"I know, sir."

"After the transport vehicles arrive, station them around as if you're preparing to dig in. Get your wounded and your salvaged materials together. After full dark, start loading them aboard the trucks. I want the evacuation underway by 0200. For the moment, we're going to pull back to Sanliurfa."

"Affirmative," Goose replied. "Can we hold Sanliurfa?"

"We don't know yet. That depends on how much the Syrians are willing to invest in this op."

Goose's helmet cam raked the ravaged battlefield. Rangers stayed busy digging their dead and salvageable supplies from wrecks, craters, and piles of stone that had been heavily fortified staging areas.

"They've already invested heavily," the sergeant said. "I don't think they'll back off now."

"Neither do I." Remington scanned the command post, taking in the monitors. "Captain Mark Falkirk is organizing a bare-bones support team aboard Wasp. They're going to evac the wounded from Sanliurfa when the transport reaches the city, and they're going to provide air cav to put down any potential Syrian air force units."

"Tell Captain Falkirk that the 75th appreciates the help," Goose said.

"I already have." Remington could tell that Goose had more on his mind. "What are you thinking?"

Without hesitation, Goose said, "I want to stage the evac in two waves. The wounded and the materials go first. The trucks are slower than the RSOVs and APCs we've got. They can leave at 0200 but we won't leave until 0400. We'll cover their retreat."

"That two-hour gap is dangerous, Sergeant."

"Understood, sir," Goose replied. "But the convoy carrying the wounded could break down. If it does, I don't know that I could get the Rangier rifle companies to abandon those men."

Remington knew that Goose was right. And even if he would be successful in ordering fighting men back to leave wounded comrades in the arms of their enemies, the Ranger captain knew that Goose wouldn't be able to leave. After everything those men had experienced today, leaving men behind wasn't going to fit into their acceptable parameters.

"It's forty klicks to Sanliurfa," Goose went on. "If the convoy makes good time, they can reach the city in an hour. That will give them an hour to load the wounded and get the city defenses reinforced before we leave our posts."

"Done," Remington said. "But with you leaving that late, you're going to be hard-pressed to outrun the dawn. Once the sun is up, the Syrians will be better able to see you."

"I know that, sir," Goose said. "I'll talk to the company commanders, but I'm sure they'll agree that the two-stage wave is more doable for them than a mass retreat."

"Carry on, Goose. Let me know what I can do to help you."

"A prayer, sir," Goose said quietly. "Now and then when you have the time, a prayer."

Remington broke the com connection. He had his own preparations to attend to. The command post personnel, including the satellite crew, would pull back after dark. Carpathia already had another crew waiting in Sanliurfa to keep the communications open so there would be no loss of intel.

"Captain Remington." One of the corporals manning the computer terminals waved for the captain's attention. "I've got an encrypted personal message from the Pentagon here, sir."

Irritated, Remington approached the computer. He took his PDA from his pocket and set it in the dock attached to the PC. The machine flashed for a moment as the message was uploaded.

Remington figured the communique would be a slap on the wrist for accepting Carpathia's help. That had to be coming. He queued the PDA and read the message, verifying the pass codes that identified the message as legitimate.

In terse sentences, the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon had advised him that the military was currently moving to DEFCON 3, the defensive condition defined as Increase in force readiness above normal readiness.

The news let Remington know that the theater of action had grown much larger than Turkey, had now, in fact, stretched across the globe. For the Pentagon to declare DEFCON 3, the United States had to fear attack. The only candidates to garner that kind of attention were China and Russia.

Had either of those countries attacked? Were they, not the Syrians, responsible for the mysterious vanishings?

United States of America Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, Colorado Springs Local Time 2429 Hours "Is this your first time at DEFCON 3?"

The bizarre question chipped through Jim Manners' focus. The technical sergeant wasn't sure if that was the first time the question had been asked or if it was only the first time he'd heard it. He glanced to his right and found Tamara Coleman seated at the console next to him.

Tamara was part of Delta Crew. Her black skin cooled with the green glow of the monitor broadcasting a night-vision display before her. She was in her late twenties and had made technical sergeant three months before Jim had. When he'd first come to the Cheyenne Mountains Operations Center, she'd trained him at his post.

She was chatty and competent and attractive. During the training period, he'd discovered she tried out for the Olympics in the hundred-meter dash and the mile and had nearly snared a position on the American team a few times. Running was one of her passions, and she made it a point to work out in Colorado's high altitudes, hoping to qualify for the American team during the next competition.

"Yeah," Jim answered. "At least, it's my first DEFCON 3 on shift here." He frowned at the monitors. "It's one thing to know we're at DEFCON 3, but it's another to watch it taking place."

