American Dreams | Book 2 | The Ascent

by Parker, Brian

  “It sounds like internet conspiracy lunacy, but believe me, I know how the government works. I was a cog in that machine until recently.” He paused and removed his hat, then his glasses. Finally, he lowered the bandana covering the lower half of his face. When he spoke, the previous voice distortion was gone. “My name is Chris Plummer. I was a police officer, and then drafted to become a CEA agent. We were tasked with the investigation of violations of the New Constitution and to assist the FBI with apprehension of anyone who spoke out against the NAR. A small group of us stood up to them. You may remember the story of Bodhi Haskins, the agent who refused to murder a little old lady because she was hungry. He escaped the holding cell the CEA had him in and went back to his parents’ farm in Alabama. The CEA raided that farm yesterday, killing Bodhi’s parents and teenaged brother. He wasn’t even there at the time. Bodhi left weeks ago to fight for the Resistance. The CEA doesn’t care. That’s three less mouths the NAR has to feed.

  “There are hundreds of stories like Bodhi’s. Use that anger. Allow it to build inside of you and stand up for what’s right. I’m calling on all police officers, firefighters, and federal agents to lay down your weapons or to join the Resistance. There’s a reason I chose to finally show my face and reveal my identity today. I am one of you. I don’t want to fight you, but if you continue to enforce the NAR’s laws, then you will become targets. I implore you. I beg you. Please, don’t make us become enemies. Help us get rid of the NAR and establish a legitimate, democratic government.

  “I want to take a moment to specifically address the National Guard units operating all across our cities. You have been at the center of some of the more heinous crimes against freedom. When confronted, many of you have stated that you ‘were just following orders.’ That cannot continue. The curfews must stop. The harassing people when they leave their homes in the day must stop. Escorting agents of the NAR as they go about their daily duties of destroying our society must stop. Look at the actions of your active duty brethren who’ve chosen to take back their bases and stand against the NAR, refusing to take part in attacking American citizens on American soil. Correct yourself now, National Guard members, or you will be corrected by the Revolution.”

  He looked off screen and nodded before refocusing on the camera. “America was the greatest nation on earth before the NAR pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes with the H5N8. We can become great again once the NAR is destroyed.

  “America! Take back what is rightfully ours! Take back your neighborhoods, your cities and towns. Then take back your states and overthrow the false federal government. It’ll take time, and a whole lot of effort on all of our parts, but we will succeed.”

  His face became serious as he stopped talking passionately about the Revolution. “Now that I’ve risked my life to show you who I am, what are you willing to do? Are you going to continue living in fear of the very people who are supposed to protect us, or are you going to do something? Join a demonstration if you’re a civilian. Walk away from your jobs if you’re an officer. Take part in active resistance if you want a little more involvement. But!” He held up a finger. “This is not a call to murder cops while they sit in their police cars or destroy private property like a bunch of thugs. Once we finally wrest control back from the NAR, we’ll have to deal with whatever is left. If we destroy our own infrastructure, then the road ahead will be that much harder. Don’t do it!”

  Plummer looked at the camera intently. “They tell me that my time is up. America, take back what is yours. I stand before you as a black man. This isn’t a black and brown thing or a white thing like they want you to believe. It isn’t privileged versus underprivileged or any other label that the NAR uses to keep us divided. This is American versus evil. This is the first major threat to our society since the Civil War. Those world wars? They happened in Europe and we went to help. The danger was far from our shores. This is here and now. We must—”

  The hacked feed cut off and the regular daily soap opera broadcast returned. Beth clicked the television off. “So…”

  I glanced past Cassandra at her and said, “So, that means we need to fight. Thank you so much for your hospitality this past week, Beth, but I need to get out there and fight the NAR’s tyranny.”

  She blinked at me. “Why would you do that? Your brother has only been dead for a day. Your beautiful wife here is pregnant. Why wouldn’t you just go back into hiding?”

