No Way Back: A Novel (36 page)

“He’s out.” The young agent cleared his throat, thinking he may have backed the wrong horse in this race, the race of his once promising career. “He’s in the field.”

“The
field
?” The deputy director looked at him skeptically.

“Yes, sir.” The agent swallowed. “The field.”

“You were with him, at the Goulds’ house, the night David Gould was shot, weren’t you, Agent Holmes?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Holmes felt his stomach plummeting. “I was.”

“So why don’t we have ourselves a little discussion . . .” The deputy director dropped the files on his desk. “And then you can tell me just where we can find Senior Agent Dokes.” Her gaze had the firmness of concrete. “In the field.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

W
hen I finally came to, everything was bumpy; I had the sensation of being tossed around. I found myself in a car—a Range Rover or Jeep, actually—my wrists bound in front of me and clasped to a handle bar on the dashboard. I yanked them toward me, and they didn’t move.

Next to me, Dokes was driving. I blinked several times, trying to clear the fuzziness from my head. Along with the throbbing ache. We were on a dark road, no longer in town. And this didn’t have the feel of an official trip. I was pretty certain that ache was about to become the least of my worries.

“Where are you taking me?” I turned to Dokes.

“It doesn’t matter where I’m taking you. How about we say the beach.” There was a tiny chuckle in his reply. “Do you like the beach, Wendy?”

I looked around and recognized the main road, 160, that led in and out of Gillian. “There’s no beach around here.”

“Don’t be so sure. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

I didn’t like that no one else was in the vehicle. If Dokes was arresting me, he’d certainly have a support team along with him. My mind flashed to Lauritzia. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. Dead, I figured. I’d gotten there too late. We went over a bump, and I lurched forward, held back by the handle bar.

“You should’ve just stopped,” Dokes said with an air of resignation. “Back in that hotel when I told you to.”

“If I had, I’d be dead,” I replied. “We both know that.”

“Maybe. But you surely would have saved us both a lot of trouble. There must be a lesson in there somewhere though.”

“I’m waiting . . .”

Dokes shrugged, slowing the vehicle. He put on his turn signal. Left. “Beware the piano player.” He chuckled as he turned the car. “Next time someone asks you up to his hotel room . . .”

He pulled onto another road, and it was only then that I saw where we were heading.

The beach.

The Great Sand Dunes National Park.

And that’s when I understood just what we were doing here. We weren’t heading to any place. But to the middle of nowhere.
The beach . . .
And this would be my last ride. I jerked on my cuffs. It only made them tighter. I jerked them again in anger and desperation, trying to rip the handle bar off the dashboard.

It didn’t budge. Just dug the cuffs deeper into my wrists until they hurt.

“You know it’s true, what they say about them,” Dokes remarked at my frustration. “I could have told you that.”

We drove into the dark park. We approached the front gate. It was unmanned. Dokes drove around it anyway, bouncing onto the tundra. This was one of those open natural sites. No fences or manmade barriers to keep it in. You could get at it from probably a hundred directions, especially in the right vehicle.

“Isn’t this a bit after hours, Dokes?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not my hours.”

I was growing scared. My heart started to beat faster. I knew he was taking me up there, deep into the acres and acres of desolate, barren dunes, to kill me. I jerked at the bar again. It was only tiring me out.

“You think that’s really gonna make a difference.” Dokes grinned at my desperation.

I said, “I know why you’re doing this. I know what this is all about. I know what Curtis found out about Culiacán. That the DEA agents killed there weren’t the intended targets that day. That it was Lasser’s daughter.”

“I know you know.” Dokes shrugged dismissively. “What else would you be doing here?”

“And I also know where it leads,” I said, my tone growing harder and more frantic. “I know you all used to work in El Paso in the DEA. For Sabrina Stein. I know the Mexican government came up with the idea to let one cartel win, as their way to stop the violence. I know the U.S.’s role in that was to procure the arms. Lasser’s job. Just the Juarte cartel. That’s why you’re doing this to me. So that it doesn’t come out that the U.S. government was arming drug traffickers and took sides in the war between narco-terrorists. That it basically allied itself with the Juarte cartel.”

