I walked down the perimeter about fifty yards and looked for a fence post that was sturdy, checking each with a tug until I found one I liked. I slid the magazine from the 1911 and shoved it in my pocket. I racked the slide and checked the chamber. Empty.
I looked around both directions, listening for any vehicles. Nothing.
I tossed the empty Colt up over the fence. It crunched on the trail on the other side. Colts were notorious for their durability. You could submerge them in water and set them on fire and they’d still function. Plug them full of junk ammunition and they’d rarely jam. I was up and over the barrier in seconds. Climbing fences was no problem. I didn’t always hunt on public land. When I reached the top, I stole a glance. I could barely make out anything over the crops from up there.
It was nothing but corn stalks stretching to the horizon, too far away to make a visual on the buildings. Peabody was right, it was another two miles at least.
I’d thought if push came to shove I could set up in a tree somewhere with a sniper rifle and a high-powered scope and do some reconnaissance. I’d been a sniper in Delta. It was my specialty. I was sure I was still deadly at a thousand yards with the right equipment, but not from two miles out. Maybe one or two guys in the world were that good. Long-range rifle fire wouldn’t be ideal in the Oklahoma plains with random microbursts of wind.
I landed on the trail with a thud. Then, it happened. A sound I knew all too well; tires crunching on rocks and a loud diesel engine.
A large truck approached fast.
I snagged the 1911 and dove into the crops, crawling my way into them a few yards. I wanted to get a look, yet still remain hidden. My first thought was they were just workers. I snagged an ear of corn off a stalk and shucked it open. I hid in the shadows but could still make out the golden kernels. I took a big bite.
There was nothing like sweet corn right off the stalk in a field. Nothing like it at all, and I needed the calories. Didn’t know when I would eat again. I could’ve spent all day out there. I wondered if they had a watermelon patch too. I’d have been in heaven.
I ate the ear of corn in rows as they drove by, then heard a voice over the rumble of the engine. Could’ve been the radio or someone inside. I wasn’t sure.
It stopped right where I was. The tires were huge. They had to be at least thirty inches. There was a lift kit on the truck. Two pairs of boots jumped out.
One set was much larger than the other. The gravel crushed into dust when they hit the ground. Maybe it was the Yona guy? Or Bear? Whatever his name was. I stared at his feet. They had to be size eighteen.
I wondered if I’d snagged part of my shirt or fabric on the chain link. Maybe they’d seen the fence shaking. The diesel exhaust landed in my nose and ruined the taste of my corn. I didn’t appreciate that.
I couldn’t get a look at the two guys. I was too far back and moving would’ve rustled the corn stalks, giving away my position. I heard two large nostrils sniff the air. It had to be Yona or Yano or whatever his name was. I couldn’t remember the Cherokee word Peabody had said. I’d just call him Bear.
His legs were like tree trunks and stomped around the front of the truck.
“You sure it was moving?”
I recognized the Boston accent, the guy from the Focus outside Sean’s place.
Bear grunted. Maybe he was a mute. Maybe just a quiet guy. I didn’t know. He stomped around the trail a few steps. The other normal-sized guy jumped up in the truck.
“Come on. We have stuff to do.”
Bear turned and stood about ten feet away from me, three from the edge of the corn. I stared at his feet and filled out his proportions in my mind from his boots and legs. He had to be six-ten at least, maybe three-fifty pounds. I could practically hear the earth begging for him to stop standing on it.
I stayed low in a crouch, pulled out the 1911, and slid the magazine into it as quietly as possible. I cocked it slowly and silently, then eased it up and aimed it right at the giant’s knee cap, wondering if it would even do anything to him.
He stood there for a while.
The other guy hollered at him again. “Come on! There’s nothing out here!” He had to yell so Bear could hear over the engine.
I watched Bear’s shadow. His head turned, then he whipped around, and his arm swiped through the corn with a backhanded chop about three-fourths of the way up the stalks.
