O’Doyle shook his head. “No, miss. We got a powerful lot of fightin’ ahead of this. Our commandin’ officers, they all tell us that. I don’t know if I’ll make it back home or not, but whatever happens, I know it’s gonna be all right.” He touched his wet uniform. “I’m not alone anymore, miss.” He nodded back out at the stream. “Me an’ these men what’s here, them what has had God hisself speakin’ into our hearts, why we’ll never be alone on this battlefield again.” He shifted his assault rifle over his shoulder and touched his blue beret.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, miss, I gotta get back to me unit.”
“Of course, Corporal,” Danielle said. “Thank you for sharing that with us.”
“Miss,” O’Doyle said with deadly earnestness, “if you go through somethin’ like that back there, bein’ saved in the Lord, I mean, you’ll find you just gotta tell somebody. It’s too big to just keep all to yourself. I’ll pray for you, miss, that God will keep you safe in his sight, an’ that you’ll make your own peace with him.” Without another word, he turned and trotted away.
Danielle Vinchenzo appeared to have been caught off guard. She fumbled the smooth transition back to the camera. “This is Danielle Vinchenzo, on special assignment for OneWorld NewsNet, where a miracle is taking shape on a battlefield.”
The news channel switched back to the anchor, and the stories moved on to the disappearances that had taken place around the world.
Remington tapped the touch pad and broke the television feed. He leaned back in his chair and stripped the earbud from his ear. Anger swirled through him. He swore.
The mission had fallen apart. He’d been used by the CIA and didn’t know the full extent of his culpability in precipitating the attack, had been in command of the rescue mission that had ended up scattered across the hardpan. His first sergeant was allowing a crazed corporal to baptize the men of three armies while the event was filmed for an international audience.
Remington didn’t want to hear about it when the joint chiefs learned of the baptisms. He rubbed his face. More than anything, he needed a win. And to get that win he knew he needed to start putting his foot down and take command of the unit that Goose had let slip through his fingers.
And Remington was going to start by putting an end to the nonsense taking place in that stream.
Turkish-Syrian Border
40 Klicks South of Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 1623 Hours
Goose parked the Hummer along the ridgeline overlooking the stream where the baptisms continued. He’d managed to send three chaplains to aid Corporal Baker, drawing from those who manned the triage center. Instead of allowing himself to be relieved, Baker had continued with his work. Seven other chaplains from the U.N. forces and the Turkish army had joined them.
Singing continued to fill the streambed area.
Thankfully, Goose noted, the woman reporter for OneWorld was absent. With Remington stepping out into the field himself, Goose really didn’t want her around to witness what he knew was going to be a confrontation.
Feeling the pain of his knee from the driving, Goose stepped from the Hummer. He leaned against the vehicle and stretched the knee out carefully. He’d had similar injuries in the past and had worked through them. The stretching didn’t help. What he needed more than anything was rest, a good meal, and eight hours of sleep. Soldiers won wars on supplies like that.
Instead, Goose reached into the pocket of his BDUs and took out a packet of analgesic tabs. He popped the tabs into his mouth, not happy about having to use them because the aspirin in them also thinned the blood and would make any wounds he received bleed more and be harder to staunch.
But being able to move was top priority. He was infantry, after all, not air force or navy. He fought his battles on his feet and he needed two good legs.
He took the canteen from his hip and drank the tabs down in two long swallows. For a moment, he remembered how he and Chris sometimes filled one of his canteens with Sunny Delight—which Chris always called “power of the sun” because he quoted commercials that caught his eye—and “camped out on safari” in the backyard for an hour or two at a time. Chris’s vivid imagination always created ferocious beasts, which they tamed or trapped, or swamps filled with alligators, which they avoided. After while, alligators!
Joey never hung out there with them because he didn’t want to get caught crawling around on the ground to avoid vultures and dragons, but Bill Townsend had. Bill ended up getting to be Chris’s horse or camel or elephant a lot. When Joey had been not quite nine, when Goose had married Megan, the backyard had been Wrigley Field or Dodgers Stadium or Fenway Park or Turner Field. Megan had gotten to be the cheering section and umpire, just as she’d always been the “girl” Chris had insisted they rescue from the beasts in the jungle.
A wave of homesickness passed through Goose. He wanted to be back home with his family, to sit at the kitchen table and watch Chris playing in the backyard, to catch a ball game with Joey and work on whatever was creating a rift between them, to have dinner with Megan.
And Goose wanted Bill back here with him.
He pushed the thoughts away and concentrated on the action taking place in the stream. He made himself drink more water. That was one of the things he was pushing on all his troops. Perspiration was the body’s cooling mechanism, and drinking water provided the raw materials to get the job done.
A Jeep pulled away from farther up the stream’s edge. As the vehicle drew closer, Goose recognized Captain Tariq Mkchian in the passenger seat.
The Jeep pulled to a stop in front of the Hummer. Goose saluted.
“At ease, Sergeant,” Mkchian said as
