Chapter 21 #2
Not knowing what else to do, she went back into the room where she’d left Cameron and Rob.
“Shit, man. I need some weed,” Rob bitched.
“Same. Think Cory’ll let us take a break soon?” Cameron asked.
Sierra knew they had to realize she was there, but they obviously didn’t care.
Tony had explained who she was when he’d brought her upstairs.
The other men accepted the story she’d weaved without question.
The longer she was in the house, the more she realized that these men—boys, really—were even more na?ve than she’d been when she’d accepted the job overseas.
They weren’t here to truly hurt anyone. This was almost like a game to them. A bit of excitement for a bunch of bored kids. And if Cory had been supplying them with drugs and food and anything else they might need, why wouldn’t they simply go with it?
Glancing toward the door, she didn’t see Cory. She heard him and Kevin putting together what she assumed was the damn RPG. She didn’t have a lot of time.
“How’d you guys hook up with Cory, anyway?” she asked.
Rob fired his rifle and laughed. “Did you see that? I didn’t think that old guy could move that fast.”
“Watch this,” Cameron told his buddy, shooting off a few rounds of his own.
Sierra clenched her teeth, hard. She hated that these jerks were aiming at her friends or other innocent people because they thought it was amusing.
Desperate to get them to stop fucking shooting, Sierra blurted, “You know we’re all gonna die, right?”
She had no idea what she was saying, but she needed to do something to take their attention off the windows.
Cameron turned to stare at her. “What?”
“What the fuck you talkin’ about?” Rob asked.
Sierra thought fast. “Remember Waco? Oh, wait…that was before you were born. But surely you heard about it. The ATF and the military, the same people who are outside right now, got frustrated when they couldn’t get into the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.
So they took a tank and rammed the place and it burned to the ground, killing like seventy people who were inside.
Men, women, and children. I don’t see how things for us will turn out any differently. ”
She didn’t mention that it was likely the Branch Davidians actually started fires inside the compound before the tank broke through the wall in the first place.
Rob and Cameron were quiet for a moment. Then Rob shook his head. “No. Cory said we’re just putting on a show for the media. And they’re out there right now, filming. Once the world sees how dangerous and out of control the military is, we’ll surrender.”
Sierra let out a harsh laugh. “You really believe that?” she asked.
“The second we walk outside, we’re dead meat.
Those military guys are pissed way the hell off that they’re being shot at.
They’ll fire on us, then later claim we were holding weapons.
They always spin shit to make themselves look good.
” She shook her head. “Nope, we’re all gonna die today.
But that’s all right with me. I’m already fucked in the head after everything I’ve been through.
I’d rather die for the cause than live with the nightmares and flashbacks I’ve got because of the fucking military. ”
Cameron and Rob shared a nervous look, and Sierra was thrilled that she’d at least planted a seed of doubt in their minds. It was about time they started using their damn brains instead of following Cory blindly.
“Sierra! I need more bullets!” Adam shouted from another room.
“Duty calls,” she told Cameron and Rob. Then she turned and headed out of the guest room. She almost tripped over Kevin again, who was moving a large wooden box out of Grover’s office.
“Watch it!” she barked.
“You watch it,” Kevin retorted.
“Wow, you guys got it set up already?” Sierra asked, her stomach dropping.
“Yeah, it wasn’t hard. Cory’s getting it ready. There’s a huge SWAT van parked right in front of the house and behind it is a military Humvee. He thinks he can take both out with one shot,” Kevin said excitedly.
“Awesome! What then?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are our plans after that? It’ll probably make everyone outside fire back.
So what are we gonna do after we blow their shit to smithereens?
” She kept her voice down, not wanting Cory to overhear.
Her lip still hurt from where he’d hit her.
Of course, that blow was nothing compared to what she’d experienced at the hands of Shahzada.
“Not sure, but Cory will tell us,” Kevin said, unconcerned about anything other than shooting the large weapon he’d just helped set up.
“Sierra!” Adam yelled once more.
Bending, she picked up another box of ammo and went down the hall to where Adam was pretending he was in a video game.
Without a word, she dropped the box at his feet, then turned and left.
