“-out there,” the man said.
“You’re positive?” Cody asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cody said something else, but he turned his face away from Danielle.
“We haven’t given up, sir. We’ll find them.”
Cody nodded. “ I want Hander” — no, that had to be Gander — “dead. I do not want him back in this city.”
“Yes, sir.”
Excitement rose in Danielle again. Goose was alive. The thought thrilled her. Tears burned her eyes. Then she concentrated on Cody again, mentally cursing him. There was no guarantee that Goose would stay that way for long.
Across the street, Cody took another drink from the neck of the bottle. “ Tell them to get to it.”
“Yes, sir.” The other man faded out of sight.
Danielle turned to Gary. “Did you get that?”
“Yeah, but without audio, all you got is one guy talking to another guy in a dark room.”
“Didn’t you read his lips?” Danielle opened her notebook computer on the room’s table.
“No. I’m not a lip-reader.”
“Hook the video feed into my computer. Download that piece.” Danielle stepped back and let the cameraman work. She tried to ignore the infrequent small-arms fire and missiles. The Syrians evidently used them as reminders, ensuring that no one in the city would get a good night’s sleep.
When Gary had the video uploaded to her computer, she played it back. This time she made notes of what she’d read.
Danielle was relieved to know Goose was still alive. She’d felt guilty ever since she saw him fall from the helicopter. She kept playing it back through her mind, realizing how she could have simply grabbed him and halted his fall.
“I want Gander dead.” That reverberated in Danielle’s head in Alexander Cody’s voice.
Danielle copied the video file to her flash drive and headed for the door. “C’mon. We’ve got to find Remington.”
41
Outside Sanliurfa
Sanliurfa Province, Turkey
Local Time 2148 Hours
Goose felt gun sights on him. He froze immediately. Even though he couldn’t see the weapon, he knew someone had a bead on him. He resisted the immediate impulse to move and forced himself to wait to see what happened. He had to trust in the body armor.
“Sergeant,” Icarus called softly, “come ahead.”
Goose let out a long breath, then slid forward again.
Icarus lowered the assault rifle he carried. Miller sat nearby.
“See anything?” Icarus asked.
“Syrians,” Goose replied. “But not the men stalking us.”
“They’re out there.”
“I know.”
Icarus glanced grimly at the expanse of ground separating them from the city. “They don’t have to risk crossing that area.”
“I know,” Goose said as he rose to a sitting position. His back and knee ached terribly. “All they gotta do is hold us here. In the morning, the Syrians can do their jobs for them. They can watch.”
“That’s what they’ll do,” Icarus said. “Carpathia won’t let Alexander Cody rest until he brings me down.”
Goose cleaned the range finder. The power supply was good, but one of the lenses had been knocked out of alignment. “The information you have is really that dangerous?”
“I’ve got documents that link Carpathia’s companies with some of the terrorist groups working with the Syrians,” Icarus said.
Miller looked at the two of them. “What? What are you talking about?”
“The reason those men are lying out there right now to kill us,” Goose said.
“Carpathia? You’ve got to be kidding.” Miller’s face showed disbelief. “That man has done more to unify the countries since the disappearances than anyone else in the world.”
“That’s just cover,” Icarus said. “What he’s really after is something else.”
“What do you think he’s after?”
“All these people left behind in the balance of God’s judgment.”
“That’s insane.”
Icarus smiled wearily. “Is it? A third of the world vanished a few short weeks ago. Is that insane too?”
Miller didn’t say anything.
“If I’d tried to tell anyone before those disappearances took place that they were going to happen, they would have locked me up. Don’t you agree?”
Reluctantly Miller nodded. “But what you’re saying about Carpathia
… what does that…”
“What does that make him?” Icarus shook his head. “If you ask me, I think the man is the devil himself. If not, then he’s part of the blackest evil you’ve ever seen.”
“But he’s working to pull everyone together. To help us see through everything.”
“You’re familiar with the Bible, right?”
“Of course.”
“What is the Antichrist supposed to do in the end times?”
Miller didn’t speak. Goose saw the fear on the man’s face.
Icarus continued. “The Antichrist is supposed to bring the people of the world, those whom God left behind during the time of the Tribulation, together. And in doing so, he will lead them away from God. That’s what Carpathia is doing.”
Goose studied Miller’s face. Although the chaplain clearly wanted to repudiate Icarus’s claims, Goose knew the man was taking them in.
Miller looked at Goose. “Do you believe this?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Goose said. “I’m not here to believe. At the moment, I’m working on getting us out of this mess alive. I reckon after that moment, the next moment will take care of itself.” But the truth was, he didn’t have enough room in his head to think about everything he needed to think about.
“You got what you went after?” Icarus asked.
“I did.” Goose showed him the range finder.
“What is that?”
The question told Goose that Icarus wasn’t a military man. “It’s a laser range finder. Snipers mount it on a rifle to get an accurate measurement of how far away a target is.”
Icarus frowned. “Knowing how far we are from the city walls isn’t going to help us.”
Goose grinned grimly. “No, sir, I have to agree with you on that.”
“And unless it can help you see those men in the dark, I don’t see that it’s going to be a lot of help.”
“It can’t do that either. But what I can do is use it to let our boys know we’re out here. The trick is going to be doing that while at the same time not alerting those snipers out there to our position.”
Downtown Sanliurfa
Local Time 2156 Hours
