Apocalypse Burning (45 page)

Culpepper had told Delroy only this morning that he had known Josiah, and there had been times during his wild and wicked days that he felt certain Josiah had rung that church bell just to get him out of bed with the devil and into the Lord’s house come a Sunday morning. Some of those sermons Josiah had preached had taken, Culpepper had acknowledged during his brief conversation when he’d driven up with the bell in the back of his battered pickup.

“But not all of the Lord’s Word,” Culpepper had said shamelessly with a grin that showed all of his dentures. “Elseways I wouldn’t still be here with ya’ll.”

He’d given the bell to Delroy for free. Even thrown in a shining.

“Heave!” Delroy yelled again, feeling the sweat pop out. The exertion was hard and his body complained of all the bruises he still carried from fighting the creature at Terrence’s grave. But he put his heart and his soul into it.

And in there he found a song. He pulled again and sang:

“Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”

Delroy matched the driving pull of his back, arms, and legs into the rhythm of the song, using the cadence to draw fresh air into his lungs and strive again.

“Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”

He leaned instinctively into the rhythm of the song, the way field hands and cotton pickers had done when he was a child and sometimes worked with them alongside his daddy, who was harvesting their immortal souls while they pulled someone else’s crop to put food on their own tables.

Four hundred and more people had gathered at the church now. All of them knew the song. The words burst out over the neighborhood, swelling as the bell rose high into the air, coming from the throats of every man, woman, and child there.

“I looked over Jordan, and what did I see,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
A band of angels comin’ after me,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”

The bell continued to rise, and Delroy found more strength in himself than he ever had. The pulling and straining of the other men holding the rope evened out and became more of a concerted effort. They sang with him, putting their voices to his:

“Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”

Hands clapped, keeping time to the song. The applause rolled over the neighborhood, gathering strength and rhythm, missed beats leveling till they came as one.

“If you get there before I do,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I’m comin’ too,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”

The song kept on, growing higher and stronger as the bell rose alongside the steeple. Men scrambled on top of the roof and guided the bell over the roof’s edge. Then the bell was in the steeple once more.

“Hold what you got,” Dion Dupree called down. He was in his fifties and still spry as a child. He called himself an inventor, but his wife, LaQuinta Mae, said he “wasn’t nothin’ but a tinkerer on his best day, an’ he ain’t had but a few of them days.”

Still, the love between the two of them was unmistakable.

“Hold what you got,” Dion called again as he scrambled inside the bell tower.

Delroy held on, feeling the rope bite into his hands. But the pain felt good, let him know he was doing something worth doing.

Long minutes later, Dion yelled down, “Okay, you can let go now. It’s up there. Ain’t goin’ no place else.”

Slowly, with more than a little trepidation, the rope was eased back. The bell hung solid and a cheer went up. In another couple minutes, the clapper was released and everyone called for Delroy to come up and ring the bell.

He went, feeling as excited as a child, the way he had when he was four years old and his daddy had let him ring the bell on a bright Sunday morning. He pulled the rope hard, listening to the clangor ring all across the neighborhood.

The bell sounded clear and strong, a sound that would drive away evil and darkness.

They’ll come,
Delroy knew.
They’ll come, and they’ll want to know what’s going on.
He looked into the blue sky past the bell tower as he descended.
Look, Daddy. People are coming to our church again, coming to visit with God and learn His ways.

Now that the bell was in place, the picnic that had been brewing all morning suddenly let loose. Folding tables and picnic tables loaded with food and guarded by the women were suddenly declared open and fair game.

“Come on, Chaplain,” Walter said. “Grab a plate an’ let’s dig in.”

“You hold those people up,” Reynard Culpepper yelled. “Ain’t one o’ ya’ll touching that food till the chaplain’s done asked a blessin’ for it.” Skinny and tall and bald, Culpepper started toward another old man who had considerable girth and a round face under a straw hat. “An’ you, Elvin Smith, I know you done poked somethin’ in your mouf after I tole you not to do that. You keep that up an’ I’ll whup you an’ take them store-bought teeth away.”

When the churchyard grew quiet, Delroy stepped near the tables. He bowed his head and asked a blessing for the food, thanked God for the companionship and the church, and for keeping them all safe while they’d been foolish enough to pull the bell up into the church steeple themselves instead of waiting for the proper equipment. He finished the prayer, and a multitude of voices joined his in saying, “Amen.”

When he looked up, he saw Glenda standing out by the fence.

The last few years had been kind to his wife. She still had her figure and her looks, but there was a little more gray hair in the coal black than he remembered. She was a natural beauty, standing there in matching dark green blouse and pants.

Mesmerized by the sight of her, full of joy for all that had happened at the church, Delroy went to her. He stood on the opposite side of the fence.

“Glenda,” he whispered, looking down at her. After that, he couldn’t speak. There were too many things that he wanted to tell her: That he was sorry. That he was glad to see her. That he still hurt over Terrence and his daddy. That he was so confused about what he was supposed to do.

Her gaze was hot and hurt, her eyes wet with unshed tears. “All this time you’ve been in town, Delroy, and you haven’t even been considerate enough to stop in to check on me. Not even to see if I was still here.” She shook her head. “Ain’t that something? Even as bad as everything got, I really didn’t think it would ever come to this.”