“All very interesting.” Dokes nodded. We left the paved road and began to bounce over the sand. “Too bad you won’t be able to tell anyone.”

“I’m not the only one who knows this. Others do too, and when I disappear, they’ll bring it all out. We have the proof.”

“You really think that’s what this is all about?” We started to climb. I saw a sign:
MEDANO
CREEK
. An arrow pointing. Another sign read:
DUNES
.

That was what we took.

“Trust me,” he said, “it’s a whole lot larger than that.”

“What could be larger than the U.S. government taking sides in the drug wars? Arming killers and drug cartels?” I racked my brain for what I had missed, for what was still out there.

Dokes merely laughed at me. “My career.”

“Your
career
? Are you insane? Your career is more important than the United States supplying millions of dollars in illegal arms to drug cartels?”

This time he wasn’t laughing. “It is to me.”

He drove down the long main roadway toward the shapeless, dark mountains. Thousands of acres of them. I remembered looking it up. Whatever he had in store for me, by morning there would be no trace. It was pitch dark. The winds were whipping. The moon shed some light on the crests of the dunes, rolling like huge black waves in a turbulent sea. Soon we began to bounce. I had to cling helplessly to the handle bar to keep from being thrown out of my seat. The vehicle climbed a steep, dark incline, Dokes downshifting and powering through. The headlights cut through the darkness, flashing a widening cone of light ahead. Then the car pitched forward, like we were surfing a giant wave, traversing the backside of the dune and heading out into virtually nowhere.

“
Please,
please,” I begged him, becoming really scared now. He just kept his gaze on the road, focused intently ahead.

“You don’t have to do this. You’re a government agent, for God’s sakes. Do you have kids? I do. Two. You know that. They don’t have a father now. Please, please, Dokes, don’t do this.” He ignored my pleas. “Say something to me, goddamn it. Dokes. Please . . .”

He didn’t answer, just continued to drive. As if I wasn’t even in the car. The moon lit a trail over the dunes, and it was like in
Lawrence of Arabia
, shimmering against the darkness. I knew precisely why he was taking me out there. By morning, the shifting sand would cover me completely. No one, no one would ever find me.

Not a grave. Not even a trace.

Nothing.

He drove about ten minutes longer, the wind now snapping at the windows, the temperature starting to drop. I figured he didn’t have a specific destination in mind. He was just heading as deep as he could into the void. It was November. Who would ever know?

My heart felt like it might crash through my chest.

Then suddenly he stopped. Completely terrifying me. We were on the upside of a massive dune. Rising above us in the night like that giant wave in
The Perfect Storm.

The one that drove them under.

“Please, no,” I begged him.

Dokes put the vehicle into park, leaving the lights on. “This is as far as we go.” He got out and came around to my side of the vehicle, but before he did, he opened the back and came out with a shovel. My heart started to beat wildly. He came around to my door and opened it, took out a key, and took off the cuffs that had bound me to the handle bar. “Let’s go.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” I murmured.

“You shouldn’t have been up there,” he said. “You crazy, stupid bitch. Don’t look at me. You got what you asked for. You should have just gotten on that train and gone home.”

For a moment I thought I saw the slightest weakening in him—realizing he was putting an end to the life of an innocent person—but it was quickly covered up by all he was bent on protecting: his stupid rank, his pension, his career. The counterfeit notion that he was preserving the security of the United States. It had all hardened around him in this fake, inpenetrable veneer. And it wasn’t going to crack. No matter what I said.

What gnawed at me most was that the bastard was going to win.

“Get out,” he said, grabbing me by the chain linking my cuffs and dragging me out of the vehicle. I fell into the sand. “Get up.”

I didn’t get up. I just looked up at him, tears forming in my eyes. “Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck you to hell. You’re nothing but a piece-of-shit murderer hiding behind his badge. You’re scum, Dokes. The slimiest form of it. You’re going to rot in hell, and for what? To protect your fucking pension. Even the cartels are higher than you. You’re zero, Dokes. Pretending you’re saving the country . . .”

