Patriots & Tyrants (Rebels & Lies Trilogy Book 2) (27 page)

This was a
conversation that he didn’t want to have. That was all that Harvey could think
about as he pulled his son from lunch and into a small, dirty, and private
room. Dust was everywhere as well as dirt on floor. A couple of empty tables
and chairs were scattered about. The wood on each chipped, cracked, and showed
signs of aging. What little light was in the room was provided sunlight
creeping in through the cracked window.

Buck had no idea what
was going on. He didn’t even question his father as to why he didn’t want him
to storm the building with him. To Buck, it was just as good to fight outside
as it was inside. The young kid never would have thought that his father was
going to pull him out of the mission entirely. That he would be asked, and if
need be, told to not participate. This mission was too dangerous for a green
solider like Buck.

The only fear that
Harvey had, really, was how Buck would react. Buck was prone to think that any
kind of criticism was simply a slight on him. In almost every case that was not
true, but that was how Buck took it. He was a lot like his mother in that way.
She would do the same thing anytime Harvey tried to talk to her about things.
That thought brought about a quick smile which was gone almost immediately.
Buck didn’t even notice it.

“What do you need,
pop?” Buck demanded. “That damn tofu they feed us is delicious.”

Smartass,
Harvey thought before he spoke. “Let’s have a seat
over there.”

Harvey pointed toward the
tables and chairs to their right. They both walked over to them and took a
seat. Buck sat across from his father with a raised eyebrow. Harvey almost
chickened out, but he knew that this was something that had to be done. He took
a deep breath and looked deep into his son’s eyes.

“Son,” Harvey said. “I
don’t want you to go on this next mission.”

Buck stood and slammed
the chair to the ground. “That’s impossible! I’m going and you can’t stop me!”

“Listen to me, son.”

“No,” Buck said as he
pointed his index finger. “You listen to me. I’m going out there. This mission
is way too important for me to just sit it out.”

It was Harvey’s turn
to stand. He looked at the still pointed index finger then gave a hard, stern
look to Buck. Buck relaxed his posture and then lowered his finger. His hands
were now in the pockets of his blue jeans. Harvey moved in closer to his son,
but Buck’s head just lowered to the ground.

“Buck, this is going
to be a dangerous one. Who knows what will happen out there? If they call in
reinforcements or they bomb the place…”

Buck’s head shot up.
“I know the risks. I’m still going out there.”

“No, I’m your father,
and I forbid it. That’s the end of it.”

“Why don’t you want me
to fight?”

“Because…” Harvey
started. “You’re too young for this. The other missions, they were dangerous,
but not so much as this one. Not to mention, you’ve frozen under pressure
before, and…”

“Ha,” Buck said.
“You’re so full of shit. Weren’t you the one who told me not to let one mistake
haunt me forever?”

Harvey nodded, “Yes, I
did. But, again, son, this is completely different. I will not allow you to
go.”

“What am I supposed to
do then?” Buck asked as he lowered his head. “Just sit here and twiddle my
thumbs.”

“You could sit here
and think about your life and how you want to live it. You’re only twenty years
old. There will be plenty more missions for you to go on.” Harvey moved close
and then put his hand on Buck’s shoulder. “Can’t you see that I’m just looking
out for you?”

“I can see that,” Buck
replied as he moved his shoulder from the grip of his father’s hand. “I can
also see that you still don’t trust me out there in battle.”

“It has nothing to do
with trust. I don’t want to see my son bleeding out there, wishing he had
stayed behind.”

“Whatever.”

The two stood in
silence then. Harvey kept looking around the room, thinking of something to
say, but nothing came to his mind. Buck just looked to the tile floor and
kicked up dirt from it. It was a battle of wills, but at the end of the day,
Harvey knew he had the upper hand. He could personally make sure that Buck was
nowhere near the battlefield.

A part of him, though,
felt the guilt of having to make a decision that should have been his son’s,
who was a grown adult. However, he was not yet a man, and was too young to make
these kinds of life altering decisions. Not only life altering, but potentially
life ending. Buck could stay back and sulk all he wanted to and would
eventually get over it. If Harvey allowed him out into the battlefield…

“You’ve grown so
much,” Harvey said to break the silence.

“I’m surprised you
noticed.” Buck replied.

“Look, I know that I
haven’t been the world’s best father, but when all this over, I promise that we
will catch up.”

“Just let me go,
Father. I won’t die and I won’t disappoint.”

“The decision has
already been made.”

“Fine”, Buck replied.
He turned and stormed out of the room.

Harvey didn’t attempt
to stop him. He had a mission to prepare for.

The rain outside
started to pick up in intensity. Kaspar leaned against the wall and used the
overhang above him to avoid the rain drops. He had a hand around his cigarette.
His eyes were nearly covered by the hood of his sweatshirt as he took another
drag. That lightheaded feeling started to overcome him. It had been a while
since he had a smoke and now, it seemed, that filthy habit was about to be
picked up again. Krys got him to quit initially, but she was gone now, and
there was nobody else to care enough to tell him not to.

