Apocalypse Burning (3 page)

“Giselle speaks English,” Goose said, glancing back at the picture of the couple standing in front of a flowered archway that existed only in some photographer’s studio. “She’s a little over five feet tall. Dark hair down to her shoulders. Dark eyes. Thirties. She’s wearing—” He looked at Arnaud.

“A red sleeveless blouse,” Arnaud said. “Tan pants. Walking shoes.”

Arnaud, Goose realized, was a man who paid attention. The description made Goose feel guilty. He couldn’t remember what his wife had worn the last time he’d seen her. Megan had come to the airfield to see him off as she always had since they’d been married. He’d seen her, remembered her brave smile even though the separation hurt her, but he didn’t remember what she was wearing. With a pang, he realized he couldn’t remember what Chris had been wearing the last time he’d seen him either.

Mechanically swallowing the lump in his throat, Goose passed the information along. Just as he finished, Arnaud stood up in the seat and threw his arm out.

“There, Sergeant! She is back there! I saw them!” Arnaud shouted. “You must back up!”

Before Goose could say anything, Arnaud leaped from the Hummer. Goose made a frantic grab for the man but missed him. By the time Goose braked the Hummer, the worried husband was already rushing toward the last alley they had passed.

“Sergeant,” Goose spoke over the headset as he pushed himself from the Hummer and dropped into the street. The impact cracked through his injured knee, but he ignored the pain and kept moving.

“Here, Phoenix,” Clay responded.

“We’ve got a possible ID on the SAR target.” Goose checked the street signs and relayed his location.

“Acknowledged, Phoenix,” Clay said. “We’re only a few blocks away.”

Goose ran, favoring his left knee and feeling the pain lance all the way up his side to detonate in the left side of his brain. It was projected pain. He recognized the sensation from years of dealing with the injury. He held the M-4A1 in both hands, high across his chest to keep his lower body clear.

A car that had been following the Hummer honked impatiently. With all the debris in the street, there was little room to pass. The earthmovers had worked only to clear a vehicle-wide path, not two lanes. A few pedestrians, all of them civilians, stopped to stare at Goose as he ran.

At the mouth of the alley, Arnaud shouted, “Giselle! Giselle!” He started forward again. Before he’d taken his second step, he jerked and spun to his right. Pain etched his features, popping even his swollen eye slightly open with surprise.

The flat crack of the rifle report reached Goose’s ears just before Arnaud hit the ground. The echoes of the shot rumbled in the narrow alley between the three-story buildings. Chunks of rock jumped up from the street as three more rounds landed near the fallen man but miraculously did not touch him. Arnaud scrabbled weakly to right himself. Blood darkened his shirt on his upper chest.

Moving quickly, Goose slammed into position with his back against the building to the right of the alley mouth. He pushed his weapon vertical, then curled around to peer down the alley.

A group of Bedouin men, all dressed in flowing robes and burnooses, hurried along the alley nearly eighty yards away. Goose saw that three of the eleven Bedouin carried a woman whose appearance matched the picture Arnaud had shown him. The Bedouin closest to their position racked the slide back on the heavy-caliber rifle he carried, then took deliberate aim at Arnaud.

“I’ve got targets at my twenty. Shots fired.” Goose lifted the M-4A1 to his left shoulder, switching hands easily because he’d trained himself to be ambidextrous with the assault rifle, and got himself into a straight line with the weapon. He leaned his shoulder into the building, kept both eyes open to view the battle zone, looked through the scope with his left eye while his right took in everything, swapping fields of vision inside his head, and squeezed the trigger.

The 5.56mm round caught the Bedouin in the center of his chest just before he fired again. Driven back by the tumbling bullet, the Bedouin fired his weapon into the air, knocking stone chips from the second floor of the building.

Staying locked on his target, Goose drove a second and third round into the center of the Bedouin’s upper body, wanting to make sure his opponent was down. Switching to his right eye, he picked up his second target: a man turning to bring up his rifle.

