Apocalypse Crucible (2 page)

Goose pounded up the fire escape. Despite the cortisone shots he’d been given for the pain and inflammation, he felt the weakness in his knee. The pain had dulled to bearable, but his movements felt mushy and a little uncertain. So far the limb had held beneath him. He forced himself to go on, reaching the second-floor landing and hauling himself around to continue up. “How many vehicles?”

“Thirty or forty. Maybe more. Hard to say with all the dust they’re stirring up. Daybreak’s an hour away. Probably get a better look then.”

Unless they’re in the middle of us by that time,
Goose couldn’t help thinking. Despite the coolness that usually came with the fading sun in the evenings, perspiration beaded on his forehead and ran down into his eyes. He knew he was running a slight fever from the inflammation in his knee. The fever, like the pain, was familiar. He often felt it when he was pushing himself too far, too fast.

But that was the pace that dealing with the Syrians required. During the last two days, the Syrian army and air force had harried them mercilessly, probing and exploring the strength of the U.S. forces’ hold on the city. The battalion’s primary assignment from the Joint Chiefs was to hold the line against the Syrians in Sanliurfa while the cities of Ankara and Diyarbakir resupplied and got reinforcements.

Goose switched the headset to another frequency. As first sergeant, his personal com unit came with auxiliary channels that he used to communicate with other divisions of the Ranger companies. “Control, this is Phoenix Leader.”

“Go, Leader,” Captain Cal Remington’s smooth voice answered immediately. If he’d just been shaken from slumber, his words showed no trace of it.

“We’ve got movement.” Goose was currently the second-ranking officer among the companies since the first lieutenant had been killed in the border clash. Remington had chosen not to fill that post and kept Goose in his present position of sovereign command after him. Goose had more years experience as a soldier than any other man in the unit—most of those years with Remington, first as a costaff sergeant and later as first sergeant after Remington completed Officer Candidate School.

“That’s what I heard. I’m on my way there. Be with you in two.”

“Yes, sir,” Goose replied. Only slightly winded from running full tilt up three flights of switchback stairs in full gear, he reached the rooftop landing and stayed low. He switched back to the battlefield channel. “Eagle One, this is Phoenix Leader.”

“Go, Leader.”

“I’m at your twenty.”

“Come ahead, Leader. Heard you coming up the fire escape. Eagle Three confirmed your ID before you reached the first landing.”

The thought that a sniper, even one his Rangers, had placed him in rifle crosshairs—even for the few seconds necessary to identify him—made Goose uneasy. Friendly fire wasn’t, and all too often it was initiated by fatigued troops stressed to the breaking point from living in fear.

The U.S. Rangers—accompanied by remnants of the Turkish Land Forces and the United Nations Peacekeeping teams that had survived the brutal attack along the border—had lived under those conditions since they’d retreated to Sanliurfa. The Turkish army, under Captain Tariq Mkchian, and the U.N. Peacekeeping teams, led by Colonel John Stone, backed the Rangers’ efforts. Those troops hadn’t fared any better than Goose’s own. During the last few days, Captain Remington had proven to the two commanders that the Rangers were far better suited to the urban brawl that the Syrian army was forcing upon them than their own units. It had been a long, arduous fight, Goose knew, but Remington was a man who had consistently proven he could get his way.

During the last two days, scouting units had tagged and made contact with Syrian scouts pushing into the area. With the world in chaos from all the disappearances, the Syrian government had chosen to take as much land as possible before the world returned to some semblance of the status quo.

Goose kept his head low as he hauled himself up onto the rooftop. He glanced automatically to the north, east, and west.

For the most part, Sanliurfa was dark. With the blessing of the Turkish army, Captain Remington had imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the city in an effort to control the looting. So far, because Sanliurfa was going to be offered as a sacrificial lamb to the invading Syrians while defenses in Ankara and Diyarbakir to the northeast and northwest were shored up and hardened, no one in the Turkish government had seen fit to tell the United States fighting men that they couldn’t die in their places.

Pockets of soft golden light marked civilians gathered around lanterns or campfires. Looters moved among them, too, a reminder that primitive impulses lurked just below the surface of most people. The fear and uncertainty those people had experienced had brought those old instincts to the forefront.

The Syrian air force had made an unexpected raid the night before that had resulted in a number of casualties. Goose could make out the darker cavities in the city where that strike had compounded the destruction of the SCUD missile strikes that had hammered Sanliurfa in the opening minutes of the undeclared war. The Syrian fighters last night had mainly targeted Sanliurfa Airport, finishing off what the SCUD attacks had started. The enemy pilots had also targeted homes and businesses, areas where the U.S. forces had gathered to relax or sleep while off duty. A third of the city lay in ruins.

Syrian snipers had kept the perimeter guards busy as well, killing nineteen more soldiers and wounding forty-three. The Rangers and marine snipers had confirmed twenty-two kills among the Syrian snipers themselves, but no one took any solace in that. Compared to U.S. casualties and the two hundred and twelve confirmed civilian lives lost to bombs, the Syrians had come out on top during that attack. Goose was pretty sure their body counts were reasonably accurate, despite the carnage from the initial air strikes. Search-and-rescue teams could tell the difference between the newly dead and the early kills because the bodies were fresh as opposed to those that had lain there decomposing since the first attack. The wounded that night numbered over eight hundred, most of those also civilian.

Before the Syrian attack, two hundred and eighty thousand people had lived in Sanliurfa. With the addition of the Ataturk Baraji Dam, named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, as part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, the city had grown by leaps and bounds. Wealth and privilege had flowed into Sanliurfa, and it was no surprise that the Syrians wanted to capture the city and create a psychological advantage in their undeclared war.

