Last Stand: Patriots (Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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