I crept alongside a wheeled metal tool station, then heard movement again. This time it was distinct: the shuffling of feet. A second later, Deacon Lynch stepped around from the side of the truck. Though I’d never seen him in person, he looked just like he did in his photographs. He was a few inches shorter than me but clearly well built. His eyes were intense, his hair unkempt, and his face covered in a scraggly beard. He wore a long-sleeved black shirt with a picture of a Confederate flag on it. He also had a nifty brass belt buckle keeping his leather belt in place, the letters CS embossed in its center.
In his hands, he held a stack of four gold bars.
The moment he rounded the corner, he locked eyes with me and froze. He glared at me, then sighed angrily. Faster than a blink, I aimed my Sig straight at him, lining up the radioactive tritium sights with the swastika at the base of his neck.
“Don’t shoot,” Lynch said calmly. He bent his knees then set the gold bars on the concrete slab at his feet. Once they were on the floor, he raised his hands in the air. “I give up.”
“You don’t deserve to live,” I spat. “After all the death you’ve brought upon this community.”
Lynch swallowed hard, then took a step in front of the tailgate.
“You’re going to shoot me?” he said, his eyes burning with fear.
I kept my finger on the trigger, applying slight pressure. All it would take was a little more for the mechanism to move back and a bullet to be sent through Lynch’s neck. I wanted nothing more than to do it. To put an end to Deacon Lynch for good. But he was unarmed. And he was offering his surrender. And no matter how badly my heart begged my trigger finger to jolt back, it wouldn’t budge.
Fine. If he wants to surrender, I’ll let him. He’ll rot in jail for life if he’s lucky and get the electric chair if he’s not.
In my peripherals, I spotted a stack of heavy-duty plastic zip ties on the workbench to my left.
“Step toward me,” I ordered.
Lynch hesitated. He swallowed again, his hands shaking over his head. Instead of listening to my order, he slowly turned around and pressed his chest onto the top of the tailgate. With the door barely open, his head nearly collided with it. He lowered his hands and held them behind his back.
Sounds suddenly rang out in the distance outside. They were muffled from the walls but getting louder, and coming from the direction of the driveway. Sirens. The police and SWAT were on their way.
“I said, step toward me!” I barked. “And turn around.”
A high-pitched ringing noise blared out from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder on instinct alone, noticing an alarm clock shaking violently in the back seat of the middle vehicle. As I snapped my head forward and focused on Lynch, he’d moved slightly to his left and leaned into the truck. His hands clasped a shotgun that had been resting under the blanket, prepped and already aimed straight at me.
I fired and jumped back, sending a bullet flying just before my feet left the ground. In a blur, I twisted and flew behind the big-wheeled toolbox. Lynch grunted as he pulled the trigger of his shotgun. The blast shook the confined space, the pellets pounding against the workstation, the back wall, and the metal tool cart between us. The storm of tiny metal balls rattled everywhere and scattered across the floor.
“You really think I’d give myself up that easily?” Lynch said when the commotion settled. His tone had shifted from nervous and caught red-handed to enraged and resolute.
I focused, contorting my body on the cold concrete and peeking below the narrow gap between the bottom of the tool cart and the floor. As he cocked another shell into the chamber, I took aim and fired, sending a round screaming into his left foot.
The white supremacist leader yelled in pain from the blow and his foot swept out from under him. He lost his balance, dropping his shotgun and staggering toward me. He slammed hard into the cart, and I barely managed to brace myself as it rolled toward me, bashing into my body.
Lynch flipped over the toolbox and fell on top of me. I’d shot the guy twice, but somehow he still had strength and he utilized every ounce of it to pin me down. In a flash, he forced my gun hand into the floor, then knocked my weapon free. I retaliated by smashing my forehead into his face, breaking his nose with ease. As he wailed and jerked back, I forced my legs between us and kicked him as hard as I could.
He flew backward, slamming hard onto his butt. I rolled and continued to engage him. As I kicked him in the chest, he extended his hand and grabbed a hammer from the floor. He swung it wildly, forcing me to lurch back to avoid being pummeled by the metal head.
“How in the hell did you find us?” he growled as he struggled toward me to take another swing.
With all my weapons gone, I scanned to my right and spotted the stack of gold bars Lynch had set down moments before. Gripping the closest one, I lunged toward Lynch just as he reared the hammer back. Before he could slam the improvised weapon into me, I bashed the gold bar into the side of his head. He grunted, dropped the hammer, and collapsed to the floor at my feet.
He shook and writhed in pain. Somehow, he hadn’t been knocked out by the blow.
