Another pair of deputies walked up, guns drawn. Then another. The two groups faced each other, with Keller and Castle in the middle, standing over Walker’s bleeding body.
“There doesn’t have to be any more bloodshed,” Keller called. “Let’s all just stand down for a minute so we can talk this out. This guy needs medical attention, pronto.”
There was no answer, only the sound of the MRAP’s engine idling and the falling wail of a siren being turned off. Finally, Gillespie straightened up again. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll stand down. But you and those people have to as well.”
“Okay,” Castle said. He crouched down and put the M4 on the ground. The other deputies hesitated, then lowered their own weapons.
Keller glanced off to the side where Oscar was standing, with his arms around his sons. “Oscar,” he said. “Can you tell those folks to put the guns down?”
Oscar started to say something in Spanish, his voice raised, when the older of the two boys tore himself out of his grasp. “NO!” he shouted. He began running to where Keller and Castle stood over Walker. “NO!” he screamed again as he bent down to scoop the pistol from where it had landed when Walker was struck.
“Ruben!” Oscar shouted. He was running toward them, his arms held out toward his son. Ruben raised the gun as he ran.
“No, kid,” Keller shouted.
“He DIES!” Ruben screamed. “HE DIES!” He had almost reached them. Keller could see the tears running down his face. He looked up to see the deputies raising their weapons again. He leaped forward to grab up the boy in his arms. Ruben stopped and swung the pistol to face him. “He dies,” he sobbed. “He is a monster.”
“You get no argument from me, kid,” Keller said. “But don’t do it. You’re not a killer.”
Ruben began to advance again. “Don’t try to stop me.”
“Sorry,” Keller said. “I have to.” As he charged Ruben, the boy fired. Keller felt the round strike him like a hammer blow to his gut. The breath went out of him. He staggered, his knees turning to rubber beneath him, but he kept coming. Ruben raised the gun to fire again, but Keller was upon him. He wrapped the boy in his arms, pinning the gun against his own chest. He heard the deputies begin firing. No. No.
All other thought was slipping away from him. He used the last of his strength to spin around, putting his back between Ruben and the line of firing deputies. He felt another hammer blow to his back that knocked him forward. He fell, the boy beneath him, next to Walker’s body. He heard Ruben cry out as Keller landed on top of him. The pain was all consuming, overtaking everything, filling the entire world until there was nothing else left in Keller’s senses but agony. This time he welcomed the darkness as it took him all the way down.
HE FLOATED in an ocean of darkness, suspended between the surface and the abyss below. It was warm and comforting there, and calm. So calm. From time to time, he heard voices, muffled and sounding as if they were coming from far away. Once, he thought he heard someone calling his name. It was a female voice, one he felt he should know, but he couldn’t place a name. He struggled weakly, trying to push himself toward the voice, but the dark water felt as thick as glue around him and he soon gave up, sinking a little deeper into the darkness. It would be so easy to simply let go, to sink down into the yawning warm blackness beneath, to rest at long last. He’d fought for so long, so hard, and he was so tired. He knew that above him was light, but somehow he knew there was also cold, and pain. Consciousness left him, an obliteration deeper than any sleep.
He awoke to the sound of voices, again saying his name. The ocean was brighter now, but colder. He felt himself rising up, up, and then the pain hit him and he groaned aloud. The pain and the sound of his voice shocked him awake.
He was lying in a bed, looking up at the pitted rectangles of a drop ceiling. He turned his head slightly to one side. The movement caused a spike of agony like a red-hot iron to pulse through his head from one temple to another. Everything hurt. When he tried to speak, all that came out was a dry croak.
“Easy, hon,” a female voice said. “Take it slow.”
He wanted to turn his head toward the voice, but he flinched away from the idea of causing himself any more pain. Eventually, after what seemed like an hour, he screwed up his courage and turned his head. The pain was still there, but there was less of it this time. He saw a set of shiny metal bed rails. He shifted his gaze slightly to look up and saw a curly-haired young woman wearing wire-rimmed glasses and dressed in a light blue pair of scrubs standing next to the bed. She was smiling at him.
