Eagle Eye: A Sam Jaeger Thriller (The Sam Jaeger Series Book 1) Read online

  EAGLE EYE

  A SAM JAEGER THRILLER

  T.J. MCCLANNAHAN

  Copyright © 2022 by T.J. McClannahan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ALSO BY T.J. MCCLANNAHAN

  SAM JAEGER VOL. 0

  Bogota: A Sam Jaeger Story

  SAM JAEGER VOL. 1

  Red City: Sam Jaeger book 2

  Worth of Souls: Sam Jaeger Book 3

  Sam Jaeger Book 4 (On Sale Soon)

  OTHER BOOKS BY T.J. MCCLANNAHAN

  Brick’s Lot: Daniel O’brickt Book 1

  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

  Epilogue

  Also by T.J. McClannahan

  About the Author

  Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend, we were all equal in the end.

  ROGER WATERS

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Sam Jaeger sat gripping his iPad screen. The cool blue glow reflected off his face revealed bloodshot eyes. His place was tidy, and he sat on the one of the most expensive couches the Furnace Warehouse had. His eighty-inch television took up much of the wall space, and he would have some movie playing while he looked up IMDB on the iPad. He liked to see who was in the film, how much it cost, what kind of camera used and so on. He enjoyed this more regularly than watching the movie. When a pang of hunger hit him, he tossed another bag of popcorn into the microwave. After a few seconds, the pops began.

  KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

  A knock at the door. He jumped at the unexpected sound, smirked and shook his head, laughing at himself as he tossed the iPad on the couch and answered the door.

  Three men gathered with a fourth stocky man on the last step to his apartment porch as he opened the door. All four wore masks that hid their faces. Sam tries to swallow with a dry throat. He croaks a dry, breathy noise too quiet for any of them to hear. Sam cleared his throat and tried to speak once more.

  “Hello?” Sam said.

  The microwave dinged. A final few POPS broke the silence.

  The four men shifted on their toes in front of Sam. He looked down at their hands, and his eyes widened along with his mouth. Blades and handguns came out from hidden places of their clothes. None of them, nor Sam himself, knew what to do. It is as though neither expected the door to open, and now that it was, they were all of them at a loss.

  “Sam Jaeger,” one of them spoke.

  It was a statement, yet Sam responded.

  “Yes?”

  Mist sprayed from the rainfall outside. Footsteps from the apartment below. Sam lived on the top floor of a three-level apartment building. Teens ran through the breezeways, yelling things, making enough noise that it could cover whatever violence followed. Five men on the porch, all of them on edge.

  HOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!

  A car's alarm shattered the silence. All five men jump. The tall gaunt man thrusts his knife into Sam’s side. The larger man grabs Sam’s arm by the shoulder, keeping him on his feet as they pushed into the apartment.

  Sam Jaeger clutched his side with his free-hand. The other lingered with finger-tips on the door frame. A trembling, Blood-soaked hand dropped a crimson flow through fingers. A Glock held on Sam. The four men in front of him ripped his shirt off. He’s frozen. Pistol held to his head, the taller man swings the gun in a get down motion.

  All four were apposing figures compared to Sam, creepy black masks with wide eyes that focused on him. Two taller men in front look around the room. The iPad he watched on the couch is the sole light in the area. The warm kitchen light casts a slight warm glow at the separate side of the room. Dressed in dense black clothes, a heavier one in the back wipes sweat from his forehead.

  “Let’s get this down before I sweat on the floor,” he says, muffled through his mask.

  This has taken longer than expected, and now they worry about leaving evidence in the apartment. Numbness and cold spread from his side, the feeling encroaches to his fingertips and toes. Blood seeping out of him with every second that slides by. What can he do? Four against one. Even without the wound, he can not fight off four armed men.

  Falling to his knees, Sam wretched, clutched his dry throat, gasped for breath. Terrorized eyes flitted around the place. Uncontrolled hands cover his face in dread of another terrible blow from one of the masked figures. A lingering desire that this it is not real taunts his mind, waiting to shock himself awake. Sheer panic evades his senses. A minute earlier, his door burst open with a BOOM! A minute previous to that, he searched IMDB for the name of an actress he recognized.

  “What now?” One of them spoke.

  “I didn’t think he’d open the door,” a taller, scrawny one responded.

  A short fatter one snorts, “Doesn’t matter, we have to kill him.”

  The slender one with the black scarf over his ski mask screamed something. Black material stretched over his wide spread screaming mouth, and wild blue eyes squinted, focused on Sam’s face. Mumbles muffled and groaned. Sam couldn’t understand him.

