Savage Beast (Max Savage Book 1)

by Sloane Howell

  Bear stood there and looked at the car and then stared over at us. He was emotionless—no expression on his face. The other guy started toward the tree line, but Bear held his arm out to stop him.

  Shirley and I disappeared into the thick woods.

  “Are they going to chase after us?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  I pushed through the brambles, keeping Shirley in front of me. “He’s way too big to make it through this.”

  “How’d you know they were coming?”

  “I didn’t. None of this felt right, so I turned around. Wasn’t going to put you at risk again. I just couldn’t do it.”

  She blinked twice, and her hand tightened around mine.

  The forest grew denser as we waded into it. None of the land between the gardens and the lodge was developed—just wild weeds and big trees growing in every direction. It was slow-moving, especially in the dark. Shirley slowed us down, but that was fine by me. I’d trusted my instincts and they were right, but now what to do?

  Shirley was safe, but we were in a tight spot.

  The sniper deal was clearly a set up. Whoever ran the show knew I’d be thinking that. He’d sent Bear in the truck. He’d improvised and done it all on the fly. That made him an incredibly dangerous opponent. Some guys could plan things in advance, but throw them into the fire and they clam up. Not this guy. We were playing into his hands.

  He’d trapped us.

  I hated his guts even more.

  The worst of it was yet to come. Maple Grove was a heavily guarded compound, and they were all awake now, alert from the assassination. It would be tough to break through their barriers and get to the bomb. The worst part was we didn’t know who we could trust. Tulsa was about to become a war zone if the bomb detonated.

  I couldn’t think about that.

  Right then, I knew I’d have to hurt a few innocent guys, for the greater good.

  57

  IT DIDN’T TAKE TOO LONG to find the first cordon of security. It was close enough to Maple Grove that light from the lodge carried out to the woods. Shirley hung back ten yards behind a tree. I didn’t want her any farther than that from me. Fortunately, it was summer and there weren’t many leaves and twigs covering the ground like there would be in fall or winter.

  I spotted two men in suits. They looked foreign but had earpieces and Beretta 9mms.

  They’d be responsible for a section of the perimeter. I held back and observed for a moment. They both kept their heads on a swivel. None of them wanted to be responsible for a breach, especially with the events of the early morning. It’d embarrass their respective leader. As I inched in their direction, the trees became less dense and allowed even more light from the lodge to peek through.

  I caught something one of them said but didn’t know what it meant. It sounded like it could be French or Spanish, but most likely Portuguese. Their skin was tanned, almost black in the dark. Portugal wouldn’t be here. They were Brazilian, had to be. I snuck up behind one of them and waited for the other guy to turn and scan the opposite direction.

  He never knew what hit him. I grabbed him around the mouth and throat, then yanked him over my outstretched leg and took him flat to his back, quietly and unobserved. I clamped a hand over his mouth which he screamed into, planted a heel on his knee, and jerked him sideways.

  I leaned down next to his ear and hoped he understood English. “Sorry.” I used a reverse chokehold to clamp off his carotid until he went limp in my arms. I didn’t want him dead if he wasn’t a bad guy. It takes far longer to choke someone out than most people think. His partner was about ten yards away by the time I eased him to the ground. I grabbed the guy’s Beretta and checked it. It was a good solid piece.

  I crept back to the shadows and slid around a tree. His partner walked over and saw him on the ground. He pulled the cuff of his sleeve to his mouth. I caught him on the left side of his head with the butt of the gun and he went down too, right before he could call it in. I snagged the ear piece and the receiver off his belt and clipped it on. The line was silent, but I figured they’d speak in English over the frequency.

  I broke down both guns and tossed the parts far away from each other, then motioned for Shirley to follow. I stomped on the second guy’s ankle to immobilize him.

  The second cordon was even more secure. I couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like had the forces not already been depleted. I turned to Shirley. “This might be impossible. We’ll have to get creative.”

  We were both whispering. It was getting late, and the sun would be up soon. We had to think quick. Those men were going to be discovered, and they would be required to check in every so often. At least I’d know about it with access to their coms. It would prevent any surprise ambushes. They didn’t speak over the channels unless it was checking in or something vital. It was going to take a miracle from God to get to the bomb because my mind drew blanks.

  Shirley had nothing. We both just stood there, crouched behind a tree, staring at the wall of men separating us and the truck. They all looked jumpy. An hour ago, it might’ve been easier. They’d have been relaxed, knowing there wasn’t a chance in hell of someone getting through with twice as many numbers. Now, everyone was edgy. We needed to use that to our advantage. But how?

  Think, Savage.

  They’d been out there all night. The woods do funny things to you before the sun breaks in the morning. I knew that more than anyone. You hear things. See things that aren’t there. The sun starts to come up and the shadows grow long and play tricks. Your mind goes to crazy places.

  Shirley stared at me like our lives depended on an idea. For the first time in my life I had nothing. I didn’t like it. There was no time to plan, everything improvised by the second. This was it. If they found us and didn’t kill us, we were certainly going straight to a lock up and not coming out until it was too late. Not to mention McCurdy could blow the bomb at any time. The truck had been parked for a good fifteen minutes, long enough for them to get out of the blast radius. I figured we had until Bear and the other guy were out of range and down the road. That would’ve been minutes ago. Why hadn’t they blown the place up yet?