“Welcome back, Mr. Keller,” she said. “You gave everybody a heck of a scare for a while there.” She reached down and took his wrist gently in her hands, her fingers expertly finding the pulse there. She nodded, then put the stethoscope in her ear. “Need to listen to your heart now,” she said. She bent over and placed the stethoscope against his chest. She smelled wonderful, the clean scent of powder and skin bringing him the rest of the way back to awareness. She straightened up, still smiling. He wanted to take that smile home with him. He tried to say something, but his throat seemed to lock up.
“Don’t talk right away,” she said. “You were on a ventilator for a good long while. Your throat’s going to hurt.”
Swallowing proved she was right, but he needed to know. “Ruben,” he said.
Her brow furrowed. “Who?”
He took a breath to try again. That hurt, too. “Ruben. Boy. Okay?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know who you’re talking’ about, sweetie.”
He sighed and took another tack. “Angela?”
“Now that, I can help you with,” the nurse said. “She’s been here off and on the past week. I think she just went down to get a cup of…”
“JACK!” he heard Angela’s voice before he saw her. She almost knocked the nurse out of the way getting to the bedside. The nurse didn’t seem to mind.
“He just woke up,” she said. “Vitals are good. His throat’s sore, and he’s worn out, but he’s making good progress.”
Angela gripped the bedrails, her hands twisting on it as if she wanted to let go and embrace him but was afraid to. He didn’t think he’d survive a hug, but he lifted a hand toward her. She took it as if she was afraid it would break. He gave her hand a weak squeeze.
“Hey,” he croaked.
“Hey, yourself,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse said. “Doctor Kensington should be along to see you in a bit.”
“Jack,” Angela said when she’d left. She gripped his hand as if she never wanted to let go. “I thought you were going to die.”
“Ruben,” Keller said. “He okay?”
She nodded. “He’s fine. Oscar’s fine. Edgar’s fine. The boys are with me. But Oscar’s in custody. Along with the rest of the people from the camp.”
Keller shook his head. “Sorry.”
She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “It’s okay, Jack. The FBI’s trying to figure out what to do with them.”
“FBI?” Keller said. “How…”
“It’s kind of a long story,” she said. “And kind of weird, too. I met some very interesting people. I’ll tell you more when you’re feeling better.”
He nodded weakly. The fatigue was beginning to overwhelm him. “Okay,” he said. “Think…I’ll sleep now.”
“Okay,” she said, and smiled. “Rest. Get well. I’m glad you’re going to be okay.”
“Love you,” he said.
She squeezed his hand, fresh tears rolling down her face. “I love you, too,” she mouthed without saying the words.
He slept.
WHEN HE awoke, there were two people he didn’t know sitting by the bed. The male half of the duo was short, stocky, with dark hair beginning to go gray at the temples. His partner was a petite woman with a sharp, intelligent face and long jet-black hair pulled back in a ponytail that reached halfway down her back. They were
dressed in dark suits that were as identical as a man’s and a woman’s suit could be.
The man made the introductions. “Mr. Keller,” he said, “I’m Special Agent Tony Wolf, Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is my partner, Special Agent Leila Dushane.”
Keller cleared his throat. “Am I under arrest?” he said. His voice felt stronger.
Wolf shook his head. “No,” he said. “And there’s very little chance that you’re ever going to be.”
The woman spoke up. “You’ve impressed some people, Mr. Keller. People who are kind of hard to impress.”
“Glad to hear it,” Keller said.
“We’re here to interview you as a witness,” Wolf said, “not as a potential defendant.”
“Still,” Keller said. “I’d like to have my lawyer present.”
Wolf nodded. “Scott McCaskill, right? Fayetteville, North Carolina?”
Dushane chuckled at Keller’s expression. “We did some homework, Mr. Keller. We can fly him down here, if you like.”
“Let me get this straight,” Keller said. “You’re willing to fly my lawyer to…where the hell am I, anyway?”
