He stared at me for a long time. His look said it all. Plain as day. First remorse because he’d hurt Shirley. He genuinely cared for her like a daughter. But she and her family were taken away from him, so he went back to what he was good at. Money. He was addicted to it. Couldn’t stop. Some people were like that. Some people robbed pharmacies for drugs. They needed a fix that bad. Morgan would blow up cities and execute presidents for his addiction. Power and money. They’ll turn you into a different person.
He wouldn’t admit it. His face went tomato red and he stormed toward me just as I picked the lock. The cuffs clicked open. Morgan shoved the gun in my face. Gritted his teeth. “Goddamn you!”
He got too close.
I smiled my busted-up face right at him. “This is gonna hurt. Just like the truth.”
66
I JERKED MY HEAD TO the side and lunged out at his wrist, catching it with one free hand. You had to love paper clips. His eyes filled with horror and shock. I jerked his arm down as I brought my knee up, smashing it into his forearm. His ulna and radius snapped on impact. It looked like he had two elbow joints.
Morgan howled in pain. His hand went limp and the gun rolled off his fingertips.
I kicked him in the ribs to get him out of the way, then bent down and grabbed the gun. “Get up.”
He grimaced, and slowly made his way to his feet. I marched him execution style over to the truck, keeping him between me and the sniper, and then shoved him down underneath the big Classic Cola logo.
Shirley started to follow.
I hollered, “No, stay there, out of range! If you can see the guy out there, he can see you!”
She stopped in her tracks but was still within yelling distance.
I pointed the gun at Morgan’s forehead but kept four feet between us.
“Take out your phone.”
He groaned and cried and pawed at his broken arm.
I gave him a quick stomp to the ribs that doubled him over. Shirley stood off in the distance, still in shock.
“Hey!”
She turned to me and wiped a few tears from her eyes. I wanted nothing more than to hold her and comfort her, but we had more pressing matters. She had to stay strong a little while longer. I tried to give her strength with my stare.
“Later!”
She nodded and righted herself, putting her game face back on.
I kicked Morgan again, right in the pressure point on his thigh. “Phone. Now!”
He took it out of his pocket with his good arm. I’d wanted to blow his head off the second I took the gun away from his sorry ass, but that would’ve been disastrous. Shirley stared at me and then I saw the light bulb go off in her head. She must’ve realized why I’d marched us in front of the truck.
Morgan held his phone up at me to show me he had it out.
“Call your buddy. Tell him to come down slow where I can see him, without the rifle.”
Morgan made the call. He nodded off in the distance, to the tank where the guy was sitting about twenty feet up. The tiny silhouette popped up and headed down. I was surprised the guy didn’t make a run for it.
Then, he did.
The guy bolted off in the other direction. He knew the game was up. He’d probably watched everything go down through the scope of the rifle.
Morgan just sat there, defeated.
“He’s gone! You can come over!”
Shirley started toward us.
I smiled at Morgan. “I have some more questions.”
67
SHIRLEY WALKED UP NEXT TO me.
I didn’t look at her, keeping the gun pointed at Morgan from a safe distance. Only dummies put a gun to someone’s head when they were in striking distance. “First, admit what you did.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. You made all of that up.”
“We don’t have time for this, Mr. Morgan. Tell her the truth. She deserves it.”
He shook his head again. “I did.”
“You have about three seconds.”
He glared up at me. “Until what?” He scoffed. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Oh, you bet your ass I am. But if you give her some closure, I won’t rip your legs off and kick your teeth in with them.”
He gulped.
“Tell her it’s true. She needs to hear it. She deserves that much.”
Shirley wouldn’t look at him.
I walked over and handed her the gun. “Remember there’s a bomb in the truck. Don’t do anything crazy.” I smiled back at him and shrugged. “You can always fire from the side though. Thanks for the tip.”
She aimed the gun at him. “Did you do it?”
“It’s complicated.”
She gritted her teeth.
I kicked him in the ribs again, doubling him over. He grimaced and blood sputtered from his lips.
“Did you kill my parents?”
“Yes.” He looked up at her. “Yes, I did. Because your mother was acting like an idiot. She wouldn’t listen to reason.”
Shirley glared, staring hate into his eyes. “I looked up to you. I loved you. Our whole family did.”
“Kristine, please. I’m sorry, okay. I’m sorry.” He had tears in his eyes. Maybe they were genuine. Maybe he wanted sympathy. Didn’t matter.
Her look morphed from anger to pity. “I feel sorry for you. You’re a miserable person that had to drag everyone down to your level.” She walked over and handed the gun to me.
I nodded in understanding.
“Do whatever you want. I’m done with him.” She turned her back to us and walked a few steps away.
“I have more questions.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Good, Charles. That’s what I like to hear. The sound of defeat. Now, what’s the end game?”
He stared at me like I was a funny-looking insect. “Blow up the pipeline and the lodge, obviously.”
I kicked him again, a downward stomp, smashing my heel right into his liver.
He keeled over, clutching his side. I cocked my leg back like I was going to do it again.
