Apocalypse Dawn (6 page)

“But, sir-“

“That’s an order, Sergeant,” Remington barked. “I want you and your team to head to Glitter City. You’ll need to take control of the evacuation there.”

Goose glanced at his watch, thought of Megan, Joey, and Chris, and did the necessary math. He was three minutes from Glitter City and ten minutes from the front line.

Glitter City was basically a tent city built of Quonset huts and leftover buildings from small towns that had been bombed and shelled out of existence years ago during border hostilities. It was located halfway between the border and Sanliurfa. During the past few weeks, as armament on both the Turkish and Syrian sides had built up, reporters from FOX News and CNN had taken up transitory residence in the tent city, becoming media nomads reporting on soldiers in the field, weaponry, political and sociological issues, and the possibility of war or peace.

During the previous weeks, at Remington’s insistence, Goose had done two interviews. He hadn’t enjoyed doing them. So far, as near as he could tell, neither of the pieces had aired. Which was fine with him, though he considered the possibility that he wasn’t very interesting or very photogenic. Maybe he was just too boring for TV. Still, he and Megan had enjoyed a laugh about them. She had threatened to tape them and play them at family gatherings.

“Sir,” Goose said, curbing his impatience and his anger because he knew Remington maintained a no-fly zone for those emotions, “Sergeant Michaels can take care of the evacuation. His qualifications-“

“Make the adjustment now, Sergeant,” Remington said. “That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.” Stung, Goose gave Tanaka the order, then reset the GPS heading himself while Tanaka made the course correction. “New course has been laid in, Captain.”

“Goose,” Remington said in a quieter voice, “I need you there. The Syrians launched a wave of short-range missiles eighteen seconds ago. Glitter City is one of their targets. ” He paused. “Do what you can to save whatever’s left of them, Goose.”

United States of America

Fort Banning, Georgia

Local Time 11:57 P.M.

“Mommy, I don’t want you to go! I don’t want you to go!”

Megan’s heart shattered at the unhappiness in her five-year-old son’s plaintive cries. She wiped tears from Chris’s cheeks and looked into his china blue eyes that were so much like his fathers.

“It’s going to be all right, little guy,” Megan said as she carried Chris in through the double doors of the staff support building. She’d called ahead to arrange emergency baby-sitting. She’d also left messages on Joey’s pager and forwarded all incoming calls to her cell phone.

“Daddy calls me little guy,” Chris said petulantly. “Not you, Mommy.”

“I know. I just felt like calling you little guy. So you can be my little guy the way you are for Daddy. You’re just going to be here a little while. Then we’ll go home.”

Megan carried Chris on her hip, surprised at how big he’d gotten since the summer. The thought that Goose wouldn’t even recognize his son when he returned from his current tour swept into her mind and brought new pain.

Extended absences during active tours were a hazard of the kind of soldiering Goose did. He and Megan had talked long and hard about those absences, about how much they affected a marriage as well as any children of that marriage. That was the biggest fear Goose had had about getting married. He’d seen military careers destroy families, and he believed too much in what he was doing to back away until he had finished the career he’d promised himself to deliver.

And compromise was a hard thing for Goose. He loved his family as fiercely as he loved his country. Having to choose between them would have destroyed him, and Megan knew that. So she chose to be strong for him, to be the woman she had trained herself to be after her first husband had abandoned Joey and her, and to wait for the time that Goose would be home again.

God willing, she prayed softly. Please, God, be willing. She always kept Goose close in her prayers.

“No, Mommy! No!” Chris wailed. He butted his head against her shoulder in frustration.

“It’s going to be all right, Chris,” Megan said. “It’ll only be for a little while. Then I’ll take you home and we can cuddle in my bed. I don’t work in the morning, so we can watch your favorite videos together. I’ll make pancakes. I promise.”

Right after I get through grounding your brother for the rest of his natural life, Megan thought. Leaving Chris asleep in his own bed would have been so much easier than getting him up, getting him dressed, and getting him upset. If Joey had been home when he was supposed to be, she could have done just that. Her frustration and anger at her older son grew.

“Okay,” Chris said sleepily. He lay against her more contentedly, and his breath whispered soft and warm against the hollow of her throat. “I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you, too, baby,” she told him.

One of the three women on duty in the emergency baby-sitting facilities met her at the door. Since Megan had used the services before and was on file, all she had to do was show her military ID to check Chris in. Megan politely refused the young woman’s offer to take her son and carried him inside the room herself.

The room was filled with cradles and small beds. The constant state of readiness around the world was taking a terrible toll on military families. Emergency baby-sitting had become a necessary thing in these troubled times.

As Megan looked around, she was surprised to see that most of the beds were filled. She glanced at the woman who had checked her in. “Busy night, huh?”

“Yeah. Military support personnel got called in a few minutes ago,” the young woman said. “There’s been some kind of attack.”

A cold rush in Megan’s chest took her breath for a moment. “Where?”

“Turkey,” the woman said.

“What happened?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I heard the news from one of the men who dropped off his daughter a few minutes ago.” She looked at Megan. “Do you have someone over there?”

“My husband.” Megan held Chris tightly. It hurt to think about putting him down and walking away from him. With Goose in danger, and Joey gone, she couldn’t think of being absent from her younger son.

