His watch read 5:58AM. Outside there would be a faint glow on the eastern horizon.
He changed direction and headed away from the man, crawling under three trucks and emerging on the eastern side of the building. The men still argued, and it sounded heated. One man accusing the other of causing the problem, the other fighting the allegations. Heads were going to roll, that was clear, and from what Ramage could gather it would be one of the guys arguing.
Ramage worked his way slowly to the back of the trailers, staying in the shadows, making no sounds. He waited five minutes while a guard snuck a smoke as he sat on a folding chair out of sight along the outer wall. Ramage had been lucky the man was smoking as he approached because the scent of tobacco gave away the man’s position.
When the guy finished, he stubbed the cancer stick out, got up, stretched, and moved on. Ramage waited a ten count and searched for the trailer he’d been in. He’d taken note of the plate number.
It was hard to see in the half-light, and he searched for sentries on the gantry-walk above, but didn’t see any. He found his gray trailer. It was pocked and scratched and covered with grime, sand, and grease. Using the handle on the back gate for support, Ramage mounted the trailer, wedging his feet in the gap between the trailer bed and rear door. A slick coating of black oil dripped from within the trailer, and he slipped and almost fell.
Ramage pulled himself to the lip of the gate and rolled over. He’d expected to land on flat, cold metal, but instead he lay on something smooth. He ran his hand over the trailer’s deck, and it felt like wet sandpaper. The air smelled of oil and rubber. Ramage pulled his phone and tapped on its light, cupping his hand to direct the light downward.
He was on black rubber covered in patches of sand. The same stuff he’d seen piled in heaps around the compound. A firehose-like metal coupling protruded from the rubber by the back gate, and there were wrinkles and bubbles that indicated there were multiple layers of rubber. It was a bladder; a giant, flattened, deflated, black balloon big enough to hold a tanker truck of crude oil. Ramage examined the coupling. It was slick with oil.
That’s when he noticed the pump in the rear right corner. It was a big thing with a red gas tank and thick hoses running from both ends of the pump. It was in a protective cage, and one hose end was mated with the bladder. His mind flashed back to his trailer trip, how he’d dug in the sand, how he’d dug in the center of the trailer.
Then it all fell together, the puzzle pieces took their places in his mind, and everything became clear. Almost everything.
Ramage pulled his pocketknife and slashed the bladder in several spots and tore the wires off the pump. Then he hauled himself out of the trailer and moved on to the next one. Four of the six gray trailers had bladders and pumps.
What Ramage didn’t understand was what some of the other supplies he’d seen were for. The hydrogen. The plastic bottles. He looked up at the closed doors along the gantry above.
He glanced at his watch. 6:06AM. No time left.
Across the warehouse men gathered by the entrance and Ramage moved closer so he could hear them. It was a lineup of a sort. Men relayed their search findings, and one of the two men who’d been arguing dressed down the group, threatening firings and penis decapitations if they’d missed anything. The boss and his son would arrive any minute, and the lead man wanted his shit straight.
Ramage stepped back into the shadows.
“I shit you not. Every last one of you dipshits will be picking roses down the Bottom’s way if you don’t get your shit together. Are you sure nothing has been taken or disturbed?”
Wagging heads, nods, and mumbles.
“Trent, the fence is secure?”
“Yup. No real damage.”
A small guy in a cowboy hat spoke up. “This don’t make sense. The environmental assholes are a pain in the ass, but they’re usually better prepared than this. This attack was a clusterfuck, so unless something went wrong, we’re missing something, boss. Count on it.”
“You count on it!” the big man yelled.
“Sir,” said another guy. “We’ve searched the entire compound. Nothing. Maybe this is just another Bay of Pigs.”
Ramage wasn’t that old, but he remembered learning about the CIA’s failed takeover of Cuba.
“Whatever it was, we better get a handle on it. Mr. Piranhio and his son will be here shortly. And they’ll want answers to these questions. Bank on it.”
Nobody spoke.
