The Homecoming: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 5 (24 page)

     On this particular evening, he was working his own district when he decided it was time.

     He checked his watch. It was just shy of eighteen hundred hours.

     He smiled.

     John Castro was many things to many people. A husband, a father, a hero perhaps.

     But most people didn’t know he was also a creature of habit.

     Robbie Benton, who’d been closely observing John since Hannah’s return trying to come up with a viable plan for disposing of him, knew it well.

     Robbie knew, for example, that at eighteen hundred hours, John would wrap up whatever he was doing and call in to the SAPD dispatcher to announce that he and his partner were off duty.

     He would then drive his partner home to his residence on Pecan Valley Drive, near the abandoned Lackland Air Force Base.

     He’d call into dispatch again, to report that Officer Flores could be found at his home, in the event of an emergency.

     On his way home to his own house, John would stop at a field on the northeast corner of Marbach Road and South Ellison Drive.

     There, he’d pick a fistful of wildflowers to take home to Robbie’s sweet Hannah. He’d present them to Hannah and she’d tell him how wonderful he was. She’d then remove the previous day’s delivery from a glass vase in the center of the dining room table and place the new flowers there.

     Since Hannah and the girls had returned home, the routine hadn’t varied.

     The only thing that differed from day to day was the amount of time it took from John’s first radio call, saying he was off duty, to the time he dropped off Officer Flores. Sometimes it took ten minutes, sometimes thirty, depending on where they happened to be on their last dispatch.

     On the other hand, the time it took between dropping Flores off, and his arrival at the field of wildflowers never varied.

     It was always precisely thirteen minutes.

     Five minutes after Flores got out of John’s car and bid his friend good night, Robbie was already set up, in another field, ninety yards away from John’s flower patch.

     Robbie’s field, a bit higher in elevation and more secluded, was the perfect sniper’s nest. It fronted a service road between cell phone towers that were no longer used. It offered a clear line of sight to his target, a paved road that would offer a clean getaway without leaving tire tracks, and absolutely no one around in any direction for half a mile.

     Except John Castro.

     It would be like taking candy from a baby.

     All he had to do was remember to take careful aim, fire two shots, walk calmly back to his own cruiser and resume his rounds.

     Then he’d merely wait for all hell to break loose, so he could be the one to comfort sweet Hannah and the girls.

     To be the one to help them through the worst days of their lives.

     To become their new hero.

     He smiled again when he saw John’s cruiser pull to the curb next to the flower patch.

     Right on time.

     He adjusted his body, in the prone position in the middle of a stand of bluebonnets.

     Then he adjusted his weapon.

     In his sights was John Castro, a man he considered a friend, but more so a competitor. A hero during the war in Iraq who dragged two wounded comrades to safety from their burning Humvee, even as his own shattered leg bled profusely.

     John Castro, the man who lobbied the chief of police and the San Antonio city council for a chance… just a chance, to be the first amputee to attend the police academy. To prove to everyone that he and others like him were willing and capable of becoming fine officers.

     John Castro, who despite his physical limitations was able to shatter a forty two year old record on the police academy obstacle course. Because obstacles to John Castro were merely slight challenges to overcome. And he’d already overcome many.

     John Castro, who became legendary as one of San Antonio’s finest police officers, a media darling, and almost a son to Chief of Police Martinez and Mayor Hurley.

     John Castro, who despite his war medals and police department commendations, really only wanted to be one thing: the best husband and father he could be to the three best young ladies in his universe or any other. His beautiful bride of fifteen years, Hannah, and his lovely daughters Rachel and Misty.

     And he had succeeded to that regard. Everybody said so.

     But it mattered very little now.

     For all John Castro was now was a target.

     Robbie Benton cared little for the obstacles John Castro had conquered on his way to being a hero to virtually everyone.

     In Robbie’s twisted and damaged mind, John was an obstacle himself.

     An obstacle who stood between Robbie and his sweet Hannah.

     Robbie had his own, though decidedly less noble, way of dealing with obstacles.

     He didn’t conquer them. He merely found whatever shortcut he could use to destroy them.

     Or, in this case to destroy
him
.

     Robbie had done this kind of thing several times before. Always to people he’d thought had slighted him, or who had something he coveted.

