Quick Sands: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 1)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  Ramage walked toward the sand pile, not looking around, keeping his head down. The ground was hardpan stained with oil and pocked with puddles. The place smelled like gas, burning rubber, and chemicals. He watched as the white semi backed into position. Hydraulics moaned as the front of the trailer rose and sand gushed through the rear gate. The driver inched the truck forward, letting the sand flow, and the trailer door slammed as the last of the sand trickled onto the pile.

  He skirted the truck on the passenger side, moving fast. He wanted to see the inside of the empty trailer.

  The 400HP diesel idled for a few seconds, but before Ramage could reach the back of the truck the semi surged into motion. He was left exposed, standing in front of the sand pile, a sandwich board with a clipboard hanging from it to his left. He strode over to it and unhooked the clipboard from its hook. He scanned the pages and found a list of suppliers; company name, date, weight, and driver’s signature. He ran his finger down the top page, and there, in red ink, was the most recent drop. The company was listed as HRI Holdings, but he couldn’t make out the scrawl of the driver’s name. No matter, Anna would have that information.

  He took a picture of the top page and kept his eyes locked on the clipboard, head down, brim of his hardhat shielding his face. Metal clanged, water roared, men yelled, and engines snarled as Texas shale was squeezed for oil like Florida oranges were for juice.

  He looked up. The white Mack hadn’t gone far. Its brakes trumpeted, and the truck rattled to a stop.

  Ramage headed for the Mac, eyes up and scanning the area. Two workers came his way but didn’t glance at him. He radiated anger and confrontation: brow knit, eyes narrowed, and he was walking fast, like he was looking for someone to yell at.

  He was halfway to the Mack. Sand still dripped from the crack where the trailer gate met the deck. Small piles formed on the ground, and when the truck inched forward a line of sand was laid down. The Mack lurched, rolled next to a pumper truck, and stopped.

  “Hey! Who the hell are you?”

  Ramage turned to see a mountain of a man staring at him through safety goggles.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “It’s about time. I’ve been wandering around here for fifteen minutes and nobody’s asked to see my ID. Nothing.” He was one octave below yelling. Ramage pulled down the brim of his hat and pushed his sunglasses up his nose, doing his best to hide the bruises on his face.

  The man’s eyes grew wide, and he shifted on his feet and looked over his shoulder searching for backup. His salt and pepper hair fell across his face, covering one eye, and he jerked his head to the side every few seconds to clear the mop away. He was overweight by about fifty pounds, but his scarred face, leather work gloves, and steel-tipped boots told Ramage the guy was no donut. A stale bagel, maybe, but not a donut.

  A yell pierced the day and Ramage and the man turned to see two workers struggling to fit the water supply hose coupling to the mouth of the drill hole. Steam and smoke bellowed across the site, metal clanked and clinked, and engines rumbled and sighed as water and chemicals were injected into the well at high pressure. Ramage glanced right, and the white Mack was still hidden behind the pumper truck.

  The guy adjusted his tone to reflect the new unknown, and said, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” He spread his feet and put his hands on his hips.

  That was exactly what Ramage was hoping for. He looked to the sky as if searching for divine assistance and shook his head. He took four steps forward, fast, like he was attacking.

  The guy stepped back, then forward, standing his ground. Ramage locked eyes with him, inches between them. “What’s your name?” The man started to answer but Ramage put up a hand. “Whatever your name is, you can be part of the problem, or part of the solution, and you need to decide right now which one you’re going to be.” Ramage leaned in closer. The man had eaten something with onions and peppers for lunch.

  “Listen, I don’t have to—”

  “You do have to. And you will. I’m from the EPA. You know what that is?”

  The man’s posture went from unmovable rock to crumpled tissue paper.

  “Your name?” Ramage said.

  The guy waited this time, eyeing Ramage, waiting to be interrupted. Ten seconds past, and the guy said, “Harry Sellers.”

