Tyranny (17 page)

B
arton Devlin had turned his cell phone off several days earlier when he got tired of ignoring the calls from his supervisor. He knew that by now his government employment had probably been terminated, and that left him with an aching emptiness inside.

For more than two decades his life had revolved around the Internal Revenue Service. His entire career had been spent punishing those who tried to get by without paying their fair share. He had gone to sleep at night firm in the conviction of his righteousness.

Now he had to fight off a persistent nausea at the thought that maybe—just maybe—the IRS really was as bad as its critics claimed. That it was nothing more than a bullying, hectoring, strong-arm branch of the administration, intended to punish not tax cheats but political enemies, to weaken conservative organizations and make it more difficult for conservative candidates to win elections. That it was really just a tool of the Democrats in their obsessive need to achieve and maintain power.

And that, Devlin knew in his heart, was not what he had signed on for.

Once he'd been forced to admit that possibility, it was like floodgates had opened in his mind. If the IRS, never well-liked but once a bastion of neutrality, had been so corrupted by a series of Democrat administrations, what about all the other government agencies? The Bureau of Land Management, for example?

On the surface, there was no more innocuous agency in Washington. The BLM was charged with managing land owned by the federal government. Nothing could be simpler.

But no agency engaged in such innocent activity would have need of a man like Slade Grayson working for them. The man was a piranha . . . no, a shark. Pure, elemental destruction in an expensive suit. If Grayson was trying to seize G.W. Brannock's ranch on behalf of the BLM, then there had to be something fishy about the deal.

Devlin was going to find out what it was.

That was why he was following Grayson's two cohorts at the moment. Finley and Todd had snuck onto the ranch well before dawn. Devlin had no idea what they were up to, but it had to be no good. The sun was up now, and the two BLM men were on their way back to Sierra Lobo.

Devlin was a hundred yards behind them in his rental car. All he knew about tailing someone he had learned from watching hundreds of TV shows in hundreds of motel rooms over the past twenty years, but he seemed to be getting better at it.

It probably helped that Finley and Todd were amateurs just like he was. None of them had any business carrying out this cloak-and-dagger stuff, especially when they were dealing with a professional like Grayson.

Sooner or later, thought Devlin, that shark was going to turn around and consume them.

“It's done,” Warren Finley reported. “I don't like it, and neither does Woody, but it's done.”

“Maybe you should let Woody speak for himself,” Grayson said. He hadn't put on his coat and tie, but he was dressed otherwise, and even though the hour wasn't much past nine o'clock in the morning, the glass in his hand had a couple of fingers of scotch in it.

Todd frowned and said, “I don't care much for killing animals, even cows.”

“Turning vegetarian on me, Woody?” Grayson asked mockingly. “Because all those burgers and steaks and roasts didn't commit suicide, you know.”

“I know. But it's different when there's not a good reason for it.”

“Not a good reason?” Grayson tossed back the drink and then glared at the two men he had sent on this errand. “What better reason can there be than furthering the cause of the United States government?”

“Are we really doing that?” Finley asked. “Or is there some other agenda at work here?”

Grayson set the empty glass aside and pointed a finger at Finley.

“I'm going to forget I heard you say that, old buddyroo. That sounded pretty freaking disloyal to the Bureau, if you ask me, and I know that's not what you want.”

Finley felt himself go pale. Disloyalty to the Bureau meant disloyalty to the administration, and that could be dangerous. Not just to a guy's career, but to his very life.

“No, that's . . . that's not what I mean,” Finley said hastily, stumbling over the words.

“I didn't think so,” Grayson replied with a superior sneer. His briefcase lay on the dresser. He went to it, opened it, and took out another plastic vial. Negligently, he tossed it to Finley, who turned positively white as a sheet as he caught it. “Empty that in another of Brannock's waterholes tonight. By the time we go out there Monday to take over, he won't have any cattle left.”

“Monday?” Finley repeated in confusion. “I thought he had sixty days to vacate the ranch.”

“Timetable's been moved up,” Grayson said as he reached for the bottle of whiskey next to the briefcase. “We're taking possession of the ranch Monday, and if Brannock resists, he and anybody who takes his side will be placed in federal custody. The gloves, gentlemen, are off.”

And it was damned well about time, Grayson thought as he poured himself another drink.

M
iranda had checked in with G. W. every day by phone, but she hadn't been out to the ranch since the day Kyle got out of the hospital. He missed seeing her, but he knew she was probably working hard on his grandfather's behalf.

When she heard about the waterhole being poisoned, though, she came out to see the results for herself.

“I still haven't heard back from the governor's office yet,” she said as she took pictures of the dead cows, “but I'm working on something else. It's not going to hurt to have public opinion on our side, and this could help with that.”

“I don't reckon I understand,” G.W. said.

She turned her phone around so that he and Kyle could see the screen. It displayed a landscape shot that Kyle knew had been taken here on the ranch, and superimposed over the photograph in a brightly colored, easy-to-read font were the words
STAND WITH G.W
.

“What in blazes is that?” G.W. asked.

“It's a Web page devoted to your efforts to keep the government from stealing your ranch from you,” Miranda explained. “I'm posting it on all the different social media platforms and updating it several times a day. You have more than five thousand likes on this one already.”

G.W. shook his head and said, “I have no idea what you're talkin' about.”

