by Tripp Ellis
Wild Fury
Tyson Wild Book Thirteen
Tripp Ellis
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Author’s Note
Tyson Wild
Max Mars
Connect With Me
Copyright © 2020 by Tripp Ellis
All rights reserved. Worldwide.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents, except for incidental references to public figures, products, or services, are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental, and not intended to refer to any living person or to disparage any company’s products or services. All characters engaging in sexual activity are above the age of consent.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, uploaded, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter devised, without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1
The battering ram hit the door with a thud, splintering the doorjamb. Bits of wood and debris showered down. The front door swung wide open, practically ripping from the hinges. The door handle hit the wall in the foyer, making a nice round hole in the sheetrock. Bits of gypsum and debris fell to the tile.
Deputy McTaggart tossed a flash-bang grenade inside the home. It clinked and bounced across the tile, coming to rest in the living room.
BAM!
I plugged my ears as the deafening bang thundered through the home.
The air filled with haze as the tactical squad breached the home with their assault rifles in the firing position. Clad in black, decked out with body armor and helmets, the tactical team advanced down the foyer—SHERIFF written in large white letters across their backs.
This all happened after the standard announcement had been made. County Sheriff's Department! We have a search warrant!
Another team stormed the home from the rear.
I followed down the foyer behind McTaggart and Wilford.
What happened next was devastating.
We knew going into this that we were dealing with some bad hombres. Things happened fast, but in retrospect, I can recall it frame by frame.
Jack Donovan was right behind me. He wore a bullet-resistant tactical vest over a loud Hawaiian shirt, and JD’s long blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail underneath a black tactical helmet. He shouldered a short-barreled AR-15 with a suppressor.
The goon on the couch, in the living room, had been playing video games—one of those first-person black-ops military games. He had long, ratty hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in days.
His girlfriend’s head had been in his lap, bobbing up and down.
By the time the tac-team had stormed into the room, the thug had dropped the videogame controller on his girlfriend’s head and reached for something.
It didn’t take a psychic to know what he was reaching for.
The gunfire emanating from the video game on television mixed with the chaos of the room and only served to increase the tension.
The girlfriend shrieked in horror. Her face twisted, and her long, brunette hair hung across her cheeks. She looked like a screaming girl in a horror movie. She curled up at the end of the couch, raising her hands innocently.
Her boyfriend had grabbed a pistol from the end table and took aim at McTaggart.
Before the thug could get a shot off, the squad filled him full of copper. His body twitched and convulsed as multiple bullets penetrated his chest. Blood spewed like geysers from the wounds. Crimson sludge dribbled from his mouth as he fell back against the couch, his shorts around his ankles.
His girlfriend was in hysterics, and her ear piercing screeches never stopped.
That's when things got ugly.
Another goon rounded the corner, leading with the barrel of a shotgun. The big black weapon took aim at McTaggart, and the thug squeezed the trigger.
Muzzle flash erupted from the barrel like a fire-breathing dragon. A plume of smoke followed.
The birdshot hit McTaggart in the chest, knocking him to the ground. The body armor took the brunt of the impact, but some of the pellets caught him in the neck and face.
He groaned with agony, and blood painted his throat and oozed from his face.
Wilford blasted at Shotgun as he ducked around the corner that led down the hallway to the bedrooms.
Drywall erupted, and gypsum billowed into the air. The sharp smell of gunpowder hung in the living room.
The hysterical girlfriend still screamed.
Wilford dropped to the ground to give aid to McTaggart. He placed his hands on McTaggart's neck, trying to stem the tide of red blood.
I advanced to the corner, flattened my back against the wall, took a deep breath, then swung the barrel of my pistol down the hallway.
It was empty.
Shotgun had retreated into one of the bedrooms.
The home was a one-story, three-bedroom. Not in a particularly horrible part of town either. There was a fat stack of cash and several kilos of cocaine on the kitchen table—neatly packed bricks of cocaine wrapped with duct tape. One of the bags was opened, revealing the crunchy white powder. The dust was scattered over the table, and someone had been packaging it into small baggies that lay in a neat pile.
These ass-clowns were breaking down the product and selling it on the street.
I wondered how many of the neighbors knew they lived next door to a criminal enterprise?
I advanced cautiously down the hallway. There were two doors to the left, two doors to the right, and a door at the end of the corridor.
