NULL device on w2k

Is there something like a NULL device I can redirect the STDERR to.
I read dirs on CD with dir /b/l *.dat | wc -l to retrieve the number of dat files.
If none found, simply zero is supposed to be returned without "file not found".
If so anyways, it must go away from the screen. The user must not see side messages.

I'd love to use something like:
dir /b/l *.dat 2>>NULL | wc -l or so
Note: wc.exe is an extra utility....released unix wc for windows

Thank you.

try using NUL