Quick Sands: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 1)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  “We’re not leaving you. I—”

  “Move. Fast. If this goes south, it’s best we’re not together. You can hear everything from the booth behind me. Hurry.”

  Gypsy and Cecil shifted to another booth just as the bell rang and the front door of the diner swung open.

  Sheriff Kingston stepped inside. He pulled down the brim of his hat as he looked around and the diner fell silent. Everyone knew why he was there, and nobody wanted any part of what was about to happen.

  Ramage sat at ease, his arm stretched over the back of his bench seat, staring at the sheriff with a broad smile on his face. The big man pulled up his gun belt and headed straight for him. Someone coughed. Silverware tinkled on a plate, a ceramic mug was set on a table, and an instrumental of Tiny Dancer played in the background.

  Kingston stopped at Ramage’s table and stared down at him, but said nothing. His face was red, anger building in his eyes, jaw tightening. He shifted on his feet and breathed, like he was using every ounce of energy he had to keep himself under control.

  “How you feeling, sheriff? Sleep well?”

  “You could have left the keys. They had to cut me out,” he said.

  Ramage laughed; full, loud, and obnoxious. “Really? Wish I could say I was sorry about that, but you know.”

  Kingston said nothing. He stood there, red faced, a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead.

  “You should have called me. I would have told you where your keys are.”

  The sheriff’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Yeah, there behind the diner somewhere. You might be able to find them if you spent a week or two looking.”

  Kingston made a sound that was part grunt, cough, and sigh, and he dropped a business card on the table. He rolled his shoulders and said, “If I can be of any assistance during your stay please give me a call.” His hand dropped to his sidearm.

  “Well, thank you. That sure is appreciated. Be sure to pass my thanks on to your boss, the Sandman.”

  The sheriff turned a darker shade of red and beads of sweat appeared on his lower lip. Without a word he turned and exited the way he’d come.

  The low murmur returned, everyone watching Ramage like he’d just been released from quarantine.

  “What the hell was that?” Gypsy said. She and Cecil slid back into the booth with him.

  Ramage picked up the card. On one side was Kingston’s contact information, title, with the Ector County logo in the upper left corner in gold foil. He flipped the card over and dropped it on the table.

  On the back was written, Dunwell.

  “Any clue?” Ramage said.

  “It’s a ghost town off Interstate 20, southwest of Odessa, about an hour and fifteen minutes from here,” Cecil said.

  “Know anything about the place?”

  “Sure,” Gypsy said. “It’s kind of famous in these parts.”

  “It’s perfect for them,” Cecil said. “On the flat terrain a car will be seen coming a mile away. There’s a maze of dirt roads leading to a central… town, I guess. Really just a collection of dilapidated buildings.”

  “So you should do this at night. In the dark,” Gypsy said.

  Ramage shook his head. “Can’t wait. Once the feds arrive Rex will never let me go in,” he said.

  Cecil said, “The maze is pocked with homestead sites, all abandoned, the trailers gone, shacks destroyed.”

  “You’ve been out there?”

  Gypsy laughed. “Sure.” She looked at Cecil and put a hand on his wrist. “We used to… hang out there when we were teenagers.”

  “What’s the deal?”

  “Legend has it that when the T. T. Dunne Kloh-Rumsey No. 1 came in—big oil well—the drilling operator was Dunne, thus it was Dunne’s well or Dunwell. It’s said the town’s named after him, however there’s a historical marker on Hwy 80 that says the land was owned by one Robert Dunne—another possible source for the town’s name,” Cecil said.

  “Yeah, I remember my da talking about it. The well hit in October, 1929, and the town experienced the same predictable explosion of population as other oil towns and naturally, the same growing pains. Shacks and tents outnumbered proper houses. They’re all gone now,” said Gypsy.

  “There was a filling station, general store, a hotel, a drugstore, barbershop, dance hall, and the typical boom town rooming houses at the center of it all,” Cecil said.

  “What happened? Well dry up?” Ramage said.

  Cecil nodded. “When drilling declined the population dwindled. Odessa and Midland siphoned off population and Dunwell died.”

