by knowing the man or by being kept informed.

Remington’s presence now was a surprise.

Somebody bumped the table stakes,
Goose guessed. He hadn’t relayed the information that he had one of Cody’s agents in custody. That fact wasn’t a salient point during the battle for the city. Cody and his team were an internal problem, small when compared to the effort required to hold Sanliurfa.