After the Rain Part 25

"s.h.i.t. Where?"

"Somewhere midway on the road's fine. You still driving the Volvo?"

"The Volvo's been seen in town. I'll go for a run. I'll be coming west down 5, toward town."

"In the rain?"

"I won't melt."

"I'm leaving now. I'll keep an eye out for a moving cloud of steam."

"f.u.c.k you, Broker."

"I don't think so. Your heart'd give out."

Broker grinned as she abruptly ended the connection. He was getting past the deadlock in the cafe with Nina. Which was what she wanted. Which was what she wanted. Uh-huh. Because he'd do the ground work with the locals. G.o.dd.a.m.n her, anyway-playing coach, getting him warmed up and in play. Uh-huh. Because he'd do the ground work with the locals. G.o.dd.a.m.n her, anyway-playing coach, getting him warmed up and in play.

Broker pushed the Explorer through the light rain, east down Highway 5. The geography had become a fixture: the wall-to-wall slab of sky, the perspective of two-lane blacktop shooting a plumb line through the green flat, thinning down to nothing. The most common things that grew over four feet tall were the telephone poles, power lines, and cell-phone towers.

He was leaning forward over the steering wheel, juices starting to stir. Past his initial frustration, he guessed why Nina wanted him to stay on here. She knew he'd naturally find an in with the locals.

And he could feel the same frenzy to do something that gripped Nina, Holly, and Jane. But doing something something does not mean doing does not mean doing anything anything. If their tip was real, they would have only one chance. And it wasn't Ace Shuster or Gordy Riker they were after. It was the people who were picking up from Shuster and Gordy. This George maybe? The Indian?

And Nina'd only have one chance, if they showed themselves.

And if that happened, he wanted in.

Like Yeager did. And his buddies.

He saw her motion before he got her outline. A flicker of white and gray, and brown skin. Smooth energy pulsing down the shoulder, on the right side of the road. He pulled over, put it in neutral, and waited. The rain moderated, then slowed to a few drips and he watched the cloudburst trundle away in the flat gray sky, trailing dark tatters.

As Jane ran closer, Broker compared her to Nina. Younger of course, and...he searched for a word and settled on Nina's-trained. She had learned that smooth stride to eliminate excess motion. Jane didn't seem to come by it innately, unlike Nina, who had these lazy fluid kinetics. Nina made everything look so easy. Almost slow, you thought, and then she was on top of you in your face, or past you and it was too late. She had learned that smooth stride to eliminate excess motion. Jane didn't seem to come by it innately, unlike Nina, who had these lazy fluid kinetics. Nina made everything look so easy. Almost slow, you thought, and then she was on top of you in your face, or past you and it was too late.

Broker suspected that nothing had ever been easy for Jane, and most likely men were the reason why. Not a trifling insight for a man who had a daughter.

She came in close now and he saw she was wearing a scissored-up white T-shirt with Cancun Cancun printed across the front, dark shorts, and worn New Balance shoes. She also had a f.a.n.n.y pack slung around her waist on thick webbing, st.u.r.dy enough to keep it from bouncing. Big enough to accommodate a cell phone, and probably a Beretta nine. As she yanked open the door and hopped in, he noticed she wore no metal. Just raindrops today. The ear piercings, the nose stud, the ax thing around her neck. Gone. printed across the front, dark shorts, and worn New Balance shoes. She also had a f.a.n.n.y pack slung around her waist on thick webbing, st.u.r.dy enough to keep it from bouncing. Big enough to accommodate a cell phone, and probably a Beretta nine. As she yanked open the door and hopped in, he noticed she wore no metal. Just raindrops today. The ear piercings, the nose stud, the ax thing around her neck. Gone.

He handed her several of the motel towels from the backseat and waited while she scrubbed some of the rain from her face, neck, and shoulders. In that moment, as she leaned forward, arms raised, chasing the rain from her short hair with the towel, she looked disarmingly feminine and unguarded.

"Why'd you stay?"

"You guys need all the help you can get."

She glared at him.

"I was asked," Broker said simply.

Jane narrowed her eyes, then slowly nodded her head. "Nina. When you delivered the suitcase at the bar and got knocked on your b.u.t.t."

"There it is."

"So what do you have in mind?"

Broker said, "If something is on for tonight, you need the local cops. They know every stalk of wheat in the f.u.c.king county."

"No way. The locals hear what we've got, they'll s.h.i.t their pants." She paused and gave him an intense stare. "They haven't heard, heard, have they?" have they?"

"They didn't have to. They already figured it out."

Jane slumped back in the seat.

Broker pointed across the road, north. "I been up there. I seen the border. It'll break your heart."

Jane pushed forward, plopped her elbows on her carved knees, and stared into the middle distance. "Holly's in deep s.h.i.t. The pogues in Homeland Security are b.i.t.c.hing to Special Ops at Bragg. Justice and Homeland Security are involved. They say we've exceeded our mandate. f.u.c.kers. We weren't supposed to have a mandate. We're supposed to be totally in the black."

"How long have we got?"

She held his eyes for a few beats and said, "We, huh?"

"Yeah, we. How long?"

"Holly's arguing that right now. They want to pull our backup. But we might have something with this Khari guy. He's Syrian-Lebanese, out of Grand Forks. Owns a warehouse and a chain of liquor stores in the Dakotas. Turns out there's a lot of Lebanese around here, especially in South Dakota..."

Broker nodded. "Ex-senator Abourezk."

"Who? Never mind-this Khari guy was Ace's dad's liquor supplier. He's an immigrant, born in Beirut. His father was active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Khari came here at nineteen, after his parents were killed in the civil war. He was raised by the mother's brother in the Maronite Catholic Church. He's not a Muslim. In fact, Lebanese Christians don't even consider themselves Arabs. Just Lebanese. We got a team on him with a parabolic mike, trying to monitor his phone conversations." She made a face. "It's pretty thin. But it's our only chance. Except now some honcho from Homeland Security is on his way to keep an eye on us."

"If tonight involves something coming across that border, you better bring one of the locals," Broker said.

"And you already got somebody lined up, huh?" Jane said.

"Just a cell phone call away. Deputy named Yeager. Because you guys won't be able to find your b.u.t.t up there in the dark."

"What else did Nina say?"

"That the gig with Ace is pretty much up. It's turned into a game. Gordy and Ace have a bet. Gordy bet Nina's a cop. Ace took the bet. So he's playing along for the drama."

Broker smiled one of his non-smiles and continued: "Sometimes undercover work is like the flip side of being a cop. The target knows you're undercover, but he can't prove it. Knowing how to play out that tension can be the trick that produces results. They're playing a game, all right. A game of chicken."

"You said that. I didn't." Jane folded her arms across her chest. Her arms came away sopping wet. Broker handed her a third towel. She draped the towel over her shirt, unzipped her f.a.n.n.y pack, and fingered out a Marlboro filter and a lighter. She lowered the window and lit the cigarette. After she blew a stream of smoke into the sodden air, she turned to Broker. "Doesn't it bother you? What she's doing?"

"Sure."

With a burst of pique or frustration, Jane came forward in her seat. "Nina talked about you. How you screwed around when you did your UC stuff as a cop. How it destroyed your first marriage."

Broker held up his hands. "Chieu hoi."

Jane screwed up her face. "Holly says that. I don't know what it means."

"It means 'I surrender.' "

"Ana la takakalum Vietnameaziah."

"Come again?"

Jane smiled. "Means 'I don't speak Vietnamese.' I'm the closest thing to an Arab-speaker in the group." She squinted, poked her cigarette out the window. "Is that the sun?"

"No, just a lighter shade of gray. But it's clearing."

"Yes it is." She opened the door and got out of the car. Broker opened his door, came around, and joined her. She puffed on her cigarette and stared across the flat green. "So do it," she said. "Bring in the locals for tonight."

"Just one."

Then she turned to him and said, "Three days ago we were in Detroit with the hottest tip in the world. Now look at us. In the middle of nowhere with some suit on his way to pull the plug."

Broker shook his head. "Not so. There's a reason Shuster's name came up. You gotta run it out. And there's another thing. You only think you're in the middle of nowhere."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. The fact is, right now you're standing in the absolute center of things. Like the North American continent."

"No s.h.i.t?"

"No s.h.i.t. That's why they put all the missiles here."

Chapter Twenty-four.

Nina needed the walk back to the bar to get herself back under control and stop swearing. G.o.dd.a.m.n marriage like a G.o.dd.a.m.n broken jukebox-get every G.o.dd.a.m.n song in the box at once. back to the bar to get herself back under control and stop swearing. G.o.dd.a.m.n marriage like a G.o.dd.a.m.n broken jukebox-get every G.o.dd.a.m.n song in the box at once.

All of them variations on him always trying to lord it over me.

