He tried to push the thought aside, but it had been intruding for hours now, ever since word had come down that the cultists had been overheard talking about a dead federal agent. He needed to focus on whatever he could do to help Adam make a connection with someone inside; if the group wouldn’t talk to them, it limited their options significantly.
Details about the compound members were sketchy at best. According to the old profile written up by BAU, Ward Butler was a hard-core survivalist with a handful of weapons possession, resisting arrest and tax evasion charges lodged against him over the years. He’d spent some time in jail, but had always gotten out, and as the years went by, he’d slipped farther and farther off the grid. He’d risen to the top of a local militia group before dropping out entirely and forming his compound, supposedly a gathering place for like-minded survivalists.
As a fringe militia leader, he fit the bill. Obsessed with weapons, antigovernment, believing that society would ultimately crumble and he’d need a bunker and the skills to live off the land. A man seeking power in a like-minded community. But he didn’t seem like a typical cult leader—primarily because they tended to be charmers. They were usually as good at manipulating words and ideas as they were people. Ward Butler, on the other hand, had an outright angry, almost antisocial personality. But then, there were as many cults as there were personalities.
“There’s something going on inside,” Yankee said in his deep Southern drawl. Apparently, his nickname was ironic, given to him by the other members of HRT.
“What is it?” Pinpricks of pain shot through his fingertips as he gripped his thermos harder, and he realized his hands were frozen. Apparently, the heating system in TOC couldn’t handle the Montana mountains.
“Take a listen, would you? I want an assessment.” Yankee nodded at the headphones, discarded on Greg’s desk, that would hook him up to the parabolic mics.
“Mic three,” Yankee added as he hurried back the way he’d come, to talk to the Special Agent in Charge who’d arrived from the Salt Lake City office.
Greg traded the thermos for his earphones. As soon as he slipped them over his ears and turned to the right mic, a flurry of loud, angry voices made him cringe. It was hard to understand anyone with all of them talking at once, but one voice stood out.
“We need her alive,” the man yelled over the fray.
Her. They had to be referring to Jen or Evelyn. One of them was still breathing. Relief and fear coursed through him in equal measure as his eyes were drawn to the picture brought in by an agent from the Salt Lake City office.
Jen Martinez was a forty-five-year-old mother of two. In the picture, she seemed happy and confident, a grin on her face and her arm around the waist of her husband of more than twenty years. Standing on either side of the couple were their kids. A daughter in high school and a son in middle school. The daughter resembled her mom, in appearance and attitude. The son took after his dad—or would, as soon as he emerged on the other side of his current awkward stage.
Every time he looked at the photograph, Greg felt the immediate need to avert his eyes. It was too close to the pictures he kept tacked up in his cubicle back at Aquia, of his wife, Marnie, and their two children, Lucy and Josh, the same ages as the Martinez kids.
He’d made the call to Marnie on the way to the plane, and she’d given the phone to Josh. His son had put on a good front, but Greg had heard his disappointment. Josh’s very first hockey game, and he’d missed it. Worse, Josh had sounded hurt, but not surprised.
Greg loved his job. He couldn’t imagine leaving it. But he spent too much time away from his kids—time he was constantly trying to make up to them when he was home.
If his partner was alive, that meant Jen Martinez was never going home to her children.
His eyes were drawn once more to the photo, to the kids who were waiting to hear if they still had a mother. Then he forced himself to look away, forced his mind back on the mission.
He glanced over at his cousin Gabe, a member of HRT who’d recently come off shift and was listening through his own earphones, frowning. He remembered the years after Gabe’s mother was killed overseas. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time during a spree shooting.
Greg’s parents had tried to help Gabe and his sister get through it, while their dad grieved by pushing everyone away. Greg recalled all the times Gabe had spent at their house, staying in Greg’s old room while he was away at college. All the times Greg’s parents had spoken about the hell Gabe and his sister and father were going through. Shut it down, Greg told himself.
“We know who’s talking?” he asked loudly. Who was trying to keep Evelyn or Jen alive?
Gabe looked up, his angular face creased with concern. He shook his head and went back to jotting notes.
Through Greg’s headphones, the flurry of voices continued. Some were arguing that they should throw her outside, let her fend for herself—an idea quashed by a voice Greg did recognize. He’d spent hours online searching for feeds of Ward Butler, and he’d found a few. Mostly old militia meetings, and they’d told him that the man was definitely radical, even for fringe militia. They’d also told him that Butler had a distinctive growl of a voice, as though his vocal cords had frozen years ago and never properly healed.
Ward’s deep voice cut through the followers’, reminding them that the FBI was outside, and insisting that if they let her go, the FBI would invade.
There was a surge of voices, mingled with other sounds—booted feet on hard floors, the slap of something against skin, guns being racked.
Then the distinctive boom from a shotgun blast split the air, and Greg instinctively sank lower in his seat.
Around him, HRT agents lurched to their feet and swarmed the entrance to the tent. A mad rush of big men trained in specialized tactical response, each carrying sixty or so pounds of equipment, all trying to race outside at once.
Over his headphones, the shuffling of feet and the loud arguments continued, and it took Greg a minute to understand. The gunshot hadn’t come from inside the compound.
It had come from the FBI’s perimeter.
Evelyn gasped for breath, the smell of blood and sweat and too many bodies squeezed closely together burning her nostrils. Pressed against the rough, hard wall, with Rolfe’s back against her, and her heart pounding, she could barely breathe.
The cultists had chased them back into the hallway, had managed to flank her and block her way before she could make a run for it. Somehow, for some reason, Rolfe had stood in front of her, trying to convince Butler to keep her alive.
A few of the cultists had stayed in the main room or followed and leaned against the wall, as if waiting for the show to start.
But most of Butler’s followers had entered full-on mob mentality. If Butler was still giving orders, she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the other cultists. Their screams all mingled together, becoming little more than a blare of words she couldn’t make sense of.
Until someone shouted, “String the bitch up!” Then a rope came lassoing from somewhere to her right, passing behind Rolfe and snagging her bun, snapping tight. It wrenched her head hard enough that if it had gone around her neck, she’d be dead. Then the rope slipped off.
“Try again!” someone demanded. “Make an example of her!”
“Feeb!” someone else screamed. “How do you like your false power now?”
“Babylonian!” A third voice, shrill and excited, rose above the others. “Your time has come! We’ll defeat your evil army!”