Savage Beast (Max Savage Book 1)

by Sloane Howell

  He nodded. “Got me out of a nasty ol’ situation out there.”

  “Cage?”

  “You know it.” He returned from the hall and dropped the 1911 on the table, then walked over and shuffled around in a drawer.

  I leaned forward on the couch and shoved my wrists together behind me, then tested my mobility. No way was I going to wear long sleeves out in the summer heat, even if it was night. I twisted and turned and got one of my hands into my front pocket.

  “Should work.” He watched everything I did.

  I took the paper clips and straightened them out, then threaded one through the denim inside my pocket. Repeated the process on the other side. I took a holster from him and put the 1911 in it, shifting the Beretta from behind my pants into the other side, then practiced my draw to get used to them. “I may need some more toys in a bit. Can’t thank you enough for this.”

  “What ya thinkin’?”

  “Got any rifles?”

  He nodded slowly. “Oh yeah. Ya get back here and I’ll show ya.”

  I put a dollar on the table.

  37

  IT TOOK ABOUT FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to get all the way through the cornfields and to the farm again—five minutes longer than last time. The delay was from the darkness. I had to move slower, more careful. If I twisted an ankle I’d be done.

  Right about the time I came into the clearing near the cabbage plants, fatigue set in. I needed coffee and food in the worst kind of way. When this was all over, I was taking a day off and sleeping. That was for damn sure, with Shirley lying on my shoulder in an expensive hotel room somewhere. I’d use my inheritance. Sean wouldn’t mind. It’d make him happy, in fact.

  I had the same view as the previous day. I couldn’t see the area in the back. It didn’t matter. There was a faint glow over the horizon where the corn ran up behind the visible operations.

  I worked through the tall stalks, right along the edge, but stayed a good five feet off the perimeter to remain concealed. It was like being on a mission all over again as I faded through the property.

  The closer I got, the more I heard. The place was active in the back. The secret meeting had to be the target, and maybe the pipeline was just a clue. Maybe Sean was saying Bilderberg plus oil equals secret meeting of oil barons. I was a bit surprised I hadn’t heard of the oil and gas meeting. I’d have expected them to use Delta for extra security detail every year. They never used us for security in the Netherlands for Bilderberg, though. Everything was need-to-know. Perhaps I just hadn’t been lucky enough to be assigned that detail. Maybe that was why, or maybe it was because it was on foreign soil.

  The corn wrapped around the buildings like a huge squared-off P. The metal I-beam structures appeared in the first clearing. I worked through the corn to the area I hadn’t been the last time—the northwest corner of the compound, where we’d hypothesized the illegal activity took place.

  When I came to the edge of the corn, I saw another building in a clearing, far away from the main road. It looked just like the others, but maybe half the size. I stared out at it from the field. There were no crops in the open land. Just tall weeds and the gravel road that cut a path down to the operations. It formed a driveway right up to a loading dock of the structure. There was no perimeter fence. It was totally reliant on the crops to conceal it.

  I glanced out and saw a big Classic Cola truck. It was right outside, parked parallel to the outer wall. Two men with machine pistols leaned against the corrugated metal like nighttime sentries.

  There wasn’t a ton of light. Only one street lamp, with a thin rope of cable drooping down to the building from the top, supplying electricity. More light glowed through the large bay door that was pulled closed. The edges lit up from inside with bright fluorescent lights. It created a faint glowing square of hazy white, occasionally interrupted by shadows when someone walked past. The building was painted some dark color I couldn’t make out, maybe black or dark green.

  It would make sneaking up on them easier, without light reflecting off the walls. I didn’t have a suppressor for the 1911 or the Beretta, though, and I had no idea how many guys were inside. I stared at the Classic Cola truck, trying to formulate a plan. I’d thought my Delta days were done, but all the instincts rushed back the same way a smell brought back an old memory.