"Just be cool," Tamara advised. Her uniform blouse and pants were neatly pressed, her name badge precisely set, and her hair cropped short and styled. She tailored her own clothes and they showed her skill. Almost offhandedly, she shifted between the spy satellites she had access to, using a combination of trackball and keyboard to log information that would be later reviewed by the analysts who had been brought on to sort and distill the huge amounts of intel they were bringing in.

"I am." Jim turned his attention back to his screens. He monitored the various airfields around the world that he was responsible for. "Did you-did you know any of them?"

"Them?" Tamara glanced at him. "Someone who disappeared, you mean?"

"Yeah." Jim nodded. "That's what I mean."

Tamara was quiet for a moment. "I've lost some friends." Her voice was thick. A shimmer of tears gleamed in her dark eyes. "But that doesn't mean they're gone for good. We could find a way to bring them back."

"Yeah," Jim said. He hoped the doubt he felt didn't come through in his voice.

"I was in the break room when it happened." Tamara tapped the keyboard. Delta Crew had been due to relieve Charlie at midnight because they were the next up in the five-crew rotation. Now, however, both teams were at work because of missing personnel. She shrugged. "I always get here early. Gives me time to catch up on my reading and some quiet time for myself. I don't like to be in my apartment when my roommate gets home at night. Gets way too weird sometimes."

"She had a date?"

Tamara smiled a little. "Definitely. New guy she met at the hospital. Tiffany goes too fast in her relationships, then they blow upusually because she gets bored-and she wonders what happened."

"I thought you were going to move out."

"I thought about it, but I can't. She's like a little sister. After eight months of living with her, I feel kind of responsible for her."

Jim nodded. While they'd been paired for his training, he'd learned quite a bit about Tamara. She was the oldest of nine children, seven of them girls, and she had definite firstborn characteristics. She still sent money back home to her family to help pay the college tuition of her younger siblings. The Air Force had taken care of Tamara's college in exchange for compensatory time in service. Her generosity with her family members had resulted in her string of strange roommates, and her caregiver nature had kept them around. Tiffany was Tamara's latest "lost cause." Tamara was also a Big Sister, and if anyone in the complex had a benefit or fund-raiser going on, Tamara was known as one of the softest touches on the crews.

"So," Jim said, "do you think it will happen?" He stared at the airfields, watching the thermographic displays that showed the crews readying the B-52H Stratofortresses at the Air Logistics Center at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Other bases around the United States were making the same preparations with their fleets.

"What?" Tamara clicked the trackball, capturing more images. "War?"

Jim's mouth dried. He didn't know how they could sit there and discuss the subject as calmly as though they were placing a breakfast order. "Yeah. That."

Tamara hesitated. "I don't know." She glanced at her monitor, turning her head just enough to let Jim know she was checking the reflection of Colonel Dan Hatton, the Delta Crew commander who had stepped in to replace the missing Colonel Morris Turner.

Colonel Hatton, an American, was one of the most senior officers at the complex. He stood quietly, granite-jawed with his hands clasped behind his back. During his time at Cheyenne Mountain, Jim was certain Colonel Hatton had seen plenty of DEFCON 3s come.

And go, Jim told himself quietly. All those other DEFCON 3s had come and gone. Otherwise, a nuclear war would have broken out.

The bases Jim watched were strategic. The B-52s were the world's best long-range heavy bombers. Armed to the teeth, a B-52 carried seventy thousand pounds of mixed ordnance, including bombs, mines, and missiles. Air-launched cruise missiles, Harpoon antiship, and Have Nap missiles were standard fare for the big bombers.

The B-52 bomber originally debuted in 1955 as a primary factor in the Cold War. Armed with nuclear weapons, the planes were tasked to fly into Soviet airspace and take out Moscow and other key Russian cities with nuclear weapons. Back in those days, the nukes had still been referred to as atom bombs. Today that arsenal was referred to as weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs. The targets essentially remained the same: deep within Russia or China.

Two B-52Hs-the current updated model with new avionics, defense systems, data-link communications, and precision-guided weapons capabilities-could patrol 140,000 square miles of ocean surface within two hours. Capable of flying at 50,000 feet and at low levels, the B-52 was a dreadnought of air-strike capability. Without being refueled in the air, a Stratofortress had a range of 8,800 miles.

In actuality, the B-52 never had to leave the sky or a threatening posture because the Stratofortress could be refueled in midair. During the Gulf War, the longest strike mission in the aircraft's history was launched by a group of B-52s that took off from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, flew to Iraq and took out targets, then returned to the home base thirty-five hours later. Only the ability of the crew to function without succumbing to fatigue limited the B-52's performance.