Turning his attention to the south-southeast, Goose took his 10x50 binoculars from the front pack attached to his Load Carrying. Equipment harness. He dialed in the magnification, moving the binoculars slowly to where the Syrian advance stood out against the dark horizon. They stirred up gray-brown dust clouds as they traveled. There was no mistaking the blocky lines of the Soviet-made tanks and APCs.

“Do you think this is it?” Mitchell asked. He hunkered down beside Goose and kept one hand clamped over the pencil mike of his headset so his voice wouldn’t be broadcast over the com. “Do you think they’re going to try to rout us tonight?”

“Not in the dark.” Goose put confidence in his voice. That was part of his job as first sergeant, to make the troops believe there was never a situation he hadn’t seen, never an enemy he couldn’t outguess. “On a hit-and-git mission, darkness is their friend. But trying to take over an urban area filled with hostiles—they’ll want the light of day.”

“So what’s up with this?”

“Pressure,” Goose responded. “Just knocking on the door and letting us know they’re still out there. This is designed to keep the kettle primed and boiling hot. They can put a few men in the field and keep this whole city awake at night.”

“Still means they’ll be coming soon.”

“Affirmative,” Goose said. Keeping the confidence of the troops also meant never lying to them.

“How far do you think they’ll push it tonight?”

“As far as they can.” Goose surveyed the approaching vehicles. They weren’t coming with any speed, and maybe that was a good thing.

Lowering the binoculars, he glanced at the Chase-Durer Combat Command Automatic Chronograph he’d gotten as a Father’s Day gift from Megan and the kids. He needed a watch in the field, and though the timepiece was an expensive one, Megan had insisted on giving it to him, telling him that she knew he took care of his gear. She also knew that he would never check the time without thinking of her and Joey and Chris.

“They’re stopping,” Mitchell said.

Goose glanced back up and saw that the advancing line of military armor had indeed stopped. “Spotter teams,” he called over the headset.

When the spotter teams acknowledged, Goose said, “Eyes on the skies. In case this is a feint for another aerial attack.”

The spotter/sniper teams affirmed the order.

“Phoenix Leader.”

Goose recognized Remington’s voice at once. “Go, Control. You have Leader.”

“Tach Two, Leader.”

“Affirmative, Control. Oracle, this is Phoenix Leader.”

Oracle was the com designation for Second Lieutenant Dan Knoffler, who was next in line for command of the company after Goose. Knoffler was currently sequestered in another part of the city, ready to take over at a moment’s notice if Remington and Goose were both injured or knocked out of the com loop.

Knoffler also managed the constant flow of vehicles drafted into medical service to transport civilian and military wounded to Ankara. Planes and helicopters were used only in cases of extreme emergency.

“Go, Phoenix Leader,” Knoffler radioed back. He was in his midtwenties, innocent in a lot of ways, but a dedicated warrior all the same. He’d missed the latest Iraqi war, and this action in Turkey was the first actual combat he’d seen. If he lived through the coming firefights, Goose knew the young lieutenant would grow into a command. “You’re monitoring?” Goose asked.

“Affirmative. Oracle has the sit-rep.”

“Oracle has the ball,” Goose said, letting Knoffler know he was going to be overseeing the city defenses for the time being.

“Affirmative. Oracle has the ball.”

Goose switched channels. He stared across the harsh terrain at the line of vehicles hunched like predatory beasts in the distance. “I’m here, Captain.” He stepped away from Mitchell so even his side of the conversation would remain private.

“I’m looking at Syrian heavy cavalry, Goose,” Remington said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me why.”

“Don’t know, sir.”

Remington was silent for a moment. “C’mon, Goose; you and I have been around the block a time or two. We’ve tramped through some wars in our time. What does your gut tell you?”

“The Syrians didn’t show up just to remind us they’re out there.”

“They could have,” Remington said. For years—while they’d been privates together, then corporals, and later, sergeants—they had always played the devil’s advocate for each other. If one of them came up with an exercise or a combat plan, the other did his level best to tear it to shreds, looking for weaknesses. They’d always been a good team.

We just don’t always agree on things,
Goose reminded himself. Corporal Dean Hardin was a good case in point. Goose put that sore point away.

“No, sir,” Goose said. “I don’t think that’s the answer.”

“Then what?”

Goose looked at the line of vehicles in the distance. Even though he didn’t know for sure where Remington was, he felt certain the man was watching the Syrian cav with the same anticipation he was. “They’re here to make a statement, sir.”

“Being out there on the horizon isn’t enough?”

“No, sir,” Goose answered, “not hardly. After that attack last night, they should have been content to leave us alone for a while. The local people we’re trading with, sir, we know they’re trading with the Syrians, too. Those traders give the Syrians information just as they give us information.”

That was why traders were met at the gates and not allowed to run unsupervised throughout the city. Trading for supplies was acceptable, but allowing them access to information about the city’s defenses to sell to the Syrians was out of the question. Even so, Sanliurfa was huge. Policing the whole area while managing ongoing rescue and salvage operations was impossible.

“Think maybe we should put a bird in the air, Goose?” Remington asked.

The support aircraft from the marine wing that had arrived from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit—Special Operations Capable MEU(SOC) out in the Mediterranean Sea had AH-1W Cobra attack helicopters in their ranks. The Whiskey Cobra was a piece of serious hardware. After seeing the marines and the Cobras in action, Goose had a healthy respect for the pilots and their machines.

“We’d be risking the helo,” Goose said. “And the pilot and gunner.”

“Every military action is an investment of risk,” Remington countered. “Whether you advance, fall back, or wait, you’re at risk.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, if they’re a ticking clock, everything in me wants to spring the trap.”

“Yes, sir,” Goose replied. “One thing my daddy always taught me about hunting in the swamps down in Waycross, Georgia, Captain: A patient hunter makes fewer mistakes than a man breaking brush just because he’s a little antsy.”