After the Rain Part 45

The three men in the corridor outside Intensive Care in the Mankato hospital weren't wearing uniforms. Broker thought he might have seen the black one before, that night on the highway outside Langdon. They could have been three Extreme Iron Man compet.i.tors who just happened to be in the vicinity. To Broker, they reeked of well-thought-through death.

"Where'd you come from?" Broker wanted to know.

The oldest one came forward, extended his hand. "Dr. Warren Burton. I'm a friend of Nina's."

"I didn't know they had healers in Delta," Broker said.

Burton was affable and rolled with it. "Well, there's always torture." He watched Broker for several seconds with his highly trained eyes. Then he said, "It'll go easier, for you and for her, if you work with us."

Broker nodded. "No problem. Answer the question. How'd you get here so fast?"

"A Minnesota Highway patrolman found her. Shuster and Khari had her in an RV, parked off in the trees at a rest stop. Some people heard her screaming and called nine-one-one. She was tied down and pinned under Khari's body. She'd worked a hand free and fought him. It got pretty intense. He bled out and his body lay on top of her for several hours. She tore out his throat."

"With her hand?"

"No."

After a moment, Broker said, "You still haven't answered my question."

"The cop got her out of there, but she didn't have any ID. She was in deep shock. Still is. All she'd say was her name, rank, and serial number. That's how they got to us," Burton said.

"I want to see her," Broker said.

Burton nodded. "The docs here are good. They're letting me sit in. To prepare you, her face is pretty beat up but it's superficial, just bruising. Her right arm has suffered some major soft tissue and tendon injury and is immobile. We've got her pretty heavily sedated, as you can understand. She's just in here."

Broker started toward the door to the ward. Burton accompanied him. At the door he stopped and said, "I served with Colonel Holland Wood. You were with him at the plant..."

Broker didn't trust his voice. So he just stared at Burton, waited until he stepped aside and then went into the ward.

They had her in a corner by a window, screened off. One cheek was bruised and swollen. Purple blood bruises splotched her neck. Her wrists and ankles were bandaged. Her right arm was immobilized in a plastic cuff, an IV drip in her left.

Her instincts were switched on. After this, they probably would be for some time. She jumped alert at the movement when he came around the screen. She tensed and her green eyes acquired him, evaluated him for threat. Then the shrill vigilance sunk back into a quieter narcotic flux.

Did she recognize him? Was that important to her now?

He went to the bed and took her left hand in his.

"Nina."

Her smile faltered. "Don't say anything, about Kit or anything, okay?"

"Okay."

"There's something important I have to tell you about Ace Shuster. But I can't remember it just yet." Abruptly, she pulled her hand away and started plucking at the hospital gown over her chest. A scrubbing motion.

"They cleaned me up," she said, "but it was all over me and I think they missed some here." Her hand went to her throat. "And here."

He decided to wait on telling her that his folks were bringing Kit...

Mom's job is making it so people can believe what they want.

Broker shifted from foot to foot, fresh out of tricks. Well, so much for keeping things in compartments. After Vietnam he'd vowed he'd never allow his heart to be broken again.

So much for vows.

"I love you," he said. He held her hand and said it over and over.

He sat with her all night. She had never seen him cry before and he wondered if, later, she would remember it.

E-Book Extra

After the Rain is my sixth novel-the fifth featuring Phil Broker-and it's been suggested that Broker and I have more than a little bit in common. We're both former soldiers, alienated by the technology craze of the 1980s and '90s, choosing instead to drive the back roads, suspecting we'd survive long enough to come back into style. is my sixth novel-the fifth featuring Phil Broker-and it's been suggested that Broker and I have more than a little bit in common. We're both former soldiers, alienated by the technology craze of the 1980s and '90s, choosing instead to drive the back roads, suspecting we'd survive long enough to come back into style.

I was born a week after the Battle of Midway in a country fighting for its existence. I grew up thinking there were only three ways to go for an American male: fireman, cop or paratrooper. I served in Vietnam; Broker turned out to be both paratrooper and cop. Neither of us was ever a fireman...

My father was a dark absent figure, who fought pro in Chicago and stayed mixed up with the wrong people. Mom left him when I was an infant. For a while I had a step dad who was a cop in Detroit. After the cop left, when I was eight, my mother sent me to Georgia Military Academy. In 1953 mom and I were driving during a storm in Marion, Kentucky. The car went off the road. I was thrown through the windshield into a swamp. Mom died at the wheel. I floated on my back in swamp water, unable to move because my chest was severely injured. I had deep cuts in my face and jaw; I was choking on my blood. If I panicked, I started to sink; so I had to remain calm, swallow the blood, and stay afloat until help arrived.

