Freedom TM

town? Dennis had never shown any interest in staying close to home. Although, who could blame him? Fossen had drilled into his kids at an early age that they were going to college and getting white-collar jobs. The day his son sat him down and explained that he was joining the military so they wouldn’t have to borrow money for school … well, Fossen felt both shame and pride at the same time. Shame that his son had to make such a choice, and pride that he had.
    Fossen prayed for his son’s safety—even though he wasn’t very religious, he tended to become so on certain occasions.
    The dogs started barking outside. Fossen knew the pattern. If it was a raccoon, a skunk, or an opossum, they’d be run off pretty quick. Stray dogs were another matter, but his dogs were in a fenced enclosure. They’d be safe.
    The barking didn’t subside, though.
    Fossen sat up in bed. All the exterior lights were off. And the motion detector lights near the barn hadn’t come on either.
Strange.
But the dogs were going crazy. Certainly the hired hands and students in the prefab unit must have heard this racket. He threw off the covers and listened more intently. There was movement downstairs. Creaking of boards on the staircase.
    Was it Jenna?
The dogs wouldn’t be going crazy.
    Adrenaline spread through his bloodstream like warm water, and he slipped off the bed. He reached underneath it for the pump Remington shotgun.
    The barking of the dogs suddenly stopped. Silence.
    Then he heard a terrified scream in the hallway. “
Daddy!
”
    He just started to get to his feet with the shotgun when the bedroom door kicked in and a blinding white light pierced his eyes. He felt something hard and blunt slam him in the stomach and he doubled over. He couldn’t get any breath in his lungs.
    He heard his wife screaming as the shotgun was yanked out of his hands. People thundered around his bedroom shouting in some foreign language.
    “La pamant! La pamant!”
    “Acum! Fa-o, acum!”
    Still sucking for breath and blinded by the lights, Fossen heard struggling and breaking glass. He was then thrown to the ground by powerful hands.
    Paramilitaries.
The word kept going through his mind.
    He’d been told Greeley had developed an early warning system. But then—he hadn’t been linked to the darknet while he was sleeping. He didn’t know anyone who did that.
    He heard more screaming in the house. And he finally found breath to speak. “Jenna! Lynn!”
    The powerful hands pulled his arms behind his back and he felt a zip tie cinched tightly around his wrists. He’d just begun to get his vision back as someone strapped duct tape across his mouth and pulled a hood over his head.
    He heard muffled screaming and shouting now. He was hauled up painfully by his arms and dragged, he assumed, out of the room. He felt his feet thudding down the stairs and across the living room, and suddenly he felt the night air on his legs and arms. He was dressed only in boxers and an undershirt. It was a warm summer night.
    He could hear crying and whimpering, and suddenly the hood was pulled from his head. He was shocked by what he saw.
    Dozens of heavily armed men in black ski masks, jeans, and casual shirts surrounded them in the moonlight. They had AK-47 assault rifles slung across their chests and wore body armor over their clothing, along with vests of spare clips. Night vision goggles covered their eyes.
    They had gathered their captives in the yard behind the farmhouse, and Fossen could see his wife and daughter, as well as three hired hands and the four visiting students in their underwear or pajamas, kneeling, bound and gagged on the grass nearby. Only Fossen was still standing among all the men. Behind them, he could see the still forms of his dogs, Blackjack, Licorice, and Hurley, lying on the dirt of their pen. Dead.
    A tall, thickly built masked man stood in front of Fossen and rested his weapon in the crook of his arm. He spoke with a thick accent.
    “Mr. Fossen. You have lovely farm.” He reached down and, laughing, grabbed Jenna by her hair. “And lovely daughter.”
    The other men laughed.
    Fossen struggled to speak—to beg them to leave his family be. To take only him. But the duct tape over his mouth prevented it. He struggled with all he had against his bonds.
    The big man grabbed Fossen’s face in a viselike hand. He pointed to one of his compatriots, who tossed one end of a rope up over a thick branch of the old oak in their