He raised the shovel and I was sure he was about to bring it down on me and end it all right there.

I turned away.

“I said,
get up
!” he shouted at me. He hurled the shovel at me and took out a gun.

“Okay, okay,” I said, and pulled myself to my feet. I started to cry.

“Start walking.”

I started to walk, trudge really, stumbling into the massive dune in the dark, the only thing illuminating us the beam from the vehicle’s headlights.

I thought of Neil and Amy, that they’d never, ever find out a thing behind what had happened to me. I would just disappear. That they’d never know I wasn’t guilty of the things they said I was. They’d grow old despising me for murdering their father. And never fucking know.

I fell, tears and mucus covering my face. Dokes kicked me forward and ordered me to go on. I thought of Dave.
I love you, honey,
I said inwardly.
I’m so sorry for what happened. Maybe I’ll see you soon. Maybe . . .

Dokes pushed me from behind with his foot. I fell face first into the sand. I was miles from anywhere, in an unmarked grave that by morning would be invisible, swept over with sand. I would probably never be found.

Dokes stood over me. This was it. He brought out his gun and pulled back the action.

I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cower. I wanted to look him firmly in the eyes. I wanted to say
Fuck you
in the last, willful breath that I would breathe. I wanted to tell him I’d meet him in hell.

But I couldn’t. I didn’t do any of these things. I was scared. I was trembling in the cold, the wind blowing sand in my face. I looked at him, and all I could do was turn away. Away from the gun as he pointed it at me.
I love you, Dave . . .
I waited for what would happen.

I centered on something, high above the dunes, in the far-off sky. A star or a planet. A bright light flickering amid the stars. I wasn’t religious. But it brought me some peace. I thought maybe it was Lauritzia. Pretty, brave Lauritzia, who had come along with me to who knew what fate? And who was with me now. I actually felt sad.

Then I heard something . . . not the wail of the wind across the dunes, but a whirring. In the sky.
Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack . . .

The far-off star I was focused on was getting larger.

Not some glowing, spiritual light like they say happens when you die. But like a beam, coming toward us at a fast pace above the dunes. With an approaching hum. The winds picking up, sand whirling all over us.

I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or already dead.

An engine?

Dokes shielded his eyes and looked up.
“What the fuck?”

My heart began to rise.

And then the noise grew louder, until it became almost deafening in my ears. A roar. And the light glared in my eyes, blinding me, wind whipping the sand in all directions. I realized what it was, and stared up at it with my hand over my eyes.

I heard a voice over a speaker: “This is the Department of Homeland Security. Put the gun down and raise your hands in the air!” The copter hovering over us, like some angel God had sent.

Suddenly Dokes ran toward me, darting from the beam of light, his gun still trained on me. I could see in his eyes what he was calculating to do. “You may think you’re going to get away, but you’re not. You’re still the only one who knows.”

“There’s no point, Dokes. It’s over.”

The voice bellowed from the copter again, “Agent Dokes, put your gun down now!”

“
It’s not over!
I’ll claim it’s a matter of national security. They won’t want what happened to come out any more than I do. Say good-bye.” He shot out his arm to shoot. “I’m not done. You are.”

“No.” The noise of the copter was unbearable, and the whipping sand almost blinded me. “Please . . .”

I never heard the shot. I only saw the gun fly out of Dokes’s hand and a spatter of red explode on his shoulder. He staggered back and fell to his knees.

The copter started coming down.

Oh God. Oh God. Can I believe this?

I couldn’t help it—I started to cry. Jubilant tears at first, then they turned into deep, convulsive sobs. Maybe it was just everything I had been through pouring out of me. I realized I no longer had to be afraid. Or be brave. Or prove anything.

It was over.

I crawled up the sand and looked at Dokes, illuminated by the searchlight’s beam. His left hand covered his right shoulder. Somehow he still had that smug, unworried expression; he even smiled at me like everything was going to be okay. He would roll. There were people much higher than him who would end up taking the fall. He looked up at the copter as it began to come down.