The massive explosion of a car bomb in the white van throws me face down onto the ground. The car windows of the other vehicles parked nearby blow outward, sending glass and metal pieces flying in every direction. Flames from the van shoot high into the air.

I try to lift my head and can’t. My ears are ringing in a constant buzzing roar. I draw in a breath and choke on smoke. My hands are raw and burning like a thousand angry wasps are stinging the shit out of me.

No, it can’t be wasps.

I force my eyes open. The stinging is from tiny pieces of glass embedded into my exposed skin; my hands, arms, face, and the back of my neck.

Fuck! I was too late.

Where is Maggie?

I lift my head and look back at the clubhouse. Thick black smoke and debris fills the parking lot, and I can’t see the doorway where she was standing thirty seconds before.

“Maggie!” I try to cry out.

My voice barely makes a sound and comes out as a hoarse whisper. I need to find her, to make sure she’s okay. I push myself up onto my knees and attempt to stand. I’m dizzy and my ears are still roaring. Shaking my head, I try to clear my vision.

“Toby!” I hear her screaming frantically from way off in the distance. “Toby! Answer me!” Her voice sounds as if she’s coming closer. “Where are you? I can’t see you! Toby!”

“Maggie,” I yell louder this time. I manage to stand, though unsteadily. “Maggie! Stay put.”

I don’t want her coming closer because of the threat of a secondary explosion. There’s almost always a second bomb placed nearby. Suddenly I see her through the smoke, and then she’s beside me with tears running down her terrified face.

“Are you okay?” she says in a panic. “Oh my god! You’re bleeding all over. You’re injured!”

“I’m okay,” I manage to say.

My brain isn’t working quite right yet, and I’m having a hard time forming words or thinking straight. Is this what it feels like to have a traumatic brain injury? To feel as if your insides have been squeezed like toothpaste out of a tube?

“What the hell just happened?” she asks shakily.

“Car bomb. The van. Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Thank God,” I say, trying to see through the smoke. “Where’s Rocco? He was right here.”

She turns around to look behind us toward the gate. “Rocco!” she yells loudly. “Rocco! Can you hear me?”

“Over here,” a faint voice calls out. “My leg’s hurt.”

“Hang on, Rocco,” Flint calls back. “We’re coming to get you, buddy.”

Flint and Sam appear through the smoke, along with Rocco’s brother, Donny, and several more of the Steel Infidels. Donny and the crew run toward the sound of Rocco’s voice.

Sam hurries to my side, grabs my arm, and slings it across his shoulder to hold me up. “I’ve got you, buddy,” he says. “You look like shit.”

“Are you alright?” Flint stops to ask me.

I nod back at him.

“There’s no telling how many injured people are outside the gates,” he says. “You’ve had experience with this kind of thing. I haven’t. Tell me what to do.”

I look at the scene of devastation and tragedy unfolding in front of us.

The terrorist’s target was the media all along.

We should have known.

What better spot to take them out than right here? Where they were all gathered up in one place, prime for the picking. Along with the Steel Infidels, the very men who killed two of their own.

A perfect evil plan.

Take out the media and get revenge on the Steel Infidels at the same time.

I’m angry and ready for vengeance.

I can’t believe the motherfuckers managed to pull this off right at our front door. My auto-pilot kicks in, clearing the fog from my brain. I no longer feel the pain from the glass shards shredding my skin.

“Have the crew bring the injured into the clubhouse,” I say. “We’ll need to set up a triage unit until the ambulances get here. The local hospital only has two, so it will be a while before they can transport the injured. We’ll also need to put the word out for any local nurses or anyone with medical experience to get here fast. Maybe even extra vans for medical transport to the bigger hospitals in Atlanta.”

“I’ll call Kendra,” Flint says. “She can alert her veterinary staff. The girls haven’t made it back to Georgia yet.”

“The Sweet Butts are going to have to step up and help,” I say. “They’re capable of doing more than we give them credit for. Go inside, Maggie, and tell them to get ready to take care of the injured. Clear a space in the main room and gather up anything we can use for medical supplies.”

