No Return Read online

  Praise for Brett Battles

  And the Jonathan Quinn series

  THE CLEANER

  “Brett Battles makes a grand entrance into the thriller scene with this unputdownable spy novel. The Cleaner has it all: exotic locales, James Bondian derring-do, and ingenious plot twists that will keep you sweating all the way till the end.”

  —TESS GERRITSEN, New York Times bestselling author

  “This book is a pure delight. Protagonist Jonathan Quinn is a unique and welcome addition to the world of crime fiction. The Cleaner is a brilliant and heart-pounding thriller; I’m on the edge of my seat, awaiting future installments of Quinn’s adventures.”

  —JEFFERY DEAVER, New York Times bestselling author

  “An emotionally tense tale of espionage and betrayal from a new author who writes with assurance and sophistication, The Cleaner’s teeth-gritting action is an auspicious debut for the talented Brett Battles.”

  —PERRI O’SHAUGHNESSY,

  New York Times bestselling author

  “Hypnotically gripping, The Cleaner moves with the speed of an assassin’s unerring bullet. From Colorado to Vietnam and Germany, this ripping-good read will leave anyone who loves suspense not only happily satisfied but eager for Battles’s next thriller.”

  —GAYLE LYNDS, New York Times bestselling author

  “Brett Battles is a compelling new voice in the thriller genre. The Cleaner combines the best elements of Lee Child, John le Carré and Robert Ludlum. Deftly plotted, perfectly paced and expertly executed … Jonathan Quinn is a character worth rooting for. Battles is a master storyteller. Find a comfortable chair and plan to stay up late. You won’t be able to put it down. A stellar debut.”

  —SHELDON SIEGEL, New York Times bestselling author

  “The Cleaner is a terrific novel. It features a compelling plot, thrilling action and an unforgettable cast of characters. This debut novel is a powerful read.”

  —ROBERT K. TANENBAUM,

  New York Times bestselling author

  “Globetrotting suspense, intriguing characters and a plot that ricochets like a bullet, Battles’s first novel is definitely in the running for best thriller debut of the year.”

  —Daily Record (UK)

  “A page-turner … Quinn [is] a compelling protagonist.… Admirers of quality espionage fiction can look forward to a new series worth following.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Battles hits for extra bases in his first novel. The Cleaner is a tightly written page-turner, filled with tradecraft and offering as much action as a James Bond film … a wild ride.”

  —Booklist

  SHADOW OF BETRAYAL

  “Battles has established himself as one of today’s best thriller writers, right up there with Lee Child, Barry Eisler and Thomas Perry. His writing is smooth and perfectly paced. His ‘cleaner’ is eminently believable as well as a hero worth caring about. I look forward to many more years of Brett Battles’s books on my nightstand.”

  —Deadly Pleasures

  “As in [Battles’s] previous two Jonathan Quinn novels, the action is heart-pounding, gripping, and always engaging.”

  —Tucson Citizen

  “An absolute pleasure to read. Battles has a true gift for writing thrillers and this book should put him on everyone’s list.… From page one this is a perfect summer read.”

  —Crimespree magazine

  “[A] plot so downright clever it’s a wonder somebody hasn’t tried something similar in real life. Start Shadow of Betrayal early in the day, or be prepared for a later-than-usual bedtime.”

  —BookPage

  “Battles keeps the reader hooked to the last sentence. Shadow of Betrayal is a wonderful thriller.”

  —www.iloveamystery.com

  THE DECEIVED

  “Breakneck pacing, colorful locales, and dizzying plot twists make the Quinn series a welcome addition to the political thriller genre.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Plenty of globetrotting nonstop action, plot twists, tight writing, whiz-bang high-tech devices … Derring-do will always find an audience.”

  —Booklist

  “A successful sequel to The Cleaner. Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Complex and believable.”

  —Deadly Pleasures

  No Return is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Dell eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2012 by Brett Battles

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DELL is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53219-0

  Cover design: Jerry Todd

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  A DISTANT BOOM ECHOED FAINTLY ACROSS THE hills.

  Wes Stewart peered at the sky. He recognized the sound, but it was one he hadn’t heard in years.

  “What the hell was that?” Danny DeLeon asked. He was holding
the second camera.

  “Sonic boom.”

  Danny still looked confused, so Wes added, “You know, when a jet breaks the sound barrier.”

  “Really?”

  Wes squinted toward the western horizon, then raised his arm and pointed. “There. See him?”