  The small, heavy one lifted an arm and bore it down on the back of Sam’s neck with a hollow thud.

  Everything turns black and stars shimmer behind his eyes. White sparks dance and surround Sam’s view as he rolls on his back.

  “You are making too much noise,” the fat one said. He investigated the rear hall of the apartment and whispers, “hold him, we’ll check the back.”

  Sam Jaeger spit, and through heavy breath, plead, and gripped his arms to his assailant’s face. He thought that now it’s one on one, and perhaps he could reason with the man that held him down. Tears fell from his bloody palms. Held by a few fibers of his shirt, they dragged Sam across the room.

  Already fed up with the whining, the fat one pushed forward. “Quiet,” he said, with his eyes cast down on Sam, disgusted, irritated by his blubbering.

  He gestures to the other three to keep him down. The fat one produced a knife from his pocket. Flipped it open, he cut the sleeve off of Sam’s shirt. Through gritted teeth, Sam spat and gagged and wept.

  “Shut up, that wound won’t kill you.”

  “Please, please, don’t do this!” Sam pleaded.

  With his foot on Sam’s neck, the fat one examined him.

  “Does he have it or not?”

  “Maybe it’s the other side?” The fat one said, scoring the rest of Sam’s shirt to shreds.

  They took several seconds and studied his shoulders. They looked for something on his skin. Unsatisfied, the four looked to each other. The fat one bears a pistol out to Sam’s head, execution style.

  Sam sat, eyes squeezed tight. He thought if there ever was a time to fight for his life, it was now with a gun to his head. It took everything within Sam to kick the fat one’s leg from beneath him. Shots fired into the ceiling, and Sam was on his feet toward the glass sliding doors in the back of his apartment. Running in the breezeway between buildings. Cold air filling his nostrils. Blood loss from the wound on his side makes him colder still. Sam didn’t notice the trail behind him. Blood drops show the way, and two of the four appear behind.

  He limped forward, damp and frozen he hurries on.

  Somehow, the fat one telling him the wound wouldn’t kill him leant a sliver of hope. If he could run, get out of this situation, he’ll live. Though he may never go back to his apartment, even still he may require surgery, he’ll live.

  As he passes through the water fall caused by broken gutters that cascaded between the apartment breezeways, he wonders what he could have done. What could they have wanted to rob from him before they would murder him? They can have had anything they want from the place Sam would cooperate.

  BANG!

  A shot rings out. Hard, gated echoes rippled around the solid surfaces of the buildings. The last thing Sam feels is a direct pressure on the back of his head, and a sluggishness, and nothing.

  “What the hell was that?” one of the four said.

  A masked man, shorter and muscled, rips Sam’s shirt off of his body.

  “
No tattoo, wrong guy.”

  They left him in the frigid rain and slip away through the low-lit parking lot. They removed their masks off and blended in to a crowd that prowled the streets alongside the apartment complex.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  A chime emanated from a phone that sat on an end-table. Sam’s sleep assist app woke him up several times that morning, but he had tapped snooze several times already. Faint mumblings heard from the other-side of the bed. Sam Jaeger rolled himself out of bed. With last week’s personal promises of working out and getting ahead on his painting a total failure; he threw his feet over the bed and breathed in, ready to make this week a more productive one. Step on; stay away from alcohol and off of his phone. YouTube has stolen many productive hours, and he cold to repeat this. Step two; live up to your fucking potential. You were a soldier, a killer. Painting five apartments in a week is NOTHING!

  He told himself this often, but was always running behind.

  “Make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.”

  Sam Jaeger recited the prayer he learned years ago, as if each day is a penny paid to a debt he’ll never requite.

  The sun peaked through his blackout drapes. The curtains did a good job of blocking, the birds trilled and the garbage trucks pounded and slammed the dumpsters. Sam had the lousy luck of his bedroom side of his apartment being next to the dumpster for the building. His living-room was pool-side, and that had its advantages on those desolate days. College girls sun-bathed between coffee and classes.

  It is a good thing summer is over, last thing I need is bodies luring me from work. Sam had a few run-ins with the young women in his apartment complex, some good, some bad, all one-night stands.

  Sam thought of both bikinis and coffee. He groaned to himself and ran his fingers through his light brown, short, tapered hair. Scratched his rugged face stubble. Shambled across the room, joints creaked. Out of habit, he made certain he locked his balcony. He would stumble out there most nights when he had a few beers and followed it with some Jameson. He locked it. And he noticed the water that gathered in the midst of the concrete slab.

