by M. A. Lawson
Before she could free herself from the overturned car, someone rapped on the driver’s-side window. It was a young guy, maybe twenty, dressed in civilian clothes, but he had a short military-style haircut and Kay guessed he was a marine stationed at Pendleton.
He was screaming, “Are you okay? Are you okay?”
Kay nodded.
The guy tried to open her door, but it was stuck. A moment later, he came back with a tire iron and yelled, “Close your eyes.” He broke the window, cleared away the glass, reached inside, and cut Kay’s seat belt with a jackknife. When he leaned over her, she could smell the beer on his breath. “I got you,” he said as he pulled her from the vehicle, but she was thinking, I was almost killed by a fuckin’ drunken marine.
As the one marine was dragging Kay out of the car, his buddy—another young guy with a boot camp haircut—was on the other side of the car. He didn’t have to break the window to get at Tito; the passenger-side door opened and Tito fell out of the car. The marine looked down at Tito, then knelt down and touched his throat. “Oh, God,” he said. “Ken, I think this guy’s dead.”
Kay ran around to Tito’s side of the car and, like the marine, knelt down next to Tito and felt for a pulse in his throat. There was no pulse. Tito was dead.
But Tito couldn’t be dead.
“He’s alive,” Kay said. “He’s just unconscious. Is your car okay to drive?” she said to the marine named Ken.
“Yeah.”
“Then carry him over to your car and put him on the backseat.”
The other marine said, “I’m sorry, lady, but I don’t think he’s alive. And if he is alive, he shouldn’t be moved. His neck looks funny. I’m calling 911.”
The marine speaking was as drunk as his buddy, Ken, and he, too, smelled like the inside of a beer keg and his words were slurred. He reached for his cell phone, fumbled it, dropped it on the ground, and it went under Kay’s overturned car. While he was on the ground, trying to locate his phone in the dark, Kay ran to the driver’s side of her car and groped for her gun. She found it, and just as the marine started to punch numbers into his cell phone, she pointed the gun at him and said, “Give me the phone.”
“Jesus, lady, are you nuts?” the young marine said.
“Yeah, I am nuts. You have no idea what’s at stake here. So you and your buddy pick him up and put him in your car like I told you.” Then she added, “And be careful with him.”
The marines looked at each other, not sure what to do.
Kay said, “Guys, I’m not screwing around here. You don’t do what I tell you, I’ll shoot you both.”
The marines picked up Tito, and while they were carrying him over to Ken’s car, the other marine said, “I’m telling you, lady, this guy’s dead. I’ve seen a lot of dead guys.”
“He’s not dead!” Kay said. “And if he is, you and your buddy are guilty of vehicular homicide. You’re both shitfaced.”
After they put Tito down on the backseat of Ken’s car, Kay said, “Now give me your car keys.”
“Hey, fuck that,” Ken said—and Kay fired a round that went right between him and the other marine’s head.
“Jesus Christ!” Ken screamed.
“Give me the keys,” Kay said.
“Give her the damn keys, Ken,” the other marine said. “She’s crazy.”
Ken flipped her his keys, and Kay said, “Now your cell phones. Toss them in the car.”
Still aiming her gun at the marines, Kay moved around to the driver’s-side door. As she was moving, she said, “Think about this, Ken. If my friend dies, you go to jail for vehicular homicide like I said. So you could call the cops and tell them I stole your car, and if they catch me, I’ll tell them how your drunken ass ran me off the road and how I was just trying to get my friend to a hospital. Choice number two is, you go back to your barracks, sleep until the booze is out of your system, then call the cops and tell them someone stole your car. If you do it my way, I’ll ditch your car somewhere close by, you’ll get it back in a couple of days, and you won’t get in trouble for hurting a guy, maybe crippling him or killing him. Give it some thought.”
Kay knew the two marines were basically good guys, the type inclined to do the right thing even if it meant getting in trouble themselves. She just hoped they wouldn’t do the right thing this time.
