Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX_
HAZARD
I don’t know what’s more embarrassing: crying in front of the Mike Bravo guys or getting hard while tackling Decaf to the floor. Something I told myself I wouldn’t do. Tackle him, that is. The getting hard thing was out of my control. Just like my emotions, apparently.
I’ve had days to stew over what my mom told me. She might have been careless about leaving Dad’s journals in the attic, but she made sure to keep the important things, like the redacted incident report about his death, somewhere I would never find it.
It only took me forcing my way into Decaf’s life for her to tell me the truth about the day my father died.
He defied his orders, and to be honest, if I were put in the same situation, I probably would have done the same thing he did. Like father, like son, I guess.
Reading how none of his unit had his back, how they kept their position and watched it happen, I tried to come up with reasons why his best friend would do that.
How Decaf could sit back and do nothing.
I’ve rationalized to where I thought I understood it.
That he knew he would also die had he followed.
I thought I had accepted it, and I promised myself I wouldn’t blame him or take it out on him.
But the second I saw him, all of that rationalization went out the window. All I could see was red.
Logically, I know that in the military, you have to follow orders, even if you don’t agree with them, but even acknowledging that, it doesn’t take the sting of it away.
Decaf abandoned my father and then abandoned me. And twenty-two years later, when I showed up on his metaphorical doorstep, he abandoned me again.
No one ordered him to stay away from me. This time, he chose it.
The room is filled with the kind of silence you only ever hear about in clichés. So quiet you could hear a pin drop, the tension is so thick it could be cut with a knife, blah, blah, blah, but I think the reality is that this room is filled with so much past trauma, no one knows how to handle it.
“It’s okay,” Decaf says again. “He deserves to get this out of his system.”
Even though I got a good punch in and Decaf’s cheek and the area around his eye is swelling, my rage still runs deep, and I want another shot at him, but I know Trav and Atlas won’t let me.
“Get what out of his system?” Atlas asks.
“The entire reason Decaf wants nothing to do with Haz in the first place,” Trav says. “Because the guilt of doing nothing to save Haz’s dad eats him alive every day.”
My head swivels in his direction. “You know? I mean, you’ve known this whole time?”
“Not the whole time, but it didn’t take too much digging to find the report, and I know Decaf.
How he’s the type of guy to take on that burden, even though none of it was his fault.
Anyone who blames him for what happened doesn’t know what it’s like in a war zone at a time when being gay in the military meant truly being alone.
” Trav turns one of the chairs at the table to face him, and he puts me in it.
“The reason you could have a military career at all is because of men like Decaf. Like me. You stand on our shoulders, so listen when I say this. Decaf already hates himself enough for the events that led to your father’s death. He shouldn’t, but he does.”
“I understand that,” I say, feeling defeated. “But I don’t understand how he could abandon me. Twice. He’s …” I flick my gaze over to Decaf who’s refusing to look at me. “He’s a piece of my dad that I never had, and he still refuses to give it to me.”
Decaf wants nothing to do with me.
“I wondered about that too,” Trav says and stands upright. “You might not know Decaf, but I do. I know without any doubt that if he’s staying away from you, it’s for a good reason. The only reason I can think of is that he’s doing it because someone asked him to.”
“Trav, don’t,” Decaf says.
“W-what?” I ask.
“Decaf is merely trying to stick by your mother’s wishes.” He turns to Decaf. “Am I right? She didn’t want you near him.”
I blink away the drying tears and swallow the new information Mom left out of her explanation. I glance over at Decaf, whose head is still held low. “Is that true?” I ask him.
Decaf refuses to look at me as he speaks, and he looks reluctant to say anything at all. “She has every right to protect you as she sees fit.”
“And I have every right to get to know my father, whether he’s here or not. You could’ve given that to me, but you walked away.”
“Because she asked me to!” he erupts.
“And evidently, following orders is more important than your best friend and his kid. I finally understand. Well, you’ve got your wish.” I stand and turn to Trav. “I quit.”
The fantasy of a massive storm-out is so much better than the reality. Especially when the reality is me trying to march my way out of the war room and never look back, only to be grabbed by my arm so hard, I almost rip my shoulder out of its socket.
“As much as I want to give you and Decaf exactly what you both want,” Trav starts, “unfortunately, there’s been a … development on the whole being an ally to the US government and working for them thing.”
“What development?” Decaf asks.
“Oh, you know, mainly that we are neither of those things anymore.” Trav tries to pull off a smile like everything is fine, but it’s obvious that nothing is.
My issues with Decaf are dropped way down the priorities list.
