Savage Reborn (Team Savage Book 1) Read online

  Savage Reborn

  Team Savage™ Book One

  Michael Todd

  Michael Anderle

  Savage Reborn (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2019 Michael Todd, and Michael Anderle

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, April 2019

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-295-7

  The Zoo Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2018-19 by Michael Anderle and LMBPN Publishing.

  Contents

  Part One

  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

  Part Two

  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

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Connect with Michael Todd and The Zoo

  Other Zoo Books

  Books written as Michael Anderle

  Savage Reborn Team

  Thanks to our Beta Readers

  John Ashmore, Charles Tillman, Crystal Wren, Kelly O’Donnell, John Ashmore, Nicole Emens, Robert Brooks, and James Caplan

  Thanks to our JIT Readers

  Diane L. Smith

  Dorothy Lloyd

  James Caplan

  Jeff Eaton

  John Ashmore

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Micky Cocker

  Paul Westman

  Peter Manis

  Robert Brooks

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  Dedication

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Johnson peered around the corner of the building, keeping most of his body hidden as he made sure the area was clear. He breathed deeply, a calming exercise, and smelled a mixture of tar and rancid water. With the kind of heat this place absorbed during the day, heat-vision was useless. That meant they had to go in using only night vision, which covered the whole place with an eerie green glow. It seemed like they were on another planet.

  “It makes you wonder why they don’t send us in with suits of armor,” Lee muttered into his comms and covered their left flank as the team of ten men moved deeper into the small village.

  “This is a covert operation,” Johnson hissed through his mic. “Something that nobody but us, our target, and the Lord Almighty can know about. Clanking around in those fucking Ironman suits would get us noticed fast, and this whole thing would blow up—literally and figuratively. And speaking of covert operations, what part of radio silence don’t you understand?”

  He turned to glare at Lee, who shrugged but kept himself off the comm lines. With the kind of encryption that these things could work with, being overheard was practically impossible. Still, the fact remained that someone might hear them, even on the short-range comms. Even if they didn’t hear what was said, they might recognize military-grade encryption if they saw it and the jig would be up.

  That said, he wished they had come out there with at least some of the heavy hitters the Army had available these days. Their own suits were far from defenseless, with full helmets that were resistant to gunfire and ceramic plates in the rest of their armor that made it similarly impervious to most handguns. There was even HUD tech in their helmets that usually only came with the full suits of armor. The designers came up with all kinds of hybrids these days.

  Which made him wonder why the fuck they hadn’t come up with something that allowed them to run these missions using some kind of stealth suit of armor instead of these heavy as fuck ceramic-plate alternatives.

  Johnson looked around and noted that no other people were out. Nightfall was essentially an announcement for these people to lie low and wait for the sun to come up again. The small town was stuck in the Middle Ages, although such luxuries as electricity and running water, as well as something as simple as guns, were known and used. It was, however, obvious from the way their roofs were covered with solar panels and the handful of windmills that generated electricity, that they were very sparing in the use of the modern amenities.

  He held a hand up and stopped to listen to the silence. It was thick with the threat of hidden danger. He wasn’t sure about the rituals these people followed, but the fact that they were all hidden inside their homes was a very good thing since keeping collateral damage low was something of a priority.

  At the same time, it could also be very bad. He didn’t like how quiet the place was. According to the reports, there was very little night-life there, but there should have been some noise—a pot clanging inside a hidden kitchen, the low murmur of conversation…something.

  But the silence was deafening. He didn’t even hear the low sawing of crickets in the underbrush. Not that he would, considering that they were paces away from the desert, but hey, at least it would help to hear anything other than their boots.

  Something wasn’t right. Johnson turned and gestured to Red Three, raised three fingers, and pointed to the top of a nearby building.

  Jordi nodded and used a ladder quickly to hike up to the top
of the building as the rest of the team moved in. Most of the structures were erected old-style. They were mostly squat, one-story buildings that had access to a rooftop covered with either solar panels or electric matting. Either way, the top of one of the buildings was more than enough to give the marksman a good vantage point over the rest of the village. Even better, he was the squad’s long-distance engagement expert and packed a massive fifty-cal sniper rifle.

  Jordi pinged him the all-clear. Johnson returned a checkmark to his HUD and indicated for them to keep moving.

  He didn’t feel right about this. It was too easy. They were being drawn into the village, which made it all too likely that this was a trap.

  Warily, he looked around and kept his rifle ready as he raised his hand. He held up three fingers and then a closed fist, then two fingers and pointed to his left. Three of the men pulled away and returned to their starting location. Two more moved to the left, using the houses as cover. This left him with only three men to help find the target. It was a risky move but damned if he would walk all his men into a trap.

  “What is this place?” Lee asked and looked around as he spoke off comms. “And why the fuck would anyone want to hide out here?”

  “I’m not sure how you pronounce it in the local language,” Johnson said. “But it translates to sandpit. And I think the reason why they want to hide out here is because it’s isolated.”

  The man grunted something and ended the conversation. The four men eased through the village and kept their movements as discreet as they could while they approached one of the houses at the center.

  Johnson raised his hand again and his team stopped and looked around. Lights were off both up and down the entire street. It was so dark that his senses tingled. In all his years doing night ops, it was never this dark in any neighborhood in any town or city. There was always some insomniac who counted the hours before the dawn or someone awake, trying to read or get some chores done.

  His gaze locked on the houses on either side of the one they headed toward. “Nope,” he stated crisply and shook his head. “I’m calling it. We’re out of here.”

  “The house is right there,” Lee protested.

  “The target’s not there,” Johnson said. “This is a trap, and we’re bugging out.” He turned when he heard gunshots from the other side of the village where the remainder of their team had been left behind. They’d heard the communications, all right.