  “Well, Harry Sellers, where’s the job foreman? Your safety officer? I want to see the paperwork on the drill head coupling currently in use, and the last three months of chemical solvent purchase orders,” Ramage said.

  Harry’s eyes glazed over.

  “You hearing me? You want audit teams from the DEC and EPA down here crawling up your ass with a microscope? Piss me off. Go ahead.”

  While Ramage ranted he kept half an eye on the pumper. The Mack still hadn’t moved. It sat hidden behind the pumper truck like it was in line to receive crude from the drill head.

  “You got ID?” Harry was getting confident again.

  Ramage hiked his shoulders, but said nothing.

  “You hear me?” Harry said.

  “You hear me?” Ramage countered.

  “Look. This is a secure facility, sir, as you said. Let’s see some ID and we can get—”

  Ramage’s left hand shot out and clamped down on the man’s balls. Ramage glanced around. Nobody was watching. He squeezed, and Harry let loose with a low squeal. Ramage wasn’t comfortable holding another man’s package, but there were two guaranteed ways to get a male’s attention: a headbutt or a ball squeeze, and he didn’t want all the commotion and blood a headbutt would cause.

  Ramage said, “Just in case I haven’t been totally honest and clear. I’m not in a very good mood, Harry. You know why?”

  Harry’s face was turning red, eyes watering and bulging from his face. He shook his head no.

  “Because of assholes like you. You think you have the right to break the rules in the name of profit, or maybe you’re a ‘just following orders’ kind of guy. Either way, I—”

  “I don’t know whaaaa…uuwwwwww…”

  “You were saying?”

  “What can I do to help?” Harry squeaked out. He was breathing heavy, tears sliding down his face, embarrassment making him docile.

  Head butt or a ball grab.

  Ramage released the guy and Harry almost fell. Ramage put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “How about we go get that paperwork I mentioned?”

  Harry nodded so fast and hard his hardhat fell off and hit the ground with a pop.

  The Mack truck was still waiting patiently, and Ramage searched for an excuse to go in that direction. The work trailer, which undoubtably housed the paperwork he’d requested along with said foreman, was in the opposite direction.

  “I think Mr. Mcmasters is in Dallas on business today, but I’m the shift foreman. I can probably get you what you need.”

  “Perfect.” Ramage slapped the man on the back. “Now we’re talking. I’ll be out of your hair by shift’s end if you can spare a cup of joe.” Ramage smiled.

  Harry looked at the ground and adjusted his crotch and looked up at Ramage with a WTF face, not wanting to be aggressive, but unwilling to totally let the stones grab go.

  Ramage lifted his shoulders again, said nothing.

  Harry headed for the administrative trailer and Ramage fell in behind him, looking over his shoulder as he walked, keeping an eye on the Sandman’s rig. He watched the work site in the reflection of the trailers front window as they approached the office, but still the Mack hadn’t moved.

  The trailer door swung open and Ramage was hit with a polar blast. Despite the moderate temperature of sixty-seven degrees, the trailer AC unit was going full tilt, the compressor whining and clicking.

  A woman who could have been Jabba the Hut’s mother sat behind a desk so stacked with papers Ramage only saw the woman’s head. Dark eyes stared from sockets surrounded with sagging skin. The strong aroma of floral perfume and cigarettes tickled Ramage’s nose, and somewhere in the back of his mind a
memory of his grandmother surged to the front of his brain. She’d worn a similar nasty smelling perfume and had been a smoker. Ramage coughed politely.

  Harry said, “This here is Irene.”

  Irene shifted in her seat to get a better view of Ramage through a valley of paper and the seat squeaked like a baby pig getting a rectal exam. She straightened her glasses and glowered at Ramage as if he was a turd on her living room rug.

  “Irene, this is…” Harry paused and looked back at Ramage.

  “Teddy Windtrope. EPA Inspector.” He held out his hand.

  Irene looked at Ramage’s hand like it was a great white shark and didn’t take it. “How may I help you?” She injected over-the-top sarcasm into every word.

