Redfall: Freedom Fighters (American Prepper Series Book 2)

by Falconer, Jay J.

  If he had to pick one celebrity for a lookalike contest, he would’ve chosen a young Josh Brolin. But Hansen knew his perception of Jigsaw was wrong—dead wrong—and he needed to act accordingly.

  “You have precisely two minutes. I’d suggest you make every second count,” Jigsaw said, his friendly expression suddenly turning sharp and focused.

  Hansen was surprised by the man’s perfect English—not a hint of a Cuban accent. His voice sounded American, born and raised—possibly well-educated—somewhere in the Midwest, if he had to guess.

  “My name’s Hansen. My friend over there is Crosby, a linguistics professor at the University of Miami.”

  Jigsaw didn’t respond, but his eyes did scan Hansen and then Crosby. The tension in the room seemed to tighten more, if that was even possible.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Hansen said in his most confident voice.

  “I’m listening.”

  “If you set us free, I’ll wire five million dollars to any account you’d like.”

  Jigsaw stood up in a flash, turned and went for the door. “Kill ‘em both. Dump their bodies in the shark tank.”

  His men aimed their rifles.

  “Wait!” Hansen yelled, realizing he’d made a mistake.

  Jigsaw stopped, holding a closed fist up but never turning to make eye contact. His men lowered their weapons.

  “Twenty million! Ten for each of us,” Hansen said, keeping his eyes on Jigsaw’s back.

  Jigsaw brought his eyes around, then his body followed before returning to his chair. He sat down.

  “What were you doing on my island when my team found you?” Jigsaw asked, his voice sounding more determined than before.

  Hansen decided to go with the truth. Well, mostly the truth. “My boat sank and I was forced swim to the nearest island. I had no idea it was yours.”

  Jigsaw hesitated, then moved his eyes to Crosby. “How do you know this man?” he asked, pointing his cigar in the direction of Hansen.

  Crosby broke his silence. “Your men tossed him into the cell next to mine.”

  “So, you two are friends then?”

  “More like acquaintances. Until that moment, I’d never met the man before.”

  “He’s telling you God’s honest truth,” Hansen added.

  “Interesting,” Jigsaw said, taking another two puffs of the cigar. He let out the smoke, puffing rings into the air like a gangster in an old black and white B-movie. He looked at Hansen.

  “I have to say, I find it odd you’d offer up ten million for a man you claim to barely know and, by extension, care nothing about. Why would anyone choose to do that?”

  “Because I’m a man of my word. Crosby helped me with the Spanish translations so I could communicate with your men. In exchange for his help, I agreed to negotiate for his release. He wants his freedom as badly as I do.”

  “A man of your word, you say?”

  “Yes sir, and I put my money where my mouth is.”

  Jigsaw looked at Crosby. “And you believe him?”

  Crosby nodded. “I really don’t have a choice.”

  Hansen wanted to drive his point home while he had the tyrant’s attention, so he tightened his delivery and added a layer of conviction to his words.

  “Look, I never bullshit about money or lives. If you let us go, I’ll wire you twenty million dollars, US, the very same day we reach American soil.”

  Jigsaw sneered. “Do you know how many people have sat in that very chair and offered me money? Just so they might have the chance to see one more sunrise.”

  “I’m guessing a few. But trust me, none of them were like me. I have the means.”

  “Well, Mr. Hansen, I’m gonna need proof.”

  “All you need to do is go on the Internet and pull up my company’s website. I’m the CEO of RaineTech and my face is all over the About Us page. Go ahead, check for yourself. You’ll see I’m telling the truth. We’re a Fortune 500 company and I’m the majority stockholder.”

  Jigsaw grabbed Hansen by the shirt. “Look around, asshole. Does it look like we have Internet?”

  Hansen held his tongue, feeling there was no right answer.

  A second later, he was glad he did when Jigsaw continued. “You seem like an intelligent guy, Mr. Hansen. If you were in my shoes, tell me, why I should believe anything you have to say?”