     Always from a distance. Always from the shadows. Always as a coward. That didn’t bother him, though. For in Robbie’s twisted mind, the end always justified the means.

     This would be his biggest prize. Once John was out of the way, Robbie would have his sweet Hannah.

     After all, who else could she possibly turn to? While all men seemed to love her, Robbie was most like John. Most similar in age and position. Robbie was close to the family, and was thought highly of by Hannah and the girls.

     He’d put in an awful lot of work to make certain of that.

     He’d always been there for Hannah when John wasn’t around. Always there to help carry in groceries or fix little things when John was deployed, or in the hospital, or working extra shifts.

     He’d be there again, to comfort sweet Hannah. To hold her when she cried. To listen to her ask, “why” a thousand times.

     He’d swear to find the bastard who shot John. And he would. He’d gun down some hapless thug and pay several others to swear that the thug, and certainly not Robbie Benton, was the man who’d gunned down John Castro in cold blood.

      The same men would accept lucrative payments in illicit guns and drugs to swear that the same thug drew on Robbie. And that Robbie had no choice but to gun him down.

     Dead men, as the pirates used to say, tell no tales. Nor do they have a chance to protest their innocence.

     In the end, he’d solve the case. He’d administer justice.

     He’d be sweet Hannah’s new hero.

     Robbie smiled again as John sauntered through the wildflowers, seemingly not a care in the world, collecting the best ones he could find for Hannah.

     Then Robbie caught himself. He had to get used to showing no joy at John’s demise. From now on it was merely disgust, or rage.

     He lined up his shot. Center mass on the side of John’s head. Leading him a bit, but not too much.

     There, in plain view in his scope at ninety yards, was the obstacle standing in his way.

     He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and very gently squeezed the trigger.

Thank you for reading

THE HOMECOMING

Please enjoy this preview of the next installment in the series,

Countdown to Armageddon, Book 6:

THE QUEST

        From her vantage point in the darkened hayloft, Sara commanded an unobstructed view of much of the lower part of the barn. The light from the torches danced across the faces of those assembled below and left a medieval feel to the scene playing out before her.

     She still didn’t know Randy Maloney’s whereabouts, or even if he’d survived the attack, but she prayed he was there among the others, to provide her whatever aid he could in her getaway.

     As for saving Tom Haskins’ life, it was now or never, for she knew she was running out of time.

     A lesser woman would have felt the gravity of the situation, and would have panicked. Or might have frozen at just the wrong moment. But Tom was lucky in that his life lay in the hands of a very strong and capable woman.

     It mattered not that the weight of the world, or at least the very lives of two good people and maybe a third, lay directly upon Sara’s shoulders. She was up to the task.

     She hadn’t fired a weapon since she’d removed Glen’s ugly face from his “Father of the Year” plaque some months before, but it didn’t matter. Her aim was true. She assumed a shooter’s stance in the shadows of the hayloft, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.

     Her first shot struck Payton in the center of his chest.

     As his limp body crumpled to the ground, her second shot hit a stunned Wimberly on the left side of his head, just behind the temple.

     The others were slow to respond, having just seen their brutal leaders fall lifelessly before them.

     And, as she has hoped, none of them had the resolve to offer any further resistance.

    
Cut off the head of the snake,
Tom had told her,
and you remove the threat.

     As if on cue, Randy Maloney burst free from the back of the crowd and was already working to free the noose from around Tom’s neck. Then his hands, all the time glaring at the crowd as though daring them to make a move.

     None did. The crowd had suddenly turned docile. Almost timid.

     The crisis was over.

     Sara walked to the edge of the hayloft, in full view of the crowd now, and stood ready to shoot anyone who made a move for a weapon. The murmurs racing through the group below made it clear that many were amazed this tiny girl, just barely a woman, had stood up to and conquered two of the most vile men West Texas had ever seen.

Countdown to Armageddon, Book 6:

THE QUEST

will be available on Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers in September, 2015.

If you enjoyed

THE HOMECOMING,

you might also enjoy

ALONE  Book 1:

Facing Armageddon

     Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases, and had planned for everything.

     It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.

     Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.

     Dave was suddenly alone.

     He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.

     Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?

     This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.

     It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.

     From the author of last year’s best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.

Chapter 1:

     Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.

     Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles, rather than rainclouds and foreboding.

     Finally, he’d had enough.

     “Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.

     “I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”