Resistance: A Prepper's War

by BJ Knights

  * This is a stand alone novel that can be enjoyed without reading the other books in the series- The best selling first book is available here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J39NO9S

  Copyright 2013 All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means without prior written permission, except for brief excerpts in reviews or analysis.

  The Resistance

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  CHAPTER V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  CHAPTER X

  Chapter I

  There wasn’t a moon out, so the night was darker than usual. A small crack of a twig, the rustling of leaves and grass, the hooting of an owl overhead was amplified by the silence of the night.

  The forest sat on the edge of a highway across from a newly developed housing sub-division. The homes were spread out on large three acre lots. The two story castles sprawled out across them were meant to be places where the wealthy could have their space.

  You could only see the whites of his eyes as Jim Farr sat crouched in the brush near the edge of the highway with camouflage painted on his face. There was a single house that had his attention straight ahead, just beyond the highway. He clicked the radio around his neck. “Brett. Twink. You in position?” he asked.

  Brett was just outside the house in the backyard behind a small cluster of trees and bushes. He had binoculars on and was peering through the back window of the house. Twink was on his belly and had his sniper rifle tucked under his arm as he looked through the scope. Both were dressed head to toe in their camouflaged field gear. As they peered through their sights the two kept watch on the family inside the house, who were sitting around the table eating dinner. Brett flicked on his radio, “Roger that. Target’s still with family.” Twink looked up at Brett who was still peering through his binoculars. “This still feels weird,” Twink said. The binoculars dropped from Brett’s face but he kept his eyes on the back of the house. “Yeah,” Brett responded, “I don’t think we’ll ever get used to being on missions in our own country.”

  Jim checked his watch. 8:11pm. He shook his head. The family shouldn’t even be there tonight. Brett’s voice came back through the radio asking Jim what he wanted to do. Jim’s steady, controlled breaths made puffs of cold air appear into the night as he spoke. Jim had reconnaissance on the target for weeks. “We give it another hour. That’ll still give us enough time to get to the evac zone. If we can’t get a good bead on the target by then we abort.”

  Coyle sat crouched about a mile away at the LZ site. He was propped up against a tree with his rifle over his lap looking up into the night sky feeling incredibly hungry. “What are they having?” he asked over the radio.

  Brett pulled his binoculars back up and zoomed in as close as he could. He saw the dad shovel a piece of pasta in his mouth. “Looks like lasagna,” Brett responded.

  Coyle placed his hand over his stomach as he moaned out in agony. He tried making the suggestion of going into join them, but Jim disagreed. Coyle clicked on his radio and a low rumble echoed in everyone’s ear as his stomach growled. “Do you hear that?” he asked. “If I don’t eat something soon my stomach is going to give away our position.”

  It was silent after that as the time inched closer to nine o’clock and the family finally finished their meals. The kids ran upstairs into their room and flipped on the television. Brett clicked his radio on. “Dinner’s over. Kids are upstairs playing video games. Target is still in the kitchen,” he replied as he watched the man and woman through the kitchen window washing dishes.

  Now was the time. Jim’s knees cracked as he rose up from the grass and leaves. He tried to work out the stiffness of his body as he darted across the highway; his rifle nose up scanning the rest of the yard. “Brett, get in position to kill the power and wait for my signal,” Jim ordered, as his boots flew across the empty highway and onto the front yard. “Twink,” Jim continued, “Keep an eye on the kids and make sure they don’t come back downstairs.”

  Twink swung his scope up towards the second floor, making sure his finger was nowhere near the trigger, as he saw the two kids zoned out from the video game in front of them. “Copy that,” Twink responded.

  Jim ducked alongside the fence on the perimeter of the house. The nearest house to them was three hundred yards away and with the lack of street lights he was perfectly covered in the night. He clicked on his radio as he opened the gate to the back yard, keeping his voice low, “Coyle, let command know we’ll be in your location ready for evac in twenty minutes.”

  Coyle, who was lying on his side holding his stomach, flopped over to his back and flipped through the radio channels until he got to the one with headquarters’ signal. He started repeating the codes to HQ that signaled their helicopter to start heading in their direction.

  Brett made it over to the power box and cracked the cover open with the blade on his knife. Dozens of wires ran up and down the box and Brett held his blade underneath them waiting for Jim’s signal.

  Jim inched closer to the back corner of the house. Just beyond that corner was the rear door that would lead him into the kitchen where his target was. Jim dropped low to his knee right at the corner’s edge. His hand came up to his neck as he pressed the radio and whispered, barely audible, “Twink, kids still upstairs?”

  Twink, still lying on his belly in the backyard in the cluster of trees, peaked through his scope and into the children’s window upstairs. The kids were still lying on the floor; their eyes glued to the television screen. “Affirmative,” Twink answered.

