Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) (77 page)

“Mount up,” Banks shouted to the others. Every Marine ran to their vehicle and followed after Tori.

Nathan was sitting in the corner of a musty-smelling room. The Fist had him gagged with a rancid dirty sock and handcuffed in the back with zip-ties. Denny had the same treatment, except he was hanging by his ankles from a rafter in the ceiling. Jess was missing, and Nathan had no idea where either of his friends were. Both he and Denny were blindfolded in a room that was now lit by electricity.

“Which one of you is the leader?” Nathan and Denny heard the grizzled voice ask.

Neither man responded.

“I’m guessing it’s you,” the voice said.

Nathan’s blindfold was removed from his face. For the first time he was able to look around the room and see his best friend, Denny, hanging by his ankles from the rafters. The rope Nathan had attached to his grappling hook was being used to suspend Denny from the ceiling.

Nathan peered into the eyes of a large intimidating man with a scar running from the left brow to the right cheek. The cut that at one time infected the man’s face had caused a serious laceration and a deformation of the man’s nose. No doubt the man had lost cartilage in the cut. It looked like he had been hit in the face with a scimitar.

The man walked over to Denny and used his left hand to grab him by the hair and pull him upward.

The large man was Muhaimin’s contact, the Fist. He punched Denny in the face and knocked him unconscious. Blood began to stream from his nose. It ran down his forehead and onto the floor. Denny’s mouth was open; although he was gagged, he had a passage for air.

“Forgive my negligence,” the Fist said in a cynical tone. “I’m asking you questions and I haven’t even removed your gag.”

He walked over to Nathan and pulled the gag down off his face.

The first thing Nathan said was, “Where’s the girl?”

“She’s assisting my men. Don’t worry about her. She’ll be useful to us for some time to come.”

Nathan knew what he was alleging, and the thought of Jess being raped, sodomized, or victimized or any other act of brutality was almost too much for him to stomach. He knew all too well the atrocities these jihadists were guilty of. The time he spent before the Flip, as a conservative blogger covering the Jihadist Wars and their decade-long illegal migration into the US, had exposed him to many such scenarios. He was right about what he believed they were doing to Jessica. Nathan counted fifteen men were in the room with him. His fears put the other thirty-five in a line behind Jess.

The Fist saw the look that was in the eyes of Nathan. They were filling with tears of righteous indignation. He was filled with fear, hate, and sorrow. His heart was breaking, and there was nothing he could do about it.

There was a guard to his left and a guard to his right. Nathan tried to stand up, but with his hands behind his back, his motions were slow and easily detectible. The two guards just pushed him back into a seated position.

“She’s your girl, isn’t she?” the Fist asked. “Would you like to see her … to make sure she’s okay?”

Nathan didn’t answer. He knew that despite whatever answer he was going to give the man, he had already drawn a conclusion: that he was going to kill Nathan and Denny and, eventually, Jess.

The Fist looked over by the doorway. “Bring the girl to me,” he commanded.

Moments later, two men dragged Jess into the same room that he and Denny were in. The Fist walked over to Denny and removed his blindfold and began slapping him in the face. The Fist wanted both men awake for what he had planned.

Denny came to and began blowing blood from his nostrils. The effects were similar to a whale coming up for air and emptying its blowhole.

“Ahh, good. You’re awake,” the Fist said.

She was conscious but indecent. Her normally modest appearance was absent along with her will to live any longer. The men were chuckling and whispering under their breath while the Fist silently watched Nathan for a reaction. He was exhibiting a great deal of pleasure just watching his emotional response.

Jess had a very visible hole in her stomach. Blood had been streaming out of it and was smeared across her entire torso region, as if it had been smeared about because of her struggles.

Nathan’s breathing was laborious, and he could not take his eyes off Jess. Denny was even more helpless than Nathan. Tears were streaming down his forehead and mixing with blood; his already plugged nose could not contain all the moisture that was building up inside his head. It felt as if his sinus cavities were going to explode.

The Fist was an expert at torture. Portions of his spec ops training required him to learn techniques of coercion. That particular course boosted his class standing significantly. He wasn’t much of a runner, swimmer, or problem solver. It was his size and skill set that earned him his place in Muhaimin’s inner circle.

By watching Nathan’s reactions, he could tell that torturing Jess would be the best possible example to give the patriot resistance members. He had no intention of killing them all. He was told to make an example of them; that meant creative liberties for the Fist.

“Gag ’em …” the Fist ordered the guards that were next to Nathan.

One of the guards went to put his blindfold on, but the Fist said, “No, no. Leave that off. He needs to see this.”

