Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (this book - Book 4)
VIOLENCE WARNING: The two stories in the Savage Gang saga, and especially the second story, involve a gang practicing extreme violence toward everyone — women, the elderly, the protagonist, etc. I am placing this warning on all chapters, including those without such violence, so you can choose whether to continue.
CHAPTER 7
Two men, both wearing the gargoyle-like masks of the Savage Gang, threw Chief Rando into the cell and stepped aside to make way for Maximus Savage, who strode in after them. The cell reeked of human sweat and wasn't much bigger than a bedroom closet. A cot with a thin, stained mattress rested against one wall, and a dented aluminum toilet sat against the other.
Savage glared at the broken police chief, who turned onto his back with a groan.
"I'd say make yourself comfortable, Chief," Savage said with a sneer. "But that'll be damn near impossible here."
Rando focused his eyes, one of which trailed blood down his face, until they settled on Savage.
"Where... where am I?" he croaked.
"You're at the permanent residence of some mean fuckers who would love to get payback on you. Well, maybe not on you exactly, but on pigs like you. This is where they lock away some real bad hombres, from all over the country. A secret place, for special punishment, you could say. The warden and I have a little deal in place, for people like you."
"Wh... Why?" the chief wheezed. "Why not just k... kill me?"
Savage snorted. "You ain't getting off that easy, chief. This is where you're gonna live till ya drop dead, so you can remember how you fucked up when you crossed the Savage Gang. You had your chance, Rando, to toe the line like everybody else. You blew it. We're sending a message. We're gonna rain down hell on the world of anybody close to you."
Savage's voice trailed off, and a faraway look came to his eyes. As he thought of the havoc his men would bring on Chief Rando's city, he wasn't thinking about Rando, or even people close to Rando, because he was no longer present in the room with the captive police chief. Not mentally. His body was present, but his mind was far away, in another place and another time. The place and time that had led him to today. Savage was creeping through the darkness among the jagged terrain of the Afghanistan mountains. Several men stalked to his left and right, moving through the shadows and down toward the fertile valley below, their M16 rifles held at the ready.
He and his brother warriors remained silent as the village came into view — a sorry assortment of mud huts surrounding a stone well. Savage gave a hand gesture, and he and his men slipped into the village, each focused on a different hut. Savage moved into the doorway of the closest structure, letting his vision adjust to the darker interior. A thin man, woman, and young child cowered in the corner, their eyes wide with terror.
The skinny man moved in front of his wife and child, holding out his hand in a pleading gesture, but Savage ignored him, raising his rifle. It took only one shot, through the man's head, to kill him. Within seconds after he fell, Savage had repeated the process with the woman and child.
Leaving the bloody carnage untouched behind him, Savage marched from the hut, knowing his men were repeating this process in the other huts. Moments later, they fell in beside him, and the group faded back into the mountain crags. After a six mile march through the cold mountains of this nation, far from home, Savage and his men came to a helicopter atop a plateau, its rotors spinning, and the American flag emblazoned on the side.
Savage climbed aboard after his men, casting one final glance back down the mountain, before the helicopter lifted off. His work was done for the night, but this wouldn't be the last time for such bloodshed. And it hadn't been the first.
The SUV chirped as Conner Bennett pressed the button to lock the doors. Beth Harper slid her hand into his, and they strolled toward the covered walkway across the deck of the parking garage, her heels clicking on the concrete surface and the satin of her evening dress swishing around her ankles.
Conner pulled her close, and Beth buried her head in his arm without breaking stride, so he wouldn't notice the wince of discomfort crossing her face. She had finished a Saturday afternoon martial arts class with Master Dawson three hours earlier, and now had the aches and sore muscles to show for it.
As they moved across the garage, she pulled away and stole a glance at Conner, taking in his rakish good looks, made even more dashing by his black tuxedo. As usual, he had teased up his short, dark hair, but, much to her surprise, had shaved his ever-present stubble.
She was quite aware he was stealing looks at her, too. Beth wore a black form-fitting dress tied at the back of her neck, leaving her toned arms bare and making her thankful for the unusually warm February weather. She wore her hair up, accentuating her delicate but striking features, and she carried a small hand purse. Three young men walked to a car on the other side of the garage, and all three men turned their heads, casting furtive glances at the slender beauty.
"Thank's for coming," she said to Conner, ignoring the looks from the men.
Conner glanced at her with what she knew was a forced smile. Beth's father had sent her tickets to a violin performance at the Thompson Center, much to Conner's chagrin. And his night would be longer than normal, since the tickets included backstage passes to meet Lena Erb, a famous violinist. Beth wasn't a classical music buff, but enjoyed live music, and didn't want to disappoint her father by not using the tickets.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Conner said, not sounding the least bit convincing.
She bit her lip and frowned as they stepped off the hard concrete floor of the garage, and onto the rubber tile of the walkway, which crossed an alley below. The curved walls of the walkway were made of glass, providing a view of the quiet alley, which passed the loading dock of the Thompson Center further up the block. Beth glanced through the glass, and saw a man on the street, facing away from her, looking up the alley toward the loading dock. He was a large individual with a bald head, and wore black sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt.
Whatever the reason — perhaps from all her experience as a superheroine — she took notice when the man raised an arm and spoke into a device in his hand. She couldn't make out the device, but it could have been a mobile phone or handheld radio. A moment later he slipped the device into his sweatshirt pocket and fixed his gaze on a truck parked toward at the end of the alley, next to the loading dock. Four security guards, wearing grey uniforms and caps with visors, and with weapons holstered at their sides, stood at the rear of the truck.