He held his hands up. “Please! Stop!”
“Better capture my interest in a hurry.”
I thought I had a pretty good idea of what Morgan was doing already. It was all driven by money and power for him. Something financial. Manipulating markets. Buying-out companies. All that clandestine rich-people stuff.
He looked up at me. “What happens after every terrorist attack?”
“People die.”
I faked a kick at him just to watch him squirm—because I liked the sight.
“Okay! Okay! I wasn’t lying about investing in renewable energies, like I said back at the house. I invested too much. It was very profitable at first, after 9/11, when oil prices surged. Investors pump a lot of money into alternative energy when oil prices skyrocket, speculators drive up the value. I’ve lost billions since, once the price of oil dropped and the financial markets collapsed.”
I kicked him again, hard. He groaned and flopped around.
“So what? You blow everything up, and the cost of oil skyrockets? That doesn’t even make sense. You’d blow up a lot of oil, but not even close to enough to make an impact.”
He laughed. It was a pitiful laugh, like he’d already resigned his fate.
“What the hell is so funny?”
“You’re focused on the objective details, working out the math in your head. How much oil was destroyed when planes crashed into the twin towers?”
I understood what he meant immediately.
He coughed a few times then steadied himself. “The price of oil isn’t based on math, or logic, it’s based on a bunch of rich guys making bets. It’s a casino. And it only takes a nudge to get them all panicking.”
“Not if they’re all dead.”
“There’s always someone to step up and fill the shoes. It’s a cutthroat industry.”
“Okay, so if the cost of oil go
es up, the value of your companies increases. You’re rich again. Great.”
He looked right through me, his mind a thousand yards away, wondering how it all went wrong in the last twenty-four hours.
“Okay, two questions. First, why the French president?”
He looked up at me and shrugged. “We held short positions on the Euro and needed something big to get the security teams scrambling. He was the easiest target. Figured the currency would drop off with the news. I’m sure it already has. It’d inflate our cash positions. This project didn’t come cheap.”
“Yeah, financing the cover for the farm had to be expensive. Surprised McCurdy wasn’t skimming off the top too. Or was he, and you needed him too much to do anything about it?”
His jaw flexed at the sound of McCurdy’ name. It told me all I needed to know.
“Okay, next question. How did you expect to get away with all of this?” I laughed. “I mean, c’mon. What good does money do if you’re rotting away in Gitmo? They execute people for that, you know?”
He sat there, refusing to give up the answer, still clinging to some kind of hope.
Shirley glared at him, gritting her teeth. “You’re despicable. I looked up to you. At least tell me why you killed my mom. You loved her.”
He snapped, knowing he was going to die, one way or the other. When you show someone to their deathbed, they show you who they really are. “Your mom and I belonged together. We could’ve raised you. She shouldn’t have taken up with that asshole father of yours! She got what she deserved.”
Shirley’s hands trembled at her sides and then balled into fists. Her jaw was tight, and she looked like she bit the inside of her cheek.
My own face heated. He was hurting her, digging his heels in. She was a good person. She had nobody because of this pile of waste. A single tear sluiced down her cheek.
I walked behind Morgan and kicked him forward onto his stomach, then pointed the gun at the back of his left knee and pulled the trigger.
He shrieked. Shirley shuddered at the sound of the gunshot.
“Now, there’s no way you’re getting out of here. Tell me how you planned to get away with this.”
“I-I-I…”
I shot the back of his other knee.
Shirley turned her back to us, unable to watch any more.
“Better start giving me answers, or I’ll work my way up your back.”
“I don’t have fingerprints on any of it. Nothing could tie me to anything until you came along.”
“Nonsense, you bankrolled the farm. McCurdy would squeal as soon as they arrested him.”
“It’s all untraceable. Routed through Delaware corporations, Panamanian shell corps, Cyprus, Caymans, Swiss banks and other offshore accounts.”
“And McCurdy?”
“We’re supposed to fly out of Jenks, before we set the bombs off. There’s one parachute in the back of the plane and only enough gas to make it halfway to Amarillo.”
“You really are a cold son of a bitch.”
“Ar-ar-are you going to kill me?”
“No.”
He rolled to his side. “What?”
I tossed the knife down in front of him. “I’m calling the Cushing cops as soon as we leave. You can fall on that knife like a samurai or let them take you to jail.”
A streak of urine stained the inside leg of his sweatpants. He reached for the knife, slowly. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his hand trembled around the handle. After a few deep breaths, he plunged it into his chest. A stream of crimson spurted from his lips. He stalled for a moment, then fell face-first back to the ground. After a few seconds, I heard the death rattle, and his lifeless eyes stared out at the oil tanks.
I grabbed Shirley with my good arm, hugging her tight to my chest. I turned her away from his body, so she wouldn’t have to look at it and ran my hand through her hair. She trembled against my ribs. I held her close and tried to take all the fear and anger in her fragile body and transfer it straight into mine. She beat at my ribs with her fists, and I squeezed her tighter. She pounded on me like a punching bag, and I took every one of the blows. It was what she needed, to get it all out.