  “I’m done hiding,” I asserted. “If it hadn’t been for my stupid ankle, I would have been on that raid instead of Rowan. He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Stop that crap right now,” Cassandra said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Rowan was in the wrong place at the wrong time—and he was only there because of the NAR and their policies. It’s their fault.”

  I grunted. “Still doesn’t bring him back, or my parents. They died because they tried to help me out and I wasn’t there for them either. It’s only a matter of time before they track me down here and the two of you are in danger.”

  “What is it you always tell me?”

  “Huh?” I looked at Cassandra in confusion.

  She rolled her eyes. “About your ankle. You say, ‘It is what it is.’ It wasn’t your fault that your ankle shattered. It was a freak accident. It ended your football career, but that’s how we met. That’s similar to what happened with your family, Bodhi. They made their choices to help us out and Rowan chose to go on that raid. Blaming yourself for what happened isn’t helpful and sure as hell won’t honor their memory. It is what it is.”

  I nodded. She was right. There was nothing I could do to bring them back. But I sure as hell could make the NAR and the CEA pay for what they did. Chris’ message had gotten me fired up. I sure as hell hoped that it had the same effect on the rest of the nation.

  SIXTEEN

  I had a slight limp as I jogged behind Rogan into the night and away from the writhing mass of humanity. We needed to get beyond the prying eyes of the drones overhead and security cameras over all of the entrances. We’d broken off from the main crowd of protestors around the Rationing Board offices to find a way to infiltrate a different target. Preferably one that lessened our likelihood of getting shot in the process.

  The chants of the crowd behind us were deafening. There were at least thirty thousand protestors according to the news. I estimated it to be more than that. This particular protest was about the heavy-handed ways of the Rationing Board and their fondness for beating up homeowners whom they determined had too much food on hand for the size of their family. What were they going to do now with thirty thousand of us on their doorstep?

  That’s what these government fucks just didn’t understand. Sure, they were effective against individuals and even very small groups, but if everyone were to rise up at the same time, they would be powerless to stop us. Once the average American realized the power that they had in groups, then the NAR would have a real problem on their hands. It wouldn’t be the hundreds of tiny, annoying gnat bites that we’d been doing for the past few weeks, we’d be a force to be reckoned with. The leaders of the Resistance knew this and our goal was to harness that power, focus it, drive it toward a common goal, and then smash the fuck out of our real target.

  While the law enforcement agencies, National Guard flunkies, and rent-a-cops were busy trying to keep the crowd at bay, Rogan and I were going to blow up the Austin Citizen Registration Center three blocks away from the Rationing Board office building. We had agents in the crowd to continue fanning the flames of dissent and keep the protestors focused on the injustices perpetrated by the rationing agents. Hopefully, they’d be able to keep everyone together there and away from the danger zone of what we planned to do.

  Even with all of the biometric scanning capabilities, the large crowd had given us a certain anonymity that no longer held true as we distanced ourselves from it. To that end, Rogan directed us to stop and mask up. I pulled my gas mask from the carrying case around my waist ab
out the same time the first flashbang grenade exploded near the crowd. The security around the building was attempting to use smoke and pyrotechnic devices to disperse the crowd.

  “You think our guys are gonna keep that protest together?” I asked. My voice was muffled and distorted in my ears as it came through the mask’s heavy filters.

  Rogan shrugged as he fit his own mask over his face. “That’s what they’re there for,” he grunted, pragmatic as always.

  In addition to some specialized communications equipment, we’d gotten the M-50 Joint Service General Purpose Masks from a sympathetic supply sergeant stationed at Fort Hood. The masks would protect us from any type of chemical weaponry the NAR agents had at their disposal, but the full face covering and darkened lenses also helped to defeat the passive biometric scanners that most government buildings sported these days. I didn’t envy the protestors in the crowd back there dealing with the tear gas smoke that was already billowing up into the night sky.