They rocked back and forth, all of them. He damn near uprooted the plants in front of me. I watched their shadows sway back and forth on the ground. Another foot of reach and he’d have seen me for sure. I kept quiet and held my breath.
He exhaled another grunt and walked back around the truck. Blood dripped from his fingers. Finally, after a few long seconds, the truck sped off.
“Damn.” I let out the breath I’d been holding. “What’s up his ass?”
I took off through the corn, thinking about what I’d just witnessed and tried to gather any information I could. What kind of agricultural operation had giant bodyguards patrolling the perimeter? I made my way through the field. It was dense and thick, but I knew there’d have to be trails running through it, places where the tires of the giant combines would beat the corn down during harvests.
They planted them in rows or stripes. I didn’t know much about farming, but I knew that much. Anyone who could see out of a plane window would recognize the pattern. I found a trail from the equipment that ran back toward the front of the farm and hopped onto it. The land was flat, but I was walking slightly uphill. If anyone approached, I’d see them from a distance and could dart back into the thick plants.
My brain logged two things at once. I counted down the time. I had two hours. I’d used roughly fifteen minutes so far. I also kept track of the direction I was heading.
Two miles to go, give or take. If I avoided any interactions, I should be fine on time. I figured I could do a mile in twelve minutes through the corn. That’d put me at the farm thirty-nine minutes from when I started. I’d have an hour and twenty-one minutes left. I figured forty minutes to get back. That’d leave me forty-one minutes to look around.
I glanced up. The sun was just starting to dip down in the western half of the sky. It was summer and the days were longer. It probably wouldn’t get dark until eight or eight-thirty.
I made it up to the main campus of the place faster than I’d thought, roughly twenty minutes later. No problems.
I came into a clearing. There was a problem though. Machinery trekked back and forth to one of the large metal buildings. The clearing was a couple hundred yards wide. They’d easily see me. I couldn’t just walk across in street clothes.
There were other crops, but they were all smaller, different kinds of vegetables and fruits. Maybe lettuce or cabbage, cantaloupes and watermelons. The plants were only a foot off the ground, rows and rows of leafy shrubs.
I glanced around at the edge of the tall corn. It ran straight down like a wall of green as far as I could see back west, and then across until it disappeared behind the buildings. I had two options, create a diversion or crawl on my stomach through the short crops until I got there. Crawling on my stomach would still put me at risk and didn’t sound appealing.
I looked down about twenty yards. There was a large piece of irrigation equipment that stretched out over the top of the rows of smaller plants, with vertical rods coming down to a wheel every ten yards or so. It sat there, stationary, maybe two hundred yards wide. I imagined it was on a timer. There were all kinds of hoses and pumps attached to the end of it. Maybe the controls were there too. I worked my way down through the dense corn, far enough back that nobody in the buildings would notice the stalks shifting. Then I made my way over and eyeballed it.
I spotted the control panel. It looked complicated. I glanced up at the sky and thought, man, Sean, I could really use you about now to figure this out.
I looked around from my new vantage point. There were some rows a little way down of what looked like okra. They wer
e taller. Tall enough to duck through and run between. Two hundred yards bent over and sprinting. Wasn’t my idea of a fun time, but it might work.
I had no idea which way the gigantic sprinkler on wheels was going to go. If it headed for the okra, it would be useless. Someone would see me out there running through cabbage if I had to switch directions. Fifty fifty odds. I’d had worse.
I pushed some buttons until I got it to fire up. Water misted out of it all the way across. The wheels turned. It rolled slowly toward the cabbage and other plants in the direction I needed. I grinned. Luck was on my side.
I stepped back and hauled ass through the corn, sprinting down to where I thought the okra would be. About the time I stepped through to get a look, a commotion rang out in the distance. I glanced over and saw about ten guys hurtling toward the machine. Two or three remained by the building, but they were all distracted by the scene unfolding.