She heard Adam bitching about the bullets spilling out, but Sierra didn’t care.
She hadn’t lied to Tweedledee and Tweedledum in the other room.
She didn’t have a good feeling about what would happen after Cory shot off that RPG.
She could hear someone yelling through a megaphone, trying to get someone to talk to them, to negotiate. But no one seemed inclined to answer. And if Cory didn’t want to negotiate, that meant he probably didn’t care if he lived or died. Or if those he brought with him did either.
Sierra supposed some people watching this mess might think exactly what Cory wanted them to. They might agree that the government and military had overreacted. They wouldn’t care that the men and women outside were goaded into whatever they might do.
Standing uncertainly in the middle of the hallway, Sierra was out of ideas.
She’d done what she could to help Grover, then spread uncertainty among some of the idiots blindly following Cory.
Now all she wanted to do was run. But she’d gotten herself into this situation, and there was no running from it.
Kevin exited the room Cory was in and called down the hallway for everyone to hear. “Five-minute warning!”
The others upstairs at the windows let out shouts of acknowledgement, and she heard the men who were still downstairs do the same.
Kevin met her gaze and grinned. “Ready for the fireworks? It’s gonna be off the hook.”
“Cool,” Sierra managed to say. Luckily, Kevin was too excited to notice her lukewarm reaction.
Sierra strongly reconsidered finding one of Grover’s hidden guns and stopping Cory from doing what would surely incite the officers and soldiers outside to retaliate. But the same obstacles remained. She didn’t know how to use any of the guns, and any hesitation could get her killed.
All she could do was hope that Grover had been able to use his secret phone, and weapons, and was even now on his way out of the prison cell she herself had suggested they put him in.
Sierra moved to the end of the hall and pressed her back into a corner, doing what Grover had ordered in those caves in Afghanistan. She slid down the wall until her ass hit the floor. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she did her best to make herself as small as possible.
While nowhere in the house was safe at the moment, at least she was away from the windows. She had no doubt that bullets would start flying the second Cory aimed that damn rocket-propelled grenade.
For a moment, it felt as if she was back in Afghanistan. Trapped. Waiting for her fate to once again be decided by others. Except this time, she’d willingly made herself a hostage.
Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead on her knees and prayed.
The second he’d been left alone in his media room, Grover had gotten to work.
Brody had shot the lights out, as ordered, but Grover didn’t need them.
He knew where he’d stashed every weapon in this room.
His thoughts briefly turned to Sierra, but if he concentrated too hard on what she might be going through, he wouldn’t be able to function.
He started with the reclining seats.
It took some maneuvering, but he was able to remove one of the knives he’d hidden in a compartment under one of the chairs and cut the second set of zip-ties Brody had put on him.
Grover could feel blood on his skin from where he’d cut himself, and where Brody had sliced him earlier, but he didn’t even feel any pain.
He was too focused. Within a minute, he’d removed the phone from its hiding place behind the decorative flag on the wall and was talking to Trigger.
His team leader had asked for some time.
Grover’s first inclination was to burst out of this fucking room and take out whoever dared stand between him and the woman he loved. But he trusted Trigger, and his team leader needed to make sure everyone was aware that Cory had an RPG and was planning to use it.
He’d designed the damn media room to be practically soundproof, and Grover regretted that now.
He couldn’t hear what was going on outside, or even inside his damn house.
To keep himself busy, he collected as many weapons as he could comfortably hold.
He holstered a pistol on his thigh and another at the small of his back, strapped a knife onto his calf and another at his waist, then grabbed a rifle as well.
He didn’t want to kill anyone…
Yeah, that was a lie. He wanted to take Cory down, and if any of the other stupid punks had hurt Sierra, he’d take them out too.
After arming himself, Grover paced the room.
What seemed like an hour later, but was in actuality closer to the fifteen minutes Trigger asked for, the phone vibrated in Grover’s hand.
“Talk to me.”
“Looks like Cory’s about to make his move,” Trigger said, and Grover could hear him breathing hard, as if he was moving while talking.
“I’ve informed everyone as to what the hell is going on, and they’ve agreed not to bring the house down.
They’re going to make a lot of noise though,” Trigger warned.