  We walked quickly, making it seem as if we were fleeing the protest. Rogan and I cut our way across the parking lot for the Citizen Registration Center, angling for the fence around the building itself. We needed to get through the fence and behind cover before an errant passerby spotted us and called the cops to get rewarded with an extra half-pound of beef or can of stew.

  Rogan had the twelve-inch bolt cutters out of his bag before I could even take my backpack off. The man was smooth at everything he did, making me look like a bumbling idiot by comparison. I knew it came from years and years of military experience as an SF operator, but it was still frustrating and I felt like I had to prove myself to him.

  Is that how Rowan died? I wondered. Had he been trying to prove himself to Rogan and gotten shot in the process? I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to discuss my brother’s death with the only man I knew who’d been there when he died. That conversation would have to happen sooner rather than later. It was a sore spot between the two of us and it needed to be addressed.

  “Stop fucking with your bag,” Rogan hissed, snipping the bottom link in the chain link fence. A 3-foot long gash in the fence stared back at me. He’d already completed the entire job.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, still trying to unzip my bag. The zipper had gotten stuck on the fabric, further complicating my efforts.

  “Don’t apologize, dammit. Just do your job when the time comes. I need you to get your head in the game, buddy.”

  I nodded and held the fence open so he could slip inside. He passed his bag through the hole first, then wormed his way through the fence into the building’s courtyard. Rogan returned the favor, holding one side of the fence so I could go through. I followed his example of passing my backpack through first and he grabbed it, lifting it away so I could get inside unencumbered.

  I gave him a thumbs up when he handed me my bag back. “Taya is up,” he stated, holding a finger to his ear. “Security system offline, but she says the first floor of the building is hardwired.” Even though the remote alarm telling some random security company that the building had been breached was disabled, there’d be a loud audible and possibly visual alarm the moment we opened a door or broke a window. Since we were only three blocks from a massive concentration of police officers and National Guard soldiers, they were sure to hear and come investigate.

  “So…” I was at a loss for what to do.

  Rogan pointed to the second floor. “We’ll just have to go through the windows up there.”

  “How?”

  He patted his bag. “There’s a reason you’ve got most of the C-4 and I’ve got the plunger and the detonators—besides the obvious desire to keep them separate. I figured we’d probably need to go through the second floor windows, so I brought along this handy-dandy telescoping ladder.” He lifted the compact ladder out of his bag. It looked too damn flimsy for my two hundred and forty-five pound frame.

  I whistled, which sounded very odd inside my mask. “You think of everything.”

  “Not everything,” he huffed. “But I’ve been doing this shit a long time, so I have a good idea about the kinds of shit that goes bad on the regular.”

  I nodded, once more feeling like a high school freshman at a football camp taught by NFL players and coaches. You realize that they had to start somewhere too, it’s just their skills are so far beyond where yours are that it seems impossible that you’ll ever learn to be that good. Rogan was a superstar in my eyes and I needed to absorb everything I could from the man.

  “Hold it while I climb up,” he said, extending the ladder and twisting the locks into place.

  I did what he asked and soon enough, he was shimmying his way up the small, but seemingly sturdy ladder. He pulled out the screen and tossed it to the ground, then tried to open the window. It was locked, so he pulled his suppressed HK-45 and put it near the center of the window a few inches from the glass. I briefly wondered if that was smart since it would leave evidence of a break-in—and then I remembered that we were about to blow up the fucking building, so I decided to keep my mouth shut and allow the professional to do his job.

  Turning his head and leaning away on the ladder, he fired one round into the top pane near the latch. I held my breath, waiting for an alarm to sound, but nothing happened. By the time I’d regained my composure, Rogan already had the hole widened enough to reach through and turn the latch. It took him a little bit of effort, but the window finally slid up roughly.

  Once more, I expected the alarm bells to sound and once again, I was pleasantly disappointed. Thank God for the little things.

  “Okay, toss me the rope that’s attached to the handle of my pack.”

