by Sam Jones
The Last Savage
The Last Savage
A novel
Sam Jones
© 2019 by Sam Jones
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 9781795063555
For James Abrego and Joe Giocomarra, friends, veterans, and two of the finest human beings who ever lived.
This one’s for you.
A note to the reader:
When I was about twelve, my range of taste in film spanned all the way from Brendan Fraser in Encino Man to Brendan Fraser in The Mummy. While I’ll never regret the staggering number of times I’ve viewed those films, it was during the summer of 2002, after I received a box of DVDs from a family friend, when my horizons were finally broadened. For the next forty-eight hours, I found myself engrossed in cinematic works like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, First Blood, several seasons of Miami Vice, and a countless array of other melodramatic action pieces big on thrills and never short on character. I distinctly recall the feelings I had when I watched John McClane, John Rambo, and Riggs and Murtaugh blasting and wisecracking their way through the plot. I was curious and drawn to how real, vulnerable, kick ass, and hilarious these heroes were, and at how the sad symphonies that were their lives, which dovetailed into happy endings (most of the time), were crafted by brilliant creative minds the likes of Richard Donner, Shane Black, and John McTiernan. Masters of the craft. Pioneers of the genre. I was enthralled and blown through the back of the family couch in wide-eyed amazement at these cinematic gems, and I found myself toting a new obsession for nail-biting thrillers packed with a witty punch.
When I wrote this book, my goal was to encapsulate those feelings I had when I first watched these staples of cinema. I wanted to relive the experience that many of us can still remember when we popped in a VHS on Friday night, sat down with a slice, and grinned with delight as we watched our favorite heroes set fire to the screen. I hope you will find a special place in your heart for my addition to that canon of thrillers, and for the zany, offbeat, flawed, and pedal-to-the-metal punk known as Billy Reese.
So yippee-ki-yay, readers. I hope you have a blast.
—S. J.
Contents
Washington, DC 1985
Four Weeks Earlier Miami, Florida
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Four Weeks Later Washington, DC
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
WASHINGTON, DC 1985
Special Agent William “Billy” Reese.
Everyone knew him.
Not everyone liked him.
And he hated it when people called him “William.”
Heads turned at the FBI headquarters in Washington as Billy strolled across the carpeted and windowless hallway of the fourth floor sporting week-old cuts and bruises on his face from a couple of long nights at the office. Traces of his piña colada–scented shampoo trailed behind him and crop-dusted the denizens behind their desk as he whistled “Low Rider” the entire walk through, as carefree and brazen as a man on a morning stroll through the park. After the last few weeks of the madness masquerading as detective work Billy had endured, a meeting with his superiors seemed like a cakewalk.
Agents, all abiding by a suit-and-tie dress code that had changed little since the bureau’s inception, began poking their heads out of their offices and cubicles to lay eyes on the culprit who smelled like a Caribbean vacation, a man who many considered to be the most notoriously unconventional, cocky, and ruggedly good-looking undercover agent in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Billy was sporting his usual go-to gray-and-red cardigan, a blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt, faded jeans, and his well-weathered white Nike Bruins with the signature red Swoosh, a slightly hefty buy that had him sticking to a hot dog–based diet for a week to make up for it on the back end. He had a job, yeah, but he was far and away from affording such a lofty purchase on his budget. Everything was month to month.
But the cabbage he dished out to get the Nikes was worth it.
They were just screaming his name when he saw them in the window six months ago, and Billy had a moderate sense of style geared toward maximum comfort that he was adamant to maintain. His handler, the ever-patient Special Agent in Charge Rebecca Ferris, once stated that his overall look was “something close to Magnum P.I. having a lovechild with Sam Malone from Cheers before being raised by David Lee Roth.”
And Billy made it work.
There were a lot of stories about him that had been thrown around the bureau in the past five years he had served as an agent—most of ’em true, some of ’em bullshit. He was—as his handler also stated—the bureau’s “sparkplug,” a UCA (undercover agent) who was as “unconventional as he was effective.” He drifted from case to case, department to department, and one city to the next like a wanderer with a badge, a 1911 Colt (not standard issue), and a peculiar sense of style that fit his off-kilter personality. His eyes reflected a heavy history that had built up significantly over his semi-fresh thirty-one years in existence, along with very subtle hints of gray that were slowly working their way into his auburn hair, a souvenir from his fair share of thrills, being that Billy Reese attracted trouble, and trouble had held his attention longer than his saint of an ex-wife ever could.
There were a lot of stories floating around about Billy Reese.
This was just one of them.
