One Mile Under (16 page)

“Of course, Mr. McKay …”

The manager led Hauck down a hallway and into an antiseptic room with a polished wood table, a matching credenza; oil rig and mining photographs on the walls. It looked as if the room came straight out of some furniture rental catalog. “We’re not normally so secretive, Mr. Hauck …” McKay motioned him into a seat. “But we do like to know who we’re talking to before we divulge certain information …”

Hauck said, “I wasn’t looking for any information. I just asked what one of your employees does.”

“I understand. And you’re right. Take a seat. Are you in the energy business?” He had a clear-eyed and direct manner. Even when he was diverting a question, he did so with a smile. “Your card says ‘Talon.’”

“I’m not,” Hauck said. “I’m in security.”

“Security? You mean like with wires and alarms?” He smiled again. “Mr. Pettibone, our director of logistics, is out right now, but that sort of thing falls under his expertise.”

“More like firm-to-firm,” Hauck replied. “Or country-to-country.”

“I see. Well, most of what we do is in the energy field. We’re not so well known as some of the bigger oil service brands. I was actually in law enforcement for a while myself, after I got out of the service. Until I got tired of wearing the uniform, if you know what I mean. And where is it you said you know Mr. Robertson from …?”

“I didn’t say I knew him. I just asked what he did.”

“That’s right. You did. Well, Mr. Robertson is what we call a senior coordinator of field projects. But like I said, he’s currently away.”

“Where is he?” Hauck asked, clear-eyed at McKay. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“In the field.”

Over the years, Hauck had been stonewalled by some of the best, and this guy was giving it his shot. “What exactly are ‘field projects’ for Alpha’?” he asked, his eyes roaming to the pictures of mining and drilling operations on the walls. “Are you guys drillers?”

“Not drillers, exactly. You might say we do field testing, handle certain site management issues that come up.”

“Field testing? You mean like geological?”

“Similar to geological …” McKay nodded. “Just not in a lab.”

“In the
field
…” Hauck said vaguely.

“That’s right,” McKay said again, that same stony smile. “The field.”

“Your brochure seems to call it ‘crisis management solutions for today’s energy and environmental issues.’”

“Yes, I’m glad you were able to take a look,” the Alpha man said. “You never know who actually reads through these things … But like any solutions-oriented firm, we like to think we take other people’s problems and turn them into opportunities. Newer drilling techniques today come with equally new challenges for communities and local governments. We like to think we make those issues …” He paused as if searching for the right word.

“Go away …”

“Well, not quite ‘go away.’” McKay smiled again. “But at least, become far more livable.”

“Inform. Change. Influence,” Hauck said.

“Now I see you
have
read up on us,” the Alpha manger said. “And now what I suggest I do is that I take your card here, and when I can get in touch with Mr. Robertson, I’ll make sure he gets it.”

“And when might that be? I was hoping I might get a chance to speak with him face-to-face. I’m only here for a couple of days.”

“Not for a while, I’m afraid.” McKay stood up. “He’s on assignment these days. Unfortunately, he won’t be back this way for a while. How long did you say you were staying?”

“I don’t know myself.” Hauck stood up as well. “Too bad.”

The Alpha manager looked at him curiously. “We like to think Weld County has its own austere charm, Mr. Hauck, but we know it’s not on too many people’s lists of their favorite places to visit. What brings you here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I was out here to visit a friend Mr. Robertson and I may have had in common.”

“Another time then, I’m afraid.” McKay shrugged, feigning disappointment.

“I’m not sure that’ll be possible. He’s dead.”

“My goodness, I’m sorry …” The oil manager looked surprised. “From around here? I could let him know.”

“No, from Aspen,” Hauck said at the office door. “And I think he does already. Know.” Hauck kept his eye on McKay, searching for the slightest sign of recognition. The guy played his part out well. “Anyway, no bother. I’ll be happy to find my way out. I appreciate your time.” He put out his hand.

“Pleasure was mine,” McKay said. “I’ll make sure he gets this.”

“Just tell him I’ll just drop something in the mail next time.”

“The mail?”

