Patriots & Tyrants (Rebels & Lies Trilogy Book 2)

by Cotton, Brian

“It’s going to be okay,” Kaspar said as he wiped the tears away.

  Krys winced before she spoke. “How…can you say that? I’ve never been this bad before.”

  “I just know it’s all going to work out. We are going to get that cure and…”

  “We’ve been saying this for months now. What if there is no hope?”

  Kaspar shook his head. “I can’t believe that I’m hearing this from you right now. You’ve got to stay strong.”

  “How can I stay strong?” Krys said as more tears flowed. “Look at me. My body is…wasting away before my own eyes. I just want to rest.”

  Kaspar snapped. “No!”

  Krys was taken aback by her lover’s sudden aggressiveness. She let go of her grip and laid her head flat on the soft, white pillow. Kaspar let loose of her and stood. He rubbed his stubbled chin and began pacing. Krys closed her eyes and remained silent. There was a sudden regret in him that he snapped at her like that, but she was being so weak right now. He couldn’t bring himself to understand the nature of her condition. The only thing that he wanted was the old Krys back and he was starting to doubt, once more, that the old Krys would ever come back.

  After he was done pacing, Kaspar walked back over to the pallet of blankets and got down on his knees again. He then bent down and rested his tired head on her midsection. The feeling of her hands running through his hair calmed him for the moment.

  “I’m sorry I snapped.” Kaspar said.

  “It’s okay. I know how you must feel to see me like this. But, I’m at the end of my rope. I don’t know if I even want to go on this next mission or not.”

  “Please, stay with me out there. One last time, for me.”

  Krys was silent for a moment before she replied. “Just this one last time, Ryan. After this, I’m done. I can’t go on like this.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Kaspar moved his head up and faced her. “We’re going to get that cure and we’re going to save you. I promised that I would.”

  Their moment was cut short when Harvey entered the tent. The leader tried to sympathize with Krys, but the team needed to move out, and right now. He moved in and looked down at his soldier.

  “How are you feeling?” Harvey wondered knowing the answer.

  “How do you think I’m feeling?” was Krys’s response.

  “I know. I hate to rush you like this, but we need to move. Can you move?”

  “Yeah, I can move.”

  She started to get up with Kaspar’s help. Harvey walked behind her and took the IV out of her arm then quickly taped gauze to it. With Kaspar’s help, Krys was able to get back to her feet. As they walked, her legs wobbled a little bit, but they managed to make it out of the tent.

  “Look,” Harvey said once they were out, “you don’t have to go on this next run if you are not able to.”

  “I’ll be fine, Harv, trust me. I just need to rest on the way there, that’s all.”

  “We’ll get you another IV and some room to lie down.” Harvey replied. “We’re meeting at the vehicles in twenty minutes. We’ll take your tent down for you.”

  With that, Kaspar led Krys to the armored vehicle as Harvey, Dexter, and Clarke worked on the tent. Inside, the others already made a pallet of blankets on one of the benches for Krys to lie down on. Kaspar tried to help her get comfortable. Once settled, he grabbed another blanket and wrapped her up in it.

  “Thank you,” Krys said with a smile.

  “You don’t have to thank me.” Kaspar replied.

  .21

  Three days wasn’t long enough. The timeline was sped up by the fact that Sullivan had nothing to go on. Little, his neophyte rookie partner, surely wasn’t going to help him. The young gun reminded Sullivan a lot of himself back when he first got promoted. So far up the USR’s ass that he couldn’t tell left from right. The kid just sat there beside him in the car practicing his quick draw. They were still tuned in to the hideout, and once more, there was nothing going on inside, or so it seemed. Their marks just talked shit and accused each other cheating once again.

  Sullivan was sure that the code they spoke in was either the cards or in the way they talked to one another. He reasoned that the most likely would be the cards because there were only so many combinations of trash talk that could be encoded. With the cards, you had any number of varieties of ways to speak to one another. It was silent, the cameras couldn’t pick up on it, and the suspected rebels inside could play it off like they were just playing cards. It was ingenious, Sullivan thought.

  That three day time limit caused the Agent to take more drastic measures in his quest for answers. There was little doubt in his mind with all the secrecy and desperation on his employer’s part that they were involved in some way with what killed his wife. With his eyes closed, Sullivan breathed in deep as he reached in his pocket for that black device he took earlier in the day. He fiddled inside of the pocket and drew the attention of his partner.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Little demanded. “Playing pocket pull, Boss?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Sullivan replied.

  “Okay…”

  His fingers found the little red button in the center. He pressed down on the button and in a matter of seconds a loud static whined through their speakers. Both Agents ripped the ear plugs from their ears. Their ears rang from the unpleasant noise that the device caused.

  “What the hell is that?” Little cried.

  “I don’t know. Some kind of scrambler or something.” Sullivan replied.

  “You did this, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “That thing in your pocket. You caused this.”

  “Fuck you, rookie.”

  Little was undeterred. “You trying to sabotage this whole thing?”

  “Why would I do that? You think I don’t like putting food on my kid’s table? I’m going in there.” Sullivan reached for his Glock 17. “You stay put.”

