No Return

49

After working his way through the Desert Rose, Wes jogged across the back edge of the large, empty field that separated the motel from the hospital, and into the hospital parking lot. Two minutes later he found Lars sitting in his pickup near the entrance to the emergency room.

Wes opened the passenger door and climbed inside.

Lars was gripping the steering wheel, looking left and right, tense and agitated.

“What the hell’s going on?” Wes asked.

Lars snapped his head around. “Did anyone follow you?”

“No. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You’re sure no one saw you leave?”

Wes shrugged, surprised by Lars’s seeming paranoia. “I don’t think so. I snuck out through the back.”

Lars seemed to relax just a fraction. “Okay. Good. We might be all right.”

“Lars, what’s going on?”

Lars put a hand over his face and sighed. “We need to go now.”

“Go where?”

Lars looked at the seat behind them. “It’ll be tight, but you’ll fit behind the seat.”

Wes glanced at the gap between the top of the bench seat and the back wall of the cab. It couldn’t have been more than five inches. “You want me to get back there? Why?”

“Because I can’t get to where we need to go if anyone knows you’re with me.”

“And where’s that?”

Lars looked at Wes. “You’ll know soon enough.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about.”

There was uncertainty in Lars’s eyes. “Things …” He looked away for a moment, then back. “Just get behind the seat, okay? You’ll understand everything soon enough.”

Wes put a hand on the door handle, thinking this might have been a mistake.

“Please,” Lars said. “We trusted each other once; I’m asking you to trust me again.”

Wes hesitated. They had trusted each other once. But in the past few days, his old friend hadn’t given him much reason to do it again. Still, there was something in Lars’s eyes, in his voice, something that hinted at the Lars Wes used to know. “The minute I think you’re trying to pull something, I’m out of here.”

“Deal.”

They got out of the truck and flipped the back of the bench seat forward. Though the space at the bottom was wider than at the top, it was still going to be a tight squeeze.

“I can move it up a few inches, but that’s about it,” Lars said.

“I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

Once Wes was lying down, Lars disappeared for a moment, then returned with an old, dark blue blanket from the bed of the truck.

“Just in case,” he said as he spread it over Wes. “You okay?”

Wes pushed the blanket off his face so he could breathe. “Never been better.”

Lars swung the seat back up. For half a second Wes thought it was going to smash him in the nose, but it stopped a half inch short.

There was absolutely no padding in the space behind the seat. Just metal sticking out at odd angles, digging deep into his back. And dirt, there was plenty of that, too.

“I’m going to move the bench up,” Lars said once he’d climbed behind the wheel.

A clunk, then a metallic groan as the bench slid forward, giving Wes about two more inches.

“That’s as far as I can go.”

It wasn’t much, but it felt luxurious compared to what it had been like moments before. That was until they started driving, and Wes wished Lars had left it where it was. The extra space allowed Wes to bang against the objects sticking out of the wall instead of being snug up against them.

At first he tracked their location by the turns they were taking, but he quickly got lost. So he closed his eyes and tried to think of something other than bruised kidneys. A few minutes later the truck rolled to a stop.

“Keep still and don’t say a word,” Lars whispered.

Wes heard the window crank down, then felt the hint of fresh air.

“Lieutenant Commander,” a voice said from outside. “I have a message for you. Hold on just a moment.”

They were on the base, Wes realized.

A moment later the voice of the guard was back. “Here you are, sir.”

The crinkle of paper was followed by a “Thank you” from Lars.

As the truck started moving, Wes could hear the paper crinkle again, then Lars swore. “He knows something’s up.”

“Who does?”

“Just stay quiet. And … and if we get pulled over, make sure you’re covered and keep still. I’m already in enough trouble as it is. If they find you, it’ll be a lot worse. For both of us.”

Wes knew that was true. He’d been snuck onto a military base. God knew how many federal laws that violated. Just getting caught would probably get them both at least a couple of years in prison.

