Quick Sands: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 1)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  He pulled on the Jeep’s door handle. Locked.

  Ramage jumped when the compressor shrieked when it clicked on.

  There was no red alarm light, but breaking the window would bring unwanted attention. It was quiet, and though the background noise of cars, people, and the grinding gears of life muffled things, a shattered window would stand out in the stillness, especially at a cop hangout.

  He pulled his right hand into the sleeve of his jacket and balled his fist. The timing had to be perfect, and he had to be fast. The seconds ticked by, a minute, his covered fist poised to smash the window.

  When the compressor kicked on and screeched, Ramage punched the window and it shattered. He didn’t wait to see if the breaking glass had been heard, and reached into the Jeep, grabbed the gun belt and headed back to the shadows. Not running or rushing, but taking his time even though his heart was galloping and every bump and bruise pounded with pain.

  Back in the Taurus he paused to gather himself as he watched the bar entrance, but nobody came out.

  His spoils consisted of a fully loaded Glock 19 with two spare mags. That was forty-five rounds of 9MM shells, full metal jacket. A faint wave of sorrow washed over him as he thought about the old cop having to explain how he lost his service weapon. Police brass considered the loss of a badge or gun as a screwup of the highest order, and the old cop was probably looking at early retirement.

  Ramage opened the driver’s side door, leaned out, and rubbed his right hand in the thin layer of dirt and grease that covered the parking lot. With his fingertips smudged, he reached into the glove compartment and ripped a sheet of paper from the back of the owner’s manual. A short pen was clipped to the manuals jacket, and Ramage wrote in block letters like a child, “Sorry I had to take your gun. It won’t fall into the wrong hands. You have my word. No need to tell anyone if you don’t want to.” Using only his right hand and legs he folded the paper and dropped it on the seat next to him.

  He wiped his hand on his jeans, started the car, and looped around the lot, passing the Jeep. As he went by, he tossed the note through the broken window into the truck’s cab. If the cop reported the incident Ramage doubted the locals would be able to pull viable prints from the note.

  He pulled away from Tito’s and turned west, working his way to I-20. He stopped at the first rest stop he came to and pulled into a parking space in a dark area of the lot, locked the doors, and reclined the seat all the way back. He needed sleep.

  Stars blinked through the thin clouds, and the night pressed in on the Taurus like it was a capsule lost in space. Trucks came and went, and the chirp of air brakes and the rumble of engines brought thoughts of Big Blue. Shame burned through Ramage, his self-loathing eating at him. Even after everything he’d been through, sometimes he still took for granted that most basic of certainties, one human’s young and old, rich or poor, male or female, all agreed on; you don’t know what you got until it’s gone.

  Chapter Six

  “What the hell?” Anna Gutierrez lifted her binoculars and scanned the horizon. A swirling trail of dust and sand snaked down County Road 115 behind a blue rig hauling… what the hell was she seeing? Anna let the binoculars drop to her chest and pulled her scarf tightly about her head. Grit swirled in the wind as she dug her heels into her donkey. The beast brayed and lurched forward down the side of the windswept dune they were perched on, bounding through the sand across the prairie, threading in and out of tufts of sand sage and shinnery oak. Ripples of sand like tiny waves marked bare patches, and scorpions and diamondbacks scuttled for cover. A stale breeze redolent of gasoline and sage carried on the gentle wind, and above buzzards squawked and cried.

  A vast ocean of sand stretched in every direction, interrupted only by roads, elevated power lines, and silos that stuck from the flat terrain like nails. Anna recalled that only five years prior there’d been no silos on the horizon. Now Atlaser, Higher Roller, White Mountain, Corvia and many other energy companies had rolled into town. They were just as bad as the criminals, if not worse, and they skirted the law whenever they could if it meant squeezing another buck out of the foundation of the Earth. For most of Anna’s life Texas Tea—black gold, was the mainstay of Prairie Home. These days it was sand.

