by M. A. Lawson
Kay didn’t follow Jessica out to sea. She was going to continue to distract the sniper to protect Jessica, and instead of swimming away from the beach, she swam parallel to it and kept her head above water. She zigzagged as best she could, but she knew the shooter was good and if he took enough shots at her, he was going to kill her. And her wonderful daughter was probably going to drown.
Then Kay heard the sound of a heavy-caliber machine gun firing—and the sound was coming from behind her. Oh, God help us. Mora must have sent some of his people to the exchange point by boat, and now she and Jessica would be dodging bullets coming from two directions. But when Kay turned to see who was firing, she saw the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen: a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. It was moving toward the beach at about forty knots, and the man on the bow of the cutter wasn’t firing his machine gun at her—he was firing at the sniper. That’s what Jessica had been trying to tell her, that she’d seen the Coast Guard cutter.
Kevin Walker had come through after all.
—
Bullets hit the ground in front of the sniper, and he dropped his rifle and scrambled as fast as he could over to a backhoe that was parked about ten feet away. As he was crawling, he heard Perez cry out in pain. Once he was safely hidden behind the backhoe, he turned to look at Perez. He’d been hit in the stomach and the sniper could see his intestines. Perez was going to die.
The sniper began crawling toward the highway, keeping the backhoe between him and the machine gunner. He heard Perez call to him, but he ignored him. As he crawled he realized his bosses were all dead or dying: Caesar Olivera, Mora, and Perez. Oh, well. He’d find employment with some other organization. A man with his talents was always in demand. He would live and maybe one day have a chance to fulfill his dream and shoot someone who really mattered, not some little girl and her mother.
48
As the machine gunner continued to fire, the crew of the Coast Guard cutter pulled Kay and Jessica out of the water. The cutter then made a wide turn and headed west—and north—back toward the United States.
The machine gunner, a kid from Iowa who had never seen an ocean until two years before, saw a cigarette boat moving toward the cutter at about fifty knots. Two of the men in the cigarette boat were armed with what looked like AK-47s.
The kid from Iowa fired a short burst over the cigarette boat, deliberately aiming high—and laughed when the boat made a turn so tight it almost capsized as it headed back to wherever it had come from.
—
A white-haired chief, a lifer in his fifties, led Kay and Jessica to the galley and gave them blankets to throw around their shoulders and cups of hot coffee. Kay asked if Kevin Walker was on board, but instead of answering her question, the chief just laughed and said, “The lieutenant will be down in a minute to talk to you.”
“Are you okay, Jessica?” Kay asked. The girl’s hair was plastered to her scalp, her lips were blue, and her teeth were chattering from the cold water. Her current physical condition wasn’t what worried Kay, however.
“Yeah, I guess,” Jessica said.
“Did they hurt you? Did they . . . did they do anything to you?”
“No, they didn’t do anything. I’m fine. Really.” Jessica decided she wouldn’t tell Kay how Perez had slapped her; Kay might decide to go back to Mexico and shoot him. “But why’d they kidnap me?”
Before Kay could answer, a woman wearing a blue Coast Guard jumpsuit came into the galley. The woman was slim, had a narrow face and short dark hair. She looked bright, competent—and tough.
“Agent Hamilton,” she said, “I’m Lieutenant Janet Stevenson, and I’m . . .”
“Thank you for saving our lives, Lieutenant,” Kay said.
“Yeah, well, I just fired a machine gun into Mexico and I’m fairly certain I’ve committed an act of war.”
“Those men belonged to a drug cartel,” Kay said.
“I’ll be sure to mention that at my court-martial.”
“I’m sorry,” Kay said, “I didn’t know Marshal Walker was going to involve the Coast Guard.”
Kay had asked Walker to get a boat and head toward Rosarito Beach. She assumed he’d borrow some civilian’s boat, one belonging to a friend or someone who worked for the Marshals Service. Kay had told him that Roman Quinterez was going to bring her and Jessica out of Mexico, and all Walker had to do was meet them off the Mexican coast, escort Kay back to the United States to face the music, and take Jessica into protective custody.
