by Elle James
“The problem is that we don’t know what line of bullshit their leader has been feeding them or how widespread it is,” Houston pointed out. “If he’s brainwashed all the adults, we may be up against a lot more opposition than we’re prepared for.”
“Well, we’re not inside yet, and we won’t get there if we don’t get moving.” Dustin headed into the brush.
Houston followed, and Adam brought up the rear.
Moving quickly, they arrived at the seven-foot tall, concrete block wall surrounding the compound. The gate was another quarter of a mile to the north. A single guard walked along the outside of the fence near the entrance, holding an old-fashioned lantern in front of him. From the distance, Dustin could see that he carried a gun of some sort slung over his shoulder. When the man turned away from them, Dustin pointed to the fence.
Houston reached it first, bent and cupped his hands.
Dustin stepped into his hands and scaled the wall. He laid flat on the concrete bricks, slipped the night vision goggles in place and checked the other side, looking for the ghostly green images of warm bodies moving about. When he didn’t see any, he whispered. “Clear.”
Adam stepped in Houston’s hands and pulled himself up to the top. Then the two brothers straddled the fence, leaned down and grabbed Houston’s hands, hauling him up between them.
All three men dropped to the other side before the guard turned and headed back their way.
Once on the ground, they sprinted toward the nearest building. Dustin had his NVGs in place. Houses lined the outer edges of the community along with several barns. A large building took up the center of the compound. Toby had identified it as the worship hall from old news reports. No green images appeared in his NVGs. No one was moving about.
Jenna’s text said she was trapped in the basement of the worship hall. Dustin’s instinct was to barge in, kick ass and find his woman. But to do this right, he had to keep calm and execute this mission with clean, cool precision in order to find the leader and head off a disaster with the potential to hurt a lot of people, including Jenna. If she was truly trapped in the basement and the leader decided to burn the place down, she’d die before they could get in, find her and get her out.
His belly clenched. This was not exactly the scenario he had in mind for declaring his love for the woman who’d never been a day off his mind. He’d rather have met her at her house, taken her into his arms and whispered his love in her ear. In Dustin’s version, Jenna would have flung her arms around his neck and declared she loved him, too. He’d ask her to marry him, she’d say yes and they’d consummate their engagement in some mind-blowing sex for the duration of his visit to Waco.
Instead, he and his brothers were staging an assault on a commune.
Dustin waved Houston to the right while he and Adam circled around the other side of the sprawling worship center. The sound of someone preaching murmured through the walls.
The backside of the structure was two stories, unlike the front’s single story, indicating a half-buried basement below. Jenna had to be there. Dustin hugged the shadows of the building opposite the worship hall and bent over the GPS tracker, double-checking Jenna’s location before he forced his way through the door. The indicator pointed to that building. A loading dock took up half of the exterior wall with a wide overhead door and a narrower single door beside it.
“She’s in there,” he whispered to Adam.
Adam nodded. “Let’s do this.”
They would get in and free Jenna. Then they’d go after the community leader, separate him from the others and remove him from the premises until which time the local authorities or the ATF could get there and take over.
Dustin started forward.
Adam slammed an arm against his chest, stopping him.
The back door to the worship hall opened and men poured out, all carrying weapons.
“Damn,” Adam muttered and sank back behind a stand of bushes.
They waited until the line of men scattered outward, heading for the outer perimeter.
Dustin hoped Houston had found a good position to lay low and stay out of sight of the commune’s troops. The men barely knew how to carry the weapons. How well could they shoot? The drizzle they’d started out with grew heavier, turning into a light rain, making it harder to see and to be seen. Hopefully, the men of the commune would assume the people inside the compound walls were the good guys, giving Dustin, Adam and Houston a shot at getting to the building. Once inside, if there were others still being assigned weapons, the brothers might run into trouble.
Dustin nodded to Adam. “Ready?”
Adam answered by hurrying across the opening between the two buildings. When he reached the outside wall of the worship hall, he waited for Dustin to join him. They converged on the back door where Houston joined them.
“Anything happening out front?” Dustin asked, softly.
Houston shook his head. “Outside doors are locked. Sounds like a sermon going on inside.”
“Cover us.” Dustin told him. “We’re going in.”
“I got your back.” Houston hunkered down in a shadow near the base of the loading dock.
Dustin and Adam climbed the steps and tried the single door. It swung inward into a large room filled with open wooden crates. Four men remained in the room, two of which were digging through a crate. The other two were loading ammunition into a banana clip. All four looked up as Dustin entered the room. Adam followed, twisting the deadbolt lock behind him.
Dustin lifted his NVGs and nodded. “Gentlemen, I suggest you put down your weapons.”
The two men loading the clips leaped to their feet, grabbed AR 15s and would have shoved the banana clips into the chamber, but Adam and Dustin reached them before they made the connection.
The Sweet Salvation men might have been trained to fire their weapons, but they were not skilled in hand-to-hand combat and went down easily. Adam quickly wrapped duct tape around his guy’s wrists, securing them behind the man’s back and then handed the tape to Dustin who did the same in record time.
