Savage Gods (John Savage Action Thriller Book 4), page 1
Table Of 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
Epilogue
Other books by Peter Boland include:
Acknowledgements
Savage Gods (John Savage Action Thriller Book 4).
Copyright © Peter Boland 2020.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author.
Chapter 1
It took several seconds for Savage to realise the vehicle he’d just passed was full of terrorists. Three to be exact, sitting in the cab of a large, four-wheel-drive pickup truck. They were stuck in a long snaking traffic queue, heading towards a congested beach, packed with people who’d staked out any spare patch of sand with umbrellas, towels and cool boxes.
Savage had flip-flopped past them, strolling along the hot pavement, towel and swimming shorts rolled up under his arm, and a flask of tea tucked under the other. He had put his temporary lack of vigilance down to the fact that his head had been full of pleasant thoughts. Thrilled at the day ahead, like an excited child. A day of dousing his hot, sweaty, grime-ridden London body in the cool blue waters of the English Channel. He’d been far too relaxed to notice them, or was he getting older and slower? Probably the latter but he convinced himself it was the former. The young Savage would’ve clocked them in a second. Read the tell-tale signs.
To be fair, a truck full of terrorists was the last thing he expected to see late morning on this sunny Sunday in August. But that was the trouble with terrorists. They had a nasty habit of appearing when they were least expected.
How he came to be by the seaside wasn’t expected either. The country was in the middle of a heatwave. A thick, sticky, tarmac-melting heatwave. Sleep had eluded him the night before. Though every window in his bedroom was open (a rather large security risk in a downstairs flat in south London), the room was as stuffy as a vacuum, breathless and suffocating. Every hour of the night had passed with sweat forming in his belly button, despite him taking numerous cold showers.
Savage was no stranger to sleeping in uncomfortable places. Being ex-special forces, he’d experienced every hardship and extreme; spent two weeks sleeping, eating and peeing in a bush in a humid, leech-ridden jungle, just to observe and report on an enemy hideout. But that was when he was twenty-four, when his body could shrug off fatigue and bounce back from anything. Now at sixty, his body wore tiredness like a heavy, sodden overcoat.
Lying on his bed, sweating profusely, the several beers he’d had the night before not helping, Savage had made the decision that what he wanted right then in life was to jump into a vast cold sea. To chill his overheated body, then drink tea from a flask, eat fish and chips, and read his history books with one or two or more snoozes in between. At seven a.m. he had made his decision. He would get out of London (it was always several degrees hotter than the rest of the country), drive to the coast and cool down properly.
Brighton would have been the closest, easiest and most logical option. London-by-the-sea, as it was known, and only a couple of hours away. Its grand regency architecture always appealed to Savage with his keen eye for building design. And the place had a buzz to it. Both quirky and sophisticated, it had plenty of soul. There was only one drawback. Its beach was made of stones, big ugly chunky ones the size of baked potatoes. Millions of them underfoot and not a grain of sand in sight.
No, not today. Savage wanted a proper beach. He wanted sand filtering between his toes when he emerged from the sea. He wanted miles of the soft golden stuff and for that he’d need to drive that little bit further to Bournemouth, with its reaching scythe-shaped bay and green-covered cliffs and cable cars down to the beach. With not one, but two piers stretching out into the sea, it was the stuff of childhood holidays. It also had something else very rare: Between Boscombe pier and Bournemouth pier at the base of the cliffs ran a road that you could drive along, the beach directly beside you. Instant access. He’d find a space, park up, open the sliding door of his VW Caddy van and set up temporary encampment there. Of course, the local council charged you a pretty penny for such simple pleasures, but he’d overlook the price, just this once.
By eight a.m. Savage had made a flask of tea and was ready.
By ten a.m. Savage realised everyone else had had the same idea.
The little VW van resided in a traffic queue outside of Southampton, heading south, where the M3 motorway met the M27. The temperature inside the van was already unbearable, as Savage had been too tight to shell out for air conditioning. Outside, the heat haze coming off the road shimmied in front of him, not helped by thousands of car engines all idling away, hot under the bonnet.
Savage kept his cool, focusing on the thought of plunging into ice-cold sea. Running into it like a man possessed. No timid edging in for him. No shuffling deeper and deeper until he got to that tricky bit by his midriff, wincing as the frigid water lapped around his tummy. No, he’d dive straight in.