My heart pounded, and my pulse thumped in my ears. A thin mist of sweat coated the small of my back. I’m not going to lie, the rush of adrenaline was like a drug. I began to crave it. Too long without a firefight and you started to get antsy and irritable. It had been that way since the first time I took enemy fire in the Teams.
It was a terrible addiction, almost as bad as drugs. Nobody wanted to get involved in this kind of thing, but it was a part of the job—a part that you relished and hated at the same time. Especially when a deputy paid the ultimate price. The ironic truth that many of us came to realize was that you were never more alive than when someone was trying to kill you.
Trying to unpack that and make sense of it was a futile effort. You just had to accept the fact that you were screwed up. You weren’t normal. Normal
people didn’t volunteer for this kind of thing.
But hey, normal is boring.
With each step I took down the hallway, my heart pumped harder.
When breaching and clearing a house, there is often nothing scarier than a closed door. You never know what you’re going to find on the other side. It's like a game show, without the prize. A sick, sadistic game show. Open the wrong door and you could get a shotgun blast to the face.
At the first door on the left, JD took one side, and I took the other. The hinges were on the hallway side of the door. Only closets swing open into hallways. Bedroom doors swing into the room, and you can’t see the hinges from the hallway. Knowing that meant nothing. It still didn’t tell me if anyone was hiding inside with a shotgun aimed at the door.
JD carefully reached for the door handle as I stood to the side and aimed my pistol at the doorway. Jack twisted the handle and pulled open the door as fast as he could.
My finger wrapped tight around the trigger, anticipating the worst.
2
The swing of the closet door fanned air across my face, tousling my hair. Empty coat hangers jingled as they swung on the rack.
The closet was empty.
I exhaled a breath.
The tension dissipated momentarily, but my heart still tried to punch through my sternum. It wouldn’t be happy until it burst out.
We turned our attention to the next door on the opposite side of the hall. It was a bedroom door with a left-hand swing that opened into the room.
I kicked the door open.
It slammed into the wall, putting another hole into the sheetrock.
JD and I spilled into the room, clearing the corners. There was a box-spring and a mattress atop the stained carpet. No bed frame. Dirty clothes littered the floor. The crumpled butt of a cigarette still smoldered in an ashtray beside the bed. The ashtray sat atop an overturned cardboard box that served as a nightstand. Next to the ashtray was a tall, glass bong, a mirror with residue of cocaine, and a tray of marijuana with rolling papers in a small orange dispenser.
The house reeked of stale smoke and body odor. It was clear that these thugs weren’t much on housework.
The room was empty.
We checked the closet as well.
JD and I slipped back into the corridor to rejoin deputies Erickson and Faulkner.
The two tactical officers had cleared the bedroom on the opposite side of the hall and found a scrawny little runt. His hands were in the air, and he trembled with fear.
"Down on the ground! Now!" Erickson barked.
The little runt complied.
"Put your hands behind your head!"
A moment later, the officer slapped cuffs around the runt’s wrists.
JD and I advanced down the hallway, checking the half-bath on the right, then crept toward the master bedroom.
There was no doubt Shotgun was behind that door.
I gave JD a look of trepidation. He nodded back, then kicked open the door.
Wood splintered as the door swung wide.
Jack dropped to a low crouch, and I angled the barrel of my pistol into the bedroom.
A ball of flames erupted from the barrel of the dragon. Shotgun leaned against the far wall and blasted at the door.
The doorframe, and the nearby sheetrock, vaporized. A plume of gypsum floated in the air. The impact hit just above JD's head. If he'd been standing, the blast would have taken his noggin clean off.
Before the thug could rack the shotgun and squeeze off another round, Jack fired two bullets into his abdomen.
I lit the scumbag up as well.
So did Faulkner.
The thug fell back against the wall and crumpled to the ground, leaving a stain of blood against the beige paint. The shotgun clattered to the floor, and a last breath rattled from the man's lungs as he bled out on the carpet.
My ears rang from the gunfire, and adrenaline coursed through my veins. My heart still pumped like a bass drum beating in my chest.
The clatter of gunfire still echoed from the videogame in the living room. The hysterical girlfriend had stopped screeching, now she was crying and sniveling and yelling at Wilford for killing her boyfriend. By the time I returned to the living room, she was in cuffs on the floor. The house was secured. The EMTs had arrived and were frantically working on McTaggart.
There was an enormous amount of blood pooled around the body.