  I had on jeans and a tee shirt. I soldier-crawled out toward the building. The Colt dug into my chest. I needed to look inside the truck, find out what I could, and get out of there. I prayed the whole way that I was wrong—prayed it was something else—prayed I’d find a large haul of drugs or a building full of illegal immigrants. The Classic Cola truck was massive. It was the size of big rigs you’d pass on the interstate, with a long trailer attached to a huge Diesel semi-truck. It had to be thirty feet long. I kept my head down and soldiered through the thick Bermuda grass interspersed among the weeds.

  I crawled out to about thirty yards away from the sentries. A little farther ahead, the grass turned to crushed gravel. I hadn’t been able to see it from back in the corn. It was an unmarked parking area. I’d need to lure them out to me, preferably together. I willed myself to forget about Shirley and Peabody—Morgan too, all of them. Clear your mind. Ninety-five percent of a mission was mental preparation. Visualization. Athletes did the same things before games. I had to see what I’d do before I did it. Instincts would kick in, but a focused mind was vital to success.

  They were the enemy.

  Them or me.

  Them or everyone.

  These two men were going to die, and I was going to send a message.

  38

  I SAW A FEW ROCKS ahead in the grass just off the gravel. I’d be about twenty yards away from the truck—twenty-five from the guards. I did the math in my head. I needed two kills without firing a gun. It’d have to be quick and silent.

  I crawled out to the gravel parking lot, slow and methodical, right arm and right leg, then left arm and left leg, six inches at a time. The larger rocks were scattered along the edges like they’d been kicked aside. I chose the best one. It was rounded, smooth, and oblong. I gripped it in my hand.

  Them or me.

  Them or everyone.

  I exhaled a long silent breath, then hurled the stone about ten yards behind me and slightly angled off to the side. It landed with a thud. Both men jumped to attention. One did a hand signal and pointed out there. He motioned at his eyes with two fingers, then pointed them out where it had landed. I thought they might be military for a second, but the way they held their weapons proved they were amateurs who’d seen Rambo one too many times. They gripped the weapons one-handed. Careless.

  Might make things a little easier. I held my breath and tried to will gravity to smash me harder into the ground—to flatten me like a pancake. I eyed the two men. Each new second only reaffirmed their amateur status. One should’ve provided cover for the other. He should’ve watched him like a hawk from a safe distance with his submachine pistol trained, scanning back and forth for threats, but he didn’t.

  They were on each other’s heels, creeping slowly out as a tightly grouped pair.

  Them or me.

  Them or everyone.

  They inched toward the sound, about fifteen feet in front and twenty feet off to my right. I buried my face in the grass and tucked my arms up underneath my stomach, my biceps pressing hard against my weapons. I tried to conceal any lighter colors I wore that might reflect light. If they looked over, hopefully all they’d see was a small, black mound on the ground. I listened, tracking their movements by the sounds they made.

  Twenty feet.

  Fifteen feet.

  One of them froze. Two feet took two more steps, then those stopped too.

  “You see it?”

  “Probably a damn coyote.” He said it like “kie-oat.”

  They both took a few more steps. I needed them one foot farther. My lungs burned hot from holding my breath. My forehead and cheeks itched from my face pressing against the b
lades of grass. I lifted my head just slightly, inhaled long and slow, and synapses fired all over. Adrenaline coursed through my blood.

  Them or everyone.

  One of them stepped into range, about eight feet away. The other followed.

  I worked up to my knees but stayed crouched down, slow and steady, completely silent, then rolled back onto my heels so I was in a frog stance.

  I calculated the distance. One large stride, land on my right foot, one step after that. Eight feet total. I could do it in under a second. Their reaction time would be too little too late.

  Them or everyone.

  I blasted off my left foot with everything I had, landed on my right, then shoved off the ball of my right and damn near took the first guy’s head off with a forearm to the side of his skull. Bone crunched against my arm and the side of his head caved in. His feet went out from under him. I carried my momentum through his head and then down, before coming back up and across. I smashed the second guy with a left jab to the side of his lower back, exploding his kidney. The gun slipped from his hand and tumbled into the grass. He stalled in the air, and I moved in to close range. I grabbed his head on opposite sides, gripped under his jaw with one hand, and splayed my fingers across the side of his head with the other.

