by Lisa Ladew
They set out before the sun slid behind the horizon, walking down the other side of the ridge line. Sara kept a brisk pace, and about a mile into it she turned back to her story.
“From what I’ve told you do you have a guess what Thorpe’s game is?” she asked him.
Jerry grunted affirmative. He adjusted his pack straps and the hated cot he was dragging and said, “He’s trafficking the guns and drugs you recover and stealing the money, right?”
Sara nodded, a new light in her eyes. “Yes. That’s right.” She smiled at Jerry, the first real smile he’d gotten since he woke up and it made his heart glad to see it.
“It’s not my first rodeo Shweetheart,” he drawled in a bad imitation of country music singers everywhere. That got him another genuine smile from Sara and his heart rejoiced.
“My investigations didn’t show a whole lot at first, but over another year’s time I was able to build a case against him that should have gotten him thrown in jail for a long time. I discovered that what he was actually doing was sending huge amounts of illegal guns into America and making a fortune selling them on the streets. He had at least one partner too, probably more. The one I know of for sure is a U.S. Senator.”
Adrenaline surged through Jerry’s veins. He’d heard all of this before! He racked his brain for the Senator who had been the main focus of Craig and Hawk’s gun trafficking investigations. “Do you mean Senator Oberlin?” he asked excitedly.
Sara looked at him strangely. “No. I mean Senator Carruthers. Claymont Carruthers. He is the senator in charge of the DCIA and Thorpe’s only boss.”
Jerry whistled, a low sound in the cooling night air. “Are you sure Oberlin couldn’t have been involved? My FBI friends, Craig and Hawk, just put together a huge case against him for gun trafficking into the U.S.”
Sara stayed silent for a moment. “He could have been. I had always hoped that Carruthers was working alone, at least within the Senate. Doesn’t it seem like one criminal senator is too many?”
Jerry nodded. It didn’t look good for their country at all. What was Lord Acton’s saying? Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. Or was it that the already corrupt were the only ones attracted to the power? Jerry didn’t know, and he was sure smarter men than him had pondered it. Besides, he didn’t want to save the world. At this point, he would have been happy to just save himself and Sara. But apparently there were at least two very powerful and very bad men between him and that goal.
Sara’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Once I was absolutely sure what he was doing, I started working on a plan to have Thorpe and Carruthers caught, investigated, and sentenced. Since a U.S. Senator was involved, I knew I only had 3 options. I had to go to either the press, the president, or someone else in the Senate with as much power as Carruthers. I knew that once I started to approach people, my life and my job would be forfeit. Even if I mailed packages and even if I did it by proxy - through another country - Thorpe would quickly figure out it was me and within a few hours a super spy would be in my country, looking to silence me permanently.
I had already amassed over two million U.S. dollars from taking half of the money recovered on my missions. I had toyed with the idea of giving it all to the foundation but as I worked on my plan I knew I needed to keep it for myself. I contacted several different identity dealers and had 21 identities created with bank accounts, graduation certificates, credit cards, social security numbers, job histories, passports, and driver’s licenses. I flew to 7 major cities in the U.S. and funded and set up 7 of these identities in safe deposit boxes. The rest I destroyed. They were decoys, just in case I was discovered.
I contacted one of the leaders of the groups of women continuing my work and told her I was leaving the country. I asked her what her plans for the future were and she surprised me. She had banded together with several other community leaders and several other groups like hers and they were on a mission to eliminate child trafficking in first their areas, then the entire country. They had tried to work with the police but were turned away consistently, so they continued to work as outlaws. She didn’t mind. Mexico has a long history of successful outlaws. I asked her what they would do if I left and never came back. Would it change anything? She said no, it would change nothing. They would keep up the work. They would even double their efforts. It was necessary work. I agreed. I gave her money. We set up some code names and words and websites and I told her when she needed more money to contact me.”
Suddenly, Sara stopped talking and walking and cocked her head at the sky. Jerry stopped too, heart beating too fast. “I thought I heard a helicopter,” she said. She waited a moment longer. “Nothing.” They started walking again, picking their way over rocks and desert scrub.
“I told Thorpe I was going on vacation again and I left Mexico for what I thought would possibly be the last time. Although it wasn’t my country, it had been a good home to me. I was sad, but not overly so. I thought there was a good chance my days as a spy were over too. No matter how I approached it, I thought the revelations I was going to divulge to America would shake it to its core, and I didn’t think the DCIA would survive the tremors. Americans don’t like secret agencies, no matter what their missions consist of.
