A Piece of the Action

The city of McAllen, Texas, maintained a busy hum of everyday life, much like a stream continues flowing with cool water. However, once a day in late afternoon, everything and everyone in the city halted their activities and came together for a special event dear to all of their hearts.

Rush hour.

The busy hum was gone, replaced with honking horns, blaring radios, and muffled profanities that made Ellen Sewell feel like yelling something creative and completely un-Christian back. The twenty-three-year-old college student brushed her burnt red hair out of her eyes and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel. She had forty-five minutes to traverse two miles to get to the bank before it closed. She just might make it.

As she sighed in weary frustration with life's problems, Ellen felt the Holy Spirit stir within her, and she remembered Pastor McKinley's message from the night before. Everyone complains about everything under the sun, except one thing: that God never uses them to save a soul. Maybe if people would take their eyes off of their stupid problems and see the dying world around them like God sees it, God might give'em a piece of the action!

For an instant, Ellen's fiery spirit flared against the Spirit's gentle chiding, yet the flame seemed to drain out of her in the face of the truth.

In shame, Ellen closed her eyes and prayed, "Father, I'm sorry. Please give me a soul today to give you. Just one soul before I get home."

A car behind her blared its horn, making her jump violently. Her prayerful mood broken, she realized that the car in front of her had just moved all of six feet forward. Muttering under her breath, she urged the car forward.

"Just one soul, huh? I'd like to send him to meet Jesus."

She immediately regretted her words and asked forgiveness for what felt like the eighty-seventh time. All she wanted to do was deposit her paycheck, win that one soul for Christ, and go home to collapse on a couch and cry her eyes out in frustration at her own lack of spirituality.

As if God realized her need to get home, traffic began clearing up in front of her. Ellen grinned excitedly and gave a little cry of joy. A motorcycle bearing a man in a leather jacket cut in front of her, but her spirits would not be dampened. God had just given her a miracle of her very own. Now she needed one more.

Just one soul, Father. A "piece of the action."

A random phrase from Pastor's message penetrated her thoughts as she finally took the exit toward the bank. Be careful what you pray for. For once, God might answer.

Sean McKinley relaxed as he finally pulled his rumbling motorcycle into the bank's parking lot. If there was one thing he hated more than people, it was lots of people all in the same place.

He parked the bike and secured it carefully to the post. As Sean strode toward the door, he lifted his arms above his head and stretched. It had been a long ride from Houston.

As soon Sean entered the bank, he drew the attention that he despised. His six-foot frame had been trained for years by the U.S. Special Forces, making him a perfect physical specimen. His white T-shirt stretched across the hard muscles of his chest, which was only partially obscured by the black leather jacket he wore. Since his enlistment had only just run out, he still wore his thick blond hair in a buzz-cut. He felt awkward in civilian clothes, and instead of tennis shoes wore combat boots with his blue jeans pulled down over them. He was tall, tanned and taut, and judging from the admiring gazes he received, the women there knew it.

Sean grunted bitterly. If only they knew everything he had done. He had only finished high school so he could run away and join the Marines. Leaving his religious father's suffocating rules behind, he had been determined to have a good time and tell himself what to do. A stupid way to think of the Corps, but it got him in. Within two years, Sean had made Special Forces, and two years after that, Delta. Drawn by his good looks and elite status, the women flocked to him, excited by being the consort of one of the legendary "operators." Too, too many women.

So he ignored them now, standing in line alone. Sean was a soul-sick soldier, burdened above his years with sins he wanted to forget. All he wanted to do was open an account, transfer eight years of military pay into it, and try to find some meaning in his life in his parents' hometown. His parents. Most especially his father, whom he had not spoken to in eight years.

Sean shifted uneasily at the thought of his father, and winced at the thought of seeing him again. After his enlistment time was up, Sean had felt something draw him back to McAllen, and lacking anywhere else to go, he came. He shook his head at his own stupidity.

What am I even doing here?

By some minor miracle, Ellen remembered to grab her Bible before she got out of her car. From the lines she could see in the bank, it would be a long wait. She walked in and stepped into line directly behind a muscular man in a leather jacket.

Ellen looked the silent stranger over and raised her eyebrows. How can someone look so alone in the middle of a crowd?

Ellen hardened herself against fear and prayed quickly. This could be the soul right here. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth to introduce herself, but the automatic doorchime every bank in America seemed afflicted with cut her off. The man turned to see, and Ellen nearly gasped. She had never seen such an expression before. Handsome, yet hard, with flickers of deep pain in his cold green eyes.

Quickly averting her gaze, she noticed the new arrivals. They were hard to miss.

A minute later, Ellen was sitting on the floor with everyone else kicking herself for not recognizing the threat sooner. What was your first clue, you little ditz? Was it the trenchcoats, those weird clear masks, the pump-action shotguns, or maybe the fact that they started yelling the minute they kicked the door in!

She and everyone else in the bank now sat against the wall under the tense watchfulness of one of the thieves. The armed man stalked back and forth, shouting at anyone who dared to move or speak while his buddies forced the bank president to get them into the vault. Ellen heard muffled sobbing from some of the ladies, and she sympathized. She felt like crying, too.

