Without Wrath (Harbinger of Change Book 3) Read online

  Without

  Wrath

  Timothy Jon Reynolds

  American Pride Press

  Copyright ©2016 by Timothy Jon Reynolds

  All characters, businesses, and situations within this work are fictional and the product of the author’s creativity. Any resemblances to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental. Publisher assumes no responsibility for any content on author or fan websites or other publications.

  Front cover art and design: Andrei Bat

  Editor: Patti Whitman

  Interior design and layout: Marian Hartsough

  Research consultant: Adam Hochman

  American Pride Press

  1344 Disc Drive #372

  Sparks, NV 89436

  Visit us at http://www.timothyjonreynolds.com

  Other Novels from Timothy Jon Reynolds:

  Harbinger of Change series

  The Harbinger of Change

  And the Meek Shall Inherit

  Without Wrath

  Chesed

  And Thou Shalt Not

  Others Novels

  YOCTO

  The Meth Chronicles

  Rock

  1 – Realizations

  He could feel the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Matt Hurst was out of breath, hiding behind a large pine tree, close to panic. He’d never been spooked like this before, especially in the forest. Yeah, he knew it was unwise to hunt alone, but he’d always been at home in the forest and looked upon it as his friend. Not now. Now it seemed to have turned on him. Suddenly, he realized what it felt like to be the hunted, and he had to admit, he was afraid.

  The morning had started rather uneventful. It wasn’t until after he had descended to the bottom of a ravine that he caught a slight movement coming from near the top. He found shelter behind a boulder, and from there he sat and watched for a long while but saw no further movement. Just his imagination?

  Moments later as he was traversing a small stream, hopping across rocks, he once again had the feeling he was being watched, that he wasn’t alone. He had this unshakable feeling of being under the surveillance of a riflescope. He was still trying to pass it off as his imagination when a small glint off a rock sent his blood running cold. He quickly made his way to cover, sure the glint was not that of a bird watching enthusiast’s binoculars. Someone was out here to kill him.

  He sprinted a good stretch after coming around a bend in the creek bed he was following. He saw the glimmer of a lens reflected off a rock, sure it was not some miracle of nature. The sensing of this unknown presence was unleashing some very irrational fears in him. Really, it was surprising and almost irrational for a man of his experience, but still, he knew the forest offered unlimited places for a seasoned sniper to prey from—and who was to say there was only one? Just the thought had him ducking as he moved.

  He tried to slow his breathing and listen, but his heart was still racing. In the back of his mind, he carried the hidden fear that one day one of his many enemies would follow him out here and finally rid the world of Mathew Hurst once and for all. He waited and listened for sounds coming from deep in the forest.

  He had been receiving survival training these last few months, and some had taken place nearby in these woods. He had joined the President’s little group and moved to Seattle where they were working with him, but he was far from graduated. He listened again . . . nothing.

  There were always bears to worry about, of course. The experts often warned that hunting alone required a constant state of mental awareness and toughness, and hiking in or out in the dark was much scarier when you had no partner—no matter what anyone would admit to. It was a macho thing, he supposed.

  Bears could be nasty on the charge, as they offered no place to get a kill shot with their head down running at their target at full speed. But Matt also knew that bears did not carry scopes. What if he were wrong; water had the ability to refract light and he was crossing a stream when it happened, after all.

  He relaxed a bit as he could hear nothing, and was about to continue on when he heard a twig snap. Matt froze. Something was out there, for sure. He considered . . . if it were a bear or cougar, the best thing he could do would be to make noise and scare the animal off—unless it had him on the menu, there was always that. However, if it were an enemy combatant, then he would lose advantage by exclaiming, “Here I am!” But it was also possible it was a fellow hunter, in which case he’d want to be heard so he didn’t get shot accidently. What a quagmire.

  He considered his options as he shouldered his rifle over his left shoulder and reached his right hand under his left arm and drew out his Smith and Wesson 44 magnum from its shoulder holster. His normal sidearm choice was his Beretta 9mm, but not out here, not when he went hunting.

  Of all the people in the world, it was his dentist, Dr. Vickerman, who had suggested the magnum and the logic behind it. It was Washington State after all, and a lot of people hunted, even one’s dentist. Dr. Vickerman, who often went to Alaska to hunt, said he always asked himself what would be the worse case scenario out there in the wilderness, and in this case, it would be a grizzly bear standing over him, ready to kill. He asked Matt, “What gun could you guarantee would save your life?”

  Matt had concurred at the time, as he did now, there would be only one: the 44-magnum revolver.

  The trail veered to the right, so Matt faced the trail with his back to the creek bed. The tension was intense and the clock was once more ticking him toward some deadly encounter. Sensing the coming confrontation, he cocked the weapon, which had a hair trigger—less than a pound of pressure would set it off. Whatever beast or enemy lay on the other side of his gun was going to be annihilated in a loud and angry way. The discharge from the gun was violent; it literally hurt his hand to shoot, and even if it were a full-grown black bear or a man in full body armor, this pistol would kill its target on impact. It had taken Matt some practice to get proficient with it, but proficient he was.