"The Russians have had some disappearances," Jim said, cycling through his list of targets. "I've seen some of the reports. The CIA is feeding information to us from their agents on the ground there."

"I know. That's why the Russian military is in motion."

"Saber rattling?" God, Jim prayed, just let it be saber rattling. Never before had he felt so vulnerable. Before he'd gotten the Cheyenne Mountain posting, he'd known when international events had turned tense, but he'd never had as great an access to how things were actually shaping up. As a military man, he'd always known that the world hovered daily on the brink of destruction. But settled in at a console in the Cheyenne Mountain complex, he had the distinct experience of being part of the process.

"I don't think so." Tamara's eyes flicked from one monitor to the other. "The Russians are scared."

"Scared? Of what?"

"You know what happened in Israel in January of last year." "When the Russian fighters got knocked from the air by that freak meteor storm."

"Meteor storm?" Tamara smiled with polite disdain. "Is that what you think happened?"

"That seems to be the best answer."

"Does it? A freak meteor storm that didn't leave any meteors behind?"

"Most people who don't know better just assumed that the destruction of the Russian jets was because the equipment they used was inferior."

"But you don't think that?"

"No way. If those fighters had been inferior, they wouldn't have made the hop from Russia. And for all of them to decide to self-destruct more or less at the same time?" Jim shook his head. "No way."

"So ... a meteor storm?"

"Well, if the Israelis had used an electromagnetic pulse bomb, we'd have heard about it. And there would have been a lot of power outages at ground zero. There weren't any reported."

"The Israeli military was caught flat-footed. They're more geared for border disputes than aerial combat with the Russians."

Jim felt defensive. "A freak meteor storm that leaves no traces is easier to believe than aliens from outer space."

Tamara nodded to her right. "Sterling wouldn't agree with you. You've heard his theory, right?"

"I have." Jim knew from personal experience that Sterling would expound on the threat of aliens for hours on end if given the opportunity. Sterling was the chief conspiracy enthusiast on Charlie Crew. "Okay, so if you don't think it was aliens or a freak meteor storm or some tactical weapon the Israelis possess that we don't know about, what do you think it was?"

Silence stretched between them for a moment. During the six months he had known her, Jim had seldom seen Tamara think before making a reply. She always had information quickly at her disposal about any number of topics.

"Do you ever read the Bible?" she asked finally.

Jim felt a little self-conscious. He'd seen the tiny cross that Tamara wore on a delicate necklace around her neck when they'd had dinner, lunch, or breakfast after hours to get better acquainted. He'd gone to church when he was a kid, but he'd gotten away from it and resented anyone who tried to shove religion down his throat.

"Some," he said. "It's been a while."

"Ever study the book of Revelation? Daniel? Ezekiel?"

"No."

"Ezekiel 38," she said. "You should take a look at it."

The conversation felt more and more uncomfortable to Jim. He was beginning to feel sorry he'd asked.

"Ezekiel 38 could be interpreted to describe the Russian attack on Israel," Tamara went on. "A great army is supposed to descend from the north and attempt to destroy Israel and take her riches. For years, Israel has depended on outside financial help."

"There are lots of riches there now."

"Because of Rosenzweig's formula, yes. At any rate, during the northern army's attack, when Israel was helpless, God told Ezekiel that He would protect Israel."

"And you believe that's what happened?"

"Not," Tamara stated quietly, "until today."

"When everyone vanished?"

"Yes."

Jim considered her answer and the possibility he knew she was only hinting at. "So if God's hand was in all of the disappearances, where did those people go?"

Tamara looked at him. "Heaven, Jim. They went to heaven." A mostly beatific expression filled her face, but some uncertainty shone in her dark eyes. There was also more than a little sadness.

Even though he had been expecting her to say exactly that, her words still brought a chill that filled Jim's heart. "Why them?"

"Because they were the ones who were deserving."

"Deserving?"

"They believed. " Tamara shook her head. "Didn't you know some of those people who disappeared from here?"

"Yeah."

"And what were most of them like?"

"They were good people," Jim answered. That was one of the first things that came to mind. Of course, he hadn't known them all, but he'd known quite a few.

"Exactly."

"But there are other good people who are still here," Jim pointed out. "You were left behind."

"Thank you for that, but my faith isn't as strong as it used to be," Tamara admitted. "Or maybe it was never as strong as I thought it was. I don't know." She sighed. "My mother was recently diagnosed with cancer."

"I'm sorry."

Tamara shook her head. "That's not the point, Jim. The point is how I reacted to that news. I'm guilty of holding God accountable for my mom's cancer. I'm not supposed to do that.

"But a feeling like that is only natural."