It seemed to happen in slow motion. The Nazi’s head snapped backward, leading his body as it hit the doorframe before dropping limply to the ground outside. There was no blood splattered against the wall and Cassandra wondered if she’d hit the man or missed and he’d fallen out of the vehicle in his effort to avoid her shot.
The AR-15 was not loud by comparison to other rifles that she’d been around, but it sounded like an explosion in the tiny, enclosed bedroom. Her ears throbbed from the pressure and she yawned, trying to pop them. Her body hadn’t had the same reaction when the RV was traveling down the highway and she’d fired out the open window.
Through the dull ache spreading rapidly from her ears into her brain, she heard the woman screech in rage. It didn’t sound human. The anger, pain, and anguish portrayed by that long wail threatened to break Cassandra’s spirit. Frankie had obviously meant something to the woman and she’d just taken that away from her.
Cassandra had the blink of an eye to duck out of the way as the woman’s hand appeared. She held a pistol and fired blindly through the doorway toward the back of the RV where Cassandra hid. The rounds tore chunks of wood from the paneling and poked holes in the metal roof as the woman repeatedly pulled the trigger without looking where she fired.
Then the pistol clicked empty.
Cassandra knew she had mere seconds to act. She’d been lucky the first time, but the RV’s walls weren’t meant to stop bullets. If the woman reloaded the weapon, her next volley could prove deadly.
She pushed herself up awkwardly and hurried toward the doorway. Outside, she could hear the woman cursing at the empty gun. Then the sound of crunching gravel reached her as someone ran.
Cassandra reached the RV’s open door. The man, Frankie, lay on the ground outside. His legs kicked and he tried to pull himself along the ground. Her bullet had taken him through the cheek, shattering the bone there, and emerged near his throat, tearing a ragged hole through his flesh. She didn’t hesitate. She fired a bullet into his chest, then raised the rifle toward the fleeing woman.
Her first two shots missed, but the third one found its mark. The woman had almost made it into the barn. Cassandra allowed the anger at what these two people had been planning to do to her build. They would have killed her—or worse. They were no better than dog shit to be wiped off your shoe after you step in it. She sighted down the rifle’s sights and took a breath before she fired two more times at the prone woman.
Then she promptly vomited out the door as the stress flooded through her. She’d just killed three people. Probably three very bad people, but they were still human. When she was finished, she sank to the floor, sitting on the step that led outside. She stared blankly at the corpse of the Nazi who’d planned to rape and murder her.
It was a long time before she was able to muster the strength to stand. She needed to see what was in that barn.
TEN
“Fuck if I know where the hell we are,” Rogan admitted. They’d been driving for hours and were hopelessly lost without the use of their cell phone GPS. It was too risky to use them since none of them were authorized to be away from their homes. The quickest way to end the Revolution would be for the feds to track phone usage and monitor location data to determine who had gone to certain meetings or protests, so the Resistance encouraged people to leave their phones at home. Rogan forbid them from coming along on missions.
And now they were lost like a lieutenant leading a patrol through a swamp.
“So, what are we gonna do?” Sammy asked with a pained expression on his face. The bullet hole in his arm had stopped bleeding through the makeshift bandage. Rogan wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad.
He glanced up at the setting sun off to their left. After driving for about two hours eastward, he’d turned the big Buick north on a two lane road. He’d figured that they’d looped far enough around Austin now and should turn west on the most promising stretch of highway. West would eventually lead them to I-35, one of the major roads running north-to-south through Texas. There was no way they’d miss it as long as they kept a steady westward approach.
“Next road to the west, we’re taking it,” he announced, glancing in the rearview at Art, who was asleep. His through-and-through shoulder wound still bled enough to soak the shirt he wore. As an SF guy, Rogan had received far more medical training than the average soldier, but he was at his limit on what he could do to help these two with exactly zero medical supplies of any kind. They couldn’t risk going to a pharmacy or medical clinic because the CEA was sure to be monitoring for unusual purchases. Not to mention, he was PNG—persona non-grata—on the federal network after he left the CEA. If he were to pop up in a biometric scan, the area would be swarming with NAR agents looking to arrest him.