  Ramage sipped his coffee and looked out the window. The breakfast rush was ending, and people loaded into their cars, moving off to start their day. He felt Ginger’s eyes on him.

  “What now?” Cecil said.

  “You give me a ride to Dunwell.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ramage rode shotgun as Gypsy drove, and Cecil was stretched-out on the bed in the rear of the van. His gunshot wound was superficial, but the antibiotics he was taking made him drowsy. A barren wasteland pocked with sagebrush and scrub pine faded into the distance on both sides of the road. Specters of sand and dust appeared from the hardpan, rising, and twisting in the wind like miniature tornadoes, only to disappear when the wind died away. Few cars moved on I-20. The sun was nearing noon, and an hour-and-a-half had passed since he’d hung up on Rex, which meant the fed was most likely in the air on route. Three hours, three-and-a-half tops, Rex had said. If he could time things right, and Rex came. That wasn’t a certainty. Rex might decide to cover his ass and leave Ramage twisting in the wind.

  “Ramage, you on this planet?” Gypsy said.

  He pulled his eyes from the desolation. “Yeah.”

  “We’re almost there. The entrance is on the northern side of the interstate. Start keeping an eye out,” she said.

  “It’s right after the Grandfalls interchange. By exit seventy-nine,” Cecil added.

  “How you feeling, honey?” Gypsy asked.

  “Better, but I don’t think I’m going to be much use for a while.”

  The van’s wheels thumped over cracks and joints in the road as they drove on for another half hour, the three-and-a-half-hour stopwatch in his head noting two hours had slipped away. As the van rolled passed exit seventy-nine Gypsy pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine.

  Ramage made a show of looking around. “Why have we stopped?”

  Cecil stuck his head between the front seats and said, “We’re here.”

  “Here? Where?” Ramage said. The terrain hadn’t changed. He saw no road. No buildings. Nothing.

  Gypsy pointed northeast. “See that cluster of structures way out there. About a mile distant on the horizon?”

  Ramage squinted through the dirty window, the sun glare making it hard to see. There were a few buildings clustered together, partly hidden by a stand of mesquite. “OK. No road.”

  “It’s there,” Gypsy said. “You’ll see it when you cross the interstate.”

  Ramage leaned back in his seat and took a breath. An awkward silence ensued. Cecil moaned in pain, Gypsy sniffled, and Ramage tried to crack his neck. No luck.

  “So, I guess you guys can wait here? Not that you can do anything. Maybe direct the fuzz when they arrive?” Ramage said.

  Gypsy’s nose crinkled, and her eyes narrowed.

  “I understand if you don’t want to be around when the shit hits the fan,” he said.

  “It’s like you said. What can we do?” she said. “But we’ll hang for a bit.”

  Ramage nodded and put out his hand. “Until we meet again?”

  She took his hand. “I hope so, Ramage. I really do.”

  Ramage reached back and shook Cecil’s hand, said thanks, and opened the van’s passenger door. The scent of mesquite and sage rolled over the plain and sand dusted his face. He had no gun. No weapons at all. No phone or radio. He wore the clothes on his back.

  He slipped from the
van and slammed the door. There were no cars traveling east or west on I-20, so Ramage jogged across the road and walked the shoulder, looking for the elusive road. He didn’t look back.

  He’d taken all of twenty steps when he found the double ruts worn into the hardpan that may have once been a road, but to call it a road in its current state would be like calling a coyote trail a brick walkway. He headed north, the cluster of abandoned buildings a mile distant. There were patches of trees and brush, and he tried to stay hidden, but Ramage had no doubts he was being watched from afar.

  Empty home sites appeared on both sides of the road. The place reminded Ramage of a campground with no campers. Mangled screen porches, forlorn decks, porch steps leading to nothing, rusted-out cars with flat tires, and garbage littered the areas carved from the sagebrush.

  The sun was overhead, and the heat made Ramage think of Christmas and his trees. It was cold up in Pennsylvania. They might even have snow. Cut Christmas trees didn’t like heat, and Ramage doubted the Sandman and his idiotic crew knew enough to give them water. It didn’t matter. With the mild Texas weather, he was sure the trees were nothing but a pile of pine needles, his entire savings lost.

