Savage Beast (Max Savage Book 1)

by Sloane Howell

  “I should’ve snagged a phone. They won’t be looking for us as hard now. Everything will be concentrated on the assassination.”

  “Why do we need a phone?”

  “Call Harden. Maybe he’ll believe you now.”

  “He’ll be busy downtown, and Provost will be there. It’s probably a jurisdictional nightmare. Can you imagine?”

  She was right. The French would want to run the show, Secret Service sticking their head in, along with a dozen other agencies suckling at the teat for information. Not to mention TPD and the FBI would be all over the place, maybe even agencies nobody had ever heard of.

  “First chance we get, we should call him. He could be useful.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure,” she said. “What are we going to do when we get to Cushing?”

  “Defuse the bomb. Kill anyone that tries to stop us. Get Morgan.”

  “No, I mean, how do we find them?”

  “We have to assume they’ll be in a bright blue Classic Cola truck, right?”

  “Right. But it’s still a huge area. We have no map of the layout. Nothing.”

  “We need to think differently. This is how they want us to think. What we’re doing right now.”

  “Okay. Well, what is bothering you most about it?”

  I whipped out around a minivan that was driving like a grandma, blasting the horn at them as we flew past. “This truck, for one. I want something more inconspicuous. And to answer your question, a lot. Like why blow up the pipeline? What do they have to gain? Who is bankrolling McCurdy? Why the assassination?”

  “The assassination had to be a diversion. Throw the place into chaos. Get everyone looking one way.”

  “And the rest?” I said.

  “I think he just wants to cripple the industry that shunned him. Anyone could be bankrolling him. There’s a ton of money between Tulsa and Houston.”

  “What’s their exit strategy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they have to have a plan, right? To get away with it?”

  “Why would Sean mention the big meeting in his clues if they weren’t going to blow it up?”

  “Maybe it was the first target and they switched when we figured it out?” My face heated up, like two days of no sleep and the pressure of the world finally ignited inside me. I beat my fist on the dash. “Damn it!”

  Shirley jumped in her seat.

  I held my hand out at her. “Sorry. I’m just—”

  “Tired, stressed, worried, hungry—take your pick?”

  I said nothing, just nodded.

  She slid a hand over mine. “We can still call it in to someone other than Harden.”

  “No, we can’t. Nobody will take us seriously but him.”

  “Even with the dead French President?”

  “Especially because of him. They’re all tied up with that. And we’re wanted fugitives. We call in and say ‘hey, I know you think we murdered a guy, but there’s a terrorist scheme going on to blow up the pipeline and maybe also a secret meeting that only a handful of people know exists. The man who lives on the moon made out of cheese told us all about it.’” I glanced over at her. “It’s just us. They’re all too busy to send people to Cushing. Even if they did believe us. They don’t have the resources.”

  “Yeah, it sounds pretty outrageous when you say it out loud.”

  “This whole thing is outrageous. It’s like something out of a damn movie. Real life doesn’t work this way. Gerard Butler and his abs don’t show up and foil a ridiculous plot at the last second.”

  My foot hammered the gas harder to the floorboard.

  62

  WE CAME INTO CUSHING FROM the north on a road called Highway 18. It wasn’t much of a highway; two lanes, one going each direction. Cushing’s landscape looked a lot like Tulsa, only flatter with copses of trees dotting the horizon.

  I didn’t need a map to know we’d arrived. The semi clanked and clattered over the uneven road. I could see the storage tanks way off in the distance. It was an incredible sight. The sun now chopped itself in half on the eastern horizon, glowing bright orange. It was haloed in white, sending additional white streaks hurtling into a bright blue sky. Ahead of us, it looked like giant aspirin and Advil spilled over the land in neat and tidy rows. It was odd. The tanks were either white or a brownish-rust color. I didn’t realize the enormity of the situation until we were closer.

  It was a matter of perspective. As we drew near, the tanks grew immense, until they were giant cylinders jutting up from the earth into the sky.

