Free Houston Attack by Randy Wayne White

laugh this time.
    And Hawker knew Roy Dalton wasn’t kidding.

nine
    For the first three days Hawker kept a low profile. He kept his ears open and said little.
    In those three days he neither saw Skate Williams nor picked up any clues to the whereabouts of Cristoba de Abella.
    But he did learn a good deal about the operation of the ranch. Skate Williams owned one of the largest farm/oil operations in the world. His Texas spread consisted of eighty square miles of land—more than fifty thousand acres.
    On the property were six ranches—not four as he had first guessed. Ranch #4 where Hawker worked was exclusively a cattle ranch. It seemed to explain the near absence of Mexican slave laborers.
    But three of the ranches were operated as a millet and hy-gear farm; a cotton farm; and one that apparently was some kind of experimental station to test exotic crops that Williams hoped to someday grow commercially. On these farms Hawker was sure he would find the slaves.
    The fifth ranch was the center of the oil operation. And Ranch #1, as Hawker had suspected, was Skate Williams’s home. From the talk Hawker heard around the bunkhouse Ranch #1 had every conceivable modern nicety, including a fully equipped airport for his helicopters and Learjets, an indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, and a private rodeo stadium.
    Reading between the lines and the smirks, Hawker also gathered that Williams had his own small army dedicated to more than just internal security. It seemed that Williams was a zealot on the subject of the inevitable collapse of world society. And when the collapse came, according to some of the cowboys in the bunk-house, Williams was not only prepared to defend himself but also to take control and rebuild as well.
    They treated it like some kind of joke, but from what Hawker heard, Williams had collected enough armaments to qualify as a world nation. Not only that, he had sufficient natural resources on his own property to make such a wild notion actually feasible. He had grain, meat, water, and oil.
    These resources were the platforms of near-monopolies that Williams controlled. A chain of gas stations. A chain of feed stores. And, with the beef, the Rio Bravo Burger franchises that Hawker had grown so fond of in Houston.
    Hawker also learned that there were three kinds of employees in the Sister Star orbit: the field help; the outsiders; and, finally, the insiders.
    The source of the field help was obvious—but only to Hawker. The cowboys assumed they were mostly wetbacks, content to be fed and housed by their employer.
    Only Hawker seemed to know that they were actually slaves. And suddenly it made sense. Considering the private nature of Williams’s passion—arming himself for the final world war and the chaos that would follow—only slaves could be trusted to work around the place. Only slaves could be depended on to stay, live, work, and die within the narrow confines of the ranch.
    Hawker was relieved to realize that the wranglers in the bunkhouse were outsiders—nothing more than trusted hired help. They were paid for their special skills but not allowed into the inner sanctum. What they knew of Williams’s strange operation they learned from what they heard and what they saw.
    Hawker was relieved because he liked the men he worked with—especially Quirt Evans, the rangy cowboy who had stopped Jeb from shooting him that very first day.
    Even so, Hawker never let his guard down. Skate Williams was obviously a brilliant organizer, and certainly no fool. Hawker remembered all too well how the plant on the slave truck had almost gotten him killed.
    He trusted no one.
    On the fourth night Hawker decided it was time for a surveillance mission. His better judgment told him he should wait longer before venturing out, but the memory of how he had promised Cristoba de Abella his protection was too strong.
    He had to find her, and he had to find her soon. If another week went by she