Edge of the Heat 5 (24 page)

He shook his head, marveling at the amazing things Sara knew how to do. A spy. A secret government agent. He wasn’t surprised at that for a second. He was surprised at the life she’d been forced into so far though. Her mom had it right when she threw that Thorpe guy out of the house. If only her mom had lived. She never would have done that first mission at such a young age, and maybe things would be different for her right now.

Briefly, Jerry wondered if Thorpe had been a part of the death of Sara’s mother. He was sure Sara had considered it. Nothing got past her.

A stinging well of hate for Thorpe began to grow inside Jerry. Thorpe was just another Norman Foster, but on a much bigger scale. Dirty, evil, devoid of all human conscience. Jerry wondered what Sara’s plan was to expose him so she could be free.

In his mind, he saw exactly what Sara was afraid he would. He saw endless lazy Sunday afternoons where they didn’t leave bed until the sun was almost setting, where they snuggled on the couch and giggled at secret, lover’s jokes. He saw walks on the beach and shared meals. He saw smiles and laughter and holding hands and a good life. In his most guarded heart he wondered if Sara would want to have children. He saw babies with thick brown hair and deep brown or blue eyes who grew up knowing many languages but never having to kill anyone.

Jerry’s three hours passed in what seemed like an instant while his mind was far away. The sun rose above the cactus. Jerry watched Sara sleep and didn’t have the heart to wake her. She hadn’t moved an inch from her original position. Finally, after the sun was well past his marking point, and he felt his own body betraying him, pulling him down to sleep against his will, he touched her shoulder.

Her eyes opened immediately, with no sleepiness caught in them. Sara knew from the light and shadows that he had let her sleep longer than three hours. Probably more like 5. Probably enough for her for today. She smiled thinly at his tired face and sat up. “Get some sleep. We move on when you wake up.”

Jerry was too tired to argue. His sleep passed even more quickly than his time spent on lookout, and in what seemed like an instant Sara was shaking him. “Get up Jerry, it’s time to eat and move on. I want to go a minimum of 20 miles tonight.”

Jerry sat up and looked around. The sun was setting, an orange fireball to the West. The fiery light made Sara’s expression look fierce and untamed. He tried to catch her eye, but could tell something had changed since their stolen moments of passion.

He had loved her as best he could, but she had shut him out again.

S
ara had packed all of their gear while he slept. She had retrieved the water bottles and filled in the holes, scattering rocks over them so, at a glance, it didn’t look like they had been there. She had set out some canned food and some water for Jerry. When he saw it his stomach lurched hungrily. He was ravenous.

He ate, trying desperately to think of what to say or do to bring back the soft, vulnerable Sara. The one that had raked her fingernails up and down his back and called out his name in a way that set him on fire. In the end he kept quiet. Fear that she would overtly reject him burned him inside. He didn’t know if he could take it. So he filled his mouth with food and kept his thoughts to himself. He would wait and see.

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 Harbor 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.

F
rozen, 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.