Apocalypse Dawn (48 page)

The main gun swiveled around on the turret, then belched flame.

Carruthers took immediate evasive maneuvers. The 125mm shot sailed past the Jeep and slammed into a burnt-out troop transport.

Standing tall, taking aim, trying to account for the bumpy terrain, Goose fired the RPG-7 just as the tank’s machine guns opened up. A round caught him in the chest and knocked him down on the rear deck, paralyzing his lungs with pain. Even as he fell, Goose saw that his aim had been true.

The rocket impacted the front of the T-72 squarely, leaving a twisted mass of metal where the 7.62mm and 12.7mm light machine guns had been. With any luck Goose had blocked the driver’s vision as well.

Incredibly, though wreathed in fire, the T-72 lumbered forward. Goose watched in disbelief as the tank rolled closer. lie marshaled his flagging strength and finally managed to draw a breath of air.

“Carruthers,” Goose called.

The man sat in the front seat without moving. The Jeep’s engine had died somewhere along the way.

“Carruthers.” Goose reached for the RPG-7, thanking God it hadn’t fallen over the jeep’s side. He found the satchel and took out a rocket.

“Get clear, Sarge,” Tanaka advised. “Carruthers … Carruthers isn’t with you anymore.”

Staying low, hands fumbling as he tried to fit the rocket to the launcher, Goose inched forward and looked at Carruthers. At least one round had drilled through his heart, leaving him slack-jawed in death.

God keep him, Goose prayed.

“Get out of there, Sarge,” Ybarra said. “Get out of there now!”

Small-arms fire strafed the T-72 as it roared toward the Jeep.

Goose remained with the jeep. If he tried to leave the vehicle in his present shape, he knew he wouldn’t make ten feet before the tank overtook him and ground him under the massive treads.

The T-72 could fire on the move at speeds up to twenty-five kilometers an hour. At present, the armored cav unit was moving faster than that. Or maybe it only looked that way, and the reason the tank crew wasn’t firing was because they hadn’t reloaded the tank’s magazine.

Standing, seeing that the machine guns had been eradicated, Goose tried once more to fit the rocket to the launcher. Before he could accomplish the task, the tank was on him.

In motion, weighing in at forty-four-and-a-half metric tons, the tank was a considerable weapon in its own right.

Dazed, working on fumes, the horror of the moment intensified by Carruthers’s death and the pain and fatigue that filled him, Goose realized he only had one chance before the tank ran him down. He gripped the RPG-7 tightly, stood, and stepped forward, timing his approach with that of the tank.

Just before the treads ground over the front of the Jeep, Goose sprinted forward. He leaped from the Jeep’s nose to the tank’s front skirting, dodged through the flames, tripped over the wreckage of the machine guns, managed two full steps that nearly got him to the tank’s rear skirt despite the sudden lunge of motion and mass beneath him, then fell.

He landed on the ground. The horrendous crunching and crashing of the jeep filled his ears, and he tried desperately not to think of what was happening to Carruthers’s body. The impact knocked the kerchief from his face.

As he forced himself to his feet and tried to fit the rocket to the launcher again, he noticed the auxiliary fuel tanks strapped across the T-72’s rear skirt immediately behind the turret. He smiled.

Goose slipped the rocket into place and lifted the RPG-7 to his shoulder. He took aim at the back of the turret through the fuel tanks, curled his finger over the trigger as the turret started to turn, and fired.

The whoosh of the rocket ended almost immediately as the warhead slammed through the fuel tanks and into the back of the turret. As the Afghanistan mujahedeen had discovered when fighting the Russians, the most vulnerable part of the T-72 was the back of the turret. And exterior fuel tanks just made it that much more vulnerable.

The explosion, coupled with the added punch of the nearly full fuel tanks, blew the turret from the tank. The resulting heat wave washed back over Goose, and his world dwindled to one flash-fried instant.

Then the tank rolled to a halt and exploded again as the ammo stored aboard went off. A roiling mass of fiery clouds, looking like a pillar of fire, streaked from the tank toward the heavens.