“Alright,” the boss said. He sighed. “Get back to your posts. Report anything out of the ordinary, and I mean anything, holler, and holler loud.”
We’ll see about that, Ramage thought.
The group dispersed, and the boss retreated up one of the metal staircases that led to the second level.
Ramage pulled his Glock, pressed the trigger safety, and moved toward the sand pile.
A door slammed above, and light knifed from a window along the raised walkway. An office. Holding the gun at his side, Ramage slipped from the shadows and walked straight toward Big Blue.
He’d gone ten paces when a voice called out, “Hey, there.”
Ramage didn’t turn around. He made a fast right and disappeared behind a stack of empty wood pallets.
“Hey.” The guy raised his voice. If he got any louder…
Ramage wedged himself between two tottering piles of pallets and waited. The man’s footsteps became faster, more determined, and when he came into view Ramage lunged from his hiding place.
The guy brought up his gun, but Ramage was too fast. He grabbed the guy’s wrist, spun him around, and drove the Glock into his back. “Say one word. Make one sound. Breathe too loud, and you’re dead. Nod if you understand.” He pressed the gun harder into the man’s spine.
The guy nodded so fast Ramage thought he might hurt his neck. “Good. Get on your knees, hands behind your head.”
He complied.
“What’s that?” Ramage said, pointing at nothing in the distance.
The guy looked up, and Ramage pistol whipped him with the Glock. Four sharp blows to the head. The guard went limp and Ramage dragged him to a pile of debris and hid the unconscious man under a tarp that covered a stack of metal parts that looked like pieces to a giant’s chemistry set. He didn’t have anything to tie the man up with, nor was there anything to bind his mouth. When they guy woke up the jig would be up.
He made his way back to Big Blue, eased open the cab door, and slipped inside. Ramage felt better immediately.
“Find anything?” Anna asked.
“Everything.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“Not only are they stealing your sand, they’re stealing crude from the fracking site and selling it directly to the refinery. Between the two of us we witnessed the entire operation,” Ramage said.
“That’s impossible. It takes time to transfer a thousand gallons of crude. It would take longer than it did.”
“Not if there was a supplemental pump helping to speed things up.”
This time both eyebrows went up.
“There’s a pump installed in each trailer along with a bladder.”
She said, “Explains gassing up the trailer.”
He nodded. “When the bladder’s empty it lays flat, and sand can be stored on top of it. Then they empty the sand, move up the line, and fill the bladder with crude oil and nobody is the wiser.”
“Then they drop it at the refinery,” she said. “They must have a guy on the inside at the refinery.”
“Yup. Who knows? Maybe the fracking company is in the loop. Making money somehow.”
“Why would some of the trucks come here before they go to the refinery?”
“No idea.”
Silence.
“You check in with Gypsy?” asked Ramage.
“Yup. All good. They’re in position awaiting our call. Time to make like a tree?”
“Not yet. We need to—” Ramage got low and Anna followed his lead. A flashli
ght beam bounced around outside the truck. Someone was checking under the rig.
They waited, Anna’s nervous breathing the only sound in the cab. Outside, Ramage heard shuffling, and then the light faded as the searcher moved away.
“They’re being thorough,” Anna said.
“The Sandman is on the way.”
Chapter Thirty
Flashlight beams arced through Big Blue’s windshield and Ramage and Anna got low. He stared up at the truck’s sagging headliner, the faded blue fabric ripped in places. He smelled Anna’s perfume, the faint scent of oil and gas, and somewhere an exhaust fan tapped every time it spun. They lay there for several minutes, the sun coming up outside, the orange-gray of daybreak leaking through windows. The searcher had moved on and Anna peeked over the rim of the window, her short black hair falling into her face. She pushed it away with a finger. Ramage’s eyes drifted to her ass, and he looked down at the Kenworth floor mat.
“Looks clear,” she said.
Ramage sat up.
“What now?”
He pointed up toward the second floor.