  She kicked her heels into Shadowfax, and the beast sprang forward, digging in, her hoofs pounding the hardpan, kicking up dust. The truck headed south toward Pyote, but Anna didn’t think this odd shipment wasn’t going to one of the licensed criminals. Her bet was it would turn off CR-115 long before town. Only supply trucks pulling refrigerated trailers full of food or flatbeds loaded with heavy equipment and parts went into town. She’d been keeping an eye on the comings and goings in Prairie Home the last couple of years since certain elements had come to town.

  Her father told her to leave it be, but Anna couldn’t. This was her home, and she didn’t want it destroyed by greedy assholes who would rape her land to get a yacht ten feet longer than their friend’s.

  There was an arroyo ahead, and she tugged on Shadowfax’s reins. The white donkey changed course and avoided the dark cut in the land that stretched like a scar across Anna’s path. Shadowfax pounded around sagebrush and through sand, her hoof beats like thunder. Anna stood in her stirrups and bent low, hiding behind the donkey’s neck as wind tore at her headscarf.

  The sun started its descent to the horizon, and a bruised sky spread across the skyline to the west. The temperature remained a mild sixty degrees, normal for western Texas in December, but it would fall below fifty as soon as the sun disappeared. Sometimes as the sun went down Anna thought she saw the curve of the Earth in the distance, like her world was slipping off the edge into nothingness, and that if she rode west she’d fall off the end of the Earth.

  The truck and its trail of dust continued on, CR-115 straight as an arrow and flat as an airstrip. When she made it to K-2 she’d get a better look at the rig as it went through Chandler’s Gap.

  K-2 was the tallest sand dune in the area. It had started when the road was cut and grew to a hundred feet tall as easterly winds supplied sand and dirt. It was treacherous in spots and susceptible to landslides the locals called quick sands. Anna knew the path to the top, she and Shadowfax had climbed the dune many times. She leaned into the donkey’s mane and patted the animal’s neck. “Slow up. Slow up,” she whispered in the beast’s ear, and the donkey’s pace eased. They’d outraced the rig by cutting across the prairie.

  She pulled back on the reins when Shadowfax reached the top of the hill, and Anna lifted the binoculars. The truck looked like many others she’d seen recently, a dark blue Kenworth with a sleeper cab. What was different was the trailer. Usually the rigs ran with covered dump trailers, but this truck was pulling a flatbed packed with something green. She turned her head slowly, keeping pace with the rig, focusing the binoculars.

  It was a load of cut Christmas trees.

  Anna pulled the field glasses from her eyes. Where the hell would they be taking a load of Christmas trees out this way? Odessa or maybe Kermit, but Prairie Home? There were barely enough people to support a grocery, though the population had doubled since the start of the sand rush and the arrival of hydraulic fracturing. Prairie Home was almost a ghost town when the fracking craze swept over western Texas bringing fortune seekers of all ethical denominations.

  The Gutierrez family owned four hundred and nineteen acres of Ector County, and someone was stealing their sand and damaging land Anna wanted preserved until they pried the deed from her dead hands along with her Winchester 1895. Local shale drillers used millions of tons of sand per year all around the Permian Basin, the hottest oil zone on Earth. Anna recalled an article from the Odessa Star that said industry experts predicted fifty million tons of sand would be needed by Texas frackers next year. Anna spent most of her youth chasing weekend adventures and dune buggies off the patch of quasi-barren wasteland she called home when the price of sand was zero. Now it fetched a hundred dollars a ton.

  The rig w
as obscured by its trail of dust, and Anna tugged on Shadowfax’s reins and turned the beast around. The donkey inched her way down the path, and Anna pointed the animal south. She wanted to see where the blue rig was going. She didn’t own a Christmas tree farm, so it was none of her business, yet she’d become suspicious of everything as the law broke down around her and the rules of corporations took hold.

  Down on the open plain Anna road southwest, pushing Shadowfax as hard as she could. The beast hadn’t had water or food since morning, and if her friend felt anything like she did the donkey was starving. Anna took a pull from her canteen and undid the clasp on the rifle holster strapped to Shadowfax’s saddle.