I exchanged a somber look with JD.
Erickson dragged the runt down the hallway, and Wilford looked like he was going to maul the kid. Wilford’s eyes burned into the thug. For a moment, I thought I would have to intervene, but Wilford contained himself. He wanted payback for his downed partner, and it didn’t matter where he got it.
Erickson marched the runt outside and stuffed him into a patrol car. Red and blue lights bathed the area, and the red and white lights from the ambulance flickered.
The EMTs managed to stop the bleeding and stabilize McTaggart. They loaded him onto a gurney and rolled him out of the house. The wheels rattled against the walkway as they rushed to the curb. An EMT pulled open the back doors to the ambulance, then they loaded McTaggart aboard. A moment later, the doors were shut and locked, and the ambulance sped away, sirens blazing.
We all shared a nervous glance, hoping McTaggart would make it.
The forensics guys spilled into the crime scene and took pictures, documenting the area. They photographed the dead thug on the couch, the fat stacks of cash on the kitchen table, and the kilos of cocaine. Everything was cataloged.
There would be lots of paperwork after an incident like this. Evaluations on protocol and procedure. Monday morning quarterbacking on how things could have been different. But sometimes it doesn't matter how much you plan or prepare, unforeseen incidents happen.
No plan ever survives the battlefield.
We wrapped up, went back to the station, and interrogated the runt.
The kid's name was Dean Malone. He was placed in one of the small interrogation rooms. There was a table, a couple of chairs, and overhead fluorescent lights bathed the room in a sickly pale glow. It was a stark, cramped room that was enough to drive you mad if you spent enough time in it. We always liked to let suspects sit for a long while, letting their fear and discomfort brew.
The little runt had shaggy red hair, a long Roman nose, and freckles. He looked like that geeky kid next-door who fell in with the wrong crowd and made extremely bad life choices. His brown eyes flicked between me and JD as we entered the room. He was still a little high, a lot nervous, and totally terrified.
I wasn't necessarily interested in him. But I was interested in what he could tell me. He wasn't the mastermind behind the organization—that much was certain.
JD and I took a seat across the table from the little scumbag. I stared at him for a long moment.
"I would not want to be you right now," I said. "Do you realize how much trouble you're in?"
"I want to speak with an attorney,” Dean said.
My fists tightened. That was the end of our discussion. I hesitated, looking at him curiously, making sure that's what he wanted. Then I shrugged ominously, pushed away from the table, and stood up.
As I headed to the door, I called over my shoulder to the perp, "A cop was shot today. If he dies, you'll get no leniency. It will be the death penalty for sure. It's too bad you passed up your only opportunity to work a deal."
Dean hesitated for a moment.
I tapped on the door, notifying the guard outside to open it. It buzzed open.
"Wait!” Dean stammered.
I held up at the door. "You’re not gonna waste my time, are you?"
Dean said nothing.
I ambled back to the table. The metal chair screeched as I pulled it across the tile floor and took a seat. It was an unnerving sound.
Sweat beaded on Dean's forehead. "Look, man, I didn't shoot anybody."
"It doesn't matter. You and your buddies were running a little d
rug enterprise. You resisted arrest, and an officer was shot. He’s in critical condition and might not make it.”
"I didn't resist! I didn't even know what was going on. I was minding my own business when the shit went down. I didn't have a gun. I didn't shoot anybody. I wasn't involved in their little business venture. I was just renting a room at the house."
A dismissive smirk curled on my face. "Right. You're totally innocent."
Dean’s sad eyes widened. "I am innocent!”
He would get no empathy from me. "Cut the bullshit. You're not wiggling out of this one. We’ve got phone records, wiretaps, email communications. I'd need a calculator to figure out how many charges are pending against you right now."
I contemplated going into my lethal injection speech, describing how painful it could be if administered improperly. "I'll be honest with you. You’re small-time. You're a piss-ant. You wouldn't even be on my radar. I’m interested in where the drugs came from.”
He shrugged and tried to look innocent, then stammered, “I… I don't know,"
"Bullshit."
"No bullshit, man," Dean said. "Like I said—“
“You weren’t involved. Right.”
"That was all Adam and Ryan," Dean said.
"12 kilos of cocaine. A value of $336,000," I said. "Where did you come up with the buy money?"
He hesitated. "You'd have to talk to Adam and Ryan."
"Seeing as they’re dead, I really can't do that."