  “These hold oil?”

  “I think so. I don’t know much about it. Just what Charles told me growing up and what I’ve seen in the news. Probably oil. Maybe gas.” She shrugged.

  My eyes widened, and I craned my neck up to the window, trying to see the tops. “Incredible.”

  We passed a sign that said WELCOME TO CUSHING, OIL CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD.

  “It’s a major pipeline hub and storage facility. Charles told me once that they set the price of oil here too, however that works. Something to do with the stock exchange and crude oil.”

  “West Texas Intermediate. That’s what he said at his house. So they set off a giant fertilizer bomb here...”

  I waited for Shirley’s mind to fill in the blanks.

  “The tanks explode,” she said. “And then the pipeline—Jesus.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be huge. The fires will spread and burn for days.” I pulled the truck over.

  “What are you doing? You see them?”

  “No, but I will in a minute.” I opened the driver’s side door. “Wait in here.”

  “Where you going?”

  I gestured to one of the tanks. It looked as tall as some of the hotels in downtown Tulsa. “Higher vantage point. Keep your eyes peeled and I’ll be watching you too.” I handed her the Colt. She’d need it more than I would if someone approached the truck.

  I slipped out, the sun growing larger on the horizon by the minute. I remembered it being something about the curve of the earth and the way the atmosphere refracted the light. It made the sun look bigger and changed the colors. Same thing with a harvest moon. They looked smaller as they moved overhead.

  I hopped over a drainage ditch and walked past a stretch of weeds and grass until the ground turned into gray crushed rock. There was a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence with three rows of barbed wire taut across the top. The fence caged in the tank. People in Oklahoma seemed to like chain-link. I looked left and then right. To the right, there was a gate with a small chain and a padlock loosely hooked around it. I saw a sign on the fence warning people to stay out, along with a list of hazards I imagined some lawyer came up with somewhere. It would be the bare minimum legal jargon that had to be posted to avoid litigation in case of an accident.

  I walked over. There was no sense in slicing myself on rusty barbed wire if there was an easier way. I grabbed the edge of the two gates where they were bound together, then shoved one side forward and pulled the other back. A gap opened up in the middle. It’d be a tight fit, but better than the razor-sharp nonsense on top of the fence.

  I worked one leg through first, ducked down and squeezed my torso between the gate, then pulled my other leg through. I couldn’t help but think if I could do it how easy it would be for a kid to get in there. What was the point of it? To keep out thieves? A thief couldn’t really steal more than they could carry, and a barrel of crude oil wasn’t very marketable on the street. Who would try to siphon oil out of a gigantic tank and then carry said barrel of oil around in the middle of nowhere? Who would they sell it to? It must’ve been for safety purposes. Which brought me back to the fact someone had been very careless when they locked up, but hey, they had the keep out sign, so what did it matter? Typical of big companies, cover their ass, and if someone gets hurt it doesn’t cost them anything.

  Why are you risking your life for these assholes?

  It’s the right thing to do, Savage. Get your
head in the game.

  A set of stairs wound its way around the side of the storage tank. I started up them. The Classic Cola truck grew smaller below with each step. The wind picked up when I’d made it about halfway to the top. It rushed and swirled, forcing its way through the tank farm. I looked down when I was about three-quarters to the top. It was one of those situations where it didn’t look too high from the ground, but once you were up there, you realized just how big it was, like going up the ladder to the high dive at the community pool as a kid.

  I scanned the horizon with each additional step, only one hundred and eighty degrees of the area visible, so I had a fifty percent chance of locating them. Once I spotted the bomb, there’d be no reason to keep going. I was also aware that if I could see them, they could see me, so I did my best to work quickly. With the sun already up, it wouldn’t be difficult to see a person standing on the stairs of a tank.

  I tried to think like them. Where would I want to set off a bomb for maximum damage in this place? In the middle of it, where the most tanks would take a direct hit, and the fire could spread to the others.