“Wait,” Iris says. “If we are neither working for the government nor an ally to them anymore, what does that make us?”
Trav drops the smile and delivers a knockout blow to us all. “Fucked. That makes us all fucked.”
He couldn’t have at least sugarcoated that?
As much as we hound Trav to tell us the details, he’s adamant we have to wait until everyone has arrived.
We’re told to take our seats, not to panic, and that it’s not as bad as it seems, but how can you say we’re enemies of our own government in one breath and then say, “It’s all good. Just chill.”
I should’ve quit sooner. I should have walked away as soon as I found out Decaf wants nothing to do with me.
Maybe then I wouldn’t be splitting in two as I realize my mom is the one responsible for it.
I understand wanting to protect me from the man she blames, but at the same time, my last thread of logic reminds me that none of this is his fault. Or hers.
Dad sacrificed his life to try to save someone else’s, and even though I don’t agree with what Decaf did, I do see his side too. I’m just not going to admit that out loud to him anytime soon. Or ever.
I don’t know what Trav’s update means for us as a team—maybe Mike Bravo is disbanding—but I do know that as soon as this meeting is over, I’m going to walk away from Denton Fitzgerald and plan to never see him again.
“Thank you all for coming,” Trav says as Angel and Proxy enter the room last. They pull up the remaining two seats down the opposite end, the empty ones next to Decaf. Apparently, his resting fuck-off face has scared everyone who wasn’t here for the drama from sitting near him.
Trav is up front, pacing back and forth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him frazzled before, but this is definitely what it is. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I’ve got it,” Atlas says and grips Trav’s shoulder as he steps forward.
“Basically, here’s the gist of what’s been happening here this past week.
Everyone knows that the world is a dumpster fire, and our current administration is only adding fuel to the fire.
Because of who we are, of what we can do, of what laws we’re willing to break in the name of our country, because the government wants plausible deniability when they say they never sanctioned certain events to occur, they came to us with a job.
A job Trav and I decided we weren’t willing to take on. ”
“The current political climate isn’t something I want us contributing to,” Trav says.
There are murmurs of agreement around the table, and I am one hundred percent on board with whatever they’re planning, so long as it means I can get away from Decaf as fast as possible, but I’m getting the impression there’s more to this story.
“When I told my White House contact exactly that, he said the new secretary of Homeland Security will most likely put us all on some kind of watch list.” Trav huffs. “Like we haven’t been threatened with that before.”
“But this …” Atlas adds. “This is different.”
“It started with getting notice of being audited from the IRS,” Trav says.
Atlas adds, “Then Lemon’s club was raided last night because of a tip-off about drugs. Which there weren’t any. That part of the business died when Lemon took over.”
“It might be nothing,” Trav says. “But I want all of you to be on high alert. If we have become enemies of the state, it won’t be long before they send for us to be taken out.”
I frown. “All because you said no to a job?”
“More or less,” Trav says.
“You want to tell them how you said no?” Atlas asks.
Trav mumbles something I don’t understand, but I do hear the word threat.
Atlas shakes his head. “When his contact said the cabinet wouldn’t be happy, he said, and I quote, ‘You can tell the current cabinet to shove their fascist demands up their asses because we’re out.’”
“That’s not much of a threat,” Iris says.
“You’re correct there.” Atlas crosses his arms. “And it probably would’ve been okay to drop it there, but he didn’t.
He also said that he has been trusted with top secret information for years, and if they feel the need to threaten us into working for them, then we might have an accident with that critical, confidential information. ”
Jesus H. Christ. “You know what I’m noticing?” I ask. “That Iris has the reputation of needing supervision, but I’m realizing the reason Trav surrounds himself with guys exactly like Iris is to make him look like the levelheaded one when that’s not the case at all.”
“You’re fired,” Trav growls at me.
“Can’t fire me when I quit already. But what does this mean for everyone? Like be on alert? Get our taxes in order?”
“At this stage, it’s just a notice to be on alert,” Trav says.
“But I’d feel a lot more at ease if we coupled up or stayed together in small groups if they’ve sent out a burn notice.
If it was any other government or a gang or anyone else we’ve dealt with over the years, I wouldn’t be worried because none of you go by the names on your ID.
But Big Brother is always watching, and it won’t take them long for each and every one of your identities to get out. Then we’ll all be shit out of luck.”
“What can they arrest us for?” I ask.
Trav places his palms on the table and leans in closer to me. “If they burn us, it’s not for the purpose of capture.”
He lets me fill in the blank. They won’t want us captured. They’d want us executed.