No Return

“Good.”

“How’s it going there?”

“I’m in,” Lars said. “Just searching for the files on the flight.”

Wes continued to scan the desert, hearing only the clacking of a keyboard through the phone’s speaker. He became so lost in the darkness that it was several seconds before he registered that the typing had stopped.

“Lars?”

“Give me a minute.” Lars’s voice sounded hushed and anxious.

Wes checked each road again. There was a faint light off in the distance through the window on the right, but as far as he could tell, it wasn’t in-line with the road.

“Did you find something or not?” he asked.

“I can work faster if you don’t ask questions,” Lars told him.

More typing.

Wes looked out the windows again. The light he’d seen before was gone.

“The roads are still empty,” he reported.

A grunted acknowledgment, then nothing but keystrokes for nearly ten minutes.

Suddenly Lars said, “Got it!”

“What did you find?”

“Proof. I’m printing it out. Get back into the truck now!”

Wes reached forward to cut the intercom connection, but held up as he noticed movement out the window to his left. There was something on the road in the distance. It was almost as dark as the landscape, but it was moving fast.

“Lars, we have company!”

“I thought you said the roads were empty.”

“They’re coming in with their lights off. There are at least two of them. West road. I’d give us three minutes, tops.”

“Get your ass down here! Now!”

52

Wesflew along the second-floor breezeway and dove through the door into the stairwell. Taking the steps three at a time, he hit the first-floor door twenty seconds after he’d hung up the phone.

“Lars?” he called out.

The five office doors of the first floor were all closed. He moved quickly from one to another, trying each. The fourth knob he turned was unlocked.

“Lars,” he said, sticking his head inside. “They’ll be here any second. We need to go!”

His friend was across the room, standing next to a printer.

“Two more sheets,” he said. “Go wait in the truck.”

“Just leave them.”

“I can’t. This is the only thing that will keep us alive.”

“What the hell’s going on?”

Lars didn’t answer, so Wes pushed out of the doorway and raced to the end of the building. He peeked around the edge. From this angle he could see where the road that ran between the buildings intersected with the road the cars were on. As of yet, it was clear.

Hearing a door close behind him, he looked back. Lars was heading toward the truck, several sheets of paper in his hand.

Wes checked the intersection again. It was no longer empty.

“We’re not going to make it,” he yelled, running to join his friend. “They’ll be here in just a couple of seconds.”

“Here.” Lars shoved the papers into Wes’s hand. “Hide somewhere. I’ll distract them.”

“What?”

“You said yourself we’re not going to make it. If they find you here, we both go to jail. If it’s just me, I’ll get a hand slap. When we’re all gone, walk back, and find a way off the base without being seen. Can you do that?”

Wes was scared to death, but he nodded.

They could now hear engines approaching.

Wes started to turn away, but Lars grabbed him. “Wait.” He snatched back one of the papers, pulled out a pen, and scribbled on the back of the sheet. “That’s the key,” he said, shoving it at Wes. “Now go! Hide!”

Wes turned and ran straight into the desert.

About one hundred feet out, he found a shallow ravine cut by an ancient flash flood. It was just deep enough for him to lie flat below the prevailing ground level. Once prone, he tilted his head up and looked back at the buildings.

Lars was in the truck and had started it up. But he only went a dozen feet before a dark sedan darted out from around the corner of the building and skidded to a stop half a car length in front of him.

Brake lights flashed, and the truck slammed to a stop. Just then a second car swung around the back of the building and cut off any potential retreat. Two more cars soon joined the first near the front, then, almost as one, doors flew open, and over a dozen armed men rushed out, their weapons pointed directly at the truck.

This is not going to be just a slap on the hand.

Wes heard sharp, raised voices, but couldn’t make out the words. Then the driver’s door of the truck opened, and Lars stepped out, his arms above his head.

“On your knees!” a single voice barked, just loud enough for Wes to hear.

Lars immediately complied.

The men surrounding him began closing in, their weapons still drawn. When they were within ten feet, two of the men behind Lars rushed forward. They grabbed Lars’s arms and shoved them down. One of the men pulled something out of a pocket and secured Lars’s hands, then they yanked him to his feet.

More voices as most of the guns were lowered. One man walked up until he was standing just a few feet in front of Lars. Even at this distance, Wes recognized Lieutenant Jenks.

After about a minute, Jenks looked back at the other men. As one, the remaining guns that had not been stowed were lowered. More talk, and then Lars was led to one of the sedans. Jenks opened the rear door and guided Lars’s head as he climbed in, then Jenks got in after him. Two others got into the front. The doors were barely shut when the sedan made a quick U-turn and sped off the way it had come.

Wes watched the twelve remaining men, willing them to get into their cars and leave, too. But instead, they gathered together. When they finally split, two went over to Lars’s truck and began searching through the cab. Six others headed to the first-floor breezeway of the building, disappearing from view. And while the final four men got into a sedan, instead of leaving, they began driving between the buildings, stopping every once in a while to shine a handheld searchlight at one of the structures.

After several minutes the car disappeared behind the buildings on the far side of the road. Just when Wes was beginning to think maybe it had driven off, headlights swept out from around the end of the building to Wes’s left.

The sedan now drove slowly along the edge of the raw desert, the spotlight beam pointing into the wilderness as the vehicle drew closer and closer to Wes’s position.

Run! The word reverberated in his head. But he held his position, knowing that if he did take off, there was no question he’d be spotted.

The sound of an engine roaring to life caused Wes to look back toward the buildings. It was Lars’s truck. The headlights were on, and the two men who had been searching it were sitting inside. Someone trotted out of the building and over to the truck, the headlight temporarily lighting him up.

Wasserman.

He leaned in the open window for several seconds, then turned back to the building as the truck drove