Dear Jesus, what are you doing? A hundred seconds ago you wanted me to witness to a guy, and now I'm under the barrel of a maniac!

The Spirit within murmured to her, and she once again resisted it on instinct.

NO! That's crazy! This is the wrong place, the wrong time! I could be shot!

The Spirit cut her no slack. With a sigh, she resigned herself to its will. Okay. If I perish, I perish, right?

Ellen summoned her courage and turned to the elderly lady crying next to her. She whispered, "Ma'am, are you all right?"

The lady, though shaking with fear, managed to nod.

Ellen smiled encouragingly. "My name is Ellen Sewell. What's yours?"

In a shuddering voice so thin Ellen leaned forward to hear, the lady answered, "M-May Roderick."

Ellen took May's trembling hand and smiled bravely. "Well, Mrs. Roderick, do you know if you died right now, if-"

"Hey!"

Ellen jerked involuntarily at the robber's voice. The man stomped up to her and shoved the barrel of the gun in her face.

"I said, no talking!"

May whimpered and the man shifted his attention to her.

"Shut up! You quit that crying, or I'll really give you something to cry about!"

The man lifted his hand as if to strike her, and Ellen's common sense screamed in despair as her red-hot temper took charge. "Hey, leave her alone! She's just scared, and who wouldn't be with some ignoramus waving a gun around at helpless old people? Is that how you get your kicks, you big bully?"

He turned to her, shouting, "What did you call me?"

Ellen cocked her head and threw it at him. "I said you're a big bully, and if that mask's any indicator, an ugly one!"

On some distant level in her consciousness, she could hear her brain screaming at her mouth to shut up, but Ellen was too heated to care.

The rifle barrel swung up to her face and leveled off at her nose. The robber swore at her in his fury. "I can kill you right now, little girl!"

Even as Ellen's brain felt like it was being sucked into that gaping hole aimed at her face, her mouth stubbornly continued to move on its own. "Oh, yeah? What do I care? I'm saved, and I'm going to heaven, and the God I serve will kick your butt if you ever touch one of His children without His permission!"

Sean could not believe the stupidity he was witnessing. Did religion really make someone that idiotic?

As soon as he had seen the men walk in, he had known what was happening. With complete calm, Sean accepted the situation and quietly followed their orders. They only wanted money, and his fantasies of heroically saving everyone single-handedly had vanished like smoke in the aftermath of his first black ops mission.

Memory, ever cruel, ever accurate, carried his helpless mind back. He was twenty-two, newly accepted into Delta. Eager to prove himself, eager to use the elite training he possessed, full of dreams but completely unprepared for the nightmares. An African warlord needed to be brought into line, and the military needed to ensure his cooperation. Sean's mission: take his most precious possession-permanently.

Sean had murdered several children after that, along with a dozen women and untold numbers of men, but that first five-year-old boy would forever haunt him. After that, he threw away any concept of the human race being inherently good. He tried to drown the nightmares in beer, women, and thrills. Some began to term him suicidal because of the insane missions he accomplished, the unbelievable odds he unflinchingly took on.

But nothing would drown out the echo of the boy's high-pitched scream, or blur the lingering shade the boy had become in his dreams. Forever etched into his mind in sharp definition, the boy's ebony face stretched into a scream, baring white teeth flecked with hints of red.

Now Sean lived with the cold reality that life truly was. And the cold reality here was that these desperate men just wanted money. He held no fear for his own worthless life, but a stray bullet might catch the civilians around him. Sean would have sat quietly and done nothing until the evangelistic nut over there opened her mouth.

The thug continued to shout at the girl, and she fired right back. The robber was getting more and more agitated, and as soon as Sean saw his eyes go crazed, he knew it was over. He could already hear her high-pitched scream, see the spray of blood from her bullet-ridden skull. See her in his dreams at night, torturing him.

In his soul, something snapped, and Sean's poison-green eyes flared bright as death rose with a roar.

The shotgun jerked to her right eye, and Ellen knew it was over. Her mouth had finally killed her. All those jokes and rueful warnings about her red hair were about to come true with a blast of black powder and a cloud of pellets burrowing-

"Noooooooo!"

A bellow of rage and denial erupted next to her, and a blur of black leather slammed into the criminal. Two sickening snaps and a savage warcry later, Ellen's aggressor crashed into the wall, his neck cocked at an unnatural angle, eyes wide open in shock.

Sean's breath came in snarls as he analyzed the area, every sense keenly alive with revitalized energy. A mind trained in combat predicted a hostile response in seconds. There were four other targets in the vault to be dispatched simultaneously to minimize civilian casualties.

He looked up.

Within seconds, the four gunmen rushed in, shouting and waving their weapons. The ringleader saw the crumpled body of his comrade and shouted at the group, "Who did this?"

They could only mutely stare above him. Ellen's mouth hung open.