“Charlotte,” Wolf said. “You were choppered up here from Hearken.”
“Let me put it this way, Mr. Keller,” Dushane said, “if you wanted us to interview you on a beach in the Caribbean, with your lawyer present and pretty girls bringing you drinks with little umbrellas in them between questions, I get the feeling that Agent Saxon would find a way to make that happen.”
“Who’s Agent Saxon?” Keller asked.
“She’s the one running this show,” Wolf said, “and she’s got some major juice from somewhere. When she says ‘jump,’ people go ‘how high?’”
“Including the guy who’s usually our boss,” Dushane said, “and he’s not usually one to jump any distance. At all.”
“So let us know, Mr. Keller,” Wolf said. “What’s it going to take?”
Keller looked back and forth between the two. Then he said, “Okay. But I’d like to know a few things, too.”
Wolf nodded. “I think I know what some of those may be.” He held up a hand and ticked off the points on his fingers as he spoke. “The man you know as Oscar Sanchez and his sons…”
“Wait a minute,” Keller said, “The ‘man I know as Oscar Sanchez?’ That’s not his real name?”
“No,” Wolf said. “His real name is Leonardo Santiago Rodriguez. Oscar Sanchez is the name on the papers he bought to get into the U.S.”
Keller shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Anyway,” Wolf went on, “he’s in ICE detention. We’re trying to make it as easy for him as we can, but he is illegal. The other prisoners at the Hearken camp are in custody as well. His sons are with his wife, Angela.” Wolf ticked off another finger. “Deputy Ray Castle’s been treated for his wounds and released. The guys from SLED—the South Carolina State police—were all over him for the killing of the Sheriff until Agent Saxon bigfooted them and got them to turn him loose, and his cousin with him. We’ve got agents all over that Sheriff’s department, and we’re turning up a gold mine of information about human trafficking, prostitution, drug-running into the States, you name it.”
“The late Sheriff Cosgrove,” Dushane said in a dry voice, “apparently thought that keeping meticulous records of all the nasty shit he was up to might be used as leverage against Walker someday.” She shook her head. “Dumb bastard. But then, judging from some of the videos he saved on his hard drive, he was definitely one to let the little head think for the big one.”
Wolf nodded. “Which brings us to Mr. Walker—also not his real name, incidentally—and his attempts to create a cracker Utopia in the South Carolina swamps. General Walker, the former Russell Samchalk, is currently in what is known as a ‘persistent vegetative state’ as a result of being hit by a large truck moving at high speed.”
“If he ever recovers,” Dushane said, “which is damned unlikely, he’ll join the rest of his peckerwood militia in a Federal penitentiary.”
“Does that answer your questions, Mr. Keller?” Wolf said.
“What about Auguste Mandujano?” Keller asked.
For the first time, Wolf looked troubled. “We don’t know anything about what’s going to happen to Mr. Mandujano.”
“You’re not going to just let him skate, are you?” Keller demanded. “He’s the one behind all of this.”
“We have reason to believe,” Wolf said, “that it was one of his lieutenants, a Mr. Zavalo, who was behind the slavery operation.”
“And Mr. Zavalo has mysteriously disappeared,” Dushane said. “Presumed dead.”
“Still,” Keller said, “it’s not like Mandujano has clean hands here.”
“When I said we don’t know what’s going to happen to him,” Wolf said, “I meant Agent Dushane and I.”
“We’re told by Agent Saxon that his fate is on a need to know basis,” Dushane said, “and we need not to know. Her words.”
“So,” Wolf said, “now that we’ve satisfied your curiosity, can you satisfy ours?”
“On one condition,” Keller said.
“I told you just giving him the ‘where are they now’ speech wouldn’t be enough,” Dushane said.
Wolf glared at her, then turned back to Keller. “What’s your request, Mr. Keller?”
“The prisoners,” he said. “The illegals. The ones you have in custody. Turn them loose. Let them stay here. Mr. Sanchez, or whatever his real name is, and the rest. They suffered to get here. Let them stay.”