By eleven a.m., Savage’s little van was in spitting distance of the beach. It wound its way through the back streets of Boscombe following the signs to the pier where he could park on the beachside road, and go straight from his car into the sea.
Savage’s heart dropped as he came over the brow of the hill above Boscombe pier, to be confronted by the miserable prospect of yet another traffic queue, heading onto the sea-front road. He could see a small hut where you paid the extortionate entrance fee. A big sign announced “FULL” in no uncertain terms. With every available parking space already taken, the attendant who took your cash had adopted a one-in-one-out policy. At the rate cars were leaving and the size of the queue backed all the way up the hill, it would take Savage at least another hour or two before he would get his beloved dip in the sea.
Savage did the smart thing. He turned his van around, headed back into Boscombe and parked his car in one of its many residential streets. Okay it might take him half an hour to walk back to the beach, but he’d rather be walking in the sunshine than stuck in a car, and he took comfort in the fact that where he’d parked was completely free. With the savings made, he might push the boat out and treat himself to an ice-cold beer to go with his fish and chips.
As Savage smugly walked down the hill towards the beach, past all the static cars queued to get onto the beach road, he noticed a pattern emerging. There were three types of people in each car. The first type were young people, windows down, music playing, not bothered in the slightest that they were having to wait for a parking space. They joked, made fun of each other and just generally enjoyed the prospect of the day ahead. The second type were couples, not so noisy, a little more restrained and maybe bordering on being fed up, but they weren’t about to show it to their loved one. Then there were the families. A different mood and matter altogether. Roof of the car weighed down with badly secured inflatable boats and body boards, the father sat with ratchet-tight hands on the steering wheel, his patience having run out somewhere back along the M3. The mother in the passenger seat, trying to keep her husband from going into meltdown, swivelled round because the kids in the back were irritable and whiny.
He knew how that felt. When Savage had a young family, he’d been in their place. The drive down to Devon with his wife and his little girl was more challenging than taking a squad of men behind enemy lines. A pang of sadness hit Savage in the chest like a bullet. He’d give anything to go back into the past, to be in that hot car seat with his wife and little girl, even though her whingeing had made him irritable at the time. For Savage was on his own now. Both his beloved daughter and wife had been snatched from him. His wife lost to cancer and his daughter to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.
Savage felt a tear form at the corner of his eye. He had to stop this now, stop feeling sorry for himself. His
Something pulled him out of his self-pity.
A nagging feeling in his head as he strolled towards the beach. Like Spiderman’s senses tingling. It took his brain a while to catch up.
Two or three cars back something had lodged in his subconscious. A vehicle that didn’t fit the pattern. It wasn’t a car full of teens, or a couple, or a frazzled family. This was a pickup truck. Nothing weird about that. Loads of people rode around in pickup trucks, especially down to the beach. But what was bugging Savage was he’d seen nothing in the back of it. All the cars he’d passed were weighed down with beach paraphernalia. Umbrellas and inflatable dinghies, paddleboards strapped to the roof, barbecues and stacks of food and beer and beach blankets. But the back of this truck had been empty, clean even.
Maybe they were beach workers. People employed to keep the beach tidy and litter free. It must take a hell of a lot of them to maintain such a long stretch of beach—seven miles of it if he remembered correctly—especially keeping all that sand off the road that ran between the two piers. But if that were the case where was their equipment? Their brooms and shovels and brushes.
Something definitely wasn’t right.
Savage stopped walking. Pulled out his phone as if he were answering an important call. He did that pacing-up-and-down-the-pavement thing people do when they’re trying to concentrate on their conversation. Each time he turned on his heel to pace in the opposite direction, he got a glimpse of the strange truck without attracting the attention of its occupants. It also helped he had his sunglasses on. His eyes were hidden while he stared right at them.
Three bearded men sat in the front across the width of the cab, each one of them clad in black long-sleeve tops. A strange choice on such a blisteringly hot day.
The truck edged further down the road and as Savage made another turn, still barking away into his phone, he moved closer to the vehicle, almost walking alongside it. He managed to snatch a look at the guy in the passenger seat. He wore long black trousers, as did the other two. There was no sign of anything that would indicate they were heading to the beach. No towels, shopping bags full of food or bottles of water. Nothing.
Savage moved away from the truck and across the pavement where he leant against a wall, still chatting to the imaginary caller. He got a clear side-on view of the cab, three guys, all bearded, sitting absolutely straight-faced. Serious. No banter. No joking or mocking each other. Guys always mocked each other when they got together. And they were heading for the beach. They’d at least be talking about something. Even if it was to complain about the time it was taking to get parked or the unbearable heat.
