One Mile Under (37 page)

Hauck pressed his boot on Robertson’s throat and dug the muzzle into the his cheek. “You’re wrong.” His finger tensed the trigger. “Doesn’t faze me one bit.”

He was about to squeeze when he heard a shout come from outside the barn.
“Hauck!”

It came from the direction of the house. Hauck recognized it as McKay. He slowly took his foot off Robertson’s chest and stepped back, the gun still trained on him.

McKay said, “Something out here you ought to see …”

“Don’t listen!” Watkins’s voice rang out from the same location. “Just do what you have to do.”

“Count of five …” McKay called back. “Then I fill his head full of holes. And we come after you.”

“Do it, Hauck,” Watkins yelled again. “That’s the sonovabitch who killed Trey. That’s why we’re here.”

“Seems you missed your chance, huh, old buddy …?” Robertson cackled, sizing up the situation.

“One more word, it’ll be your last,” Hauck said, jamming the muzzle into the Alpha man’s forehead.

“Okay, okay …”

Hauck looked out through the flames outside and saw McKay holding Watkins by his collar, a rifle to the back of his head. The siren was blaring. The fire had reached the roof of the barn. It was starting to split apart. They had to get out of here.

“Three seconds …” McKay came back. “I’ll blow his head apart like an eggshell. And I don’t bluff.”

“Get up,” Hauck said, kicking Robertson over.

Watkins hollered from outside. “
Don’t!
”

“Get up,” Hauck said again. “Give me the slightest reason, and this is where it ends for you.”

With a grin, Robertson slowly pushed himself up to his feet, his arm smelling of burnt flesh.

Hauck prodded him in the back with the muzzle. “Now move.”

They stepped out of the burning barn. McKay was behind the combine, holding Watkins. He smiled, in the way a desperate killer might smile who had brought all the pieces of his plan together. Hauck pushed Robertson forward until they were about ten yards away, the gun tip dug into his back.

“You’re either one foolish man or a very unlucky one,” the Alpha boss said smiling. “Violence always seems to follow you.”

Hauck met his gaze. “I was thinking similar thoughts about you.”

“So here we are.”

“Seems like a standoff,” Hauck said. “So how do you want to play it?”

“Oh, no standoff.” McKay shook his head. His look of satisfaction and control sent an uncomfortable feeling down Hauck’s spine. McKay motioned with his chin for Hauck to look around.

Behind him, one of the men Hauck thought was down came from around the barn.

“No standoff at all.”

“How badly do you want to lose your man here?” Hauck said, the rifle pressed into Robertson’s back, glancing at the other man circling behind him, his own gun trained on Hauck.

McKay dug his M-16 into the base of the farmer’s skull and shrugged. “How bad do you want to lose yours?”

The numbers didn’t quite add up. It all seemed pretty foolish now, coming back, but Hauck was long past any regrets. He’d been to the edge before. Nowhere to go. And he knew sometimes you just had to play it out. People often faltered. Lacked the will. Though it seemed McKay had been here, too.

Hauck smiled at him. “So is this what they meant in the brochure by ‘environmental challenges’ …? Using the word broadly, of course.”

McKay chuckled. “No, I admit, this one’s a bit beyond the mission statement. But we do whatever the job calls for. So here we are.”

The siren continued to sound.

Watkins gave him an imploring look. “Hauck, I told you, do what you came here to do. I can’t live with it, the other way.”

“Shut up, old man,” said McKay, swatting him on the back of the head with the gun butt. “I know you a bit,” he said to Hauck. “Maybe more than you think. We both believe in the things we do. I know that one of them for you is what seems like doing the right thing; otherwise you wouldn’t even be here. And for us, it’s getting the right things done, and so these wells, the energy independence they bring, it’s what we believe, at all costs.

“But you also don’t believe in people dying when they don’t have to. Otherwise you would have blown John here’s head off back in the barn. Any more than you can let this ol’ farmer of yours die here needlessly, too. He’s already lost enough, don’t you agree? Am I right on all that …?”

The man behind Hauck stepped around at a bad angle looking for a clear shot, and Hauck kept dragging Robertson by the collar, so he would stay somewhat shielded. “Don’t make yourself into something fancy, McKay. You’re basically just hired killers. But you’ve got the floor …”

“You know what we want. Drop the gun. We’ll let ol’ Chuck here go and go about with his life. Back to his family. You heard what I offered before. He’s already got what he wanted.”

