Apocalypse Crucible

gear, he reached the rooftop landing and stayed low. He switched back to the battlefield channel. “Eagle One, this is Phoenix Leader.”
“Go, Leader.”
“I’m at your twenty.”
“Come ahead, Leader. Heard you coming up the fire escape. Eagle Three confirmed your ID before you reached the first landing.”
The thought that a sniper, even one his Rangers, had placed him in rifle crosshairs—even for the few seconds necessary to identify him—made Goose uneasy. Friendly fire wasn’t, and all too often it was initiated by fatigued troops stressed to the breaking point from living in fear.
The U.S. Rangers—accompanied by remnants of the Turkish Land Forces and the United Nations Peacekeeping teams that had survived the brutal attack along the border—had lived under those conditions since they’d retreated to Sanliurfa. The Turkish army, under Captain Tariq Mkchian, and the U.N. Peacekeeping teams, led by Colonel John Stone, backed the Rangers’ efforts. Those troops hadn’t fared any better than Goose’s own. During the last few days, Captain Remington had proven to the two commanders that the Rangers were far better suited to the urban brawl that the Syrian army was forcing upon them than their own units. It had been a long, arduous fight, Goose knew, but Remington was a man who had consistently proven he could get his way.
During the last two days, scouting units had tagged and made contact with Syrian scouts pushing into the area. With the world in chaos from all the disappearances, the Syrian government had chosen to take as much land as possible before the world returned to some semblance of the status quo.
Goose kept his head low as he hauled himself up onto the rooftop. He glanced automatically to the north, east, and west.
For the most part, Sanliurfa was dark. With the blessing of the Turkish army, Captain Remington had imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the city in an effort to control the looting. So far, because Sanliurfa was going to be offered as a sacrificial lamb to the invading Syrians while defenses in Ankara and Diyarbakir to the northeast and northwest were shored up and hardened, no one in the Turkish government had seen fit to tell the United States fighting men that they couldn’t die in their places.
Pockets of soft golden light marked civilians gathered around lanterns or campfires. Looters moved among them, too, a reminder that primitive impulses lurked just below the surface of most people. The fear and uncertainty those people had experienced had brought those old instincts to the forefront.
The Syrian air force had made an unexpected raid the night before that had resulted in a number of casualties. Goose could make out the darker cavities in the city where that strike had compounded the destruction of the SCUD missile strikes that had hammered Sanliurfa in the opening minutes of the undeclared war. The Syrian fighters last night had mainly targeted Sanliurfa Airport, finishing off what the SCUD attacks had started. The enemy pilots had also targeted homes and businesses, areas where the U.S. forces had gathered to relax or sleep while off duty. A third of the city lay in ruins.
Syrian snipers had kept the perimeter guards busy as well, killing nineteen more soldiers and wounding forty-three. The Rangers and marine snipers had confirmed twenty-two kills among the Syrian snipers themselves, but no one took any solace in that. Compared to U.S. casualties and the two hundred and twelve confirmed civilian lives lost to bombs, the Syrians had come out on top during that attack. Goose was pretty sure their body counts were reasonably accurate, despite the carnage from the initial air strikes. Search-and-rescue teams could tell the difference between the newly dead and the early kills because the bodies were fresh as opposed to those that had lain there decomposing since the first attack. The wounded that night numbered over eight hundred, most of those also civilian.
Before the Syrian attack, two hundred and eighty thousand people had lived in Sanliurfa. With the addition of the Ataturk Baraji Dam, named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, as part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, the city had grown by leaps and bounds. Wealth and privilege had flowed into Sanliurfa, and it was no surprise that the Syrians wanted to capture the city and create a psychological advantage in their undeclared war.
Turning his attention to the south-southeast, Goose took his 10x50 binoculars from the front pack attached to his Load Carrying. Equipment harness. He dialed in the magnification, moving the binoculars slowly to where the Syrian advance stood out against the dark horizon. They stirred up gray-brown dust clouds as they traveled. There was no mistaking the blocky lines of the Soviet-made tanks and APCs.
“Do you think this is it?” Mitchell asked. He hunkered down beside Goose and kept one hand clamped over the pencil mike of his headset so his voice wouldn’t be broadcast over the com. “Do you think they’re going to try to rout us tonight?”
“Not in the dark.” Goose put confidence in his voice. That was part of his job as first sergeant, to make the troops believe there was never a situation he hadn’t seen, never an enemy he couldn’t outguess. “On a hit-and-git mission, darkness is their friend. But trying to take over an urban area filled with hostiles—they’ll want the light of day.”
“So what’s up with this?”
“Pressure,” Goose responded. “Just knocking on the door and letting us know they’re still out there. This is designed to keep the kettle primed and boiling hot. They can put a few men in the field and keep this whole city awake at night.”
“Still means they’ll be coming soon.”
“Affirmative,” Goose said. Keeping the confidence of the troops also meant never lying to them.
“How far do you think they’ll push it tonight?”
“As far as they can.” Goose surveyed the approaching vehicles. They weren’t coming with any speed, and maybe that was a good thing.
Lowering the binoculars, he glanced at the Chase-Durer Combat Command Automatic Chronograph he’d gotten as a Father’s