  “Well, for starters, I think you already do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have agreed to negotiate with me.”

  Jigsaw’s eyes fired red. “Let me be absolutely clear about one thing—this isn’t a negotiation. So I’d advise you to choose your words carefully because they just might be your last. I came here because you told my men you were involved in the red rain that’s sweeping the planet. That’s the only reason I’m here. Not for money, and certainly not for only twenty million. So, right here, right now, I want to know everything you know about the red rain. Otherwise, I’ll bleed you slow and trust me, you’ll beg me for a bullet before I’m done.”

  Hansen swallowed hard.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  General Rawlings stepped off the Coast Guard Defender Boat and onto the rickety wooden dock that had been built alongside the Potomac River decades before. He was relieved to have solid ground under his feet. Well, almost solid ground—he wondered if any of the soggy deck boards would give way as he walked to shore.

  Regardless, he’d gladly welcomed the monotony of the endless red rain and its dilapidating effects in exchange for the seemingly nonstop turbulence of the Atlantic ocean. The past few hours on the water were more than enough for one lifetime.

  Yet, despite his queasy stomach and complete exhaustion, he was thankful to still have a lifetime to enjoy, albeit one filled with the stress of working in Washington. He couldn’t say the same for the private jet and its occupants who crashed into the ocean near the Octopus yacht. Their lives ended in a horrific explosion, and the witnesses still weren’t sure how it happened.

  Ahead of him at the end of the dock was a trio of men, standing together and wearing black raincoats. He didn’t recognize any of them. Behind the raincoat brigade was a motorcade of black sedans, with another eleven men spread out across the immediate area, forming a protective circle, each with their back to the vehicles.

  “Welcome back, General,” the oldest looking of three said when Rawlings approached. The bald man’s voice was layered with a distinct Texas accent, making Rawlings’ ears confirm each word.

  “Thank you. But now I need you to identify yourself,” Rawlings said, stopping his advance.

  “My apologies,” the same man said, pulling his credentials out from inside his suit coat. He showed them. The badge identified him as Secret Service Agent Robert Martin.

  “Service Director Chance sent us here to escort you, General.”

  “Escort me where?”

  “Site R, sir.”

  “Raven Rock? Why?”

  “Night Watch Protocol has been initiated,” Martin said, opening the side door of the third sedan.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “General, sir. We have a priority situation and we need you to please come with us. Director Wiggins is holding on a private channel inside. Please have a seat, sir, and we’ll connect you. Then we need to be on our way, ASAP.”

  Night Watch Protocol meant an imminent threat to the stability and continuity of government existed, causing senior members of government to be evacuated to the Raven Rock Facility—a nuclear-hardened, underground mountain complex built along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, near Blue Ridge Summit. Normally senior officials were airlifted to the secure site, but with the red rain grounding all air traffic, he knew he was in for a lengthy ride.

  The general slid his backside onto the bench seat and climbed in. The door closed behind him, then all four door locks locked with a loud click and the interior lighting darkened a bit. A second later the floorboard filled with red-colored ambient light.

  The sedan’s security system sp
oke in a soft female voice as expected. “Counter-surveillance protocols initiated. Interior secure.”

  The display on the back of the seat flickered on, showing the face of Director Nancy Wiggins. She looked a thousand years old. Whatever the situation, it clearly wasn’t good.

  Rawlings twipped his fingers, activating the secure channel from his end.

  “What’s going on, Nancy?”

  Wiggins cleared her throat. “General, I’m not sure how best to put this, so I’m just going to say it. POTUS is dead.”

  “What?” Rawlings snapped at her, feeling the permanent knot in his stomach double in size instantly.

  “We’ve had a series of shootings at 2600 and well, General, President Cooper was victim number fourteen.”

  “Fourteen people? Are you kidding me? How?”

  “Do you remember earlier when we discussed the odd behavior of the President?”

  “Yes, clearly.”