  “The hell you mean ‘stay put’.”

  “I mean, keep your rookie ass in this car.”

  “You’re crazy. This is my case, too.”

  Sullivan pointed the gun at the kid. Just like last night, Little just froze and didn’t make any attempt to subdue his partner. As much as this rookie wanted to put away the bad people and serve his country, he was just as much of a coward who didn’t want to get hurt. Sullivan actually liked the change of pace. There was no way he could have gotten away with this maverick behavior before with those two dip shits. They would have put him under.

  “You’re going to stay in this car,” Sullivan ordered. “If you disobey my orders, then I will personally see you put in prison as a member of the resistance.”

  “You’re not going to get away with this!”

  “Oh, yes, I am. Remember that little talk we had about seniority? Who do you think they would believe?”

  “You’ve done lost it!”

  “Stay put. If I even feel you creeping up behind me, I will turn around and put two in your chest, let you bleed for a little bit, then put one in your head. You get me?”

  The rookie simply nodded. Sullivan exited the car and back peddled the first few steps as he faced his partner. When he was certain that Little would comply with his orders, he turned and jogged at a steady pace towards the warehouse. He kept his gun held low at his thigh as he moved. That little device was something else, Sullivan thought. The device was still experimental but it seemed to be doing the trick. It would scramble any video and listening device within a half mile of where the user was. It was supposed to be used to scramble the resistance’s communications when the USR would breach their locations. Now, Sullivan was using it to scramble out the USR’s signals so he could talk with the resistance face to face.

  When he reached the door of the warehouse, he stopped for a moment to breathe. Visions of his son clouded his mind. He wondered if this was really worth it. They were resistance, after all, and their leader in there would no doubt recognize the man who interrogated
him days before.

  Through the door, he could hear them inside, getting all rowdy over their “card game”. He would be outnumbered six to one. If they decided to, they could kill the Agent, and then make a run for it. Somehow, Sullivan didn’t think that was going to happen. The men inside still had a plan, and they needed to execute it. If they killed an Agent, they would be forced to abandon that assignment, causing the resistance even more headaches than they already had with the mighty USR breathing down their necks.

  Just play it cool.

  .22

  With one swift kick from his left foot, Sullivan was able to knock the door open. The wave of surprise that hit him almost knocked at his concentration for a brief, split second. The boys in the room all dropped their cards and stood from their chairs. The Agent had the upper hand for the moment, as the men in the room were not expecting someone to barge in with a Glock pointed in their direction. Reed pulled out a revolver and held the others back.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Reed shouted.

  “I’m with the USR.” Sullivan replied back. “I’m not here to arrest anyone. I’ve come to warn you.”

  The men started to scramble around, but Reed told them to keep calm. Sure enough, the rebel leader recognized Sullivan from the interrogation room. Reed moved forward, gun still trained on the Agent’s head. The Agent kept his gun trained, as well, hoping that the rookie stayed in the car like he was ordered to. Now came the hard part. He had to convince these men that he was, in fact, not here to do anything but warn them of the coming invasion of USR Agents.

  “You were the one who interrogated me, right?” Reed demanded.

  “That’s right, I…”

  X moved forward, a silver Colt .45 automatic in his hands, and pushed Reed aside. Things were about to get out of hand. He moved his gun from Reed to the former gangster.

  “Let’s blast his ass, homes.” X said. “They’ve found us. We can’t risk our operation.”

  “You can still run your operation,” Sullivan said. “Just listen to what I have to say.”

  “Why should we do that? We know you’ve got this place bugged.”

  “Don’t shoot.” Sullivan said as he reached with his free hand into his pocket. He pulled out the little black device for the all to see. “This is blocking our signal. They can’t hear or see us right now.”

  “I don’t believe…” X started to say.

  “X, lower your weapon.” Reed said.

  “Are you loco?” X demanded. “He’s an Agent.”

  “An Agent who came alone,” Reed replied. “Agents never come alone, am I right?”

  “That’s right.” Sullivan replied.

  The others in the room moved forward now. They raised their handguns and aimed them at the intruder. Sullivan’s mind started to race. He should have known that this was a bad idea. In fact, he did know it was, but this was the only way, given his short time constraints. The Agent’s eyes darted from left to right at all the guns pointed at him. There was an eerie silence in the room. It was time to change tactics.

  “Look,” Sullivan started to plead as he raised his gun hand in the air. “I’m not here for anything else other than to warn you, that’s all.”

  “Why the fuck would you do that?” X demanded.

  “I want answers. I was hoping you fellas could help me with that.”

  “Why would we talk to you? C’mon, boss, let’s do him and dump the body.”

  “You would kill an Agent in cold blood?” Sullivan demanded. “That’s not smart…”

  X cocked the hammer of his Colt back. “Letting you live wouldn’t be smart…”

  “Okay!” Reed shouted. “Everyone, lower your damn weapons, now!”

  The others obeyed and lowered their guns, all except for X. He remained defiant. There was no way in hell he was going to lower his weapon. Reed moved over and tapped the man on the shoulder. He tried to ask him again to lower the weapon, but the mean scowl and focused eyes of X remained on the Agent.