Goose knew the sound of his weapon firing had alerted the other Bedouins to his position—and not just to his position, but also to his nationality—but there had been no way around that. The M-4A1’s sharp report was a lot different than the heavier detonation of the Russian SKS chambered in 7.62mm carried by the Syrians. Flicking his vision back to his left eye between heartbeats, Goose centered the crosshairs above the Bedouin’s rifle, almost looking down his opponent’s barrel, then squeezed the trigger.

The M-4A1 chugged against Goose’s shoulder almost recoil-free, but a spray of stone splinters and dust blinded him almost immediately as the Bedouin’s bullet struck the wall in front of him. Withdrawing, Goose kept himself from instinctively trying to wipe the stone grit from his eyes. Rubbing at them now might scratch one of his eyes, or even both of them. He looked down, letting the tears come naturally to wash the grit and dust from his eyes.

Footsteps pounded down the alley toward Goose.

Arnaud lifted his head, eyes big with fear. “They are coming,” he whispered in a hoarse, panicked croak. “Giselle.” He tried to crawl but couldn’t move.

His vision still partially blurred and his tears cool on his face, Goose swung around the corner again. He slid the fire selector to three-round-burst mode, then centered the rifle at the lead Bedouin’s waist and squeezed the trigger. He rode the slight recoil up and to the right, stitching the man from hip to shoulder in two three-round bursts and knocking him back.

The assault rifle rode naturally, carrying over to the second man in the alley. Goose squeezed the trigger again, holding the weapon steady and putting a three-round burst into the center of his chest.

As this target went down, Goose saw that his initial round at the second man in the alley had sprawled another man out. Four men were down. Seven were up and moving. Giselle Arnaud remained among them.

Moving quickly, Goose hooked the fingers of his left hand in the back of Arnaud’s shirt and dragged the man clear of the alley’s mouth. From Goose’s quick look at the man, he noted that the wound in his shoulder wasn’t life threatening.

Goose took a compress from his field medkit and covered the wound. “Hold this on your chest,” he ordered. “Tight. Slow the bleeding.”

“My wife,” Arnaud whispered. “Giselle—”

“We’re going to get her,” Goose said and hoped that he told the man the truth. “But you need to take care of yourself.” He pushed himself up, feeling the weakness in his bad knee, then positioned himself at the corner of the alley again. He swapped magazines in his weapon, shuffling the partially spent one to the back of his LCE.

The Bedouins ran for the other end of the alley.

“Sergeant Clay,” Goose called over the headset.

“Here,” Clay responded immediately. “We heard gunshots over your headset.”

“There was an exchange,” Goose said. “Four Bedouin are down. Seven remain viable. They do have the woman. She’s alive. Let’s keep her that way.”

“Affirmative,” Clay replied. “We’re on top of your twenty now.”

“Base,” Goose said, pushing himself forward into the alley.

“Base is here, Phoenix Leader.”

“I need a medical team here.”

“Already en route.”

“What about air support?” Goose passed the first two men in the alley’s mouth.

“Negative. The captain doesn’t see the need to risk a helo at this time.”

Not for a civilian,
Goose thought, feeling angry with Remington. At the same time, though, he recognized that Remington’s reluctance was good military strategy. Helicopters were hard to come by in these tough times. They were a limited resource not meant for squandering. Plenty of civilians had taken refuge throughout the city, too afraid to brave the open expanse back to Ankara, Turkey’s capital to the north and west. As far as Remington was concerned, they weren’t his problem. Only holding this line against a superior force of invading Syrians mattered.

“Affirmative, Base.” Goose kept going, watching as the Bedouin juked into another alley to the east. “Clay, our targets broke east. Along an alley.”

“Acknowledged,” Clay replied.

“I see them,” another Ranger said.

Gunfire broke out in a steady staccato roar.

“Keep the woman clear.” Goose broke into a run, passing the final two Bedouin bodies, then positioned himself beside the alley the group had disappeared into.

Gunfire continued, filling the air with harsh cracks and accompanying echoes.

