Synopsis
New Mexico Deputy Sheriff Ray Dolezal is called to look at a body in the White Sands desert alongside a suitcase with $500,000 discovered by two tourists. A mortician is content to have the death remain a mystery, but Dolezal sees a chance to escape the boredom of being a family man and a law officer in a small town where not much seems to happen.
They track the victim, Spenser, and his last known residence to a local motel. During the autopsy they find a phone number written on paper inside the stomach. Dolezal calls the number, posing as Spenser, to set up a meeting. At the motel, two females attack him at gunpoint, grab the money and instruct him to meet Gorman Lennox at a restaurant.
Dolezal is intercepted by an FBI agent named Greg Meeker, who informs him that Bob Spenser was an FBI agent working undercover. Now that Dolezal has handed the money over to the bad guys, Meeker concludes he may as well continue to pose as Spenser in an effort to regain the money or help the FBI make a bust.
He meets Lennox and wealthy associate Lane Bodine and learns that the money is being used to buy illegal arms in an effort to fund left-wing freedom fighters that are apparently being slaughtered by right-wing militia somewhere in South America. However, the arms dealers want $250,000 more for the weapons. Meeker, not willing to cough up more money, pushes the responsibility of raising the additional quarter-million dollars on Dolezal. Dolezal ends up romancing his way into Lane's life so that she will attract rich humanitarian donors to donate the needed money.
The plot thickens as two FBI men from internal affairs look for Dolezal, thinking he killed Spenser and took the money. Lane knows that Dolezal is not really Spenser, but she agrees to keep the secret and raise the money because she finds Dolezal an attractive, honest alternative to the violent Lennox.
Dolezal suspects that something else is going on and when he attends a rodeo with Lane and meets Noreen, who had an affair with the real Spenser. It turns out Spenser was working with someone else from the FBI who likely killed him. Noreen runs away in fear and Dolezal is grabbed by the internal affairs agents. Noreen ends up shot to death in her car in a parking lot.
They are run off the road by Lennox. He kidnaps the FBI internal affairs men and takes Dolezal out into the desert to drop another bombshell—he knows who Dolezal really is, because Lennox is secretly a CIA agent who wants to ensure that the arms deal goes through in order to ensure the survival of the military-industrial complex through warfare.
Lennox kills the two agents. He informs Dolezal that he has also kidnapped Lane. Dolezal must find where she hid the $250,000 and then meet Lennox on a deserted military base in the White Sands desert.
Dolezal uncovers the money in a briefcase buried in Lane's horse's stall. He beats up an FBI agent whom Meeker had tailing him. He then kidnaps Meeker and takes him out to the White Sands dunes, handcuffing him to a pipe inside an abandoned building.
Dolezal explains that Lennox is CIA, that the FBI will be arriving soon and that Meeker can either face punishment for killing Spenser and stealing the money or try to flee. Dolezal leaves a gun behind, so that with some effort Meeker is able to grab it and hide behind a bathroom stall.
Lennox arrives and reveals that Lane is alive, down the road a few miles. Dolezal has placed the briefcase in the abandoned building, but when Lennox walks in, Meeker shoots and kills him. Dolezal drives away and picks up Lane. He then drops her off at her estate and even though she still has hopes, however remote, that he'll stay with her, he explains that he loves his wife and needs to return home to his family. Before leaving, he hands her a plastic garbage bag containing the $250,000 she had obtained through her pseudo-fund raising event.
A small army of FBI arrive in cars and helicopters. Meeker has broken the pipe he was cuffed to, escaped from the abandoned building, and is running on the White Sands desert with the briefcase. Dolezal has left the original $500,000 he was originally suspected of stealing so that the FBI will no longer be after him, but one of the agents notices footprints going out into the White Sands and so they head off in pursuit. Just as the FBI catches up with him, Meeker stumbles and drops the briefcase, causing it to open. It does not have any money in it, just sand.
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