“Want company?”
“You?” Joey couldn’t figure her out. She had been so hard on him, then this. Her behavior didn’t make sense.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because you’re a friend. And I think maybe you could use a friend for a little while.”
A friend. That was one of the last things Joey wanted to be with Jenny McGrath. He almost groaned in frustration.
“Look,” Jenny said. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for the things that I said. I’m not always a nice person.”
“No,” he agreed, and part of him wanted to be a little mean about accepting her offer. However, he regretted his response immediately.
She sighed. “It’s a twenty-minute drive back to the base. Your dad is obviously involved in something really bad, wherever he is.”
“Turkey.”
“Whatever. And I don’t know what your mom had to say—”
“There’s been an emergency. My little brother got dumped in the child-care center on base because I wasn’t home.” Like I should have been. “Chris likes to be in his own bed at night. Mom said he wasn’t happy about being left there, and if he wakes up there, he’s going to freak.”
“Then let’s go get him,” Jenny said, taking Joey by the arm.
Joey didn’t move.
She looked at him, locking eyes. “It’s a twenty-minute drive, Joey. You’re upset. At least, I’d be upset in your shoes. You don’t need to be alone. And the fact that you wanted to make sure I was going to be okay if you left me here was kind of cool.” She shrugged. “Let me return the favor by riding along with you. I take care of my friends, too. When I get over being temporarily self-involved.”
Joey melted at her hesitant smile, and he got a peek behind the usual confident and distant air Jenny McGrath broadcast to everyone. He got the feeling she was actually afraid he was going to turn her down. But thinking about that twenty-minute drive back to Fort Benning, he knew he’d be a basket case by the time he arrived if he was alone.
“All right,” he said.
Over her left shoulder, the television at the bar changed its programming with no warning. The words LIVE BROADCAST—GLITTER CITY, TURKEY started streaming across the bottom of the screen.
Even across the distance, Joey recognized Goose’s haggard features. Goose wore a kerchief over his lower face, but the scar by his right eyebrow that curved down toward his hidden cheekbone marked him immediately. Sand coated his face and gear. A helicopter flew through the air in the distance behind him.
Goose was obviously short of patience with the reporter talking to him. The camera shot only showed his head and shoulders, but Joey could identify the emotion by his stepdad’s stance. Then Goose turned away from the camera, one hand going to the headset. The helicopter exploded.
Stunned, not believing what he was seeing, Joey’s breath stopped dead and tight in his lungs and his mouth turned dry as chalk. On the screen, Goose advanced toward the ridge where the flaming fragments of the helicopter had fallen. In the next instant, a Jeep sailed over the ridge and landed on the desert floor. The vehicle swung dangerously close to the burned-out husk of a building as the driver overcorrected. The gunner on the rear deck swung his weapon in Goose’s direction and started firing.
Joey watched as Goose reversed directions and took cover behind the broken, smoke-wreathed fragment of a wall. Bullets threw up sprays of sand and chewed pockmarks in the stone. Then the camera view changed as the Jeep gunner’s next sweep of deadly fire caught the cameraman and punched him backward.
A sheen of bright crimson blood covered the camera lens before everything went black.
13
Turkey
30 Klicks South of Sanliurfa
Local Time 0755 Hours
As Goose centered the M-4A1’s sights over the Syrian gunner on the Jeep’s rear deck and squeezed the trigger, he watched in helpless frustration as the machine gun swiveled in the reporter and cameraman’s direction. Hardesty threw himself flat, but the cameraman never had a chance.
A fusillade of bullets slapped into the cameraman, shredded the camera, and dropped a bloody corpse to the hot, smoke-stained ground already strewn with debris.
Taking aim, Goose slipped his finger over the M-4A1’s trigger, took up slack, and pulled through. The assault rifle bucked against his shoulder. He fired two more three-round bursts, unsure of which one raked the machine gunner from the rear deck. A body tumbled from the vehicle and fell in a limp-limbed sprawl to the ground.
Noticing that there had been a casualty, the Syrian soldier driving the Jeep took immediate evasive action.
No mercy existed in Goose’s heart. He thought of all the unsuspecting people who had been killed in the brutal attack only moments ago. When he had to take the lives of people killing innocents, he figured he was on the side of the angels. He fired again, putting his next rounds into the driver, watching as the man slumped over the steering wheel.
Out of control, the Jeep weaved and drove into the flaming hulk of a building. As high as the flames were, Goose knew the third man in the Jeep wasn’t going to make an escape from the building.
Hardesty, the news reporter, lay on the ground and raised his head only briefly to look at the dead cameraman. Then he began shouting for help.
“Three,” Goose shouted hoarsely, not knowing if the headset connection was still intact. “This is Leader.”
“Three reads you, Leader,” Bobby Tanaka radioed back.
“Take the high ground, Three. You’re our cover.”
“Affirmative, Leader. Three has the high ground.” As the squad sniper, Tanaka could provide covering fire.
Goose watched as the other two Jeeps roared into Glitter City. “Four,” he said.
“Four reads you, Leader,” Dean Hardin replied.
“Get one of the RSOVs up and running, Four,” Goose ordered. “If any crew from that 60 survived, I want to know. Eight and Ten, you’re with Four.”
“Acknowledged, Leader,” Hardin said. “Gonna be tough getting through to them.”
“We’ll give them something else to
