American Dreams | Book 3 | End Game [Side Mission]

by Parker, Brian

  “Going upstairs first,” he whispered into the radio. “I want to make sure I’m not forgetting anyone.”

  “Okay. I’ll lock the front door.”

  Damn, that hacker was good, Rogan mused. It was exactly what he was going to suggest. He’d never belittle Taya’s skills, but this other woman was on it just as well as she’d been.

  Rogan cleared the second floor quickly. He did a cursory check of each room, but all of the beds were made and hadn’t appeared disturbed in quite a while. The Resistance’s luck had held. The couple was actually alone in the big house.

  He went back down to the foyer using the second set of stairs and walked down the hallway to where the master bedroom was supposed to be, according to the plans. The door leading into the room was shut. It was odd that a couple, alone in the house, would close their bedroom door at night. He pushed the thought aside.

  Rogan sheathed the knife and pulled the roll of duct tape from the accessory pouch attached to his plate carrier. He wanted to have the knife out as well, but that would be too much shit to try and juggle. When he was ready, he pushed the door open gently and stepped onto the carpet inside.

  As he did so, the hard barrel of a pistol pressed against the side of his head and the lights came on. He raised his hands slowly.

  “I got you, motherfucker.”

  “Edgar! Language,” the senator’s wife chastised from where she sat up in the bed.

  “Well, shit,” Rogan groaned.

  EIGHT

  Rogan’s eyes adjusted quickly to the light in the room. The soft, warm glow of the bedside lamps, that had turned on with the flick of a switch were meant to be easy on the eyes versus the hard, recessed lighting overhead. He was in the downstairs master bedroom of Senator Bradley’s turn of the century home. And he was fucked.

  “Who are you?” the senator demanded, the barrel of his pistol still pressing against Rogan’s temple as he had his hands up.

  He turned his head slightly to look at the old man. “Ah ah,” Bradley grunted. “Eyes forward, dirtbag. Answer the damned question.”

  “Edgar, really!”

  “Dammit, Brenda. Don’t you realize—”

  Rogan twisted, using the back of his forearm to hit the old man’s hands. As he turned, he ducked forward and brought his own weapon across underneath his body.

  The senator’s large caliber pistol roared, sending a flash of heat across Rogan’s neck as he fired the HK point blank into the senator’s side. The woman screamed as her husband’s weapon fired again.

  Rogan felt like he’d been kicked by a horse as the senator’s bullet slammed into his body armor, sending him off of his feet and onto the bed. He pushed the pain aside, rolling toward the senator’s wife. He got behind her as the senator brought the gun up once more.

  “Don’t. Don’t do it,” Rogan gasped. What the fuck kind of gun is that monster? he asked himself.

  The senator leaned heavily against the wall, blood trailing down his pajama pants from the bullet hole in his side. The nickel-plated .44 magnum revolver he held waivered. “Who are you?” he demanded again.

  Rogan took a deep breath. His shooter’s cut soft body armor had stopped the slow moving bullet, but he still felt like shit. If that old fucker had hit him just four or five inches up or down, below the armor, then he’d be out of the fight for good.

  “Put down the pistol, Senator,” Rogan ordered, pulling his fighting knife from its sheath and placing the blade against Brenda Bradley’s collar bone. He extended his pistol toward the senator. “Do it, or I’ll cut her fucking throat right here in front of you.”

  The big handgun dropped to the floor and the man slid down the wall leaving a bloody smear in his wake. “Now, push it away from you.”

  The senator pushed the weapon away weakly. Like the blood beginning to pool around him, the will to fight was quickly leaving the old man.

  “Did they make any calls?” Rogan asked into the radio.

  “He attempted to, but we blocked it.”

  “Good. Thanks,” he replied, holstering his pistol.

  Rogan wormed his way off the bed and searched for the duct tape that he’d dropped when he got shot. It was near the doorway. He slid along sideways, not wanting to put his back to the woman or the senator. Either of them could produce a weapon and shoot him if he wasn’t continually on guard against it.