The other two men who’d been digging in the crates yanked out AR 15s and pointed them at Dustin and Adam.
“Let them go, or we’ll shoot,” said a man dressed in simple black trousers and a homespun white shirt, his voice quavering.
Dustin nodded at the weapons pointed at him and Adam as he completed a circle of tape around his captive’s wrists. “We aren’t here to hurt anyone. We’re trying to stop your people from being harmed. Put down the gun.”
The one closest to them shook his head. “No. You need to leave. Now. Or I’ll sh-shoot.”
Dustin strode across the floor toward the man closest to him. “You don’t want to kill anyone.”
“I will martyr myself in the name of God.” The man squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
His lips quirking, Dustin jerked the rifle out of the man’s hands. “The weapon is only dangerous when it’s loaded.” He threw the rifle aside, grabbed the man’s arm and twisted, spinning him around. In seconds, he had the man’s wrists bound and a piece of tape over his mouth. Adam handled the other man, leading him to a corner of the room.
Once all four men were secured in duct tape, Dustin glanced around the large room filled with crates. Several doors led off the main warehouse room. If the basement was as large as the building above, the warehouse storage where they were standing was only half of the space available beneath the worship hall.
Dustin pointed to a door. “Adam, take that one. I’ve got the middle.”
When Dustin opened the middle doorway, he discovered a long hallway, leading down the center of the building. As he walked down the hall, he checked inside each of the rooms lining the corridor, his stomach turning over as he realized each door had a deadbolt lock on the outside. He could hear the sound of someone preaching coming from somewhere above him and very near. The echo of people chanting followed every pause from the speaker. Adam entered the hallway behind hi
m.
“Nothing inside these rooms,” Adam said, his voice low and soft.
The doors Dustin opened were each thick and seemed to be solid, the rooms on the other side were more like individual cells. Dustin didn’t call out for Jenna, afraid his voice would carry to whoever was preaching above him. He had to find her and get her out before the congregation adjourned or the armed men returned and found their comrades trussed up like pigs for the slaughter.
About the time Dustin smelled the rotten-egg scent of gas, Adam spoke, “I smell gas. Either there’s a leak, or someone has bigger plans for the worship hall and everyone in it.”
“Get out,” Dustin said. “I’ll find Jenna and bring her out on my own. Get out,” he insisted.
“I’m not leaving without you.”
Dustin ran to the next door and flung it open. Only four more to check. God, he hoped he found her before the whole building went up.
Adam jerked the door open on the other side of the hallway. Dustin opened the next and then the last door at the end of the long hallway, beside a wooden ladder leading up to the ceiling. The lock on this door was engaged. He flipped it and opened the door. Three women scrambled out into the hall, all talking at once.
When he untangled the lot, he found Jenna and pulled her into his arms.
“Thank God you came when you did.” Jenna clung to him and kissed his lips. Then she leaned back. “We have to get out of here. I think Elder Snow is going to euthanize his congregation.”
“We can’t leave all those people to die.”
The smell of smoke filtered in from above their heads.
“Oh, god, he’s really going through with it. He’d going to burn the worship hall down with everyone inside.”
“Not everyone. The men got out with weapons and ammunition.”
“That leaves the women and children,” Jenna’s voice choked. “Snow is going to martyr them by burning the worship hall.”
Shouts above them grew louder and screams could be heard, rising into a roaring crescendo.
“He told his assistant to lock the doors. Those people are trapped inside. They’ll die.”
The sound of a door opening overhead alerted Dustin. A square of light pierced the dim lighting of the long hallway and smoke poured into the opening above. Screams and cries filled the air as panic ensued.
“Hide,” Jenna whispered. “Someone’s coming down from the sanctuary.”
Dustin held Jenna’s hand and slipped into the nearest doorway. Adam and Houston gathered the two women and hid in the cell on the other side.
They waited while a man eased down the ladder, pulling the trap door closed over his head, shutting off the spread of smoke and muffling the screams of women and children.
When the man reached the bottom, he turned and hurried toward the other end of the hallway.
“That’s Elder Snow. The bastard is leaving his people to die in the worship hall.” Jenna surged forward.
Dustin stopped her. “Let us take care of him.” He slipped past her.
Adam and Houston burst into the hallway at the same time and they jumped Elder Snow.
“What is the meaning of this?” the older man insisted, trying to pull his arms free of the Ford men’s grip. He glanced up at the trap door. Smoke sifted through the cracks between the planks, burning Dustin’s lungs. He gave the preacher a rough shake. “Did you set the place on fire?”
“Our people will not be governed by others. They have the right to live the way the want or die for what they believe in.”
“They have the right to live or die, but their children do not deserve to die for what their parents have been brainwashed into believing by a crazy man.” Dustin shook his head. “Hell, we don’t have time to deal with you.” He slammed his elbow into the man’s face, broke his nose and sent him flying backward to land on his ass. “You had no right to sentence those women and children to death.”
“And you left them,” Lissa stood over Elder Snow, her brows puckered in accusation. “You left good people to die.”
“We can’t let that happen,” Rebecca said. She ran for the ladder and hurried up to the sanctuary above, pushing the trap door open.