“I do,” Kyle said as he felt excitement growing in him, “and I think it's a great idea. People all over the country—shoot, all over the world—are finding out what the government's trying to do to you, G.W., and they don't like it.”

“I thought Miranda just said they do like it,” G.W. said with a frown.

“No, they like the page—” Miranda began. She stopped and tapped on her phone's screen for a moment. “Just let me post those pictures I took, and we ought to see plenty of comments right away disapproving of what the BLM has done here.”

“You mean people are gonna believe us over the BLM?”

“A lot of people will. Sure, there's plenty of craziness on the Internet, but the truth has a way of getting out there, too, and when enough people see it, they realize it.”

Kyle said, “So we wage a war for public opinion?”

“It can't hurt,” Miranda said.

That was probably true, he thought . . . but now that he thought about it, he couldn't really see how it was going to help much, either. All the Internet outrage in the world wasn't going to bring those dead cows back, and it wouldn't stop Slade Grayson and the BLM, either.

“I suppose the vet confirmed that the cattle were poisoned?” she asked.

“Yeah,” G.W. said, “although he couldn't tell exactly what it was.”

“He took tissue samples and samples of the water back to town with him to analyze them,” Kyle put in. “He said he'd let us know if he found out anything definite.”

“I'll add that to the post,” Miranda said.

They had come out here in G.W.'s pickup, the three of them crowded into the front seat with Miranda in the middle. Kyle hadn't minded that at all.

Now, as they started back toward the truck, G.W. went on ahead, leaving Kyle and Miranda to follow. She asked quietly, “How are you doing? I haven't talked to you in several days.”

“I know,” he said.

“I've been busy researching other cases and all the laws regarding the concept of eminent domain. That's not exactly what this is, of course. The government's not condemning the property to take it and use it for the public good. This is a land grab, pure and simple. We have to make sure everyone sees it as such.”

“Seems like you've got a good start on that. And to answer your question, I'm all right. Doing better every day. I don't yelp when I climb out of bed in the morning or take a deep breath, and that's a big improvement over the first day or so.”

“I'm glad.” She changed the subject by asking, “G.W. has a computer, doesn't he?”

“Yeah, and Internet access, although he's never done much with it.”

“Then you can take part in this social media campaign.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Kyle said.

She looked over at him and said, “You don't sound very enthusiastic.”

He hadn't wanted to throw cold water on her ideas, but he had to be honest with her, too.

“You know what social media outrage is like, all sound and fury and not much else. It makes people feel good about themselves and what they believe, but I'm not sure it ever accomplishes anything else.”

Miranda shook her head and said, “I disagree. People all over the world have used it to further their causes. All the Islamic terror groups who hate us use it. There must be something to it, or people wouldn't keep coming back to it.”

“We'll see, I guess,” Kyle said.

“I suppose so,” Miranda said, and now her voice was a little cooler than it had been earlier.

As arguments went, this one was pretty minor, Kyle thought. Even so, he wished it hadn't happened.

He wanted things to bring him and Miranda closer together . . . not drive them farther apart.

 

 

Doc Bryan, the veterinarian, called later that afternoon to tell G. W. that he hadn't been able to identify the unusual element that he'd found in the sample from the waterhole. It was some sort of organic compound unknown to him, but he was confident that it was what had killed the cattle, because he had found it in their tissue samples, too.

Having reached the end of his capabilities, the doctor was sending the other samples he had taken to friends of his at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M. They would have a better shot at identifying the compound than he would, he explained.

“If the stuff came from Grayson, there's no telling what it might be,” Kyle said to G.W. after the phone conversation with Doc Bryan. “From what I hear, the government's developed quite a few biological and chemical weapons that it's kept secret. Wasn't there some big deal a while back about a secret lab in this part of the country . . . ?”

“Casa del Diablo,” G.W. said, nodding. “Yeah, that fella who cheated his way into the White House tried to use some sort of nerve gas from there to wipe out a whole town that thumbed their noses at his gun-grabbin' habits. That's what made him go loco and refuse to leave office when Congress impeached and convicted him.” G.W. sighed. “I thought that might be enough to make the whole country come to its senses. Didn't last long, though. Before you knew it, half the folks had their hands out again and were promisin' to vote for whoever would fill 'em up. We know which bunch
that
is.”

“So if Grayson's some sort of government troubleshooter, he could have gotten his hands on something very few people know about.”

G.W. nodded and said, “That's right, and when you get right down to it, it doesn't really matter what he or his flunkies used to poison that waterhole. What's important is that they're still tryin' to run me off . . . and I'm not gonna go.”

After supper, as evening approached, G.W. went out to the barn to saddle one of his horses. Kyle went with him and said, “I've got a pretty good idea what you're up to, and I'm coming with you, G.W.”

“I'm not sure you're in any shape to sit a saddle.”

“I can ride,” Kyle insisted. “My ribs still hurt a little, but the rest of me is fine. Riding isn't going to cause a problem.”

“Well, I don't mind tellin' you, it'd be good to have you along, son,” G.W. admitted. “There's no way of knowin' what we're gonna run into out there, but if it comes to trouble, you're a good man to have beside me.”

Kyle's heart swelled with pride. Those simple words from his grandfather meant a lot to him.

“You want me to fetch a couple of rifles while you're saddling the horses?” he asked.

G. W. nodded and said grimly, “We're liable to need 'em.”