“You should come inside too,” Maggie pleads. She tugs gently at my hand. “Look at your arms and neck. You’re bleeding all over the place. Please. Let me patch you up.”

“No,” I say firmly. “There’s something I need to do first. That fucker in the red cap hanging around the van seemed familiar, and he’s still out there in the crowd somewhere…dead or alive. Either way, I need to find him and put an end to this madness. Even if all that’s left of him is charred pieces.”

Flint gives me an incredulous look. “You recognized him? Who do you think it was?”

“I don’t know for sure. I think it might be the third shooter at the mall. The man on the upper level.”

“Son of a bitch!” Sam says. “I’ll go with you. Are you sure you’re okay to do this? Because you don’t look so good.”

I remove his arm that’s holding me up and wipe off the blood that’s streaming down into my eyes with the back of my hands. “As fine as I’ll ever be,” I say. “Come on, Sam. Let’s find this bastard.”

We make our way toward the direction of where the gate used to be. From the splintered metal pieces crunching under our boots, I suspect the fence surrounding our clubhouse has been blown to bits. It’s hard to see more than a few feet in front of us to know for sure how much damage has been done.

Now that I have a plan, adrenaline is flooding my body and clearing my mind. I’m focused and calm.

“Where did you last see him?” Sam asks.

“When he was walking away from the white van,” I say. “It was parked to the right of the gate. He must’ve set a timer and then took off. He either went into the woods on foot or had someone else pick him up in a car down at the main road.”

“What’s your best guess? Woods or the road?”

“My gut tells me the cocksucker is in the woods,” I say. “His plan is probably to stay put and then make his way to a pick-up location when the coast is clear.”

While others are rushing away from the multiple burning vehicles, we run toward them. If there was any justice in the world, the fucker would have exploded with the car bomb. When we get closer, I realize nobody could have survived the blast if they were anywhere near it. We won’t find his body. I figure he set a five-minute timer and ran like a motherfucker.

“Go toward the woods,” I tell Sam. “If we can get beyond the smoke, maybe we can spot him.”

The wooded area to the right of the clubhouse goes straight up a mountainside. To an outsider, it would appear to be no more than a densely-wooded hillside. In reality, the climb up is rough, with big boulders and thick, tangled underbrush to crawl through. Over the years, Sam and I have hiked it so many times we could do it blindfolded.

Which is basically what we’re going to have to do today through the dense smoke.

If the shooter is ahead of us, it’s only by a few minutes, and he doesn’t know the area. Visibility is low, like walking through a forest fire. When my throat starts to sting, I tug off my shirt and tie it around the lower part of my face to filter out the smoke. Sam does the same.

“We’re never going to be able to spot him in this smoke,” he says. “He could be five feet in front of us and we won’t see him.”

“That’s why we have to get above him. To the top of the mountain. We’ll be able to spot him once we get above the smoke level. And then we’ve got the son of a bitch right where we want him.”

“Lead the way,” Sam says. “I’m right behind you, as always. Seems like my life is spent looking at your lard ass.”

We start climbing straight up the steep mountain, using tree saplings to pull ourselves up. As we climb farther, we instinctively follow the worn path our own boots had made many years before.

The first time Sam and I climbed this mountain, we were in high school. His Dad was beating the shit out of him on a regular basis. Flint had run off to Atlanta to be a big-city attorney. Jesse was taking over as leader of the Steel Infidels. My home life was an unstable mess.

We were too young to be in the Steel Infidels. The bikers in the MC treated us like a joke whenever we were around them, which wasn’t often. That didn’t stop us from dreaming.

We’d sneak up the mountain with a six-pack of beer so we could sit and watch the crew work on their bikes in the parking lot of the clubhouse. We’d talk about what kind of Harleys we’d buy and the cool tattoos we’d get. What badasses we were going to be once we were two of the Steel Infidels’ chosen twelve.