I held her close and kept my mouth down by her ear. “It’s okay. He’s gone.”
“I hate him!” She screamed over my shoulder at his corpse, “I hate you!”
I pulled her harder against my chest and cupped the side of her head in my palm. Tears flooded her face and soaked into my shirt. She finally gave into my embrace and just sobbed.
I kissed the top of her head, and smoothed her hair down, over and over. “We got him. He’ll never hurt anyone again.”
After about fifteen or twenty seconds, she did what all cops and soldiers do. She pushed it all back down and straightened up, schooling her features, game face back on. She wiped both of her eyes. “I’m sor—”
I shook my head. “Don’t.”
She stared at the ground and nodded.
I walked over and took the cell phone out of Morgan’s pocket. The bastard played hostage for hours. I didn’t like people getting one up on me. He’d done it.
I called up the Maple Grove Lodge after looking up the number on the internet. Morgan’s phone had a great signal on it. I could see the cell towers off in the distance. A man with a deep voice answered. No way was he a normal employee.
“I need to speak with Ramirez. He’s on executive detail.”
“What are you doing?” Shirley whispered.
I covered the receiver. “They can defuse the other bomb, now that we know it’s there.”
“Sir, the president is not here. Is this some kind of joke? You have the wrong number.”
“Listen up. I know who you are, and I know why you’re there. I’m not some conspiracy whack job making prank calls. There’s a Classic Cola truck parked outside. It’s packed with enough fertilizer to level that place. There’s one in Cushing in the middle of the oil storage facility too. You get to Ramirez now and you tell him to check the truck again and to get someone out here immediately, as fast as possible. Tell him Savage sent you and it’s new. Tell him exactly that. Top priority. Get on it.”
I hung up. Whether he went to Ramirez or not, I didn’t know. But I didn’t have time to find out. He’d tell someone who’d tell someone who would go look.
I yanked Peabody’s knife out of Morgan, then hopped up in the back of the truck with it.
I didn’t know whose job it was to detonate the bomb, but it needed to be dealt with. As far as I knew, McCurdy could still make a phone call and blow the place up. I climbed in and examined the bomb up and down several times. Finally, I severed a wire that ran out of the panel, then stepped back out.
Shirley eyed me with suspicion. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“What? How?”
“You watch too many movies.”
“Wow. You’re just—I don’t know what you are.” She put a hand on my shoulder that’d been shot. I grimaced.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry.” She started to touch it again.
I caught her wrist in my palm on instinct. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
I smiled. “We need to get out of here. Come on.”
“Where we going?”
“To see our other friend at the airport in Jenks.”
68
IT TOOK US A LITTLE under an hour to arrive at the northern side of Jenks in the giant truck with the lift kit on it. No way was I driving the semi all the way there with a dismantled bomb in the back, and the truck might come in handier if we needed to go off-road. I’d read about the Jenks high school football team in the Tulsa World when I’d look for messages from Sean. It was the only reason I recognized the name. They were one of the top-ranked high school football teams in the country every year.
The drive to Jenks was pretty uneventful. A few rolling hills along the highway with thick wild-growing trees flanking each side.
The skylin
e of downtown grew smaller in the rear-view mirror the farther south we drove on Highway 75. We were coming up on 81st Street, eight miles south of downtown.
I took the exit ramp on 81st, made a left, and we headed back east.
“How far?”
“About a mile and make a right on Elwood. The airport is near a golf course.”
Airport and a golf course, a lot of open, flat land.
“You know this area?”
“Kind of, but not well. It’s a different jurisdiction.”
“Okay.”
I turned right on Elwood, heading south. It looked like a typical rural area. Nothing special. Two-lane road. The heat lazily waved up from the asphalt.
There were fenced-in yards with American flags hanging off the porches, and yellow signs warned of flooding in low-lying areas. I figured we must be close to the Arkansas river. The whole area seemed to sit in a flood plain. Two sets of power lines ran parallel to the roads, long ropes of wire connected to tall wooden poles stretching off into the distance.
The trees cleared, and the airport came into view. It was a small airport for puddle jumpers; Cessna airplanes everywhere, little two- or four-seaters with propellers on the nose. There were tiny metal buildings strewn about. Signs everywhere read DESTINATIONS and CHARTER TOURS. It was where the rich people came to fly or play. There was a hangar labeled Spartan School of Aeronautics. I figured students came here to log training hours for their pilot licenses. A few backhoes and other powerful machines crawled along a giant rectangle of upturned earth off to one side.
I spotted the entrance. McCurdy would be in a hangar. No way would he leave without Morgan. Morgan was the money train, and the brains. McCurdy would be nervous, pacing, monitoring the news.
I couldn’t wait to see him.
We pulled around, cruising through the airport, scanning the hangars. Then I spotted a building three stories high with a huge bay door open at the front. Six or seven Cessnas were lined up in a row facing the road.
Savage Beast (Max Savage Book 1) Page 24