“He’ll know what I mean.”

On his way out Hauck stopped at a framed photograph he’d noticed on the wall when he was walking in.

An army photo. An entire unit, it seemed. At least sixty of them. Everyone in fatigues.
301st Air Division,
it read at the bottom.

Alpha Unit
.

It was taken on an airfield tarmac, mountains in the background. The photo caption read,
Rasheed Air Base, 2009.
It looked like Iraq. In the back row, he noticed the person he had just spoken with. McKay. His hat off, a little younger-looking, with a bit more hair. Hauck thought he could make out a major’s leaf on his uniform.

Alpha Unit.
What was that?

Underneath Hauck saw a legend of names. He checked it, searching for the only one he knew. Maj. Randall McKay. He kept on looking until he found the other name he was looking for.

In the bottom row. Kneeling. A light-featured young man with a narrow, chiseled face, a hard jawline, light hair shaved close on the sides, military style, and a deep-set, expressionless stare.

Lance Cpl. John Robertson.

And next to him a smiling face in a floppy desert army hat.

Staff Sgt. Colin Adrian.

Alpha Unit had become the Alpha Group.
Crisis management solutions for today’s energy and environmental issues.
Seeing no one around, Hauck took out his phone and bore in closely on the gaunt, narrow face. Robertson. And snapped the shot.

What the hell went on out there?
Hauck stared closely at his face on the army photo.

In the field.

Back in his car, Hauck called in to Brooke at Talon. “I need another favor.”

“You really
are
trying to get me in trouble, aren’t you?” she said, only half in jest.

“I need you to look into the 301st Army Airborne Division. More specifically, into something called Alpha Unit. They were in Iraq or Afghanistan. I need to know specifically what they’re about and what they did over there.”

“Alpha Unit. The 301st Airborne. I’ll get it as soon as I can. But Ty, I can’t let you hang up just yet. Mr. Foley said he’ll have my ass if you called in again and I didn’t put you on. And I only half think that he was joking.”

Hauck knew his boss was perfectly capable of doing something like that, canning someone, simply to make his point to someone else. “Don’t worry about Tom. I’ve got your back. Just get me that information as quick as you can. And Brooke …”

“Yes.”

“This stays between us? Not anyone else in the company.”

“That goes without saying, Ty.”

“Especially Foley.”

“So I guess you did, after all …?” He could hear the tiny smile in her voice.

“Did what?” he asked

“Get involved.”

“Let’s just say something’s got my attention out here. And you know how that always seems to go.”

“Yes.” Brooke sighed. “I do know.”

Dani hung with Trey’s buddies Rudy and John Booth at the café in town, until they said that they had to head back to Carbondale. John played in a band and had a gig tonight in Glenwood Springs. They asked if she wanted to ride back with them.

“No. My stuff is in my uncle’s car,” she said. “He texted he’s on his way.”

She gave them both a hug. It had been a tearful ceremony. Both John and Rudy had asked to say something at it. They’d lost one of their own. Dani had her doubts, of course, about what had happened. But she didn’t share them. At least, not until she knew if they led anywhere. She and Ty had already crossed the line a bit with Allie and Trey’s father.

“We’ll see you back in town.” John Booth waved.

After the guys left, Dani stuck around the café. The waitress came up, a woman of about fifty, her dark brown hair in an old-fashioned bob. She was cheerful. Everyone seemed to know each other in here. Small town.

“I see your friends have left. Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

“How about a refill on the coffee, thanks …” Dani checked her watch. Ty had texted he was on his way. This wasn’t exactly Starbucks, she acknowledged to herself. Lattes and macchiato would be a foreign language here.

“Never seen the lot of you before. What brings you all to town?” the waitress asked as she came back with a pot and refilled Dani’s cup.

“We came for a funeral,” Dani said.

“Oh,” she said. “Chuck Watkins’s boy?”

Dani nodded.

“So sorry to hear about that. I knew him a bit, growing up, before he went off. Seems like he died the way he lived, though. He was certainly not one to hold back.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Dani agreed, smiling.