“They’re turning back,” Clay said. “Coming back your way, Leader. Two more are down. Five remain.”

“Understood.” Goose glanced around the corner. The other end of the alley was too far to reach, and he didn’t want to expose Arnaud to enemy fire again. “What about the woman?”

“She’s alive. We picked targets we could take without endangering her.”

Goose flattened himself against the building. “Come up quick, Sergeant. I’m about to be in the middle of them. They’ve caught me exposed.”

“Understood,” Clay said. “Look over your shoulder when it goes down. That’ll be us.”

Footsteps pounded the asphalt, drawing closer. Hoarse shouts in a language Goose couldn’t understand punctuated the sporadic weapon blasts. Despite the Kevlar armor he wore, he knew he might die in the coming encounter.

Will I see Chris if I do, God? I believe in You, but I don’t believe You took my child away from me. I don’t believe those disappearances were by Your hand. I don’t believe that was the Rapture. I refuse to believe that. But if I die right here and right now, please let me see my boy again and know that he is all right.

Then the first Bedouin broke from the alley, coming into view and passing Goose all in the same instant.

Goose let the man go and prayed that the man would not notice him. Another followed. The three Bedouin carrying the kidnapped woman brought up the rear.

Settling into the moment, knowing surprise was his greatest weapon, Goose shot the first of the three men through the head, aiming for the base of his skull as he passed. The bullets severed the spinal cord and the vagus nerve, destroying all motor control immediately. He dropped like a rock, causing the two men following him to stumble and fall and drop Giselle.

Goose spun, switching the fire selector to full-auto, and opened up on the two Bedouin farther down the alley. He emptied the magazine in less than two seconds, not even enough time for the two survivors to recover from their fall.

Dropping the assault rifle, Goose swept his M9 pistol from his hip, thumbed the safety off, and aimed at the nearest fallen Bedouin, who pulled a pistol from beneath his robe and pushed himself up.

Giselle Arnaud lay on the asphalt. Ropes bound her wrists and ankles. Blood trickled down her hands, evidence of her struggles to free herself. A gag tied around her head prevented her from crying out, but tears spilled down her cheeks, leaving tracks on her dusty face. Her bruised and dirty features were twisted with fright.

Goose looked away from the woman, locating his targets. He put a bullet through the nearest Bedouin’s face. He followed up with two more through the man’s chest as he fell. Near the woman’s head, the other Bedouin rose with a pistol in his hand, firing as he stood.

Bullets slammed into Goose’s chest armor. One of them caught his helmet, bouncing his head to one side. He remained on task. He wasn’t dead and he had a job to finish. He fired the M9 at the Bedouin, hitting the man’s chest and working up in case the man wore body armor beneath the robe.

As the Bedouin fell away, Goose spotted Sergeant Clay and his Ranger squad coming down the alley, throwing themselves forward and taking up positions as the men behind raced up to move into new positions.

Gunfire opened up behind Goose, letting him know the two men farther down the alley weren’t dead. He dropped and covered the kidnapped woman with his own body, lending her the protection of the body armor he wore as Clay and his men reached the alley mouth.

The M-4A1s blazed on full-auto for a few seconds. When they stopped, Goose doubted any of the Bedouin remained alive. Clay ordered his men into new positions, securing the alley in a standard two-by-two deployment.

Looking down at the woman, Goose knew immediately that something was wrong. Her face was slack and still. Fear still showed there, but nothing moved. He saw his own reflection in her glassy eyes.

“No,” Goose said hoarsely. Over the past few days, he’d seen too many dead not to know what he was probably looking at. He pushed himself up.

The woman didn’t move.

“Goose,” Clay said, striding toward him.

“
Giselle!
” Arnaud called from the alley’s end. “Where is my wife?” He continued in French.

Stunned, Goose gazed at the dark spot in the center of Giselle Arnaud’s red blouse. The spot was not spreading. She wasn’t bleeding. That meant her heart no longer pumped.