Hell's Fortress Read Online Free PDF

now?”
    “Regretting what?”
    “Not cutting them down like I suggested. I warned you—they’re locusts.”
    Jacob felt his face flush. With Helen Kemp’s body stiffening in the back of the truck, Smoot’s callous words rubbed him raw.
    Eliza interposed herself between Jacob and the church elder. “Now is not the time to push my brother, Elder. Get in the truck. You can help us with these supplies.”
    Smoot ignored her. His sons manned the .50-cal in the pillbox, and their presence seemed to bolster his recalcitrance. Today it was Grover again, plus his older brother Bill, a man with two wives and several children. Their horses grazed nearby, tethered to an iron ring on the side of the bunker.
    Smoot lifted the tarp on one of the pickups to inspect the supplies beneath. “Giving away the farm, Christianson?”
    “You know why.”
    “Yes, to chase down your sister’s boyfriend. Don’t know why she can’t marry a righteous man of the church instead of a gentile.”
    “Steve Krantz is one of us now.”
    “Fine. Former gentile. He’s still one man. You ever think maybe he doesn’t want to come back? That Eliza tricked him into baptism and he took the first chance to run like the devil? And straight into the devil’s arms, I’d say.”
    Eliza bristled visibly at this, but didn’t take the bait. Good for her. Neither did Jacob. He reached into his truck to fetch several sheets of paper from the glove compartment. Then he called Stephen Paul over and handed him the papers.
    “A list of stuff we need. I’m sending you with silver coins to buy it all, if you can. Don’t go mucking around war zones and abandoned towns, but if you can get these things—especially antibiotics—it will save lives.”
    “Justification for a foolhardy plan,” Smoot said. “We’re going to risk three lives to save one, that’s the bottom line.”
    “Where’s your faith?” Stephen Paul demanded. “Brother Jacob wouldn’t send us into the desert to be killed.”
    “And did you test that or swallow it blindly?” Smoot asked him. “Did you fall to your knees and ask the Lord if it was right to leave your wives and children?”
    “Of course I did.” Stephen Paul sounded shocked at the question. “The instant Jacob called to ask, I gathered my wives and we all prayed together to know the Lord’s will.” He gave Smoot a sharp look. “You must have heard the plan at the same time I did. Didn’t you pray about it?”
    “Well, no,” Smoot said, sounding uncomfortable. “It was all so sudden, and I wasn’t asked to go.”
    “But I was. So I did.”
    Stephen Paul had played a trump card, against which there could be no argument. The Lord had confirmed it. What greater proof could there be? Of course both elders were operating on the assumption that Jacob would never take such a dangerous step without praying about it himself first. Which he hadn’t done, shamefully enough.
    He was doing it for Eliza. If he didn’t, she’d go off on her own, and he could never allow that. So yes, Smoot was at least partly right about the supply-gathering nonsense.
    “I still say it’s a fool’s errand,” Smoot grumbled after a long, uncomfortable pause. “But fine, let’s get this over with.” He called over his shoulder. “Bill, anything funny happens on that ridge, you know what to do.”
    “Um . . .”
    Jacob made his way to the bunker and looked in the gun slit. “What you do is you wait for my signal. Don’t start shooting because something looks funny. You got that?”
    “Yes.” Bill didn’t look at his father.
    “You too, Grover.”
    “Yes, Brother Jacob.” Smoot’s younger son looked even more frightened to be obeying Jacob instead of his father.
    Fortunately, Smoot didn’t make an issue of it, but climbed into the pickup truck with the others. They drove slowly down the road until they caught up with Kemp and his minders, waiting in the road opposite the refugee camp.
    Kemp and two other refugees