Wolf shook his head. “Can’t do it.”
“You said I could ask for anything.”
“Even if we could waive all the requirements for citizenship,” Wolf said, “they say they don’t want to stay.”
Keller remembered his earlier conversation with Oscar. Look at this. Am I safe here? Is my family safe?
Dushane shook her head sadly. “They’ve asked ICE to expedite their deportation. Including Mr. Rodriguez.”
“His wife’s going with him,” Wolf said.
Keller went numb with shock. “What?”
Wolf nodded. “Yeah. That might take some doing. But she said she’s going with her husband, and his sons. Says she wants to help raise them.”
Dushane noticed the look on Keller’s face. “Are you okay, Mr. Keller?”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “Look, I’m worn out. I’ll answer your questions. But not now. Now I just want to rest.”
“We really need…” Wolf said.
Dushane interrupted him. “Boss,” she said in a quiet voice. Her eyes were still on Keller’s face. “We should come back another time.”
Wolf looked from her to Keller, then back again. “Yeah,” he said, and stood up. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Keller. Rest now.”
He didn’t answer as they left.
SHE SHOWED up on the second day he was awake, as he was finally able to sit up on the edge of the bed after several attempts, all of them urged along by a steady succession of nurses. The effort left him sweating and gasping for breath. He looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. She was leaning on her cane, studying his face. “Hey,” she said quietly.
“Well at least you came to say good-bye,” Keller said.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Jack, please. Don’t make this any harder.”
His short laugh sent jagged shards of pain through the muscles of his chest and back. It felt fitting. “Well,” he said, “the last thing I want to do is make this any harder on you.”
She opened her eyes. “I almost didn’t come. I even wrote a letter. I knew you’d be angry. I knew you’d be bitter. I knew you’d say things that hurt, because I know how much this hurts you, and I didn’t think I could stand it.”
He picked a towel off the bed beside him and wiped the sweat from his brow. “So why did you come?”
“Because you deserve better than to hear it from someone else. You deserve more than a letter. That would
make me a coward. I owe you at least the respect of saying what I have to say to your face.”
He tossed the towel on the bed. “What’s to say? I mean, I could have sworn you said you loved me. And I know I said it to you. And now, I guess…what? You changed your mind?”
She walked over and leaned on the back of the wooden chair that sat by the bed. “No,” she said. “No, I didn’t change my mind about loving you. I love you and I always will. But I made a promise. I made a promise to a good man. And he needs me.”
“I need you.” The words came out in a hoarse whisper before he could stop them.
“Maybe. But you need more than that. You need to run after people and kick doors in and take down the bad guys. You need to put yourself in the line of fire, like you did at that place in South Carolina. It’s in your blood. You don’t feel alive unless you’re doing that. And I can’t live like that, Jack. When they told me you’d been shot, they didn’t expect you to make it. And when I heard that, I died inside. Not a little. Everything inside me turned to ashes.”
“Does Oscar know that?” Keller said.
“No. He’s still detained. We see each other once a week and we talk through the glass. He knows how I feel about you. But he knows I love him, too. In a different way, but I love him. He says we can learn to be happy together. We can settle down, live a quiet life, raise his sons.”
“A quiet life,” Keller said, in the voice of someone putting a name to a paradise he’d never see.
“Yes. A quiet life.” She shook her head. “Jack, I can’t go through this again. And if I stay with you, if I let myself go and love you the way you deserve, I will. Maybe not soon, but sometime, you’ll find something else to chase, some bad guy that needs taking down and…” she gestured at the bed. “It’ll be this all over again. I can’t take it, Jack. I’m tough, I know I am, I’ve had to be, but I just…can’t.” She bowed her head. He tried to stand, to go to her, but his legs wouldn’t hold him up. She saw him almost go down and rushed to him. He put his arms around her and held onto her like a drowning man. Gently, she lowered him back to a sitting position on the bed.
Devils and Dust Page 24