  Ramage glanced over at a coffee pot that rested atop a metal filing cabinet next to a dusty miniature Christmas tree. The coffee maker’s glass decanter was stained brown and the black machine was covered in a layer of dust. Looked like there was no coffee forthcoming. That changed things.

  Ramage eyeballed the unused coffee machine.

  “Yeah, right, let me run to my truck and get you a coffee while Irene pulls your paperwork, Mr. Windtrope.” Harry shot Irene a glance and it didn’t take a genius to decipher its meaning: be nice and give him what he wants. “If you’ll excuse me.” Ramage laughed to himself. He was always amazed at how polite people got when their balls were in a vise. He chuckled out loud and Irene cocked her head to the side.

  “Yes, Irene, you can help me.” Ramage repeated his pulled from his ass request: “I’ll need to see the paperwork on the drill head coupling currently in use, and the last three months of chemical solvent purchase orders, as well as the last three months accounts payable for your sand deliveries.”

  Irene made a sound like a dying slug, and her chair screamed in protest. “Are ledger printouts from the accounting system acceptable?”

  Ramage didn’t know what normal practice was and if he requested something different Ms. Hut might get suspicious. So, he waited and said nothing.

  “Getting the actual invoices would take a week. We don’t keep them on site.”

  People always filled the silence. They couldn’t help themselves.

  “Give me printouts,” Ramage said. He looked around the disorganized trailer. “If I have any concerns, I’ll select a test sample for you to pull.”

  She harrumphed and pecked at her keyboard.

  All the seats in the small office were covered with paper, so Ramage lifted a large pile of printouts, dropped it to the floor, and sat.

  Irene sighed, but said nothing. Her printer cycled up, and pages spit into the output tray.

  A few minutes later Harry returned with Ramage’s coffee, and he and Irene waited while Ramage took his time reviewing documents. The drill head paperwork might as well have been in a foreign language. Engineering verbiage, schematics, rate and flow figures. He put pencil check marks in various random spots, then did the same with the solvent invoices.

  When he got to the accounts payable list he took his time, reviewing each entry, and there was HRI Holdings. Ramage made checkmarks next to four other vendors on the top sheet and handed the printout to Harry, who made two copies on a small multiuse office printer. Then he gave one of the sheets to Irene and one to Ramage, who pocketed it. “I’ll be back next week. Have these ready for me.” He tipped the paper coffee cup to his lips, downed the joe, and dropped the cup in a trashcan. Then without a word to Harry or Irene, he strode from the trailer.

  The white Mack still waited alongside the same pumper truck. The trailer door slammed behind him and that was Ramage’s cue to leave. He went down the aluminum steps to the hardpan. He felt eyes on him now. Nobody made eye contact. Everyone was watching him, but nobody was looking at him. Word had spread that a guy from the department of tree hugging affairs was on site to help kill their livelihood.

  Ramage walked toward the gate, glancing around but not really looking at anything except the white truck, which he could hardly see behind the pumper truck. The guard hung his head out of the booth, expecting Ramage to stop, but instead Ramage opened the gate himself.

  “Hey. You can’t do that,” the guard said as he scrambled from his shack.

  “Just did.” Ramage didn’t bother to close the gate behind him.

  The protestors had been cleared from the entrance and were on the opposite side of the road to the west, a hundred yards from the fracking site entrance. To the east there was nothing except open plain, the road, and a banged up white pickup.

  He double-timed it across the street and jumped in the truck’s cab.

  “How’d you make out? Any—” She realized he wasn’t listening to her.

  Ramage stared at the white eighteen-wheeler as it slid past the gate onto CR-115.

  “Oh, shit,” Anna said.

  Ramage heard the grumble of the Mack truck, watched it turn east and pass them. The pickup’s door opening pulled him from his trance. “Hey? Where you going?”

  She pointed.

  The security guards had Gypsy and Cecil on the ground, hands behind their backs. Ramage saw no real cops.

  “They can’t do that,” Anna said. “I have to—”

  “Get in the truck.”

  “Ramage. I—”

  “Get in,” he said. “Please.”

  She sighed and got back in the pickup, her eyes locked on her friends.

  “You track the rig and I’ll stay here and help your friends. Deal?”

  “What can you do?”

  “Trust me.”

  She nodded and started the pickup.

  “Can they bring me to your house when I’m done here?”

  Her brow knitted, and her eyes narrowed.

  “Do they know where you live? Do you care if they find out?”

  She thought about it. “Tell Gypsy I said Selena is el dios. Then tell her I said to take you to Lucy’s.”

  “10-4.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you want your father meeting the Wonder Twins?”

  “He wouldn’t…”

  “Understand?”

  “Like it.”

  “See you at Lucy’s.” He got out and slammed the door.

  It was 3:57PM.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Anna sat with her mouth hanging open, watching Ramage stalk across the road full of confidence. The white truck disappeared in a cloud of dust to the east. Ramage was almost to the crowd of people. Sweat dripped down Anna’s back. She sighed and dropped the pickup into drive, looped across the road, and took off heading east.

  The steering wheel trembled, and the passenger side front quarter panel looked like it was going to blow off as she pushed the old Ford, trying to catchup to the Sandman’s truck. She glanced in the rearview but saw only a cloud of dust. Ramage was on his own, but she knew with a hundred percent certainty he’d be fine. Despite knowing next to nothing about the man, she trusted him, believed he had her best interest at heart. Why else would he be helping her? Not sex. She’d come on to him.

  The problem was even with the damage Piranha and Chic had inflicted, she thought he was good looking. The fading bruises made him look tough. Made her want to treat him like gravy and sop him up like a biscuit, smother him until he was so happy thoughts of leaving wouldn’t even enter his mind. She was no fool. She knew the score. When he was done in Prairie Home he would leave.

  The desolate hardpan stretched out to nowhere on both sides of the road, and Anna felt like she might drive off the end of the Earth. Her neck cramped, and she rubbed it, but it didn’t help. The Mack turned off CR-115 and pulled into T-bird Gas Depot.

  She stopped and parked on the side of the road, giving the truck as much space as possible. The rig passed over a speed bump and she heard the distant bong bong of the trailer gate as it slammed. Anna didn’t notice any sand dripping from under the gate. The white truck made a wide turn and came to a stop on the opposite side of the gas station. She couldn’t see what was happening, e
ven with the binoculars. There were too many trucks in the way.

  She eased the pickup back onto the road and entered the gas depot. The Ford coughed as she circled the pumps and parked in front of a cinderblock building marked restrooms.

  The driver of the white truck got out and slipped a credit card into the gas pump and removed the nozzle handle. After a pause while the credit card information was verified, the driver inserted the nozzle into the gas tank, wedged the tank’s cap into the pump handle to hold down the safety lever, and walked off.

  Anna had seen several drivers since she started keeping the logbook, but she didn’t think she’d seen this guy before. He was rail thin and at least six feet tall. He wore large coke bottle glasses, jeans, and a white t-shirt.

  It took five minutes for the tank to fill. The driver returned and pulled the nozzle from the tank. Then to Anna’s surprise he didn’t replace the nozzle in its cradle. Instead he walked to the rear of the truck, eased the back gate open a few inches, and inserted the supply spout into something in the truck’s trailer.

  Anna leaned forward in her seat and picked up the binoculars. The driver leaned against the trailer, the hose snaking over the ground, its end inside the trailer. Two minutes later the driver pulled the hose free, slammed the gate, and replaced the nozzle in the pump’s cradle. He climbed the steps to the truck’s cab, cranked the engine, and pulled out of the station. Anna waited a few minutes, then followed.

  Her mind drifted as she drove, mostly questions about Ramage. Who was he? He hadn’t been driving a truck his whole life. And that story about his wife. She rolled what she knew around in her head and came up with nothing concrete. She figured Ramage had done something to avenge his wife’s death and was on the run. A government agent who couldn’t do the job anymore because of the trauma he’d experienced.