  The moment was upon him; his heart rate pulsing through his hand on the gun, waiting for the millisecond he needed to gain the deadly advantage. He assumed a semi-boxer shooter stance in anticipation. He was facing the game trail with the most intensity he could ever remember—when suddenly the barrel of what he could only assume was a gun came to rest on the back of his neck.

  He froze. Then a very familiar voice instructed, “That was a good application of logic, Matt, but we really need work on the tracks you leave everywhere and how to watch your flank.”

  He lowered his weapon, easing off the hammer and replacing it in his holster, as he replied, “Yes, Jim.” It was the only acceptable reply when his mentor had just taught him a lesson. Of course, it was an unscheduled lesson and now Matt realized he had to be “on” at all times, even out here.

  He turned to talk to Jim, but he was gone. Matt sighed, and then continued on his way, a little more wise about hiding behind the tree his footprints led to, and watching his back.

  * * *

  João sat on the edge of his bed. Last night was a brain-cell killer . . . so much rum. He looked back onto the bed and spotted the girl he mated last night; she was maybe eighteen years old. She also had the perfect ass that was now slightly sticking out of the covers—and it stirred something in him even though his head was pounding.

  He was going to replace the blinds today as some of the slats were bent and the sun’s first rays always found his eyes, which was why he was up right now. He couldn’t count how many times he’d planned to do this, but today was really the day he was going to fix the blinds.

  He was pretty sure it had been over a year since he’d sta
rted trying to kill himself by partying too hard; over a year since he’d lost his best friend; and over a year since he’d returned to Rio de Janeiro and his Favela Nova Brasília.

  He was currently the leader of “The Anthill Gang.” Others had different names for them, but they were the “Anthill” as far as any of them were concerned, and that was all that mattered. Their Favela was part of the Complexo do Alemão, a place where there were many slums. João had no interest to know how many, all he cared about was their own, and those right next to them.

  Abandoned on the streets at age nine, he had lived the life of a street child. He surely would have died had he not met Felipe soon after his parents had abandoned him. He remembered his early life with his parents always worrying about putting a roof over their heads. He remembered coming up Avenida Itaoca, the street that ran along the entrance to Nova Brasília where the businesses on both sides were abandoned, the buildings all stripped and broken, just like after a war. The drugs had not yet completely taken over things back then.

  One of those buildings was the last residence João recalled having as a child with his parents. It had been a factory years before, but now even the roof was stripped. People had divided up the floor space and lived there, but rain was the enemy of that plan and it was short lived. He remembered the day he woke up and his family had moved. His mom had left him some bread and a blanket—and that was it. She couldn’t write, so there was no note. She had never even told him his last name.

  His best friend, Felipe, had suffered the same fate; only Felipe would still see members of his family. He was abandoned by his father, kicked out and told to go out and survive, while other siblings were permitted to stay. Felipe had to endure seeing his more favored siblings around from time to time. That was how he found out his papa was sick and he was able to let him know just how much he appreciated the abandonment—right before he killed him.

  João had no such luck. He never saw his parents or any of his siblings ever again.

  He walked over to the bathroom, relieved himself, and came back to the bed, positioning himself so to be out of the rays of the sun. He looked at his bed partner again. She was one of their whores. He had no idea how many they had at this point. Now that their rivals, the Reds, were gone, they were able to expand their place on the Hill and absorb all of the rival gang’s assets.

  It wasn’t easy becoming Premeiro Comando. He and Felipe had grown up just floating around as kids with no place to be and no food to eat. They tried everywhere, but no place was for them. They were run off from any place where money could be found.

  Then one day when they were fourteen they found themselves in a new kind of place in the flatlands—one the drug lords didn’t control. They were both able to find vendors who gave them food for work. Life was good—for about a second. Hooked on getting high anyway they could, they sometimes found themselves sniffing glue, and although it made his head feel like it did now, a tube would last a long time and the world just disappeared when they did it.

  The drug lords did not run this new town; it was the militia who did. The militia was a private group that extorted money from the locals for “protection.” The protection part worked, but everything there was more expensive because of the “Militia tax.” The main positive was the place was pretty safe for street kids—or so they thought—until one day they walked out from an alley where they had been sleeping. The militia had just caught an older boy of sixteen smoking pot. To their horror, the fucking putos took the kid out to the main square and shot him! That was it for them in the Gardenia Azul.

  The next place they landed was Nova Brasília where the local gang, the Anthills, needed recruits, and they quickly rose up the ranks because they had learned a trick on the streets that the Ants hierarchy liked. After Gardenia Azul they met some Colombians who were smuggling cocaine and used them as mules. This was the best time of their lives to date because it was the only period when they ever had any money. Being old enough, then in their teens, they actually rented a room and had a place to stay. That was until the Colombians got busted, but not before teaching the two of them the trick.