“Glenda—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t you talk to me. I don’t want to even hear any of it now, Delroy. You just go on about your business, and you leave me out of it like you left me out of everything else these past five years.” Without another word, she turned and walked away.

Delroy threw a leg over the fence and started after her.

“Chaplain.”

Caught astride the fence, Delroy looked back at Phyllis.

“You want some advice?” Phyllis asked, looking at him with a raised eyebrow and her hands on her hips like a woman who’d better be listened to.

“You and Walter,” Delroy grumbled.

“Well, Walter ain’t here right now, so I figure I best go ahead an’ handle this. Probably more my area of expertise anyways.” Phyllis nodded toward Glenda. “You go after that woman right now, my guess is you’re gonna get your head ripped right off. That woman’s been done wrong. Got her heart all fulla pain an’ regrets. Don’t know what-all you done to her, but you best be sorrowful an’ apologizin’ all over yourownself next time you see her. But for now, be best if you just give her some room.”

Delroy watched Glenda walk away. “If I don’t go after her, I may never see her again.”

Phyllis sighed in exasperation and rolled her eyes big and white. “You menfolk. I swear I don’t know why the Lord made y’all so stupid about love, but He done did an’ there it is. I suppose He had a reason, an’ they’s probably a joke in there too. ‘Course, a few of you He done went an’ give some looks to. You ain’t no Denzel yourownself, but you’re a right good-lookin’ man when the light catches you just right.” She smiled. “Now you get on over here an’ fill you a plate an’ let that woman take care of herself the way she wants to for right now.”

Delroy stared after Glenda, watching her disappear around the corner.

“Don’t you go frettin’ none over her, Chaplain,” Phyllis said. “She be back.”

“You think so, do you?”

“I know so. Bet you a twenty-dollar bill against it, an’ you can give me a five if you win. Which you won’t.”

“The Lord frowns on gambling,” Delroy said.

“Shoot, Chaplain—” Phyllis smiled sweetly at him—“ain’t no gamble to it. I know I be gettin’ that five bucks just as sure as we hung that bell.” She shook her head. “That woman loves you. That’s writ on her face just as certain as the hand of God writ on Moses’ tablets.”

Operation Run Dry
26 Klicks South-Southwest of Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 1813 Hours

Full dark hadn’t yet descended over the Syrian fuel depot when the sixty Rangers arrived at the area after their fifty-three-klick run.

Goose waved them to ground among the low hills overlooking the war zone, well out of sight of the Syrian guards posted at the perimeter. They maintained radio silence, communicating through hand signals and messengers the way Rangers had since the Revolutionary War.

Lieutenant Keller lay in the same shadow-covered ditch that Goose used for shelter. Both of them were already soaked from the incessant rain and buried deep in the mud that sucked at them. Thankfully, though, the rain and the mud were warm, not cold as they had been in many places Goose had been before.

Goose took his 10x50 binoculars from his chest pack, switched them over to light-amplifier mode, and scanned the Syrian hard site. To his west, to the right from his current northerly position, a small airfield stood covered with camo-colored tarp. Three Syrian cargo helos, Russian Mi-8s that reminded Goose of the army Hueys, sat under the tarp. Eight men, two to a side, guarded the airfield. They stood under the tarp, though, and smoked cigarettes, indicating that they didn’t feel threatened.

To the east, Goose’s left and forward, the ruins of an ancient city stuck out of the mud. Archeological maps Remington had shown them indicated the existence of huge rooms beneath the ground. Remington said that the Syrian army had stockpiled barrels of fuel in those rooms, laying in a supply for their next advance.

Alpha Detail’s mission was to take out the fuel stockpile—the reason the mission was called Run Dry, because their efforts were supposed to cause the Syrians to “run dry” on fuel—and to execute some of the higher-ranked Syrian army commanders. Bravo was supposed to destroy the armored cav foundering in the mud, secure the airbase, and take the Mi-8s hostage to use for escape. Failing that, Bravo was supposed to destroy the helos along with the armored cav. Any escape at that point would be on foot.

Goose took in the Syrian armored cav units, counting four T-55 main battle tanks and two of the newer and heavier T-72s. The T-55s carried a 100mm cannon, a 12.7mm machine gun, and a 7.62mm machine gun. The T-72s were armed with a 125mm cannon and 12.7mm and 7.62mm machine guns.

Five BMP-1 APCs sat next to the tanks. The armored personnel carriers held crews of three and could transport up to eight more soldiers. They were armed with a 73mm cannon, a 7.62mm machine gun, and a Sagger antitank missile. Three BRT-60 APCs kept them company. Their armament was lighter, consisting only of a 14.5mm machine gun and a 7.62mm machine gun. However, they could carry fourteen troops.

A handful of warehouses that had once been homes for desert traders still existed, all of them tucked up against the ridgeline.

When it came to raw manpower, the Rangers were outnumbered three to one. The Syrians had bivouacked two hundred men in the area. Twenty-two of them were tank crews. Another 103 were APC crew and transport troops for quick strikes. That left seventy-five men for security detail, pit crew, and on-site mechanical repairs and replacement.

And,
Goose told himself,
somewhere in there are four high-ranking Syrian military officials.

Keller tapped him on the arm.

Goose looked at the lieutenant, read the signs for pulling back, and nodded. Together, slowly, they pulled back through the mud and rain. Over the ridge, out of line of sight, and too far away to be heard, Goose hunkered down with the lieutenant.