But Gerry’s in danger, too, she told herself. Reluctantly, she placed Chris in one of the empty beds and pulled the sheet over him.

He looked up at her with those wide, blue eyes. “Night, Mommy.”

“Good night, baby.” Megan was surprised at the lump in her throat. “I love you. Say your prayers, honey.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Chris said. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

“He will, darling. He will.” Megan ruffled her son’s hair and kissed him.

“I’m just going to sleep for a little while, Mommy, so you can come and get me soon.”

“I will, Chris. I’ll be right there for you. Promise.”

Yawning, his little nose wrinkling, Chris rolled over on his side and closed his eyes. He was asleep in the space of a drawn breath.

Megan kissed her son once more, thankful for such a precious gift, and left the nursery. Her thoughts spun, filled with Gerry and Boyd Fletcher, wondering where Joey might be, and hoping that Goose was all right, because if she knew her husband, he would be in the middle of things.

The Mediterranean Sea

USS Wasp

Local Time 0657 Hours

Alone with the dead man in the small, refrigerated room next to the medical department that was sometimes used as a morgue, U.S. Navy Chaplain Delroy Harte gazed at the stationery before him and prayed that the proper words would come to him. God, help me. How do you write to a woman and tell her that her husband is dead? How do you write to his children and tell them that their father no longer lives?

Those were things agencies within the Department of Defense had been set up to handle. Even knowing that those agencies had already contacted the dead man’s family didn’t help him. Dwight’s family would expect a letter from his chaplain and good friend; a sad announcement would carry a more personal touch than the standard military communications. But the emotional cost of writing that letter was higher than Delroy had believed possible. He’d never, in his years in the military, been put in the position of writing one like it before. Letters for the dead, yes; he’d written those. But never a letter for someone who’d been his best friend.

The chaplain closed his eyes, aware of the familiar noises of Wasp coursing all around him, and tried to remember how his father had handled deaths within his small Baptist congregation in Marbury, Alabama. But Delroy Harte found no solace there. Josiah Harte had known every member of his congregation, all those souls who sat in the pews every Sunday to hear the hard-fisted, hellfire-and-brimstone sermons his father had delivered. His father had also known all of the townspeople who never darkened the door of the church till they were carried inside in a box.

Delroy had known the man who now lay in the black body bag on the stainless steel table a few feet away. Known him well and admired him greatly. He shifted and gazed at the body bag, hoping that an answer would somehow appear there. But it didn’t.

His father had been ten times the pastor Delroy had turned out to be. Josiah Harte had watched over his congregation and his family with love and wisdom, leading them with a stern hand and a gentle touch, guiding so many of them to fulfilling lives enriched with a sense of purpose.

Tense and fatigued, a condition that was hard to get into and almost impossible to escape, Delroy stood and stretched his legs. He stood six feet six inches tall. In high school, he’d been a power forward, one of the greatest basketball players the school had ever seen. People had believed he’d never make it through college without being drafted by the NBA. But that had been before he lost his father. Somehow in the deep and terrible confusion of that loss, Delroy had found the Lord in ways he had never imagined.

But you didn’t stay walking close to the Lord, did you, Delray? No, you turned away from Him. And you are too afraid to tell anyone because you don’t know what would become of you without this mission in your life.

He rubbed his chin. The stubble that had grown there let him know he’d been at his task much longer than he would have guessed.

His eyes burning with exhaustion, he gazed at his blurred reflection in the stainless steel table where he’d been working. His skin was dark, nearly blue-black, and his image flowed like a dark pool across the metal surface. His hair was cut military style, high and tight, as it had been for thirty years, since the day he’d entered the navy. He wore his chaplain’s service dress blue uniform, but he’d left his white gloves and his tie in his pocket. The tie would go back on before he left this room.

Officially, he was off duty right now. Writing the letter to the dead man’s family was something he was doing at the request of the dead man himself. Back in sick bay, before the emergency surgery that had been ordered after Dwight had complained about severe chest pains and shortness of breath late last night, Dwight had asked him to take on this task-just in case …

Waiting in the medical department while the medical personnel worked on his friend, Delroy had expected to sit for hours till the doctors and nurses performed the surgery and got Dwight stabilized. The medical staff told Delroy there was nothing to worry about outside of the normal risks of bypass surgery-and given Dwight’s comparative youth and overall fitness, those were pretty small. At least, that was what they told him before they started cutting.

Delroy had believed them. Dwight had been in great shape, he was only fifty-two years old-only three years Delroy’s junior-and the doctors were top-flight military surgeons tempered by previous service in combat conditions. When she was in home port in Norfolk, Virginia, Wasp was counted as the fourth largest hospital in the state. She was part of the state’s disaster relief plan. Military medical aid didn’t come much better than the facilities on USS Wasp.

But the doctors were wrong this time. Fifteen minutes into the surgery, Chief Petty Officer Dwight Mellencamp had died on the table. Thirty minutes after the surgery had begun, the surgeon had been out in the waiting room, explaining everything to Delroy, and despite his personal grief, the chaplain had followed most of the medical jargon. The docs had done their best.