Kay started Ken’s car, planning to drive away, then shut off the engine and got out. The two marines, now thirty yards down the road toward Pendleton, stopped and looked as she returned to the wreck. She reached inside the Camry and grabbed the Taser and the Walgreens bag containing the chemical she’d used on the marshals.
She didn’t have a clue what she was going to do next, but the chemical and the Taser were extra weapons. She returned to the marines’ car, started the engine, then waved at the guys as she drove past them; Ken gave her the finger. Kay couldn’t help but smile and think Semper Fi. She stepped on the gas and headed toward the I-5 freeway—away from the minivan waiting for her on North River Road.
Now what in the hell was she going to do?
How was she going to exchange a dead man for her daughter?
—
If she had followed Mora’s plan and not been in an accident, by now Kay and Tito should have reached the minivan. She wondered how long the minivan driver would wait before he called Mora to tell him that Kay had not shown up.
Mora wouldn’t be too worried—or at least not immediately—because he knew that as long as he had Jessica, Kay would contact him. No, Mora wasn’t the primary threat at this point. The threat was the law-enforcement agencies who would soon be hunting for her, and who might prevent her from freeing her daughter.
As she drove, Kay tried to figure out how much time she had before the cops began chasing her. The accident had used up twenty minutes; the marshals should be unconscious for another hour and a half. It would take the marines at least an hour to walk back to Pendleton; as drunk as they were, she didn’t think they’d run. Hopefully, they’d take Kay’s suggestion, go to their barracks, and report Ken’s car stolen in the morning and say nothing about Kay and Tito. But she couldn’t count on that. If they reported the accident as soon as they reached the base, the highway patrol would start looking for Ken’s car and a woman who had fled the scene of an accident within the hour. The worst scenario would be if the marines found a pay phone before they reached the base and started making calls.
So. She had to assume that in less than sixty minutes, every person with a badge in Southern California was going to be on her tail—which meant that she had less than an hour to figure out a way to evade her pursuers.
Then there was the larger problem: Tito was dead, and when Mora discovered this, her daughter would die.
—
Kay exited I-5 at the town of Carlsbad and pulled off onto a quiet side street to think. She needed a plan. As she stepped out of the car, she glanced at Tito’s body lying on the backseat. You useless son of a bitch.
The first thing she had to do was get a new car. She couldn’t keep using Ken’s car, because at some point it would be reported stolen. She might be able to steal a car, but only if someone had left the keys in it; one thing the DEA had not taught her was how to hot-wire a car, and she didn’t have time to wander around trying to find an unlocked car with the keys conveniently dangling from the ignition. Then she came up with an easier way to steal a car.
Stealing a car, however, wasn’t her biggest problem.
How was she going to get Jessica back now that Tito was dead? And even if she could come up with a plan, how could she give herself enough time to execute the plan? It wouldn’t be long before the minivan driver called Mora and told him that Kay hadn’t arrived with Tito—and when that happened, Mora was going to know that something had gone wrong.
She rested her butt against the hood of Ken’s car, closed her eyes, and though
t—and came up with a plan, or if not a plan, half a plan. Half a plan was the best she could do for the moment. To give herself the time she needed to execute her half-assed plan, she was going to call Raphael Mora and tell him the truth.
Well, almost the truth.
—
Kay’s next stop was at a twenty-four-hour supermarket in Encinitas. Tito was still lying on the backseat, but if anybody walking by saw him, they would most likely think he was just sleeping or a drunk who’d passed out. She ran into the store, to the toothpaste aisle, and found the thickest dental floss they carried. She would have preferred clear monofilament fishing line, but she didn’t have time to drive around and find a place that sold fishing equipment at one in the morning.
Back in the car, she drove as fast as she could to Del Mar—meaning five miles over the speed limit. If a cop stopped her, she was screwed. As she was driving, her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and didn’t recognize the number, but she figured it was Mora calling. She let the call go to voice mail.