  Danny shaded his eyes. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Flying south, just a little bit above the mountains.” Wes’s finger tracked the movement of the jet.

  “No, I don’t.… Wait. It’s like a white dot.”

  Wes nodded. “Yep.”

  “That thing’s moving fast.”

  “It’s a fighter jet, Danny. That’s what they do.”

  “Damn.”

  While it was novel to Danny, for Wes it was a reminder of a time when he would have barely noticed a sky full of jets.

  “You guys set?” Dione Li, their producer/director, asked from behind them. She was leading a group of three others over to the base of the rock formation. The look on her face was pure Dione: ten percent annoyed, fifteen percent pissed, and one hundred percent determined. “We got a lot to do today, and I don’t want to mess around.”

  “Same speech, different city,” Danny said through the side of his mouth.

  “I’m sweating,” Monroe Banks announced, more an accusation than a statement.

  “On it,” Anna Mendes called out. She whipped out a couple of Kleenex from the makeup utility belt around her waist and dabbed at a line of perspiration that had formed on Monroe’s forehead.

  “Is it going to be this hot every day?” Monroe whined as she fanned herself with her hand.

  Wes rolled his eyes. The last he’d checked, the temperature had been hovering around ninety-two degrees, not so bad for mid-day in the high Mojave Desert. Of course, that was because it was October—not August, or July, or September, or June, or even May, when it seldom dipped below one hundred while the sun was out.

  Donning her faux, producer-mode smile, Dione stepped over to the spot she’d picked out earlier, then turned back to the others. “So, Monroe, we’ll have you stand right here for the intro shot. Behind you we’ll see the empty desert, then, as you finish, look to your right and follow the rock up. Wes will mimic your movement with the camera. Danny, I want you to get a wide shot from down the slope. Try to get as many of the formations—”

  “Pinnacles,” Wes corrected her.

  “As many pinnacles,” Dione said, smirking, “as you can into the frame.”

  Danny gave her a nod. “Will do.” He shuffle-stepped down the small slope into position.

  Their location was the Trona Pinnacles, a group of tufa deposits that stretched in an east–west line across the dry bed of Searles Lake. It was a few hours north of Los Angeles, and twenty miles from Wes’s hometown of Ridgecrest, California. The Pinnacles had been formed by an ancient sea, and the best way Wes had ever heard them described was as a bunch of giant, caveless stalagmites.

  Alison Pringle, the tallest member of the crew, slipped behind Wes. “Where do you want me so I’m not in your way?” she asked.

  Wes pointed at a spot a few feet behind his position. “There should be good.”

  She touched his arm just below his shoulder. “Thanks.” She smiled, then moved off.

  While Monroe moved into position, Dione glanced at Alison. “Are we good with sound?”

  “Monroe, can you give me a level?” Alison wore a pair of headphones that allowed her to monitor both Monroe’s voice and any ambient noises the host’s mic might pick up.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  “We’re fine,” Alison said.

  “Four,” Monroe finished.

  Dione turned her attention to Wes. “Set?”

  Wes nodded.

  She leaned toward him, and in a low voice asked, “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You’re awfully quiet.”

  Wes frowned. “No I’m not.”

  “Whatever you want to think, but, yeah, you are.” She did a quick check of the rest of the crew, then said, “All right, Monroe. Whenever you’re ready.”

  Monroe closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them again, an entirely different person emerged. The less-than-pleasant Monroe the crew had been subjected to since they’d arrived in Ridgecrest the night before had been replaced by the bright, friendly version the 1.3 million viewers of Close to Home were used to seeing.

  “All right,” Dione said. “Here we go. And … Monroe.”

  Monroe gave it a beat, then, “A vast nothingness. Brown for as far as the eye can see. A wasteland. A place no one would willingly visit, right?” Another beat. “If you believed that, then you’d be missing out on some of the most interesting and beautiful parts of the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles. Hi, I’m Monroe Banks, and welcome to another episode of Close to—”

  “Hold on,” Alison called out.

  Dione groaned. “Seriously? She almost had it in one take.”

  Alison had a hand pressing one side of her headphones tight against her skull. “I’m picking up a hum.”

  “Electrical?” Wes asked.

  Alison shook her head. “Don’t think so.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Dione said.

  “It’s getting loud—”

  “I think I hear something,” Wes said. It wasn’t so much a hum as a rumbling whine.