  “Rained last night,” he mumbled to himself.

  His daily dance of sliding his feet into his slippers, he walked to the kitchen. Scrambled for the set of skull candy headphones and played some Deftones to occupy the hollow drone of his somber dark void of a home. He had wasted no time or money supplying the place with plants or anything. All hopes of decoration left his head after the messy divorce.

  But he wouldn’t waste anytime on that. There’s so much work. Work that called for his daily caffeine to see it through.

  He patted the cabinet doors open. Swiped a coffee filter. Waved the other of the fifty that stuck to the one filter he needed until it fell. He swiped his palm across the top shelf on the counter, clutching the bag of coffee.

  “Son of a...”

  His alarm app only let him look at a cordial Good Morning, and not what hour it was. He must have set it wrong or hit snooze a helluva lot more times that he figured. He didn’t realize how late in the day it was until he glimpsed the time on his microwave digital clock.

  “Shit!”

  Coffee spreads over the countertop and the floor. The brown and silver bag WHIPS across the kitchen, sliding across the dinner table before landing on the floor. In a hasty fit, Sam threw it across the room. He looked up at the ceiling and laughed. Quietly, the urge to scream was unbearable, but he didn’t want to wake his neighbors who shared a wall. He sabotaged himself, and it was only Monday Morning.

  For the next five minutes, he cleaned coffee off of the counter and floor. Coffee he had meant to drink. This is going to make him late, and he’s already late. Then he remembered he has a key to the apartments he needs to paint. They’d be empty. He could stroll up to the job site anytime he wished, for as late as he wanted. Not wanting to make it too late of a day, he ran out of the kitchen, clutching his keys before he slammed the front door shut.

  The sun veiled itself behind clouds. The sun strikes its oppressive rays over all. He had left his sunglasses somewhere in the apartment. Sam squints his tired eyes at the bright, overcast sky, struggling to see. His dim apartment felt like a cave, surfacing from it is always a relief. Sam walks through the parking lot through large puddles and musty breeze. He counted the change in his pocket, content to have a dollar in the middle console of his painting van.

  “Good” Sam says.

  His phone dinged in his pocket. It’s got to be Jake, nagging him about the 3-bed villa Sam has yet to complete. He avoids the texts. Coffee first, when he’s good and caffeinated, he’ll bust out the rest of the painting on that apartment in six, seven hours, no problem.

  He sped on his way, not ten over the limit, 54 in a 45. The mermaids in the Starbucks logo caught his eye. It would cost more than the ninth-nine cent drip at the corner convenience store, but what the hell. Big check coming in this week won’t hurt to splurge a little. Paint brush cost twenty anyway. What’s another three or four for a good Americano.

  “Come on!” Three cars ahead of him prevent him from moving on. Stopping at a drive-through on his way to pick up some painter’s tape and a fresh brush.

  “What the hell are you ordering, man!” He said to himself. While the man in front of him took too long to give his order. A fat fellow in a huge pickup truck throws his plump hand out of the side while Sam waited for the person to come over the speaker. He dare not murmur a negative word. He’d like his coffee without the spit this morning.

  “Hello, it’s be my pleasure to serve you this morning!”

  He finds the chipper tone unsettling but keeps it to himself. And through a scowl, he ordered.

  “Yeah, just give me a large Americano with two shots please!” Sam thumbs through his change.

  “Do you mean grande, sir?”

  “A small.”

  “A tall?”

  He shook his and adds, “yeah that.”

  “Ok, pull ahead, sir.”

  Sam pulls ahead.

  “Can’t read me back the god damn order...”

  At the window, the kid smiled at him, with his curled hair sticking out of his hat, and covered his eyes. Sam tries hard to suppress his hostility toward the kid.

  “How are you, sir? Americano?”

  “Ye —”

  “And I have already taken care of it, sir.”

  Sam dug in his wallet.

  “What’s that?”

  Drive-through guy stuck his head through the drive-through window and shifted his headset to the side. Somehow, that would make Sam hear him better.

  “The guy ahead of you gave me a hundred, told me to let it ride!”

  Drive-through guy smiled at Sam, like he had anything to do with it.

  “Oh.” Sam scratched his chin. “In that case, make it a large, three shots, and throw a sausage biscuit in there, will you?”

  Drive-through guy’s smile melted off his face, and he gave a look to Sam as if to inquire if he’s serious.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Jason West regarded the youthful waiter as he set his espresso on the table in front of him. He kept the smile on his face as the dark-haired, wired young man poured the San Pellegrino in the small glass.