  I focused on the center of the farm. Half my field of vision was still impeded by the tank, but I wanted to check everything before going farther. I wouldn’t be able to see much else if I looked over the top anyway, unless I could get up there and walk to the other side.

  Just then, I caught a glimpse of it.

  Another blue Classic Cola truck, sitting just around the edge of a tank, right in the middle of the place.

  63

  A PAIR OF GOOD BINOCULARS would’ve come in handy, but I had to make do with what I was born with, my own two eyes. I had good vision—twenty-twenty. I held my hand to my forehead like a salute and cupped my fingers around to block out the sun.

  I needed to get moving, but I wanted as much information as possible. Was there a trap? Where would they keep Morgan? I scanned back and forth near the truck, looking for anything that might help. I found something. There was a small building, about fifty yards from the truck. The big blue semi with the yin-yang Classic Cola logo sat right at the mid-point between four huge tanks. I estimated them to be somewhere around sixty feet tall and two hundred feet in diameter. Pi times the radius squared, times height, would give me the volume. A hundred squared times pi, times sixty. Somewhere around one-point-eight-million cubic feet of oil. One cubic foot was roughly seven-point-four gallons. I figured the capacity was somewhere around thirteen or fourteen million gallons of oil. Conclusion: it was a shitload of hydrocarbons in a metal container.

  Somehow, doing the math helped calm me down a bit. I figured there was probably ten million gallons of oil or gas in it. They wouldn’t let it fill all the way up. They’d want some empty space. It was maybe even necessary for the pressure to move the liquid back and forth. We’d been briefed on how oil was stored back in my training days for a mission in the gulf. The storage containers were owned by a company, which then rented space in the tank to different oil corporations and partnerships. The oil inside belonged to hundreds of companies, later divided into millions of shareholders, shell corporations, and on and on, dividing up the pie with numerous spreadsheets and software, all of it changing daily. The company owning the tank charged them all rent. There had to be twenty or thirty tanks on the farm. That was only what I could see from where I was. I figured forty or fifty total.

  I was effectively sitting on top of four or five hundred million gallons of oil and gas, with a weapon of mass destruction larger than the Oklahoma City bomb in the middle, waiting to detonate. Oh, and with a pipeline connecting all of it, running under the ground.

  How do you get yourself into these situations?

  I thought the bomb might blast me into orbit. I looked back over at the small building.

  The first guy I noticed was Bear. He looked twice as large as a normal person. Morgan was still taped to the same chair. I couldn’t make out any details, beyond that. For all I knew, Morgan might not even be alive or breathing, especially if they’d beaten him. Bear’s driver had to be there somewhere. He confirmed it right then, walking around the side of the building. People walked a certain way. If you watched close enough you could identify them by their movements. There was even gait recognition software used in forensics settings and as biometric identification. He stopped next to Bear and stood like they were waiting for instructions. The rest of the place was a ghost town.

  I had all the information I was going to get, so I started back down the stairs.

  I thought about how much oil was being pumped underground from all the tanks. “A major hub for all pipeline activity in North America.” I remembered the Oklahoma City bomb had blown a crater thirty feet across and eight feet deep into the ground, from the book I’d looked at. I figured this bomb was good for twice that depth and radius. What would happen when the pipeline ignited?

  There had to be safety valves and cutoffs and computers, somewhere in a building, somewhere in the world monitoring all of it. Fire prevention systems? It wasn’t like destroying pipelines was a new endeavor, though it had probably never been carried out on this type of scale. Terrorists in the middle east and Africa blew up pipelines all the time, they were usually a key target during wars. I hoped our technology was better than theirs.

  I made my way to the bottom of the stairs. Shirley sat in the truck, out of sight from Bear and his driver. I walked back to the fence, squeezed through the gate, and strode up next to the truck as she rolled down the window.

  “Three people counting Morgan.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s still restrained to the chair. Couldn’t see more than that.”

  She nodded with a hint of worry in her eyes.

  “Hand me the Colt.”

  She passed the gun through the window.

