A man in brown khaki shorts, hiking boots, and a gray shirt staggered in front of the alley mouth. He appeared thirty-something, balding and sunburned. Blood poured down the side of his face from a wound at the top of his head. Crimson lines ran down his chin and neck, disappearing into his shirt. His battered features were red and raw. Swollen bruises almost closed one eye.
“Sir.” Goose kept his voice strong but neutral. The man jerked away and covered his head with one arm.
Peering fearfully under his forearm with his one good eye, the man looked at Goose. “You are American.”
“Yes, sir,” Goose replied. The wounded man stood partially behind Goose’s Humvee, hiding as well as he could. Goose had driven into the alley to have his confrontation privately with Icarus. But right now the man was using the Humvee as cover. Goose cleared his throat, searching for the right words to get through to this man. “I’m First Sergeant Gander. With the United States Army 75th Rangers from Fort Benning, Georgia.” His words were tinged with a southern accent, acquired courtesy of Waycross, Georgia, where Goose had been born and raised.
“Thank God,” the man said. “Thank God.” He started down the alley but almost fell over a loose hunk of debris from the nearby bomb-blasted buildings. Syrian artillery hadn’t hit this part of the city as extensively as it had in other sections, but fallen debris still blocked the alley behind Goose.
“Sir,” Goose said in a sterner voice, “stay where you are.”
The man gaped at Goose but halted where he was.
Over the past few days, the Sanliurfan citizens and visitors had quickly learned to obey commands given by the three armies that currently held positions within the city. In addition to the Syrian threat looming outside the city’s borders, the strange anomaly that had ripped away what most experts agreed was at least a third of the world’s population had left people everywhere confused, paranoid, and afraid. No one knew if the disappearances would start up again, or who might disappear next.
“What?” the man shouted.
“Stay where you are,” Goose repeated. “I don’t know you.”
During the past few days, the Rangers as well as the United Nations Peacekeeping teams and the Turkish army had learned that Syria’s blatant and unprovoked attack on Turkey and the subsequent invasion had inspired a number of local terrorists to start ratcheting up their own campaigns to make political and religious statements. Most of those campaigns concentrated on raising the body count. Several soldiers of all three armies, various Sanliurfan citizens, and some innocent tourists trapped in this mess had paid the price for the terrorists’ convictions.
The man stopped. “Mon Dieu! This is insane! I need help! My wife needs help! Do you not understand? They have her! They took her!”
Goose listened, straining his ears for any sounds of a struggle or confrontation. Distant vehicle noises and the roars of earthmoving equipment used to clear the primary streets and reinforce fighting positions, none of them nearby, created a constant aural backdrop over the city. He blinked stinging sweat from his eyes. He was edgy from not sleeping for more than twenty-four hours, and even the last sleep he’d managed hadn’t been uninterrupted for more than an hour and a half at a time.
“You have got to help her.” The man leaned heavily against the alley wall, as if the realization that he would have to win Goose over was almost too much to bear. Blood continued to thread down the side of his face and neck. His injured eye seemed to close a little more with each frantic heartbeat. “I do not know what they will do to her. Please.”
“Your wife was taken?” Goose asked.
“Oui.” There was no mistaking the pain in the man’s eyes.
“Who are you?”
“I am Jean Arnaud,” the man replied. “I am a university professor in Paris.” He named the school, but his French was so rapid Goose couldn’t understand him. “I have papers.” He reached for his shirt breast pocket with trembling hands that left bloodstains in their wake. “I was here in Sanliurfa on a sabbatical with my wife, Giselle. They took Giselle. You must help her.” His fingers fumbled with the pocket and barely got the papers out.
Trusting his instincts that the man was telling the truth as well as the physical evidence of the beating Jean Arnaud had obviously undergone, Goose lowered his weapon but didn’t put it away as he approached the man. If someone had kidnapped the woman, time was already working against a rescue effort. Sanliurfa, with its hodgepodge of architecture and hundreds of years of history, was a rabbit warren of hiding places.
Goose gestured to the Hummer. “Get in.”
Arnaud hesitated just for a moment.
Grabbing the man by his arm, Goose pulled Arnaud into motion. He escorted the man to the passenger side of the Hummer and shoved him into the seat.
Goose jogged around to the driver’s side, limping a little on his bad knee, and slid behind the wheel. Starting the Hummer’s engine, he tagged the communications headset he wore to open a channel, then pulled the pencil mike to the corner of his mouth.
“Base,” Goose said. “This is Phoenix Leader.”
“Base reads you five by five, Phoenix Leader,” the calm male voice responded.
“I need a com network for an immediate SAR op and access to soldiers at this twenty.” Goose gave his location, then looked over his shoulder and backed the Hummer out into the street.
“A SAR, Phoenix Leader?”
“Affirmative,” Goose replied. The call for a search-and-rescue team drew immediate attention, especially after the Syrian attack that had taken place the previous night. The city and the Rangers were still picking up the pieces from that. “The SAR target is a civilian, not one of our own.”
“Understood,