“Don’t see how that’s possible. There’re guards patrolling both walkways, and they’re open to the entire warehouse. Everyone on ground level will see us,” she said.
Ramage detected panic in her voice. “Don’t worry about it. Give me a minute.” They would have to take one of the four staircases at the ends of the raised walkways that ran the length of the warehouse. The north and south ends of the warehouse had no second floor. So they’d have to choose a side, but from what Ramage saw that decision was an easy one.
The second level on the eastern side had six closed doors. One was definitely an office because the boss had gone in there, and light still spilled from the window that opened on the interior of the warehouse. The next two rooms appeared dark. No light protruding from under doors or through the windows. The next room had a lot of activity. Light spilled from the front window, and Ramage saw shadows moving about. A breakroom, or lunchroom Ramage figured. The far room was dark.
The western side of the upper level showed much more promise. There were only two doors, and both had rectangular boxes with glowing numeric keypads next to them, not the standard electronic locks that secured the warehouse doors. He’d need Splice’s security code, and it would either work, or it wouldn’t, but it was clear the Sandman had put extra security on the rooms for a reason.
“OK,” Ramage said. “Doesn’t appear to be much on the western side, so we’re going east.”
Anna nodded and shifted her position, so she was facing east.
A guard walked the eastern gantry. Ramage saw him clearly under the florescent lights. He wore jeans, and a dark blue letterman-type jacket with a silver star on the left breast and sleeves of silver. Ramage recognized the colors of the local football team.
The guy walked lazily down the open hallway. He didn’t look like he was paying attention to anything in particular, but he was watching. His head shifted from side-to-side, and he held his rifle at parade rest. Shadows knifed across the gantry, but there were large stretches where there was no cover at all and anyone walking on the gantry above could be seen from the ground floor.
“Let’s do this.”
“Do this?” she said. “Do what? This is getting dangerous, Ramage. These guys have guns. We know your truck is here. We have proof they’re stealing my sand and doing worse. Let’s get out of here.”
“Life for the truth,” he said.
“What?”
“Listen, you can stay here. I’ll take good pi—”
“No. You need me. Remember?”
“Follow me. Cover my ass. Stay low and be ready to fire,” he said. Ramage cracked open the driver’s side door and slipped out. He held the door for Anna as she climbed down and the two conspirators crawled under trucks, traversed a pile of coal, and a pallet full of hoses of all sizes.
He was heading for the staircase in the southeast corner. It was the most visible from the front entrance, and hence guards would pay less attention to it. Why? Human nature. Ramage knew the boss was on the way, even if he was taking his sweet-ass time, and therefore all the guards and workers at the compound were on edge. Heads on swivels, the boss had said. Hide things in plain sight and people will never see it. Especially people tired from a long shift and looking forward to going home, maybe even before the big man arrived and heads rolled.
They paused behind an old pickup missing two wheels. The metal staircase was lit like a Christmas tree, but its support beams cast long shadows on the wall. Above on the open walkway, the guard paced. He had about twenty feet to go before he hit the southern steps and turned and headed back north.
“How the—”
He put a finger to his lips. A man threaded through two trucks in front of the pickup. Ramage held his breath as the man pressed on, looking under vehicles as he went.
“How are we going to get up there?”
“We… aren’t. I want you to cover me from here. Anyone comes at me, shoot them in the leg.”
“Ramage, I’m not some damsel you can leave behind while you go to war. I—”
“Listen. Just cover my ass, OK? That’s why you’re here.”
She sighed.
Ramage stepped from behind the truck and walked along the warehouse wall until he stood in the shadow created by the staircase. He climbed the underside of the steps, inching up the main support column, using it to conceal himself. He grunted and strained, pulling himself from one beam to another, bracing himself on the inner edge of each step.
Minutes evaporated and he froze when sneakers appeared on the landing above. He was only halfway up. If the guy looked down, he’d be discovered.
But the guy didn’t look down. He spun on the ball of his foot, snapped the rifle to his shoulder like he was reliving some long-ago march across a hallowed battlefield, and walked north.
Two more minutes of strenuous climbing and Ramage’s arms burned, his mouth was paper dry, and his eyes stung. He stuck his head over the edge of the stair landing. His guy was almost at the other end of the gantry, two more steps to go before he did his spin and came back Ramage’s way.
Thin cones of shadow fell across the walkway, running up the walls. The nearest one was ten feet away. He couldn’t make it, and there was no way he could take the guy down from beneath the landing. Not without causing all kinds of commotion.
Stalemate. He beat himself up briefly for not having a better plan, but then remembered most plans went to shit before they even got going, so nothing lost.
The guard was at the end of the walkway.
Ramage swung up onto the landing, stood, and stepped backward, pressing his back to the metal wall. The entire warehouse opened before him. He was in the shadows, but he felt exposed, like anyone who glanced up would see him.
There was no time to think on the situation because the guard turned and headed back his way. He looked down, searching for Anna, but he didn’t see her. He drew the Glock. If he needed to use it the game was over, but he had to be prepared. He rolled his shoulders and put the gun back in his waistband. On second thought, he needed both hands free.
The guard was coming straight at him, hips swaying, the tip of his rifle bobbing as he walked. The guy was looking right at Ramage, and ants crawled up his spine. He knew the man couldn’t see him—he hadn’t reacted—but Ramage’s palms sweat anyway, the bottoms of his feet burning as his lizard mind pressed all the panic buttons. It took all the patience and will he had to stand fast, wait for the man to come to him. Just like his survivalist instructor Jerry had taught him.
The guy was twenty feet away and Ramage shifted position slightly, putting himself next to a support column that ran up the side of the metal wall. Large bolts dug into Ramage’s arm as he wedged himself against the metal.
The guard saw Ramage, and the guy’s eyes grew wide.
Something below in the yard clanged like an oriental dinner bell, and the primitive side of the
guard’s brain betrayed him, and he looked toward the disturbance.
Ramage was on him like a spider, all legs and arms wrapping the man up and bringing him to the metal deck. He stuck the Glock in the guy’s cheek, and said, “Make a sound. Go ahead. And you won’t be going home tonight. Nod if you understand.”
The guy jerked his head under Ramage’s bicep. “Good.”
Nothing moved on the floor below. There were no alarms. No warning screams. Ramage pressed the man to the metal stair landing, both of them out in the open under the harsh fluorescent lighting. He counted to three in his head, then got up, jerked the man to his feet, and pressed him against the wall. Ramage stripped his jacket down to his shoulders, gun almost in the man’s mouth.
Ramage spun the guy around and stripped the jacket the rest of the way off, then smacked him in the back of the head. The guy yelped, but didn’t go down. Ramage hit him again. And again. When the man fell unconscious, Ramage laid him on the floor and stepped back into the shadows. Nothing moved below. No alarms sounded.
He dragged the guard off the landing and lay his prone form along the wall, partially hidden in shadow. But it wasn’t much of a shadow. It barely hid the guy, and if anyone came up the stairs, or looked too hard at the stair landing, he’d be seen.
Ramage saw Anna standing beneath the stairs. She was waving him on. She held her gun in one hand and a long lag bolt in the other. He understood. The clang he’d heard was her throwing bolts, creating a diversion for him.
Ramage put on the guard’s jacket, grabbed the man’s rifle, an old Mossberg, and propped it on his shoulder as he walked casually down the open walkway toward the first door. His mind raced, red flags popping up all over his mental monitoring screen. What if someone saw him enter the room? What if the code didn’t work? What if someone noticed the guard was missing? To all these questions the practical side of Ramage’s mind provided answers. The guy had to go to the bathroom. Right? Check the rooms periodically?
He stopped at the first door and looked out on the warehouse below. He saw two men standing by the entrance, presumably waiting for the Sandman, and three others snaked through the equipment and supplies on the lower level. Across the way on the opposite gantry walkway the guard paced, paying him no mind.
Quick Sands: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 1) Page 19