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Voice of Freedom (Against All Enemies) (Volume 2)

By H. L. Wegley

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Chapter 1
Week 4 on Israel’s Coast, near Netanya Beach

Oh crud!
A tear tickled Julia Weiss’s cheek. Crying at a wedding would only confirm everyone’s opinion of her. Weiss the wimp, the weak link on this team.
What a wuss she’d become after her narrow win in her battle with Ebola, after being knocked out by a flashbang grenade, held captive by a demoniac who had some really bad plans for her, and after having guns held to her head more times than she could count.
But, putting things in perspective, shedding a few tears was preferable to full-blown PTSD. Besides, this wedding was special.
Maybe Julia should be crying. After all, she had been pursuing the groom only eight weeks ago. Julia grinned through watery eyes. On their mission trip to Guatemala, she had definitely been crushing on hunky Brock Daniels … until she learned about Brock’s childhood soulmate, KC.
No way would she wedge herself between those two. They belonged together. And now, on August 15, at 09:05 a.m. …
“I now pronounce you man and wife.” Pastor Michael, a fortysomething man with a small beard and a large Bible, stood at the end of the long living room, beaming a smile that spread the full width of his round face. He gestured to Brock. “You may kiss your bride.”
Bride? Twenty-two-year-old KC Banning was more than that. With her green eyes and auburn hair highlighted in blazing red from a month in the blistering Israeli sun—sunshine which had also multiplied the sprinkling of freckles across the cheeks and nose of a perfectly sculpted face—KC might have been a Celtic Princess.
No. KC was a Celtic Princess, royalty in every sense of the word. While Julia, two years KC’s senior, was a commoner, a weak, little—enough self-deprecation. Just enjoy the wedding, Julia.
Six-foot-five, two-hundred-thirty-five-pound athlete and writer, Brock Daniels, heart and soul of America—whatever President Hannan hadn’t destroyed—kissed the Irish Princess.
Julia tried to shove tyrant, Abe Hannan, and the problems at home from her mind and simply delight in the union of these two people handcrafted for each other.
KC, dressed in a summer outfit that had some secret, special meaning for the two, returned Brock’s kiss with all the passion of a heart-on-her-sleeve, stereotypical Irish girl.
As Brock and KC kissed, it seemed that a great wrong in the world had finally been set right. The rending of Brock's and KC's childhood relationship by KC’s father seven years ago was almost as if it had never happened.
Please, God, let KC and Brock have their time together. Don't let Hannan finish what KC's father started … especially not now.
Julia wiped her cheeks and looked up into the eyes of warrior, Steve Bancroft. The gaze of this handsome Army Ranger had been locked on her, intense and—there was no other interpretation—longing … at the very time Brock and KC were kissing.
Steve hadn’t a clue what he would be getting in Julia Weiss and probably wouldn’t want it once he found out. Regardless, his look of admiration continued, flattering but frustrating, because his warrior ways created a big problem, a problem she would soon have to deal with before it broke two hearts.
Uncomfortable with Steve’s protracted study of her face, Julia looked away, focusing on Jeff and Allie Jacobs. They were the married couple who rounded out the band of six Americans protected by the Israelis in this spacious, fifth-floor suite near Netanya Beach on the Mediterranean Coast.
Beyond Jeff, at the far end of the living room, Benjamin Levy, their IDF Special Forces guard, stood by the main entry door. Loyal, devoted, vigilant, he had been with Major Katz in Oregon when the Israelis rescued the six from Hannan’s thugs.
What was wrong with Benjamin? His eyes widened. He whirled toward the door and grabbed the knob. “Incoming—”
An invisible force cut off Benjamin’s words.
It slammed Julia into Steve.
His arms circled her.
Their bodies smashed into the wall.
Julia collapsed on the floor beside Steve.
Her head throbbed. She rubbed it then tried to stand.
“No, Julia.” Powerful arms pulled her down.
She shook her head to clear the fog, but now it clouded her vision, too.
When Julia drew a sharp breath, she gagged on acrid air, unfit to breathe.
She blinked her burning eyes. Not fog. Smoke!
With a whoosh, a tangle of flames leaped toward them, dancing, engulfing the far end of the living room, threatening their path of escape.
“Stay down, everybody!” Steve's voice. “There might be another incoming …”
