American Dreams | Book 2 | The Ascent

by Parker, Brian

  Rogan cleared his throat. “We do have an operation coming up,” he said. “We’re going to raid one of the police stations to get some more weapons and ammunition. The only cops still on the job are loyalists to the System, so we’ve got no problems with them being a part of the collateral damage if they choose to fight. We need trusted fighters for something like this, not the average protestor along for the ride.”

  “I can go, Bodhi,” Rowan pleaded. “I need to prove to myself that I can fight for this country the same as you can. I’m almost an adult. Hell, if this was World War Two, they wouldn’t have any problems with me going down to the recruiter and joining up like Grandpa did at sixteen. This is no different than those stories he used to tell us. You know, the one about when he was in the back of a truck driving across that bridge into Germany and the Krauts started bombing the road? Only him and another guy survived because they fell into the water when the Nazis counterattacked. Or when he had to guard those hundred prisoners all by himself? He—”

  “One hundred?” I scoffed. “He told me that he took two hundred Nazis prisoners.”

  Rowan laughed bitterly. Our grandfather had passed away four years ago at the ripe old age of ninety-three. My dad was the product of his third marriage when he was in his fifties. Those two had been together for almost forty years when he died. She was heartbroken and died within two months of him. It was both sad and really sweet that they had that kind of love for each other.

  “Yeah, he sure could exaggerate,” Rowan said. “But this is our war, Bodhi. I can’t sit on the sidelines. If your friend here will take me, I’m want to go on this raid. We’ve got to get the NAR out of America.”

  “I promised Dad that I’d watch out for you, Rowan.”

  “You don’t get it. I’m not asking for your permission, Bodhi. I came here to fight for our freedom and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

  “There’s no respawns, man,” I said. “This isn’t one of your video games. When you die here in the real world, you stay dead.”

  “Then I’ll just have to stay alive,” he said, smacking my knee.

  That simple act caused pain to radiate through my leg and I got nauseous. Goddammit! I screamed in my mind. Why had my stupid ankle gotten injured again?

  “I don’t want to get involved in your family dynamics, Haskins,” Rogan said. “But if your brother is willing to go, we certainly could use the help. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who want to support the Revolution through protests and doing what they can, like Beth here, but there are very few people who’re willing to take up arms to fight for what they believe in. Your grandfather sounds like an amazing man, but his generation is gone. They’ve passed the torch on to us. We dishonor their memory if we let the NAR continue to destroy this nation.”

  He was right. They both were. We came all this way to make a difference, not to sit around and watch television. Wasn’t that why I’d gone on the raid to steal all of the data from the CEA servers and then destroy them? I hadn’t had any illusions that Rowan would stay behind on every mission when I decided to bring him along. But I had envisioned going with him into a fight by his side to keep him safe.

  I stared at Rowan as I spoke to Rogan. “Promise me that you’ll do everything you can to keep him safe.”

  “I promise you that I will do everything in my power to bring everyone home alive,” Rogan said. “We’re going there, seeking a fight, so I can’t promise you that I’ll keep him out of harm’s way. You know that. I will stick right by his side, though. I promise you that.”

  It was the best I could ask for. Rowan was correct in that he didn’t need my permission to go, but it would make things easier for him if the air was clear between us when he did leave.

  “When is the mission?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Rogan said, standing up. “I’ll have somebody pick you up tomorrow morning around eight, then we’ll consolidate at an old warehouse south of town to rehearse the mission. Sound good?”

  “Yessir,” Rowan answered.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said begrudgingly. “I wish this damn ankle wasn’t so fucked up.”

  Rogan offered me his hand and I shook it. The deep callouses on his hand reminded me of how very different his and my life had been. He’d been a career soldier while I’d been a football player until I got hurt and a student up until the Crud cancelled my classes and then the CEA drafted me into service. He was infinitely more prepared for combat than I’d ever be… How would Rowan, a seventeen year old boy who liked video games do?

  There was no way of knowing and I stood there mutely as Rogan shook my younger brother’s hand, then gave Beth another hug. Then he was gone and I announced that I needed to go lay down.

  To my surprise, Beth did not come join me in the bedroom as she’d done every day when I took a nap, nor did she come in with me after dinner and I was able to shower alone for the first time since arriving at her house. Even more surprisingly, she did not sleep in her bed that night.

  The night before my brother’s first combat mission against the loyalists of the New American Republic, he became a man. I guess Beth had been impressed with his patriotism and wanted to show him her appreciation of his potential sacrifice for our once great nation.

  I just wished that she didn’t moan so loudly during her appreciation as I buried my head in the pillows.

  PART TWO

  SIX

  Rogan looked at his current team with apprehension. They were all an unknown quantity to him, every one of them untried and raw in his eyes, regardless of their actual experience level. They’d spent the morning rehearsing the attack and now it was go time.

  The plan called for them to get at least two guys inside the building first, to keep the officers from locking the interior doors and ending the mission before it even began. Ideally, he’d be able to get all fourteen members of his team in there before anyone started shooting, but they’d cross that bridge when they got there. Being able to get those first two in the door were key.

