The wind carried the twisting black smoke across Goose’s vision, smudging the sight of the terrorist as he raised his pistol. The station wagon exploded, bits of it launching into the air, its body buckling into a wrenched mass of flaming metal.
Goose twisted into a profile stance, offering the smallest target possible to the terrorist. He flicked the M-4A1’s fire selector over to a three-round burst. “Put the weapon down!” he ordered. “We’re the United States Army! Throw down your weapon and step away!”
Instead, the terrorist screamed in rage and opened fire.
One round slapped against Goose’s Kevlar-lined helmet. It hit hard enough to knock his head to one side like he’d caught a punch from a professional boxer. The bullet ricocheted from the helmet, though. Goose took a half step to the right to recover. His sights on the terrorist never wavered. He squeezed the trigger, aiming for the kill zone.
The terrorist staggered backward just as the report from Tanaka’s sniper weapon echoed around Goose. It was over.
Goose assigned Williams and Clark to secure the third terrorist’s body and confirm the kill, then turned back to the CIA agent.
The agent stood with difficulty, leaning heavily on Bill. Holding his assault rifle in one hand, Bill put his other arm around the man’s waist to support him.
Flipping over to the secure command frequency, Goose said, “Phoenix Base, this is Phoenix Leader.”
“Go, Leader. Base reads you.”
“Can you confirm the story we’re getting here?”
“Affirmative, Leader,” Remington said in a cool voice. “My translator at this end tells me the man was telling someone that the group had been attacked by American Rangers.”
“Was he alerting Syrian forces or the PKK?” Goose asked. He thought of his team. The front line was only seven klicks away, but suddenly it felt like a million miles.
“He was transmitting a warning, Leader,” Remington said. “We haven’t been able to confirm the destination of the signal. There wasn’t time to get a lock on it.”
“Did he get through?”
“We don’t know.”
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 11:21 P.M.
Megan Gander stabbed a hand out, palmed the handset, and had the cordless phone to her ear between the first and second ring. The real trick was being awake and semicoherent by the time the chill plastic touched her ear and cheek.
Her thoughts flew immediately to Joey. She’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him to get home. She looked at her watch. Joey had a 9 P.M. curfew on school nights, and he knew it. It was way too late for her boy to be out. Her anger came awake with her, and she was ready to unload on her seventeen-year-old son if he was calling with any excuse as to why he hadn’t been home at curfew.
If Goose were home, Joey wouldn’t push his luck so hard, she thought, and at the same moment she prayed the call wasn’t from the police to tell her something had happened to Joey. Or from the army, telling her something had happened to Goose.
That was her second thought as she awoke. Maybe the call was about Goose. Her husband had sounded calm and casual during their phone conversation the previous day, and she knew he wouldn’t call her late at night or during her scheduled shift at the base’s counseling center. Goose was just that way. No matter what time zone he was in, Goose always knew what time it was in her world and what she had going on.
Just as she thought the call might be about Goose, she dismissed the possibility. While Goose thought things might heat up along the Turkish-Syrian border, he’d assured her that nothing had happened yet. And if something had happened to Goose, there would have been a uniformed officer at her door to inform her, not some impersonal phone call.
“Megan Gander,” she said, then covered the mouthpiece while she cleared the sleep from her voice.
“Megan, this is Helen Cordell.”
“Yes, Helen. What can I do for you?” Helen Cordell was the current night shift supervisor at the counseling center where Megan worked. Megan sat up on the living-room couch. She wore pink sweats that were a favorite of hers from her high school days eighteen years earlier. Other than during her two pregnancies, her size had never changed. She’d been gifted with a fast metabolism and worked hard to stay in shape. She and Goose shared mutual interests in tennis and hiking, as well as other team sports supported on base, and that helped make scheduling activities easy.
“I know it’s not your scheduled shift,” Helen said, “but we have a situation.”
“It’s no problem. I was just grabbing a nap.” Megan got up and moved through the small three-bedroom base house she and Goose had filled with comfortable furniture and personal items. She walked past the master bedroom and down the hall to Joey’s room. “I’d have been up anyway in a few minutes.”
“Is something wrong?”
“It’s my son, Joey.” Megan opened the door and peeked into the room. The room was a mess—the walls covered with posters of extreme sports icons in midstunt, CDs scattered everywhere, and schoolbooks gathering dust on the small rolltop desk Goose had given the boy as a birthday present a few years ago. The bed was empty. “It’s past curfew and my teenager still hasn’t made it home.” Megan walked to the other bedroom. “He was supposed to be home by nine. If he’s not home by midnight, I get to go out and look for him.”
“Now I really hate having to call you,” Helen said. “I know how nerve-wracking it is waiting up on a teenager. I’ve done that myself.”
“I know. Joey wouldn’t pull something like this if Goose was at home.” Megan eased her other son’s door open.
Chris lay swaddled in