  Ramage smelled fire and smoke. One of the abandoned home sites was charred black, the remnants of a shack visible at the center of a circle of black sand. He dropped into a crouch and took a fistful of charred sand, letting it sift through his fingers, smelling it. The sand didn’t smell like smoke, so the fire had occurred a long time ago. Rain washed away everything in time, but not the burned sand.

  A low growl echoed through the ruins. A white coyote with streaks of black and brown stared at Ramage through the sagebrush. It bared its teeth, its gray eyes locked on him.

  “Boo!” Ramage yelled.

  The coyote bolted.

  The maze of roads twisted and turned and Ramage gasped when he saw Anna’s brown jacket laying in the road ahead. He ran to it, picking it up and sniffing it. Anna had been wearing it when he’d last seen her in the compound.

  Ramage ground his teeth so hard his jaw hurt.

  The cluster of buildings grew closer, but the maze of roads had taken him east, so Ramage started making lefts. The jacket had been a marker, a signpost.

  When he found Anna’s shirt the anger was so all consuming he literally saw red, like gazing at the sun with his eyes closed. He remembered being questioned after the incident that had left nine people—men, women, and a child—dead. He hadn’t tried to deny anything he’d been accused of. Joan’s partner was a fed looking to keep the paychecks coming in, and there was no way he’d lie for Ramage. Ramage had understood what he was doing. He’d had no illusions, and there was no insanity defense. He’d fully expected to go to jail for what he’d done, and when he didn’t Ramage felt no joy. No relief. No pride or pleasure of revenge. His punishment was to be his penitence —right or wrong killing another person was a crime against nature. He knew that deep down, and his shame tormented him on dark sleepless nights when he had nothing better to do than think about his screwups and miss Joan.

  He dropped on his ass, head in hands, a tear leaking from his eye. He glanced at his watch. 1:54PM. An hour before the cavalry arrived. He hoped. He sat there several minutes, lost in his desperation.

  Ramage got up, dusted himself off, wiped the tear from his face with the back of his hand, and continued on, the rage easing. The road forked ahead, but Anna’s sock marked the way. He picked the sock up, sniffed it, and let it fall to the ground.

  The path was clear, the road he was on led toward the cluster of buildings that made-up Dunwell’s main drag. Rusted-out cars, cinderblock foundations, and piles of rubble lined the road, and everything was covered in a layer of sand. Ramage heard Cecil’s voice in his head. “There was a filling station, general store, a hotel, a drugstore, barbershop, dance hall, and the typical boom town rooming houses…”

  Piranha and his boys were in one of the buildings, but which one? Did it matter? He felt vulnerable walking in the center of the road, no cover. They could take his head off with a rifle shot. Wouldn’t be difficult, but Ramage pushed away the angst. He knew his mind was playing tricks on him. He understood how this would go. He had a date with Piranha, and the guy who killed Ramage prematurely would be buried in the same shallow grave as him.

  Ramage heard circus music, that accordion titter that had a way of bringing a smile to your face by promising fun and games. He shook his head. Couldn’t be. Sand scraped over sand like millions of roaches scuttling over sandpaper. He rubbed his eyes. The cluster of buildings was a quarter mile distant. He rolled his shoulders, thought of Anna, and strode down the hump between two shallow ruts in the hardpan, arms extended at his sides in the ‘I don’t have a weapon’ position.

  The first structure he came to was a dilapidated gas station, the old school kind with a round steel arch over the entrance, and a sign on a metal pole that clearly had once spun around with the wind, but was now so rusted the stations name couldn’t be read. Two hunks of metal that had once been gas pumps sat out front. All the windows had been smashed, and Ramage started when he saw a man peering at him through the gas station’s broken front window.

  It was a young guy, maybe twenty-five. Black hair, tan shirt, sunglasses. He didn’t move, he only stared at Ramage, who stood transfixed before the forlorn gas pumps, sand pelting his face. Ramage backed away, not taking his eyes off the man. When Ramage turned and continued walking up the street the guy emerged from the station and followed.