  “I’m afraid we dropped the ball. We should’ve stepped up and done something then, while we still could.”

  “What do you mean, Nancy? What does that have to do with this?”

  “The shooter was the President. He killed thirteen people and wounded eleven. Secret Service had to take him down.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “POTUS somehow acquired two semi-autos and a stack of reserve ammo, then began shooting. He targeted members of his staff and a few visiting Senators. We lost a number of agents as well, before Cooper was identified as the threat and neutralized.”

  “Secret Service killed the President? Is that what I just heard?”

  “Yes, Nate. I’m afraid it’s all true. We’re not sure what’s going on or why Cooper did what he did. It could be something about this red rain that we’ve overlooked, or something else entirely. It’s possible he just snapped under the pressure. We really don’t know. Not yet, anyway, but I have everyone working on it and have instituted a complete media blackout. We’ve frozen the Internet, too, using the shutdown protocols installed by Indigo Technologies. We can’t take any chances that word of the shootings or the President’s death leaks out. We’ll have anarchy.”

  “I agree. What about cell phones and landlines?”

  “Offline, too. Our first priority now is to ensure the continuity of government until we can get this sorted out. To that end, I’ve initiated the Night Watch Protocol and we’re in the process of relocating what’s left of the senior staff and top-level Congressional members to Site R.”

  Rawlings paused, letting it all soak in. “So let me make sure I have this straight. For no apparent reason, President Cooper, a brilliant, stable man I’ve known for almost twenty years, decides to grab a couple of guns and start killing people? A man respected by his peers and counted on by the American people. Does that sound right to you?”

  “No, General. Like I said, something is afoot.”

  Rawlings shook his head, then an idea popped into his thoughts. “You know Nancy, we’ve seen something like this before.”

  “When? I don’t recall anything like this ever happening.”

  “Tessa Redfall—a stable, God-fearing woman I’d also known for decades—suddenly grabbed an assault rifle and went out and killed a busload of scientists and their families.”

  “You’re right, Nate. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I can’t accept any of this as simply coincidence. Something’s not right here. Two stable, well-respected adults don’t just wake up one day and decide to go on a killing spree for no apparent reason.”

  “If you’re right, then none of us is safe. Any one of us could be next—the next shooter or the next victim.”

  Rawlings continued his verbalized thinking. “Now, if you add in what I just saw over open water, I’m starting to think we might be at war and don’t even realize it.”

  “Explain,” she said, her face pinching together with obvious concern.

  “Shortly after I arrived for the sit-down with Anderchuck on his yacht, a private jet flew over. It was low and fast on the first pass, then it circled around and exploded—again for no apparent reason. Now keep in mind the ocean is the one place where aircraft can still fly, but getting to it from land is more than difficult right now. So, I ask you . . . do you think all these deadly acts with peculiar circumstances surrounding them are just random coincidences? Or are we in the midst of something more specific and targeted?”

  “Yes, I see your point. Definitely too many coincidences.”

  “But it doesn’t end there. Who do you think was onboard the aircraft that mysteriously exploded over the Atlantic?”

  “I’m not sure I want to kno—”

  “Vito Indigo,” the General said, not waiting for her to finish the sentence.

  “Vito? Are you sure?” she asked, her face filling with obvious signs of grief.

  “Yes, we’re fairly certain. The tail section was visible long enough for the Coast Guard crew to ID the plane by its registration number. It belonged to Indigo, all right. No doubt about it. Apparently, it was his private jet.”

  She hesitated, shaking her head. “What’s going on here, Nate?”

  He took a few seconds to line up his thoughts before he answered her.

  “I think someone has launched a silent invasion of sorts, removing specifically targeted pieces from the game board. First, they had Redfall’s wife eliminate a group of distinguished scientists two years ago, then this red rain appears and blinds us across the board. And it grounds air traffic. Then another brilliant, resourceful man, Vito Indigo, is taken out. Another scientist of sorts. The same man who owns and controls the Internet, as well as the world’s largest tech company. Now we have the President and members of his administration being killed, along with members of Congress.”

