Big Fracking Mess

By Lee Atterbury

Contract killers, hit men, and one fracking operation. All have something to hide. At all costs. Jim Taylor, Buck and Hook have their hands full. Are they the sheriff's death squad? Relentless contract killers hired to kill a child ... hit men sent to silence them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Atterbury
• Release date: Sep 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370657698

Lee Atterbury

About the Author: Lee R. Atterbury is a trial lawyer in Middleton, WI. He lives with his wife and nine horses. He is working on two other novels featuring Jim Taylor and Buck.

Book preview

BIG FRACKING MESS

Lee Atterbury

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The names, incidents, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author's imagination and are not to be constructed as real. The events in this book are entirely fiction and by no means should anyone attempt to live out the actions that are portrayed in the book.

Copyright © 2016 Lee Atterbury

Website:  www.leeatterbury.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. All rights reserved.

Other Jim and Buck Novels:

Solitude Showdown

Meeteetse Massacre

Crazy Woman

This book is dedicated to my wife, Sally.

MARCH

Eddy lowered the binoculars. It would be easy, only one guard there at night. The equipment yard was huge, twenty acres he guessed, and the guard spent most of his time in the little shack by the gate. Once an hour, on the hour, the guard left the shack and walked along the fence for fifteen minutes, not getting even halfway around the perimeter.

Near as Eddy could tell the guard never even saw the south fence which was opposite the gate. He looked over at his partner. Steve was smoking and pacing. It was Steve’s first action and Eddy was not pleased. Nervous rookies made mistakes.

Okay, Steve, it looks like a go. Put out your smoke and follow me.

They set off across the dark range land. A gentle wind brought the scent of sage. Coyotes yipped and sang in the distance. There was enough light from the new moon to allow them to avoid getting tangled in the clumps of sagebrush. They stayed several hundred yards from the fence until they had passed the western boundary. Then Eddy angled them closer aiming for the center of the south fence.

At the fence Eddy knelt and started on the chain links with a bolt cutter. He looked over at Steve who was about to light a cigarette. Christ, put that away. You want to get busted? he hissed.

Uh, sorry.

Five minutes later they were through the fence. They split up. Eddy headed for the diesel fuel tank. He had twenty pounds of sugar in his backpack. Steve also carried sugar. His was for the fuel tanks of the various pieces of equipment. They were no more than thirty feet from the fence when a dozen flood lights flashed to life. Both froze.

From behind them a voice called, What you boys doin’ here? They turned. A dark figure stood by the hole they’d cut in the fence, holding a long object that reflected the light. What we gonna do with these trespassers?

Eddy raised his hands. We give up. Don’t hurt us. This was the smart move, he knew from prior raids. If you’re busted, cooperate, don’t give them an excuse for violence. He hoped the new guy would follow his lead.

But Steve panicked. He took off running toward the front gate. He’d barely gone  ten feet when two men jumped out from behind a backhoe. One tackled him and held him on the ground. The other raised a baseball bat.

______________________________________

The local Green Earth leadership committee huddled in a cheap motel room on the main drag into Bison.

Eddy and Steve should have been back yesterday morning. Something bad’s happened.

You checked with the Sheriff Department?

Yeah, nothing. No arrests, no reports.

I drove past the site they were going to raid. No sign. It was business as usual, all the equipment was working on the access road. They didn’t get it done.

So what do we do?

Check with Denver. They’ll get word out.

What do you think?

I think it’s bad, real bad.

AUGUST

CHAPTER 1

Abner Arthur Allen was not having a good day. Three head of cattle dead in the high pasture. Four dead last week. Not a mark or a wound on any of them. The vet could not give him a cause of death. Not without a post mortem as he called it. And that wasn’t free. Seventeen dead so far this season. At this rate he’d lose half his herd before fall. Maybe Willy Cox was right. His cattle started dying when that fracking operation began running. Willy said they pumped stuff into the ground to get the oil out and that stuff could get into his ground water or his creek.

He’d go into town later, stop in at the Cenex Co-op. Willy might be there and some of the guys from north of town. There was a well up there, too. Maybe they’d know more. Or the county ag agent. He could check on the computer first.

He could not afford to lose any more cattle. The loan at the bank came due in November and the co-op wouldn’t carry him much beyond that either. If he couldn’t pay the bank, he’d lose the ranch. What would he do then?

____________________________________

The well was producing. Tank trucks rolled in and tank trucks rolled out. The crews were working three shifts. Chester Chesterton looked out the window of the site trailer and smiled. The set up had taken too long, but everything was finally finished. The actual well had been easy compared with the rest of the operation: the gravel access road, the fencing around the well and equipment yard, hiring the oil crews, housing for the men, waste water containment pond, and on and on. Protesters from Green Earth Now had tried to block the installation. He had to hire men to provide security. They were a rough looking bunch, some of them, but they were effective.

There was a knock on the trailer door. Yeah, come in.

Hinckley stuck his head in. Boss, there’s some rancher at the gate. He’s yelling that his cattle are dying and it’s our fault.