Beth said nothing, and she and Conner stepped out of the windowed portion of the walkway and approached the elevator, losing sight of the alley. Strawberry Square, an indoor shopping mall, lay just ahead, but they would take the elevator down to ground level. After Conner pressed the button on the wall, the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. He selected the button for the main floor and the elevator descended.
"You're quiet tonight," she commented, snuggling up close to him as they waited for the elevator to reach its destination.
"Just tired, I guess."
He wasn't tired, she knew, but now wasn't the time for a deeper talk. Tonight was all about fun and improving their relationship.
The elevator reached the lobby, and they stepped into the large atrium of the Thompson Center. Colored banners hung from the ceiling four stories overhead, and a throng of people filled the air with the hum of conversation. A line of patrons stood at the concessions counter ahead of her, while many others moved toward a bank of doors leading into the auditorium.
Beth glanced to her right, through tall windows, and spotted several television news trucks parked along the curb. It wasn't the news trucks, though, that caught her attention, but a man in a window on the second floor of a four-story building across the street, standing back from the window and holding a pair of binoculars. He stood far back from the window, and the street lights weren't bright, so she wasn't sure why she had even noticed him in the darkened interior of the opposite building. His attention alternated between the crowd in the foyer and the alley on the side of the building.
"Everything okay?" Conner asked her.
She pulled her eyes from the man to find Conner regarding her with a cocked eyebrow.
"Oh, yeah, sorry," she said. "Just amazed at all the television coverage." She glanced back toward the building across the street, but couldn't find the man in the dark windows.
From his spot across the street, Rocco Lynch held the binoculars to his face and looked into the tall windows of the Thompson Center, scanning the crowd and making a mental note of the guard in the foyer. This single rent-a-cop should be the only resistance during the gang's debut in Harrisburg, after Lynch's men eliminated the four guards at the delivery truck.
Lynch had selected tonight's five-man team with those numbers in mind. Once the gang established itself in a city, Lynch and Savage preferred conducting multiple operations at once, and didn't want their men relying upon the luxury of overwhelming numbers. Savage also liked to demoralize law enforcement and the local populace, by showing what the gang accomplished with only a fraction of its strength. Lynch and his four men would be more than enough, against such meager resistance.
The gangster swiveled the binoculars, moving his view from the foyer to the side alley. He and his men had spent hours observing the location over the last few days, and it wasn't uncommon for delivery trucks to block the alley, even during non-business hours. Although they had a backup escape route, a blockage might put a major kink in their plans. So far, so good. Only a single delivery truck sat in the alley, and it was the truck whose contents they wanted.
The target for tonight perplexed Lynch. He hadn't heard violins for years, but he remembered them sounding like a mass of cars in a traffic jam. One of his men had told him a violin made beautiful music in the hands of a skilled performer, but Lynch scoffed at the suggestion. Nevertheless, the violin here tonight was valued at over one million dollars, which was the only incentive he needed.
He wished he could go in with his men to grab the instrument, but there were too many other variables. Lynch needed to oversee the operation, in order to coordinate it. He would also enjoy seeing panic descend on the city as the Savage Gang made its grand entrance.
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (this book - Book 4)
Another interesting chapter, all leading up to some difficult times ahead for Sapphire Angel. This is certainly not your average gang. This is like taking on an army, and I imagine they will have a plan for her, like they do everything else. We will see how she deals with them. Sounds like the first confrontation may be coming sooner than later, we will see.
The only down side to this cadence of releasing chapters is I end up wishing my weekend away, so we can get to Mondays release. :)
Ahhh, interesting! So we get a bit of an update on Chief Rando---though I’m assuming he won’t last too long---and a little bit of what made Savage the man he is today. Not much to go off of at the moment, though, but he still seems to have been experienced with violence from the very beginning. I don’t know whether that helicopter having the American flag symbol on it meant that they were with the Americans, or if they were for a different, opposing faction and were just stealing a helicopter that belonged TO the Americans. It was chilling how his gang just went around and wiped an entire village of huts without even bothering to spare the young ones or even just giving them a chance to explain; then again, we aren’t exactly sure if THEY did anything to Savage’s gang to warrant their own attack. More Middle Eastern rep, too, with Afghanistan and all that, in addition to Mantis, Amal Nassar, Majid Azari, and the ILA. They’re all villains, though, which unnerves me a little. Not everyone from there is bad.
That violin concert sounds SO high-class; definitely something I’d like to go to if I had company! If you were doing chapter titles (like I am), I would totally recommend the title “Resorting To Violins”. Not sure if puns are your thing, but it’s just an idea at any rate.
For once, I actually have reservations about Sapphire springing to action to stop Rocco Lynch and co.’s attack on the violin concert. This is supposed to be a night she spends with Conner, a night where they’re supposed to get along and improve their relationship, which hasn’t been doing well BECAUSE of her superhero activities. Conner might not take it well if that happens, but maybe if he physically sees the Savage Gang up close, it’ll change his mind. Maybe he can fight them as well, or at least help in getting the bystanders to safety.
I know they’re just there for a prized violin and all, but would the Savage Gang perhaps be interested in abducting Lena Erb? Sounds like she’s at least a little popular, and if expanding their influence and making the population fear them is what the Gang is focused on, I don’t see why not. There could be a fight inside the hall and the violinists could provide the background music, or something. And the Gang just doesn’t attack them because they’re THAT good.
I have a feeling this concert’s about to become something that no one will forget for a LONG time. Better brace for an imminent attack!