On the floor, Jess was awake and could feel the warmth of the blood streaming from her abdomen. It was pooling beneath her and giving a cold sensation as it cooled to the winter temperatures. Her lip was fat from being struck in the mouth multiple times by her assailants. Her tongue was bleeding from one of the punches to the jaw she had taken; she’d bitten it in the process.

“Please …” Jess uttered in a soft voice. “You don’t have to do this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, pretty girl. I do have to do this.”

The Fist walked around the room, scratching his chin, as if to prolong their misery.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Have you ever heard of the Nanking Massacre?”

He paused to look at Jess, whose skin was pale. Her eyes partially opened, one of them nearly swollen shut. When he received no answer, he continued on with his monologue.

“The Nanking Massacre occurred during the Second Sino-Japanese War in late 1937 and early 1938. The Japanese army invaded Nanking, which was at the time the capital of the Republic of China. In a six-week period, they raped, murdered, and beheaded three hundred thousand Chinese. You probably won’t read about that in your American history books because Japan is now an ally of the United States. I mean
former
United States,” the Fist jokingly corrected himself to make a point.

He walked by one of the guards and put out an open hand. The guard handed him a gut hook knife. The blade was very sharp and had a hook shape that came off of the tip and curled backwards toward the handle. It was designed that way for gutting animal kills.

Nathan was mumbling from beneath his gag. His words were unintelligible. The Fist wasn’t interested in anything Nathan had to say. He only cared about his purpose, and that was making an example of the girl. He believed, wholeheartedly, that killing Jess in a brutal fashion would demoralize the men, who would, in turn, cease the resistance.

The Fist ran his finger up and down the blade before taking a knee next to Jessica.

Nathan was red with anger. His nose was snotty, and tears were streaming down his angry face. The entire scene was made of nightmarish delusions that he hoped he would soon wake up from. It wasn’t until Jess uttered the following sentence that he composed himself and switched from severe anguish to absolute sorrow.

“Please, I’m with child.”

The Fist paused and then laughed. “Well, now, that doesn’t change a thing. It proves my decision to be a good one.” He snickered and looked at Nathan, who was still watching Jess. “Do you want to see it?” the Fist asked Nathan.

Nathan knew that Jess wasn’t pregnant; it was only a ploy to stop the Fist from killing her. Nathan mumbled some more words in the Fist’s direction.

What Nathan was trying to tell the Fist and what he couldn’t understand because of the gag: “I’ll kill you if you harm her.” Even if the Fist could hear him, it wouldn’t matter. He had no fear of Nathan.

The Fist stuck the knife into Jess’s bullet hole and pulled upward towards her chest cavity. The gut knife worked in such a way that it looked like Jess’s stomach was being unzipped.

Nathan and Denny joined Jess in her screams. The guards assisted the Fist by holding Jess steady, one at each leg and arm. When he had finished opening her womb, he pulled out her entrails, set them to the side, and said, “Sorry. I can’t seem to find it in this mess.”

His words went unheard. All Nathan and Denny could feel was numbness; both of them were dealing with tunnel vision.

The Fist rearranged his position on the floor near Jess’s head. The guards were struggling to hold Jess still, until her screams turned to gurgles. Soon after, they were silenced. After removing Jess’s head, he stood up and wiped his hands with a towel that one of the guards handed him.

A man opened the door from the outside.

“Boss, we have to go. They’re on their way.”

The Fist looked back to Nathan and said, “The Nanking Massacre has come to America. I’m sure you’ll write it in your history books. I hope you never see me again. Tell your friends the Fist will pay this bill for any American who makes the same debt as you have.”

The Fist and his men left the room. Their vehicles could be heard leaving the area.

0200 Hours

Hot Springs, South Dakota

The exact location of the parked UN convoy and crew-served weapon systems locations were fed back to Buchanan from his reconnaissance Marines. He had already made it abundantly clear that he wanted to drop artillery on the entire town. He thought the idea of nitpicking objective points was delaying precious time. Buchanan was dealing with an inner struggle that included disobeying a direct order from the commandant and Joint Chief, General John James.

One of the only things that was keeping him from open defiance was the possibility of retaliatory justice. Buchanan wasn’t quite sure how far it would go; it might be a death sentence. The other was that the future was veiled in uncertainty, and nobody knew who would be stepping up to take charge of reviving the American way of life. If the general were to be that leader, then Buchanan would have already started his career in the new world order on the wrong foot.

The attack was about to begin. The plan was to strike the town where the UN equipment was staged and where they knew UN soldiers to be positioned in their greatest numbers. There would be collateral casualties from the attack, but it would be minimized. The intelligence showed that the schools, libraries, and government buildings were populated with the most UN soldiers. The convoys were staged on major streets and highways that led into and ran out of the town. The invaders had the town on complete lockdown.

