Goose raked his gaze over the death and destruction that filled the border area. Artillery shelled the area, harrying the men dug in along the invisible front line. Smoke and dust swept across the land, carried in clouds that swirled slowly in the dry breeze. Exploding mortars and rocket fire hammered those clouds, blowing them to smithereens or causing them to twist in new and violent gyrations.
The dust and smoke looked like wraiths, Goose realized, and his neck prickled at the thought, though he wasn’t usually prone to an overactive imagination.
Men and pieces of men were scattered in all directions. As bad as Glitter City had been, the border units had been hit worse. Soldiers hustled through the burning APCs, Hummers, tanks, and cargo trucks, all overturned and strewn about like an angry child’s toys. The uninjured men were working to separate the quick from the dead. A few of the men had medical bands on their arms to identify them for and protect them from enemy snipers. However, the Syrian artillery fire recognized no Geneva Convention edicts and had no conscience. From Goose’s vantage point, it looked as though the corpsmen were being targeted because of those armbands.
Three men carried a fourth to a waiting truck marked with a Red Cross insignia. Just as they reached the truck, a group of four MiGs, the Russian-made aircraft the Syrians used, appeared in the south. The jets streaked out of the blue sky, looking like camo-colored darts.
Goose switched over to the frequency used by the troops in the field. Before he could say anything, cries of, “Incoming! Incoming!” filled the headset. Knowing he couldn’t offer anything more, he clicked back to the command frequency Remington had designated to him.
Below, men scattered all along the border.
The MiGs peeled out of the tight diamond formation they had been in. Looking like high-tech vultures, the jets fired a salvo of air-tosurface missiles that rocketed toward the entrenched positions of the Turkish, U.S., and U.N. forces.
The missiles struck the ground and unleashed thunderclaps of noise, as well as unbelievable destructive fury. One of the missiles struck the medical transport truck. Goose wasn’t certain they’d intended to hit that target or not; with the clouds of smoke and dust and the speed at which the MiGs were flying, it was possible that the pilot never saw the truck’s Red Cross markings.
The missile struck the truck broadside, piercing the ribbed canvas and not exploding till it struck the ground. Later, Goose never knew if he actually saw the missile pass through the truck in one of those moments of crystal clarity that sometimes happened on the battlefield, or if the analytical processes in his mind that he tapped into while making decisions told him that was what had happened.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
The resulting explosion lifted the truck from the ground, whirling it end over end thirty feet into the air. The gas tanks ruptured and caught on fire. In the next instant, the truck was a flaming comet that descended on an M-1A1 Abrams tank. As the twisted hulk of the truck rolled from the tank, bodies of soldiers spilled out in its wake. Some of the corpses wreathed the Abrams.
The three men who had been carrying the fourth had been blown several yards away. None of them got up.
One of the few surviving anti-aircraft emplacements opened fire. A collection of American Rangers and Turkish soldiers operated the double-barreled weapon, tracking black clouds of flak across the blue sky. In the space of three or four seconds, the AA gun crew had the MiG’s range. The AA cannonfire struck the MiG like a giant’s fists, crumpling the warbird. Trailing oily black smoke, the MiG turned and tried to limp back south of the border. Another salvo of AA cannonfire caught up with the jet, and the resulting explosions broke it into fiery pieces.
“Boo-yah!” Tanaka yelled a short distance from Goose. The young man stood and shook his fist at the falling debris that had been the enemy aircraft.
In the next instant, one of the three surviving MiGs wheeled in the sky, flipping over in an inversion that took it away from the AA gunners’ sights. Still inverted, the Syrian pilot triggered his 20mm guns. The cannon rounds pounded the desert ground, opening harsh tears in the earth and throwing up spiraling double plumes of dirt, sand, and smoke. The pilot flipped over 180 degrees, never pausing on the 20mm cannon.
Even as they realized the danger they were in, the AA crew was struck by the hammering bursts of 20mm cannonfire. Dead soldiers dropped, torn and bloody, like rag dolls. None of the brave crew that had brought the enemy jet down remained alive.
Continuing to rain destruction down on the border, the MiGs slammed air-to-surface missiles into vehicles and groups of men. A direct hit by a missile blasted past the reactive armor covering an Abrams and tore the turret loose.
A moment later, a surviving member of the tank crew tried to scramble from the rolling stock only to get caught by the next missile that flipped the Abrams over. The small American flag attached to the radio aerial burst into flames and incinerated.
Goose watched the destruction helplessly. Hitting the MiG with a round from the M-4A1 would have been an amazing feat. And a waste of ammo, he thought bitterly. With supply lines cut up and in danger, there was no telling how much time would pass before the survivors could resupply.
“Look out!” Tanaka yelled. “Incoming! Nine o’clock!”
Goose swiveled his head to the left and spotted the MiG sweeping in from the east, running a nap-of-the-earth course. “Down!” he yelled. “Take cover!” He turned and ran, spotting the chaplain with
