The Homecoming: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 5

by Darrell Maloney

  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.”

  Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With that look.

  “Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”

  “Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”

  “Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”

  The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”

  Dave coughed. At first he had no words.

  Then he found some, and stated the obvious.

  “Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”

  “Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”

  Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got owned.”

  “I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”

  “Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”

  Two heads nodded up and down behind her.

  “But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”

  Beth made a gagging sound.

  “Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”

  “Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”

  Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.

  In other words, he played right into Sarah’s hands. She knew he would, as soon as she let the kiss fly.

  “Okay, here goes.”

  Dave started humming the tune that had played in his mind a thousand times since the previous evening.

  It took the three of them no more than ten notes. They’d have been “Name That Tune” champions in another era.

  All three of them blurted out, almost simultaneously, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

  Then Dave felt incredibly stupid.

  “Of course. How could I have not known that? The old Mr. Rogers theme song. Sheesh! Now I really feel dumb.”

  Sarah said, “Did you know that Fred Rogers was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and wore his red sweater to hide all of his tattoos?”

  Dave scoffed.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet. Why?”

  “That story’s been going around for years. It was debunked a long time ago. Mr. Rogers was a fine man, but he was never a Green Beret.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet.”

  It was too much for Lindsey.

  “Gee whiz, would you two stop believing what you read on the internet? Nearly all of it is garbage.”

  She turned to her little sister.

  “Do we have to teach these old people everything?”

  Beth said nothing but nodded her head decisively. She was in firm agreement.

  Dave was a man of his word, and after the family checked in at the ticket kiosk and Sarah and the girls got their boarding passes, they made a beeline to Cinnabon.

  “Daddy, are you going to walk us to the gate?”

  “No, honey, I can’t go through security without a boarding pass, so I’ll walk you as far as I can and then you can give me a great big hug and a kiss.”

  “I wish you could come with us.”

  “I know, sugar. I wish I could too. But with two of the guys being sick at work, they just can’t let me take vacation right now. Uncle Tommy will understand, and we can go fishing another time. And you’ll be so busy helping Aunt Susan get everything ready for the wedding, you won’t even have time to miss me.”

  “Bet I will!”

  Sarah looked at him longingly. They were going to be apart for their twelfth anniversary. It would be the first one they’d missed.

  It was as if he could read her mind.

  “We’ll do something special when you get back, I promise. We’ll get a sitter and go spend the weekend at the lake. Just the two of us.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He walked the three special ladies in his life to the TSA checkpoint and got his hugs and kisses.

  He held Sarah close and told her he loved her.

  Little Beth rolled her eyes and said, “No mush, you two.”

  Dave paid her no mind. He looked Sarah in the eyes and said, “It’ll seem like forever before I see you again.”

  Neither of them had a clue how true those words would be.

  ALONE, Book 1:

  Facing Armageddon

  is available now on Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

  Please enjoy this preview of

  REBELLION Book 1:

  The Allegiance Device

  There’s a certain element in our society that believes the federal government is using FEMA death camps, mind altering drugs, and tracking implants to control us all.

  These people are generally ridiculed and scorned.

  But what if they’re right?

  Megan and Jason are a young couple with a small child, enjoying a typical American life in an average suburb. There’s nothing special about them at all.

  And then they notice that people around them are mysteriously disappearing.

  Some of them are never seen again. Some of them come back, but there’s something oddly different about them.

  Megan is a newspaper reporter, and starts investigating. Until, that is, she speaks to the wrong people and asks too many questions.

  Then she and her family are no longer just typical Americans. They are now targets of the United States government.

  Chapter 1:

  “Honey, come here a minute. I want to show you this.”

  Jason slipped his mug out of the Keurig and dumped a teaspoon of sugar into it. He’d need an extra boost to get himself started this morning.

  “Be there in two shakes. Do you want coffee?”

  She yelled back, “No thanks! I have some already.”

 
He stirred his cup and walked to the small office they shared on the back of the house. He walked up behind her and kissed her on the top of her head.

  “Well, thanks for making me some too.”

  “Hey, I never know how to make your coffee. You fix it different every day. There’s something weird and icky about a man who can’t decide how to drink his coffee. Besides, you were in the shower.”

  “Icky? People still say icky?”

  “I do. And what did you mean when you said ‘two shakes,’ by the way? Mi no comprende your weird language.”

  “Oh, so now I’m weird and icky. On the same day. I feel so honored.”

  “Seriously. I’ve heard you say that before. But I don’t know what it means.”

  “It’s a shortened version of something my grandmother used to say. ‘Two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’ It means it won’t take long. Or something. When I say that it means the same as just a second.”

  “How bizarre. So should I assume it doesn’t take very long for a lamb to shake its tail twice?”

  “That would be my assumption, although I don’t spend a lot of time following lambs around and watching their butts. I’d much rather watch yours.”

  “Oh, you silver tongued devil, you…”

  “Another bizarre saying.”

  “Yes, and another I heard from you. Did you get that one from your grandmother too?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact…”

  “I knew it. No wonder you’re nuts. It runs in your family.”

  “Yeah, yeah… what was it you wanted to show me?”

  She called up a friend’s profile on Facebook.

  “Remember Linda, and her husband John?”

  “The black helicopter people. Yeah, they’re the ones I said I want to avoid forever, after that last Christmas party we went to. He bent my ear for half an hour about how FEMA was coming after all of us. I couldn’t break away from him and dump him on anyone else because everyone else already knew to avoid him.”