Wearily, not believing that he was still alive but thanking God for His mercy, Goose pushed himself to his feet. He peered around at the battlefield. “Base, this is Phoenix Leader.”

“Go, Leader. You have Base.”

“Do we own this battlefield, Base?”

Cal Remington’s voice came over the headset. “You own the battlefield, Phoenix Leader. Good work down there. Establish your perimeter and set up your salvaging operations.”

“Understood, Base. Leader out.” Goose surveyed the harsh terrain. All they had to do was put up an appearance, keep the Syrian army buffaloed, and survive long enough to retreat during the night.

But night seemed a lifetime away.

The Mediterranean Sea

USS Wasp

Local Time 1017 Hours

Heat shimmered from Wasp’s flight deck as Delroy Harte trudged toward the waiting CH-53E Sea Stallion with travel kit in hand. Frustration and anger nearly shackled his mind, blinding him and making him slow to respond to the greetings of the crewmen that he passed.

Despite the horror that had happened along the TurkishSyrian border, despite the number of personnel that had gone inexplicably missing from the ship and the entire ARG, the ship’s crew still had jobs to do. A second wave of aircraft and Marines-cobbled together from Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily and MCB Camp Butler in Okinawa-was due onboard Wasp in a matter of hours. The ship had to be made ready to receive the new aircraft and troops that would rally to make the next attempt to reinforce the U.S., U.N., and Turkish troops along the border.

The wind from the waiting helo whipped across Delroy with humid intensity that left him perspiring under his jacket. He knew he should feel uncomfortable, and maybe he did, but at the moment, he didn’t care.

He also noticed that several of the Marines stared at him with suspicious curiosity and more than a little hostility. Well, Colonel Donaldson, you certainly get your word around quick. He held his head high and tried to appear more certain of himself than he was. God, why did You lead me this far, make me believe in You, and then let me fail at this? I know that you have raptured the church, taken your faithful with you, and I know you left me behind because I have broken the relationship I have had with You. Is this my punishment then, God, for doubting You?

The insecure feelings came rolling back in, almost thick enough and heavy enough to smother Delroy. As he walked, he carried his father’s Bible in his free hand, and he thought about the way Josiah Harte had pounded the pulpit on Sunday mornings, how his father had journeyed to the homes of the sick, and ministered to them until they got better or-as in some cases-how he had helped them let go of the mortal world and not be afraid.

When Delroy was nine, his grandfather had passed. A more bitter, angry, and harsh man had never walked the earth. Delroy had never seen two men less likely to be father and son, or a man more willing to turn his son aside and treasure other children who had turned out to be as godless and violent as he himself was.

During his childhood, Delroy could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen his grandfather. Every time Josiah had taken his family to visit his parents, Jonah Harte had gone away on fishing trips and drinking binges.

Grandmother Harte had tried to fool her husband sometimes by not telling him when Josiah and his family were coming to visit, but there had always been clues: apple pies, extra cookies for the children. So Jonah would load up his tackle box, throw a six-pack of beer in the passenger seat, and be gone for a few days.

In the end, though, Jonah Harte had succumbed to cancer that had broken even his wild fierceness, had melted the unforgiving coldness from his heart. His other children, three sons and two daughters, had wanted Josiah to stay away, but Josiah hadn’t. Despite their curses and anger, Josiah had ministered to his father. He knew those curses were directed at him because he could accept his father’s death. And because he could offer his father the certainty that if he accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior, he would go on to a better place.

For nearly two weeks, Josiah had stayed with his father, and Delroy had helped. In the South-at least in those days-people died at home in their own beds surrounded by family, not in hospitals with only strangers in attendance. Jonah Harte had died a shipwreck of a man in twisted, sweat-soaked sheets.

But Josiah had never given up on his father or lost his faith in the Lord. That bedroom in the tiny old house had been filled with gospel, with songs sung a cappella, and Delroy had never heard his father’s voice sound stronger or the songs sound sweeter. Josiah had talked of God’s love, of His sacrifice of his only son to save this world.