His answer seemed to placate Sammy, who lay his head against the headrest. Fifteen minutes later, he saw a sign pointing down a gravel road that read, “To I-35.” He eased off of the accelerator and glanced around. It certainly didn’t look like a new sign, put out to confuse drivers, but a gravel road? Since when did gravel roads feed out onto a highway?
“Fuck it,” he muttered. The road was headed west. It was probably a cutoff that led to another road that would feed onto the interstate in a few miles, but who knew? Texans did some weird shit and with I-35 under a perpetual state of construction, there was no telling what the locals might have done in an effort to get to the highway. With the gas gauge hovering below a quarter of a tank, he had to hope he was making the right choice.
The gravel road ran straight for several miles before turning gently southward. Even that was good since he figured they were somewhere just north of Austin. Then, it turned west again, the pale gravel stretching out for miles in front of them in the fading light.
After twenty-five minutes on the gravel road, he was beginning to think that he’d made a mistake. How the hell did a dirt road go for so many miles? They’d passed probably thirty homes on the long stretch of gravel, they hadn’t seen anyone outside.
Soon, he heard gunfire over the crunching of the tires. It wasn’t a lot, maybe three or four rounds if his ears could be trusted, but it was enough to pique his curiosity. He crested a small rise and immediately on the other side of it was a red barn with an old over-the-cab RV and a blue Toyota in the circular drive. There was a body on the ground near the barn and a woman staggering away from the RV holding a rifle.
She turned, raising the weapon and he immediately slammed on the brakes, causing the Buick to skid on the gravel and throwing up a cloud of dust.
“It can’t be,” he muttered.
“What?” Sammy asked groggily.
He looked back up in time to see the woman hobbling toward the barn. He glanced at the RV’s plates. Alabama.
“It can’t be,” he repeated, opening his door and stepping out. If he wasn’t right, then he could potentially be stepping into a world of shit. There was already one body on the ground, the woman wasn’t afraid to use that weapon she carried.
“Cassandra?” Rogan shouted. “Mrs. Haskins?”
He kept the car between himself and the woman. She’d stopped when he called out the name and was now turning slowly toward him. He could see from her slow, steady movement that she was contemplating firing at him once she turned.
“It’s me, Jason Rogan!” he yelled, enunciating the words. “I’m a friend of your husband’s.”
The woman turned around completely. She was pregnant—big pregnant. She had the rifle up in the pocket of her shoulder, not quite pointed at him, but near enough, especially with the end of the rifle swaying like it was. “Where’s Bodhi?” she yelled back.
He breathed a sigh of relief. It was her. “He’s back in Austin. What… What are you doing out here?”
Rogan eased around the car, hands up so she could see that he wasn’t armed. The girl was obviously freaked out, he didn’t want to spook her and get shot.
“These sickos,” she hissed, lowering the rifle. “Kidnapped me
from a rest area about thirty or forty minutes away. I… I did what I did to stop them.”
He nodded, making his way behind the RV. On the other side, a body lay on the ground outside the door. It looked like she’d shot him in the face or bashed it in with a blunt object and he had another hole in his chest. The other body, the one he’d seen originally, was much smaller. A female.
“Did they?”
“No, thank God,” she said. “I stopped them before they got inside the RV.” She lifted an arm listlessly in the direction of the Buick. “Who are they?”
“Resistance fighters.”
“That sounds…”
“Dumb?” Rogan offered with a friendly smile. “Yeah, I kinda think so too, but we haven’t come up with a better term yet. Both of them are injured and need medical attention, so we’ll get that to them as soon as we can get back to Austin.”
“Long way from Austin out here,” she mumbled.