If Roman hadn’t decided to kill Caesar Olivera, everything would have worked out just the way she planned, Roman would still be alive, and Kay and her daughter would have escaped—except Kay and Jessica would have been on the run from Caesar Olivera for the rest of their lives. Yes, Roman did the right thing, even though what he did put Jessica in danger. Kay owed him so much for everything—and now would never be able to repay him.
“Why did you help Walker, Lieutenant?” Kay asked.
“If I had known I was going to have to drive my boat onto a Mexican beach, I wouldn’t have.”
Kay wondered if Walker had some sort of personal relationship with the lieutenant and that’s why she helped him. She was a good-looking woman, and Walker was—or used to be—a desirable man. Most likely, though, Walker had simply told her that she’d be helping the marshals with a conventional rescue mission in international waters. But when Roman’s boat was disabled and the lieutenant saw people being shot, she was forced to take action. Whatever the case, Kay was grateful to her and sorry about the trouble she was in now.
“Is Walker here?” Kay asked.
“Yeah, he’s in a bunk up forward. He was drunk when he came on board, and he started puking the minute we left the pier. Now, I’m not going to put cuffs on you, but you’re under arrest for helping Tito Olivera escape.”
Jessica jumped up and said, “What!”
“It’s okay, Jessica,” Kay said. “She’s only doing what she has to do, and she’s right.”
“I’ve already radioed San Diego that you’re on board. Someone will be meeting us when we dock. FBI or U.S. Marshals, I imagine, but I don’t know who has jurisdiction over you.”
“What will happen to Jessica?”
“I don’t know, and she’s not my problem. She’s not under arrest, so you can probably call a friend to take care of her.”
Kay didn’t have any friends to call—well, maybe Maddox—but there was no point in bringing that up.
“Can you tell me where Tito Olivera is?” the lieutenant asked. “The guys in San Diego want to know.”
“Yeah,” Kay said. “He’s dead. His body is in a storage locker in La Mesa.”
“Jesus, Kay,” Jessica muttered.
“Give me the address of the storage place,” the lieutenant said, “and I’ll radio that information to San Diego. Did you kill him?”
Before Kay could answer, the lieutenant said, “Wait! You don’t have to answer that. You have the right to an attorney.”
Before the lieutenant could complete the Miranda warning, Kay told the lieutenant where Tito’s corpse was hidden. As soon as she left, Jessica said, “Kay, tell me what’s going on. Why are you being arrested?”
Kay told her the whole story.
When she finished, Jessica said, “I don’t know what to say, Kay. I mean, I can’t believe you did all this for me.”
Now, that pissed Kay off. “What the hell did you think I was going to do? You’re my daughter, for Christ’s sake. Did you think I was going to let those guys kill you?”
Before Jessica could respond, Kevin Walker lurched into the galley. He looked awful. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was as pale as a sheet.
“I guess you made it,” he said to Kay. “I was sort of out of it when all the shooting started.”
“Thanks, Kevin. I owe you b
ig-time.”
Walker started to say something, then he clamped his hand over his mouth, turned, and ran out of the galley. Kay wondered if anyone had ever died from seasickness.
“Do you think they’ll actually send you to jail?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t know,” Kay said. “I do know my career with the DEA is over.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. Maybe I’ll become a stay-at-home mom after I get out of jail.” Then she started laughing, and Jessica joined in, and they couldn’t seem to stop.
49
Kay and Jessica disembarked the Coast Guard cutter in San Diego to find Jim Davis standing tall on the pier. With his white hair and white mustache, he looked like somebody’s grandfather—somebody’s very pissed-off grandfather.