  Breaking someone’s neck was all about torque. You had to apply the right amount of pressure to do it correctly. I wrenched his head as hard as I could one direction, while yanking the opposite way with my other hand. Ligaments popped, and tendons snapped. It severed his spine right at the base of his brain. I dropped him down onto the ground, then checked the other guy. No pulse. I wasn’t surprised.

  I fumbled through both of their pants and found nothing of interest there other than a cell phone. I pocketed it.

  I glanced back and forth between them, then dragged them each by a foot. Their heads bounced up and down on the grass. I yanked them both over to the side of the Classic Cola truck. My heart pounded in my ears.

  I unclipped the holsters strapped around both guys. One had a tactical knife. I pulled it out and gave it a once over.

  Thanks.

  I walked back out and retrieved their weapons and tossed the holsters as far as I could in the grass. I took one of the machine pistols and broke it down, then slung the components in opposite directions. I grabbed the other one and checked it out. They were Heckler and Koch MP7s. 4.6 x 30mm. I jogged back over with it in my hand, then pulled out the knife. I stabbed both of them through the heart with a quick jab for certainty. Efficient was the way to go when you had to make sure someone was dead.

  The blood oozed out slowly. Their hearts had already stopped pumping. Maybe the stabs were excessive. I shrugged.

  Them or everyone.

  I cut down the center of one guy’s tee shirt. I wanted to let McCurdy know what he was dealing with. I ripped it open the rest of the way and exposed his bare chest, then carved out a message for them to find.

  “I’M COMING, S”

  That’s all it said. The only thing I regretted was not getting to see McCurdy’ face when he found it. I rolled the two guys under the truck and walked around to the back. When I lifted the rear door up, it was worse than I’d suspected.

  39

  I HAD QUITE A FEW hypotheses as to why they’d host a clandestine meeting on a Sunday. The obvious answer was it wasn’t a weekday. People wouldn’t expect something like that on a weekend. I figured many people in Oklahoma spent Sunday mornings in church or sleeping in. That’d leave windows of opportunity regarding traffic. I was sure they had people much smarter than me who were scouting those types of things out. They’d be crunching data and using fluid dynamics and traffic flow models.

  I recognized a sound that shook me from my thoughts—the truck. The diesel engine on that thing coupled with the giant tires chewing up the gravel created a unique audio signature, and it was heading toward me. I could already see the headlights glowing above the corn in the distance. I wanted to stay and get a better look. Maybe I could’ve sabotaged their whole operation, but there was no time.

  I sprinted out to the cornfields just in time to miss Bear’s arrival. I wasn’t armed for a showdown with McCurdy’s whole clan. This was reconnaissance. The tactical plan would come later. I had to stick to the script, stay calm and composed, and use resources wisely to make sound decisions.

  I made it past the farm’s perimeter, once I’d gone through the corn and over the chain link. As I waded through the forest, it all crashed into me, right there at the creek. I doubled over. The bile had already crept up my throat the second I opened the truck. I projectile vomited right into the filmy stagnant water and moss-covered rocks. Wave after wave of convulsions rolled through my body until it was nothing but dry heaving, my stomach empty.

  I glanced at myself in the water, stared at my puke on the ground, then looked back at my reflection. “You done?”

  I’d seen a lot in my day, more than anyone should be subjected to. I’d witnessed all kinds of atrocities from mass genocide graves, to children with limbs blown apart. The potential of this would put it all to shame. The news was poisoning me from the inside. I had to tell Shirley it was true. My stomach clenched even harder at the thought. There wasn’t time for worry, so I pushed it all out of my mind and tried to focus. I humped it all the way back to Peabody’s.

  He scratched Remington behind his big floppy ears when I walked through the door. “It bad?”

  I nodded.

