The Alpha man lay there smirking. “Not so easy, is it? Just to kill someone. Goes against everything you have inside, right, detective?”
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.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
“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.”