  The man carried an M4 carbine at parade rest, and Ramage felt the guy’s stare boring into his back. The sun was getting hot, heat baking off the sand in waves. He glanced over his shoulder as he walked, but the man seemed content to keep his distance.

  The remnants of old boarding houses loomed to his right, most of the wood rotted away, leaving cinderblocks, metal door frames and tile flooring. To his left was a pile of concrete chunks, wood, rebar, and a sign that read Teddy’s. Ramage figured Teddy had been the local purveyor of tits and cocktails. Where there were oil drillers, there were places for them to waste their paychecks.

  Another man appeared from behind the pile of rubble. The guy had a dark beard and a long ponytail. He held a gun at his side as he closed in from Ramage’s left. Seeing the man made Ramage look right for an escape route, but there was another guy coming at him from that direction. He only had one way to go; forward.

  The post office came up on Ramage’s right; a small brick structure that looked to be the most functional building left in town, and he figured that was where Piranha was hiding out. The three men closed ranks, one to his left, one right, and one behind. He strode forward, trying to look confident, but he felt anything but. What the hell had he been thinking? How was this going to help Anna? He didn’t know. All he knew was he had to try. Had to do something, and if that meant end game for him, so be it. When the bill came due, it came due. Tips and intentions aren’t considered.

  A door slammed, and a man stepped from an old building with a blank rusted marquee out front. “Hi, Ramage.” He lifted his gun and pointed it at Ramage’s head as he strode forward. “Name’s Ace. You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Mr. Piranhio’s.”

  “Yeah? The dead one or the live one?” Ramage said.

  The thug bit his lower lip and pushed his gun out further.

  “I’m unarmed. Here to swap myself for Anna.”

  The big bald man laughed. “Might be a little late for that. What with what you did to the senior Carl Piranhio and all.”

  “I didn’t do shit. He got caught in quick sands while trying to kill me.”

  “Not how the boss sees it. The way he sees it you killed his father, and he wants payment. Recompence.”

  “You mean revenge?”

  Ace hiked his shoulders.

  Ramage stood in silence, surrounded, no options.

  “How we gonna do this? Your choice.”

  Ramage put his wrists together and held them out before him.
<
br />   “Good boy.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The man with the dark beard and long ponytail stepped forward, pulled a zip-tie from a pocket, and bound Ramage’s hands in front of him, not behind his back.

  Mistake number one.

  Ace punched Ramage in the jaw, a jarring blow that snapped his head back and split his lip. “Just in case you were thinking of trying any of your bullshit. You’re damn lucky Chiclet was with the boss at that rest stop and not me.”

  Mistake number two.

  Ramage heard circus music again, the familiar refrain bringing the image of a funhouse with a huge creepy clown head above its entrance to mind, but he couldn’t remember where the image had come from. Someplace buried deep in his youth beneath years of adult callus.

  “This way,” Ace said.

  The thugs led Ramage down an alley between the post office and a pile of wood that had once been a building. Ace, Ramage, and the guy with the beard entered the post office’s side door, and beard-boy closed the door behind them.

  The building’s large open area that should’ve been filled with sorting equipment and computers was littered with debris, and several sections of the roof had fallen in, blue sky visible through the holes. Most of the interior walls were gone, and all the desk furniture, light fixtures—anything of value—had been stripped long ago. To the left was a counter with windows that opened into a lobby, and a row of offices ran off to the right, all the doors gone. Even the hinge plates had been salvaged.

  The circus music got louder, and beard-boy shoved Ramage forward and he almost tripped over a brick. In the center of the sorting space a man sat on a folding chair staring at a data pad. He tapped, laughed, smiled, and reeled back, unaware, or not caring, that he was being watched.

  “Tony? What the hell?” Ace said. He jerked Ramage to a halt.

  Tony tapped his device and the circus music stopped. “Just killing some time playing a game, Ace. No worries. Goddamn Big Top app is addictive.”

  “We ready here?”