  “That bad?”

  I stared.

  Peabody unreclined his chair and sat up straight. “Good God ah-mighty.”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Let me know if I can help.”

  I nodded again. “I’ll be right back.”

  I crept up the road, taking extra caution along the way. I stayed in the shadows of the trees and off the gravel. The second McCurdy’s boys found their guys it was going to change the game. I made it back to the Escalade with more than an hour to spare from the three-hour estimate I’d given them.

  Shirley smiled when she made out my silhouette, then she noticed my face. It had to be pale. The moonlight must’ve amplified it by a thousand. Her lips mashed into a thin line.

  I crawled into the backseat. “Letting you know I’m good. I need to go back up and get some—” I glanced at Charles Morgan. “—provisions.”

  I watched his hand on the steering wheel. It trembled as I caught his eyes in the mirror. They were steady, trained on me. He was nervous. He wasn’t used to being out in the middle of the woods with fugitives for hours, with talks of conspiracies in the air. I’d have been shaken up a bit too if I were him. Nobody was immune from the truth if we didn’t take action, soon.

  “So, what’d you find?” Shirley turned back to face me, her face telling me she already knew the answer to her question.

  “Hell.”

  40

  “ON APRIL 19, 1995, TIMOTHY McVeigh detonated a Ryder Truck converted into a fertilizer bomb in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City. I don’t have to tell you two this.”

  Shirley stared down at the floorboard. Charles Morgan looked like the air sucked right out of his lungs.

  Shirley slowly brought her hand down to her lap. “So they are building a bomb back there?”

  “Built. Already done,” I said. “There’s more. McVeigh and his buddies were upset about the government’s handling of the Ruby Ridge standoff. That’s where the Ruby clue came in.”

  “So we were right about the $168?”

  “Yeah. That’s how many people died in the bombing. It cost 168 lives.” I explained it out loud for Morgan, even though Shirley already knew.

  “Christ.” It was the first word Morgan had spoken.

  “So you saw the bomb?” Shirley asked.

  I nodded and tried to keep the bile down. The saliva in the back of my throat became thick and salty and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead again.

  “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head. “It�
�s probably twice as big. Maybe bigger.”

  “Jesus.” Morgan stared at me in the rear-view mirror again.

  “It’s worse.”

  “How can it get worse than that?” Shirley reached back and put a hand on my leg. She had to contort her body at a weird angle, but her hand was there, sitting on my thigh.

  “I couldn’t even tell it was a bomb at first. It confused the hell out of me. Until I opened one of the Classic Cola cans.”

  “It’s in Classic Cola cans? They built a bomb out of cans of soda?”

  “I know. It sounds crazy. But they have the operations for it, all the canning machines for the farm.”

  “So they could drive it in almost anywhere?” Morgan asked. “Stacks of soda cans? Like a delivery?”

  “Yeah, they have a commercial Classic Cola truck. I opened the door. It looked like it was packed with cans of soda, like a normal delivery. Piled up on pallets. I only know because I opened one of them and smelled it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely volatile, probably derived from ammonium nitrate fertilizer. I looked closer and saw shock tubing threaded throughout the bottom of the truck. It blended in perfectly. One wall was reinforced and I’m pretty sure that’s how they plan to detonate it. These guys are very smart. They know what they’re doing. And they’re not going to be on anyone’s radar.”

  “Because of the farm.” Shirley nodded. “Nobody blinks an eye when a farm orders tons of fertilizers.”

  “Exactly. And I’m telling you, guys. It looked like a completely normal truck to an untrained eye. Hundred percent concealed. I don’t even know if I’d notice if I wasn’t looking for it. All the cans were sealed, air tight. No smells. No traces.”

  “How’d you know? Back at the library?” Morgan asked.

  “I saw a book on the OKC bombing on the shelf.” I pulled out the piece of paper.

  FOR SALE!

  Multiple items. Antique MCMLiV windmill. Seven 1950s era dolls, all related.