  “I hear it, too,” Monroe said, cocking her head.

  A second later it was loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Dione frowned. “What the hell is—”

  “Oh, God!” Danny cried out from the bottom of the slope.

  He was staring off to the east.

  Whatever he’d seen was hidden from the others by the massive pinnacle at their side. Wes half ran, half slid down the slope toward his fellow cameraman.

  “Where are you going?” Dione shouted after him. “I want to get this shot off.”

  She hadn’t seen the look on Danny’s face. Wes had. Danny was terrified.

  As Wes skidded to a stop he turned his head to follow Danny’s gaze, but it took a moment for his mind to actually figure out what he was seeing.

  A military jet. A fighter.

  Only instead of being a white dot in the distance, this one was a mass of gray ripping through the sky no more than five hundred feet above the ground. And its trajectory was taking it lower, not higher.

  Wes’s first thought was that it was going to crash. His second was, It’s going to crash into us.

  “What?” Danny said, alarmed.

  Wes hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud.

  “Up the slope. Behind the rock,” he yelled.

  Not having to be told twice, Danny took off running for the questionable safety of the pinnacle.

  Wes scrambled to follow, but slipped on the loose dirt and fell to his knees. The ground began to shake as the roar of the aircraft intensified. He looked back quickly and saw there was no way he was going to make it to shelter in time.

  He was going to die.

  He started to turn away, but a flash of light from the back of the jet stopped him. For half a second it seemed as if nothing had changed, then the nose of the aircraft inched upward a few feet, and the jet veered to the left, away from the pinnacle.

  He saw me, Wes thought. He saw me and did something to miss me.

  But whatever the pilot had done was only enough to change his path, not his fate. Wes watched as the plane began dropping lower and lower—its new target the emptiness south of the crew’s position.

  Wes pushed himself up and began sprinting toward the crew’s vehicles. He’d only made it a dozen feet when—

  Whomp.

  He skidded to a stop, mesmerized as the plane plowed into the desert floor.

  He had expected the jet to flip and roll, breaking into a million pieces seconds after it smashed into the ground. Instead, the multimillion-dollar aircraft barreled through the earth, throwing up dirt and plants and rocks, but remaining i
ntact. Then, just before it stopped, it twisted sideways, enveloping itself in a cloud of dust.

  Wes jerked out of his trance and raced the rest of the way to the green Ford Escape he’d been in charge of driving out to the location that morning.

  As he started to drive off, he glanced back and saw some of the shoot crew running toward the other vehicle, a Toyota Highlander. Dione was in the lead and waving frantically for Wes to stop.

  But stopping wasn’t an option. He jammed the accelerator to the floor and sped into the open desert.

  WITH NO ROAD OR PATH TO FOLLOW, WES pushed the Escape faster than he should, bouncing over dirt and rocks and avoiding what vegetation he could. Soon he was surrounded by sagebrush set ablaze by the crash.

  Thump.

  Sparks flew out from the side of the car as he smashed over a clump of burning brush.

  Immediately he heard a rumble. The axle? Had he damaged it?

  Just then a fighter streaked across the sky, a mere hundred feet above his roof.

  Jerking back in surprise, Wes nearly swerved the truck into the gouge created by the crash. But he quickly regained control and shoved the accelerator back to the floor.

  It took him four and a half minutes to get from the pinnacles to the plane. Four and a half minutes that felt like a year.

  Slamming to a stop, he jumped out of the SUV and ran toward the aircraft. The fighter that had buzzed by moments before had been joined by another, both circling helplessly a few hundred feet above the wreck of their friend.

  The dust cloud from the crash was still dissipating as Wes weaved around the small pockets of fire where the groundcover was burning.

  The aircraft was pointed almost toward him, so he could see into the cockpit. The glass canopy was gone. He had no idea when that had happened, or where it was for that matter. It certainly had been in place when the plane had swept past him before it had hit the ground.

  Wes looked around anxiously, thinking that maybe the pilot had been able to eject. But then he spotted a person still in the cockpit, slumped to the side, unmoving.

  Unmoving didn’t mean dead, though.

  Wes ran around the plane looking for the easiest way up. But the brush next to the aircraft was more densely packed, pushed together by the crash, and all of it on fire. He continued searching until he spotted a narrow gap.

  I can make that, he thought.

  Somewhere behind him doors opened, then slammed shut.

  “Wes!” It was Dione. “Get back!”