  “I’ll get him. He’ll be fine.” I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I had to give her some kind of hope. “Stay here.” I took a step toward the road.

  “Do you want backup?”

  “I want you safe. If I’m not back in ten minutes, drive out of here as fast as possible and get far away.”

  “Okay.”

  I knew there was no way she’d listen, but I had to say it.

  64

  I HID AROUND THE CORNER of another perimeter fence and poked my head out. Sure enough, there sat Bear and his driver, up near the building. Why were they over there? Why not stay near the truck? Maybe the short distance made them feel like they might have a chance if it exploded; some kind of psychological comfort. Morgan didn’t move, didn’t look injured, just taped up and tired. He was sweaty and dirty.

  I estimated my distance from them at fifty yards, plenty close enough to be effective. Yanking the Colt out of my waistband, I racked the slide and checked. One in the chamber. I darted out into the road at an angle.

  Bear spotted me first. I saw an eyebrow pop up over one of his sunken eyes. It was the most I’d seen him express himself in two days. His buddy never saw it coming. I hit him with a double tap to the chest. He collapsed next to Morgan.

  Morgan’s eyes shot open and he flailed back and forth in the chair. Guess he’s alive. The front two legs of his chair came up and then slammed down. He shook side to side and rocked violently.

  Bear didn’t move. Nobody else came out of the building. The big lifted truck was parked on the side. It’d been hidden from my view from the tank. I figured one of them drove the bomb and one drove the truck. They had to be waiting for someone else, or instructions to blow the place. Otherwise why would they stay?

  The sun was already beating down on me, and I tossed the gun aside, marching straight toward Bear. I planned to put a beating on him, the same way he did Peabody.

  His lips curled up into a smile.

  Bear didn’t run, didn’t hurry. He took huge steps but looked like a normal person strolling casually, each stride covering an enormous amount of ground. I swore I could hear the earth straining under his boots, rumbling each time they
came in contact. We stopped about twenty feet apart and stared for a second, sizing each other up. I took a step forward. He took a bigger step and engulfed me in the shadow of his seven-foot frame with the sun at his back.

  His yellow eyes went wild, like he was hungry. Quiet men were always the ones you had to worry about. Men who ran their mouths weren’t dangerous. Bear was a sociopath. There was nothing behind his bloodshot irises but malice. He got off on hurting people, controlling their fate. He thought he knew my future, he’d put me in a casket after I’d begged him to stop.

  We’d see.

  He charged first, like a bull, and was much faster than I’d expected. I narrowly escaped his path and slammed a fist into his ribs, using his momentum to my advantage. It was like punching steel bars of a jail cell. He doubled over then quickly righted himself. I stared at him, assessing. One blow from one of his massive arms would put me down, and once I was on the ground, the fight was over.

  He had a reach advantage too, but he’d shown me his first and possibly only weakness. He wasn’t trained to fight. His size had always been more than enough to make up for it against regular opponents. My punch had barely fazed him, maybe cracked a rib if I was lucky. I stepped inside and riddled him with blows. Right left. Right left. Quick, efficient, powerful jabs to both sides of his ribs. The goal of each, to bust his internal organs and ram my fists through his back. He swung wildly but I was in too close. The sides of his arms caromed off my head. The blows were still powerful but held a fraction of his potential force behind them. They were easy enough to withstand while I drilled his mid-section repeatedly.

  He attempted to wrap me in a bear hug. I didn’t have time to appreciate the irony. I slipped through his arms; he looked like a football player that whiffed on a tackle. Working from behind, I got a few more shots to his ribs before he knew what happened.

  Wear him down.

  Just as I started to back away and make my next move, he caught me. I expected him to swing around with a strong right hook, but he came with a backhand from the opposite direction, a much more dangerous strike. It damn near took my head off. The blow all but crushed my jaw. My feet flew out in front of me, and I landed flat on my back. It knocked the wind from my lungs. I wheezed and gasped, sucking huge breaths, and stared straight up at the sky. Fuzzy stars fireworked in front of my eyes.