The camera panned down the single road that cut through Glitter City. People were panicked, some of them abandoning vehicles while others loaded gear and passengers aboard, evidently thinking they were going to flee before the missiles reached them.
In the next instant, absolute carnage tore through Glitter City. SCUDs landed in the small town, and the resulting explosions collapsed a building.
Dwight’s voice came to Delroy in that moment. “We’re living in the end times now, Del. God is going to deliver his people from the war and strife that’s going to consume this world. We’re going to live to see the Rapture.”
Dwight had been wrong, of course. He hadn’t lived to see it. But as Delroy Harte watched the stark images relayed on the television monitor, the chaplain found the idea of the Rapture being close at hand much easier to believe.
But then, Delroy denied that, refused to believe it. This was just a military engagement, not the end times. Perhaps a war would even come of it. Men would die and he would pray for them because that was what he had signed on to do.
5
Turkey
30 Klicks South of Sanliurfa
Local Time 0657 Hours
A SCUD-B surface-to-surface missile’s rockets burned for eighty seconds, more or less. While in the air that eighty seconds, the SCUD-B traveled one hundred and seventy-five miles.
The distance to Glitter City from Aleppo, Syria, was less than eighty miles, less than half the distance the SCUD-Bs were capable of. When he’d gotten the call from Captain Remington, Goose had been three minutes away from the tent city that housed support personnel as well as media. Even picking up the pace in the RSOVs to the point of risking life and limb, the Rangers arrived two minutes and forty-eight seconds after the first wave of SCUDs blasted into the landscape.
Goose sat buckled into the passenger seat and peered at the huge dust cloud that had been raised around the area from the impact and detonation of the SCUDs. Bobby Tanaka whipped the vehicle hard to the left just as Goose yelled, “Something’s in the road!”
The yellow dust cloud had concealed the long steel body of an unexploded SCUD missile. Goose knew from hard experience that SCUDs didn’t always detonate. The failure rate for the Russiandesigned weapons was something U.S. military forces would never have allowed. But the thirty-foot-plus missiles remained in the Syrian army’s arsenal. And they had done their share of damage today.
The RSOV skidded wildly in the loose sand. The rear quarter panel came around and smacked the SCUD. When he heard an ear-splitting blast at almost the same time, Goose figured that he and his unit had just been blown to smithereens.
Instead, the RSOV skidded in the opposite direction from the impact as Tanaka overcorrected. The SCUD in the roadway remained a dud. It would have to be removed by bomb disposal teams later.
Glancing over his shoulder, Goose watched the second Ranger vehicle avoid the SCUD by several feet. Then realization kicked in that if the detonation he’d heard hadn’t occurred at their twenty it had to have happened elsewhere. He glanced forward again and saw a new cloud of dust curling up a hundred feet and more from the desert.
Clods of hard earth and debris tumbled back down from the sky.
They drummed against the RSOV with the force of sledgehammers. The cacophony rolled over Goose, deafening him.
Holding his left forearm over his face, Goose took as much cover as he could from his helmet and Kevlar vest. Rocks and clods pinged off armor as well as flesh, leaving welts, scrapes, and bruises. Goggles protected his eyes from the grit that swirled in the air, but the yellow dust matted and stuck to the kerchief he’d pulled up over his nose and mouth. Perspiration and saliva had made the kerchief wet enough to turn the dust to mud.
The fallout from the SCUD detonation continued for a few seconds, then immediately started again as at least two more missiles struck the high ridges of broken earth that surrounded Glitter City. Ages ago, when the town had been little more than a trading post for travelers, small stone buildings had been constructed against the sides of the bowl that contained the meeting place. The surrounding hills forming the natural bowl had always protected the village and the traders from the wind and the sandstorms that sometimes rose up. The town had provided a place of relative peace, a little shade, and a natural spring that was work to get to but had provided the townsfolk with their share of cool water.
Since the arrival of the American troops and the international media, Turkish traders had opened up a market again. They offered local cuisine and trinkets for souvenirs, bartering those things for American and European products such as cigarettes, Coke and Pepsi, and even military MREs. Most American fighting men only accepted the meals-ready-to-eat when nothing else was available, but Turkish traders found a ready market waiting to sample the meals.
Several buildings had existed on those hillsides, some of them decades old. Most of them were in some state of disrepair. After the media had encamped there, local construction teams had been hired to provide more adequate shelter. With things heating up on the border, most of the reporters wanted to stay on-site rather than make the trip