  Jim peaked around the corner of the wall to get a good look at the door he needed to breach. Jim took a soft, slow breath and then pressed his communication link. “Brett,” Jim said, “on my mark cut the power.”

  Brett stood at the box poised to cut the wire. He could feel the blade digging into the wax coatings of the wires in his hand as he applied a steady, gentle pressure.

  Twink shifted his focus from the kids’ room back down to the kitchen window, where the mom and dad laughed about something as she dipped the dishes into soapy water and he dried them. Only ten feet to the left Twink saw Jim strapping on his night vision goggles at the corner of the house.

  Jim’s breath started to accelerate as he adjusted his goggles. He could feel his pulse rapidly coursing through his body. He inched as close to the edge of the wall as he could without passing it and he moved his thumb to the safety lever on his rifle and clicked it off. “Kill power,” Jim whispered.

  The entire neighborhood went black and Jim sprinted around towards the backdoor and kicked it open. Jim saw the married couple through the green hue of his goggles as the husband swung his wife behind him and backed them into a corner of the kitchen. Jim’s rifle kept a bead on the target even though she was well covered.

  “Please,” the husband begged, “don’t hurt us. We didn’t do anything. Take what you want.”

  Jim barked for the both of them to get down. The husband started to comply, but a knife appeared out from behind him and was brought to his throat. His wife tucked his right arm behind him as she held him hostage.

  Jim’s hands tightened around the rifle as his face twisted in anger. “Drop the knife,” he demanded. The husband was shaking like a leaf now. The blade was right under his Adam’s apple and a small trickle of blood started to run down his neck.

  “Kate,” the husband asked, “what are you doing?”

  She dug the knife slightly deeper into his throat to shut him up. He winced as he fel
t the blade’s edge sinking into his skin. . Only Kate’s left eye appeared from around her husband’s neck and shoulder. She looked at Jim carefully, glancing from him to the opening in the living room where she could escape.

  Jim peered through the sights on his rifle. He didn’t have a clear shot. so he inched a little closer.

  “Move and I kill him,” Kate commanded.

  Jim froze. He started to feel hot. His head felt dizzy. He could taste sand in his mouth and his lips suddenly felt chapped and dry. He glanced down at the rifle in his hands, except it wasn’t a rifle anymore. It was a 9mm pistol. He looked over at Kate and her husband, but it wasn’t them anymore. Instead he was looking at his brother-in-law using his 5-year-old niece as a human shield with a gun pointed at him.

  With a knife to his throat and his arm subdued behind him, Kate worked her husband like a puppet along the kitchen counter. They passed the fridge and were right in front of Jim, who was shaking his head trying to get the images out of his mind.

  Jim’s rifle finally dipped, which gave Kate the window she was looking for, she knocked her husband’s legs from underneath him, then sent him barreling into Jim. Jim popped out of the hallucination and he knocked the husband out with the butt of his rifle.

  As he chased Kate through the living room, she flung the blade back at Jim and sliced his shoulder before he could duck out of the way. Kate made it to the front door, but Jim pinned her up against it before she could escape. He threw her hands behind her back and then he heard the soft click of a hammer being pulled back on a revolver.

  Jim turned, slowly, as his eyes came resting upon the eldest son, no older than nine, with a six shooter shaking in his hand. Tears were streaming down his face as he stood on the steps of the staircase facing the front door. His younger brother was crouched behind his legs, clutching the staircase banisters as sobs left his tiny body.

  Jim kept Kate close as he turned the both of them around, keeping one hand on Kate’s restraints and the other up high; free of any weapons. “Take it easy, buddy,” Jim said calmly.

  “Let her go,” the boy said. His voice was trembling as he kept both hands on the pistol, taking aim at Jim’s head.

  Kate smiled as she coaxed her son into setter her free. “Hunny, come and get mommy out of these cuffs, okay?”

  The stairs creaked as the boy moved slowly down the steps; trembling more the closer he got. Jim pulled Kate slowly away from the door back through the living room towards the rear exit where Jim had entered. “Go back upstairs,” Jim said his eyes soft as the young boy followed them. “We’re not gonna hurt anyone.”

  As they got closer to the kitchen the boy’s eyes glanced down towards the floor and he saw his father sprawled out on the ground. For the split second the boy’s eyes were off of him, Jim rushed towards him and grabbed the pistol out of his hand. As he did Kate took off towards the back door. Jim flipped on his radio. “Twink, she’s heading out the back,” Jim screamed. He looked back down at the boy on the ground and asked if he was alright. Jim emptied the bullets into his hand, put them in his pocket, and handed the gun back to the boy. “Stay here and call an ambulance for your dad,” he said.

  When Jim rushed out the back, he saw Twink had drugged Kate and Brett came jogging around the corner from the other side of the house. As Jim threw Kate over his shoulder and they started the long hike through the rocky terrain towards the evacuation site Jim could hear the cries from the boys inside the house followed by the wail of police sirens in the distance.