“I think we’re closer than you realize.” His eyes drifted over toward the barn. “What’s inside there?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “I don’t know. I was going to find out.” She scratched at her head behind her ear. “What are you doing out here, Mr. Rogan?”
“Running,” he replied. “Well, I mean, now we’re heading back toward Austin from a different direction than how we left. We had an op that went bad. The cops closed in on us and we almost got captured, but we were able to give them the slip.”
“I thought Bodhi was with you guys.”
“He fucked up his ankle again. Had to stay back.”
She nodded in understanding. Haskin’s ankle was a liability, that was for sure. “So, you left him with that hornball?”
Rogan grinned as he shrugged. “Beth is harmless. She’s a free spirit who just wants the freedoms that she used to have. She probably should have lived in the 1960s though, you’re right about that.”
“Maybe she’s harmless to you, but not to me. She keeps putting the moves on my husband.”
“Yeah…” His mind drifted to the body in the trunk. The younger Haskins had apparently been the victim of Beth’s moves the night prior. The dreamy look on his face had told the story all to clearly.
He focused back on the woman in front of him. She swayed slightly as she stood there, waiting for him to continue. Cassandra’s face was haggard. The skin on her cheeks was gaunt and she had dark circles underneath red, bloodshot eyes. “Are you okay? I can check out the barn by myself.”
She shook her head. “I’m getting pretty tired all of a sudden, but I need to see what’s inside. What they had in store for me that I saved myself from.”
Rogan nodded. He understood the need. The same had happened to him in Nigeria when he’d experienced an insatiable need to see the bodies of a group of Boko Haram terrorists who’d ambushed his team a week prior. It was morbid and mentally disturbing to see the remnants of the AC-130 gunship’s work, but it had also been cathartic to see justice served.
“Let’s go see what’s inside,” he said. “Then maybe we can get back on the road and reunite you and your husband, huh?”
ELEVEN
Cassandra’s shock at seeing the man who’d saved the life of Bodhi and rescued her from certain jail time faded quickly. She was too exhausted to give a shit any longer. She’d been tired to the point of nearly falling asleep while she drove the RV when she stopped at the rest area to get some sleep. Then all of this happened, and her body responded by giving her a much-needed boost of adrenaline, but now that the immediate threat to her life and that of little Bathtub in her stomach was over, she was beginning to crash hard.
She turned from him, staggering slightly as she did so. “Whoa!” Rogan said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“No,” she answered truthfully. “I’m exhausted. Need to eat something and get some water. But, I need to finish this to put it all behind me.”
He pulled a pistol from the paddle holster on his hip. She noticed that the draw was a little awkward because of the long silencer on the end of the weapon. “Alright, let’s do this then. It was just the two of them?”
“There was a third guy.” She stopped. “Okay, so two guys kidnapped me at the rest area. One of them drove the RV, the other trailed behind in their car. I shot the one in the car from the back of the RV as we drove down the highway and he crashed.”
Rogan glanced at her, clearly impressed with what she’d done. “And the woman?”
“I don’t know. I think she came from inside the barn when we pulled up.”
He nodded. “Okay then. I want you to set up off to the side of the door,” he directed. “I’ll open it and enter the building. Stay outside and provide overwatch until I clear any threats.”
She shook her head, trying to make his words make sense through the descending fog in her brain. “What?”
“You stay outside and out of direct line of sight from the doorway in case somebody inside has a gun. Make sure nobody sneaks up on me when I’m inside,” he replied.
“Oh. Okay. I can do that.”
He walked slowly toward the door, trying to avoid making too much noise on the gravel. Rogan looked at her and gave her a thumbs up when he got to the door. Cassandra pushed the rifle into her shoulder and elevated the barrel slightly, prepared to bring it up quickly and start shooting if anything happened.
