Apocalypse Dawn by Mel Odom Read Free Book Online Page B

in. Megan politely refused the young woman’s offer to take her son and carried him inside the room herself.
    The room was filled with cradles and small beds. The constant state of readiness around the world was taking a terrible toll on military families. Emergency baby-sitting had become a necessary thing in these troubled times.

    As Megan looked around, she was surprised to see that most of the beds were filled. She glanced at the woman who had checked her in. “Busy night, huh?”
    “Yeah. Military support personnel got called in a few minutes ago,” the young woman said. “There’s been some kind of attack.”
    A cold rush in Megan’s chest took her breath for a moment. “Where?”
    “Turkey,” the woman said.
    “What happened?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t know. I heard the news from one of the men who dropped off his daughter a few minutes ago.” She looked at Megan. “Do you have someone over there?”
    “My husband.” Megan held Chris tightly. It hurt to think about putting him down and walking away from him. With Goose in danger, and Joey gone, she couldn’t think of being absent from her younger son.
    But Gerry’s in danger, too, she told herself. Reluctantly, she placed Chris in one of the empty beds and pulled the sheet over him.
    He looked up at her with those wide, blue eyes. “Night, Mommy.”
    “Good night, baby.” Megan was surprised at the lump in her throat. “I love you. Say your prayers, honey.”
    “Now I lay me down to sleep,” Chris said. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
    “He will, darling. He will.” Megan ruffled her son’s hair and kissed him.
    “I’m just going to sleep for a little while, Mommy, so you can come and get me soon.”
    “I will, Chris. I’ll be right there for you. Promise.”
    Yawning, his little nose wrinkling, Chris rolled over on his side and closed his eyes. He was asleep in the space of a drawn breath.
    Megan kissed her son once more, thankful for such a precious gift, and left the nursery. Her thoughts spun, filled with Gerry and Boyd Fletcher, wondering where Joey might be, and hoping that Goose was all right, because if she knew her husband, he would be in the middle of things.

    The Mediterranean Sea
    USS Wasp
    Local Time 0657 Hours
    Alone with the dead man in the small, refrigerated room next to the medical department that was sometimes used as a morgue, U.S. Navy Chaplain Delroy Harte gazed at the stationery before him and prayed that the proper words would come to him. God, help me. How do you write to a woman and tell her that her husband is dead? How do you write to his children and tell them that their father no longer lives?
    Those were things agencies within the Department of Defense had been set up to handle. Even knowing that those agencies had already contacted the dead man’s family didn’t help him. Dwight’s family would expect a letter from his chaplain and good friend; a sad announcement would carry a more personal touch than the standard military communications. But the emotional cost of writing that letter was higher than Delroy had believed possible. He’d never, in his years in the military, been put in the position of writing one like it before. Letters for the dead, yes; he’d written those. But never a letter for someone who’d been his best friend.
    The chaplain closed his eyes, aware of the familiar noises of Wasp coursing all around him, and tried to remember how his father had handled deaths within his small Baptist congregation in Marbury, Alabama. But Delroy Harte found no solace there. Josiah Harte had known every member of his congregation, all those souls who sat in the pews every Sunday to hear the hard-fisted, hellfire-and-brimstone sermons his father had delivered. His father had also known all of the townspeople who never darkened the door of the church till they were carried inside in a box.

    Delroy had known the man who now lay in the black body bag on the stainless steel table a few