Authors: Andrew Gross
Hauck didn’t notice a blinker on. And he didn’t seem to be slowing. Hauck sped past the turnoff.
Maybe fifty yards behind him now, the large oil rig did as well.
And it continued to pick up speed and narrow the gap until it was right on Hauck’s tail. The one in front of him was cruising along at around thirty. Hauck was suddenly sandwiched between the two giant rigs.
“Take it easy, pal,” Hauck said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “What’s the hurry?”
Hauck looked ahead to try to pass. The traffic was light and they were on a straightaway with a dotted line, but as he swung into the oncoming lane and hit the gas, the oil rig in front of him sped up as well. For a moment, Hauck found himself completely in no-man’s-land. He looked behind. The truck behind him kept up its pace as well.
They are playing possum with me!
He didn’t dare try it. He squeezed back in lane in between the trucks. For a second they just kept their speed.
Having fun?
Hauck glared in his mirror behind, trying to make out the driver’s face.
The truck behind him honked. Hauck caught a glimpse of the driver. White. Baseball cap. Reflective sunglasses. He honked again.
The truck in front began to slow.
That was when it dawned on Hauck that these assholes weren’t playing a game with him at all.
So here’s the welcoming committee,
he said to himself. Courtesy of Alpha and RMM.
That sure was quick
.
The rig in back picked up its speed again. With mounting alarm, Hauck thought for a second that he was about to be dead-on rammed. He sped up, hugging the Colorado license plate of the rig in front. They were all cruising along at fifty. He glanced behind. He noted to himself that if the guy in front of him suddenly stopped …
Hauck’s blood started to tighten.
He was in one of those compact, four-cylinder SUVs. Not a lot under the hood. He saw a clear path up in front of him now and decided to gun it and make a run for it. He gave it everything he had.
He shot out into the oncoming lane. His speed was up to seventy now. Eighty. He pulled alongside the truck in front. Ninety. The sonovabitch picked up his speed as well. Keeping pace.
Asshole.
Hauck kept the pedal to the floor and got about halfway past when he saw a filmy object on the road far ahead and realized he couldn’t risk this. He immediately hit the brakes, letting the front truck shoot by him, and ducked back into his lane, barely squeezing in as the creep behind him was tight on his tail.
Seconds later, a UPS truck whooshed by. What Hauck would have met head-on if he’d continued to pass.
Now, it was crystal clear what was going on.
The road curved along the river now and he couldn’t pass. The cab behind him was virtually on top of him. He was trapped. They were toying with him. He
hoped
they were only toying. This was a game of cat and mouse, and clearly he was the one with the big ears and long whiskers. His heart began to beat with some urgency.
They could flatten him at any moment.
Doing sixty, Hauck glanced at the road’s shoulder on the right. The road was slightly elevated, with a drop-off of three to four feet between the shoulder and a dried-up field. Enough to send his car into a deadly roll if he went over. The sonovabitch in back had pulled up on his tail. Hauck had the sense the guy was about to ram his rear. He kept on looking behind him and then ahead, his pulse going as fast as the car. He had to do something. And do it now. His nerves picked up as he glanced at the side of the road. Behind him he heard the rumble of the truck’s engine hitting another gear.
His car was a rental, and he was on the hook for it, but hell, he decided, as he saw it coming right on top of him, a thousand-dollar deductible was a whole lot better than his life.
He jerked his wheel sharply to the right, forcing his SUV onto the pebbly shoulder, where he spun into a shaky, screeching turn, trying to hold it together. Spraying gravel, he tumbled over the three-foot embankment, his SUV nosediving into a ditch, then righting itself with a huge bounce that nearly flung him out of his seat. He came to an abrupt stop in a cloud of dust and flying pebbles.
Hauck’s heart flew into his throat. “
Sonovabitches!
” Dust was everywhere. He watched the other two rigs drive off down the road, the drivers probably laughing to themselves over the radio. They could have easily killed him if he had rolled. He couldn’t see if the trucks had kept going or stopped. If anyone was coming back for him. His breaths were heavy in his chest and his heart was pulsing, seeming about three times its normal size.