Their behaviour was off. They were too focused. Getting ready for something.
Savage examined the vehicle. A big four-wheel-drive Ford. Spotless. This year’s plates. He noticed a logo in the back right-hand corner. A sticker. It read “Hire me. I’m less than you think.” And then there was a web address below it. He turned his attention to the wheels, specifically the tyres. Big, knobbly, off-road tyres. Coupled with the powerful four-by-four transmission, the truck would have no problem driving on soft yellow sand. Savage surveyed the beach below. Teeming with bodies, packed side by side as far as the eye could see.
It didn’t take a genius to work out that if these guys were indeed terrorists, their plan would be simple: drive onto the beach road then swing onto the beach itself, plough over as many people as possible. Run them over. They had seven miles of uninterrupted sand—full of unsuspecting beachgoers. They could murder hundreds of people. Possibly even a thousand. Everyone would be drowsy in the sun with their guard down, relaxed and vulnerable, wondering what was happening, until it was too late. Like shooting fish in a barrel. The only thing stopping them was this traffic queue. A single line of cars funnelling through one tight little entrance and exit. Once they made it through that narrow entrance it would be carnage.
Savage peeled himself off the wall. And swore at his phone as if it had stopped working. He shouted into it. All part of the pantomime so he could march up to the truck.
Looking straight at the guy in the passenger seat, Savage said, “Mate, do you know where I can get a top-up round here?” He held his phone up and waved it in front of the guy’s face, surreptitiously snapping off a few shots.
“No,” said the guy in the passenger seat.
Savage walked away from the car and swiped through the shots, captured at odd angles. Three guys, dressed in black, wearing combat boots. But it was the fourth shot that chilled his blood.
Three machetes lay in the passenger footwell.
Their plan was clear to Savage. When they ran out of bodies to run over or could go no further, they’d snatch up the machetes, leave the truck and go on a slashing spree, killing and maiming as many people as they could until the police shot them. How long it would take for the police to get here and put them out of action was anyone’s guess. With the London Bridge attacks the police only took eight minutes to arrive on the scene. This would not be that easy. With only one entrance and exit onto the beach, flanked by cliffs, plus people panicking and fleeing the other way, police accessibility would be hampered. These terrorists would have a hell of a lot more time than eight minutes to wreak havoc. Possibly two or three times as much. They could kill a lot of people.
There were only four cars in front of them in the queue for the beach. The police would never get there in time.
Savage would have to take them on by himself.
Chapter 2
Savage weighed up his odds.
Three terrorists with machetes against him, armed with a towel and a flask of tea.
His odds weren’t good.
If he took them on in a straight fight, they’d cut him down in seconds and then the carnage would begin.
Confrontation wouldn’t work, but maybe containment would. Scanning the line of cars waiting in the queue, almost all of them had objects strapped to the roof. Savage needed a strap, but it needed to be long and none of the ones near him were anywhere near long enough. Up the road he spotted a tatty Ford Transit van loaded up high with inflatable paddle boards, six of them stacked up like pancakes on a plate, lashed down with three extra-long heavy-duty luggage straps with nice big meaty buckles. Perfect for what he had in mind.
Savage approached the van. Two young, bare-chested guys sat in the front, happy and excitable. More were in the back, nursing crates of beer at their feet, disposable barbecues and several bags of food. That was how a vehicle heading for the beach should look.
“Excuse me,” said Savage. “I was wondering if I could buy one of your luggage straps.”
“Nah, sorry mate,” said the guy in the passenger seat, taking a hit from a vape machine. It smelt of blueberries. “We need them. Keep the boards on the roof.”
Savage whipped out his wallet. “How much did the straps cost you? Twenty quid?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Savage offered up a twenty-pound note. “I’ll give you this for just one strap.”
“Nah, sorry mate. We need them.”
Down the road Savage noticed another car had left the beach and the attendant was letting the next car through. The terrorists were only two cars away from the entrance. He was running out of time. No more haggling. He needed that hefty luggage strap right now.
He pulled two more twenties out. “Here’s sixty quid. I just need one strap. You’ll still have two up there to keep your boards secure.”
“Are you for real?” said the driver.
“Yep.”
“We’ll take that deal.” He got out of the van, reached up and unlashed one of the straps, rolled it up and handed it to Savage. Savage placed the three twenties in his hand.
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