“I don’t think he ever came back much after he left. I know he and his father never quite saw things eye to eye. No farmer, that boy … We knew that the minute he got out of these parts he wasn’t coming back.” She took out a rag and wiped down the table. “Not that many people here would disagree with him.”

“Disagree about what?”

“You’re not family, are you?”

Dani shook her head. “Trey was a friend.”

“Well, he’s an honorable man, Chuck. His father. And nobody’s fool. Everybody here respects someone who makes a go of it with what they’re given. That farm’s been in the family for a long time.”

“The drought here has clearly cost him.”

“Like it’s cost a lot of people … But you have to move forward,” the waitress said. “Look around, things are changing here. We have opportunities now.”

“You talking the oil?”

“Honey, all the sugar beets and potatoes a man can plant in a lifetime won’t match a minute’s worth of what that land can really produce. I don’t know why God saw to put it all here. Four years ago, this place was just a dried-up patch of dying cropland. Now we have schools, parks. People staying, not moving away. Jobs.”

“I saw the park. And the football stadium. And I’ve seen this logo around a bit. RMM?”

“You’ll get used to it if you spend a day here.” The waitress laughed. “Resurgent Mining and Mineral. And bless them. You can ask anyone here, they’ll tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Like I said, every man’s entitled to live his life as he sees fit. But one thing you don’t want to mess with”—the waitress folded her rag in her apron—“is a town’s future.”

Dani noticed her boss behind the counter, who seemed to be giving her the eye. There was something almost eerie and swept under the surface about what was going on in this place.

“Never mind anyway …” The waitress saw her boss looking at her. “I’ve probably said enough. Why anyone who knows me ends up calling me Gabby. Let me know if you need anything else, honey, okay?” Then she looked back at the grill. “Junior, that stack of blueberries ready for table six yet?”

Hauck turned onto Route 34 on his way back to pick up Dani.

It was clear Alpha was keeping what Robertson did for them under the radar. The guy had taken someone’s identity, an army friend from his old unit. He received his mail at an abandoned house—who knew who owned it? He worked amorphously in what they referred to as “the field.”

Yet he was down in Aspen last week, where whatever fell under the job description of “senior field coordinator” intersected tragically with Trey Watkins. Maybe with that hot-air balloon as well. He had served with his boss, McKay, in Alpha Unit, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hauck had been up against this type of resistance before, many times. He knew when he was being stonewalled and told to butt out.

Those were precisely the times when he knew it was time to dig deeper.

Halfway back to Templeton, on the stretch of the road that followed the river, he noticed one of those gleaming, eighteen-wheeler oil tankers—identical to the ones he and Dani had seen yesterday—about a quarter mile behind him and coming up him fast.

He realized he was almost at the very same spot where yesterday they had seen them pull onto the main road from the river.

The shiny exterior of the long, cylindrical tanker glinted sharply in the sun.

RMM—
that was the logo on them, he recalled.

It was a gold mine. What did McKay say, a hundred thousand barrels a day? Seven million cubic feet of natural gas. A hundred gold mines. Against it, a bunch of dried-out crops and farmers … How could they even compete? The fancy park, the state-of-the-art football facility. Templeton was bought and paid for, and the check read “RMM.” Everyone was grabbing their share of the Wattenberg field.

Everyone except Chuck Watkins maybe.

Hauck glanced again in the mirror and saw that the big oil rig he had seen a quarter mile behind had now pulled within a couple of hundred yards. He was nearing the turnoff where he had seen them come up from the river, by his best guess, a half a mile or so up ahead. That’s where this one would likely be turning into, he surmised. To whatever well was down there. He thought of going down there to check.

As he neared, he saw an identical rig pull up at the intersection. It pulled out, slowly at first, its turning radius swinging it wide into the oncoming lane until it righted itself a hundred yards or so in front of Hauck. Hauck slowed. Gradually, the tanker built up speed, ten to twenty to thirty miles per hour.

The rig in his rearview mirror had now made up most of the gap on him. It seemed likely it would turn onto the same road to the river where the one in front of him had just come out from.

The one that was just ahead of him now …