“Phoenix Leader, this is Sniper Team Romero.”
“Good to have you there, Romero. Can you confirm Base’s report of one hostile sniper team?”
“Not only confirm it, Leader, but we’re in position to cancel their pass to the party.”
“Negative on the cancellation, Romero,” Goose replied. “The Syrians are baiting us. None of my team has been hit. But I wouldn’t mind seeing them sit out the next few dances.” Sliding his M-4A1 to the side, he took out his 10X50 binoculars and had the Ranger sniper team direct him to the hostile shooter’s location.
After a brief search, Goose found the enemy team—a shooter and a spotter—stretched out on a rocky outcrop in the jagged mountains to the southeast. No one else was around. The digital readout on his binoculars estimated the distance at a little less than a mile.
“Romero,” Goose said, “I have our sniper team in sight. Send them on their way.”
“Affirmative, Leader. We’ll send them packing.”
An instant later, rock jumped from the outcropping around the two Syrian soldiers. They jumped for cover, obviously not expecting to be found so quickly.
The other Rangers cheered the sniper team on as they reported, “Leader, your water detail is clean and green.”
“Understood, Romero. Thanks for the assist.” Goose put his binoculars away and stood. He took up the assault rifle and felt fatigue eat into his bones.
Glancing at the dead fish floating on the river, he was reminded of an old army axiom, the military version of Murphy’s Law: “It isn’t the bullet with his name on it that a professional soldier has to fear; it’s all those that are addressed ‘To Whom It May Concern.’”
The 75th Ranger Regiment was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And it seemed more than their share of trouble was looking for them.
Turkish-Syrian Border
40 Klicks South of Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0601 Hours
Death stalked the invisible line that separated Syria and Turkey.
Goose peered through his binoculars and adjusted the magnification as he scanned the border. He knew the balance that kept three armies from each other’s throats was so tenuous that any change might tip it the wrong way. Even a shift in the slow, dry wind might trigger renewed hostilities. The hatred between the Turks and the Syriansponsored Kurdish terrorists had existed for too many generations to count. And Goose knew that the Turks’ American allies would be in the thick of the fighting, no matter who started it.
The early morning light hurt Goose’s eyes, and the rocks and sand around him absorbed the sun’s rays and steadily rose to baking temperature. By midafternoon, he knew from hard experience, the arid land would be almost unbearable.
For the last seventy-two hours, he and C Company had been on constant alert in full battle dress, camped in the harsh, barren plateaus overlooking the border. He’d been awake for so long that sleep was a distant memory. The exhausted man inside him had no place here. The professional warrior had to stay sharp.
Despite the circumstances, he’d taken the time to stay cleanshaven, although he hadn’t foisted the same expectation on his men. Leadership was often as much about image as about substance. A shade less than six feet tall, with wheat-colored blond hair that almost matched the desert around him and a body disciplined by nearly two decades of military training, Goose looked like a soldier. He kept his hair cropped high and tight, but sand still found a way to burrow into his scalp, where it itched furiously. Just one more irritant he had to ignore. The dry heat pulled at the half-moon shrapnel scar that ran from his right eyebrow to his cheekbone. The scar was less than six months old and still felt tight.
During the last few months, his border patrol assignment had turned nasty. The body count was getting serious for all sides. Of late, a few American casualties had been added into the mix, kicking up international scrutiny and drawing the attention of news media from all over the globe. There were other hot spots in the world, of course, and news service people were hunkered down like vultures around the various front lines, waiting to see where the bloodiest violence would erupt first.
Goose prayed some other place would win that lottery. He was sitting atop a powder keg that could leave dead soldiers piled high on both sides of the border—some of whom he might be responsible for.
Many months ago, the United Nations had sought the help of the United States to police a flare-up in terrorist activity along Turkey’s borders. President Fitzhugh responded by sending in the troops. He explained to the American people that it was more than local terrorism that threatened the peace in that part of the world. Before long the Syrian army was facing off with the Turks at the border. Because of Turkey’s role as a key Western ally in the turbulent Middle East, Fitzhugh had made sure help had been quick in coming. The 75th Army Ranger Regiment moved into the area on a peacekeeping mission. Rifle companies of the Third Battalion from Fort Benning, Georgia, an outfit with an illustrious combat history, had taken on their portion of the mission.
Goose hoped the American forces could keep the border nailed down until peace talks between Turkey and Syria and the Kurdistan Workers Party could bear fruit. It was his job to see that the diplomats had the time they needed to keep people from dying.
But being so far from home for so long was hard. He missed his wife, Megan, and his boys, Joey and Chris. The last couple of years hadn’t been kind to Goose—or to any American Special Forces troops. Terrorist activity around the globe had kept them in the field. Goose’s five-year-old son, Chris, seemed to be growing up much too fast in the pictures Goose had received from home over the last few months. And his seventeen-year-old stepson, Joey, was on