  He bent down to retrieve the tape and the pain in his chest increased tenfold. “Ugh,” he groaned as he straightened up. The bastard hurt. “Why’d you shoot me, dick?”

  The senator sighed. “Why’d you shoot me, dick?” he replied, mocking Rogan.

  “Touché.” He walked over and kicked the magnum several more feet away from the old man. “I’m going to secure Brenda here and then you and I are gonna take a walk, Senator.”

  “Please. No. No. Please,” the wife pleaded as he went to her and taped her hands in front of her and then put a quick, single wrap around her ankles. Finally, he took the pillowcase off of one of their pillows and used it as a gag in her mouth.

  “You’ll be okay. We’ll call for help when we’re safely away. Twenty minutes at most as long as your husband cooperates.” He tied the gag on the back of her head. “Do you need the blanket or anything?” She nodded in the affirmative, so he lifted the sheets up over her. “There you go, Mrs. Bradley. I’m arresting your husband for treason against the United States of America. The NAR is an illegal entity, not authorized to operate within our borders. Your husband will remain safe in my custody as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid. Understand?” Another nod told him that she did.

  He picked up another one of the couple’s pillows and carried it to the senator. “I don’t have any bandages,” Rogan told him. “So, I’m going to tape this pillow against your side.”

  The senator grunted. “How kind of you, asshole.” His wife mumbled something against the gag.

  “You want me to just let you bleed out?”

  The man’s eyes went wide as if he hadn’t considered the possibility of his own death. “No. No, please patch me up.”

  Rogan taped Senator Bradley’s hands together, and then took the pillowcase off the pillow he’d brought with him before taping it over his wound. It looked like his bullet had passed through the muscle on the right side of the senator’s abdomen, not the intestines. That was much better. He wasn’t a medic and only had rudimentary combat lifesaver skills, but he thought the man would survive as long as he stopped the blood flow.

  “Alright. Time to go, Senator,” Rogan said, pulling him roughly to his feet. The senator cried out in pain, the sound muffled by the pillowcase crammed in his mouth. “Oh, stop it, you big baby,” he chastised. “You’re fine. It’s a through-and-through.”

  He led the man over to his wife. “You still good, Mrs. Bradley?”

  She nodded, so he allowed the senator to ease downward and place his forehead against hers in goodbye. It was a heartwarming gesture from a man who knew he’d probably be sentenced to death while in captivity. Rogan allowed them a few seconds of skin-to-skin contact, then he pulled the senator back upright.

  As he whirled the older man around, Rogan called Chase on the radio. “Hey, buddy. Bring the car around. I’ve got a dinner guest who needs a ride.”

  “On the way.”

  Rogan led the shuffling senator down the hall into the large foyer. “You’ve got a lovely home, Senator,” he said as he went to the door. He tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Hey, Little Sister,” he said into the radio. “Can you open the front door for me?”

  “On it.”

  The electronic locks disengaged a couple of seconds after she’d replied. Rogan opened the door as a pair of bright white headlights appeared at the large vehicle gate leading from the property to the street. He started to pull the senator toward the street but the gates parted and Chase’s white Range Rover shot through the opening, racing toward the house.

  Chase stopped in front of th
e door and Rogan helped the prisoner down the steps. He opened the back door and pushed him inside. As he sat down to buckle his seatbelt, Chase looked in shock at the man in the back seat.

  “We did it. We actually did it.”

  “We’re doing it,” Rogan corrected him. “We aren’t out of the woods yet. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Is that… Is that blood?” Chase asked, turning on the interior lights.

  “Yeah. The fucker shot me, so I returned the favor.”

  “You got shot? Are you okay?”

  Rogan nodded. “Hit me in my vest. We need to go before the cops arrive.”

  That seemed to motivate him. He shifted into drive and the engine came to life as he took his foot off the brake pedal. They passed through the gate and it closed behind them.

  “Watch your speed,” Rogan cautioned. “Don’t want to get stopped for speeding.”

