Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(62)

I let Ariana out of my truck one ridge over from the GPS coordinates Dale gave me. She scrambles up the hill to find a good vantage point.

The truth is, if this is an ambush, she won’t be able to do much good. If Dale is in cahoots with Gareth McCormack, the sharpshooter could be anywhere. He could be farther away and, with his shooting skills, far more accurate than Ariana. There is no way Ariana could protect me.

But covering me isn’t my only reason for asking her to hunker down in the hills while I drive out to see Dale. I also want to keep her hidden. That way, if a bullet sails a thousand yards through my skull, Ariana may still be able to get away.

Maybe.

As I round a bend, I spot one of McCormack’s tanker trucks parked in the ridged valley below. I scan the hillside for Ariana and don’t see her among the sagebrush and gnarled tree snags. I drive slowly, looking around for any sign of an ambush. With McCormack’s range, there are dozens of places he could be hiding, especially now as the sun is lowering and casting shadows in every hollow in the hillsides and every crevice in the rocky outcroppings.

I approach the tanker truck and see Dale sitting on the tank with some kind of box in his lap. The truck is a single unit, with the cylinder of the tank connected to the truck itself—an eight-wheeler instead of an eighteen-wheeler, but still an enormous vehicle. There’s a metal ladder on the passenger side of the rig, which Dale must have used to climb up there.

I park my truck and shut off the engine. I leave the keys in the ignition in case I need to make a quick getaway. As I approach Dale on foot, my heart is racing. My nerves are on high alert.

The air is still and silent except for the crunch of my boots on the rocks.

“Howdy, partner,” Dale says, smiling down at me with the big grin I’ve come to expect from him.

The box on his lap appears to be a pizza box. Dale is chewing a slice.

“Want a piece?” he says. “It’s cold, but it’s still damn good.”

“Maybe later,” I say.

“Suit yourself.”

“Why’d you bring me out here, Dale?”

“All business, huh?” he says, grinning with a piece of pepperoni stuck in his teeth. “No time for bullshitting today?”

“Sorry,” I say. “It’s been a long day.”

My body is tense, my hand ready to fly to my pistol and draw.

“Where’s Ariana?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “She’s a fugitive.”

“That’s too bad,” he says. Then he adds, “Climb on up. The surprise is up here.”

I feel nervous about this. Is he asking me to climb on top so Gareth can get a better shot? I’ll be in full view for a thousand yards in any direction. But I’ve come this far.

I set my boot on the bottom rung of the ladder and pull myself up. I keep my eyes on Dale as I do. When I get to the top, I stand, my feet unsteady on the narrow, flat walkway atop the cylinder.

There appear to be two hatch openings on top, each with a hinged steel strap across it and a clamp securing the strap. I don’t know enough about tanker trucks to be sure, but I assume one hatch is where oil is pumped in, and the other is where it’s pumped out.

Dale kneels before the closest hatch and releases the clamp.

“Move slowly,” I say, knowing he could have a weapon stashed inside.

“I ain’t gonna shoot you, Rory,” he says, looking back at me. “I seen that video of you. I ain’t stupid.”

I watch him closely.

“Ready?” he says, giving me a big shit-eating grin.

“For what?” I say.

Dale swings back the metal strap and opens the hatch door, about the diameter of a basketball. He steps back to let me look inside.

I expect to see an opaque ocean of oil.

Instead, there is a compartment full of bricks and bricks of white powder vacuum-sealed in plastic wrap.

“Holy shit,” I say. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Well,” Dale says, grinning, “it ain’t baker’s yeast.”





Chapter 79



I WAVE FOR Ariana to come down from the hillside. When Dale sees her start to make her way down from the rocks with my rifle slung over her shoulder, his grin widens even more.

“Didn’t trust me, did you?” Dale says, although he doesn’t look the least bit disappointed that I didn’t.

“What the hell are you doing carrying thousands of dollars in drugs in your truck?” I say.

“That ain’t thousands of dollars in drugs, Rory.” He points to the cache. “That’s millions.”

I can’t tell how large the compartment is, how deep it goes into the tank. But if each brick is a kilo, that means they’re probably worth anywhere from ten to thirty thousand dollars apiece. If there are a hundred bricks, that means the pile of them could be worth one to three million dollars.

Carson McCormack’s oil business, Dale explains, is a front for a more lucrative drug business.

“His wells are going dry,” Dale says. “Most of the pumping you see is just for show. Whenever you see his tankers going up and down the highway, they’re more likely to be carrying coke than oil. And I ain’t talking about the carbonated beverage.”

As he talks, everything I’ve seen in Rio Lobo starts to make sense. The fact that most of McCormack’s employees look more like mercenaries than oil workers. The way his ranch is fortified with hurricane fencing and razor wire and a guard station. The way he travels with an entourage, driving together like a military convoy.