“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?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
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 …
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.