  Chase slowed, and they drove through the neighborhood for several blocks in silence before coming to a complete stop at a traffic light. “Um… So how do you get blood out of leather?” he asked.

  “Fuck if I know, man.” Rogan looked out the window toward the lights of Washington, DC. “Try that Billy Mays shit.”

  “Who? The dead guy?”

  “Yeah. Try that stuff,” Rogan affirmed as he patted the dashboard. “Or you could leave it as a conversation piece. Do you know how valuable this car will be after we kick the NAR out of power? This was the arresting vehicle for the top NAR official— Shit.”

  “What?” Chase asked, slowing down as he glanced over at Rogan.

  “Pull over up here. I forgot to check to see if he was chipped.”

  Chase pulled the car into the same mall parking lot where they’d picked up the vehicle the night before. Rogan got out and passed a handheld RFID detecting device across the senator, paying special attention to his hands. When he was satisfied that the man hadn’t been injected with a tracking device, he sat back down in the front seat.

  “Okay, now I feel better. Let’s get him out of here and back to the hotel.”

  When they were about ten miles from the senator’s house, Rogan called the cyber team to have them request an ambulance to go check on Mrs. Bradley. He’d promised her that he would call for help and he did.

  Now it was time to see the fruits of the night’s labors.

  NINE

  The night had been an overwhelming success, but they had to move again. This time, the Resistance chose to go south, deeper into Virginia away from the capital. Of the twelve members of the NAR’s Inner Council, surprisingly they had eleven of them in custody. The only member that they weren’t able to arrest had died during the capture attempt from an apparent heart attack.

  Out of the thirteen teams that had set out from the hotel, Rogan was the only man who’d fired a shot or been forced to deal with security elements. Everyone else had apprehended their target without resorting to violence.

  Everyone else, that is, except for McKenzie, the snide bitch from Portland, and her partner. They’d been assigned to take out Director Morningstar from the CEA. The woman had seemed gleeful that she’d taken the assignment that he’d wanted. It didn’t matter anymore; she was either dead or in jail right now. She’d been delayed in starting, for some reason, and by the time her team tried to apprehend him, police had already been alerted of Resistance activity in the region. Apparently, Morningstar was awake when they arrived and the team decided to attempt the arrest anyway. No one had heard from them since.

  Jackson, the de facto leader of the small Resistance group had ordered everyone out of the hotel and directed people to meet back up at the Chancellorsville Battlefield Visitor Center fifteen miles away. Once there, they’d decide where to go with the prisoners and what the best way forward was from that point.

  Rogan decided to part ways with the group after he passed over Senator Bradley to them. He’d done his part by arresting the man and had accomplished the task that Chris Plummer had given him. Now, he set his sights on a new mission, one of possibly even greater importance than apprehending the Inner Council criminals had been.

  The US Military had stayed out of the conflict, for the most part. They’d sat on the sidelines, waiting to support whoever ended up winning the war. That had to change. As a lifelong member of the military, Rogan held their morals and judgment in high regards. They needed to pick a side. Every member of the US military had taken an oath to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It was time that they added their weight to the fight to overthrow the New American Republic and its sham New Constitution. America hadn’t been perfect before, and there was a lot of room for change, but the NAR sure as hell wasn’t it.

  He knew exactly where to start. After he said his goodbyes and handed over most of the equipment that he’d gotten from his old supply sergeant, Rogan pointed the nose of the big Buick southward, toward North Carolina.

  Toward home.

  THE END OF ROGAN’S SIDE MISSION

  Five Roads to Texas: a Phalanx Press Collaboration

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  More from Brian Parker

  When a string of grisly murders rocks Easytown's sex clubs, Detective Forrest must stop the killer before he strikes again. The Easytown Novels, written by Brian Parker, are a sci-fi noir detective series.

  Available in ebook, print, and audio.

  The Immorality Clause, book 1: www.hyperurl.co/j3345s

  Tears of a Clone, book 2: www.hyperurl.co/uiov23

  West End Droids & East End Dames, book 3: www.hyperurl.co/ci4e9j

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE