Sandbagged: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 2)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  Paperwork completed, Jasper gave Ramage a key, a copy of all documents, one box each of .22 and .38 caliber bullets, and he was on his way. The pickup rattled as he accelerated toward RT-6, but the engine ran fine, and there was a full tank of gas. He needed to bring it back that way or pay $8.50 a gallon replenishment fee.

  Once out of town he pulled off the road behind a stand of pine trees, killed the engine, and opened the Price Tourist Guide to the centerfold map.

  Utah was the thirteenth largest state by area, but thirtieth in population. The terrain was incredibly varied and provided Ramage with an abundance of options. Outdoor sports enthusiasts came year-round to hike the red rock canyons, hunt the pine forests, and play all kinds of games jeopardizing their safety at the higher elevations. With the Uinta Mountains to the north, and the Wasatch Plateau to the west, Ramage was confident his northeastern outdoorsman skills would be superior to thugs from Texas whose experience with the wild probably amounted to steer antagonizing, cock fights, and digging sand.

  He didn’t want to go far. He needed a place where there wouldn’t be people, where he could eliminate the possibility of collateral damage, maybe settle things from afar with the rifle. He didn’t like handling things that way, but Rolly wasn’t playing fair, so Ramage didn’t see why he should.

  Castle Gate jumped off the map at him and it was only a few miles up the road in the Price Canyon cut. He smiled, dropping the map on the bench seat as he started the pickup. Ramage headed west, back toward the rifle, and the end of the quick sands he’d been mired in since he’d left Pennsylvania with a load of cut Christmas trees.

  Chapter Twelve

  “WTF?” Ramage said as he drove by the Whispering Pine Motel. All the emergency vehicles had cleared out, but Marie’s battered turquoise Mustang GT with a duct taped fender was parked in front of room six. His room.

  Ramage slowed and did a three-point turn, the pickup shaking, tires chirping. He backed into a space in the corner of the lot and killed the engine. The rifle could wait, he needed some time to think, figure out how he was going to draw Rolly in and exactly where, because the Gate was a large area. He was tired, and Rolly was most likely holed up somewhere, licking his wounds and waiting for information to come to him. That made baiting the mousetrap easy. He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and cracked his neck. Nobody at the hotel knew what he was driving, so he leaned back in his seat, getting low as he watched the hotel. Clearly Marie and the boys had backtracked to meet their contact. Ramage felt like he’d won the lotto, though he had no idea why.

  He drifted into a half sleep, mind wandering as he watched, his heart rate slowing, muscles easing, tension ebbing from him. He thought of Anna and smiled.

  It was midday, the sun overhead, when Butch came out by himself, like a rat crawling from its hole into daylight. He covered his eyes as he made his way to the busted-up Mustang and took off east. Most likely heading to Helper for supplies, there was a small grocery there and it was only fifteen minutes away via RT-6.

  The trail of dust left by the Mustang hung over the highway until a semi roared past, pushing the brown clouds aside, the dust and sand rolling across the parking lot like a miniature sandstorm. He considered following Butch, but since he hadn’t seen Ralph or Alice, he figured the transaction had already happened, or was occurring at the hotel.

  He waited, half sleeping, gnawing on a ham sandwich he’d bought from a vending machine on his way out of West Wood. As he reengineered his situation, he began to see a possible road to the finish line. He needed to put Rolly on his scent. He’d go to bars in Price and throw a little money around, but mostly words, maybe a threat or two. Drop in all around, let the world know Ramage was looking for him, that he could be found at the truck stop in a rented pickup. Once Rolly was on the scent, off to Castle Gate and into the mountains they’d go.

  He drank some water and had to take a pee. He waited until nobody lingered out front of the hotel, and he snuck around the juniper bushes, away from the picnic tables on the opposite end of the building. There was a large brown stain on the breezeway before the door to room six. He relieved himself with the precision of a carpenter cutting an expensive piece of wood. The entire operation took two minutes. His yellow images in the snow when he was a boy were always more elaborate and completed faster than his friends’.