Incoming what? Regardless, they had been attacked. That realization jolted Julia. It sent her pulse revving to somewhere near the red line.
Despite military guards and Israeli intelligence, the best intelligence in the world, they had been located and attacked.
KC and Brock didn't deserve this. And coming on their wedding day was beyond brutal. Somehow, President Hannan had found them.
At that thought, molten lava surged inside Julia. It erupted in a string of words describing Abe Hannan and the place she wanted to send him. Her tirade ended in a wheezing, coughing fit.
Brock sat up beside KC and coughed. “Julia's right. Hannan’s doing. I'd bet on it.”
Steve rose to his feet then quickly dropped to his knees. “Air’s getting hot. Stay down near the floor.” He scanned the group then looked across the smooth marble floor toward the door which had been blown off its hinges. “Come on. Let’s—what the—the floor's gone!”
“So’s Benjamin.” Jeff’s voice.
Julia crawled beside Steve. Barely visible through billows of smoke, a dark chasm had opened up in the marble floor. The hole extended all the way to the door. Now flames threatened to engulf their sanctuary in one end of the closed-off living room.
With the flames and the gaping hole, they couldn't reach the door, their only hope of escaping the inferno.
Julia looked at Brock, cradling a wide-eyed KC in his arms, then at Jeff and Allie. They would all die. Brock and KC would have one kiss as man and wife … and nothing more.
Tears flowed again, tears from Julia’s heart, not from the smoke.
Vacillating between tears and another tirade, she prayed that another explosion would come, sending them all quickly into God's presence, heaven. But the menacing orange and red blazes, licking at all things flammable, looked like heaven’s antithesis. Julia’s bare skin already stung from its radiant heat.
Benjamin had disappeared, his fate a mystery. With the living room rapidly becoming a smoke-filled oven, the fate of Julia and her friends was no mystery at all. For them, in a few more seconds, they would experience hell on earth. And burning to death was Julia’s worst—
“Go, go, go!” Steve swept Brock and KC toward the hole in the floor with one stroke of his powerful right arm.
“To the suite below?” Brock pointed ahead to the smoke-shrouded hole.
“Yeah. Then out the door to the stairwell. Meet you there.” Steve shot Pastor Michael a glance. “Go with them, pastor.”
Brock tugged on KC’s arm. “How fast can you crawl, Kace?”
“Faster than you.”
Brock scurried after KC, both slowing as they approached the cavernous hole.
Crack!
Julia gasped.
A large section of floor broke, sending Brock and KC tumbling downward, out of sight.
Pastor Michael reached the edge of the enlarged hole, swung his legs down into it, and disappeared.
Steve’s hand squeezed Julia’s shoulder. “It’s only ten feet. They’ll be okay.” He nudged Jeff. “You and Allie next.”
Near the hole, flames lashed out at Jeff and Allie. Somehow the two dropped into the hole without the fire stopping them.
Julia shrank back against the wall, away from the flames that now danced like demons over the opening in the floor. The thought of burning to death sent a quivering nausea through her gut. As bile rose in her throat, she fought the urge to vomit.
“Our turn, Julia. Stay on the right side of—”
“Away from the flames?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.” Steve crawled ahead.
She didn’t follow. Couldn’t follow.
The fire leaped across the hole to the opposite wall. Now, blazes attacked from both sides of the opening.
Steve spun around on the floor and made eye contact. His eyes widened as he studied her face. He lunged toward her, hooking Julia under her arms with both hands.
She pulled away from him as images of flames licking the flesh off their bodies drove every sane thought from her mind. “Steve, I … I’m not afraid to die, but please, not by burning.”
“We’re not going to die.” He rose to his knees, gripped both of her wrists, and swung her body toward the opening in the floor.
Julia’s body slid across the smooth floor toward the hole and the flames. She cried out as her legs dropped into the hole.
Steve’s hands had clamped on her wrists so tightly her hands were going numb. “It’s okay. I’ll lower you down. Then it will be only a three- or four-foot drop. But roll out of the way. I’ll be right behind you.”
She hung suspended from Steve’s hands in an opaque, gray cloud. Julia looked up at Steve.
Flames shot out from the nearest wall, hitting him.
He winced, and his grip loosened. One hand slipped loose, then the other.
Julia plunged downward, off balance and flailing to control her fall into the smoke-shrouded unknown.

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