Kay pulled over at an unlighted spot behind a building that looked like a warehouse. She dragged Tito out of the backseat and put him in the front passenger seat, sitting up. It wasn’t easy moving his deadweight, and she was sweating by the time she was done. She put the seat belt across Tito’s chest to hold him in a sitting position and turned on the dome light in the car.
She turned Tito’s head so it was facing toward the driver’s seat and then noticed that his eyes were open. His eyes made him look dead. She pushed down on his eyelids and just prayed they’d stay down. Next, she tied the dental floss to his left wrist, looping the floss over the rearview mirror. The floss was pale green, but you could see it in the light provided by the dome light. That wasn’t good. She took her cell phone, put it in video mode, and framed the picture. Okay. If she held the phone just right, the dental floss couldn’t be seen clearly. She should be able to pull it off.
She took a breath and called Mora.
Mora answered immediately, saying: “What’s going on, Agent Hamilton? Why aren’t you where you’re supposed to be? Why didn’t you meet up with the transport vehicle?”
“We’ve got a major problem,” Kay said. “I got Tito out of Pendleton without a hitch, just like he told you when he called. Then, a couple minutes later, we got in a wreck with two marines who were driving back to Pendleton. My car—”
“Agent Hamilton, you do not want to play games with me. I wasn’t bluffing about what would happen to your daughter if you—”
“Listen to me!” Kay screamed. “I’m not lying. I’m not playing games. You can verify everything I’m trying to tell you.” When Mora didn’t interrupt, Kay continued. “Like I said, we got in a wreck. My car turned over in a ditch on North River Road about five miles from where I was supposed to meet the minivan. Tell the minivan driver to go look; he’ll see it. Anyway, I had the marines put Tito in their car and I took their car, but—”
“What do you mean, you had the marines put him in the car?”
“I’m getting to that. Quit interrupting me. I had the marines put him in their car because Tito was hurt in the accident. The idiot wasn’t wearing his seat belt. His right shoulder is dislocated for sure, and he’s got a concussion, a bad one. He really smacked his head, and I need to get him to a doctor.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t think you would. I’m going to take a video with my cell phone. I’ll send it to you in one minute.”
Kay put her cell phone in video mode, then she panned Tito’s corpse sitting in the seat next to her. As she videoed, she started talking. “You can see him, Mora, he’s just sitting here. Tito, say something. Tell Mora you’re hurt. Tito! Tito! Say something!”
Kay gave a low groan, hoping Mora would think the sound came from Tito, then pulled on the dental floss and dead Tito slowly raised his left hand. Kay immediately stopped recording and sent the video to Mora’s phone, waited thirty seconds, then called him back.
“You can verify the car wreck,” Kay said again, “and you can see that he’s hurt. But pretty soon the marine is going to report that I stole his car, so I need to get a clean car.”
“You don’t need another car. I’ll call the transport driver and have him meet you. Give me your location.”
“No! I’m not going to give your guy a chance to kill me and take Tito. What I’m going to do is take Tito to a doctor right away so he doesn’t die on me, and then I’ll get a clean car.”
“You can’t take him to a hospital,” Mora said.
“I know that. I’m taking him to a doc I know.”
“I’ll give you the name of a doctor we use, one you can trust not to call the authorities.”
“No. I’m taking him to my doc, not yours. If I take him to yours, you’ll just send in a bunch of your goons to take him from me. I don’t trust you, Mora. We’re going to do this my way.”
“I won’t—”
“I’m not going to debate this with you. I know a doctor, a good one, and he’s close to my current location. He got his ass in trouble selling OxyContin to addicts a couple years ago, and I did him a favor so he wouldn’t lose his license. When Tito’s stable, we’ll make the exchange.”