He was waiting for
Sullivan to come out. If the coward would come out at all. Kaspar got some help
from one of the rebels by telling the rebel his story. The rebel took Kaspar’s
side in an instant and told him he would see what he could do. If everything
went according to plan, Sullivan would walk towards the small building directly
behind the power plant for a top secret meeting. Kaspar, of course, had no way
of knowing how gullible the supposed former Agent was, but there was always the
chance.

The mission to come
could wait, Kaspar thought as he remembered what Clarke told him the night
before. To not do anything stupid, that the mission came before anything else,
all that bullshit. It was not that Kaspar didn’t understand the importance of
the next mission. That much he did understand. The problem was that he had
something personal to finish and he was going to see it through before the
mission. After all, he could very well be killed in that USR controlled
building and then who would avenge Mother then?

Kaspar was back to his
old ways. He knew it, but couldn’t help it. He never dreamed that his eyes
would see that piece of shit again. If Krys were still here, Kaspar knew that
she would talk him out of it. There would have been something in her bag of
tricks to convince him that it was the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately for
Sullivan, she wasn’t here anymore.

After taking one last
drag, he saw his target, walking towards the small building just as planned.
The poor bastard bit the hook. Kaspar threw the cigarette to the side and
started to make a run for Sullivan. Loud splashes of water flew from under his
feet. His mark heard him coming but Kaspar didn’t care. Sullivan turned and
prepared himself for the incoming fight. Kaspar just kept running, ignoring the
stings from the tiny droplets of rain on his face, intent on ending this part
of his life and moving on. When he got close, Sullivan put up his closed fists
and forewarms in a defensive posture. This would be easy, Kaspar thought,
nothing compared to some of the other fighters he fought in his past life.

“Come here, you son of
a bitch!” Kaspar cried.

The two met in the
middle of the field, already drenched from the rain fall above. Kaspar took a
swing which Sullivan ducked under. The former Agent threw his own which
connected to the left side of the face. The ex-prize fighter took the shot and
didn’t feel it. There was so much adrenaline flowing through him that he could
have been hit by a car at low speed and still gotten up. Kaspar faked right,
and then delivered a left hook to Sullivan’s cheek.

He went for another shot,
but his opponent ducked under it. This time, Sullivan wrapped his arms around
his attacker’s midsection. During the attempted takedown, Kaspar threw a hard
punch at Sullivan’s right ear. Sullivan remained undeterred. He grabbed at
Kaspar’s left leg to throw off his balance. With all his strength, he pulled
the leg up and Kaspar’s foot was lifted off the ground. Kaspar tried to fight
it off, but Sullivan threw his body weight to the left. Eventually, the
attacker couldn’t keep his balance and Sullivan tackled him to the ground.

Upon impact with the
wet grass and mud, the back of Kaspar’s head hit hard on the ground. The force
of the impact nearly knocked him out, but he managed to keep his consciousness.
Sullivan, on top of his opponent in a kneeled position, looked down at him. In
an instant, he delivered a sharp blow to the nose. Blood leaked out of it like
water from a gauzier. Kaspar knew that his nose was broken the instant it was
hit. Sullivan went for another one but stopped himself mid punch. He stood over
his attacker and spit on the ground.

“What the hell’s your
problem?” Sullivan demanded.

Kaspar moved his hands
to his nose. “You know what it is. You killed my mother!”

“I told you already, I
didn’t pull the trigger. I tried to stop my men from doing it. I wanted to
bring her in for questioning.”

“You think I’m going
to believe that?”

“Believe what you
want,” Sullivan barked. “I’m done defending myself to you. My son has been
kidnapped. I’ve got to get him back. That’s all I care about now. And, I’m not
letting anyone, let alone you, stop me. I would advise staying the hell out of
my way from now on.”

Sullivan turned to
walk away. Kaspar tried to force his way from the ground.

“I’m not finished with
you!” Kaspar cried.

Sullivan turned back around.
His opponent managed to only get back to a seated position. The fogginess in
his head was throwing off his balance. The former Agent moved in, blocked a
halfhearted swing, and then punched the fallen fighter twice with two hard
right hooks. After the hooks, he used his foot to kick Kaspar back to the
ground.

“This is finished,”
Sullivan said looking down as he extended his hand downward. “I’m learning how
to repent. You need to learn how to forgive.”

“To hell with you.”
Kaspar replied.

Sullivan then stood
tall. “Fine, I’ll leave you here to bleed and think about it.”

With that, Sullivan
turned and walked away, ignoring all the obscenities that were shouted his way.
Once Kaspar realized that he wasn’t coming back, and that he was physically
unable to chase after him, he laid his head onto the wet grass. He then reached
up with both hands to his nose. With one sharp turn, his crooked nose was
popped back into place. Kaspar let out a loud cry and then did what Sullivan
left him there to do.