  After that, it would basically be taking the substation room by room. If they could accomplish it without hurting anyone, the better it would be. Maybe it would help the local police see the Resistance in a different light. Probably not, but you never knew how people would react to things.

  “Are you guys ready?” Rogan asked.

  There were a chorus of affirmative answers and he nodded. It was a ragtag bunch of fighters who’d volunteered to attack the police station. Most of whom he didn’t know personally and had only met the day before. That was concerning to him. His entire adult life had been spent in the military. He’d known every person that he went into battle with, most of them very well, and had spent countless hours rehearsing and training with them. These guys… You play the hand you’re dealt, he told himself.

  His eyes wandered over to the Haskins boy. He was Bodhi Haskins’ younger brother. The kid volunteered in the big man’s place since he was still out with his ankle injury. Rowan was just seventeen, but that wasn’t such a big deal to Rogan, who’d gotten a waiver from his parents to join the Army at seventeen when he graduated a year early from home schooling. He’d completed Infantry OSUT while he was still the same age and as in the middle of the 8-week long Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, RASP, when he finally turned eighteen. Then he went on to some seriously hardcore missions in Afghanistan only a couple of months later.

  No, Rowan Haskins’ age didn’t bother him at all. It was the fact that he was so eager to do something to get out from under his brother’s shadow that worried Rogan. He hoped the kid wouldn’t be a liability.

  “Alright, team, here’s the deal. Every American phoned in a big favor for us that we weren’t expecting. He has a protest set to kick off at the North Austin Precinct on the other side of town. They’ll be chanting the usual stuff, but they’ve been instructed to really take it up a notch. Not be violent or get themselves arrested, but just make it seem as if the situation c
ould turn at any moment.” He took a breath. “Hopefully, that will empty the officers out of the South Austin Precinct as they move north to support. Then we enter the building and go as rehearsed.”

  He looked around the room. “Questions?” he asked the group.

  “Yeah, doesn’t the protest hurt us?” a woman named Monica asked. “I mean, wouldn’t they call in off-duty officers and be on high alert or whatever?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Rogan answered. “Look, I know things aren’t perfect here, but the remaining cops have been running ragged all over town for almost a month. The Revolution isn’t about just five or six people—or the fifteen of us. There are hundreds of little actions occurring everywhere in the city and the cops or the feds have to respond to each of them. They’re tired. They don’t have a bench of off-duty cops to call in, and those that they do carouse into coming in will be sent north to deal with the protest. This should help us.”

  As he finished speaking, the lights flickered, then went off completely. “Dammit,” Rogan muttered. “They’re early. Open the shades to let some light in.”

  He heard several members of the team make their way across the warehouse floor to the windows where they’d pulled the roller shades down to keep prying eyes off of their rehearsals. As the shades went up, he had a moment of fear that it was the NAR outside who’d cut power to the building instead of the Resistance hackers who’d been planning to disrupt power across the entire city, and most of the county.

  The outside was clear, though. There were no feds wearing crappy suits getting ready to batter the doorway down to capture or kill them all.

  Rogan sighed. “The power outage was planned. It’s just another layer to the insurgency. It’s about twenty minutes earlier than I’d been told to expect it, but that’s okay. Early is almost always better than late, in my opinion. The power outage is the signal for the protestors to begin assembling. We just need to cool our jets for about thirty or forty minutes, then make our move toward the precinct.”

  He held up his hands at the grumbling emanating from the group. “I know, I know. The waiting is the hardest part.” Rogan pointed to a blue cooler in the corner. “The good news is that we aren’t some pansy government organization that can’t have a drink during the day and I’ve got a thirty-pack of beer in the cooler to help calm everyone’s nerves. Remember, we may be shooting, so two beer max, please.”

  That brightened everyone’s spirits as they made their way over to the cooler. Rogan grinned. Two of the light beers would be just enough to take the edge off without having to worry about people getting drunk. “Hey, Haskins,” he called out to the youth milling about.

  “Yessir?”

  “It’s okay. You can have a beer.”

  “You sure?”

  He pulled out his wallet and flashed the CEA badge that he still carried. “It’s fine. I’m a federal agent and I’m authorizing you to let loose a little. Only one for you, though.”

  “Yessir!” Haskins replied with a big grin as he walked over to the group who were already busy digging through the ice to see if there was anything with a higher alcohol content than the Bud Light he’d provided them with.

  “Nope,” he said under his breath. “Taking the edge off doesn’t mean blunting the sword.”

  They’d observed ten police cruisers leave the parking lot over the last twenty minutes and one big van, the proverbial patty wagon that the cops would deploy downtown to 6th Street on Friday and Saturday nights and out to big events like the annual South by Southwest festival. That would reduce the number of officers in the station by twelve, at a minimum, hopefully more if they’d doubled up in the squad cars.

  “Alright,” Rogan said, strapping his body armor tight around his midsection. “It’s go time.”

  The others gathered together from where they’d been milling about in the warehouse. The tell-tale sound of ripping Velcro told him that several of the former officers had brought their body armor as well. That was a good thing. None of them liked the prospect of fighting against their fellow police officers, but the ultimatum had been given: If you stuck with the NAR, then you were considered a loyalist and it was open season on loyalists. The fraternal bond between officers who continued to enforce the overbearing laws of the System and those who’d sided with the Resistance was severed.