Rogan reached out to the handle and twisted it, pushing the door inward as he rolled his body behind the doorframe for cover. There was no barrage of gunfire or explosions from a boobytrap or anything else that Cassandra had been expecting. Instead, it was just silence. The dark opening in the side of the red barn looked like the gaping maw of an angry beast to her, making her shake. She’d almost been swallowed whole by the creature’s mouth. If she hadn’t taken action, she was certain that she’d have died inside that building.
Rogan waved to her to get her attention. He nodded and she adjusted her stance slightly to relieve the pressure on her lower back. He must have taken that as her reply that she was ready for him to enter because he disappeared inside.
She saw the beam of a flashlight snake its way across the darkness, then the lights came on as he found a switch. From what she could see, it looked like a standard barn with a center aisle and a row of stalls along one side. There was probably another row on the opposite side that was out of her line of view.
Cassandra waited patiently as Rogan searched the interior of the barn. He appeared at the doorway a few minutes later, beckoning her forward.
“I need your help,” he said softly.
“What is it?”
“There’s a woman inside. She’s not in good shape. Looks like they had her here for a while.”
Cassandra didn’t wait for further explanation, she pushed past him into the barn. She walked quickly down the hard packed dirt floor toward a stall about halfway down where the door was open. She rounded the corner and saw the legs and an arm of a thin woman sticking out from underneath an old horse blanket. Her skin was battered and bruised where it stuck out of the fabric. Her mess of tangled black hair was barely visible underneath the top of the blanket. The only other items in the stall besides the blanket were a bare, stained mattress and a bucket in the opposite corner. The woman hid her face from view.
“Hello,” Cassandra said softly. “I’m Cassandra. We came to get you out of here. You’re safe now.”
“Who— Who are you?” the voice croaked, dry as if she hadn’t had anything to drink in days.
“Rogan!”
“Yeah?” he answered. “Go get some water out of the RV refrigerator.” She waited until he was gone and said, “I’m nobody really. I was traveling to meet up with my husband and those two guys kidnapped me.”
At the mention of the two men, the woman squealed and pressed herself further into the corner, pulling the blanket over her head.
“I killed them,” Cassandra stated coldly. “And the woman. They will never harm you again.”
“Wh—Wha—Wh
at?” the woman stuttered.
“They’re dead. All three of them. But I need you to tell me if there are more of them or if it was only those three. My partner and I need to know if anyone else is coming.”
She shook her head. “No. Just the two—three I mean.”
“Okay, good.” She pointed at the filthy mattress. “Can I sit?”
The woman didn’t reply, so she sat down, careful to avoid touching the mattress with her hands. “Do you know how long you’ve been here?”
The woman shook her head. “No. A couple of weeks? Maybe more. Everything runs together.” She looked up at Cassandra then, revealing a Hispanic face. “Are you sure?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you sure they’re dead? It’s not just a trick?”
“I shot them myself,” Cassandra replied. “They will never hurt you again. I promise.”
“Can… Can I leave?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered. “Do you—Oh, thank you.” She took the glass of water from Rogan as he appeared at the doorway. “Here. Drink some water.”
The woman took the glass and gulped it down, spilling some across her cheeks in her effort to get it down as quickly as possible.
“Are you hungry? I have some stuff in the refrigerator of my RV outside.”
“RV?” the woman asked, looking at Cassandra and then glancing up at Rogan. “You guys aren’t cops?”
“No,” Cassandra replied gently. “I was traveling and got tired so I stopped at a rest area. That’s where those two guys jumped me. I was able to lock myself in the living area, but they drove the RV here with me in back. When we stopped, I used my rifle to defend myself.”
She nodded in understanding. “I can just go. Please don’t call the police.”
“Illegal?” Cassandra asked.
She shook her head violently, surprising Cassandra. “I’ve lived in San Antonio my whole life,” she said. “I graduated high school there and had a job. But my parents were immigrants. When it came time to register, the government wouldn’t let me and was going to deport me. So I ran.”
American Dreams | Book 2 | The Ascent Page 8