“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Hauck. That’s not what I want at all.” Watkins tried to flail at McKay and the Alpha man kicked his legs out from under him, sending him to the ground.

“But you know what the one difference is between us, Mr. Hauck.” The Alpha boss shrugged with a slight smile. “It’s that in our world, people are dying all the time …”

“There’s one more”—Hauck jammed the muzzle into Robertson’s back—“difference. I also believe people have to pay. And as you hear, I don’t think my friend Watkins here would be so happy with me if I just handed him over to you. Would you, Chuck?”

Watkins shook his head. “No.”

“And of course there’s one more thing …” Hauck raised the barrel of the gun to Robertson’s head.

McKay said, “What’s that?”

Hauck looked across at him. “The girl.”

“The girl …”

“She has to live.”

“You’re right, the girl …” McKay nodded, but his eyes lost their amusement. “That does complicate things a bit.”

Behind Hauck, flames rose into the sky; the barn was about to break apart. The fire flew up in waves with a bellowing whoosh. Hauck felt the heat press against his skin. The siren continued to wail.

“People are gonna hear that. They’re going to be coming here,” he said to McKay. “Let him go. He’s already lost enough. It’s me you want anyway.”

“Do what we’re here to do,” Watkins seethed, trying to wrangle out of McKay’s grasp.

“We both know what this is about now. And it’s not the water. Not anymore. Let him go.”

“Well, you’re right about that.” McKay dug the tip of the muzzle into the back of Watkins’s skull. “So I’m giving you to the count of five … Then things start. We see where they fall.”

Hauck looked at Watkins, the farmer’s worried but steady look saying that somehow this was okay. This was right.
Kill the sonovabitch who killed his son
. Hauck shifted with Robertson. He decided the better odds were to shield himself with him from McKay and go for the Alpha man behind him first.

Suddenly he heard a rumble. His gaze shot toward the road. Three or four cars were coming up it toward the farm. Maybe neighbors, seeing the flames. Or Watkins’s friends, the ones who had left, hearing the siren.

“Take a look,” Hauck said. “It’s over, McKay. What are you going to do, shoot him in front of everyone? Maybe kill them, too, to cover it all up? And then me? Robertson? The guy behind me? We’re all gonna die for this?”

The vehicles stopped about a hundred yards from the house. A few people stepped out. Hauck saw Milt and Don. And Watkins’s farmhands came back from the fields.

“It’s over,” Hauck said again. “No way to keep this quiet now. Put the gun down.”

The Alpha man looked at the people arriving at the scene. “Oh, it ain’t over …” He shook his head, gritting his jaw. Beams and planks collapsed into the fireball. Three of his men were lying dead somewhere in the fields and the barn.

“Get out of here,” the Alpha man hissed, giving Watkins a kick with his boot. “You just hit the jackpot, Chuck. Get lost.”

Watkins looked at Hauck and wouldn’t leave him behind. “No.”

“Get going, I said. And you do one thing to interfere, everything we talked about goes away. For all of them. You hear …? So get along. Now!”

“Go.” Hauck nodded. “Warn Dani.” He was about to say, call the Aspen police, but then he stopped himself as not to give it away.

“Count of three …” McKay tensed on the trigger. “You want to die so bad, old man, stick around. But I don’t see how that helps the rest of you in any way. So get everyone out of here now.”

The farmer looked at Hauck with futility in his eyes and pulled his arms away. He started to walk toward the cars, looked back at Hauck again, then picked up his pace into a labored trot. Ahead, people were gathered, watching, waiting. It looked like his friend Milt had come back for him. And Don. Everyone just stood there watching.

“So what’re you going to do now, McKay?” Hauck grabbed Robertson by the collar and jerked him backward. He tried to keep the Alpha man who was circling behind him in his line of sight. His arm felt useless. It took everything he had just to keep the gun level now. He felt his legs weakening, too. Blood came down his side.

“Look at you, soldier,” McKay said laughing. “I think it’s over for
you
.” He stepped away from the cover of the hay bales, narrowing the distance between them. The other Alpha man crept in closer behind Hauck. “You want to start shooting, shoot. Truth is, though, I really don’t see any way you get out of here alive.”

