Chapter 1
Riptide
I’d lost my mind. I was sure of it. But ever since I’d seen the beautiful woman out in the desert I hadn’t been able to get her out of my thoughts.
She was with me during every waking moment and throughout the night.
It could be any one of my brothers preparing for this mission, but because of Sloane, it had to be me.
I just had to convince my brothers to vote for me to go.
Never did I think I’d be doing something as crazy as this.
Yet here I was, preparing to immerse myself into a way of life I knew nothing about.
Sure, I was doing it as a way of rescuing anyone I could—including the woman who’d caught my eye—and taking out those who were a danger to anyone who stumbled upon them, but still… I was about to join a cult.
Everyone was slowly piling into the meeting room.
Apprehension made me hyper focused. It was an unusual and almost foreign feeling for me.
Covert Operations hadn’t really been a thing for Green Berets.
Our main function had been to train other troops.
We’d trained our own men and other countries' armies on how to effectively fight.
The best way to train those forces was to fight alongside them, but nothing was ever undercover. That kind of work was for the Feds.
Go behind enemy lines, lay up in the woods, hide out in an abandoned building and prepare an ambush?
That was too easy. I’d done that more times than I could count.
But to actually go into the enemy's lair and pretend to be one of them?
That was new for me. And yeah, I was nervous.
My life, the lives of my brothers—if the cult found out who I was working with—and the lives of innocents out there on the compound could be at stake if I fucked this up.
I thought about the woman I’d seen only a few weeks ago. They’d called out her name and it had been echoing in my head ever since. Sloane. I’d only seen her for a few minutes. She’d been trying to stop the cult mob from beating a kid. She’d taken the punishment instead.
At the time I’d tried to run in and save her, but my brothers had pulled me back.
I couldn’t recall ever going into a blind rage like that in my life.
But when I saw her—that gorgeous long brown hair glinting in the light, eyes so blue they shone from a hundred yards away, and a heart big enough to care about a child that way—I hadn’t been able to help myself.
To see those men hurt something so perfect had me seeing red.
It was time to go undercover, into the cult.
To take them down. I would need to contain my anger, or else I would never be able to rescue her.
As if my own imagination wasn’t enough to keep me on edge, Butcher, our resident psychopath, was serious and somber.
That was never a good sign. I took my seat at the table, directly across from him.
He had some expertise in this area, so as much as I appreciated the others being there, I needed to be face to face with him.
None of the rest of us had dealt with cults before.
At least not in this capacity. He was the one who was going to help me get through this, hopefully alive.
“Alright, everyone, settle down. Sit down and shut up.” There was instant silence at Lockout's order. “It’s time to vote. Are we sending Riptide in?”
He didn’t need to clarify. We’d been thinking about nothing else since he’d announced two days ago that we’d be putting this to a vote. It was time to decide and I sure as hell hoped the others were on the same page.
Unease was heavy in the air as everyone looked around to gauge what the general consensus was.
We never sent our brothers out alone. The guilt was heavy on their faces.
They didn’t like that I was going into the lion’s den without them.
Shit, if I could figure out a way to bring one of them along with me, I’d jump at the chance.
Unfortunately, Chet only had one cousin that was supposed to be joining him.
We’d had no trouble tracking the cousin down and handing his location over to the cops.
Anonymously, of course. There was a rap sheet on him a mile long that would keep him detained long enough for me to get through this mission.
That meant that my brothers would have to sit back and wait, powerless, until I was able to bring them something actionable on the cult. In that regard, I had it easy, and didn’t envy them. I would be too busy trying not to blow my cover to ever get bored and feel powerless.
Before I could answer, Toxic spoke up. “We could still kill the bastard outright. There’s no need to send Rip in alone. He would still get his girlfriend and the cult would be done.”
I ignored the dig about ‘my girlfriend’.
Everyone at this table knew the reason I’d volunteered was because of her.