“If you’re here to put cuffs on me, Jim,” Kay said, “I want my daughter—”
“Shut up, Hamilton. I don’t want to hear a word from you. The marshals are going to escort you and your daughter to your home so you can pack some clothes, then you’ll be taken to a hotel here in town and the marshals will provide protection until we can assess the threat against you. This afternoon, someone from the U.S. Attorney’s Office will be over to take a statement from you, and tomorrow you’ll be taken to a meeting to discuss this whole mess.”
“A meeting? So I’m not going to be arrested?”
Davis ignored the question. “Give me your gun and your badge and your passport.”
“My passport? You think I’m a flight risk?”
“Hamilton, give me your gun, your badge, and your passport.”
“I lost the gun in Mexico,” Kay said. “It’s in fifty feet of water off Rosarito Beach.” She pulled her badge and her passport out of the back pocket of her jeans and handed them to Davis.
“There’s something else, Hamilton. María Delgato, her mother, her brother, Figgins, and Patterson were slaughtered in Neah Bay. They’re all dead.”
“Oh, God,” Kay said. Now she felt like throwing up.
“Did you tell Olivera’s people where María was being kept?” Davis asked.
“No!” Kay said. “I would never do that. You know I wouldn’t.”
Davis looked at her for a long time, then said, “Yeah, I didn’t think so. But somehow Olivera found out where they were staying.”
Kay remembered how nervous Figgins had sounded the last two times she spoke with him and wondered if he’d made a mistake or withheld something from her. Whatever the case, she felt just sick about him, his partner, and the Delgatos having been killed. Her only satisfaction was knowing the people responsible were also dead.
“So what’s going to happen to me, Jim?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Davis said. Then he paused and added, “You should have called me before you decided to bust Tito out of jail, Kay.”
“Oh, yeah? What would you have done?”
“I don’t know, but—”
“Well, I know. You would have called a dozen people, then a big meeting would have been held with a lot of bureaucrats, and they would have decided that the United States government doesn’t negotiate with drug cartels. Then my daughter would have died.”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Hamilton. Just go with the marshals.”
Kay still thought Jim Davis was a pretty good guy.
—
The marshals took Kay and Jessica to an Embassy Suites in La Jolla. She’d been expecting some fleabag motel. After they showered, they ordered an expensive dinner from room service and celebrated that they were still alive. If she hadn’t been with her daughter, Kay would have downed half a dozen of those little bottles in the minibar.
“I like your hair, by the way,” Jessica said.
“I can’t get used to myself as a redhead,” Kay said, “but I like the style. If I don’t go to jail, I’ll get the dye taken out and go back to my own color, but maybe I’ll wear it this way for a while.”
“You really think you’ll go to jail?” Jessica had asked this before, and Kay imagined the girl was not only concerned for her but also concerned that she’d be on her own again.
“I don’t know. There’s a rule they teach you when you work for the government. It says: It’s better to ask for permission first than have to beg for forgiveness later. I didn’t ask permission. If things had gone wrong, Tito could have gotten away.” She didn’t bother to add: And you would have been killed. “Then there’s the small problem that I knocked out two federal marshals, helped kill a couple Mexican citizens, and—”
“They were drug dealers.”
“—and, thanks to me, the U.S. Coast Guard invaded Mexico. So, will I go to jail? Maybe. Will I get fired? No doubt about it.”
That afternoon, a wooden-faced lawyer from the U.S. Attorney’s Office showed up with a tape recorder. He read Kay her Miranda rights, then just sat there as Kay told him everything she did after Jessica was kidnapped. Kay thought about lying about whose idea it was to build the explosive collar that killed Caesar Olivera—she thought about blaming that on Roman—but she didn’t.
The lawyer turned off the recorder when Kay was finished and said, “You might want to hire your own attorney.”
—
Jim Davis called Kay the next morning and told her the meeting had been postponed for a day. Apparently, the big dogs were still arguing over what to do with her. The marshals wouldn’t let Kay and Jessica leave their hotel room, so they spent the day watching pay-per-view movies on TV that cost about fifteen bucks a pop.
