American Dreams | Book 2 | The Ascent

by Parker, Brian

  Less than ten minutes after she arrived at the RV, Cassandra drove it out of the woods and passed the house where Bodhi’s parents died. She paused for a moment to say a prayer for the Haskins family, then eased the big vehicle onto the dirt road, turning the nose westward toward Austin.

  Toward Bodhi.

  EIGHT

  Rogan lifted his feet from the floor, which was sticky with drying blood. So much blood. They’d been chased and hounded for hours. Each time they thought they’d given their pursuers the slip, they’d see them in the distance and start driving again. Everyone was exhausted and on the verge of collapse.

  Out of the original eleven men and women that had gotten into the van from the warehouse to attack the police station, only six were okay. Three were dead. Haskins had died at the police station and his body was in the cargo area. Stephanie Cooper died outside the police station, shot in the head when the back windows were knocked out. Ted Hunt had been peppered with bullet holes at some point and died of his injuries about an hour ago. Two more members of the team, Sammy Blackledge and Art Jacobs, had gunshot wounds as well—although not fatal as long as they could get away and receive medical attention to get the wounds cleaned and bandaged.

  Correction: As long as he could get them away. Rogan was pissed. The mission was supposed to be an in and out, nobody gets hurt kind of deal, but that hadn’t even lasted five minutes past the start. He’d fucked things up by the numbers, first by not having a clear idea of the police station layout with the single point of entry and exit, and next by allowing Haskins to get himself killed when he opened the door. The kid should have stayed in the van. He didn’t have any training. Most of them didn’t. On top of the injuries and death they’d sustained, he had no idea if the truck containing their stolen weapons even got away. They’d been balls to the wall since the chase began with no way of contacting Garrett to see if he’d made it back to the Resistance.

  “Turn in here!” Rogan shouted, pointing at a dilapidated maintenance garage with a giant “Closed” sign in the window. “Pull around back.”

  The driver turned the wheel sharply, sending the van’s occupants sideways and the blood sloshing against the side panels. At least one of the bodies thumped limply into the glass, sending a chill down Rogan’s spine. “Slow down!” he ordered. They didn’t need the damned van to tip over. “Try to minimize the dust cloud.”

  They had to switch vehicles and get back on the road quickly before roadblocks got set up and any hope of escape was taken away. He didn’t know what type of assets they were being tracked with, whether it was cameras, a drone, helicopter, or even a satellite that had been retasked to cover the scene, but the cops seemed to be right on their heels every step of the way. That would change as people began to calm down from the events that had destroyed the South Austin Precinct building. Once they shifted from reaction mode to trying to predict the fugitives’ movements, then it was game over. Rogan had to keep ahead of them.

  The van came to a stop behind the garage and Rogan hopped out. “There has to be keys inside for all these cars,” he said, gesturing toward the row of vehicles backed neatly into parking spaces. “Most are probably here for oil changes and shit.”

  “I’ll go too,” Ciara, the driver said.

  “No. I need you to keep the van ready to go,” Rogan replied. “Spahngler, come with me.”

  The retired police officer nodded, opening the door. Rogan hadn’t even had time to talk to his team yet, but he knew the killing of cops in cold blood hadn’t sat well with most of them. Spahngler would probably be in that camp. Whoever had shot the desk officer had straight up murdered the man. That wasn’t okay and was not what the Revolution was about. The cops who died in the ensuing gunfight were different. That was self-defense. If there was one bright spot in Rowan Haskins’ death, it was that Rogan was about ninety-five percent sure that he’d been the instigator who shot the desk officer and alerted the cops in the back of the station of the raid.

  Spahngler and Rogan went to the back door and he used the grip of his pistol to break the glass above the door handle. The thin, single pane window shattered, sending jagged shards of glass crashing loudly to the concrete floor. “Dammit,” Rogan mumbled.

  “I don’t see any cameras,” the older man stated, grunting as he stepped over the threshold.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Rogan agreed. He’d chosen this place specifically because it looked like an old mom and pop garage that would be closed on a Sunday for church. During his time with the CEA, he’d learned that most of the religious folks were resistant to the all-intrusive lifestyle that the NAR pushed for. He wasn’t religious himself, so he didn’t know if it was a belief thing or that they simply didn’t want the government all up in their business, all the time. Probably a little bit of both.

  “Okay, we need keys— No, two sets,” Rogan said, scanning the interior of the garage. A large peg board was affixed to the wall above a red tool cart. It was as good a place as any to start looking.

  He barely even made it to his target search area when Spahngler called out, “Got ’em.”

  “Geez,” Rogan muttered under his breath.

  “Office,” the officer replied.

  No shit, Rogan laughed to himself. Of course they’d be in the office. Aloud, he said, “Okay, grab a couple of sets. We need to see what’s running and what isn’t.”

  It took them a few minutes to decide on two vehicles that seemed to be in good working order and that had gas in the tank, then another five to move the bodies into the trunk of the car that Rogan would drive. He decided that Sammy and Art, the two injured men, should also go with him. If they ran into a roadblock, the ones who didn’t have any injuries could potentially get past, while Rogan’s crew would be very suspicious because of the blood-stained clothing. If they opened the trunk, then it was game over.