I took off, head down, crouched at the knees, shoulders hunched. I sprinted two hundred yards ducked below the height of the plants. By the time I got to the end I was winded, and pain shot through my lower back and legs. Wasn’t getting any younger at thirty-five, that was for sure.
At the end of the okra there was a small maintenance shed, maybe five feet by five feet. I hid behind it and stared off at each side. Everyone was focused on the problem. I saw some guys with their hands up, clutching their heads. Apparently, it was hard to shut the thing down. I shrugged.
I needed another plan.
I wanted to get a look at the buildings and see what they were doing inside. But the big buildings and greenhouses out in the open wouldn’t contain the illegal operations, and I would be seen if I got close to them. It’d be the heavily guarded area that was the mother lode. It was way off somewhere else, out of sight. It was possible it wasn’t even here.
I watched everything and tried to log as much information as I could from my vantage point. The large buildings looked as expected. I saw forklifts going in and out, loading docks, trucks piled with produce—all of it fresh. It looked legit. The middle building had a pair of huge bay doors on the end and they were propped open. I could make out some industrial fans inside, and some steel machinery, probably canning, like an assembly line. The huge fans and open doors were to keep the equipment cool and the air circulating. I didn’t see any HVAC units on the perimeter. What a nice employer to open up the doors for the workers. Might drop a penny off the stock price if they put in an ac unit. Can’t have that.
I’d been wrong about the third building. It was nearly empty. Workers pulled large machines in and out of the place—combines, tractors, bulldozers, backhoes. They had everything in there. I had a better view inside of it because it was the closest to me. The building would fill back up once all the machines were brought back at the end of the day.
There was a huge wall that divided it in the middle. I caught a glance while someone drove a tractor inside. The wall made it so I could only see halfway in the building. All kinds of green and orange and blue machinery lined the perimeter—John Deere, Kubota, New Holland.
I looked around the outside up to the other end. Nothing. What would be in the other half of the place? I thought about it for a few seconds. Supplies? Maybe? I thought back to the invoices I’d seen: pesticides, etc. I would’ve bet that was what the rest of the building was for. They’d need to store tons of it for a farm this big. It would make sense to keep it compartmentalized from the buildings that handled crops. There were probably even regulations about how it had to be handled and what types of security was necessary. I was sure there were permits and licensing required.
A huge Classic Cola truck rumbled over a separate gravel entrance. It was probably there to stock refrigerators for employees or whatever. McCurdy most likely had vending machines and made his employees pay for everything.
The truck kept going, past all the buildings, and disappeared to a different part of the huge expanse, which told me there was something back beyond the corn. The truck kicked up all kinds of dust in its wake from the unpaved road. I wouldn’t have time to go back there and check it out. Maybe there were more buildings in the back, larger warehouses for all the excess crops. Maybe they took all the remnants and made compost to sell.
The guys were still fussing with the irrigation system off in the distance. I crept around and took a peek inside the shed. There was nothing important: rakes, light supplies, some other gardening implements and specialized tools. The administration building piqued my curiosity the most.
I stared at the structure again and realized I had about twenty minutes. Was that enough time? Maybe McCurdy didn’t work weekends. I could find a way into his office, snoop around a little bit and see what else I could find.
I caught four guys walking up to the front in my peripheral vision. I’d be damned if it wasn’t Wyatt and his three buddies. The driver of the Focus wasn’t with them, nor was Bear. They must’ve still been out patrolling.
At that point I decided to hell with it, I didn’t have time for some stealth intelligence mission. Shirley would be pissed, but I figured since I’d told them to tell their boss I was coming, I should go make good on my promise.
15
TURNS OUT, NOBODY HAD SATURDAYS off at McCurdy Farms. Confidence was the key to everything. I strode right up to the front like I owned the place and walked through the door. There was a receptionist, early-fifties maybe, sitting at a large oak desk. She jabbered away to someone on the phone. It was not a work call. She must’ve been related to McCurdy because he didn’t seem like the type of person who’d let something like that slide, judging by the rest of his operation.
