Hauck grinned. “It just seems to stick in my gut when I see people using their power to step all over others. Especially when they hide behind some shiny government shield or a corporation. There are a lot of people who just get trampled upon on the way. I’ve found people are just waiting around for someone to take the first step. So I must like it. ’Cause I’m here.”
“I know you were a cop and all,” the farmer said. “But me, I got something I’m fighting for here. Our lives are at stake. To me, it’s not just what’s right. I lost my son. It’s personal.”
Hauck thought of Dani, who’d become as close as if she were his own, and what she’d been through. “Trust me, it’s personal for me, too.”
Watkins smiled. “It’s enough to shake the idealism in anyone, isn’t it, Mr. Hauck? Anyway, only one thing I ask of you here …”
“If I can.”
“You just point out the sonovabitch who killed my boy. That a deal?”
“All right. But just so you know, I have my own gripes against him, too.”
“Best shot then.” The farmer nodded. “You know, more I think about it, I think we’re here for the same reasons, Mr. Hauck.”
“And what’s that?”
“Strip away all the idealism, all the wrongs, we’re really both just here to kill a man.”
Hauck smiled. “Seems a good time for you to call me Ty.”
“Chuck, then.”
Up in the distance Hauck saw two sets of lights heading toward them. He yelled out, “Two cars coming in!” and checked his rifle. “Take your positions. Here they come.”
“Lupe! Miguel!” Watkins hurried back down the stairs. The music cut off and Hauck saw the two farmhands scampering around outside. One had a couple of improvised Molotov cocktails—made from heating oil in beer bottles stuffed with a rag. The other jumped in the cab of the large combine and started the engine.
The lights grew closer. Hauck trained his sights on the driver in the first car. He had night sights but they weren’t very good. Maybe for a buck creeping around the woods at a hundred yards. The rumble of the engines could now be heard.
“Here they come!” Hauck said. His heart was beating fast. “Hold your firing till I give the go.”
He steadied his shooting elbow on the window ledge and followed the lead vehicle in. He thought, though, that something didn’t figure. If it was Robertson, he wouldn’t have made such a visible show. These guys were all trained. Unless this was a diversion, and the main attack was coming elsewhere. He rolled around to the other side of the window and scanned both sides of the fields, searching for signs of activity.
There were none.
He brought the rifle back. His pulse picked up as he watched the lead vehicle, which he now could make out as a flatbed truck, stop along the fields maybe a hundred yards short of the driveway. His finger tensed softly on the trigger. “Everyone get ready …”
The doors opened. Two men stepped out. Hauck followed them in his sight, squinting into the sight. The first wore a cowboy hat. He didn’t recognize either of them, and they didn’t exactly look like an elite team. They both had rifles. Two more got out of the pickup truck behind them.
Hauck trained in on the lead person, illuminated through the yellow night sight. Where was Robertson? Where was McKay? “Just give me a reason,” he muttered softly, boring in.
Then, the man in the cowboy hat called out, “Chuck! Chuck Watkins … It’s Ben. Early. Milt Yarrow is with me. Don Ellis and Fred Barnes are in the truck behind us.”
“Hold your fire!” Watkins shouted, coming out from the house, waving his arms.
Hauck lowered his gun. The names were familiar somehow. Then it hit him. The class action against the town he had read at Jen Keeler’s.
They were all part of it, too.
“Word was you were a little undermanned here and might need a little help.” Ben came up to Watkins and extended his hand. “We thought we’d lend a hand.”
They also brought ammunition and other weapons. Hauck figured by now RMM and Alpha knew about his visit to the DA. Kidnapping charges, along with attempted murder, wouldn’t exactly be the kind of publicity they’d be seeking now, enough to derail any merger. Tomorrow, they’d find out about the new class action suit. And once Global Energy learned of it, the sparks would fly. The guys at RMM had dug themselves a hole and they couldn’t let that just sit. Hauck thought he’d give anything to see Moss’s reaction to it.
The others stayed in the house and opened a few beers to settle their nerves. He sat up in the window, watching the road and the fields.
Could be anytime, Hauck decided. Maybe tonight. He sat back and settled his eyes over the dark fields.
But they’d come.
More likely tomorrow.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Wendell Moss leaned against the railing at the Trixie One well site. The reassuring ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung of the pump bobbing at three-second intervals was as natural a sound to him as a hymn in church. The sound meant that product—either oil or natural gas—was being pumped back up the well. But, sadly, Trixie was on her last breaths. In the past months, her production had sunk beneath the economic costs of keeping her running. That was why the crew was down to two men who were sucking the last barrels dry and preparing the concrete mixture that would be pumped down the wellhead in a day, forever sealing it off. Moss wiped his forehead in the afternoon sun.