John Gilstrap - Threat warning

“It rallied three hundred million people to go to war!” Neen boomed. “The greatest mistake those jihadists made was to deliver a symbol to the media. The symbol becomes manipulated and what is righteous becomes evil.”

Copley smiled. “And that is exactly the point, is it not? They think that we are those very jihadists.”

“But sooner or later, you’re going to have to reveal the truth. After the world rallies behind us-once the government is exposed in all its weakness, and they realize that it is safe to rise up against the true evildoers in Washington-this business of harming a soldier’s family will be all that people remember.”

Copley sighed. How could a man so smart be so naive? “What you’re missing, Kendig, is that-”

A knock on the door interrupted them. It was louder than it should have been and more rapid than normal. That spoke of a problem, Copley thought. “Come,” he said.

The door opened to reveal Brother Duane-one of the elders-towering in the frame next to Sister Colleen, whose red eyes betrayed the fact that she had been crying.

“What is it?” Copley asked.

“I’m afraid we have some terrible news,” Brother Duane said.

A door slammed down the hall, and Ryan heard the sound of heavy feet in the hallway. They were coming toward him, and they were many. His heart rate spiked as he did his best to straighten himself in his seat, but his arms remained pinioned behind him and threaded through the chair.

They appeared in the archway as a group-Ryan counted seven of them-and all but the sheriff who’d brought him here wore the same heavy black boots as the men who stormed their prison room. This time, though, there were no masks. Among them, he recognized the bitch they’d picked up in the car a hundred years ago. Or maybe it was only a day.

They formed a kind of wedge in the space that separated the dining room from the hallway, anchored in the middle by a thirtysomething blond man who looked angrier than anyone Ryan had ever seen. If the wedge were an arrowhead, the angry man would have been the point. The others were angry, too; but that anchor guy was scary.

If Ryan wasn’t mistaken, the only girl in the group-her name was Cathleen, wasn’t it? No, but something like that-looked less angry than the others. In fact, she mostly looked scared.

The man said, “You’re a murderer.”

“I’m not,” Ryan said. “That asshole attacked my mother.”

The man closed the distance that separated them in four long strides. He was still moving when he unleashed a wicked open-handed smack across Ryan’s face. He smelled blood instantly, and within seconds, streams were flowing from both nostrils.

“You will not use that language in my house!” the man bellowed.

“That’s what he is,” Ryan said. He wanted to sound defiant, but he ended up having to cough blood from his throat. He needed to spit, but he knew that would be trouble. If you’re not allowed to say “asshole,” then spitting blood on the carpet was a non-starter. “He was trying to rape her,” he said.

Maybe the next slap hurt more because it landed with more force. Or maybe it just landed in exactly the same spot. Either way, it made a purple strobe flash behind his eyes as something bounced around inside his head.

Maybe it knocked him out, because the next thing Ryan knew, he was sideways on the floor, carpet against his face. He was vaguely aware that the carpet was for sure stained now.

“… kill him,” someone said. Ryan thought it was the sheriff, and his tone sounded more like a warning than a suggestion. Anyway, it didn’t scare him.

“No one fouls the name of a brave warrior in my presence.”

“Get him up, for heaven’s sake,” the sheriff said.

Hands were on him, pulling and lifting, and a lightning bolt of pain shot through Ryan’s right arm, from wrist to elbow, launching a howl that to him sounded like it was coming from someone else.

“Look what you did,” the sheriff said. “You broke his arm.”

Oh, shit, Ryan thought. They broke my arm? Then his head cleared. Oh, shit. They broke my arm!

“Ow!” he yelled. Then he shrieked it as they continued to lift him, still tied to the chair. As he shifted in his seat, the bones shifted under the skin and it felt like they were tearing off his arm like a drumstick. “Stop! Stop! Oh, God, please stop!”

Things flashed behind his eyes again, but this time he didn’t think it was because he was being hit. He thought it was just the pain. He’d felt pain before, but this was something new. This was Technicolor pain, sharper and brighter than anything he’d felt before, like the difference between Dorothy in Kansas and Dorothy in Oz. And what a weird analogy, he thought.

But they kept manhandling him. Finally, he just screamed-as close to the sound of the scared-shitless lady in a horror movie as he could get without cutting his balls off.

“Stop!” a new voice boomed. “Take the handcuffs off. My God, I’m going to get sick if I watch his arm bend any more.”

My arm is bending? He screamed again.

They lowered him back to the floor, and they must have really bent it because there was another flash of light, and an instant later, he was back in the chair with both hands free, except his right one was propped on a pillow that had been placed on his lap. The arm didn’t look right at all. His hand and his wrist were already swelling, and his forearm looked funny under the fabric of his clothes. The lines weren’t straight anymore.

Someone was holding him in the chair by his shoulders.

“Are you awake now?” the sheriff asked. The big man had taken a knee in front of Ryan, and was looking him in the eyes. “I think he’s okay now,” he said over his shoulders to the others who had gathered around.

Ryan had expected at least a small look of sympathy from the gathered terrorists, but he got nothing of the sort. If anything, they looked even more pissed than before. They all stared, but none of them seemed to know what they wanted.

The sensible part of Ryan-the one that desperately wanted the pain to stop, and to just be left alone-knew that this was the time to be quiet, but the other part of him-the one that was pissed off and humiliated-overruled.

“I wasn’t lying,” he said. It wasn’t until he tried to talk that he realized that blood had actually dried in the back of his mouth, leaving a kind of crust back there. “Your guy-Brother Stephen, I think was his name-attacked my mother.”

“It’s true,” the girl with the K-name said.

The point man-Ryan assumed him to be the leader since he was the guy who owned this big house-shot an angry look at her. “You were there?” he asked.

“I was there when they found his body,” she said. She looked at the floor. “He was… exposed.”

“That’s not proof,” Point Man scoffed. “They could have done that to him to make it look like he was trying to attack.”

What, like I’m going to pull out some guy’s dick? Ryan thought.

“I think that’s a stretch, Brother Michael,” the sheriff said.

So the leader’s name was Brother Michael.

The comment drew another angry glare.

“Don’t look at me that way,” the sheriff said. “How likely do you think it is that they would really do that? Why would they?”

“So that they could escape,” Brother Michael said.

“And why would Brother Stephen have been in their room to allow that to happen?”

Owned you, dude, Ryan didn’t say. He winced against a twitch of pain in his arm.

Brother Michael’s face went blank, but then he came back. “Even if that were true, that doesn’t grant permission for prisoners to execute their guards.”

“I didn’t execute anyone,” Ryan said. The words were out before he could stop them. Once launched, what was the sense of pulling back? “I couldn’t even see what I was doing. I just launched on him and tackled him. I guess I grabbed him around the neck and twisted it. We hit the ground, and when I got up, he didn’t. It was kind of an accident.”