Goose had made his peace with himself over the men he was going to kill tonight. He’d said his prayers and focused on the atrocities his enemies had done, judging them fit for no mercy if they chose to fight. The Syrian army had launched SCUDs into metropolitan areas, killing hundreds of men, women, and children. And they had attacked Sanliurfa on different occasions, killing civilians as well as brother Rangers.
Payback was coming, and it was dressed in Ranger black and wearing the bruised shadows of the night on its face.
Goose felt the wind blowing in from the east, mixed with the spitting rain that collected and slid down his features to soak the turtleneck he wore. He carried his M-4A1 slung over his shoulder, his M9 on his hip, and took up an MP5-SD3 machine pistol with suppressor as his lead weapon for the moment. His LCE was loaded with grenades and extra ammo for his weapons.
A shadow flitted along the ridgeline to Goose’s right. He picked it up instantly in his peripheral vision. He shifted the MP5 across his knees a little, getting his body ready to move and bring the deadly machine pistol up if he needed to.
Goose stayed hunkered down, putting most of his weight on his good knee so he could save the injured one. The bad knee had swelled tremendously, filling his pant leg and promising days of agony to come.
But he was with his men in the field and that was where he belonged. Megan could never understand that about him. Not the warrior spirit, not the avenger inside him that lived to break the hold evil men had on others. For some people, being a soldier was a profession, but Goose had always felt it was a calling, something in his nature that he could never deny. He’d fought and would fight to protect those who could not protect themselves, and he would make the sacrifices necessary to see that done.
Tonight men would die because of his willingness to do that.
And the more he thought about all the terror and oppression that were coming in the next seven years, the stronger that spirit in him felt. The action against the Syrian army was a delaying tactic, a maneuver that would buy the armies occupying Sanliurfa a little more time. A chance at life or a slower death.
But what was he going to do after that? The question had hung heavy in his mind during the fifty-three-klick run through the rainsodden land. Even when the action was over in Turkey—and God grant that it would be—there would be new wars to fight. The Four Horsemen were coming. Nicolae Carpathia might be the Antichrist.
Goose wondered if he would recognize the evil in the man if he saw it, or if he would be pulled into it. And what if Icarus had it wrong? What if Carpathia wasn’t Antichrist? What if the Antichrist hadn’t shown up yet?
The possibilities made Goose’s mind dizzy. His father had always told him that sometimes a man could simply know too much. Wes Gander had always advised Goose to take each day as it came, to make a battle plan, then find out what mistakes were made the day before and correct those.
But that wasn’t possible now. No one knew what mistakes were being made.
“First Sergeant.” Corporal Tommy Brass hesitated in the brush ten yards away. The Rangers knew better than to creep up on each other unannounced.
“Here, Corporal,” Goose replied in a soft voice that didn’t carry far.
“Bravo Detail is in position. Lieutenant Keller says we’re go on your go.”
Keller was holding two Alpha squads back for the moment. Goose’s primary mission was the takedown of the four targets designated by Captain Remington for termination—all four were ranking officers in the Syrian army. Goose had seen the files on all of them. They were butchers, men who used the power of the military to further their own bloodlusts and desires.
The deaths of those four men were going to be a message. So far, the Syrian army thought of the Rangers only as peacekeepers. But when the Syrians had used the dead bodies of the men who had fallen during the border skirmish, they had crossed the line. Tonight, the Syrian army was going to learn a little about retribution.
“Gonna be readin’ ‘em from the Old Testament,” Wes Gander used to say when he talked about people he’d had confrontations with.
And that was what it was, Goose knew—an Old Testament reckoning right here in the holy lands where so much of that bloody history had played out.
“Affirmative, Corporal,” Goose said. “Stand by to go live on the sat-link when I call for it. When we hit the house, those four targets we’re after are going to scatter.”
When they left Sanliurfa, Remington had tagged all four men through the spy-sat recon. Once the sat-link kicked in, Remington’s specialty teams would guide Goose and his men to the targets.
And once that ball was in play, Keller would take the other two squads into the fuel dump site and destroy those supplies. Bravo Detail would explode booby traps they had on the armored cav, then proceed to the airfield and attempt to secure it. If everything went well, the marine wing from Sanliurfa could make a surprise strike and take out the remaining Syrian army.
“Yes, First Sergeant.”
Goose took a final deep breath, then took up the rope secured to a stake shoved deep into the mud. The drop over the ridgeline was steep, made even more treacherous by the mud clinging to the side. The roofs of the buildings were thirty feet below.
He held the MP5 in his right hand and used his left to rappel the steep descent Australian style, which put him face forward