He had an urge to gun the car and turn around and head back to Greeley, and give McKay a sense of how he appreciated the escort.
But he had Dani to pick up. He put the SUV in gear and went to climb back on the road, when up ahead, from the direction of Templeton, he saw another vehicle racing toward him.
The real welcoming committee.
Flashing blue-and-red lights came into focus. A white-and-blue police SUV drove up at high speed.
The committee chairman, Hauck said sarcastically.
It slowed as it came in sight, slowly bumping over the elevated shoulder, and pulled up next to him, about five feet from Hauck’s car.
The driver stepped out, khaki uniform, bald on top, short red hair on the sides. The requisite shades. Above the gold shield on the door it said,
TOWN OF TEMPLETON, COLORADO.
And beneath it,
CHIEF OF POLICE
.
“You all right, mister?” The cop stepped over to Hauck’s vehicle.
“Fine.” Hauck lowered the window. “Just a friendly driving lesson from those two rigs that probably just sped right past you going around eighty. Guess I flunked.”
“
Yeah
.” The chief cackled amusedly. “Those big ones sometimes act like they’re the only ones on the road. You really have to watch yourself out here. Glad I was coming by.”
Yeah, just coming by,
Hauck snorted to himself. McKay was probably on the phone to him the second Hauck left his office. “Thanks. You the chief there?”
“Until they take the job away from me …” The policeman grinned. “Riddick,” he said. “So where you heading, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Back your way,” Hauck said. “I’m picking up my niece.”
“She lives here?” Riddick asked, almost as if he knew.
“No. We only came in yesterday.”
“Not much to see in Templeton but onion fields and the potato festival. And that’s in July.”
“We came for a funeral,” Hauck explained.
“Ah … Chuck Watkins’s boy. Real sad … Tried to be there myself. You’re sure your car will make it out of there? I could run you back if you need to.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hauck said, giving the engine a rev. “However, if you come across those two again, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you’d give them each a choke hold from me.”
“You wouldn’t, would you?” The chief chuckled again. “Just consider yourself lucky. What did you say your name was again?”
“Hauck.”
“I’ve seen a lot worse, Mr. Hauck. I once knew this guy, he was driven straight off the road by a couple of those mothers a few years back. Almost flew right into the river over there. Nearly drowned. That was when there was a whole lot more water. Wish I could remember his name …” The cop tapped his forehead. “Doesn’t work quite like it used to, know what I mean? Not that that matters, but I suspect you’ll be leaving soon, now that the boy’s in the ground?”
“Sooner or later. There’s something about this place I’m starting to like.”
“Yeah? And what would that be?”
“I don’t know, the hospitality?” Hauck said.
If smiles could shoot things, Riddick’s would have to be licensed by the NRA. “So I could run you back. Last chance. Never know when another of those rigs will come up again. Out of the blue.”
The offer had more of a feeling of a threat to Hauck, than an invitation. “Won’t be needed. And like you said, you were headed in the opposite direction anyway. I wouldn’t want to hold you up.”
“So I was.” The chief laughed again, but this time without mirth. “Well. I’m glad you’re okay … Maybe pull over next time, when you see them come up on your tail.”
“Be sure of that,” Hauck said.
Riddick went back to his vehicle and opened the driver’s door. “Ah, I remember now … That name I couldn’t recall. Who got run off the road up here. It came back to me. It was John,” the chief said. Hauck saw his face reflected back in the guy’s shades. “John Robertson.”
He let the name sink in.
“But that name wouldn’t mean anything to you, would it now …? You’re just passing through.”
“Nothing at all.” Hauck didn’t need it explained further. “Anyway, I hope he’s okay.”
“Who?”
“Your friend. Robertson.”
“To my knowledge …” Riddick scratched his head. “Haven’t seen him in a long while.” He climbed back into his car. “Funny thing, though, the longer you stick around this place, the more you learn anything can happen here.”
“I’ll be sure and keep that in mind.”
“Well that sure took a while,” Dani said with a roll of her eyes. She was waiting on the street outside.
“Ran into a bit of a speed bump on the way,” Hauck said apologetically.
“
An accident?
Look at your car, Uncle Ty. It’s a mess.” It had picked up a new layer of dust.