I flew to Atlanta, Georgia, assumed one of my new identities, and started calling reporters. I finally found one who would talk to me. At the same time I sent out packets to several member of congress and the president’s office. The day I was to meet the reporter, she didn’t show. I scouted out the restaurant I told her to meet me at and she never went inside. I didn’t go inside either. I was already feeling nervous. I tried to call her - no answer. The next morning I saw her picture on the news. She’d been shot in a mugging on the way to our appointment. I drove out of Georgia that day to New York City. I tried Fox News. When I found a reporter who would talk to me, I refused to tell him what it was about. When he insisted all I said was ‘government corruption’ but I cautioned him not to tell anyone. I told him to come in an hour. He called and rescheduled for two hours later. I got suspicious. I watched the restaurant we were going to meet at from a hotel across the street. I watched it swarm with DCIA agents. I wondered what story they had been given. I also wondered if they knew who they were looking for. Had I been found out already? Probably not. But maybe my packets had been intercepted and read somehow? Maybe Thorpe was suspicious it was me? I abandoned New York and holed up for a while, trying to think of what to do next. Obviously Thorpe and Carruthers were well protected and this was going to be harder than I thought. I wracked my brain for contacts - someone who could get me an audience with the president. I couldn’t think of anyone. And I didn’t know enough about the Senators to know who could be trusted.
I tried to send my report to Wikileaks. It never went up. I started a twitter account and sat in a hotel room tweeting the whole sordid mess from beginning to end in 140 characters with hashtags like #UScorruption . I had 217 tweets out and was finally starting to get some attention when Twitter was hit by a denial of service attack. The site went down completely. I got suspicious. Then I started wondering if they could find me through the hotel’s ISP. I left the hotel and watched it from a few blocks away. When the police showed up with a swat team I drove out of New York.
I tried a dozen more times in a dozen different ways. I never got anywhere. To this day I don’t know what happened to the reports I sent to the president and congress. I can only assume that no one ever saw them. They were intercepted or just thrown away as lunacy.”
Sara put her head down, as if this part of the story pained her.
“I gave up, honestly. I just drove. The date that I was supposed to return to work came and went. I could almost feel Thorpe turning his attention towards me. I didn’t dare try again. I considered just going to another country: France maybe, or Sweden. Somewhere I could just live in peace.
But I knew I couldn’t do that. I went to Westwood Ha
rbor and assumed my identity there. This was a year before I met you. I wasn’t working yet. I watched Thorpe through his reports to the agency, which I hacked into. He had ceased to do much of anything since his pet agent had gone rogue. Or at least not anything that he was reporting. One day I decided to look myself up. I was reported as a traitor to the country. I was wanted for treason; for selling government secrets to anyone who would buy them, and for murder. Thorpe had doctored the reports from the men that he had instructed me to kill, and a new report said that I had reported killing them in self-defense, but that his investigations determined I had gone rogue long before I actually left, and deciding to kill these men was just the start of it. I watched for him to splash my case across the major new media, but that didn’t happen.
I started plotting just what I was going to do. How was I going to end this? For the last year I have been watching Thorpe and Carruthers, waiting for them to start up their activities again. As far as I can tell, they’ve -”
Sara stopped again, scanning the night sky, her face set in worry. “I know I heard that.” Sara sprinted toward the trees on the right. “Run Jerry, they’re coming!” Jerry could hear it too. The far off sound of a helicopter, coming in fast.
Chapter 30
Frozen, Jerry could only stare after her in shock. Then his self-preservation kicked in and he followed. His bad leg, already aching from the miles and miles of walking, started screaming in protest. He ignored it.
Sara ran with her head down, one arm pumping, the cot carried in her other hand. She was quick. Every 100 feet or so she slowed to a jog and scanned the sky. When they were still a half quarter from the trees she skidded to a stop, Jerry close behind her. “We’re not going to make it. We have to bed down right here.” She threw her cot on the ground and grabbed Jerry’s from his hands, placing it next to hers. “Go gather all the grassy scrub plants you can find!” she told him, un-shouldering her pack and pawing through it. He ran to do what she said, ripping scrub bushes out of the ground. Panic threatened to overtake him. This was it. He knew they had guns. He wondered if Sara would say fighting would be better, or just giving up. He would follow her lead. He ripped as many plants out of the ground as he could carry and ran them back to Sara.
She had both cots covered with aluminum foil, and was heaving dirt and more plants on top of the aluminum foil and piling it up around the sides. “Get under,” she hissed at him, tearing the plants from his hands. “It has to be good enough.” He could hear the heavy rotors beating the air. He got down and crawled under the cots, curling himself up as small as possible to make room for Sara.
She came in on all fours, pushing his pack out of the way. She covered the hole she had come in from with his plants and laid still for just a second. Then she started going through her pack again. Jerry could hear the helicopter coming closer.
Sara pressed a gun into his hand. “If they land, we shoot. They will have bigger guns and they will probably be shooting to kill, but so will we.”
Jerry held his breath as the helicopter seemed to fly directly over the top of them. He couldn’t see it, but his ears told him where it was.
It flew on.
Jerry tried to relax and breathe again. “They’ll make a few more passes,” Sara said.
“Won’t the aluminum foil make it easier for them to see us?” Jerry whispered. He couldn’t help it. He knew no one in the helicopter could hear him, but talking normally still seemed like a risk.
“They aren’t searching for us with a spotlight. They are searching for us with FLIR. It’s a small Forward Looking Infrared Radar camera mounted under the helicopter. It’s almost foolproof in the desert. It picks up body heat. At night, this desert cools to about 40 or 50 degrees in the summer, but our bodies are still 98 degrees. Unless we found a hole in the ground or a cave to hide in, they know they can spot us, even in a grove of trees. But as long as we don’t touch the aluminum foil, our heat won’t transfer to it, and all they will see is the heat signature of it, which will look just like the ground to them.”
