Rawls looked genuinely curious. “Why?”
“Because I did, after a colony of them attacked me. Turns out they’re a species of Mexican free-tailed bats, common to the area, known for nesting under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin. What’s not common is that the ones in that cave were maybe ten times bigger than the ones found under the bridge. And here’s the kicker: the average life expectancy for Mexican free-tailed bats is between four and six years, but by all accounts, the one we tested from the rez was at least fifty.”
That got Rawls’s attention. “Fifty years?”
“Could be a hundred. The testing’s not finished yet.” Caitlin paused again, to let that sink in, before continuing. “So, if you weren’t drilling for oil, what exactly are those workmen supposed to do, now that the protesting’s over?”
“Whatever’s growing on that land is being affected by the chemical composition of the groundwater leaching up from an aquifer we can’t reach through normal means. And to properly recreate the conditions, I’m going to need an oil well’s worth of that magic water.”
“And if you’re right, I imagine a barrel of that water will be worth a thousand times more than a barrel of oil.”
“Closer to ten thousand times, Ranger.”
“So here’s where we’re at, Mr. Rawls.” Caitlin nodded. “Your cat’s out of the bag, as far as the government goes. Keep obstructing us and you’ll end up a coconspirator with whoever we nail in connection with ISIS. You want to tell him how things go from here, Jones?”
She stepped aside so Jones could take her place, looking down at Cray Rawls, but he took a seat on the edge of the desk instead, showcasing the cowboy boots he figured made him a genuine Texan.
“Who you think you’re talking to here, hoss?” he said, the slightest Texas twang evident in his cadence. “I’m Homeland Security, and you won’t find a Miranda warning card anywhere on my person. I snap my fingers and—poof!—you disappear. We’ll seize your assets, freeze your accounts, turn every employee you’ve got into a person of interest, to make their lives a living hell, too. See, there’s no gray area with Homeland, and we never have to defend ourselves in court. You’re in or you’re out. So which is it?”
Rawls fixed his gaze back on Caitlin. “If I tell you what you want to know—”
“No deals, Mr. Rawls,” she interrupted. “The only thing I can promise you for sure, in return for your cooperation, is not to go public with the fact that your son might be directly aiding and abetting the biggest terrorist attack by far in American history. I can’t take anything else off the table.”
Rawls shook his head, moved his eyes from Caitlin to Jones and then back again. “When did this stop being the United States of America?”
Jones answered before Caitlin could. “When ISIS decided to use a weapon of mass destruction they found on land you currently control.”
“A man like you never gives everything up until his back hits the wall, Mr. Rawls,” Caitlin picked up. “That’s where you’re at right now, and you’ve got one more chance to come clean about what else you’re after on that rez besides water.”
Rawls’s expression tightened into one familiar to Caitlin from the Houston boxing gym where they’d first met: exhaustion, after he’d punched himself out and could barely raise his arms. “Just one question, Ranger. How much do you know about corn?”
Before he could continue, a knock preceded the office door opening, and Captain Tepper poked his head in.
“We got a lead on these bastards,” was all Tepper said.
86
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS
Dylan parked his truck off the rez, in a grove set well back from the entrance, near a trail through the woods that Ela had shown him. During the drive north, he’d noticed a tear in the tan cloth upholstery, down the middle of the passenger seat.
That made him think of the day he’d bought his beloved Chevy S-10, after his freshman year at Brown, without telling his dad, and how it had conked out almost as soon as he’d gotten it home. Instead of being pissed, his father had taught him how to change the starter, then the alternator, and finally, the battery. Never criticizing him for the purchase or preaching something like “What’d you expect for five hundred bucks?”