The snafu was written up as an unforeseen combat accident, but Gallen heard another story. Apparently, once the digital photographs had started arriving at the Pentagon, certain levels of brass were embarrassed by who was secretly associating with whom and they’d panicked, tried to protect Al Meni.
‘You been out, what, a year?’ said Mulligan, leaning back as his plate of eggs and sausage arrived.
‘Six months,’ said Gallen.
‘Back working on the farm with old Roy, huh?’
‘You know where I am,’ said Gallen. ‘That’s your job.’
‘How’s the cattle business?’ Mulligan smirked slightly.
‘You know how cattle’s going in northern Wyoming, or you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Hey,’ said Mulligan, raising his hands.
‘The fuck you want, Paul?’
Mulligan recoiled slightly and then made a slow scan of the restaurant before bringing his eyes back to the eggs over-easy. ‘I want to hire you, Gerry.’
‘Hire me?’
Reaching inside his windbreaker, Mulligan removed a small leather clasp and gave Gallen a business card from it. The card announced Paul Mulligan MBA — Vice-President, Security under a coloured banner for Oasis Energy, a massive oil and gas company based in Calgary.
‘MBA?’ said Gallen, having to smile. ‘Annapolis boys think wearing their ring is enough to run the world.’
‘Just staying current.’
‘I know nothing ‘bout gas, except how to pump it into a truck,’ said Gallen, thinking about making it north to a town called Shell, hopefully with the transmission healthy enough to tow a horse trailer.
‘Not oil and gas,’ said Mulligan, chewing on sausage. ‘Security.’
Gallen sipped on his coffee and looked out the window. The sun was fighting through the cloud.
‘Heard of Harry Durville?’ asked Mulligan.
‘Owns Oasis Energy,’ said Gallen. ‘Real rich guy. What about him?’
‘I need a detail on him. Bodyguard, PSD — you know the score.’
‘What happened to the old one?’
Mulligan laughed. ‘Shit, Ace. You soldiers always ask the same questions.’
‘Well?’
‘They were British guys, ex-Paras and Royal Marines. Got an offer from a big contractor in Iraq and they were gone.’
‘Who were they?’ asked Gallen.
‘Can’t say,’ said Mulligan. ‘Code of silence, omerta — all that shit.’
‘Doesn’t sound like my line,’ said Gallen. ‘What’s wrong with using the cops?’
‘Durville’s a billionaire but he’s hands-on,’ said Mulligan. ‘One day you’re escorting him onto an Arab’s super yacht, next thing you know he’s drinking fermented goat piss with peasants in Turkmenistan.’
‘Man gets around.’
‘Grew up in Alberta logging camps. He gets drunk and wants to fight — he can be trouble. I need a special crew on him.’
They swapped stares. Gallen wanted to be on the road, collecting those horses and banking the thousand dollars a month he was going to charge to prepare them for the first showjumping competition of the season. Mulligan was an annoyance, a hand reaching out from his past, trying to pull him backwards.
‘Thanks for thinking of me, Paul,’ said Gallen, searching for cash in his breast pocket.
‘I’ll get this,’ said Mulligan. ‘Keep my card.’
Gallen looked at him. ‘I’m not interested, Paul.’
‘Sure, Gerry. But for the record: you can run a team of four, they get two thousand a week. You get four. Full Oasis health and disability. The whole nine.’
Grabbing his keys and phone, Gallen stood.
‘You know, I didn’t have a say in the Al Meni snatch,’ said Mulligan as they shook hands. ‘Wasn’t my call.’
‘You made the call, Paul.’
Mulligan rolled his eyes. ‘It came from above, Gerry. Shit, you know how that works.’
‘Sure do, Paul,’ said Gallen, turning to go. ‘You were my above.’
CHAPTER 3
The transmission started slipping about ten minutes after Gallen took the road east out of Greybull for Shell. It didn’t happen on every change but you could feel it on the change up from second to third — a transmission that wasn’t handling the diesel’s torque as the truck climbed along 15 into the Bighorn range.
Smoking one cigarette every half-hour, Gallen sipped on take-out coffee and willed on the transmission, deciding the truck would get them home if he had to drive at thirty mph across the whole damn state. It might have to rise up the to-do list he’d been writing since leaving the Marines and getting back to the farm; the list started with getting Roy to stop his drinking and went on through re-posting the horse yards, gravelling the driveway, getting the main load bearing fixed on the snow blower and replacing the boundary fencing on the bottom forty acres. The barn foundation had cracked and collapsed at the north end, the loading gates for the cattle were bent and broken, and the sump pump wasn’t working properly in the cellar. With spring starting, the cows were about to drop and Roy’s stock management system was in his head. There were animals all over the Gallen family’s three hundred and eighty acres and he only knew where two-thirds of them were hiding.
It all came back to money and the fact that Roy Gallen didn’t have any. After a lifetime of raising cattle and rough stock for the rodeo circuit, Roy was hiding away from decisions in a fug of rye-drinking and hangovers.
Showjumpers weren’t his people, said Roy, and Gallen would say, ‘So the bankers are your people? You want them shutting you down?’
Taking it slow through Shell, the tawny-white Bighorns rising in the background, Gallen took a side road out of town and drove it till he pulled left into a large iron gate with the legend Tally-Ho Ranch across the arch. The Robinson property, the details of which Roy had begrudgingly passed on to Gallen.
Taking it slow up the tree-lined driveway, he noted the white post-and-rail fencing and the warmblood horses in their paddocks, a few patches of snow still visible in the fence lines. There was more invested in each of those jumpers than Gallen used to make in a year in the military and he had a sudden blast of self-consciousness about the Arvada-Clearmont High School Panthers sticker on his rear screen. Did showjumping folks trust hockey players?
The stock trailer Gallen had left at Tally-Ho was parked up against the barn on its struts and Gallen swung the F-350 in an arc, reversing the dually rear axle under the gooseneck hitch.
‘Kenny,’ he yelled, slamming the truck door and throwing on a heavy Tough Duck jacket against the cold of altitude. ‘You around?’
‘Here, boss,’ came a low voice, and Gallen walked around the barn to the yard where one horse was tethered to a rail. Beyond was a sand riding arena where Kenny Winter sat on a stationary horse.
‘This them?’ Gallen let himself into the yard, dodging the puddles as he closed on the tethered sorrel gelding. Running his hand along the animal’s withers and across his back to his rump, Gallen liked what he saw.
‘This the abscessed one?’
‘Easiest fix I done for a long time,’ said Winter, spitting into the sand. ‘Vet been coming out charging the lady four hunert a time for X-rays in the shoulder.’
‘You poulticed it?’ Gallen lowered his voice lest the owner overheard the redneck horse doctoring.
‘Sure. It burst this morning. Got half a bottle of peroxide up that hoof and he was purring like a cat inside an hour.’