The Nature of the Beast

By Ryan Josey

Too often, our servicemen return with more than scars and invisible wounds. They become something often considered monstrous for our military in order to defend our homeland. But what happens when their work is done and their respected units have no further use for them? Trained killers now told to be normal members of society and forget about what they were programmed to do. For most, it isnt that easy to just revert back. Once killing is in your blood, you return to your primal roots and never again will you ever be the same.

On the south coast of Texas, five fishermen, grown disenfranchised by hard work and low wages, find themselves in over their heads in the seedy world of international drug trafficking and in a crossfire between feuding cartels.

When two border patrol agents find a dead man and a large sum of money on the banks of the Rio Grande, they are faced with the age-old decision between right and wrong. Alas, the distinction is not always so clear.

A cartel enforcer is tasked with enforcing smuggling routes, but the former Mexican soldier has his own fanatical agenda as well.

They are all lost souls on a collision course with one another that can only end with violence, an all-too-familiar outcome on the troubled Texas-Mexico border.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496951359

Ryan Josey

Ryan was born and raised in Houston, Texas. He grew up as an academic and athletic standout in wrestling and cross-country running. He furthered his wrestling by continuing competition through mixed martial arts. He competes at 170, welterweight. Ryan also has a passion for nature and the outdoors, which he says is his inspiration for much of his work. Growing up, Ryan has always been drawn to the outdoors and the trials they sometimes offer, often believing it is the trials that actually keep him drawn in. Ryan explains that Nature of the Beast is an allegory for all conflict and human duality and explores the oldest conflict of all—good versus evil and the gray area in between.

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© 2014 Ryan Josey . All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/11/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5134-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5135-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920249

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Contents

Chapter 1 The Slaying Of The Beast

Chapter 2 Temptation On The Big River

Chapter 3 Sea Turtles And Hollow Points

Chapter 4 Higher Stakes

Chapter 5 Conundrum

Chapter 6 Alamo Ranch

Chapter 7 A Deal With The Devil

Chapter 8 El Angel De La Muerte

Chapter 9 Reunion

Chapter 10 Late Night Stranger

Chapter 11 Just Like Old Times

Chapter 12 The Hero Rusty Hays

Chapter 13 The Hunt

Chapter 14 Assassins

Chapter 15 The Moment Of Passing

Chapter 16 Rekindling

Chapter 17 The Oldest Truth

Chapter 18 The Sky At Dawn

Chapter 19 Intervention

Chapter 20 The Luxury Of Morality

Chapter 21 Ambush

Chapter 22 Marked Men

Chapter 23 Necessary Evil

Chapter 24 The Lord’s Work

Chapter 25 Breaking News

Chapter 26 Under The Pecan Trees

Chapter 27 Remember The Alamo

Chapter 28 Stalled

Chapter 29 Mercy

Chapter 30 Flying The Coop

Chapter 31 Showdown

Chapter 32 The High Ground

Chapter 33 The Alamo

Chapter 34 Snake Bitten

Chapter 35 The Good Samaritan

Chapter 36 Desperation

Chapter 37 Judgment

Chapter 38 Duel

Cameron County Sheriff’s Department

Harlingen TX

Interrogation of Jodi Turner

Interrogation conducted by Officer Ty Morris

11/15/14

Officer Morris: Is there anything else you might have left out or forgotten ma’am?

Jodi Turner: No, of course not. Why would you ask me that? I’ve told you everything I know. Am I in trouble? Do I need a lawyer? I didn’t want to shoot that man. (Sobbing) I had no choice.

Officer Morris: Ma’am, if that’s the case, then you shouldn’t worry. Just take a deep breath and try to relax.

Jodi Turner: He had a gun! (Sobbing)

Officer Morris: We know that, Jodi, so you can calm down. We found the gun, real piece of hardware, Glock, all tricked out with a silencer. That’s not the typical gun we see around here, not exactly your run-of-the-mill shotgun or deer rifle.

Jodi Turner: When I saw him there getting out of my uncle’s truck, I knew something was wrong. He came walking across the lawn with that gun in his hands and I knew. I knew as soon as I laid eyes on him that he was pure evil, the kind that makes the hair on your neck stand up, the devil in the flesh. So I ran and got the shotgun.

Officer Morris: The twelve-gauge pump from Mr. Grove’s closet, is that correct?

Jodi Turner: Yes sir.

Officer Morris: Does Everett Grove have a lot of guns?

Jodi Turner: Well I suppose. I mean I reckon he has as many as the next man. He likes to hunt so he’s got a few I think, just like any other Texas boy.

Officer Morris: Well Jodi, we found him to have quite a few guns to be honest. We found the sorts that are only used for foul play and trouble.

