“I need you to hold it together for me, Gary. We’ve lost people too and I need your help to figure out who did this.”
Gary was pawing at the blood on his shirt as though he were seeing it for the first time. “All I know is that a bunch of men in trucks came onto our property and told us to hand over our firearms.”
“What?”
“Yessir. They waved around a piece of paper that looked official enough. Had the president’s seal on it. You know that thing on the carpet in the Oval Office?”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“Well, these guys looked real official, wearing black cargo pants and armed to the teeth. Said the governor for this district had sent them to disarm the local population by order of the president.”
“Governor for this district,” John spat, hating the way the words sounded. “That doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
“You said it. I told them as much too. They replied that I could keep one pistol and fifty rounds of ammo. ‘How am I gonna hunt?’ That’s what I asked them. And you know what they said? ‘That’s what the pistol’s for.’ You ever tried hunting with a pistol?”
John shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Course not, ’cause I can see you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Man can’t hunt with a pistol. Wasn’t even gonna let me keep my deer rifle. Anyway, I told them to turn those trucks around and head back to where they came from. Told them to go have a read through the Constitution again if their recollection was rusty. That was when they opened fire. Killed my Beth right there in front of me. Then they went through the house and took my Ruger American and my brand new Glock 21 and anything else they fancied. Pretty much cleaned me out and then set the place on fire.”
“What about your son?”
“They threw him in the truck and drove off. Probably figured without food or water I wouldn’t last long. I wasn’t worth wasting a bullet on, I suppose. If I’d only given him my guns, maybe Beth would still be alive and I wouldn’t have lost Billy.” Gary was getting choked up again and John gave him a minute.
“Do you remember hearing where they were taking them? Knoxville, maybe?”
“I wish I knew.”
John gripped the steering wheel as they drove on. It was clear enough that whoever had done this to Gary and his family had also been the ones to kill Tim and kidnap the others. If ever there was a time when regular folks needed weapons to defend themselves it was now, with the grid down and the police no longer an effective deterrent. John couldn’t grasp the logic behind the president’s decree, nor the legality of such a move in the first place. Any proposal that threatened the Second Amendment had to first go through a long legal process. Thankfully, it wasn’t something a single figure could change with the stroke of a pen.
Unless, that was, there had been a coup. Or the rights that they had come to know and cherish had somehow been suspended.
Chapter 10
John made a right on Phillips Road, which led down from the mountains and into the valley near Oneida. Yesterday he’d gone a ways along the interstate without seeing any sign of the people who’d taken his family. Afterward, he’d taken one of the small back roads west and come across what looked like a roadblock of some sort. The men pointing rifles in his direction had been an added incentive to save that route for last.
There was a systematic way to go about this. Gary had provided an important, although slightly vague piece of the puzzle. If they failed to find any sign of them between here and Oneida, John would then find a place to fill the jerrycans on Betsy’s rear door with diesel and consider heading back toward Knoxville.
He was contemplating that very possibility when he made his way around a curve and came to an older SUV on the shoulder of the street. Nearby were four men. Two of them were kneeling on the ground, their wrists bound behind their backs with zip ties. Two others were wearing green fatigues and aiming a pair of AKs at their prisoners’ heads.
John was about to throw the truck into reverse when he noticed the men on the ground were wearing dark cargo pants. Could they be from the same group that had attacked Gary and John’s family?
He slipped his S&W out from its holster and slid it over to Brandon. “Crack your window open and get ready to back me up if things go bad.”
John pulled the AR from between the seat and the middle console and opened the driver side door.
One of the two guarding the men on the ground swung his weapon in John’s direction.
“Don’t make a move,” he said.
John remained still. “Take it easy, friend. We don’t have a beef with either of you gentlemen. We’re looking for our families who were taken from us. We’re on the same side.”
“Drop your weapon and kick it over here,” the one aiming in his direction ordered.
If he’d been alone, John might have angled the car so he could take cover behind the wheel well, but that move would have left Brandon and Gary exposed. Contrary to the movies, 5.56 and 7.62 rounds could penetrate both car doors with ease.
“They’re going to execute us,” one of the men kneeling started to say, and John didn’t feel an ounce of pity, especially if they had done what he thought they had.
“I’m afraid I can’t hand my weapon over,” John informed him. “I’m assuming you caught these men ransacking your cabin.”
The men in green fatigues looked confused. “These boys are insurgents who are about to be executed,” the first one said. “We’re here by order of the president. Charged with bringing law and order back to the county.”
And suddenly John realized he’d been wrong. He’d assumed because of their dark cargo pants that the men kneeling on the ground were responsible for the attacks against the locals, but now it was crystal clear who the real threat was.
Pushing off with his forward foot, John raced to the back of the truck right as the first one opened fire. Bullets tore through the open driver’s side door. Splinters of rock and asphalt jumped at his feet. Brandon stuck his hand out the window and rattled off a handful of shots, all of which went wide.
Now behind the truck, John dropped into a prone position. With a clear view from under Betsy, he aimed and then squeezed the trigger three times. The first man with the fatigues was struck in the chest and dropped at about the same time as the second took off sprinting toward the forest’s edge.
Moving to the corner of the truck, John settled into a kneeling position and tracked the man through his Trijicon ACOG as his target ran over uneven ground. He was having difficulty keeping the sights on him. Soon the man was climbing the side of the hill next to the road. Taking a deep breath, John fired five rounds. The first four narrowly missed, kicking up dirt around the fleeing man’s legs. The fifth took the top of his head off.
“Darn it,” John blurted in frustration. He hadn’t wanted to kill him. Least not before he had a chance to ask him some questions. But moving targets were some of the hardest to hit. It was an element of prepping most didn’t take into account. Of course firing at a range was important since, like all muscles, marksmanship had a tendency to atrophy if neglected. But most shooters tended to practice by firing on static targets, often paper cutouts or AR500 steel plates, rather than at a dynamic range where movement was incorporated into the drill. He made a mental note to address this deficiency in his tactical training as soon as possible.
The other men in dark cargo pants were on their feet now, contemplating whether or not to run. One of them had a mohawk. He wound up and began kicking the body next to him.
“Enough,” John shouted. He was still trying to assess the situation and abusing the dead, no matter what they’d done, wasn’t part of his ethos. He rapped on the side of the truck. “You two okay in there?”