Ryan Lee had made it back with the communications gear. He had successfully entered the town and was not suspected of doing anything out of the ordinary. One complication arose; when Lee had returned with the radio, Cox and any remaining survivors were not where he had left them. If they had been discovered or captured, he would have heard about it.

It was shift change for the patrol guard, and several new soldiers were reporting to their assigned posts only to find out that the men they were assigned to relieve were either missing or dead. Several bodies had been discovered in the hills surrounding Hot Springs; each of them were UN-assigned soldiers on perimeter security. Lee was alone in the dark.

Voices and radio chatter were heard by Lee,
closing in on his location
. He was near a trail that had two dead patrol guards strewn out on the path. The sounds were coming from the relief guards, who would soon find out that their associates were no longer alive. It was a very chilly twenty-seven degrees at 0200 hours. Lee’s teeth were chattering and the men were getting closer.

They were not equipped with costly FLIR equipment, unlike their enemies, the Recon Marines. As they walked the trail, they heard radio calls from other surrounding positions that they were finding dead UN patrol guards. Once they heard the news, they pulled their rifles up from a lackadaisical position to a high ready position and began speaking in broken English with a Middle Eastern accent.

“We know you here. Show yourself.”

The two men put their backs together and were acting hypervigilant to the point of paranoia and fear. Their movements were exaggerated by quick reflexes so that they would point their weapons wherever they heard the sound of a branch blowing in the wind. At one point, a pinecone fell to the earth and both men opened fire at the position of the sound.

This incident frightened Ryan Lee because he knew that reinforcements would soon be joining them and he would be discovered. He responded by standing up and pointing his weapon in their direction and pulling the trigger. The click of his trigger seemingly unleashed artillery upon the town of Hot Springs. All three men fell to the earth and looked in the direction of the town. It was being bombarded from an unknown position. Convoys, buildings, people, and other targets were being decimated. Lee stood up and took aim at the men. The explosive lights in the near distance gave him a visual on their location. The two men were killed by Lee and he returned to the darkness of the woods with communications gear in hand.

The District

Executive Commander Muhaimin was
gently
 tucked away in his bedroom chambers. White linen perfectly draped across his body as he slept on his back. His arms and shoulders were on the outside of the sheets, and a pistol was in his left hand when he was suddenly awakened by a loud pounding on the chamber door. The commotion roused Muhaimin into an upright position. He was grinding his teeth with the pistol grip being tightly squeezed.

“What is it?”

“Sir, the Hot Springs operation failed. The division was destroyed, sir.”

Muhaimin jumped out of his bed and scurried to the door. He was barefooted; nobody had ever seen the Executive Commander barefooted and lived to tell the tale.

The door opened and Muhaimin raised his pistol and shot the man in the cheekbone just under the left eye. He died instantly.

Muhaimin went back to bed.

East Chicago, Indiana

“Tori, we’ve been driving around for hours. We can’t find them,” Banks said.

Tori was unyielding in her desire to keep looking for Nathan, Denny, and Jess. She didn’t say a word; she didn’t need to. Banks knew she had the wheel, and short of knocking her out, she wasn’t going to quit searching. Banks decided to try another tactic.

“Listen, Marine,” he said to her. She briefly made eye contact; then her eyes went back to the road. “We have a mission objective, and nothing’s more important than seeing it through. Mission accomplishment, Marine, that’s the goal.

Tori slammed on the brakes, the convoy behind her narrowly missing the impact. She was deeply considering abandoning the group in search of Nathan, Denny, and Jess so that the operation wouldn’t go unhindered.

When he saw he was making progress, he said, “We need to go back, rally on Richards, and head to South Dakota to finish this.”

Tori was a deeply jaded person who found very little faith in anybody she didn’t know before the Flip. Jess was a new face to her, but was one she accepted because she was a package deal if she was to be with Nathan and Denny. It was Banks’s use of the word
rally
that sparked a memory. She remembered that it was Nathan who said,
“Okay then, it’s settled. We take out that kill zone then rally on Buchanan.”
Tori knew that it was what Nathan wanted most. To join back up with this man named Buchanan. She had never met him, but Nathan constantly rambled on about him. In a way, she did know him; she knew him through Nathan, who trusted him with his life and the lives of his people.

“Fine,” Tori conceded. She knew that if she couldn’t find him here, if he was still alive, then she would meet back up with him later.

The convoy turned around and headed back to the south side of the crematorium.

An Abandoned building, Writing Lakefront Park, Indiana

“This is a good spot. Kill the engines and turn off the lights,” Troy said into his radio.