  “X,” Reed started to say. “If this man was here for anything else, he would’ve brought an army of Agents with him, but he didn’t. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  “You’ve gotten soft, Bossman.”

  “It’s the right play.”

  “Your Bossman is right,” Sullivan said. He inched his gun back into the shoulder holster. “It’s the only play you got. You kill me here, you can kiss your operation good-bye. You kick me out, you’ll never see me again, and you won’t know what the USR is plotting right now, either. So, you lose your operation still. You can listen to me, though, maybe learn a thing or two about your enemy, and continue…whatever it is that you are doing.”

  “How can we trust you?” X demanded.

  “You can’t really know for sure. But, you can listen to what I have to say.”

  “Spit it out, Puerco.”

  “All right, now all of you, listen up.” Sullivan said.

  The others moved in around him. Sullivan still felt uncomfortable with this many men who swore that all Agents were their enemies were surrounding him. He would just have to get over it. After taking a few breaths, he gained his composure.

  Sullivan cleared his throat. “Okay, they’ve given me three days to come up with something concrete about your operation.”

  “What happens in three days?” Sugar asked.

  “In three days, if I don’t have anything, the USR is going to breach the hell out of this place and kill you all. If you survive the breach, you’ll live only to be tortured and publically executed.”

  “How much do they know about us?” Reed wondered.

  “Not much. They know you all meet here after work. They know you play cards. They also know that you are most likely working for the resistance.”

  There was an instant silence. Sullivan moved his head slow around the room. His eyes roamed around to see if anyone would bite. He still didn’t know for a fact that they were actually resistance. It had always been an assumption. The assumption proved to be accurate with the reaction of the men when he entered the room, saying he was USR.

  “Anything else?” Reed asked.

  “Well, there is one other thing,” Sullivan said. “Something that I don’t know, and I’m not sure if any of my superiors know, but what is it that you do in the factory?”

  “We make things,” X answered.

  Sullivan allowed a smirk. “What kind of things?”

  “Not going to tell you that. We don’t even know you…”

  “Look,” Sullivan said. He placed his hands up in the air. “We don’t have a whole lot of time. I’ve got a rookie sitting in a car right now who’s about to blow his wad any second. Just heed my warning. Don’t meet up here. You can meet somewhere else if you want, but not here. Just be more careful about being made.”

  He reached into his pocket and when he did, the men in the room started to go for their weapons again. Reed called them off. Again, Sullivan raised his hands in submission. They all backed off. In his right, cupped hand, rested a piece of paper. The Agent handed it over to Reed. As he slowly began to back away, the men behind him moved over to allow him an easy path back to the door.

  Once he was gone, everyone in the room gathered around Reed to decide what was next. Reed unfolded the piece of paper and read aloud from it. It was simply a phone number and instructions for when they would next meet.

  “I don’t like it.” X remarked as he began to pace around the room.

  “Well, like it or not, he did tip us off.” Reed replied.

  “That’s fine, he’s a real humanitarian. What if this is a trick? To get us out in the open and pick us off?”

  “If he wanted us arrested or dead, he could have ordered that a long time ago.”

  Pinkie stepped in, “I’m with X on this one, boss. We can’t trust him. We just need to go forward with the plan and then get the hell out of here.”

  “Listen, guys, we’ve got help on the inside now. Potential help,
anyway, but he did tip us off…”

  “Why would he do that?” X demanded.

  “I’m not a mind reader, X, but maybe he’s telling the truth, he just wants to talk. Something must have happened to him. Something that we might be able to help him with in return.”

  “You speaking in maybe’s, if’s, and hypotheticals is starting to piss me off.”

  Reed stepped up to the second in command. “You challenging my authority is pissing me off, too, X. Don’t forget, you asked me to lead us.”

  “I’m beginning to think that was a mistake, homes.”

  “Well, you’re just going to have to live with it.”

  “Not if I relieve you of your command.”

  Pepper moved in and got between them. “Woah, woah, fellas. We don’t need this right now. Boss is right, we did put him in command, let’s go with what he says.”

  “Your boss is going to get us all killed.” X replied.

  “All right, all right.” Reed said. “Look, let’s see what happens in the next two days and then decide what to do. If our place gets raided then we’ll move forward and see what the son of a bitch wants. If not, then we know we can’t trust him, got it?”

  “Fine by me.”

  The men began to gather their belongings and head for the door.

  .23

  Harvey and his team already set up camp by the time Sanders showed up with his squad. The sun had set hours ago and nothing remained in the sky but a vast darkness, the clouds covered up the stars and half of the moon. When the motors of Sanders’s team’s vehicles roared into the night air, the rebels in Harvey’s team all grabbed their assault rifles, ready to strike if it happened to be USR troops. They all approached the vehicle with their weapons shouldered and at the ready. Sanders hopped out of the driver’s side of his tank like personnel delivery vehicle. It had ten wheels, was almost stealth like in the blackness of night thanks to the high tech paint job. When he was on his feet he gave a big salute and a bigger smile. The flashlight from Harvey’s rifle projected off Sanders’s mug.

  “Lower your weapons, men.” Harvey said. He approached Sanders and the two saluted one another.