At one point Jessica looked over at Kay, and feeling eyes on her, Kay said, “What?”
“I still can’t believe what you did for me.”
“Does this mean you’re going to start calling me Mom now?” Kay said.
Jessica looked at her for a moment, then said, “Nah, I don’t think so.”
They both started laughing again, but when they stopped, Jessica grew serious and said, “Why did you decide to give me up for adoption?”
Kay nodded her head. “Yeah, let’s talk about that. And about what I did in Miami.”
50
The meeting to determine Kay’s fate was being held in the Federal Building on Front Street and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, a man named Callahan, was personally chairing the session. With Callahan was Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Meyer, Kay’s old lover, and Kay wasn’t sure why he was there. Maybe he was responsible for prosecuting some of the crimes she’d committed.
Also attending was Kay’s boss, Jim Davis; Assistant U.S. Attorney Carol Maddox, the lawyer who would have prosecuted Tito if Tito had lived; U.S. Marshal Harlan Declan, the man who had replaced Kevin Walker after Walker was fired; a gray-haired lady from the State Department who wasn’t introduced by name and who was wearing a blue-green pantsuit that might have been borrowed from Hillary Clinton’s closet; and a dork with a bow tie who was responsible for the U.S. Attorney’s PR—in other words, the guy they stuck behind the podium to deliver carefully drafted obfuscations.
There was one other person there who Kay hadn’t expected but was delighted to see: Barb Reynolds, her friend and mentor, and the one person in the DEA who had always looked out for her back in Washington.
Kay was pretty sure, however, that not even Barb could save her.
Kay sat down at the end of the long conference table. Barb winked at her—which Kay took as a good sign—and when she looked at Robert Meyer, he managed a small smile, which disappeared when his boss started talking.
Callahan, the U.S. Attorney, was a florid-faced, balding man who reminded Kay of a TV actor whose name she couldn’t remember. He began the meeting by saying: “Agent Hamilton, you’re in a lot of trouble.”
No shit, Kay almost said, but didn’t. Instead she said, “Then maybe I should have a lawyer here.” But sh
e already knew that she didn’t need a lawyer.
“I suggest that you just sit there and be quiet and not interrupt when I’m talking,” Callahan said. “Right now you’re facing federal prosecution for helping Tito Olivera escape, and two counts of reckless endangerment for exposing two U.S. marshals to a chemical agent that could have killed them. In addition to these federal charges, the State of California can convict you for leaving the scene of the accident that killed Tito Olivera and for double counts of grand-theft auto.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Kay said.
“What did you say?” Callahan shouted, half rising from his chair, his red face becoming even redder. Kay hoped the guy didn’t have a stroke.
“I said bullshit. You’re not going to prosecute me for anything. I’m a mother who saved her daughter from a Mexican drug cartel. You couldn’t find a jury in this country who’d convict me.” Looking at Carol Maddox, Kay said, “What do they call it when the jury says to hell with the law and lets the defendant go?”
“Jury nullification,” Maddox said. Maddox seemed amused by the whole proceeding—and before the meeting started, she was the only one who had asked Kay how her daughter was doing. Kay figured she’d gone a couple of steps up the motherhood ladder in Maddox’s eyes. Maybe not Mother of the Year material, but at least now she was part of the sisterhood.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Kay said. “Jury nullification. And if you think I won’t talk to the media, you’re crazy. I’m the movie of the week. I’ll get an agent and I’ll go on talk shows and tell the whole world how I saved my daughter and how Caesar Olivera was killed. I know you don’t want that to happen, so why are we really here?”
Kay noticed that Barb Reynolds was struggling not to smile, but then Barb said, “Settle down, Kay. Mr. Callahan wasn’t threatening you, he was just explaining what the government could do if it chose to.”
The hell it wasn’t a threat.
“So, like I said, what are we all doing here?”