  He wished the three men and two women good luck before reminding them that they should be fine as long as they kept their weapons hidden and nobody showed a police officer the bottom of their shoes or pant legs. There really had been a lot of blood in the van.

  Rogan shifted the ancient Buick LeSabre into drive and pulled out of the garage parking lot. He’d considered driving directly back to Austin, but decided to head east for a little while, possibly an hour or so, then loop around and come in from the north. His two companions weren’t in any immediate danger, so it was much safer than the direct route.

  The three in the trunk? Well, they were along for the ride.

  NINE

  Cassandra eased the big RV off the highway into the rest area. She was only about four, maybe five hours away from Austin, but she just couldn’t do any more driving. The events of the day had been both emotionally and physically draining.

  She brought the big Thor Quantum RV to a halt in one of the many empty parking spots to check her map. She still had the old US atlas and folding maps that the truck stop owner had given her all those months ago. She sighed. She’d been on the run back then too. Would it ever end?

  She sat in the driver’s seat for several minutes, staring at the map and using her fingernail as a scale to reassess her earlier assertion that she was five hours away from Austin. After looking at it, she decided that she was only about three hours away, less than one hundred and fifty miles. Her back hurt, so she opened the door to stand outside and stretch. The RV was nice, extremely nice in fact, but her body wasn’t accustomed to sitting down for such long periods of time. The last time she’d gotten out of the driver’s seat was in Mississippi when she used the siphoning system to steal some much-needed gasoline.

  As she stretched, Cassandra looked out around the rest area. There were two other cars in the massive parking lot, but she couldn’t see anyone. It was nearing dark, so the people could have been sleeping in their car or off laying down in the grass somewhere. That was weird, but people were weird.

  The longer she stood there, the more a feeling of unease came upon her. She couldn’t shake
it. It was like she was being watched, to which she chastised herself as being silly. Of course she was being watched. The damn NAR had cameras everywhere, lording over the population and controlling their every movement.

  She dismissed her uneasiness and locked the cab of the RV, then went around the side to where the door to the living area was. It would have been so much more convenient to have one of the ones that was all enclosed like a big touring van than the truck cab with the living area attached to the back like this one was, but hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Bella and John had been so gracious toward her and Bodhi, allowing them to use the RV for months. Their generosity had ultimately led to their death.

  “Dammit,” Cassandra muttered as she inserted the key into the door handle. It was hard to see what she was doing through the tears that flowed down her cheeks at the thought of the older Haskins’ fate.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  Cassandra whirled, pulling the key from the lock and dropping them as she clutched her stomach. A bald man wearing a tank top, shorts, and calf-length white socks with sandals stood about twenty feet away, near the back corner of the RV, illuminated by the setting sun. Both of his arms were a solid mass of tattoos.

  “Um, nothing’s wrong,” she called out, ignoring the pain in her back as she squatted down to pick up the keys.

  “You look upset,” the guy stated.

  “Yeah, you do.” A second man appeared at the front of the RV. This one was shirtless, covered in tattoos like his buddy. At this distance, Cassandra could see they were of the bullshit White Supremacist variety with swastikas, the dual lightning bolt SS symbols, and dark Maltese crosses. “I can make you feel better, baby.”

  Cassandra pushed the key into the door and twisted it. “Oh no you don’t!” the one at the back shouted, surging forward.

  Her mind screamed for her body to go faster. She had to get inside. The guy in socks and sandals ran toward her. He was almost there.

  She yanked the door open and jumped inside, pulling the handle with her just as the man slammed into the door behind her. His added momentum allowed the handle to click into place and she locked the door, then threw the deadbolt. The men shouted outside, beating on the side of the RV and she fell backward, hitting the linoleum hard. The fall sent waves of pain up her back and through her stomach, causing her to cry out.

  Then she heard the lock in the handle click open and she searched the floor in horror.

  She’d left the keys in the doorknob in her rush to get inside. How could she have been so stupid? She hobbled away from the door, going to the closet where she’d put the dead CEA agents’ guns. The men outside yanked on the door, only the flimsy deadbolt kept it from opening.

  Her hand closed around the barrel of John Haskin’s AR-15 and she steeled herself for more bloodshed. The day had started with the raid and had already been filled with blood. One way or the other, it was going to end in the same manner.

  There was an angry exchange of voices outside and the invasion attempt stopped abruptly. That meant they were going to try something else. She moved to the back of the RV and positioned herself behind the wall of the bathroom. Leaning against the flimsy material, she lifted the rifle into her shoulder. She wasn’t going down without a fight.

  To her dismay, the RV engine turned over and the big vehicle lurched forward, causing her to fall backward onto the bed. The thugs had decided to take the RV somewhere more private than the rest area alongside the road. Again, Cassandra cursed herself for being so incredibly stupid to have left the keys outside.