Suddenly Jerry was sorry for every nasty thought he’d had about the cot he had been dragging.
He reached out in the dark and grasped Sara’s hand. She laced her fingers through his, warm and comforting.
Jerry listened to the helicopter pass overhead three more times, holding his breath each time it came close. Finally, it seemed to move on. “Will they be back tonight?” he asked Sara.
“Maybe. It depends on whether they think we are here or not. I’m betting they think we are heading North, but are just being thorough by checking this area.”
“Oh.” Jerry wished this made him feel better.
After a few more minutes Sara crawled out from under their shelter. “Let’s have a drink and then we’ll pack up and move on.”
Jerry nodded and dragged their packs out.
***
30 minutes later, they walked on at Sara’s swift pace. She didn’t say anything. Her silence stretched across Jerry’s brain, making it hard for him to think. Finally, he had to ask. “So what’s the plan now?”
She looked at him, her eyes unreadable. “Which plan?”
“You know, the plan to get Thorpe and Carruthers arrested and their plots exposed.”
She gave him a flat look. “I’ve given up on that.”
“Given up? You can’t give up!”
“It’s impossible.” She shook her head. “What’s that saying? You can’t fight city hall? Well you really can’t fight a corrupt city hall.”
“Craig and Hawk could help us.”
She gave him another steely glance. “Or we could get them killed.”
“Yeah, you said that already, but Sara, we have to do something! What are we going to do when we get to Vegas?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly.
Jerry suddenly realized something that made his mouth go dry. “Wait, if you’ve given up, what does that mean for me? I can’t go home, can I?”
Sara didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
Jerry raised his head to the sky. “I don’t have 5 identities waiting for me. I don’t have a million dollars stashed away.”
“We could run, Jerry.” Sara grasped his hand as they walked. Squeezed it. “We could go somewhere - anywhere. Spain, Norway, Switzerland. We could just … disappear.”
Jerry studied the darkness over him. The stars, a million miles away, so high above this mess he was neck-deep in. Never seeing his friends or family again. Never even talking to them. Emma. His sister. Craig. Quitting his job. Leaving the United States forever. No.
“No.”
Sara dropped his hand. “I don’t know then.”
They walked in silence for hours. The helicopter did not return.
As day broke over the horizon, Sara found them another place to bed down, to hide from the sun, to rest. They dug the holes for water in silence. Cautiously, she laid out the day’s sleep schedule, knowing he finally hated her, now that he had fully grasped what she had gotten him into.
So when he asked if she would lay down with him for a few minutes as he fell asleep, she thought she must have misheard him. She tilted her head to the side and looked at him, wide-eyed.
“I just want to hold your hand,” he said, smiling at her with that grin that stole her breath.
“OK,” Sara stammered.
She held his hand for an hour, until he shifted position and pulled it away. Then she got up and prowled the ridge line from their new vantage point, her mind spinning uselessly in circles.
Chapter 31
Emma stepped off the plane runway into the Westwood Harbor airport and headed towards baggage claim, lost in her own thoughts, her strawberry-blonde hair uncharacteristically curly from the Hawaiian humidity. Beside her, Craig pressed a button on his cell phone. “We’re here,” he said into it. He listened for a moment. “OK, see you then.”
Emma jerked out of her head and looked at him. “See who when?”
“Hawk
and Vivian are coming home too. They’ll be here this afternoon.”
Emma moaned. “Oh no. I’m so sorry I ruined our honeymoon, Craig. I just know something happened to Jerry. He never would ignore my calls. He never would go without answering his phone for almost 3 full days.”
Craig pulled her into a one-armed hug as they walked. “I know he wouldn’t. I wanted to come home too. Besides, we have a lifetime of second and third and fourth honeymoons. Or we could just go on this one again once we find Jerry.” He smiled at her and kissed her cheek.
“But now I’ve ruined Vivian and Hawk’s honeymoon too. My sister will never forgive me,” Emma almost whispered, her eyes frantically searching for their baggage carousel.
Craig grinned. “You’re right, Vivian will never forgive you.” Emma looked at him sharply. He held up a hand, laughter in his eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive! You didn’t tell them to come home. Hawk said she wanted to, and he agreed. They can’t enjoy themselves either knowing Jerry is missing.”
“I know, I just feel so bad.”
“Don’t feel bad. We were right to come back here. I’ve got a bad feeling about Jerry disappearing too.”
“You don’t think he’s …” Emma trailed off.
“No, I don’t. But maybe he needs some help. It does sound like that woman he brought to the wedding was involved in something weird.”
Craig’s phone buzzed. He looked down at it. All his messages were flooding in from the 5 hour plane ride. He checked their carousel. Not moving yet. He hoped they would hurry. He felt as anxious to start looking for Jerry as Emma did.
“Lionel called.”
“Oh, maybe he’s got news on my brother.”