  The chopper was already their when they arrived at the rendezvous point. They secured Kate’s body in one of the harnesses and then strapped themselves in. Coyle looked around the group with his eyebrows raised as if he were waiting for something.

  “What?” Jim asked.

  “No leftovers?” Coyle asked as his stomach continued to growl.

  The helicopter landed fifty miles south in Northern California and Kate was still passed out when they arrived. A pair of medics came and put her on a stretcher to take her to the interrogations room where she’d be “woken up.”

  Jim, Coyle, Brett, and Twink all headed towards the command post to be debriefed. Coyle walked ahead with Jim, while Brett and Twink hung back out of ear shot.

  “What happened in there?” Brett asked.

  Twink adjusted his pack’s strap on his shoulder as they walked across the tarmac. “Not sure. I think he froze up again,” Twink replied.

  “He hasn’t been the same since Phoenix,” Brett said.

  “I don’t think anyone would be the same after what he went through,” Twink said sullenly.

  As Jim walked to General Locke’s office, Coyle was chewing his ear off about something, but Jim wasn’t listening. His mind was retreating back to all of the missions he’d been on in the last three months. It was his driving force. Those missions gave him something to focus on, so he didn’t have to think about anything else.

  The events that happened in Phoenix had changed his life. It was there that he had tried to prove his brother-in-law’s innocence by risking not just his life, but the lives of his friends only to have his trust betrayed. The vision that he saw tonight was the same he’d seen in dreams every night since that day.

  His sister Samantha hadn’t spoken to him in months and had forbidden him to see Annie, his niece. Jim had fought so hard to find them and keep them safe. After the attacks in San Diego that set all of this in motion he battled gangs, soldiers, fires, bombs, and riots and now the only family he had left didn’t want anything to do with him.

  The only piece of him that was still with them was his cat, Tigs, who wouldn’t leave Annie’s side after what happened. Jim missed the feline, and as much as Coyle wouldn’t admit it, he did too.

  Jim pushed all of that out of his mind as he opened the door to Locke’s office and was greeted by the faces of busy administrative workers, whirring across the floor. Jim didn’t look at any of their faces as he made a beeline straight for the interrogation room.

  On the way back to the room Jim passed the locked doors of all of the other men and women who he brought in on charges of conspiracy and treason. The organization he was hunting down ran deep; politicians, businessmen, lawyers, all of whom were part of the attacks on major U.S. cities around the country four months ago. Now they were sitting behind closed doors in eight by eight cells.

  Jim knew he was just reaching the tip of the iceberg with who was behind this, because none of the assailants that he brought in had said a word. Even when they turned them against one another, saying that their friends already gave them up, they wouldn’t talk. They were unwavering in their loyalty.

  Locke was standing behind the one-way glass examining the empty room. His belly sagged over his belt and he smoothed his mustache as Jim entered through the door behind him. Locke didn’t turn around. He already knew who it was.

  Jim joined Locked by the glass and leaned his hands forward on the thin rail in front of it. His nose was almost touching the glass as he watched the medics bring in Kate who was still passed out. One medic strapped restraints to her and the chair, while the other prepared a syringe of adrenaline to wake her up.

  “Any collateral damage?” Locke asked.

  “Nothing serious,” Jim responded.

  Kate gasped for breath as she shot awake and the adrenaline kicked in. She looked down at the restraints as she struggled to free herself. The medics left and were replaced by two interrogators dressed in army cargo pants and blue shirts. One had a file in their hand and tossed it on the table in front of her.

  The two men started to show pictures of her family, but she just looked away. They screamed threats at her and her family; told her that her co-conspirators had already given her up. The soldier kept pointing at pictures of her sons, but she just looked away indifferent to it all.

  The interrogators had the water bucket out now. One of the men held Kate’s head back and placed a cloth over her face. He continued to bark questions at her, bu
t she remained silent through the breaks in the water’s flow over her face.

  “We’re not getting anywhere, Locke,” Jim said over the gurgled chokes and coughs coming through the speaker system.

  “It’s going to take time, Jim. You yourself said they were well organized. Whatever it was they had planned they’d been preparing for a long time,” Locke said.

  “We have over twenty members of this organization and we don’t know who’s in charge, why they attacked us, or what they have planned next,” Jim replied sounding agitated.

  “Jim,” Locke started as he turned his back to the interrogation, “the President’s ordered all reservists into active duty and brought home sixty percent of our soldiers from foreign bases to help re-establish order.”

  Jim shook his head. “If these people are as deep as we think they are then why is it so hard to believe that this could be what they want?”

  Locke exhaled and turned back to the interrogation scene that now had Kate coughing up water over her and the two men in the room with them shoving more pictures in her face. “How are the sessions going?” Locke inquired.