“Not an accident.” Hauck shrugged. “Welcoming committee.”
“You didn’t run in to Robertson, did you?” Dani’s eyes lit up with alarm.
“More like from the friendly folk at Alpha and RMM.”
Dani looked at him, then at the SUV again, its wheels all covered in dust. “Is everything okay, Uncle Ty?”
“I’m fine. I could use a coffee, though. Maybe something to eat.”
“Park over there then. I think I know just the place.”
Inside, over a coffee and a bison burger, he told her about what he’d found in the mailbox at Robertson’s abandoned property that led him to Alpha.
And then his meeting there with McKay. The runaround they gave him at the mere mention of Robertson’s name. “They’re some kind of energy consulting company. He’s got some vague job there, though he’s never around. Coordinator of field activities.”
“What kind of ‘field activities’ brought him to the Roaring Fork River?” Dani snorted cynically. “Was he looking for oil there?”
“I don’t know. But the Alpha Group seemed to have originated as a military unit in Iraq. The 301st Airborne. How that ties into the energy business, I have no idea. But I saw a photo of the unit on the wall, and both McKay and Robertson were in it. As was their pal Adrian, who was killed. I’ll find out what the connection is. I have my office working on it now.”
“So what happened on the road?” Dani asked again. “Look, you’re cut, Uncle Ty!” She put a napkin to his forehead and dabbed at a small cut under the hairline, where his head must have nicked the wheel.
“Just a little warning.”
“Uncle Ty, you’re bleeding and your car looks like it’s been in the Sahara to Cape Town rally. What do you mean a little warning?”
Not wanting to worry her, he told her about the two trucks; the same as the ones they saw yesterday; and being caught between them and how they’d pretty much driven him off the road; he tried to make light of it as best he could.
“My God, they could have killed you, Uncle Ty! We have to take it to the police.”
“I think I already did. Take it to the police.” Hauck told her about his meeting with the local chief. “Any reason you think the police here are going to be sympathetic to some outsider who they hope will be out of their hair by tonight and who claims he was mishandled by a couple of RMM boys getting their jollies? That was all planned, Dani.”
“Planned?”
“It was a message. To butt out. On Robertson. To get my ass out of town.”
“But you could have been hurt.”
He smiled. In the past couple of years he had been beaten within an inch of his life, dragged from a speeding car in London, dangled over a rushing river in Croatia, and still carried the scars from having been shot a bunch of times. “I’ll be fine.”
“That waitress …” Dani leaned forward and nodded toward the one she’d been speaking with earlier, her voice almost in a whisper. “I spoke with her while you were away.
RMM
stands for Resurgent Mining and Mineral. It’s a big energy exploration company out of Denver. I googled it while I was waiting for you. They’re the big honcho here. The ones behind all the parks and fancy bleachers. You ought to see the senior center and the town hall as well. Apparently Trey’s father seems to have pissed them off in some way. A lot of the townsfolk here seem to resent him.”
“Why is that?”
“Not sure. I got the impression he was somehow standing in the way of the oil and gas development that’s going on here. She clammed up pretty quickly once she got going. I think her boss over there gave her the evil eye. But she did say, ‘One thing you can’t do is stand in the way of a town’s future.’”
“Can’t stand in the way of the truth, either, when it’s ready to spill out.”
His cell phone vibrated. He took it out and saw that it was Brooke. “Hopefully, this will make things a little clearer.”
“I think I got what you want,” his assistant said. “On the 301st Airborne. And Alpha Unit …”
Hauck excused himself and stepped outside. He leaned against the window on the old brick façade overlooking the dilapidated Main Street. “Go ahead.”
“They were a Special Forces group in Iraq and Afghanistan, specializing in what they call PsyOps. Do you know what that is?”
Hauck shrugged. “The use of psychological tactics to influence the mind-set of the enemy or a local population in war …?”
“That’s part of it. I was told this sort of thing has been going on since World War II, when we began dropping leaflets to encourage the resistance against the Nazis. In Iraq, though, you remember how during the Surge it came out how we started buying off Sunni tribal leaders to disaffect against Al Qaeda? And the same in Afghanistan?”