Apocalypse Crucible (16 page)

Goose pushed himself to his feet. A bad feeling came over him because he was fairly certain the man was one of the CIA agents looking for Icarus in Sanliurfa. Goose knew Icarus was desperate enough to kill to save himself. Whatever secrets he held were big and dangerous to more than just himself, or else the CIA wouldn’t have searched for him so thoroughly and Icarus wouldn’t have taken such pains to hide.

But the beating looked fresh. Whoever had administered it had gotten bloody.

Goose tried to remember if Icarus had looked bloody but couldn’t. Still, Icarus had driven; he wouldn’t have stopped to beat a man on foot he could easily escape from.

Then someone else had administered the beating. With growing discomfort, Goose figured he knew who was behind that coldblooded act. Remington was searching for Icarus, and he had assigned some of the company hardcases to look for the man. This attack breached the grudgingly granted no-man’s-land between the CIA and Remington regarding the Icarus matter.

“Get him up,” Goose growled. “Let’s get him to the hospital. The defensive perimeter there could use some shoring up.” Reports flashed constantly over the headset, relaying information about incoming wounded and continued flurries of attacks by Syrian infantry trapped inside the city.

If Icarus was true to his word, the man was waiting there. But it didn’t mean he was going to tell Goose everything—or anything. Icarus would tell only whatever suited him.

This time, Goose was determined not to let Icarus get away. Whether he answered questions or not, Icarus was no longer going to be a player.

United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 2148 Hours

“Leslie, why don’t you come away from that window?” Megan suggested. She stood still, knowing if she closed on the girl that she could upset the delicate balance they’d maintained over the past several minutes. But she was also afraid one of the overzealous or overwrought MPs outside might chose that moment to neutralize the potentially explosive situation inside the Hollister home.

“The MPs are still here?” Leslie lifted her left hand, the gun-free one, and shaded her eyes against the pulsing amber lights that came from outside.

“Yes.” Megan resisted the immediate impulse to go to the girl and pull her from the window.

“This is really weird.” Leslie turned from the window, lurching a little unsteadily. The pistol hung heavily at her side. “I’ve never dreamed in this much detail before.” She looked at Megan with rising panic in her eyes. “What if I’m not dreaming? What if I was in a traffic accident? What if I’m in a coma, on life support in the hospital or something like that? Maybe that’s why I can’t wake up! Maybe that’s why I’m dreaming so vividly!”

“Leslie.” Megan struggled to make her voice reasonable. “You’re not in a coma. There’s been no accident.”

“You’d say that, though,” Leslie accused, growing increasingly hysterical.

“Why would I say that?”

“Because.” Leslie sounded petulant and frantic. “Because maybe you’re the thing that’s trying to keep me in here.”

“What thing?”

“The sedation.” Leslie waved, obviously pulling at straws. She shifted her weight from foot to foot restlessly.

Panic swelled within Megan, but she knew she was siphoning off most of the emotion from the girl.

“Don’t you see?” Leslie wailed. “The doctors could be working on me now! I could be in the ER on base while they’re trying to save me!”

“Leslie, listen to me. That’s not what is happening.”

Leslie pushed her sweaty hair back from her forehead. “You can’t say that! You don’t know that!”

Megan knew the girl’s voice carried through the window and could probably be heard at least by the MPs if not the surrounding neighbors.

“You’re
me!
” Leslie went on. “You can’t know anything more than I know! That’s impossible!”

“Leslie, you’ve got to stay calm.”

The girl started to pace like a caged animal, but she kept her distance from Megan.

Megan respected the distance. In other counseling sessions under tense circumstances, she’d seen teens exhibit the same restlessness. The need to move seemed ingrained in so many of the young who had emotional problems and needs. That instinct made dealing with them even more problematic.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Leslie said, shaking her head. “I can’t stay like this. I’ll go crazy.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Megan said.

Leslie wheeled on her, stepping into the intervening space between herself and Megan. “How can you say that? You don’t know!”

Megan held her ground, feeling a queasy sensation coil in her stomach. With Leslie approaching her with a weapon in her fist, Megan felt certain the MPs could scarcely contain themselves.

“Leslie, you’ve got to stay calm,” Megan said. She didn’t move, fearing that any sudden attempt on her part to get away from the young girl—any visible sign that she wasn’t somewhat in control of the situation—would trigger the MPs into action. Maybe Kerby even had a sniper standing by, ready to kill or incapacitate Leslie Hollister if she looked like she was going to be a threat to the neighbors or his squad.

“I can’t be calm!” Leslie roared. Tears poured down her face. “I can’t wake up, Mrs. Gander! Don’t you get it? I’m trapped here!” Her voice broke. “I just want out of here! I want my mom!”

Leslie raised the pistol toward Megan’s face.

Despite the fear that filled her, Megan stood on trembling legs. Her lungs felt like a vise had closed around them, making breathing almost impossible.
Don’t shoot! God, please don’t let her shoot, and don’t let those young men outside make a mistake!
Tears blurred Megan’s vision, and it was all she could do not to give in to her own panic.

Shaking with anger and fear, clearly out of control, Leslie shoved the pistol barrel against Megan’s cheek.

“Don’t do this,” Megan said softly. “Please don’t do this. You’re making a mistake. Everything is going to be all right.”

Leslie quivered. Her eyes narrowed. More tears coursed down her face. “Will I wake up if I shoot you?”

Mastering her own rampant emotions, Megan prayed that she wouldn’t faint. “No.” She put as much conviction into her answer as she could.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know.”

