“I am; I am,” Gary replied. “But even the Steadicam programming in this unit isn’t going to keep the picture from jumping everywhere.”
“Just keep shooting. Do you know where Goose is?” Danielle stared through the burning and overturned vehicles. Thank God none of them belonged to the Rangers.
“Not yet.”
“Find him.”
“I’m trying.”
Danielle turned to the driver. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”
The man refused to look at her, but he did put his foot down harder on the accelerator. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“If you want to pull over, I’ll drive myself.”
He shook his head. “Is any of this even real to you?”
“All of it is real,” Danielle told him. When she got back to Sanliurfa, she was determined to find another driver. “This is the biggest story of my career. A third of the planet disappears. A lot of world leaders are talking-behind closed doors-that this is some kind of religious thing.”
The driver swerved to miss a tree, and the cameraman yelped in surprise.
“We’re in a nation that has the only city in the world that sits on two continents,” Danielle continued. “Which city, by the way, has been a point of contention between Christianity and Islamic beliefs since they laid the first stone of the first building there.” She paused. “It’s real to me.”
“I found Goose,” Gary said.
“Where?”
“He’s on top of the second truck back.” Gary laughed like a madman. “You know, that guy is certifiable. I’ve filmed extreme sports athletes who wouldn’t do what I’ve seen him do since this started. I love that guy.”
Danielle clung to the honest emotion in Gary’s voice. That was how Goose played before the young male audience. He was a man’s man, a warrior in the truest sense of the word. And for the women, he was the hero, the guy they all hoped to fall in love with. Those were the demographics she’d pushed at her producer at OneWorld NewsNet to get permission to stay with his story.
But if he got killed…
She pushed that thought out of her mind. She couldn’t imagine Goose getting killed. When the chips were down and everything was on the line, he was unstoppable. She’d never met a man like him before.
The jeep whipped by a burning vehicle. A group of Rangers held bandits at gunpoint and were slapping restraints on them. The heat from the flames rolled over Danielle just for a moment, but her eyes remained on the lone figure atop the cargo truck.
Local Time 2125 Hours
Wind tore at Goose as he clung to the canvas covering the steel support ribs of the cargo truck’s payload area. The metal banged against his body, though the Kevlar vest blunted some of the trauma. He held on to the M-4A1 with his right hand as he went forward.
Crain climbed behind Goose. The younger man didn’t keep his body snugged into the canvas and was taking a beating that slowed his progress. He hadn’t yet gotten on top of the truck.
“Sarge! Sarge!” the truck driver called. “Are you there?”
“I’m here, Jenson,” Goose said. “You just hold her steady for one minute longer.” He dug his elbows and knees into the canvas and straddled the supports. His knee burned with pain at every bump and lurch.
“He’s almost at the door! I see him in the mirror!”
“I’m there,” Goose said as he pulled himself to the side of the truck and thrust the assault rifle forward.
The bandit clung to the truck’s side. The man’s feet rested on the edge of the payload area through the canvas tarp, and he held on to the tarp with one hand. Balancing himself, pistol in one hand, the bandit swung forward and tried to shove his weapon through the broken window.
“Sarge!”
Goose squeezed the trigger and felt the M-4A1 thud briefly against his shoulder. A three-round burst shattered the bandit’s head, and he fell from the truck’s side.
One of the bandit vehicles racing beside the convoy on the right side immediately returned fire. Goose stayed low. The canvas didn’t offer much protection, but he was grateful for what he got. Bullets sizzled through the air over his head. A round struck one of the supports and sent a vibration singing through it. And at least one punched into his Kevlar vest.
Goose plucked an M67 fragmentation grenade from his combat webbing, flicked the clip out with his thumb, and released the spoon and pin. Arching up for a moment, he threw the spherical grenade at the jeep as it roared to within thirty feet.
The bandits fired at him immediately, but between the rough ride offered by the jeep and the bouncing of the cargo truck, they missed him. Goose pulled his helmet low and crossed an arm in front of his face.
“Fire in the hole!” he roared.
Crain hunkered down atop the cargo truck.
A thunderclap exploded beside the cargo truck, and shrapnel from the grenade peppered the vehicle’s body. Goose pulled the M-4A1 to his shoulder and peered over the side. The jeep was a smoking ruin carrying dead men. It rammed into the cargo truck’s side, then got caught up under the wheels. The truck reared like a bucking bronco as it rolled over the bandit vehicle.
The three remaining bandit vehicles hesitated, then veered away from the convoy’s side. Unable to see the Ranger Hummers on the other side of the trucks, or possibly mistaking them for their comrades, the drivers of the bandit vehicles closed in again and focused on the lead truck.
“Drifter Two,” Goose called as he scrambled to the rear of the truck.
“Reading you five by,” Donner radioed back.
“Swing around behind the convoy and let these boys know you’re here.”
“Affirmative.”
Goose caught hold of the support bar across the opening and flipped across, stepping backward into the cargo area. He’d organized the way the payload was distributed before they’d left the post. He knew where everything was.
The dead bodies of the two Rangers who’d been assigned to the payload area rocked restlessly with the sway and jar of the cargo truck. For a moment, the sight of them held Goose in his tracks. Both of the men had been young. Losing soldiers under his command hurt, and lately he’d lost a lot of them.
Get your job done. You can grieve later.
He stepped over the dead men and used a penflash from the pocket of his BDUs to make certain of the crate he wanted. When he found the equipment crate he was looking for, he slung his rifle and opened the crate. He reached inside and took out an SMAW.
Using the Israeli B-300 Shoulder-launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon as a model, the United States Marine Corps had originally fielded the SMAW MK153 Mod 0 for use against tanks and heavily fortified installations. It had proven effective time and again. During Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. Army had used some of them. Impressed with the performance of the SMAW, the army had continued to borrow the marine weapons while in the Middle East, and the Rangers had a cache of them along the border for use against the Soviet-made tanks the Syrian army fielded.
Goose slammed an 83mm rocket home in the launcher, then swung around to the rear of the truck. Crain was hanging upside down over the opening.
“Thought maybe you needed a hand,” Crain said.
“I got it.” Goose stepped through the opening and put a foot on the truck’s bumper. He slid to the side of the truck, swaying along with the vehicle’s bumping, then shouldered the weapon and aimed it back toward the jeeps in front of the Hummer.
“Weapons upgrade?” Crain asked.
Goose took aim through the scope and centered the crosshairs on the lead vehicle.
“Just a little video game humor,” Crain said.
“I’m not much into video games.”
Crain’s rifle barked again and again.
Donner led the Ranger vehicles in a close sweep behind the cargo trucks. Goose saw them edging into view. The bandits spotted them as well and pulled away from the trucks.
The rocket launcher was overkill in this situation, and Goose knew it. But he thought about the village Niyazi had attacked and all the dead victims and wounded that had been left behind, and his heart hardened.