Resistance: A Prepper's War Read Online Free PDF Page B

sharply.
     
    Locke lowered himself into the chair behind him and drummed his fingers on the conference room table. He looked older, more tired than he had before. “Jim,” Locke said, “It’s not your decision to make.”
     
    “Like hell it’s not!” he shouted, but he knew Locke was right. Ultimately it would be Samantha’s decision to make.
     
    “We haven’t had a solid opportunity like this in the past three months. It’s just a matter of time before whoever is behind all of this figures out where this code went and when they do they’ll be the ones to negotiate the terms,” Locke said. “Let’s get this information to them on our terms while we can still get something out of it,” Locke pleaded.
     
    “That’s all we are to you aren’t we?” Jim said. “Just things to squeeze opportunity out of,” Jim continued as the words grew harsher. “It was the same thing when you met me at that refugee camp outside of Phoenix. You were just using me and my family for figuring out the bigger picture.”
     
    “Everything I did was for the benefit of my country,” Locke said sternly. “Whatever qualms you have with me aren’t because you’re upset with me. It’s because of what happened with Matt.”
     
    All of the events that had been set in motion since Phoenix were coming to a boiling point. The missions, the hallucinations, everything that plagued him was corning him, forcing him to face the obstacles in front of him.
     
    Locke stood up and walked over to Jim and handed him the mission file. “You’re plane leaves at zero six hundred,” Locke said as he slid the file into Jim’s hand. The two men were nose to nose. “You’re dismissed,” Locke said softly.
     
    Coyle, Brett, and Twink were down the hall waiting for him when Jim left the conference room. He handed Brett the file as he walked past him. “Get the gear ready,” Jim said, “We leave in the morning.”
     
    When Samantha got the call that evening she wasn’t sure how to feel. She wasn’t mad, or sad. The only emotion that she really had, which she felt terrible for having it, was relief.
     
    She immediately pushed it out of her mind. She shouldn’t feel that way. It made her a bad wife, a bad mother. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to tell Annie, who’d finally started speaking again. Samantha decided the best course of action was to just tell her daughter what was happening. Besides, the doctors had told her that this would be good for her. They said closure was important.
     
    Annie was moving a toy across the ground that Tigs was chasing. She was giggling as the cat ran around batting the feathery end with her paws. Samantha didn’t want to lose this again. Seeing her daughter smiling and laughing again felt to good, but she knew putting it off would only make it worse.
    “Annie,” she said.
     
    The girl looked up at her mother as the toy stopped moving and Tigs pounced on it, trapping it between her paws.
     
    Samantha walked into the room and sat on her bed and patted the seat next to her. Annie hopped up next to her mother and she turned to face her daughter holding her both her tiny hands in hers.
     
    “You know how much your father loved you, right?” Samantha asked.
     
    Annie looked down for a moment and then back up to her mother with wide eyes and nodded.
     
    “We’re going to his funeral tomorrow. Do you know what that is?” Samantha asked; her words were gentle, like they were walking on cracking ice and any moment they would plunge her daughter back into the icy cold to steal her voice.
     
    Annie nodded her head again. “Yes,” Annie said, “it’s where we get to say goodbye.”
     
    Tears started to well up in Samantha’s eyes and some leaked out onto her cheeks. Samantha’s lips quivered as she spoke. “That’s right,” she said as her voice cracked. “We get to say goodbye.” Samantha wrapped her arms around her daughter as the tears continued to roll down her