Leslie wiped at her mascara-smeared face. “I tried to shoot myself earlier.”

Megan remembered the deafening report and the hole in the wall.

“I couldn’t do it,” Leslie said. “I was just too afraid. I kept hoping everything would get better.”

“It will. But you’ve got to trust me.”

Leslie shook her head. “But that’s the problem! Don’t you see, Mrs. Gander? You’re not you!” She snuffled and hiccupped and cried out in frustration. “You’re me! And
I
can’t wake up!”

Before Megan realized what was going on, the gun barrel was pulled away from her cheek. Too late, she saw that Leslie had turned the weapon on herself, burying the muzzle against her stomach.

The sharp explosion echoed within the room.

Horrified, Megan reached for the teenager as she twisted away and fell. But as Megan closed her hand on Leslie’s arm, the girl jerked away from her, propelled by an outside force. Even before the sound of the rifle shot penetrated the bedroom and the broken glass from the shattered window tumbled to the floor, Megan knew that one of Kerby’s team had fired, thinking that he was saving Megan’s life.

Leslie’s body sprawled across the floor. Her blonde hair fanned out around her, making her look impossibly young, as blood gushed onto the carpet.

8

Sunshine Hills Cemetery
Outside Marbury, Alabama
Local Time 2148 Hours

“I’d feel better if I could pay you for the shovel.” Delroy Harte stood in the drizzle beside the old truck at the front of Sunshine Hills Cemetery. Wild and frenzied, the wind yanked at his slicker and buffeted his back. A jagged blade of lightning ripped through the black sky, followed immediately by a thunderclap. The rain had abated somewhat, but the storm remained, regaining strength.

George spoke through the open window. “An’ I don’t feel right about chargin’ you for the use of one knowin’ you ain’t set on keepin’ it.” The old man took a last drag on his hand-rolled cigarette and filled the truck’s interior with the warm orange glow. As he exhaled, he pinched the cigarette out between a callused thumb and forefinger, then fieldstripped the charred and spit-wet remnant so the tobacco and paper blew away.

Over the years, Delroy had seen several soldiers practice the same procedure out in the field. “That a habit?”

“Smokin?” George lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Been doin’ it for years.”

“Stripping the butt away like that.” Delroy nodded toward the overburdened ashtray sticking out of the pickup’s battered and sunripened console. “Looks like you normally use the ashtray.” Observing men’s mannerisms had become second nature to him as chaplain. Most sailors aboard a ship weren’t predisposed to saying when they had a problem or what that problem was.

George looked at the full ashtray, then back at Delroy. “Hadn’t paid attention. Guess I been doin’ that for some time these past few days.” He glanced around the cemetery. “Just don’t feel safe here, I reckon. Guys in-country, where they ain’t supposed to be, fieldstripping cigarettes comes as easy as manners at your momma’s table.”

An old habit of soldiers in dangerous places, Delroy thought. Trained to move on and leave no trace of themselves behind. Over fifty years later and the life-or-death training returned as if learned yesterday. Comes from serving in the war, and from getting left behind. He knows this isn’t a safe place.

“These here times, Delroy,” the old man said in a soft voice barely audible over the crack of the branches slapping each other overhead, “why I’m afeared they ain’t safe for man nor beast.”

“God sees us through the darkest times,” Delroy said automatically.

George squinted and studied Delroy with bright interest. “You really believe that?”

“I’m working on it.”

“An’ you a-standin’ there with that shovel in your hand.” George shook his head sadly.

Guilt flushed through Delroy; he knew then that the old man had guessed what he planned on doing, but he made no apologies for his decision. He had to know. He had to know for a lot of reasons.

Glancing ahead where the ancient pickup’s dulled yellow headlights played over the wrought-iron gates of Sunshine Hills Cemetery, George said, “This here ain’t no place to be in the dead o’ night, boy.”

“It’s the place I have to be for right now.”

“Be better to come back in the light o’ day.”

“Can’t.” Delroy couldn’t imagine accomplishing the task he’d set before himself in broad daylight. He was also afraid that if he got a good night’s sleep, fatigue wouldn’t again numb him enough to allow him to set foot into the graveyard. He tightened his grip on the weathered shovel handle.

George sighed and crossed his arms over the steering wheel again. “I wouldn’t like it none, but if you needed me to, I reckon I could wait out here for you for a spell.”

Delroy shook his head. “Couldn’t ask you to do that.”

The pickup’s windshield wipers slowly swept the drizzle from the smoke-stained glass in brief waves. “You wasn’t askin’. It was me was offerin’.”

The prospect of remaining alone in the graveyard left Delroy edgy. Still, he couldn’t ask the old man for that. And no matter how things turned out when he finished, Delroy was certain he’d need some time alone. “You’ve got people waiting on you.”

“An’ they’ll be waitin’ till I get there. You probably ain’t even got a dry place to sleep picked out.” George looked at him. “Ain’t even thought that far ahead, has you?”

“Marbury has hotels.”

George gave a grudging nod. “That they do. Yes, sir, that they do.” He paused and scratched his whiskered cheek. “You got this to do, don’t you, boy? An’ you knowin’ it ain’t fit nor proper to go questionin’ things like this.”

“Aye.”

“Then you best be at it.” George shoved the clutch in and ground the transmission gears. He fumbled inside his shirt pocket, took out a business card, and handed it to Delroy. “All that writin’ there on the front, don’t pay no nevermind to it. People give me them cards all the time. Fancy cards. Expensive cards. All about who they is an’ what they does. What you need to know is writ on the back.”