Turning away from the tent, Remington made a mental note to check on Corporal Joseph Baker’s hours. Maybe there was a way to cut into Baker’s free time even more. That’d disrupt the church schedule. Then Remington focused his thoughts on his upcoming meeting. If everything worked well, he’d have a chance to strike back at the Syrians within the next few days, maybe even the next few hours.
And maybe he’d be able to work out his situation with First Sergeant Samuel Adams “Goose” Gander at the same time. After all, the holding position in Sanliurfa was all about acceptable losses. Somebody was going to have to take them. And Remington knew just who he was going to toss into the next desperate situation.
United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0611 Hours
“First Sergeant.”
Startled, totally engrossed in what he was reading and struggling to make sense of, Goose looked up from the Bible. His mind reeled from the prophecies contained in the book of Revelation, partly because of how huge and sweeping they were, and partly because he had trouble understanding many of them.
Corporal Joseph Baker stood in the doorway of the makeshift barracks. At six feet eight inches tall and built like a Kodiak bear, the corporal was both a threatening and an awe-inspiring man. His face was round beneath his blond crew cut, and his china blue eyes held innocence as well as fatigue. Bruises from the fighting he’d survived still marked his face, but they were green and yellow with age now. He wore BDUs and carried an M-4A1. He hung his helmet by its strap over one broad shoulder.
Goose dragged his feet from the small cot and dropped them to the floor. He wore his boots, though he had taken the time to change his socks. Going without his boots wasn’t something he was prepared to do, but, as a soldier, he knew fresh socks meant he had less chance of catching athlete’s foot or some other bacterial infection. In a battle zone, an infantryman without healthy feet was only one quick step away from being a dead man.
“Corporal,” Goose said in greeting.
The building the Ranger contingent was using now as their barracks had been a grain mill for a hundred years or more. Located near the heart of the city, because Sanliurfa had been around in one incarnation or another for hundreds of years, the mill offered the Rangers a good central location from which to deploy troops.
The Rangers bunked in the basement. There were no windows—one of its greatest advantages in the current situation—so light came from electric lanterns and torches run by generators. The noise from those generators constantly hammered and chugged to create a solid racket that underscored every conversation. But the building’s walls were a couple feet thick and offered a lot of protection against the artillery shelling the military expected to resume once the Syrians took up their assault on the city in earnest again.
The sweet smell of the milled grain accumulated through the centuries thickened the air to the point that men with asthma or sinus conditions hadn’t been able to stand it. Fine particles floated in the air, filled every nook and cranny, and coated every surface. Goose knew that grain dust could be explosive, and though he’d been assured by the demolition guys that the concentrations in the basement weren’t anywhere high enough to be dangerous, he still worried.
Dozens of beds were spread over the basement floor, but all of them were organized to provide aisles for rapid evac if the troops were called into a firefight.
The Rangers didn’t really rest in this room, Goose knew. The men collapsed, passed out, and gave in to fatigue or injury. Most of them sleeping or lying in the beds now bore light wounds. These wounded were just the tip of the iceberg. The hospitals overflowed with more critically wounded. To Goose it didn’t seem like an hour could go by without somebody—soldier or citizen—succumbing to his wounds.
They were bleeding to death slowly in Sanliurfa, and Goose knew it.
So the mill basement wasn’t a place of rest or hope. It was a staging area, where men took brief respite and hoped and prayed they and their friends weren’t going to be the next to die. The healthy Rangers occupied the few bars or restaurants open throughout the city. At least those places provided his men with a comforting façade, a place where they could pretend for a moment that everything was going to be all right.
Goose had taken to splitting his time between the bars, the taverns, and the temporary barracks. As a first sergeant, he pushed himself to maintain a high profile. Other soldiers leaned on his ability to keep himself up and going. He felt frayed and ragged now, and his interpretation of the book of Revelation was building a solid fear in his heart and mind. It wasn’t his only source of unease, either. Goose’s talk with Icarus and his decision to let the man go remained constantly in the first sergeant’s thoughts.
“Am I interrupting you?” Baker asked.
“No,” Goose replied. “I’m due back in the field at 0700.”
Remington had issued standing orders that every man was supposed to be in the rack for five hours a day until the next round of Syrian attacks. That wasn’t enough sleep to keep a warrior healthy or sane, but it was something.
“Have you slept?” Baker entered the room and nodded hello to several of the men who called out to him.
Other men, Goose noted, rolled over in their beds and turned away from Baker. The corporal was something of a messiah and a pariah these days. His church was one of the only areas that didn’t move on a regular basis.
Remington had objected to the permanent placement of the tent church but hadn’t chosen to fight a battle over it yet.