Jodi Turner: Everett was in the army.

Officer Morris: Yeah, we pulled his military file, the parts that aren’t classified at least. Seems like Everett Grove isn’t the sort of fella you’d want to tangle with, Army special forces in Afghanistan, Blackwater in Iraq. He’s a real bad mama jama I’d say. What type of man is he?

Jodi Turner: Uhhh…he’s a good man. Everett is a real good man. He’s a war hero, you know? I reckon you’d call him the strong silent type. He’s as stubborn as a mule, but he’s got a good heart.

Officer Morris: Is he ever violent or anything like that?

Jodi Turner: No. He ain’t ever been violent with me at least. He’s got awful fits of bad dreams now and then but that’s about it. What you want to know about Everett for? He ain’t in trouble is he? I told you already, he wasn’t even home when this happened. I have a key to his house.

Officer Morris: I just want to know the man and I want to know what he was like after the war. Was he changed or troubled or anything like that? And also I’d like to get an idea of the nature of y’all’s relationship.

Jodi Turner: Our relationship? I guess that’s one way to put it. Everett loves me. He’s loved me as long as we’ve known each other. We don’t always see eye to eye and we’ve been sore toward each other a time or two, but he always treats me real good. Unfortunately most women, especially round here, never settle down with the good ones. I always find myself falling for the worst kind of man. Just one of the mysteries of human nature I reckon.

Officer Morris: So you had an intimate relationship prior to his service and after he returned?

Jodi Turner: Yes sir.

Officer Morris: Any difference in him, beside the nightmares?

Jodi Turner: Yes sir, but not how you think. He wasn’t violent or hot headed like you say. He was just gone.

Officer Morris: How do you mean?

Jodi Turner: It was like he was just a shadow of himself. I look in his eyes sometimes and I see nothing there, nothing beyond the surface. Maybe he never really came home. Sometimes I think in Everett’s mind he’s still at war.

Chapter 1

The Slaying of the Beast

As soon as the hook was set, the shark was on the run. The run was hard and lightning fast, and the two seasoned fishing guides on deck were immediately aware of its size. Everett Grove and Cody Jackson both moved hastily across the deck of The Good Timin Charlie, a twenty-eight-foot Boston Whaler charter boat owned and operated by their boss and friend Captain Carlos Reno.

Everett and Cody both knew instantly that the brute on the end of the line was big enough to spell trouble for the yuppie holding the pole, which was now bending dramatically and rapidly unspooling hundred-pound test line. Everett, the more powerful of the two deckhands, grabbed hold of the back of the man’s harness while Cody grabbed the rod and guided the man to the other side of the boat to face the direction in which the shark was running.

Don’t work yourself silly, Cody cautioned while adjusting the drag on the reel. Let off him a bit. Let him run it out.

Captain Carlos emerged from the wheelhouse with a crooked grin on his round brown face. Ahah! he cried out. Told y’all I’d put y’all on some fish!

Hot damn! one of the three yuppie clients on the boat exclaimed. Everett relaxed and loosened his grip on the harness some but did not let go.

How big is it? Carlos shouted over the balmy Gulf breeze sweeping the southern end of the Laguna Madre.

Cody turned to the fish captain with a big goofy smile that Everett knew well. It was a warm, welcoming, and joyous smile that was common of Cody even in the stickiest of situations. Tan grande como mi polla! he called back to Carlos and chuckled. Cody turned to Everett and rolled his eyes.

Everett was known to be cold and stolid at times, but he couldn’t help but crack a smile out of simple amusement. Cody was good at being a catalyst for smiles. He’d always been a joker and had provided comic relief in some very dire situations that the two men had shared.

Even Cody’s appearance was humorous. He was tall, lanky, and bowlegged. His grin was full of oversized pearly whites and his face had an anglo shape with prominent waspy features, but not so prominent that he looked old; in fact, he looked and acted much younger than his thirty years. Most folks who met him assumed he was in college, probably because he dressed and behaved like a frat boy.

He drank like a fish, dipped Copenhagen long-cut, wore Sperry yacht shoes, pastel colored Columbia shirts, and always shorts and never jeans. He kept a dirty white University of Texas cap pulled down low on his head over his sand colored hair. His boyish face was always clean-shaven and he had a reputation as a skirt chaser.

But despite his zany demeanor, Cody was a very sharp and well-practiced outdoorsman. He bailed water with a plastic pitcher and poured it on the yuppie’s reel, which was dumping line quickly. The shark turned east and swam hard. The guy’s buddies hooted and hollered as they observed the battle between man and beast.

He’s makin a good go of it, Cody said and then began coaching and instructing the client while Everett maintained a grip on the greenhorn to keep him from getting yanked over the side. That’s how it always was; Everett handled the physical stuff while Cody did the talking.