  My stomach flipped, and my heart squeezed tight in my chest. Any second could be our last. Shirley’s stare burned a hole in the side of my head, searing into my brain. Nothing. I balled my right hand into a fist.

  I’d lived my whole life thinking the harder you worked, the luckier you got. But you could never depend on luck—ever. I’d managed to avoid relying on it by always being prepared, and then just appreciated it when it happened. But right then, I was on the verge of closing my eyes and saying a prayer.

  And then, I saw a pair of eyes.

  58

  ANOTHER SET OF EYES APPEARED, and another. The fluorescent beams from the lights around the lodge lit them up. The multiple pairs of eyes all flicked around. They were deer, a whole damn family of them.

  I glanced over at Shirley and held a finger to my lips.

  Deer spooked easily. Evolution had handed them the gift of hearing over millions of years to help them survive. I’d hunted them since I was a teenager. They were fast and flexible and able to maneuver through just about anything, especially the forest. It’s how they evaded predators. Right then, I needed them to make a bunch of trained killers follow them.

  I reached down slowly for a rock and hurled it in their direction. They took off all at once.

  I pressed the button on the receiver of the headset and spoke into it, altering my voice to sound foreign but as ambiguous as possible. I probably sounded like an alien, but I needed them confused, unsure who it came from. “Movement. Multiple body. Northwest in trees.”

  I crouched down and grabbed Shirley and held her face to my chest so hard I worried I was smothering her. What seemed like a million footsteps took off.

  The deer tucked tail and ran off in the forest, chasing them farther away. It’d worked, for now. We neede
d to hurry.

  I grabbed Shirley after I thought they’d all gone, yanking under her arms to lift her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

  We spun around the tree trunk and came face to face with the barrel of a pistol.

  “That’s far enough, right there!”

  59

  HE STARTED TO CALL FOR backup, but he didn’t. Right when his flashlight hit us in the face, he hesitated. He clicked the light off and we were both temporarily blinded. What the hell was going on?

  “Savage?” he whisper-screamed.

  I held both hands up. “Yeah.”

  He holstered his weapon, and his lips curled up into a grin. “Oh, this ought to be good.”

  I caught a glimpse of his face and recognized him immediately. Jose Ramirez. I’d known him for years. We were Rangers and went through Delta training at the same time.

  “I don’t have time to explain, but—”

  “But?”

  “I need you to let me go.”

  He shook his head. “Gotta be kiddin’ me?”

  “Come with us. I’ll show you. We need to hurry.”

  He warred with himself for a few seconds, looking around then back at me.

  “No time to waste. Trust me.”

  Delta was a brotherhood. It didn’t end when someone left. It was for life.

  He glared, then nodded. “Okay. But hurry.”

  I walked by and slapped him on the back. He knew me. Knew me well. We’d spent time together overseas, Iraq and Afghanistan. I led the way.

  I looked over. Shirley’s eyes were wider than usual. We acted like it was business as usual, which it kind of was. Shirley acted like a rational person, like someone who’d just escaped the clutches of death. Ramirez could’ve put a round between both our eyes before we’d known what happened. We were that good. I breathed a sigh of relief thinking about it, before my mind went back to the bomb.

  “Ramirez. Detective Shirley. TPD.”

  We came into a more well-lit area and he nodded at her.

  I shifted my gaze to Ramirez. “You look good in a suit. I should’ve known Delta would be out here.”

  “Yep, getting bossed around as usual by the SS pricks.” He paused. “So, there’s no threat out there, is there?”

  I took off the headset and tossed it off in the woods. “Family of deer. They might eat the grass. Is it safe for us to jog?”

  “Yeah.” He looked back and raised his cuff to his mouth. “False alarm, back to your positions.”

  We humped it over toward the Classic Cola truck. There was nobody in the cab. They dropped it there and left, as expected. I scanned the area to make sure there wasn’t a line of sight I missed somewhere. Nothing. Trees still everywhere, full of leaves.

  It didn’t make sense.

  We sidled up to the truck with caution.

  “What’s going on?” said Ramirez.

  Something was off about it, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. “It’s a bomb.”

  Ramirez’s eyebrows cocked up and his forehead wrinkled. The muscles in his neck tensed.

  “We need to defuse it.”

  “We have more guys here with demo experience. You want me to call them?”

  “Let’s assess first.”

  He nodded. Shirley walked on my right. Ramirez on my left.

  We made it to the back of the truck. I couldn’t wait to see Ramirez’s eyes when he saw how carefully and intricately planned out it was. We appreciated things like that in a morbid way. I had the first time I saw it, right before reality set in. Morgan would probably be inside, and I could see the hope on Shirley’s features.

  Bracing for the worst, I unlatched the back and raised the door up on its rollers.

  It wasn’t a bomb.

  60

  THE TRUCK WAS FULL, BUT it wasn’t the same truck I’d seen on the farm.