Her stunning beauty, her courage, her defiance, she was pulling at me, drawing me in.
I needed to figure out what it was about her that had me so wound up.
Once I knew, I could go back to my normal life. A life without her haunting my dreams.
“Won’t work.” Butcher’s tone was wooden. “Back when I worked for the secret squirrel agency more than once we ran across these Jonestown type cults.”
My lips twitched as Butcher used the secret squirrel reference. It was a way to make fun of anyone in law enforcement or military who was overly paranoid or enthusiastic about a mission. Everyone knew the CIA was the epitome of paranoid.
Butcher’s eyes locked on me, his brow raising, but he didn’t stop his explanation to ask what was so funny.
“All over the damn world. For as much as they seem different, they really are all the same. They all have a basic religion they start from, Christian, Muslim, Hindi, whatever. They begin with the accepted religion, but then pervert it into a worship of the cult leader himself.”
“That tracks,” Dash said, interrupting my thoughts. “This guy frequently calls himself the Earth God.”
We’d been listening in on the recordings Dash and I had managed to get off the cult. It wasn’t much since they rarely held their weird ass meetings out in the open. We hadn’t infiltrated the camp, so I hadn’t been able to set any surveillance equipment up in any of the buildings.
Butcher shot him a look so stern that Dash almost fell out of his chair. “Don’t get ahead of me, I’ll get to that.”
“Sorry.”
“Butcher,” I muttered, getting him back on track. My muscles were tense and I was practically vibrating in my seat. I was amped up to ten and itching to go. The sooner I started, the sooner I finished. Everyone just needed to agree first.
“Anyway,” Butcher said, focusing back on me, “these guys prey on the weak and disenfranchised. You’d think that they’d go after the dumb and gullible, but that’s never how it works.
The cultists tend to be smart, capable, and fanatically dangerous.
It’s like once they have something new to set their sights on they come alive again.
In a way that usually isn’t good for anyone.
” He looked over at Toxic. “It’s why you can’t just outright kill their leader.
The consequences are always unpredictable and violent.
They might commit mass suicide, killing off the women and children first. They might engage in ritual sacrifice.
Or they might attack. Randomly kill dozens or hundreds of civilians that aren’t even connected to the cult. ”
Butcher stopped and rubbed his forehead, as though he needed a minute to shove down whatever memories were battering at him.
I pushed down the thought of her getting killed by the other followers.
I couldn’t focus on that right now, or I’d drive myself crazy.
If killing Ethan would put her in jeopardy, then that option was off the table.
No way would I let her get hurt. I looked back at Butcher.
I was left with the feeling that, more than once, he’d tried the direct approach by killing a leader, and that it had backfired.
That he was talking from personal experience.
We all stayed silent while he gathered himself.
“We only have one real option here, and that’s to send Riptide in. Let him become part of the cult. Identify the members that are there against their will. Once we get them out, then, and only then, can we take on a direct approach. Kill them all.”
It still seemed like an extreme approach. Priest spoke up. “Far be it for me to advocate for police assistance, but we’re talking about dozens of people here. How is this not mass murder?”
“Mass murder?” Butcher's head snapped up and locked onto Priest. His normal, wild eyes were back, pupils so blown they nearly looked black with just a thin blue ring noticeable. “Have you been listening to Dash’s recordings of these guys? Have you listened to his ‘sermons’? This isn’t your run-of-the-mill scam like a pop-up church.
Some hillbilly preacher, rolling into town and filling the collection plate before bailing.
This is the real deal.” He looked back towards me so he could really emphasize his next words.
“Ethan is a believer. A true believer. He believes that he is God incarnate, flesh and blood on earth. That's why he calls himself the Earth God. That’s not some hippie tree hugging term. No, he believes that he is God, here on earth. And they believe it too. Most of them anyways. Hopefully not all of them.”
“What about gettin’ the innocents out, then lettin’ the cops handle it?” Hush suggested.