Mel Odom - Apocalypse unleashed

“By letting Captain Remington know we’re out here.”

Icarus shook his head. “You’re a fool, Goose. Remington’s as much a part of this as those men out there hunting us.”

“I don’t believe that.” Goose knew he was being stubborn, and he knew that Cal Remington was following his own goals at the moment. Those goals, Goose was painfully aware, were different from his own. “The captain wouldn’t leave us out here to die.”

“He’s been sending you to the hot spots,” Icarus said. “He’s been expecting you to die. He had you under lockdown only a few hours ago. I’d say that Remington isn’t your greatest fan.”

Goose knew that was true. But he knew something else too. “Those men inside that city, they’re Rangers. We don’t leave a man behind. If they know we’re here, they’ll tell the captain. The captain won’t have any choice but to try to save us.”

Rain dappled Icarus’s tight features. “You put a lot of stock in this captain of yours.”

“Yes, sir. I do. I’ve worked with him for a long time.” Goose knew that if pressed, he wouldn’t have been able to say exactly when his and Remington’s paths had started to diverge. “It’s not just the captain I’m putting my faith in. It’s those Rangers inside as well.”

Icarus shook his head. Jagged lightning traced a white-hot vein across the sky.

“If you see another way of doing this,” Goose said, “I’m all ears.”

Miller looked from Goose to Icarus a few times. “Staying out here isn’t an answer. When morning comes, the Syrians are going to start moving again.”

“Once they do that,” Goose said, “they’ll flush us out of hiding. Come dawn, we’re not going to have a chance at all.”

Icarus gazed at the city.

Goose knew how the man felt. Safety was so close, but it was still a world away.

“How do you propose to signal them without giving away our position to the Syrians or to the men out there hunting us?” Icarus asked finally.

“I’m working on that,” Goose replied.

Downtown Sanliurfa

Sanliurfa Province, Turkey

Local Time 2116 Hours

“We shouldn’t be up here,” Gary said softly.

Danielle ignored the cameraman as she swept the building on the other side of the street with a pair of night-vision binoculars she’d gotten from a black market dealer.

“They said being in the upper floors was dangerous.” Fear tightened Gary’s voice. “If a missile hits up here, or below, there’s a good chance we’ll get buried in the rubble.”

“I know. But we’re this close to a story. I can feel it.”

“That CIA guy isn’t the story OneWorld NewsNet wants. They want footage of the arrival of the UN troops.”

“We got that.” Danielle increased the magnification, trying desperately to find Cody within the room. She’d spotted him for a short time earlier. He’d been fearlessly-though she was more prone to think of him as drunkenly — staring out the window at the battlefield in front of the city. Cody made no effort to involve himself in the rescue of the city.

That’s because his agenda is somewhere else, Danielle told herself.

“They want more footage,” Gary said.

“We’ll get it.” Danielle started to wonder about the pressure her producer was putting on her. To her, adding footage to what they’d already gotten was just busywork. The world already knew that Nicolae Carpathia had been voted in as secretarygeneral and that he’d sent reinforcements to Sanliurfa.

As innocently as she could, Danielle had tried to send a question through channels as to why Carpathia had ordered that when so much of the rest of the world was just as chaotic. No answer had been forthcoming. None of the other news agencies speculated about that move either.

On the surface, Carpathia was doing a humane act by shoring up the defenses.

That’s on the surface, Danielle reminded herself. But she couldn’t help thinking of Lizuca Carutasu and the way she’d been murdered in Romania for digging into the relationship between Carpathia and Alexander Cody. The surface isn’t the story. It never is. She studied the darkened window. So what are you protecting here, Carpathia?

“Look,” Gary said, “maybe you don’t care about your job, but I do. I think we should-”

Danielle cut him off. “Do you care more about your job than you do about getting back home in one piece?”

“No.”

“Then pay attention.”

“To what?”

“What’s going on around you.”

“We’re rescued,” Gary said belligerently. “All we gotta do is shoot some footage of the UN troops, and we’re home free.”

“Then OneWorld is sending you home?”

“I’ve asked to be sent back home.”

“Did they say yes?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Then they’re not going to send you home yet. They need a cameraman over here.”

“I told them I’ve had enough.”

“Have you stopped and wondered what this is about?” Danielle asked.

“What what’s about? The war? The Syrians have always-”

“No. The reinforcements. Why now?”

“Maybe this was as soon as Carpathia could make it happen.”

“Doesn’t reinforcing Sanliurfa seem like a lost cause to you? What do we need to hold here? There are no oil fields, no natural resources. Most of the civilians have cleared away, and the ones who have stayed can’t be viewed as our responsibility.”

Gary remained silent.

“And if reinforcing this city was a good idea, don’t you think the previous secretarygeneral would have thought of that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think he would have,” Danielle said.

“Maybe he had trouble selling it?”

“Then how was Carpathia able to sell it to the rest of the United Nations?”

“Don’t know. I’ve listened to the guy talk. He’s awfully convincing.”

Danielle silently agreed. “What if Carpathia wants Icarus?”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“Why?”

“Conspiracy theories aren’t my thing.”

“They’re not mine either.”

“Then we should be out there on the street interviewing some of those UN soldiers.”

“I can’t do that.”

Gary sighed.

At that moment, across the street, Alexander Cody stepped back into the wan moonlight pouring down from the darkened sky.

“Bring your camera over here,” Danielle ordered.

Outside Sanliurfa

Local Time 2116 Hours

Goose inched across the muddy ground. In his mind, he was just another layer of mud. And he moved slow as molasses, oozing across the slippery ground rather than sliding. Mud caked his face. Half the time when he breathed, he sucked in dirty water from the ground.

His first objective lay eighty yards away. He felt certain the burned and blasted remnants of the tank provided sufficient cover.

Unless those guys gunning for you have moved around. Goose tried to keep from thinking about that. Likewise, he tried to keep from thinking that the unknown gunners were even now creeping up on Miller and Icarus. There was no way you could bring them with you. They’re not trained for this.

Goose dug his boot toes into the ground and started oozing forward again. A sharp stone dug into his face. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t make an adjustment. He just slid over the stone and kept going.

Long minutes later, he reached the tank. Smoke, diesel, and the distinct odor of burned flesh clung to the broken metal. Goose remained low and got his bearings. The muted moonlight splashed across bodies of the dead. The rain had washed the blood from the corpses, and the thirsty ground had drunk it in. But the horrible wounds remained visible. Torn flesh, limbs that had been ripped away, incomplete heads-all of them lay before him.