We didn’t find out until much later that the MC knew what we were doing the whole time. Nothing got past them. Certainly not a couple of teenage wannabes hiding out on the mountain to play ‘I Spy.’ They played along with the game and sometimes even put on a little extra show in the parking lot for our benefit. Sam and I were the little kids in the Steel Infidels family, the brats. The crew patiently waited for us to grow up and take their place one day.

And now we have.

The brats are all grown up with a job to do.

“The smoke is starting to clear,” Sam says, breathing hard. “Damn! I don’t remember the hike being this fucking difficult when we were younger. I’m out of breath.” He leans against the side of a tree and bends over to try to breathe. He looks at me with concern. “You’re still dripping blood. Are you sure you’re okay? I can’t carry your big ass down off this mountain, so don’t even think about passing out on me.”

“We’re almost at the top. Keep going. Remember the rocks that we used to sit on where we could see the parking lot?”

“Sure,” Sam says. “Didn’t we hide a six-pack of beer up there years ago? Even a green beer would taste good about now. How long will beer keep outdoors? Ten years?” He pushes off from the tree and starts climbing again. “Okay, I’m good.”

We hike five more minutes and then we’re finally above the smoke line. The mountainside is as clear as ever. I take a deep breath of the fresh air. Sam is energized now and scrambles to reach the boulders first. He climbs up on the tallest one and stands to scan the area below us.

“Damn,” he says in a solemn voice. “It’s looks like fucking Armageddon from up here.” He points to the black cloud of smoke hanging over the clubhouse and the surrounding area. “Doomsday.”

I sit down beside him and use my shirt to wipe the blood from my face, neck, and arms.

“You’re all glittery and shiny,” Sam says. “Is that glass in your skin?”

“Yeah, it’s all over me. And in me.”

“Anything I can do to help? I can try to scrape it out with a credit card.”

I roll my eyes at him. It’s a good thing he’s not a medic. “No, thank you,” I say. “I’ll manage fine without your help.”

“Do you still think he’s on his way up?” he asks. “I would hate to think we walked all this way for nothing on a stupid hunch. They could use our help at the clubhouse.”

“We’ll know in a few minutes one way or the other,” I say. “Where’s your weapon?” I remove my gun from my leg holster and stand up again for a better vantage point.

Sam slides a gun out of his jacket pocket and holds it up for me to see.

“You watch that side and I’ll keep an eye out over here,” I say. “The second he clears the smoke, we need to act. If he sees us first, one of us is a goner.”

Sam holds up a finger. “One question,” he says. “Are we planning to haul this motherfucker back down the mountain with us alive and hand him over to the police or…?” He raises his eyebrows at me in an unspoken question.

“What do you think? Are you in the mood to be carrying an injured asshole back down the way we just came up? I know I’m not. If we take him alive, he’ll go to jail. Big fucking deal. He’ll become an even bigger hero to his freaky followers. They’ll carry on his work to avenge him. It will never stop. You know what Jesse always says. ‘Cut off the head of the snake and the body dies.’”

“Guess that settles it then. No argument from me on that point. So now we wait.”

Several minutes go by without any sign of the man. I’ve almost given up hope when I see movement down below us. The man is grabbing onto tree trunks to pull himself up the mountain the same way we did. He’s moving slow and steady. Every time he grabs a tree, the leaves shake on top. By watching the treetops, we’re able to pinpoint his location.

I motion to Sam and hold a finger to my lips for silence. The man will exit the tree line any minute now. When he does, he’ll be well within my target range.

I take a deep, steadying breath to calm my nerves.

I’m tired of all the killing.

I’m ready to start living.

The man staggers out of the woods, limping badly with a hurt leg. He’s cut up all over the same as I am from the explosion. It warms my heart to know that he feels pain in the last minutes of his life. I would love to make him feel more, to avenge everyone he hurt, but it wouldn’t serve any purpose.

Strength isn’t about destroying those you hate.

True strength is about building up the ones you love.

Life is about the living.

And loving.

I line up the shot and fire. He drops to the ground.

“Let’s go home,” I say to Sam, who’s watching me quietly. “It’s over.”