I grew up to become a talented drunk; after flunking out of college in Detroit I matriculated through the auto factories. Initially I wouldn't enlist for Vietnam because I was opposed the war. But I was nagged by the question of service. I knew who was fighting the war-I watched them leave the factories month after month while I hid out behind my invalid student deferment. So I volunteered for the Airborne because jump wings were a guaranteed ticket to a combat slot in Vietnam.

And so one of my childhood goals had been realized: I was an Army paratrooper a.s.signed as a radioman to a small advisory team in Vietnam. [Broker makes a profitable return to Vietnam in THE PRICE OF BLOOD. Sorry to say, that episode isn't biographical.]

One moonless monsoon night in 1969 I was crossing flooded rice paddies in northern Quang Tri Province, going to the aid of an embattled Vietnamese militia unit. We hit a VC blocking force. As I dived for cover I split my lip and when I rolled over in the water, in the light of a flare, I saw that the paddy was full of corpses. The unit we were going to relieve had made a run for it and had been annihilated. There I was, face up to the rain, floating in muddy water, blood in my mouth, surrounded by the dead in an eerie replay of 1953.

Having such experiences recommends storytelling as a personal form of expression.

Several inpatient stints in drug dependency wards later I found employment doing art & graphics at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Somewhere around this time I was asked to do a book review. After it ran, some of the reporters asked me who'd written it for me.

Hmmmm. My chances of becoming a writer were about one in a million. I liked the odds and set to work. Fortunately, I had the encouragement of a remarkable editor at the paper, Deborah Howell, and the example and guidance of John Camp, aka John Sanford, friend and former colleague at the Pioneer Press. John was writing thrillers full time. Several false starts later, I sold my first book, Hunter's Moon, Hunter's Moon, which was a rehash of many of the dark themes from my earlier life. But it was time to get on the with the second half of my life which included 25 years of stone cold sobriety, a successful marriage, a beautiful daughter and the geography and climate of northern Minnesota. The result was my loner character, Phil Broker. He has been described as a fugitive from modern psychology who believes in monsters because it requires old-fashioned heroes to catch them. which was a rehash of many of the dark themes from my earlier life. But it was time to get on the with the second half of my life which included 25 years of stone cold sobriety, a successful marriage, a beautiful daughter and the geography and climate of northern Minnesota. The result was my loner character, Phil Broker. He has been described as a fugitive from modern psychology who believes in monsters because it requires old-fashioned heroes to catch them.

And now it seems that Broker, having driven the backs roads long enough, might be getting some legs. During the 1980s and '90s that soldier service stuff was for "other people". But then the world got more real than virtual. Maybe in this post 9/11, post Enron world, the one percent of us under 65 who've actually served in combat, like my guy Broker, are coming back into style, to stand alongside cops and fireman.

Acknowledgments.

Gary Siegrist, dealer in heavy construction equipment, Montrose, Michigan George W. Crocker, North American Water Office, Lake Elmo, Minnesota Sheriff David Zeiss, Cavalier County Sheriff's Department, Langdon, North Dakota Chief Deputy Greg Fetsch, Cavalier County Sheriff's Department, Langdon, North Dakota Dana R. King, North Dakota Highway Patrol Cameron Sillers P.C., Attorney at Law, Langdon, North Dakota Harold and Nancy Blanchard, Grafton, North Dakota Sgt. Lawrence R. Rogers, City of St. Paul Police Department Bomb Squad, St. Paul, Minnesota Sgt. David Prois, Fridley Police Department, Fridley, Minnesota Dean Mattson, trainer, River Valley Athletic Club, Stillwater, Minnesota

About the Author.

CHUCK LOGAN, called "one of the best new thriller writers" by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, is the author of six novels, including is the author of six novels, including Vapor Trail, Absolute Zero, Vapor Trail, Absolute Zero, and and The Big Law. The Big Law. A veteran of the war in Vietnam, he lives in Stillwater, Minnesota, with his wife and daughter. A veteran of the war in Vietnam, he lives in Stillwater, Minnesota, with his wife and daughter.

www.chucklogan.com Available from HarperAudio and as an e-book from PerfectBound Don't miss the next book by your favorite author. Sign up now for AuthorTracker by visiting www.AuthorTracker.com.

Also by Chuck Logan

Vapor Trail

Absolute Zero

The Big Law

The Price of Blood

Hunter's Moon