Hauck heard a crash and the barn imploded in flame. With a blast of heat, beams and planks and burning embers collapsed onto themselves with a freight-train-like roar.

Startled, Hauck turned, his strength ebbing. McKay seemed to nod, and the Alpha man behind Hauck closed in. Hauck backed away, grabbing on to Robertson, but Robertson managed to wrap his foot behind Hauck’s leg and spun him backward, Hauck stumbling.

There was a tussle for the gun, but Hauck had no strength left to fight him. It fell out of his hands. He stood there, barely able to keep himself up, staring at Robertson, whose smirk had a lot more life in it now.

“Shoulda done it while you had the chance …” Robertson said, grinning. “My turn now.”

The rifle stock came up, clubbing Hauck on the side of the head, his legs buckling and darkness rushing in.

“That’s what you fucking get for messing around in my mailbox, asshole,” was all Hauck heard before he blacked out.

Hauck blinked his eyes open. He had no idea how much time had passed. The vehicle he was riding in drove through a chain link fence gate, which closed behind him. He struggled to get a sense of where he was. The car continued up the darkened road, then swung around. He saw a hut, two large round tanker trucks, lights canting into the car from a tall trestle. His head throbbed, and as he went to rub it, he found that his hands were bound in front. Across from him, Robertson was at the wheel, across from him. Hauck pushed himself up and heard a click in his ears from behind. The muzzle of a gun pressed against the back of his head.

“Welcome back. One wrong move and it’s lights out,” McKay said, behind him. “Just so we understand.”

Hauck nodded. He realized he was riding in one of the black SUVs he’d seen around. In spite of the circumstances, which were about as dire as they got, there was enough irony to still make him chuckle. “Always wanted a ride in one of these,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we’ve arrived,” the Alpha boss said, “so the strobe lighting and party bar will have to wait for another time.”

“Shame,” Hauck muttered. It was clear to him there was no way out. His hands were bound. His left arm barely felt attached and there was blood all over his shoulder. He couldn’t even do what Dani had done days before, be tracked by his own phone. It was somewhere back in the barn. Melted cinders by now.

They drove up to the black trestle in the center of the well pad; it was about twenty feet high, lit up by a series of floodlights. The pump head, which Hauck recalled Dani telling him was known as a “horse head” on these old wells, bobbed up and down in three-or four-second intervals.

“Welcome to Trixie One,” McKay said. “I hear you’re already acquainted with Hannah, her cousin. She’s been quite a girl. Three hundred and sixty barrels a day. Seven days a week. For eighteen months now. Unfortunately this is the end of the run for her.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Hauck said.

“For you, too. Pull up here,” he instructed Robertson. “I’ll get the well cap open. Why don’t you show Mr. Hauck around.”

It was dark. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Hauck tugged at his wrists, testing the ties. But there was no give. At least he was alive. They could have shot him back at the farm.

Though he knew they hadn’t brought him up there just to give him a second tour.

“You realize this is all gonna come falling down on you.” Hauck turned back and looked at McKay. “You. Alpha. RMM. Global Exploration. People saw what happened back there. You can’t buy them off forever. It’ll all come out. And it’ll bring down everything. The merger. The entire company.”

“You’re right.” McKay nodded. “We can’t sweep this one under the rug. Or down the well cap, as we say here. But these kinds of operations always carry the possibility of future surprise. It’s like sinking a well. You never know how it will turn out; you only try to keep the odds in your favor. It’s kind of an arbitrage, between what you can control and what is inherently uncontrollable. In our favor, experience tells me, the people back there will see quickly what’s in their best interest. And that would be water, Mr. Hauck, all the water they need in this drought. And all the benefits that go with it. Basically a continuation of their way of life. The police, even the local prosecutors … the same calculus works for them as well. They know what they get with us and they don’t know you. So we’ll see how it falls out. Ultimately, our most important goal is to protect our client.”

“And those people back there on that farm? Your people?”

“What people, Mr. Hauck? You mean
our
men? Trust me, that’s already in the process of being cleaned up. Maybe a gas line explosion. Or in the fire in the barn. They won’t be found. They all knew the risk when they signed up here. Isn’t that right, John?”