  The Colombians knew that most Brazilians could kind of understand Spanish when spoken, but what Felipe and João discovered was they couldn’t understand provincial Spanish when spoken quickly. The Colombians used it as a way to communicate openly without someone deciphering what they said. Back then the leader of the Ants was Paulo, and he overheard them one day using it and liked the idea. Felipe and João quickly became intrinsic to the Ants ascension in the criminal world, and their impact never lessened until they ran the gang.

  Other than the two years that he left Rio and had gone to Ecuador to attack the United States, João had never been outside of Brazil. Starting out as a foot soldier and ending as the co-leader, he didn’t seek out to attack the U.S. He was brought into the attack as part of a team. His employer, a super-brain driven by God, recruited twelve of the Ants to carry out the attack; and João was the only one left to tell the tale. Everyone else was dead. After years of battling their rival gangs, the Reds and Ramos Nacidos, the man/boy behind the brain changed their status overnight.

  The man/boy was soft and looked so out of place, yet he spoke to Felipe like the most fearless warrior. He was after one of their whores. This was the part of the God thing that João just never quite understood. No one that knew them would have dared come in like that, but this man/boy, he later came to know as Pablo Manuel, just walked right in and bargained with Felipe for her. Such a deal would have been impossible for anyone else to pull off. Pablo said the rival Reds would all be dead by morning and the Ants could have their territory. Crazy talk as the Reds were connected to some serious prison gangs in São Paulo, the tendrils reaching all the way to their Favela.

  It was unfathomable, yet it happened and it put them on a map of people never to fuck with. People spoke of their brutality now. When a gang perpetrated that kind of destruction, then they got notice and respect quickly. Suddenly, right after Pablo’s people butchered all the Reds, the Ramos Nacido boys got real quiet and stayed off the Ants’ turf. It had taken the Ramos boys this long to start their rivalry again. Apparently they were tired of hearing the rumors of how badass the Ants were now, and wanted some action for themselves.

  Things were different now, though. As soon as they knew the Olympics were coming to Rio, the government started cracking down, especially on drugs and violence—the two things João stood for. He looked at his bedmate’s ass again, still slightly sticking out of the covers, and added sex to that list of things that he stood for.

  Nowadays, the UPP (Polícia Pacificadoa), Brazil’s peacekeeping police units, were everywhere, and that just would not do. So the Ants sent a message last week and shot one of their officers who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Turned out it was a woman. Why the UPP would be sending a woman after someone like him he had no clue? But she was dead now and her upset brethren were buzzing like bees all around his Favela.

  The Hill housed them and the Reds on the main facade, and above them the Praca do Terco (a flat terrace with no structures) prohibited the Ramos Nacido from coming straight down into their neighborhood on anything other than on foot. For the Ramos boys to get to them, they would have to use a car and come up the Avenida Itaoca, then turn up Rue Nova Brasília, and come right into the heart of the beast. So they had started the galinha (chicken) tactics.

  Last week, some of the Ants were having a roof party when shots came from up the hill. No one was hit, but the party was over quickly. Spotters had been seeing the Ramos boys all over, driving by, and sitting up at the top of the hill staking things out. Once the Reds were dead, the Ants had taken over the territory, but that meant more territory to protect.

  João rubbed the girl’s foot as it popped out of the covers. She had short stubby feet, but they were cute. Not all whores were so cute. As a matter of fact, if it weren’t for Pablo’s “needed” whore, then none of this would have happened
.

  After Pablo had the Reds killed, the man/boy was back as promised for the whore, Vera. He took her and told Felipe to have fun for the next few months, but soon he would be back, and he would need twelve Ants for a mission.

  At first they thought about refusing, but then they thought about the Reds and agreed, especially after seeing what Pablo had left to split amongst themselves—a duffle bag containing five million U.S.—and it put them on the map financially as a player.

  Pablo’s gift enabled them to finally buy coca from the Colombians who had that amount as their minimum buy. To this day, the day before the Colombians arrive for a delivery, the whole upper Favela empties except for the Ants. Initially, there had been some incidents that the Colombians had to deal with among the locals and the Ants stood back. But now the deal was in place and the shipments came every Friday.

  João still marveled at Filipe. Filipe was a hard man, in fact, he was so hard that if one just looked at him, one knew his whole story, and that was why João was in place now. Like a prison gang, once their hierarchy was taken away to help this man/boy named Pablo Manuel attack the United States, Filipe just instinctively knew how to run things remotely: WITH AN IRON FIST.

  He and Felipe had made the initial buys. Then they turned operations over to Carlos to handle while they were gone. To his credit, Felipe was amazing at controlling things from afar.

  It turned out that the man/boy was a super genius. Pablo Manuel had come from Ecuador with a plan given to him by God, and somehow their whore was attached to the plan. Over a couple of years this genius had built a bunker inside a mountain attached to a rock quarry that he owned.

  He also had built a drone army that ran on super batteries. They were silent, had stealth technology, and were internally cooled. And they were undetectable. He had two types—flyers and fish. The fish were of the five hundred pound Sea Bass variety and packed a wallop that could cripple any vessel. The flyers were of two different varieties: the boom and the electrical storm.