He did not need that kind of flak. Not now. Not ever. Call security, have them take care of it.

Yes, sir.

Chester Chesterton had leveraged everything he owned to set up this operation. He’d even raided his daughter’s trust fund. When the delays and overruns mounted up, he’d sought money from a source that scared him a little, unlike his other investors. But he had to have the cash and the man in Vegas had it. This investor had insisted on a big piece of the action, as he called it. Desperate, Chesterton had agreed and now he regretted it.

____________________________________

Sheriff Zeke Thomasen hung up the phone. Ab Allen was in the hospital with a skull fracture and was in a coma. The rural mail carrier had found him unconscious, sprawled in his truck stopped on the gravel road that led to his ranch. Zeke’s first thought was that the rancher had crashed or fallen, but the doctor said Ab had been severely beaten. He called out through his open door. Doris, would you please find Hook and Jim and ask them to see me.

_____________________________________

Hook and Jim were in Zeke’s office late that day. He told them about Ab Allen. I want you to go out to his ranch and look around. Somebody beat the tar out of him. See what you can find. Maybe some reason why or who. He looked each of them in the eye. Try not to shoot anyone, okay?

Amy Hooker, who went by Hook, and James Taylor, known as Jim, were an unlikely pair. Hook was a tall woman in her late twenties, blond hair, blue eyes, and with Nordic type good looks. She was beautiful when she smiled, which was extremely rare. Jim was tall and rail thin in his late sixties with gray hair and beard. Hook was a former Army MP. Jim had no law enforcement experience.

Both had things in their pasts that cast shadows over them about which they were reluctant to speak. Both had killed men in the line of duty, but that was pretty much all they had in common. Their partnership was rocky and strained from the beginning. Hook was a rigid professional cop, Jim a dope smoking ex-lawyer. She thought he had no business being in law enforcement. He thought she was too uptight. They disagreed about almost everything and irritated one another constantly. In the course of working together, fighting off neo-Nazi killers and solving an abduction, they had developed a mutual respect. Neither would admit the affection they felt for the other.

Sir, can we talk with his wife? Hook asked.

He’s a widower. Lives out there by himself. You two are the detectives, you’ll have to nose around.

I’ll do my best to keep Hook out of trouble, but no guarantees.

More like I’ll have to clean up after you. You’re a wrecking ball.

Please, just do your job and stay on task. Zeke looked each of them in the eye.

They left, squabbling all the way out of the building.

Zeke sat back and looked up at the ceiling. Louise, he said, speaking to his long dead wife, there are days when I wish I could do without them.

____________________________________

He sat in his office, his desk lamp the only light in the building. It was going on eleven. This was when he did his best writing. Alf Jacobson was the reporter, photographer, editor, and publisher of the Bison Banner and had been for almost twenty seven years. This night he was not writing.

He’d come to Bison to live his dream of owning his own newspaper. Alf had done well. His newspaper was respected as the best source of news in the county. He had inside informants everywhere and knew just about everything that was fit to print and much that wasn’t. His nose for news was legendary.

Tonight he wasn’t writing because he was contemplating his future. Now in his sixties, he knew retirement was not far away. The newspaper business had been fun and intellectually rewarding, but the income it generated barely kept the lights on and food on his table. It was not going to fund his retirement and he doubted he would ever find a buyer.

A year ago he had invested his modest retirement fund in a new business venture. It was now producing a trickle of income and the owner of the venture promised greater returns in the near future. This was the future he was contemplating. It gave him the energy to keep at the newspaper a little longer. He felt he would do just about anything to see this investment pay off.

CHAPTER 2

The Cessna cruised slowly at a thousand feet above ground. It was a brilliant sunny morning, no clouds, no haze yet. Everything below was visible in fine detail. The sagebrush dotted range gave way to the wooded slopes of the foothills. Grassy high elevation pastures, speckled with cattle, were framed by the distant granite peaks of the mountains. Creeks, some flowing, some dry, snaked through the landscape. The passenger, sitting in the right seat, spoke. See, over there, she pointed, that pond and just to the left of it the fence and the creek?

The pilot scanned through the windshield. Yeah, I see.

Can you circle that?

Sure.

The pilot guided the aircraft to the area and circled to the right, dipping the wing so the passenger could have a clear, unobstructed view. The camera clicked rapidly as the plane made a slow, wide circle.

Now can you go higher so I can get the drilling equipment in a wide-angle shot?

The pilot added throttle and adjusted the pitch, adding a little pressure on the yoke. When they gained altitude the passenger asked for another circle. Halfway through the circle a hole appeared in the right wing and liquid started spraying from the underside. Son of a bitch, the pilot yelled, there’s a hole in our gas tank. He banked the plane in the opposite direction. Then he reached down and turned the fuel selector to the left tank.

What happened? asked the passenger.

Some bastard shot us. He looked at the fuel gauge. Hope we’ve got enough fuel to get us back to the airstrip. He looked over at his passenger. What the hell were you taking pictures of?