  The engine changed pitch as the vehicle picked up speed. She threw open the blinds above the bed, seeing the rest area disappear behind them. They were already going too fast for her to try to jump out. Then she saw one of the cars that had been in the parking lot pull out of its spot, quickly accelerating to catch up to the RV on the onramp.

  She squinted, trying to determine who it was in the car. The sun reflected off the windshield, hiding his face, but the bare chest of Nazi tattoos was clearly visible. Then the bastard waved to her, causing her to duck down.

  “Son of a bitch!” she hissed. The RV reached full speed, merging onto the highway.

  There were at least two attackers. At least two men whom she’d have to deal with once they stopped. That was two times as many as she felt she was prepared to fight against. Something had to be done to even the odds.

  Cassandra peeked up through the window. The creep was right there, only about ten or fifteen feet off the rear bumper, even though they were traveling at sixty miles per hour. It would be so easy…

  She set the rifle down and raised the window, flipping the man pursuing them off when the glass was out of the way. He waved again and she was thankful for the glare on the window that hid his disgusting, smiling face.

  “I am not your victim, asshole,” she said aloud, planting her left foot firmly against the wall where it met the floor. She pressed her right knee into the side of the bed, creating a steady base for herself, then she brought up the AR.

  Pushing the end of the barrel through the screen, she sighted down the length of the weapon, centering the front sight post directly on the man’s chest and fired. The rifle bucked slightly against her shoulder and she squeezed the trigger again. And then two more times as the car behind them veered violently and careened from side-to-side.

  The front tires caught and the car flipped, rolling over on the top, crushing the occupant before continuing its rotation. When the tires hit the pavement again, the car leapt several feet into the air and landed on the roof once more. It continued rolling off the highway and into the median where it came to a stop against the thick wire barriers that the highway department placed there to keep out of control vehicles from swerving into oncoming traffic.

  She waited for the car to explode or for the driver of the RV to stop. Neither happened. Instead, he accelerated even more, putting distance between themselves and what was sure to be a massive traffic jam and police investigation.

  That was one way to even the odds. She had to hope that the dickbag driving the RV hadn’t heard the gun and thought the other guy just had an accident. Keeping the element of surprise was paramount to her escape. If she could just get a few clear shots at this guy like she had at the other one, then she would survive.

  She lurched forward, her footing uncertain in the swaying RV. Back at the closet, she switched out magazines, replacing the one she’d used with a full one. Then she grabbed a second magazine and stumbled forward to the dinette where she sat down heavily, waiting to see where they were going.

  It didn’t take long before the vehicle exited the highway and slowed enough that she could see the countryside clearly out of the window. The view didn’t help her ascertain where she was being taken, though. She couldn’t see any mile markers or exit signs. It looked like the same, nondescript dried brown grass and overgrown cedar trees that she’d seen over the past hundred miles or so.

  Eventually, the RV turned off the small, two-lane road onto a gravel road. The billowing dust started to filter in through the open window in the back of the RV, so Cassandra stood and made her way to the bedroom to close it. When she did so, she saw just how isolated they were in the middle of nowhere.

  Ten minutes later, the RV rocked to a stop outside of an old red barn. There wasn’t a house as far as Cassandra could see in the failing light. Her heart sank as the door to the barn opened and a woman stepped out. She’d hoped to be able to deal with the skinhead on her own without another person there. More people meant a greater probability that things would go badly for her.

  Cassandra went back to the bedroom once again. She wanted to keep the wall between her and the kidnappers in case they had guns.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! The loud rapping of knuckles against the RV door startled her. “Open up in there or it’s just going to be worse for you.” She recognized the voice as the man who’d originally spoken to her at the rest stop.

  She con
sidered replying, but ultimately discarded the idea. Right now, they had no idea where she was in the RV, which worked to her advantage, giving her the potential element of surprise when they broke in.

  “Hey, lady,” the woman shouted. “Frankie’s a good guy, but you don’t wanna make him mad. Come on out here.”

  Cassandra grimaced. If that woman considered “Frankie” to be a good guy, then what the hell was her definition of a bad guy? She adjusted her grip on the rifle, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants leg. There was no way she was letting these people take her without a fight.

  She could hear the two of them talking, but couldn’t make out the words. Then, the woman began screaming incoherently. A small hand slapped against the window set into the door. “You bitch! What did you do to Gregg? I’m going to fucking kill you!”

  Gregg? Was that the name of the dude whom she’d shot? Fuck that guy. The world was a better place without him. She stayed silent.

  A loud thud reverberated through the RV as something heavy hit the door. The woman cursed and a few seconds later, a brick came crashing through the window, shattering it. She barely had time to react as a tattooed arm snaked through the hole, slapping against the interior of the door. The hand felt its way upward until the fingers found the slide lock.

  Her breath came in quick, ragged gasps as she raised the rifle. They would be coming now.

  The door surged open and Cassandra caught her breath. She knew she had one chance to do this or she’d lose the element of surprise. The man’s face appeared from behind the counter as he stepped up into the RV. His eyes went wide in recognition of the fatal flaw he’d made a split second before she fired.