  “Insurgents are everywhere,” Jordi called over the comms. The boy’s voice was low and controlled, but Johnson could hear the panic behind his words. “They were waiting for us just outside the village center. Bug out, squad leader. The east side is covered by bogeys!”

  Johnson signaled for his men to move east but to keep to the shadows. He wasn’t sure if their movements were being individually tracked or if the enemy had waited for them to get deeper into the village before they attacked. Either way, he would be damned before he left any member of his team behind. He raised his rifle and narrowed his eyes as a group of men converged on the building where Jordi perched.

  Johnson snarled, raised his weapon, and opened fire in two tight, three-round bursts. “Red Three, mark the entrance of the building.” The thunder of heavy ordinance shattered the night and one of the five combatants dropped with barely a grunt. Another man staggered, sagged against the wall, and clutched his leg. Damn good shooting, Johnson acknowledged and grinned wolfishly. A couple more men fell as the heavy fifty-cal fired and punched through their body armor like it was tissue paper.

  “Appreciate the assist, Squad Leader. Bugging out now,” Jordi shouted and jumped off the edge of the building to drop smoothly to the ground.

  Movement out of the corner of his eye drew Johnson’s attention. A group of men emerged from a building in heavy body armor, toting outdated assault rifles. He swung his weapon around and gestured for his men to take cover as he opened fire. Time slowed to a crawl. They were outnumbered and outgunned, but the only thing that mattered to him was to get the rest of his men out.

  He scanned the area, tugged a grenade from his pouch, and tossed it through a window of the building the men had exited. Loud shouts issued from inside in the few seconds before the explosion.

  “Squad on the perimeter, pull away from the village and give us some cover fire,” Johnson snapped into his comms. He indicated for the three men with him to step into the building and clear it as he hid behind one of the walls.

  Bullets sprayed around him, but from the haphazard fire spread between him and the three men who entered the building, he could tell that there wasn’t much in the way of leadership behind this ambush. They had been prepared to attack, judging by the lack of civilians, but they were still not sure what to do once the trap had closed. He guessed they had assumed that their superior numbers and better positions would enable them to overcome their lack of leadership.

  “Roger that, Squad Leader. Stay safe in there,” one of the men on the perimeter called. It was a risk to split their forces like this, but those inside the village knew that they wouldn’t make it out if someone didn’t cover their retreat. Considering how deep in the black-ops book this operation was, they had nobody to count on but themselves.

  “House is clear. Get your ass in here!” Lee called from inside.

  Two men peered out of the windows, eliminated a couple of insurgents, and gave Johnson a chance to clear the wall he hid behind before he barreled through the window he’d thrown the grenade through only moments before. Jagged glass dug into his shoulder pads, but he was inside and now behind an interior wall. He moved more out of instinct than anything else. His heart hammered in his chest, which made it difficult to think. The other members of his team assumed defensive positions.

  “We need a way out of here, Red Team,” Johnson said and tried to keep his voice steady as he reloaded his weapon quickly. His hands trembled but he pushed the weakness aside. He needed to be at the top of his game right now—for his team if not for himself.

  Jordi connected his HUD vision to Johnson’s. “We see an opening on the west side of the village, Squad Leader.”

  Johnson now had a good view of the highway that split the village in half. A group of men was crossing it, but there was a slight opening he thought the rest of his team could slip through. “Roger that, Red Three,” he said and glanced at his small team. “We need to make it to an opening on the west side of the village. We’ll break for it as quickly as we can, and we need to keep on pushing, so don’t—”

  “Grenade!”

  He wasn’t sure who made the call, but there was no disputing the fact that one of those little knobby orbs of death had dropped from a hatch at the top of the building. They had been in a hurry and hadn’t cleared the roof.

  “Shit!” Johnson yelled as the hatch closed again. The three men deeper in the building scrambled to move as far away from the ordnance as possible. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it far enough.

  Johnson ducked and flinched at the roar of the explosion, which seemed to last longer than it should have. The air smelled of death and the noise-filters in his helmet hadn’t kicked in fast enough, which left his ears ringing. He peered into the smoky mess that remained and tried to determine the consequences.

  Two of the men hadn’t made it away in time. Shrapnel had ripped through not only their armor but their helmets too. The vital signs feeding directly into his helmet had flatlined. They were gone.

  There was still one heartbeat, though. Lee lay on the ground. He growled with the effort as he dragged himself to where his assault rifle had landed after it had been torn from his grasp. Johnson knelt beside the man and made a cursory examination—not easy while he struggled to move. He wasn’t a doctor, but some training in first aid helped. Lee actually looked like he had avoided the brunt of the explosion with most of his armor intact, except for his right leg. It had almost completely shattered and the lower half of the limb hung on by what looked like the barest of muscle fibers. It didn’t
bleed that badly, though, which indicated that maybe the wound hadn’t severed any arteries. Or maybe the shrapnel was still in there and suppressed the bleeding.

  “Fuck!” Johnson exclaimed and put his hands on Lee’s shoulders to force him to a halt. “You need to stay with me, you got that, Red Seven?”

  “Need to get to my rifle, sir…” Lee’s voice sounded distant like he was half asleep. “Can’t…leave any traces behind…”

  “Your rifle’s done for, Seven. Listen to me and you listen good, because I’ll get your dumb ass out of here whether you like it or not,” Johnson shouted over the ringing in his ears. “You take this…” He handed the man his own assault rifle and dragged Lee to a spot where he would be out of sight of anyone outside. “You cover that door and make sure nobody shoots me from behind while I clear the roof, do you understand me?”