At moments like this she had to take the time to center herself back in her job. She always used the same image: a room full of Kits-Kit at two, at three, at four, and five. A couple dozen Kits. That's what that day-care center in New Jersey was like the night of 9/11. She wasn't positive the story was for real, but it had gone around the teams so regularly it had acquired the force of truth. According to the story the staff became so distracted with shock that n.o.body really told the kids why most of their parents wouldn't be coming home from the Towers.

She saw those kids waiting, caged in the seconds and minutes and hours, until slowly they started to cry. Maybe one of those kids would have taken it upon herself to go beyond her own fear and doubt to stand up, go over and help the other ones, comfort them.

That kid would be the dummy, the one saddled with the front-line preselection factor, the one who felt the need to take care of the others. There were always a few dummies who felt the duty to go up front. Like that day at the Towers, tens of thousands coming out, hundreds going in.

Dummies like her.

And, G.o.ddammit, like Broker.

The thing gnawed at her. It was the knot cinched tight at the center of her marriage: Did two people like her and Broker belong together? They each knew all about going in first, and nothing at all about backing off.

And what a wonderful mom I've turned out to be-taking my kid on her first op at seven.

She kicked at the gravel along the side of the road. Ouch. Not a good idea in sandals.

G.o.d, where the h.e.l.l did they get so much sky? The clouds grew right up out of the earth. Piles and piles of gray clouds stacked in the fields and going up and arching overhead like a Sistine Chapel of clouds forever. The clouds grew right up out of the earth. Piles and piles of gray clouds stacked in the fields and going up and arching overhead like a Sistine Chapel of clouds forever.

Then it started to rain and she ran the last hundred yards and came back in the bar with mud spattered up her calves. Ace was not reading the newspaper. He stood behind the bar twirling his finger around the rim of a tumbler half full of whiskey. "So how'd it go?" he asked. She noted that the pa.s.sive repose had departed his manner. Now his eyes were moody, hot, sulking; they measured her in a certain way, undressing her.

"f.u.c.k him." Nina sank into a chair at the table.

"You already did that," Ace said over his raised gla.s.s. "Maybe you should try f.u.c.king someone else who appreciates you."

Uh-oh. First there was Dr. Phil. Now comes the direct approach. First there was Dr. Phil. Now comes the direct approach.

She made a face, stood up, and went into the bathroom and washed the mud from her legs. Twenty-four hours ago she would have been willing to go to bed with him, if there was no other way of getting the fix on a target. Now they had a fix.

When she came out of the john, the rain shower had stopped. Ace came around the bar, antsier than he'd been, but still attractive. The way a guy in a beer commercial is attractive.

She gave him an honest, tired, thirty-five-year-old-woman look: On top of everything else, do I have to put out-now?

But she was still mad at Broker, no faking that. And Ace picked up on it. The natural rebounder, he would catch her in midair, coming off her fight with Broker.

And she saw how it could happen. A revenge f.u.c.k.

In the line of duty.

Ace grinned at her quandary, put his empty gla.s.s on the bar, and said, "C'mon, let's go for a drive."

Nina slumped in the pa.s.senger seat while Ace pushed the Tahoe down South 1. He listened to a crop report, turned off the radio, flung his hand at the fields. "Right at the saturation point, three days of water's about all the grain can stand. Don't start drying soon, it's all gonna turn to green mush."

They pa.s.sed a deserted crossroads: empty store, gas station, the remnants of a miniature golf course, and this phone booth sitting out all alone. Nina leaned forward in her seat. In the distance, across the highway, a huge concrete pyramid started to rise out of the ground, four, five stories high, with a circular facing on it, like a bull's-eye.

"What the h.e.l.l?" she said.

"Our local ruins. Nekoma. That's the radar for the old ABM system, the Spartans, like that picture I showed you. Never was used. They negotiated Salt II and they shut 'er down." He winked at her. "In high school, senior year, I knew this girl named Sally Solce. We used to come here to make out."

"I was beginning to think you weren't interested in s.e.x. Just family counseling."

Ace grinned, pulled to the side of the road, turned off the engine, and said, "Sally was a great believer in pyramids. Said they gathered energy..."

Nina eyed him sidelong across the suddenly charged distance between them. She felt the color creep up her throat. She squirmed on the seat and the rustle of her tight thighs against light cotton on the leather upholstery generated a zip of static electricity.

"...And not just any old kind of energy," he said, smoothly turning, getting closer.

Okay. Here it comes.