The parks and garden areas of downtown Sanliurfa mostly looked like someone had torched Eden. Several areas still smoldered, covered in piles of debris where the construction teams had dumped broken chunks of buildings and burned-out vehicles. In other places, surplus tents stood out under trees. Remington knew vast numbers of Sanliurfa’s people were living in the streets in makeshift homes like these. It seemed they thought that the Syrians would rather target buildings than open areas with their missiles and aircraft attacks, though how they could believe that with all the smoking evidence to the contrary, Remington didn’t know.
Only a few blocks farther on, Remington spotted the huge tent area where Corporal Joseph Baker kept his makeshift church running 24/7. Acidic anger burned through the Ranger captain’s stomach as he realized the church had grown even larger since the last time he’d seen it.
When the Rangers had first arrived in Sanliurfa, the stories about the freak earthquake that had broken the Syrian pursuit of the Allied retreating border troops just as they were about to overwhelm them had captured the immediate attention of the media and the locals, not to mention a good percentage of the Allied troops. Remington still didn’t know what had triggered Corporal Baker’s decision to lead the troops trapped there in saying the Twenty-third Psalm. But he had. And in that moment, after the earthquake wiped out the first of the Syrian armor, Corporal Baker had become a man of mythic proportions in far too many people’s minds.
The talk in Sanliurfa was that Corporal Joseph Baker had God’s ear.
Remington didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Even before the retreat from the border had begun, Baker had baptized soldiers from all three armies as well as media personnel, Turkish citizens, and nomadic traders. He’d been out there in that stinking river for hours. Remington still caught occasional video bites of the event on the news channels.
The baptisms had continued even after their arrival in Sanliurfa, as more soldiers came forward to give themselves to God, followed by a goodly chunk of the city’s civilian populace, who heard of the man of God who could lead them to salvation, even in a war zone. Baker and the men who believed in him—some of them military chaplains!—had dragged under the makeshift church tent a metal tank that held enough water to dunk a man deep enough to baptize him.
Remington thought the whole process was nothing more than religious mumbo jumbo. As far as he was concerned, baptism was simply a get-out-of-jail-free card for losers convinced they were about to die.
The Ranger captain had never been baptized. Nor had he ever wanted to be baptized. He didn’t believe in God. He believed in himself.
So far, he’d managed his life so that believing in God hadn’t been necessary. Anything Remington wanted, he went out and got for himself. So far, nothing he had ever wanted had been completely out of his reach or his ability to change his circumstances so that whatever he wanted became available. The instant he started believing in something outside of himself, some higher power, Remington knew his life would be over. What point was there in believing in God in a world where man made the rules? He figured he might as well believe in luck. And he did. In his own luck.
As the RSOV passed the tent, now offering supplies, light medical treatment, and care to wounded soldiers as well as to any civilians who needed help, Remington got a glimpse inside. Soldiers wearing Ranger uniforms, marine uniforms, U.N. uniforms, and Turkish army uniforms knelt together on the ground with their heads bowed and their weapons within easy reach. Civilians knelt beside them.
The lion shall lie down with the lamb. The thought came unbidden to Remington. He was irritated that the biblical phrase should even occur to him. Religion was not his deal. All his life, all he’d ever had to believe in was himself. And in the military, all the belief in the world wouldn’t save a man from superior weapons or superior tactics. All these people thinking about God were wasting time they should have been using to develop plans of action. The Syrians were coming. If there was a God, He’d shown no sign of stopping it.
Surprisingly, Baker wasn’t at the pulpit that someone had fashioned from ammo crates covered with a sheet of plywood. One of the Ranger chaplains stood there leading the prayer as another man dunked a soldier into the large metal water container. A line of men obviously waiting their turn for a dunking stood to one side of the container.
The religious convictions of Baker’s followers had created friction among the Rangers as well as among the other military units. Most of those who were baptized by Baker or one of the chaplains seemed to believe that they were somehow divinely protected. Remington had seen one instance himself, though he noticed that those men died just as readily as any other soldier in his command.
But their belief in the hereafter—that they were going to survive somewhere else even if they were killed in the city they held on to by the skin of their teeth and bled dry to keep—offended other soldiers. Remington believed that having someone constantly in the next trench harping about saving his immortal soul simply reminded a fighting man that he could be dead in the next heartbeat.
And where do you go once you are dead?
Remington hated that the question was even formed in his mind. Death would catch him someday, but until that moment he intended to live like he was going to live forever. He wouldn’t allow himself to get distracted by Baker or his converts. They were all idiots, all