  He drifted off to sleep, thoughts of timing filling his mind. He wanted to engage Rolly in the dark. The idea of Rolly hiring local help was worrisome, but not very. How invested would a guy who’d been paid a few bucks to leave his bar stool be? Mercenaries never hung around when things went to shit. Why would they?

  The slam of the Mustang’s door brought Ramage fully awake.

  Butch trudged to room six, looking around like he’d stolen a candy bar, and went inside.

  Ramage brought his seat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. The Dodge’s dash clock read 2:37PM. He rolled his shoulders as he ate the rest of his sandwich, the bread already a little stale.

  Maverix came out of room six followed by Spencer, who carried their customary white Styrofoam cooler filled with beer. He wondered if Butch was in on the smuggling, and figured he was judging by the man’s red cheeks and capillary streaked nose and the fact that he’d just returned with multiple bags. The boys disappeared around the corner of the motel.

  He needed to move along, grab the rifle and get to Price so he could spread his verbal chum, and get some sleep, but something stopped him from starting the pickup. He hadn’t showered in two days, and the faint scent of chimp urine still clung to the inside of his nostrils, but he felt a certain responsibility for Ralph and Alice. This was what Anna would call a mental paradox, whatever the hell that meant. Ramage would go to great lengths to save an animal, but had no trouble watching those he deemed deserving fall on their faces. He thought it had something to do with the animals being mentally inferior, trusting, and unable to defend themselves against the planet’s greatest predator, man. Anna thought all that was rationalization, and as he’d come to see over the last month, Anna normally saw things differently than him, and that was good.

  He got out of the truck and retraced his steps around the back of the Whispering Pine the same way he had the prior night and peered around the northeast corner of the building.

  Maverix and Spencer sat at their usual table, their Coors proudly displayed, no camouflage magnets.

  Ramage stayed hidden and said, “Hey boys.” Two hollow thuds as beers hit the table, then a ten count of silence as both men searched around them.

  Maverix said, “Who is it?”

  “Beers?” Ramage said. “What would Marie and your Stake President say?”

  “Pastor Dan? He smokes every week be—” Spencer said.

  Ramage stepped into the open and strode toward the boys as he said, “Can I get a beer? Really need one.”

  Maverix and Spencer looked at one another, as if verifying what they were seeing. Maverix looked over his shoulder toward the front of the hotel, then stared at Ramage as his hand snaked into the cooler and pulled free a cold one. “The pageant is over and most of the folks involved have gone home,” he said.

  Ramage opened his Coors and took a long pull. It was one of the classic barrel shaped dark bottles he liked with a metal cap. Ramage zinged the top into the grill and knocked over part of the cigarette sculpture.

  “What are you doing here?” Spencer said. “If Butch sees you…”

  “What?” Ramage said as he took a long pull of beer. “The better question, is what the hell are you doing here?”

  Both men looked at the table.

  “Ralph and Alice?”

  They nodded in unison.

  “This isn’t your business,” came Anna’s voice from his frontal lobe. “Get your ass home. I need you, not two primates, one of which pissed on you!” Yet….

  He said, “It’s commendable you won’t leave them, but what about you two? You just going to continue on? Or do you still plan to run?”

  Ma
verix looked over his shoulder again. “We’d love to, but the end of your little speech last night made Marie suspicious, and when she gets suspicious, she gets loopy. She’s got Butch and Noah watching us.”

  “I don’t see anyone watching right now,” Ramage said.

  “We don’t have the car keys,” Spencer said.

  “And you know what a long walk it is to anywhere,” Maverix said. “How did you manage?”

  Ramage said nothing.

  “Whatever,” Maverix said. He finished his beer, dropped the empty in the cooler, and grabbed another.

  “I’ve got a pickup,” Ramage said.

  Both men’s brows wrinkled as they stared at him.

  “Would she let you take Ralph and Alice out for a walk? If she knew you didn’t have the keys?”

  “Won’t matter,” Spencer said. “We’re meeting the client at 4PM.”

  That didn’t leave much time.

  “Look, I need a little help myself. What do you say to a short-term partnership and a timeout concerning all outstanding issues and perceived slights?”

  “Why would you help us? What do you need us to do?”