“How? How will we make the exchange?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think about that right now. You figure something out. But things have changed. By the time I get Tito to the doctor, the marshals at Pendleton are going to be conscious. Not long after that, every cop in California is going to be looking for me, and they’ll definitely be checking the border crossings. In other words, it’s not going to be as simple as me just driving Tito across the border anymore. So you figure something out, genius. You come up with a way to make the exchange in California or Arizona. And it has to be like you said before: I have to be able to confirm that my daughter’s free before I give you Tito.”
Mora didn’t say anything for a long time, then he said, “I think you’re lying to me, Agent Hamilton. Maybe I’ll have a dozen of my men rape your daughter to give her a taste of her future.”
“You do anything to my daughter—anything—and I swear I’ll cut the balls off this piece of shit sitting next to me. So you’ll get him back, but he won’t be happy about his condition.”
Again Mora went silent. “I want you to call me every hour.”
“I’ll call you when I’m ready to call you. By the way, I’m also getting rid of my cell phone. I’ll get a clean one from the doctor. If I don’t ditch this phone, the marshals will be able to track me. Now, I’ll talk to you later. I’ve got to get Tito to the doctor before he goes into a coma or something.”
Kay knew that Mora didn’t necessarily believe everything she’d told him—but he had to act like he did. He had no choice.
—
The next thing Kay needed to do was dump her cell phone and the marines’ cell phones. She dropped the marines’ phones into a curbside waste container, but she placed hers on a bus stop bench. She was hoping someone would pick up the phone and then start moving around Del Mar—and the marshals would waste some time tracking that person. She hoped.
It was now time to go get her new car, after which she’d put Tito’s body someplace where it wouldn’t be found for a couple days. She looked at her watch. The marshals at Pendleton would be regaining consciousness very soon. She was running out of time. She wanted to be across the border by five a.m.
34
A ringing cell phone lying on the coffee table next to his Heckler & Koch .45 woke Marshal Kevin Walker a little after two a.m. For the second night in a row, he’d passed out on the couch and never made it to bed. And for the second night in a row, he considered putting the .45 in his mouth and pulling the trigger. His head ached, his mouth was dry, and his back hurt from lying on the couch.
He knew he had to stop drinking. Either that or swallow the gun. He should g
o to his boss, tell him he was a drunk, and ask for time to go into rehab. Or maybe just resign and go into rehab. Or maybe just resign and forget rehab. Whatever he did, he couldn’t continue doing what he was doing. He was either going to end up as a bum in a gutter, or worse yet, do something stupid that could end up killing more people who worked for him.
The heavy drinking really started after the fifth funeral. He’d made it through the first four about as well as anyone could, telling the survivors how sorry he was, how they’d get the animals responsible, handing the folded-up flag to the widows, their small hands trembling as they took it. But at the fifth funeral . . .
Walker barely knew the guy they were burying. He’d just been transferred out from Kansas City. He was young, in his twenties, and had a wife and twin daughters, beautiful little blond girls, only three years old. The little girls didn’t know what was going on, just that there were a lot of people around and their mother was crying, but one of them saw Walker looking at her and she gave him a shy smile and a little wave. It was the smile that did it. Something shattered inside him.
He’d go to work during the day and do his job, but at night he’d come home and start sipping whiskey. It was like there was a video loop playing in his head. He’d sit there, seeing everything he’d done the day of the massacre, thinking he should have done this, he should have done that . . . He just couldn’t stop thinking about it. And he could see, as clear as the day it happened, the burned-out SUV that contained four of his men. He could still smell their flesh burning.
The damn cell phone kept ringing. He finally answered it on the sixth ring, just before it went to voice mail. “Walker,” he croaked.
“Sir, this is Lincoln, up here at Pendleton.”
Walker didn’t really know Lincoln either; he was one of the new guys he’d been given to replace the guys he’d lost. The guys he’d killed.
“Yeah, Lincoln, what’s going on?”
Lincoln told him: Two DEA agents, Hamilton and Kirk, came to Pendleton about midnight with orders to interview Tito Olivera about some ongoing DEA operation. The next thing Lincoln and his partner knew, they were waking up two hours later.