  “Jeff, Laura, go on up and get into position on the roof. The rest of us will begin our move in three minutes.” The two team members who possessed rifles jogged over to the stairs leading to the roof access. They’d provide the long-range cover for the group while everyone else wielded pistols or shotguns, both of which would have been useless at any type of distance.

  Rogan gestured the Haskins boy over so he could talk privately. “Hey, man. This is your first mission,” he began. “We haven’t had time to train on any of the details about how to enter and clear a room, which is what we’ll be doing.”

  “But we just went through all of those rehearsals.”

  He nodded in frustration. “I know, but it’s not enough. In the Army, we practice this stuff hundreds—if not thousands—of times before a soldier is put into harm’s way. And there’s still issues with the execution phase every damn time. Garrett needs a lookout in the truck, somebody I can trust to keep an eye out for anything going south that we can’t see from inside the building. I want to you stay with him.”

  “No way, man. I came all this way to be a part of the action, not sit out in a parked car while you guys are putting yourselves in danger.”

  “Rowan, look at me. This isn’t a game. Some people might get seriously injured or killed. I really think—”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rogan, but I want to be on the inside. I won’t hold you back or whatever you think. I’m not a kid. I can handle myself.”

  He stared hard at the boy, then nodded. “Okay. Be smart and keep your head down.”

  “Got it.”

  Rogan grunted, then turned to the group. “Alright, everyone load up,” he barked. “Let’s go.”

  They emerged from the warehouse into the daylight. It was hotter than he remembered outside. He hoped that didn’t backfire against the protestors. If the weather had been nicer, the turnout would understandably be larger, but on hot days…

  He shoved the thoughts from his mind. He had to focus on what his team was doing here, not about the variable affecting a separate event that was beyond his control anyway. Storming into the police station to take over their stockpile of weapons was a dangerous enough prospect without being distracted.

  Rogan nodded to their driver, Garrett, who then peeled off from the group with another man to get the flatbed truck that they would fill with weapons and ammunition once they seized them. Everyone else piled into a large 15-passenger Ford Econoline van and he started the engine.

  There was virtually no traffic as he pulled out onto the street. Part of that was the perpetual lockdown that the NAR exercised over the population, while another part was due to the power outage caused by the Resistance techs. Either way, he was thankful for the lack of civilian traffic in the area because it was likely to get ugly.

  The trip to the police station took less than thirty seconds. They could have easily walked there from the warehouse without any difficulty, but Rogan wanted the getaway van to be on site, ready for transport on a moment’s notice.

  He pulled up to the front doors. “It’s go time!” he shouted, his voice muffled by the mask he wore, opening his door as he yelled. He hadn’t even bothered to turn off the engine.

  By the time he reached the doors, several members of the team were already through them. He had his rifle held at the low ready position and wore his pistol on his hip. He’d chosen to keep the silencer on it for the mission, adding weight and length, but he figured the tradeoff was worth it. If things went south, having the silenced weapon might be useful.

  The first shots rang out as one of his group shot the officer sitting at the desk. The man hadn’t even pulled his weapon. It was
completely against what he’d told his teammates.

  “Hey, goddammit!” he shouted, watching his team spread out in the lobby like ants. “Only shoot if they present a threat to you. Some of these guys just want to serve the community.” It was a dangerous order as the men and women of the APD were well trained. Waiting for them to draw their weapons against you could mean signing your own death warrant.

  Rogan realized how little they knew about the layout the moment he entered the building. The lobby had one door off of it leading back to the rest of the station. He’d expected several doors that could be utilized so they didn’t all have to funnel through the one doorway, but that wasn’t the case. They’d studied the interior camera footage, but it had been a poor indicator of how the layout actually presented itself in person. Cameras labeled with the various room names hadn’t meant much beyond the one labeled “lobby” and possibly the “intake desk” which should have been near the front of the building.

  “Keep going!” he yelled, pointing at the door. One of the team rushed over and pulled the door open. “Don’t silhouette—”

  Several quick bursts of pistol fire cut the man down. He fell sideways, the door swinging open with him. The poor fellow stayed upright, holding the door open as his hand got stuck in the handle. Rogan’s people began shooting toward the doorway, peppering the floor and walls with bullet holes ineffectively. Then, a hail of gunfire erupted in response to the lull when people were changing magazines. They were stalled at a chokepoint.

  Rogan cursed under his breath and grabbed one of the homemade explosives he’d been given. He looked it over. The two or three pound lump of claylike substance wrapped in tape was Tannerite, an explosive compound that was safe to handle, but exploded violently when struck by a high-velocity round, such as the M-4 that Rogan carried. It wasn’t supposed to ignite with pistol fire, but he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure.

  He tossed the Tannerite ball into the doorway, allowing it to roll down the aisle end-over-end. One of the cops yelled, “Grenade!” and they all dove away, giving Rogan the perfect opportunity to aim through the combat optics on his rifle. He sighted in on the ball and squeezed the trigger just as one of the cops reemerged after taking cover from what they assumed was a pretend grenade.