Billy cut the whistling and slowed his pace, eyeballing the names on the doors in the fourth-floor hallway before finding the winner with the last door on the left:
Donald Brogan
Executive Assistant Director
Criminal Investigations
He turned the handle and walked inside. Brogan’s administrative assistant, waiting behind her desk and a pile of papers, looked up and said, “Head inside, Agent Reese. He’s waiting for you.”
It was telling to Billy tha
t he was seeing the EAD. It meant one of two things was about to happen: a commendation or a reprimanding.
Billy was positive that it was probably the latter.
He thanked Brogan’s assistant, turned left, and opened another door that led into the office. The shades were closed. Reagan’s nifty headshot was framed and smiling proudly in a portrait on the wall. The only illumination came from a pair of lamps behind a desk. Standing behind that desk was a tall and gaunt man with cheekbones so narrow they were almost casting shadows along the lower part of his face. He was the epitome of the term “lanky,” and Billy—the good-looking and fit young cat that he was—always made forty-eight-year-old Donald Brogan feel just a little older any time they crossed paths. This caused a little extra saltiness on Brogan’s end, and he was a man already prone to being salty on the regular. Reporting directly to the deputy director made him that way.
That and a lot of bad nicknames he was given in junior high that he was still trying to scrub from his memory, “Rubber Band Brogan” being by far the worst.
He oversaw a Noah’s ark-size staff, in terms of numbers, if biblical references are your thing, so it went without saying that the man had a laundry list of problems to deal with on a minute-to-minute basis.
And Billy Reese was currently at the top of the list.
“Take a seat,” Brogan said, just shy of a grunt, as he slid into the leather chair behind his massive desk in his massive office.
Billy moved to the chair across from Brogan’s. As he sat down, Brogan took account of the various welts, bruises, and scars on Billy’s face that he had accumulated over the course of a few weeks on the job, including a recently broken nose with bandage taped over the bridge.
“I’m assuming you’ve already talked with your section chief,” Brogan said as he leaned forward to double-check the name on his file, “McFarlane.”
Billy nodded. “He’s ready to throw me to the wolves.”
Brogan stared on at Billy through his horn-rims with an inquisitive and irritated gaze and said, “Pretty much everyone else that was involved in this op is ready to burn you.”
Billy shrugged. “Well, McFarlane never liked me to begin with, sir. Guy’s like five-five and I’m six-one.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that that bridge troll is probably just miffed that he’s not roller coaster eligible.”
“Goddamn smartass,” Brogan said. “You’ve been working a group one detail so long that it’s completely skewed your sense of professionalism. I’ve seen your jacket. You’ve had two letters of censure, and you’ve been threatened with probation twice.”
“You getting to a point, sir?”
“Professionally, Reese, I think you’re questionable at best. The only reason you’re around is because you do the jobs other people won’t.”
“Yet I’m paid less somehow. Isn’t that some shit.”
“Personally,” Brogan carried on, “a lot of people don’t like you. Myself included. I think you’re arrogant, sloppy, unprofessional, and insubordinate, and I’m convinced that the only reason you’re still alive and employed is because of nothing more than luck.”
None of Brogan’s criticisms affected Billy in the slightest.
He was used to it.
“Well,” Billy said, “most of my time is spent chasing hit men and drug dealers across the country. I’ve been shot at more times than Billy the Kid, and I only average four hours of sleep on any given night. Tends to leave guys in my line of work with a few rough edges at the end of the day. But if ruffling people’s feathers is the cost of being effective and staying alive, I can live with that. Sir.”
Brogan turned his chair left and let his gaze rest on the closed shades over the window.
The last thing he wanted to look at was Billy Reese.
“How long have you been working undercover?” he asked the agent.
“Five years,” the agent replied.
“You were chasing down bad checks before, is that correct?”
“I was.”
“Who recruited you to be a UCA?”
“Tom Toobin,” Billy said, fondly remembering the old man with the bad haircut who taught him most of what he knew.
“Toobin was a good man,” Brogan said.
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Yeah, he was…”
Brogan drew a breath and shifted the conversation back to the more pressing matters at hand. “There’s a shelf life with guys like you, William,” he said.
Billy winced. “Please don’t call me that.”
Brogan continued on. “There’s an expiration date with your type. You’re effective, sure, but you take way too many chances. You rely on luck, and luck is a lot like time: eventually it runs out.
“You know, usually an undercover agent knows when it’s time to call it quits. They cash and get out before they cross a line or make a mistake they can’t come back from. But you…”
Brogan leaned forward.
Billy waited for the rest.