And in the end, Jonah Harte’s anger and fear and unkindness had shattered. Two days before his death, Jonah had come to Jesus, and he had died almost peacefully in the arms of a son he had never truly acknowledged in life.

Delroy stared hard at the waiting helicopter. God, take me. Please take me and use me as You see fit. Don’t let me lie fallow while there is so much to be done. But in the back of his mind, Delroy knew he was still angry over Terry’s death. And help me to get over the loss of my son, God. Help me to understand why You took him so that I may stand tall in Your service.

He almost felt ashamed at the last. God’s plans weren’t for men to understand. Only glimpses now and then were given to mere mortals. Josiah had taught Delroy that.

As the rotor wash from the helo grew stronger, Delroy tucked his father’s Bible under his arm and put his hand to his hat.

“Chaplain Harte!”

At first Delroy thought he had imagined the call.

“Chaplain Harte!”

Recognizing the captain’s voice, Delroy stopped and turned around. The rotor wash broke across his back and whipped his jacket billowing before him.

Captain Falkirk crossed the deck in the long, rolling stride of a longtime Navy man. His dress whites shone in the sun, and he looked dapper and resplendent in the uniform. He had his hat under his arm and a pair of blue-tinted aviator’s sunglasses on.

Delroy, his hands full with his Bible and his kit, fumbled with his hat and tried to tuck it under his arm so he could salute.

“At ease, Commander,” Falkirk said as he reached him. “This is an informal visit.” He smiled a little.

“Aye, sir.” Delroy stood in the full heat of the glaring sun. He controlled his anger at the man he’d always thought of as a friend, but he couldn’t help feeling betrayed. When he’d reached his quarters, Falkirk had already left a message with a young ensign outside his door with instructions to pack only an overnight bag and report to the flight deck immediately. Delroy assumed that the rest of his personal belongings would be shipped to him later. He still didn’t know where the captain was sending him.

“I’ve just come to see you off, Commander,” Falkirk said.

“There was no need for that, sir,” Delroy replied.

“Angry, Commander?”

“Frustrated mostly, sir.”

“But you’re angry, too.”

Delroy couldn’t fathom the captain’s easygoing nature. “I think I’m entitled, sir.”

Falkirk nodded, and the sun gleamed from the blue lenses. “1 think you are, too. Because if you’re right and God has raptured his church-“

“Begging the captain’s pardon,” Delroy interrupted, “I am right.”

Falkirk’s gaze behind the blue-tinted lenses was implacable and accusing. “Yet here you stand, in a world that’s been left behind, in a world of non-and near-believers.”

The captain’s words stung. Delroy pushed his breath out. “Sir, I’ve got a helicopter waiting for me. The longer it sits on that helipad, the more fuel it burns. I wouldn’t dare to presume to tell you your job, but I think I’d be a little more miserly with my resources till I figured out where I stood in this thing.”

“So why do you think you were left behind?” Falkirk gazed up at Delroy from behind the sunglasses.

“My beliefs are hardly under your purview, Captain,” Delroy stated stiffly.

“Aren’t they, Chaplain?” Falkirk’s voice took on an edge. “You came into my office and started talking, as Colonel Donaldson called it, crazy talk. You advanced your theory-“

“It’s not a theory. It’s the truth.”

Falkirk ignored the interruption. “Your theory that the world was raptured, in an attempt to explain the disappearances aboard Wasp and among the Marines sent to the border conflict. That advancement of said theory places your contentions under my purview.” He paused. “Wouldn’t you agree, Commander?”

Muscles knotted along Delroy’s jaw. He made himself answer with effort. “Aye, sir.”

Falkirk looked away, seemingly staring at the whitecapped waves rolling in toward Wasp’s bow. “As captain of this ship, I’ve got a responsibility to the Navy, to the Marines, and to the men and women I serve with.”