Patriots & Tyrants (Rebels & Lies Trilogy Book 2) (11 page)

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.

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.