That was a fracking operation. Their waste water is leaking into that creek.

__________________________________

The horse heard the airplane when it was still miles away. He knew what it was. Over the years he had often seen and heard the flying machines. Airplanes had never concerned him as they had never come close enough to be a threat. He seldom paid them any attention other than noting the noise as a part of the general background at the farm back in Wisconsin.

Something about this airplane got Buck’s attention. He seldom heard them here

in Wyoming, but that wasn’t it. The rhythm and quality of the noise, something intermittent, a sort of sputtering, was new to him. All other flying machines gave off a steady drone. He focused on the noise, turning his ears toward the sound and following its flight path.

When the sputtering stopped, Buck tracked the now visible but silent aircraft. As he watched, it glided directly at him. It got lower and larger. Alarmed, he stiffened and looked over to where Jim and Bob were organizing equipment.

Inside the plane both pilot and passenger were silent, the only noise the whistling of the wind as the plane glided. The pilot was scanning for a place to put down, the passenger moving her lips in a silent prayer. The pilot had extended the glide as long as he could, but there hadn’t been much altitude to start with.

Buck galloped over to the men and slammed to a stop throwing dirt onto the tent they were folding. He gave a deep bellow and threw his head toward the descending airplane now just two hundred yards away and only a hundred feet above the ground. He snorted as the other horses and mules began to run around in a panic. They raced in circles, kicking up dust, bucking and rearing.

As Bob and Jim stared wide-eyed, the pilot flared the sinking plane, leveling the flight path so the aircraft would gently contact the ground. The range land was reasonably level, but there were rocks here and there. The main wheels touched the ground and the plane slowed. It looked like a perfect emergency landing. Then the nose wheel touched. Just as the watchers started to sigh with relief, the nose wheel hit a watermelon sized rock. The nose gear collapsed and the nose of the plane plowed into the ground. The fuselage levered up and forward. The tail came up to almost a ninety degree angle. Jim, who had once been a pilot, let out an Oh, shit. The aircraft had finally spent its momentum. Gravity became ascendant and the plane slammed back down. The main gear crumpled and all was still.

Buck gave a snort of disgust as if to say that the flying machine was stupid. He was offended by the disruption. The other animals raced to the far end of the fenced land and were breathing hard and lathered with sweat.

Jim hopped on Buck and they loped over to the wreck while Bob got on the satellite phone to call an ambulance. Jim slid off his horse and approached the aircraft. He peered into the cockpit. Both occupants were motionless, but did not appear to be bleeding. He couldn’t open the left side door and went around to the other side. That door opened. Both people were slumped forward, still restrained by the seat and shoulder harnesses. Jim reckoned that the impact gave them a pretty severe jolt when the plane’s nose jammed into the ground. He worried about spinal injuries and figured it would be best not to move them until the rescue people got to the scene.

He heard a moan from the seat nearest to him. Hey, stay calm, help is on the way, Jim said. Try not to move. Then he leaned in to get a closer look. The person, a young woman, opened her eyes. She was smallish, he couldn’t judge her height, but she was on the small side. Black hair cut short, tanned face, no makeup. She blinked and looked at Jim. Please be still. I don’t know if you’re hurt. We’ve called an ambulance. He heard a sigh, took it as assent. What’s your name?

The young woman grimaced and squinted, in obvious pain. Edie…

Hi, Edie, I’m Jim. Can you tell me what happened?

She swallowed. Taking pictures…fracking…waste water spill…they shot the plane.

What?

Shot the plane…lost gas in the wing. She gestured with her right hand.

Jim looked over his shoulder at the wing behind and above him. He saw the hole in the bottom of the wing. He’d flown a plane like this one. He knew the plane’s fuel was in the wing tanks. Jesus, who?

We were over the fracking site. Edie’s voice was getting stronger.

Fuckers, Jim muttered.

Give me the camera. She pointed at an expensive looking camera on the floor in front of her. Jim figured what the hell he might as well and it would keep her calm. He reached down and got the camera and held it near her. She took it and slid something from the frame. Take this. Give it to Green Earth, okay?

Jim said, Okay, and held out his hand. Edie put a plastic chip in his hand and he closed his fingers over it.

Car doors slammed. Jim heard Bob say, Are you with fire rescue?…Who are you? Then there was a loud voice he didn’t recognize. Two burly guys in dirty coveralls came up to the wreck. One of them said Where’s the camera? Where’s the film?

Bob said, If you’re not with fire rescue, you better back off. These folks need medical help.

We need the camera and film.

Jim slipped the chip into a pants pocket and backed out of the plane. Who are you and what are you doing here?

None of your business, said the nearer guy, chest puffed out and hands in fists. He was six two, broad shouldered, his face grimy with grease and dirt. We need the fucking camera. Out of the way, old man.

Jim pulled his badge out of his shirt pocket. He didn’t like wearing it, but couldn’t find a good place to store it, so it usually stayed in a pocket. He held the badge up. I’m Jim Taylor, Deputy Sheriff, Flint County, and you are?