  She chuckled to herself as she bounced along. The idea that she wasn’t safe on her own land was comical. The dirt she’d despised as a child had become valuable, though she’d come to understand that all sand wasn’t created equal. Preferred sand granules are large, rugged and round as marbles and ideally shaped to slice open crevices in shale rock so that oil can seep out freely. West Texas sand grains aren’t big or sturdy, and they’re oddly shaped, more like jelly beans than marbles. So for years Texas sand was ignored, until the local shale oil boom in the Permian.

  Anna wiped grit from her face. Ahead the truck turned down a private road and disappeared as wind swept dust over the plain. Armies of trucks hauling sand to drill sites crawled down the road like ants bringing food to their queen in the hill. A never-ending stream of commerce that was mostly unregulated. Corrupt and corporatized law enforcement did nothing, and only Anna and her father cared if their land was being stolen grain by grain.

  To the west Anna picked up the blue truck as it barreled toward a patch of land surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The area wasn’t big, no more than three acres, and a huge warehouse sat at the center of a yard stacked on the edges with dump trailers and backhoes. She’d tracked the sand thieves stealing from her to this spot several times. It was the Sandman’s compound.

  Anna peered through the binoculars as the truck stopped at a guardhouse. The semi idled there for several minutes, but she couldn’t see what was happening inside the cab. Five minutes passed before the gate opened. That told Anna the delivery wasn’t scheduled. If they’d been expecting a shipment of cut Christmas trees surely the man at the gate would’ve known.

  The truck inched into the yard and the guard locked the fence behind it. Anna tried to read the license plate number but couldn’t due to the angle. There were DOT numbers on the side of the rig, but the writing was small, and with the vehicle moving she couldn’t make them out. Dust and sand filled the air and above a buzzard shrieked. Shadowfax chuffed and whinnied, and Anna patted the beast’s neck.

  “Yeah, sure is strange,” she said to the donkey.

  The blue Kenworth grumbled and stalled, gears grinding as the truck lurched into the arced doorway of the large silver hut and was lost from view. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter fence.

  Anna knew the Sandman, Carl Piranhio, owned the three-acre property under the name Grains Holdings. It was listed as a sand and gravel provider, though it owned no quarry and had no documentable relationship with any, yet somehow, they sold sand.

  She’d been unable to catch them stealing her sand and getting close to the compound without being seen was next to impossible. She’d tried to take pictures, she’d set traps, and it had all been a waste of time. Nobody cared anyway, and Sheriff Kingston would laugh at her regardless of the evidence she presented.

  Out on the plain the dust settled, and once again Anna saw for miles in every direction. She pulled a notebook from her jacket and noted the date and time, and the type of shipment. Her notes were full of information, but none of it proved anything. The sheriff told her she was being paranoid, and that the increase in local commerce was good for Prairie Home. The town needed the money, and why would she want to stop that?

  She sat there a long time, Shadowfax shifting from hoof to hoof beneath her. Anna’s stomach grumbled. Dusk fell over the land, and the silence of day was replaced with the dull echoes of the night creatures as they buzzed, chirped, and bleated.

  Floodlights surrounding the compound snapped on, creating a puddle of light on the vast empty plain. Anna tucked in her scarf, gently dug her heels into Shadowfax’s flanks, and headed for home.

  Chapter Seven

  Ramage had been in many cities. He understood why they expanded and contracted, and Odessa was one of the fastest growing towns in the United States thanks to the explosion of shale oil drilling and its related support services and products. The city was named after Odessa, Ukraine, because of the local shortgrass prairie’s resemblance to Ukraine’s steppe landscape. Founded in 1881 as a water stop and cattle shipping point on the Texas and Pacific Railway, the city resembled a real-life Mos Eisley spaceport. People from all over the country flocked to the area because there was money to be made, but when the fracking mines went bust, the gold diggers would move on leaving pockets of raped landscape that would make the Once-ler’s work in The Lorax look pale by comparison.

  He was in and out of Odessa like a shadow. The Sandman was well known around town, and it didn’t take much to learn of the man’s alleged whereabouts. The bartender at the first place he stopped, and the waitress at the diner where he ate, both provided the same information: the Sandman was a ruthless criminal that had a compound in a town fifty miles outside Odessa called Prairie Home.