Lars turned the truck every minute or so. It got to the point where it seemed to Wes like at times they were actually going in circles. Then suddenly they sped up, made two quick turns, and jammed to a stop. Lars switched the engine off and doused the headlights.

There was a thump as Lars lay across the bench seat. Wes wanted to ask what was going on, but was smart enough to remain silent.

They stayed like that for nearly five minutes before Lars finally sat back up. Nothing for a moment, then the engine came back to life and the truck started moving again.

More minutes passed, then Lars said, “You were right before. I was supposed to meet him that night.”

Wes wasn’t following. Meet who? What night? The night of the crash?

Then it hit him. Not the night of the crash. Another night, years ago.

His father’s day planner. Pudge at 8:30.

“I chickened out. He wanted my help, but I chickened out.”

“Help with what?” Wes asked.

Lars grunted, but said nothing more.

Wes asked him again, but didn’t even get a grunt this time.

Several minutes later the truck pulled to a stop and Lars cut the engine.

“Stay here,” he whispered.

The door opened, he got out, then it closed again.

Silence, both inside and outside the cab. A quiet Sunday night.

Questions about his father, and Lars, and why they would have met, swam through Wes’s mind.

Lars came back after ten minutes. Without a word, he unlatched the seat and tilted it forward, then he pulled the blanket off.

“Here,” he said, extending his free hand to Wes.

With Lars’s help, Wes struggled up, then out, every muscle screaming in pain.

They were parked next to a rectangular, two-story, flat-top building. It was white, and had outside breeze-ways on both the first and second levels. Wes turned and saw two more identical buildings to the side. All unmistakably military.

He did a full three-sixty. There were three more buildings on the other side of a narrow road, but otherwise, there was only desert in all directions.

“Come on,” Lars said.

“Wait. What were you supposed to help my father with?”

“Not now. We don’t have time.”

“Lars, we’re talking about my dad!”

“Later.”

“Do you know why he went up Nine Mile Canyon?”

But Lars was already jogging along the side of the building, toward a door at the top of a short set of concrete steps. Wes hesitated a moment, then followed. As soon as he reached the steps, Lars opened the metal door, revealing a stairwell inside. Without a word, they went up.

The stairs ended at the second-floor landing. From there, Lars led Wes onto the breezeway. Along the wall were five metal doors. Lars hurried down to the one at the far end, his footsteps echoing softly through the empty night, and pulled the door open. He motioned for Wes to enter.

The room was about fifteen feet wide by twenty long. There were three desks, each covered with books and papers. The wall on the left was a heavily used, floor-to-ceiling dry-erase board, while the wall on the right and the one directly across from the door sported waist-high, wood-framed windows.

Lars moved quickly to the corner where the two windowed walls met. He looked out one, then the other for several seconds before turning back to Wes. “You can see both routes from here.”

He pointed through the window to the left, indicating where the road that ran between the buildings met with another that curved out into the darkness of the desert. Through the window to the right, he pointed at a narrower road that passed between two of the buildings on the other side of the main road and then led out into a different part of the wilderness.

“If you see anything, anything, you tell me right away.”

“Hold on,” Wes said. “What, exactly, are we doing here?”

Lars took a moment, then said, “You were right about Adair.”

“Hold on. You’re telling me for sure the pilot wasn’t Adair?”

Lars nodded. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

“You’ve known this all along?”

“No,” Lars said quickly. “That part of things I didn’t know until this evening.”

“What things?”

“Look, the reason we came out here is because there’s information that will prove you were right, but I can’t just access it anywhere. I called in a favor and got the password to a secure computer terminal downstairs that does have access to the info. It’s not a perfect solution. But they won’t realize it right away, and our location out here will hopefully buy us a little extra time for me to find everything. What I need you to do is watch the roads and warn me if anyone’s coming.” He turned the phone on the closest desk to face them. “There’s an internal intercom in this building. When I get downstairs, I’ll call you on this line.” He pointed at an unlit indicator on the phone. “Just press that and we’ll be connected. All right?”

Wes looked at his friend for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. All right.”