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United States 75th Army
Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 1422 Hours

"Help me! Please, God, send someone to help me! My wife! They took my wife!"

The agonized and fearful cry jerked First Sergeant Samuel Adams "Goose" Gander from the mental paralysis that had gripped him for the last several moments. The early afternoon sun blazed over Sanliurfa, beating down on the city with an unrelenting heat. Shimmering blasts of ovenlike air radiated from the shattered buildings surrounding him and the hard-baked asphalt beneath his boots. Sweat soaked Goose's BDUs and ran down his face from beneath his Kevlar helmet. The helmet shaded his eyes and would deflect most bullets and shrapnel, but right now it felt like a stewpot slowly parboiling his brain. Sand stuck to his chin and burned his eyes. The coppery taste of his own blood still lined his mouth, a souvenir from the fight he'd just had with Icarus.

Goose still stood in the alley where minutes ago he had first fought, then talked with the man he knew only as Icarus, the rogue CIA agent that Special Agent-in-Charge Alexander Cody and Ranger Captain Cal Remington had scoured Sanliurfa to find. Despite their desperate efforts, neither had been able to locate their target.

Goose, however, had encountered the fugitive on three different occasions. On two of those occasions, Icarus had sought Goose out. The rogue agent had staged the circumstances of those events so that Goose had had no choice but to let him walk away. The third time, at their meeting in this place, Goose had discovered by accident where Icarus was hiding. He'd forcibly taken the rogue agent into custody. But he hadn't remanded Icarus over to Remington, Goose's commanding officer.

Though he and Remington disagreed on the matter of Icarus—as they had on many other things over the long years of their association in the military—Remington was Goose's good friend and a brother in arms.

But in the end Goose hadn't held Icarus. He'd allowed him to slip free. Now Icarus was gone, once more loose to pursue whatever mission drove him to remain within Sanliurfa's boundaries despite the dangers of the Syrian army, poised to attack the city, and the presence of his hunters Remington and Cody. If any of his pursuers caught up with him, Icarus's odds of survival, Goose knew, were essentially zero.

Goose also knew that he should be in hot pursuit of the rogue agent. But it appeared that chasing Icarus wasn't an option just now. Something else was going down, and Goose couldn't ignore the plea for help. He was a soldier, and soldiers defended those who couldn't defend themselves. In Sanliurfa, there were a number of defenseless.

"Help me! Someone help me! For the love of God!"

Goose stared toward the mouth of the alley, tracking the plea for help. He automatically slid his M-4A1 assault rifle from his shoulder and canted the weapon so the barrel pointed down and the butt rested on but not against his right shoulder under his chin. Four inches shorter than the M16s that infantrymen had carried in past wars, the M-4A1's design lent itself to close-quarter combat. Today's battlefields moved increasingly in the direction of urban warfare rather than open terrain. The weapons the Rangers carried reflected that.

A man in brown khaki shorts, hiking boots, and a gray shirt staggered in front of the alley mouth. He appeared thirty-something, balding and sunburned. Blood poured down the side of his face from a wound at the top of his head. Crimson lines ran down his chin and neck, disappearing into his shirt. His battered features were red and raw. Swollen bruises almost closed one eye.

"Sir." Goose kept his voice strong but neutral. The man jerked away and covered his head with one arm.

Peering fearfully under his forearm with his one good eye, the man looked at Goose. "You are American."

"Yes, sir," Goose replied. The wounded man stood partially behind Goose's Humvee, hiding as well as he could. Goose had driven into the alley to have his confrontation privately with Icarus. But right now the man was using the Humvee as cover. Goose cleared his throat, searching for the right words to get through to this man. "I'm First Sergeant Gander. With the United States Army 75th Rangers from Fort Benning, Georgia." His words were tinged with a southern accent, acquired courtesy of Waycross, Georgia, where Goose had been born and raised.

"Thank God," the man said. "Thank God." He started down the alley but almost fell over a loose hunk of debris from the nearby bomb-blasted buildings. Syrian artillery hadn't hit this part of the city as extensively as it had in other sections, but fallen debris still blocked the alley behind Goose.

"Sir," Goose said in a sterner voice, "stay where you are."

The man gaped at Goose but halted where he was.

Over the past few days, the Sanliurfan citizens and visitors had quickly learned to obey commands given by the three armies that currently held positions within the city. In addition to the Syrian threat looming outside the city's borders, the strange anomaly that had ripped away what most experts agreed was at least a third of the world's population had left people everywhere confused, paranoid, and afraid. No one knew if the disappearances would start up again, or who might disappear next.

"What?" the man shouted.

"Stay where you are," Goose repeated. "I don't know you."

During the past few days, the Rangers as well as the United Nations Peacekeeping teams and the Turkish army had learned that Syria's blatant and unprovoked attack on Turkey and the subsequent invasion had inspired a number of local terrorists to start ratcheting up their own campaigns to make political and religious statements. Most of those campaigns concentrated on raising the body count. Several soldiers of all three armies, various Sanliurfan citizens, and some innocent tourists trapped in this mess had paid the price for the terrorists' convictions.

Copyright © 2004 by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.