  The ladder shifted and moved slightly as Rogan took his weight off of it and eased through the window into the building. I fumbled around and found the rope tied to the handle of his backpack and pulled on it until the running end tumbled out of the pocket where it’d been stashed. He caught it on the first toss up to him and hauled his bag up the side of the wall hand-over-hand.

  I stood on the ground, looking like a complete idiot for twenty or so seconds until Rogan’s voice echoed down. “Here you go. Catch.”

  The end of the rope slapped against the lens of my gas mask. It would have been funny if the stakes weren’t so damned high. I took the rope and tied a knot on the handle of my own bag, then told him it was ready. He began hauling up the much heavier bag quickly.

  “Okay, I’ve got the top part of the ladder. Climb up,” Rogan directed when the bag had gone through the window.

  The ladder was much harder for me to negotiate than it had been for Rogan. In addition to the fact that I outweighed him by forty or fifty pounds, maybe more, I was much bigger overall than he was. He was thin, muscular, and moved with a grace born from confidence. I was like a bull in a china shop as I clambered up the ladder. The thing shifted side-to-side and felt like it was going to tip over or collapse the entire way up, adding urgency to my movements, which, of course, had the unintended result of making me even clumsier.

  I finally reached the top and climbed through the window. “Whew!” I sighed. “Thought I was going down on that thing.”

  “Keep your weird sexual practices at home,” he said sternly. “There’s no room for that shit on a mission.”

  “Huh?” I looked at Rogan in confusion for a second and then realized what I’d said. “Oh. Ha ha, very funny.”

  “Gotta keep it interesting out here.” He bent down and picked up his backpack, so I did the same. Somehow, he’d already untied the rope from my bag while I’d been climbing up the ladder and it was already stashed away. Damn, the guy was good.

  “Okay, I want to place the charges in the corners of the building, two or three key points along the sides, and then take the roll of det cord and wrap it around the offices and snake it through a few doorways and such. Last thing, I want to place one charge on the stairs as we’re leaving, so don’t let me get explosive-happy and forget that. I couldn’t find any public records on this buildin
g’s construction, so I don’t know if it will be enough to bring down the building. I want the maximum amount of damage possible if it doesn’t collapse. Got it?”

  I nodded. I’d understood about three-quarters of what he said, but it was extremely hard to hear his muffled words through the mask. Regardless, I was just the mule for this mission, carrying all the heavy stuff. Rogan was a Special Forces engineer, which meant he was the guy trained in demolitions. He’d be setting the charges, I’d just be handing him stuff.

  We did a cursory check of the upstairs. It was mostly offices and conference rooms. We did deviate from the plan slightly when we found a small server room with three large Dell tower servers set apart from one another on tables with a bunch of cables running to each of them. Rogan and I pushed the tables together and he plopped a fist-size chunk of the C-4 in the middle of them. Then, he inserted a blasting cap into the block and fished the wire out through the door to the window we’d come through.

  The entire demolitions process was much more tedious than I’d expected. I’d seen hundreds of movies where the main character put a timer device on an explosive and then waited for it to go off. There were all sorts of issues with timing devices, Rogan told me as he methodically inserted the detonators and then laid wires out to the stairwell.

  Besides the very real possibility of the timer failing altogether—or detonating prematurely—it was next to impossible to get twenty timers synched up. Just a second or two difference between detonations could jar the detonator loose and not achieve the desired effects, which in this case, was to blow the fuck out of the Citizen Registration Center.

  It took over an hour to get all the charges set and the wires spliced to ensure the proper electrical charge would be sent to the detonators. Then, we were going back out the window and spooling more wire across the building’s courtyard. We’d placed too many charges, cutting the spool of wire down each time to connect the various detonators. Rogan stated that we really needed several hundred additional feet of cord, but we only had enough to make it around the next building. That should, in theory, protect us from the worst of the blast, but we had to be mindful of shit falling from the sky once we blew the building.