He bled and thought
about what to do next.

“What happened to
you?” Buck wondered as he took a break from shooting rounds from his Glock 17
into the paper target.

“I picked a fight.”
Kaspar replied. The white bandage over his nose littered with droplets of red
crimson.

“I can see that. You
got your ass kicked, didn’t you?”

“Let’s try minding our
business.”

“Fair enough,” Buck
replied as he resumed his firing position.

Kaspar pulled out a
handgun of his own. His hand gripped the handle of Krys’s P99. He looked down
at the gun for a moment before he started to fire away at a separate target
next to Buck. He fired in three round bursts from the semi-automatic. Each time
he practiced on getting two to the chest and one to the head. It was a
technique that Paxton tried to teach him as well as Krys. After all this time
he still wasn’t a pro at it, but he could manage.

As he fired the last
three rounds from his mag and started his reload, he asked himself again why he
didn’t take a gun to that failed confrontation with Sullivan. He realized that
he made a conscious choice not to. He figured that he could give him a tune up
and that would have been good enough. However, he made a huge error in
underestimating Sullivan. He knew that his adversary would have had hand to
hand combat training by the USR. Still, in his anger, he relied on his own
instincts and the fact that he had never lost a fight in his life.

“What’s got you all
hot and bothered, anyway?” Kaspar asked noticing the pouty look on Buck’s face.

“Mind our own
business, right?” Buck replied, finishing off his own mag.

“Just curious, I
guess.”

“Well,” Buck replied
as he grabbed a fresh clip, “my father wants me to sit out this next mission,
so I guess I’m just wasting ammo.”

Kaspar raised an
eyebrow. “You going to listen to him?”

“Well, yes, at the end
of the day he’s my father. I have to respect his demands, I suppose.”

“May I ask how old you
are?”

Buck laughed, “Why?”

“Just tell me your
age.”

“I’m twenty.”

“Twenty, huh?” Kaspar
turned his attention back to the paper target and aimed. “I think that makes
you old enough to make your own decisions.”

Kaspar fired off
another mag into the paper target. He lowered the gun once it was empty and
looked at his handiwork. He wasn’t quite satisfied with it, but it wasn’t poor
marksmanship, either. With a sigh, he grabbed another mag from out of his pocket,
reloaded, and then looked to the target. The firing in his left ear ceased and
Buck cleared his throat before Kaspar got to firing again.

“Yes?” Kaspar asked.

“You think I should go
then? Disobey my father?”

“I don’t know what to
tell you,” Kaspar replied. He lowered the gun then turned to face the young
man. “Like we talked about before, I wish I had a father to look out for me,
keep me out of trouble. But, at the same time, it’s not his place to tell you
what to do or how you should live your life. Do you think you’d regret not
going?”

“I don’t know, yet. I
know if I got hurt real bad or if I was bleeding to death I’d wish I had
listened.”

“Let me tell you
something, kid. I’m not much older than you, but you can’t ever know what’s
going to happen.” Kaspar cleared the lump in his throat with a hard swallow.
“Sometimes, I wish Mother never got shot, but then I’d still be doing the same
things I’d been doing. I also wouldn’t have met Krys…”

“I’m really sorry
about what happened to her…”

Kaspar lifted a hand
and shook his head. “No apologies, what happened to her couldn’t have been
prevented. What I’m saying is: I think for people to truly find happiness, they
need to make their decisions, take the circumstances that come along with it,
and live with whatever happens.”

“But, if I die out
there, I’m not going to live with anything.” Buck replied with a smirk.

“You want to make
difference, though, don’t you?”

“Sure I do.”

“And, is it for
yourself, to prove something to your old man…”

Buck interrupted, “I
don’t know why. Obviously, I don’t know any different, I was raised into this
life.”

“But, the fact remains
that you want to make a difference for…something. You can’t do that sitting on
your hands. Your father needs to let you go, to understand that you’re a grown
ass man, I guess.”

Buck smiled, “You
think I should go, then, right?”

“That’s your problem.”

Buck lifted the
handgun in his hand and pointed it at the target in front of him. There was an
uncontrollable smile growing across his face before he fired. Kaspar noticed it
and the instant guilt trip hit him with a sudden explosion of negative energy.
It really wasn’t his place to tell Buck what to do, or to try to convince the
kid to get into something way over his head. Kaspar also couldn’t just sit back
and have Buck not do something because his father told him so. He would never
outright admit it to Buck, but he envied him. For those reasons they just
discussed. His own father didn’t give two shits about him, and here was this
kid, who had a father trying to keep him away from battle. Harvey was only
looking out for his son’s best interest, and Kaspar knew that, but at the same
time, Buck was a grown man. He reasoned with himself that what he told the kid
was right.

Kaspar, aiming at the
paper target, just hoped that Buck didn’t have to die to prove a point.