  An odd name. Ramage checked the internet via a computer in the Odessa Public Library and discovered Prairie Home was basically a ghost town that had been revitalized with the current boom. It was out in the middle of sand country, and Ramage figured that’s where the guy got the Sandman nickname.

  Piranha and Chiclet were also well known in town as the two men were notorious troublemakers and partyers. Both the bartender and the waitress said not to mess with Piranha, and that he was a little off. A polite way of saying the man was crazy. Great. Just what Ramage needed, a guy who thought he was the Sonny Corleone of sand.

  The Ford’s cooling fan was making a tapping sound that was driving Ramage crazy, and as he sped down CR-18 toward Prairie Home he fingered the Glock that sat in his lap. It had been awhile. The weapon felt good in his hand, but it brought back memories he’d rather leave buried. Wind whistled through the window stripping like a flute and accompanied the fan’s snare drum. His head ached, his bruises beat in rhythm with his heart, and his muscles hurt from lack of sleep and proper nourishment.

  Grassland slid by on both sides of the road, the faint orange glow of sunrise filling his rearview mirror. He opened the window and fresh air filled the car. The chill woke him and oiled the gears of his mind. He needed breakfast and coffee. A plan of attack. The town of Prairie Home was small, and newcomers would stand out like a pile of dog crap on the sidewalk. Did he care? He did. The element of surprise was always good, so he decided not to barge into town like a man on a mission, but rather ease in slow and quiet.

  To call Prairie Home a town was an insult to towns. A sign read Welcome to Prairie Home, and he wondered what the name meant besides its literal interpretation. There was always a story behind small town names. Like the last name of the person who founded the town, or some variation of the industry that had driven the town’s creation, or a descriptive name that mirrored the locations physical features. Like Willow Falls along the river in Pennsylvania, or Seaside on the coast of California, or Orange County, Florida. Maybe that’s all Prairie Home meant, a town on the prairie.

  Ramage’s expectations were pretty much on the money. He’d expected rundown houses, a diner, and maybe a gas station, but things were a bit livelier than that. An immense shipping infrastructure was everywhere. He knew millions of gallons of crude oil were moved from western Texas to points all over the United States each year, and the supplies and support services necessary for the extraction and transport of black gold required people and heavy equipment.

  Ramage parked the Ford at the edge of t
own behind a hotel called Ranchos that looked like it hadn’t been in operation since I-20 was a wagon trail. He didn’t want the locals to know what he was driving. Not yet, anyway, and as he walked into town, he did his best not to draw attention. After a brief mental debate, he’d hidden the Glock under the Ford’s passenger seat. Newbies often got rousted first time in town, and the last thing he needed was a local cop busting him while doing due diligence.

  It was early, the gray haze of dusk spreading across the land, the town just waking up. Lights spilled from a cluster of buildings ahead, and Ramage hoped they’d be a diner and a hotel.

  The road into town was wide and stained with streaks of tire rubber and oil. It ran due west where it met a traffic light that marked the town’s only intersection. Buildings filled in the road’s sides as he walked, and he saw a sign that read Main Street. There was a diner, a hardware store, machine shop, heavy equipment parts store, and a restaurant named Gusher, though Ramage wondered how long it would be before the name was changed to Shale Squeezers or Crushers.

  Many storefronts were boarded up, and it was clear some of the shops like the Starbucks and Sprint phone store were new. Both were operating out of locations that hadn’t been renovated from their old uses and were in need of the customary upgrades typical of establishments that sell coffee and communication.

  Behind the buildings on main street the town spread-out in a loose triangle with the traffic light the center of the universe. There was a lot of empty space, and literal tumbleweeds rolled through the town as people went about their business. A town of five hundred people. Maybe less.

  Ramage continued west on Main Street looking for a bar. A hangout where workers went after a hard day to blow off steam before going home to face domestic responsibilities, though such a place was likely to be closed at this hour, even in Texas.