  “Who would do this?”

  “I’m not sure, but whoever is behind this is moving very slowly. So much so that nobody has noticed their advance. If I’m right, then my gut is telling me there’ve been other incidents and deaths that we’ve missed along the way, too. It’s also possible that the red rain is part of it all somehow, but I’m not sure if it’s a merely a distraction or the root cause. There’s certainly a sweeping agenda at work here—a carefully plotted and executed master plan, if you will.”

  Wiggins nodded, her face energizing with anger. “Then we’d better damn well find Hansen, and soon. He must be the key to all this, or he knows who is.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Slayer brought the van around the side of the house and parked it behind the back patio. The trailer he was pulling was stuffed with wire retrieved from four sections of telephone poles located two miles west of Pandora.

  All it took was a quick swipe of their 20” Husqvarna chainsaw and down they came. Diesel had the teeth on that bad boy chewing through wood like a rabid beaver. Though the rotting poles would’ve probably come down the next time a thunderstorm rolled through the area, anyway.

  Regardless, G had been right—the phone cables came in 100-pair bundles, giving them thousands of linear feet when all said and done.

  “You get in and lift. I’ll pull from the back,” he told Diesel, sitting next to him in the van. Both of them brought their arms up and pulled the hoods of their raincoat over their heads.

  “Crap, here comes Dre. We’ll need to give him something to do. You know he’s gonna ask,” Diesel said, nodding in the direction of the back door to the main house.

  “I’ll think of something,” Slayer muttered, getting out of the van and walking through the rain to the back of the open-air trailer. He pulled the pins on the tailgate and dropped it to the ground, then waited as Diesel climbed inside, working his way to the front.

  Dre was standing next to Slayer in a flash, yapping about the Internet being down again, but Slayer wasn’t really listening—a common occurrence when the kid was tagging along.

  He liked Dre well enough and their team needed his nimble imagination when it came to his inventions, bu
t the teen was annoying. Dre would slip into these extended diatribes about something new he’d learned that day, then explain it all with a hyped-up delivery that always seemed to work itself into one really long sentence. It was exhausting to say the least.

  Other than the occasional pause to take a breath, the boy’s lips never seemed to stop. His flappers were always in high gear, like the gills on a fish just pulled from the river. It was all Slayer could do not to grab a handful of Dixie’s tampons and jam them into the kid’s mouth sometimes.

  Maybe Dre’s incessant jabbering was some sort of survival mechanism, like with the fish and its gills. If Dre didn’t keep talking, he’d die. The metaphor did seem to fit, though he wasn’t sure how to throw the kid back in the water to shut his pie hole. He grinned.

  “What’s so funny?” Diesel asked, talking overtop of the rambling Dre.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he shot back, grabbing the leading edge of the first coil. With Diesel’s help, they pulled it from the trailer and into the dirt.

  “Can I help?” Dre asked, taking a break from the conversation with himself to utter the words.

  “Nah, we got it, sport. Just hang back a little. Okay?”

  Dre nodded and took a sharp step back, slipping back into the explanation about his latest idea for a homemade hovercraft he wanted to build. Well, actually, Diesel would have to build it. Dre would only explain the idea and draw baseline schematics, then Diesel would take it from there, fabricating the materials in their extensive wood and metal shop in barn number three.

  Slayer waited for Diesel to hop out of the trailer and grab onto the same side of the wire he was holding. He did, then the two of them dragged it to a spot just short of where Jazz and Kat were working to set up a yellow canopy. He waited for Diesel to let go, then he dropped the wire, making sure to miss his toes.

  Dre stopped talking for a moment to take a breath, giving Slayer the opportunity to grab the kid’s attention. He touched Dre’s shoulder and spoke in a gentle voice, “Why don’t you stay here and help the girls get the canopy set up? Looks like they could use another pair of hands. I’m sure you can show them how to do it faster.”