  “What the hell?” I climbed in the back of it. No shock tubing. No panel with wires running up the wall. I opened one of the cans of soda, sniffed it, and took a drink.

  “You know you can get that at any store, you cheap ass.” Ramirez stood there, shaking his head. “Seriously. This some kind of joke?”

  I stood there, bewildered.

  There was no time for theatrics. I tried to think back and replay the events in my head. They left the farm, had a head start on us. It was the driver guy, McCurdy, Morgan as a hostage, Bear following in the jacked-up truck. They were driving slow and cautious through the farm, even when I was holding a gun. Even when I was letting rounds fly in the front of their building, I’d seen them ambling up the highway. If the truck wasn’t filled with explosives, they would’ve taken off at normal speed.

  They drove away in the bomb truck. I was ninety-nine percent sure. They improvised a decoy somewhere along the way. The bomb was wired to the truck. McCurdy knew that I knew he hated all these guys. He had to have known I’d think they were the target. He’d played me again. I was left standing like an idiot and I was the only one who’d seen the damn bomb. Shirley probably thought I was insane, making things up. Everything moved way too fast. My brain was dizzy.

  I shook my head, trying to focus, on the edge of a mental breakdown.

  “Did you see two Classic Cola trucks at the farm?”

  She shook her head. “I never even saw one until you showed up.”

  “Bizarre.”

  “What the hell have you gotten yourself into?” Ramirez stared.

  “Thanks for not busting our ass over this. I need one more favor.”

  “Which is?”

  “We have to leave.”

  “How the hell you gonna get out?”

  There were guards as far as I could see, running around, positioning themselves. The Focus was way back up at the botanical gardens and Bear might still be up there. I didn’t answer Ramirez. I walked to the front of the truck, and hopped in. There were keys in the ignition. Why wouldn’t they take them? It made no sense. How had they gotten out?

  I rolled down the window as Shirley and Ramirez walked up to the side. “Taking the truck.”

  Shirley didn’t hesitate. She ran around and hopped up in the front.

  “That’ll work. If they give you problems, tell them to ask for me. I’m tight with some of those SS guys up front.”

  I nodded. “Until next time. Say hi to the family.”

  “Will do, Savage. Take care.”

  I turned to Shirley but didn’t say anything.

  “We’re not in handcuffs yet,” she said.

  “You could be after all this is over, if you want.”

  Her face flushed with pink, and she slugged me on the arm. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind.”

  I put the truck in gear and drove around the back. It was a big circle drive around the main building. “Get your mind out of the gutter, detective.”

  I got a look at the front of the lodge as we circled to the front. It was a huge log-cabin-style building with a sunflower pattern of windows below the apex.

  “Where now?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “Cushing?”

  “Yeah.” Something still ate away at my gut, though. They were always one step ahead, and I didn’t like it.

  61

  I WORRIED ABOUT US NOT matching the description of whoever drove the truck in. It may have been one person and there were two of us now, too. We weren’t wearing Classic Cola uniforms. It was dicey. Shirley relaxed her face but stiffened from the waist down. They waved us straight through the exit; we didn’t even have to stop.

  “Guess they were preoccupied,” I said, as we curved along the road.

  “I can’t wrap my head around all this. It’s like a different world I’m living in.”

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  The sun finally peeked over the eastern horizon, a giant orange parabola arcing into a scud of light clouds. The sky lightened to a gray overhead. We weaved around a few more roads and would be coming up on highway 412 soon. I had no idea where Cushing was.


  “We need GPS, unless you know how to get there.”

  Shirley fumbled through the glove box and came up with a paper map. Thank God for truckers. The guy who usually drove the rig must’ve been old school or carried one for backup. I figured most of them used a GPS-type system on their phones these days. This truck was older and didn’t have one built into the dash.

  “I’ve never been there.” She unfolded the map in her lap. It was the entire state, blue lines for interstates, red for highways.

  “Why Cushing? I mean I know the oil tanks and pipeline are there like Morgan said, and there were clues to it in Sean’s message. But what’s the motive?”

  “Destroy the thing he was denied? Like I can’t play with your toy so I’m going to break it?”

  “I don’t know. The Maple Grove thing felt like a better target. More personal. Those guys betrayed him. He’s a classic narcissist. He wants them to pay for what they did to him.” A sign flashed by saying the highway junction was in one mile.

  “Maybe he knew Cushing would be an easier target.” The map crinkled in her hands as she pulled it up closer to her face. “Go west on 412.”

  I nodded and took the westbound exit when we arrived at the highway.

  “Going back through town to I-44 is faster, but these roads will be less busy. Less chance of being pulled over. There may be traffic after what happened downtown anyway.”

  I gunned it, wanting to see how fast the truck could get moving. The semi got up to seventy miles per hour before it maxed out. That would do. “At least the lodge is clear. That’s all squared away,” I said. “How long you think it’ll take to get there? Ballpark?”

  She held up the map again and did a quick calculation in her head. “Maybe an hour? Maybe less if we maintain this speed the whole way.”