Chapter 1

Why me, Lord, why me? I'm just a poor redneck trying to live out my life in North East Texas. I couldn't afford a lawyer even if I didn't detest the bastards, so why did you let the bank steal my place?

Why? I didn't really have to ask, did I? Even I knew prayer was always answered, no matter what. Only trouble is, in my case the answer is usually no.

So here I am, a forty-four year old cowboy stuck in 2006, and fucked out of my thirty acres and my shack. Take my advice and never build anything you want to keep on land you don't own the minerals under.

I don't guess I had a real bitch coming, they payed me five times what I'd spent on the land and threw in a hundred bucks per square foot for the patched up little shack I called home. You could say I made out like a bandit.

The money wasn't what I wanted though, I wanted to stay where I was and basically be left alone. No chance of that when they struck a gusher two miles from me. A god damned gusher for Christ's sake. I thought those were over with decades ago.

I could have stayed right where I was, barely. But when the geologists got done figuring they said the perfect spot for another well was right in the exact center of my thirty acres.

No matter what you think about environmental regulations, let me tell you that when they sink an oil well they still make a fucked up stinking mess. I took the money, after quite a bit of bitching raised the price a good bit, and I ran - so to speak.

Actually I caught a ride to the Chivalay place in town and bought me a six wheel drive Silverado 3500 LT with all the bells and whistles I could find. I even added a few, like the 200 gallon extra tank behind the cab. It already had two 20-gallon tanks installed but the extra one I had added gave me plenty of time between stops.

I still had money to burn from my buyout and I planned to spend it all before the IRS noticed. Then I planned to disappear. That's right, I intended to drop right off the radar.

Key to my plan was leaving with cash only, no bank accounts and no credit cards. First I paid a small fortune to fill up all my tanks and then I went to the post office to fill out a change of address card. I picked a quaint little abandoned house I knew of that was even further back in the woods than I'd been. When the IRS finally came around looking for me, no earlier than a couple of years I was sure, they'd have a hell of a time finding anyone at all.

I spent the next few days buying a camper trailer, nothing too fancy you understand, but I'd always admired the Airstreams and the twenty-eight footer seemed just right to me. I even put on a camper shell for the pickup bed. I wouldn't be sleeping back there. Having a two hundred gallon spare gasoline tank in my bedroom just didn't appeal to my delicate sensibilities, but the shell would keep my stuff from getting wet. And I had a lot of stuff.

I was like a human pack rat; if I ever got hold of something I didn't let it get away from me. If it was an antique firearm or an interesting web page, I saved it. I was probably the only guy within two hundred miles that had four computers for his own use.

It helped that I built my own, money wise anyway, and it seemed like every time a newer and bigger hard drive came along I had to have at least one. Hell, it got so bad that I had to buy USB conversions for my drives because I couldn't find motherboards that had enough IDE connections to attach them all. I spent half my time trying to remember where I'd saved some stupid file I wanted.

By the time I'd packed up all the crap I was taking with me, and taken the time to build a desk for my computers into my new camping trailer a week had gone by. It was time to shake the dust of my hometown and make like a baby. I headed out.

Next stop, Big D, as in Dallas. It wasn't that I cared much for the city, I didn't. Still, I could find things I wanted there and I wanted a lot.

I found a good laptop at Frys and I liked it so well I bought two. I picked up a twenty-one inch flat panel for my trailer network and found a heavy-duty inverter so I could power it from the truck's batteries if I couldn't find a handy AC outlet to use. A few hundred dollars worth of other odds and ends and I was off.

I already had all the rifles and pistols I needed, more than I needed in fact. That didn't mean a thing to me though. When you have plenty of money and no debts, none you're going to pay anyhow, you buy what you want, not what you need.

I loved firearms of all types; well I'll be honest, I loved weapons. I had pretty much all of them I wanted already but that didn't mean I had every single one I wanted. There was one I'd longed for since it came out, but I'd never had enough money together at the same time to buy it.

I wanted a Barrett 82A1 50 caliber. I know, it's a small cannon, but the thought of a rifle that was deadly out to a thousand meters was more than I could get away from. What the hell, it was only money.

A Barrett isn't the kind of firearm you can pick up at Wal-Mart. In fact, I had to call the company to find a dealer in Dallas that might have one in stock. There were only two that I could get hold of by phone and they acted like they wanted retail price plus fifty percent.

When I'd called, Barrett told me they would sell direct to anyone with a Federal Firearms License, so I found a pawnshop that had one and made a deal. Hell, he was tickled pink to order one and make only five hundred bucks over his cost and freight. He was even happier to order me an ATN 4-12x80 Day Night scope for it. The best guess was that it would be nearly a week for both to arrive, but I didn't give a shit. I paid half and waited, spending my nights in the trailer and my days shopping for other crap.

It was almost two weeks later before I had the Barrett, scope, reloading dies, and a stock of powder, primers, and bullets gathered up. I still had nearly a hundred thousand in cash too. Next stop Las Vegas.

I was glad to get out of Dallas but I had to take another short break up near Amarillo. I got to thinking about all the firearms I was carrying around the country and decided I needed to find a good hidey-hole for them in the trailer.

A welder I ran across said he'd be glad to take my money to build me a steel box under the trailer's floor; he got it done in less than two days. It wasn't even much of a bother to get into and out of, all I had to do was pull up a part of the carpet in the main bedroom. After a while I could yank back the carpet, get into the box and then put the carpet back down looking like it had never been bothered in fifteen minutes.

Four days later I was in Vegas, feeding the slots and drinking free whiskey. They'd let you have all you could hold for nothing as long as you kept pumping coins in the slots.

I even got friendly with a great looking waitress by tipping her a twenty every time she refreshed my drink. I was trying to get up the nerve to hit her up to spend some time away from work with me when she beat me to it.

She brought me a refill and let me know that she was getting off work in a few minutes and she asked me how late I was going to gamble.

"It's getting a little boring, where're you headed after work?" I asked.

"I usually go right home but I'm a little hungry tonight," she said.

"Any chance I could buy you some supper?"

"I think I'd like that. Meet me in the entrance lobby in about fifteen minutes," she said.

I wouldn't have recognized her in her normal clothes if it hadn't been for her titties. I'd know that pair anywhere, and believe it or not, her street clothes showed more cleavage than the waitress get up had. Naturally the dress covered more than the heavy-duty panty type things she wore at work but you can't have everything, at least not right off the bat.

The doorman asked and I had him signal for a cab. Gail and I were in it before I had any idea where we were going. When the cabby asked I looked at Gail for suggestions. She named a place and I told him to take us there before she even got to what they served.