With a roar of incomprehensible fury, the man in black leather dropped from the ceiling into the middle of them. He slammed his elbow into the face of one behind him, breaking the man's nose into his brain, and snapped his hand forward, crushing the throat of the man in front of him. A succession of brutal strikes later, all four of the robbers collapsed to the floor like deer before a hunter.

Without missing a step, the biker snatched up a fallen shotgun and stepped outside.

Ellen stared, unable to realize that she was still alive. She snapped out of her reverie when she heard screeching tires and four deafening shotgun blasts come from outside. She turned to the door just as her guardian stepped back in.

He glanced around at the awestruck crowd, and muttered almost sheepishly, "Getaway car."

His head dropped and his eyes caught on the weapon that he held. In disgust, he threw the gun down and spit on it. Ellen jumped at the sound of the gun hitting the floor. As fast as a hawk, his icy green eyes focused on her, and she saw anger ignite in them again, this time at her.

Oh, God, help me.

Sean saw the girl who started this whole mess jump as he tossed the shotgun away, and the cooling embers of his temper flared again. He stalked directly toward her and was rewarded by fear in her eyes. Good. Fear would burn the lesson into her mind.

"Get up."

The redhead stared at him dumbly from her seat on the floor. Sean sighed inwardly and reached down, grasped her arm and dragged her up to her feet.

Even when she stood, Sean still towered over her. He could feel her trying to shrink away from his face, and for an instant, he wondered how he must appear to her. It was no use scaring the girl speechless, as impossible as that seemed. He relaxed his grip-a little.

"What is your name?"

Her wide-open eyes stared into his, and she seemed petrified at the thought of speaking to him. Sean felt military thinking come over him again, and he barked, "Name!"

She jumped again and stuttered, "E-Ellen. Ellen Sewell."

Sean's eyes burned into hers. "All right, Ellen Sewell, just what were you trying to accomplish back there?"

Ellen's mouth opened, then shut again. She really didn't know. The whole thing seemed so surreal to her.

Sean answered for her, "I'll tell you what you accomplished. You nearly got yourself killed over some insane religious nonsense."

Now she responded. "It is not nonsense! If you want to know what nonsense is, how about attacking five gunmen with nothing but your bare hands!"

Sean did not answer.

Ellen raised her eyebrows and put her hands on her hips. "I guess that makes us both insane."

Sean gritted his teeth. "No one will miss me if I die, Miss Sewell. What's your excuse?"

Ellen cocked her head and looked at his face. Hard, dark, and drawn with pain, perhaps, but without a trace of self-pity or dramatic exaggeration. He truly meant what he said.

She could feel her spirit reach out to him in his shadowed pain, and she knew that the Spirit within her approved.

"What's your name?"

Sean looked away for an instant, then met her eyes. "Sean. Sean McKinley."

"Sean, I do not fear death because it has no hold over me. Jesus Christ died to release me from it."

Sean looked at her. Ellen seemed totally sincere. Misguided, perhaps, but sincere.

He almost told her what he thought of religion, but something in her eyes halted him. At first, he thought he hesitated because she was attractive. Then he thought it was because her spirit remained so fiery in the wake of her recent trauma. But it hit him with deadly force, straight through his shadowed past and dark deeds into his heart. She really believed in this. With all of her heart, enough to risk her life for it, Ellen believed in Jesus.

The still small voice murmured within him, When was the last time you believed in something, Sean?

He retorted, more at the voice than at her, "I didn't see God save your life back there."

Ellen planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head. "I'm alive, aren't I?"

Sean weakened. For the first time, he felt a desperate need to trust in something. He wanted to know more of what this spirited girl possessed that he did not.

He did not even realize what made him speak, but the words escaped his lips anyways. "Tell me more."

Police and medics burst into the bank, scattering about to secure the scene and check on the elderly. Ellen glanced away from Sean and blew her breath out impatiently. All I need is twenty minutes with him, Father!

Not here.

She turned back to him and said, "I won't have time to tell you here, not without getting interrupted. How about if you come to my church tonight and we can talk there?"

Sean hesitated. This was all really new to him.

Ellen caught his hesitation and smiled at him. "Who knows? He's used you once already. Maybe Jesus will give you a piece of the real action."

Sean grunted in dark amusement. "The day that Jesus uses someone like me, pigs will fly Harriers and I'll be reunited with my father."

Ellen frowned and tried to say more, but Sean cut her off. "Do you have a card for the church or something?"

Ellen furrowed her brow. "Why?"

Sean looked at her and laughed. Clearly, with no trace of bitterness. This girl was great to be around.

"Am I supposed to track it down myself, or are you going to tell me how to get there?"

Ellen's face lighted in understanding. "Oh."

She dug around in her purse just as police approached them. She pulled out a card with the church's address on it and handed it to Sean, who took it with a smile.

He glanced at the card and froze. Ellen saw him and sensed that something was wrong.

"Sean? Are you okay?"

Sean McKinley held up the card with a trembling hand and showed it to her. He sighed deeply and asked, "Ellen, is there anything that God can't do?"

Ellen looked at him in confusion and leaned closer to read the proffered card.

CentralBaptistChurch

221 Desert Blvd.

Pastor: Tom McKinley