The screaming grew louder.
“It’s too late.” Elder Snow sat up, blood dripping from his nose. “Let them go to their god. Let them martyr themselves in His name.”
“We’re not going to let them die on our watch.” Dustin pulled out his roll of duct tape, secured the elder’s wrists together behind him and slapped some over his mouth, tired of listening to his crazy talk and desperate to help save the people in the worship hall.
Jenna left his side and raced to the ladder, following Rebecca up into the sanctuary.
“Jenna!” Dustin cried out. “Don’t go up there. We’ll open the doors from the outside.”
She didn’t hear him over the shouts and screams.
“Go after her,” Adam said. “We’ll handle it from the outside. We’ll get those people out.”
Dustin didn’t argue. He started up the ladder and into the murky, smoky room above. Jenna and Rebecca stood on a dais shouting into the panicked crowd. “Come up onto the dais. There’s a way out through here.”
Dustin climbed up the rest of the way and stood beside Jenna. Then he raised his voice above the cacophony of noise and called out in a calming voice, “Please, everyone stay calm and get down on your knees. The lower you are, the less smoke you’ll inhale.”
To prove it, he dropped to his haunches and pulled Jenna down beside him.
Chapter Eleven
‡
JENNA COUGHED, THE smoke burning her lungs. She waved toward a woman and her two small children. “Please, save your children.”
The woman coughed and yanked her children away from Jenna’s outstretched hand. “You are the devil risen up from the fires of hell!”
“Lady, if I’m the devil, where did your leader go? Elder Snow snuck out the back and left you and all the women and children trapped in here to die.”
“We’re going to our Lord. He will grant us Sweet Salvation,” she said, while her baby cried.
“Let him grant it to you. But don’t condemn your children to death.” Dustin leaped down off the dais, grabbed the baby from her arms and handed her to Jenna. “Get her out.” He took the little boy from her and climbed back on the stage. “If you want to see your children again in this life, you’ll come with me.”
Rebecca jumped off the stage and did the same, taking a child from a mother’s arms and hurried back up onto the stage.
Jenna stood at the trap door, clueless and more desperate to get out as the smoke thickened. She was strong, but she wasn’t sure she could manage carrying a baby down the ladder.
Dustin set his charge on the platform beside her. “Hold onto him. Don’t let go.” Then he was down the ladder and reached up. “Lower the baby to me,” he called from below.
“No, that’s my baby. Those are my children!” The woman leaped onto the stage. Before she reached her, Jenna lowered the baby to Dustin. “You want your baby, lady, go get her.”
Dustin set the baby on the ground and reached up for the boy.
Jenna dragged the little guy to the opening. He kicked and screamed, crying for his mother. He landed a few good blows to Jenna’s shins before she had him dangling over the trap door and lowered him to Dustin.
Jenna turned to the woman. “It’s your choice to live or die, but don’t let a fanatic kill your children.”
The woman shook her head. “We were supposed to go to the Lord.”
“And Elder Snow was chosen to send you? He’s a liar, and if he succeeds, he’ll be a murderer of women and children. He’s not God’s messenger. Please, go with your children. They’re crying for their mother. You know you love them.”
Tears filled the woman’s eyes. “I do love my babies.”
“Then go.” Jenna led the woman to the ladder and watched as she descended into the basement.
Re
becca appeared beside her carrying a baby, followed by a woman with two other children. “These people want to live.”
The woman handed her children down to Dustin and lowered herself to the ground.
Lissa appeared beside Jenna. “Let me help.”
Jenna pointed to the basement. “Take over from Dustin. He can be of more help up here getting everyone else out.”
She nodded and hurried down the ladder.
Dustin climbed up and gathered Jenna in his arms. “Get out now. The smoke’s getting bad.”
“I can’t leave these babies to die,” she said, her eyes tearing from the smoke, her heart swelling with her love for this man who’d rescued her from certain death and now worked to save others. “Let’s get them out.” She ripped a long strip of fabric from the hem of her dress and handed it to him, then ripped another for herself. They tied it around their noses and mouths and went to work saving the people of Sweet Salvation.
One by one, they hustled women and their children to the dais and down through the trap door. Soon a fire brigade of women lined the hallway in the basement, hurrying children out into the open.
But it wasn’t fast enough, and the smoke was so thick Jenna worried she and Dustin wouldn’t get out before they were overcome. With fifty or more women and children still in the sanctuary, they wouldn’t be able to save them all.
Jenna coughed and hacked, her eyes streaming as she helped another woman up on the dais.
“Go. I’ll get the rest.
“You can’t,” she coughed. “There are too many.”
By now, the remainder of the women crowded around them, crying and shoving their children forward.
“You have to leave,” Dustin told Jenna. “I don’t want you to die. I love you.” He held her for a moment and then pushed her toward the trap door.
Her heart burned with her love for this man at the same time her lungs burned with the smoke filling them. “I won’t leave without you. And in case we don’t make it out alive, I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
At that moment, the fire burned through one of the walls and it cracked, falling several feet before it stopped. Roof timbers creaked, and the remaining women dropped to the floor, covering their children with their bodies.