  Cutting right to the chase. Ramage liked that. “I’m not sure yet, but I won’t put you in danger. Not anymore than you’re already in, anyway,” Ramage lied. It was a nice thought, but when bullets started flying, he didn’t owe these animal traffickers anything, or at least not much.

  “What are you suggesting?” Spencer asked, eager now, light in his eyes as his mind spun a tale of freedom.

  “I’ve got an errand up the road,” Ramage said. “Go inside, wait a bit, and tell Marie you want to take the chimps out for a short walk to say goodbye before the hand off. I’ll be waiting at the end of the lot to bring you to Price.”

  “No catch?”

  “I’m doing this for Ralph and Alice, and you have to promise to donate them to a zoo or a rescue or something. I’ll let you two know what I need from you when I know. Deal?”

  Maverix and Spencer didn’t speak. They shared a glance and got up as Spencer collected the cooler.

  “See you in forty-five minutes,” Maverix said.

  Back out on RT-6 heading west to Soldier Summit, he wondered if he was doing the right thing bringing the boys into this… again. They weren’t trained or experienced enough to deal with the raw anger and violence that Rolly was going to try and bring down on him. It was his fault the boys had been sucked in the first time, and it was his fault they were being watched, so he did owe them. A little. He shook it off.

  Soldier Summit was deserted, but this time Ramage had a vehicle, so he pulled in next to the gas pumps and started filling his tank. As the white numbers showing the cost and gallons rolled like a slot machine, he watched the garage, and beyond in the distance, the only occupied house standing amidst the wasteland. The tank was almost full, so after thirty seconds the pump clicked off, and he put the nozzle back in its cradle. The gas cap zipped as he tightened it. He opened the truck door and lifted his right foot, preparing to hop in the pickup, when the big man oozed from the office. He paused in the cold, staring at the pickup.

  Ramage grabbed the snubby and put it in his jacket pocket. He closed the pickup’s door and walked around to the back of the vehicle, sprang open the tailgate, and sat, his legs swinging. He thought he heard the fat guy sigh, but it could’ve been the wind. Like a snail inching from the sea, without the tide to help it, the guy worked his way toward Ramage in a teetering lopsided gait that made the guy look like he was going to fall over.

  When the man was ten feet away, a thin brown frost cloud hovering above the hardpan marking his trail, Ramage said, “Howdy.”

  The man waddled to a stop, but said nothing. The pump said Ramage owed $3.57. He hadn’t used much gas, and he’d stopped on an odd number for a reason. He dug in a pocket, and held a ten dollar bill out to the man.

  The guy looked at the money like it was yen.

  When he reached out to take the bill, Ramage drew down the .38 and pointed it at the guy’s head. “My name be Rolly Pepper,” Ramage said, doing his best dumbass accent, which was part country, part southern twang, with a dash of his northeastern drawl thrown in for good measure. “Anybody been out looking for me? Asking after me and such?”

  The fat guy shook his head, but it barely moved. Ramage tossed the bill at the guy and inched off the tailgate.

  Big boy took a step back, his hand clawing at the air as he tried to catch the bill. He failed and bent to pick the money up, a long slow process like a glacier moving. When he had his hand on the bill Ramage put the snubby in his ear.

  “Listen up. I don’t like people from Utah. Shit, I don’t like people,” Ramage said. “I need you to deliver a message to the guy that’ll come looking for me, and to the sheriff. You see Queensbury out here, right?

  The guy nodded.

  “Tell both of them that Rolly Pepper is coming for them, and they better hide in the deepest canyon they can find. Got that?” Ramage said.

  “You want me to tell Queensbury that?” The guy’s voice was squeaky and small, probably why he hardly spoke. Plus, he was stupid. Who worried about a ten spot when they had a gun in their face?

  “Exactly that. Rolly P – E – P – P – E – R. Can you handle it?”

  He nodded and Ramage backed off, letting the guy take the ten.

  Ramage got back in the pickup, fired it up, and pulled back out onto RT-6. He stopped and grabbed the rifle, buried the Colt in the sand for archeologists in the future to discover, and six minutes short of his forty-five-minute schedule he nudged down off the highway onto the patchy blacktop parking lot of The Whispering Pine Motel. Maverix and Spencer were walking the chimps around the picnic tables, playing some kind of game.