They had followed the Fist’s convoy from the crematorium and maintained their distance. On occasion, they would lose their scent, but then, as if by chance, they would pick it back up.

A couple hours had passed, and Troy and his three-percenters group had found a good spot to park their trucks and make their way to where they believed the Fist was located. In a strange twist of events, they had seen the men take Nathan, Denny, and Jess into a building from which they never returned. It would be okay to assume them dead if not for the fact that if the men wanted to kill them, why didn’t they take their shots at the crematorium? Why go through the hassle of relocating them?

In addition to this odd move, the convoy departed and left one HMMWV behind, parked in the open, in front of the building where they had taken their prisoners. None of it added up to Troy.

“When we get up there, nobody touches the Hummer,” he said. “I’ll delegate somebody to check it out when the coast is clear. It could be rigged with explosives or something crazy.”

The men came out from behind their covered positions and made their way toward the building where they had last seen Nathan, Denny, and Jess. The men moved from cover to cover and would stop on occasion to watch for movement. Troy was glad to see the power was back on, but it was frustrating his attempts to move undetected. Nobody had silencers, or he would have ordered the lights shot out. Now they were a huge nuisance and posed a threat due to the fact that their brilliant radiance was casting shadows from the men. Nobody was shooting at them and there was no sign of life. On occasion you could hear gunshots in the background from the city, but no noises were emanating from the park’s complex.

The men finally reached the abandoned building. There were no windows, so breaching while minimizing casualties was going to have to be put on the back burner. There was just no way of knowing the placement of enemies or how many of them were in the building.

Troy and his men stacked on the door. He was first, and then right behind him was another, and so on. Each man had a rifle in their right hand and their hand on the back of the man in front of them. It was their way of knowing when the breach was taking place. Across from Troy, there was one man assigned to open the door. This strategy allowed Troy and his breaching team to rapidly enter the building with their weapons at the high ready position. It was the best plan they had for the situation. The rooms had to be cleared if they were to locate their friends, but nobody knew for sure if they were walking into a trap.

The door had been previously busted open. The bolt that once secured the door was knocked out of the frame of the door. It was pulled shut, but very little held it secure. The man across from Troy pushed the door open and the entry process had begun. Troy went left into the room; the man behind him went center; and the man behind him went right. The room was clear.

They stacked on the next door. There was a pool of blood running out from the next room. They all saw it and feared the worst. This door was pulled shut and was not busted. There was no wall for a man to stand across from Troy, so he stood next to him and opened the door, quickly moving out of the way so that the team could make a good breach. The sight was horrifying. It looked like Jess, but it was hard to tell. There was so much blood that the floor was slippery.

“Cut them loose,” Troy said. “Be careful with Denny. There’s no telling how long he’s been upside down. Bring him down slowly,” Troy was saying, trying to manage the situation.

Neither Nathan nor Denny was speaking. Nathan had a look in his eyes, though. His eyes were telling a story of deep loss, sorrow, pain, hatred, anger, and vengeance.

Both men were now cut free from their bonds. They walked out of the building and into the night air. They stood in solace of one another, but didn’t speak; they didn’t need to. Each of them knew what was in their future. It was a red vengeance.

Captain Richards and Rory Price were waiting at the rally point. They had been without contact for at least two hours, and their worries were legitimately growing.

“We’ve got incoming vehicles,” Rory called out. Captain Richards and the others took cover until they saw it was Banks’s convoy with Tori driving the lead vehicle. Each man stepped out from his hiding place and met the convoy.

Captain Richards walked up and met Banks at the passenger side of the lead HMMVV.

“How goes the mission?” he asked.

“We lost Nathan, Denny, and Jess,” Banks said.

“Lost? What do you mean by lost?” Richards asked. Nathan was the captain’s nephew, and Richards was instantly distraught at the thought.

“Not that kind of loss, sir,” Banks replied.

Tori interrupted the conversation by saying, “They were taken, Richards.”

“Taken by who?”

“There was a counterattack that came in from the north wall. I think they took them prisoner, but we can’t find them,” she said.

“We can’t find Troy and his group either. After they drew out the guards and took cover, we kinda lost them after that,” Richards said.

“Mission accomplishment, right, sir?” Banks asked Richards, hoping to get a reassuring and unquestionable reply of yes.

Captain Richards stepped away and checked himself. He didn’t want to leave without Nathan, but he understood mission accomplishment. That was a language he’d been preaching to his men for the last few years. To go back on it now, for personal reasons, would cause his men to lose respect for him.

“Load up,” Richards called out. “We’re going to open those shipping containers, shut this place down, and head west.”

“You heard the captain,” Banks shouted. “Load up.