For almost two hours the shark fought. It was valiant effort by the beast. It was indeed a large shark, and as the guides had suspected all along, it turned out to be a bull shark. The big bastard had worn himself out, and under Cody’s supervision the yuppies reeled him in.

The ratty-looking veteran nudged the clients aside and hooked the bull shark in the gill with a gaff hook while Everett let go of the man’s harness and pulled on heavy gloves. He reached over the side and grabbed the shark’s gill and hooked in its gaping mouth with a gaff of his own.

The two Texas anglers groaned and moaned as they struggled to pull the beefy fish aboard, but after a little straining the massive fish flopped into the boat. The shark got lively when it hit the deck. Get back! Cody sternly commanded the clients.

The beast thrashed about and swung its head from side to side, snapping its jaws. While Cody controlled it with the gaff, Everett leaned over and popped the clasp that secured the bang stick to the side of the wheelhouse. He marched over to the shark, pressed the stick down on its head, and discharged a twelve-gauge slug. The shark whipped around some and thoroughly smeared the deck with blood before slowing down and eventually lying still.

The big bull was as long as the deck was wide and was thick-bodied. Its huge jaws yawned open as it died and exposed rows of razor sharp triangular teeth. Lord almighty! The yuppie swelled with pride in his catch.

Once the beast was slain the clients got drunk and carried on. One of them got sick on the ride back to Port Isabel and started chumming off the stern. Carlos drove the boat, Cody shot-gunned Pearl Light with the clients, and Everett sat by himself on the bow.

Spray peppered his tan face as the boat cut across the waters of the lower Laguna Madre. His polarized Costas cut down on the glare enough for him to spot a pair of dolphins swimming alongside of the boat just beneath the surface. He ran his tough weathered hands through his wavy brown hair and smiled a little to himself thinking of the yuppies’ reaction to catching the shark.

The man’s chest had swelled with pride and his machismo had grown quickly. He held his chin high as he crouched down next to the conquered shark for pictures. Now he was getting drunk on the deck talking about which room of his house he’d mount the jaws in.

Everett wondered if the fish would be the largest one strung up at the marina. Surely there’d be others. A week earlier a young girl had been attacked by a bull shark while surfing on South Padre Island. The attack wasn’t fatal or even that severe, but it was rare for late October and had led to ridiculous talk about the rise of aggression in sharks in that area. This won’t be the last attack that’s how this sorta thing happens, they’d ignorantly declare.

So it was no surprise to the fishing guides when they’d been booked solid for shark fishing trips. And it wasn’t just them out for the bull shark, every bay boat and deep sea rig on the lower Laguna Madre was out under the cool clear autumn sky chumming the water with fish guts and baiting hooks with mullet and ladyfish.

As they approached their slip in the marina, Everett spotted crowds forming on the docks. Just as he’d suspected, dozens of bulls, black tips, and makos were strung up by their tails. Folks were gathering around snapping pics on their cell phones and digital cameras. Some of the fish were pretty big but none came close to size of the big bull on the deck of The Good Timin Charlie.

Once the yuppies’ shark was strung up and measured, eight-foot six inches, the people flocked over to gawk at the largest catch of the day. Carlos, Cody, and the yuppies posed for photos while Everett secured the dock lines and hosed the blood off the deck. A man’s shadow cast down over the Boston whaler and Everett glanced over his shoulder to see who it was.

He was more than slightly aggravated to find game warden Russell Hays standing over him puffing on a Marlboro light. Everett knew Russell, Rusty, from high school and had never cared for him much. He’d been a bully back then and not much had changed. In Everett’s opinion Rusty Hays was an egotistical small town hic who’d always enjoyed a good power trip. He was the type of conceited asshole that had no business wearing the khaki uniform and gold badge that granted him the overwhelming authority entrusted to him by the great state of Texas.

That’s a real beast y’all got, Grove, Rusty said with cigarette smoke funneling out of his nostrils. He flicked the cigarette butt into the water and stood there with his hands on his hips in a stereotypical authoritative pose.

Everett looked at the arrogant law enforcement officer he’d known and disliked for fifteen years. Yep, he replied and resumed cleaning the deck.

You heard about that fucker that got hold of that girl’s leg out on the island? he asked, using a tone that implied that he thought of the two as old buddies.

Yep, Everett said without turning around to face the man. He had never claimed to be any sort of poetic conversationalist and he had never been much for small talk, especially with people that he did not care for.

Rusty pushed his felt cowboy hat up off his brow and adjusted his aviators. "Every one of these sons of bitches could die for all I care. When I was a kid, a monster about as big as the one y’all caught got a hold of my