“You,” Brogan said, “bring yourself right up to the line and toy with the odds, and now, right now, it’s finally caught up with you…”
Billy said nothing.
He knew that Brogan was probably right.
“You’ve got a meeting with OPR and Deputy Director Frost in two hours,” Brogan said. “This whole thing is a giant goddamn catastrophe, and they’re going to decide whether to throw you a life raft or let you drown in front of the DOJ review board, so…what are you going to tell them?”
Billy took a beat and said, “Exactly what happened, sir.”
“I’m not even sure that I know what the hell happened, Reese. I’ve read your debrief, but I’m not buying into any of this nonsense you put on paper.”
“There were a lot of moving parts on this one, sir. The case took a lot of left turns I wasn’t expecting.”
“And now there’s a lot of dead people in the wake as a result…”
Brogan waited for a reply.
Billy had nothing.
“So,” Brogan continued as he leaned back in his chair, “what’s your side of the story? I need to know if I’m going to vouch for you or let you burn in front of the review board. They have the ability to press charges against you if they feel so inclined, and the word is that they’re feeling inclined. There’s a lot that needs to be answered for here. I mean, Christ, you drove a car into a—”
Brogan shook his head.
He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.
“How did that happen, Billy?” he asked. “How in perfect hell did that happen?”
Billy smirked.
The bar tab he rang up for that little stunt had definitely been worth it.
In response to Brogan’s inquiry, he replied, “It’s hard to explain, sir—”
Brogan held his palm up to Billy to cut him off from speaking any further. “The one thing I request of you,” he said, “is that you stop calling me ‘sir.’ After everything that’s happened, I find your forced respect condescending, considering how many laws and direct orders that you’ve broken. It’s offensive that you would attempt to make up for this insanity that’s occurred by sugar coating it with formalities. You’re so full of shit right now, Agent Reese, it’s downright insulting.”
Billy had nothing.
Brogan was spot on in his assessment.
“What happened?” Brogan asked him, his hands held out submissively, pleading for an answer to clarify all the scattered facts. “This operation, your sole goal, was to track down the people who killed one of our own. That didn’t happen. OPR is going to ask for my opinion when the time comes to pass judgment, and I can’t find a single redeeming element in this whole case that would make me want to go to the mat for you. Take me back to the beginning, Billy. Tell me the whole thing. Give me something…”
Billy drew a breath.
It was a long tale to tell.
He leaned back in his chair and thought back to when it all started, in
a beat-up car in Little Havana with Bob Marley playing on the radio. “A few weeks ago,” he said to Brogan, “is when this whole thing started. I was undercover on a drug deal, and it went bad. It went really bad…”
Four Weeks Earlier Miami, Florida
1
IT WAS NEAR the dead of night. The radio inside a cherry-red, ’83 Mercedes-Benz Roadster was blasting The Fixx’s “Red Skies” as it raced down the I-95, practically flying into the heart of the city. Palm trees whizzed past the driver of the Benz riding with the top down, the South Florida humidity hitting him in waves as he scoped out the town for the right kind of fixes that would suit his particular kind of vices.
He stamped his foot on the accelerator as he dashed through South Beach—blue, pink, yellow, green, and red neon lights lined every restaurant, club, and bar, flashing in timed repetitions and buzzing with a vivacious electric charge. The patrons inside all the clubs and dance halls were shoulder to shoulder and neck to neck as a synthesizer-strong playlist fueled their close-quarters grinding, the thump-thump-thumping of the bass thick enough that people could hear it from a mile away.
But no one seemed to mind.
Everything was loud. Everything was big. Everything was soaked with neon.
This was paradise.
This was Miami.
And everyone wanted a part of the action.
Midnight hit. The entire scene was on fire with a frenzy of big hair, big mustaches, and big lines of patrons lining up at the bathrooms to sniff up some courage.
A man with a mullet was catcalling from his Trans-Am. The woman on the curb with feathered hair, shoulder pads, and a vixen’s beam waved back.
The driver in the Benz made his way down the six lanes of the MacArthur Causeway that linked the mainland to Hibiscus, Star, and Palm Island, rustling waters passing underneath the bridge as he threw the Benz into fifth and took off into the night to a destination unknown, no longer a factor or player in the story currently unfolding over in Little Havana.
To say that the weather in Miami that night was muggy was a grave understatement. The heat was so thick and humid in Little Havana that particular evening that Billy Reese, posted up in the passenger’s seat of a borrowed Mercury Cougar, in a residential neighborhood with another undercover FBI agent, had decided to classify the unbearable weather as having gone from being “an irritant” to “damned indecent.”