Chairs lined the white walls, almost like a physician’s waiting room. There was a door off to my right, her left. It probably led back to all the offices. I didn’t like closed spaces, preferred everything out in the open.
The receptionist kept blabbering on about an episode of something called The Bachelor. I walked right past her like I’d done it a thousand times. Her hair was puffed up like a Cheeto and round like one too. She didn’t even look my way.
I pushed through the door into a long hallway. It turned at a right angle at the end and I felt like a mouse in a maze. I figured it was divided into sections, most businesses were. There were usually conference rooms up front, and after that it’d be sales and marketing, accounting and finance, IT, and then upper management and operations.
Judging by the facilities and the size of the labor force, I’d have guessed they did a hundred million dollars a year in revenue. Those machines weren’t cheap, easily tens of millions of dollars in assets. Sales had to be ten times that, maybe more, to net the kind of profit to sustain a place this size.
I walked down the hallway. McCurdy’s office would be at the end. The layout didn’t surprise me. Illegal operations were more compartmentalized than standard businesses. He probably wanted to keep them all separate and unaware of what the others were doing.
Sure enough, conference rooms first. Accounting came next, so I’d gotten that part wrong, but the rest was like clockwork. Each section had a door and I peeked inside the windows. There were more offices. Each probably had its own breakroom to keep departments from fraternizing.
McCurdy would have another secretary, his own assistant at the back to act as a second defense. I guessed young and beautiful. They always were. Rich men needed something to stare at all day other than their wife. I turned the corner. Sure enough, a leggy blonde in a skirt reaching for files. She’d be harder to get through than the lady up front.
I walked right past.
“Excuse me?”
“I have an appointment.”
She scrambled to her desk, not knowing what to do. “I didn’t schedule any meetings for him.”
I kept walking and kicked the door open. “I made it with Wyatt.”
The four men I’d already met at Sean’s whipped around. Their eyes widened, and they shifted to the side. McCurdy sat behind a mahogany desk. He leaned
back and smiled.
“Told you I was coming.”
“Take a break.” McCurdy waved them off.
Wyatt puffed his chest out and stared back at McCurdy. “No way. We’re not leaving you in here with him.”
I took another step toward all of them. “Gonna put another beating on me, Wyatt?”
McCurdy grinned, seemingly amused.
The other men twitched, their eyes darting around. Eventually, they all walked past me. No one made eye contact, but they kept their chests puffed out with pride. Good for them. Their redneck honor was the least of my concerns. I closed the door after Wyatt finally made his way out, and I turned around to face McCurdy.
“Well, you wanted to chat. Let’s chat.” I walked over.
He stood up and held his hand out. “Patrick McCurdy.”
I smirked at his hand.
He still smiled, then took a seat. I did the same.
“What can I do for you, Mr.—?”
“You know my name. If you don’t, you’re an idiot.”
“Why would I know your name?”
“You figured out everything you could about me the second I stuck my heel in Wyatt’s back.”
“Yeah, I did, Mr. Savage.”
“Just Savage is fine. And you didn’t find much other than my name.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you’re not important enough to know about me. You’re not even important in your own city. You think you’re special because some detectives tipped you off that I was nosing around, but you’re not.”
A vein bulged in his neck. It was a small reaction, but a reaction, nonetheless.
“What can I do for you?”
He was calm and confident. There was a slight bit of frustration at my taunt, but nothing major. No elevated heartrate. He was a dangerous guy. Not in a physical sense. He had that look. I’d seen it before. No empathy, serene and collected, like he was still in charge of the situation. He was a sharp man. Nobody grows up poor and builds a huge business by being an idiot. The bit about the detectives was a Hail Mary, but how else would he have known to send his guys to follow me? Someone there was dirty, and my money was on Starsky.
Savage Beast (Max Savage Book 1) Page 8