  The truck crawled through the lot, his foot off the gas pedal, the Dodge’s old exhaust farting gently. The pickup came to a stop at the end of the lot and Ramage got out and left the door open. He went to the boys and said, “Put the chimps in the back then come get me.”

  “Where are you going,” Maverix said. He and Spencer shuffled forward, each holding the hand of a chimpanzee.

  “Not far. Give me one of your gloves,” Ramage said to Maverix.

  “Why? What?”

  “Forget it.” Ramage walked away, working his way along the line of parked cars to the opposite end of the lot where the Mustang GT waited. He heard the truck start, the faint hoot of one of the chimps, then tires rolling over broken blacktop.

  Ramage picked up a chunk of broken blacktop and stuffed it in the Mustang’s tailpipe.

  Maverix stopped the truck and Ramage slipped in next to Spencer. He said, “Banana in the tailpipe better work for real or I’ll find Eddie Murphy and kick his ass.”

  Maverix chuckled, but Spencer looked at him, vacant eyes, no smile.

  “Beverly Hills Cop?”

  Nothing.

  The activity in the lot had drawn attention, and Butch’s face appeared between the curtains of room six, and five seconds later the door flew open. Butch barged out, then Marie, no snake, no gun.

  Maverix made a left on RT-6 and put the gas pedal to the floor, the old Dodge rattling and shaking like it might fall apart.

  Ramage glanced in the truck’s rearview and saw Ralph and Alice, and beyond them Butch scrambling into the Mustang. Seeing the monkeys made Ramage think of another film, Every Which Way But Loose, a Clint Eastwood classic about a tough guy befriending an orangutan. Eddie Rabbit’s classic song of the same name filled his head, the memory from so long ago Ramage didn’t remember who he’d been when he’d first heard the song, seen the movie. Eddie sang from his past, the wind whistling through the weatherstripping of the truck’s windows as accompaniment. The voice crooned about not believing in strings, how obligations are unnecessary things, Eddie Rabbit asking if he’s heading for heartbreak, why is he still hanging around?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Karma watched Rolly Pepper stride across the Red Rock Truck Stop’s parkin
g lot like he owned the place. The greasy looking gringo had been throwing his name all over town, giving out money and business cards with some bullshit security company on it and a cell number. She’d seen one, and if the guy was in security, she felt bad for the people that hired him. He was as discrete as crabs, and just as ugly. Karma felt herself wishing Pepper was the Skeeter, so she could take real pleasure in cleaning the stain that was Rolly Pepper off the fabric of the human race. Instead, she was letting the guy do her job for her, but based on what she’d observed so far, Ramage was kicking the guy’s ass.

  Rolly was asking around for local help, and Gloria, the bartender at The Dive, said her husband was thinking of going along on what Pepper was describing as “rounding up a dangerous criminal who had multiple warrants and bounties waiting back in Texas.” At least the bounty part was true.

  Karma didn’t like cold weather and she was getting tired of sitting around. Her church contact had been waiting on her for twenty-four hours, and it looked like he’d have to wait another twenty-four, at least. The Kenworth hadn’t moved from its solitary spot at the end of the lot since Ramage left. Manny, the mechanic, had spent an hour crawling under and around the rig, only to discover what she’d done. Why it hadn’t been repaired yet, she didn’t know, but she had to find out, because the Skeeter wouldn’t come until he had a good reason, and she needed to get this done. She had plans for the coming weekend.

  Pepper got into his new rental car, a black Dodge Charger. He was getting ready for a chase, to where, who knew. Ramage hadn’t shown in Price, but since Pepper had started with four, counting himself, and was down to two, she figured she could infer a certain degree of failure. This wasn’t a surprise. Ramage was no ordinary Skeeter.

  She watched as Rolly started the Charger, revved the engine like a teenager showing off for a girl, and tore from the parking lot, leaving a cloud of dust and several truckers shaking their heads. Karma got out of the car and locked the door. The truck stop was busy, three big rigs lined up at the gas pumps, cars and trucks lined up in front of the diner.