Homefront. Part 24

Cantrell took a Zippo from his pocket, popped it, lit the Pall Mall.

"Eekkk," squeaked the woman, backpedaling like a mouse in Cinderella Cinderella.

Cantrell turned back to Rodney, blew a stream of smoke in his face. "We're waiting."

"OMG's bad folks, too bad for me," Rodney panted. The pressure had traveled down his arms into his chest, up his red corded throat into his bulging eyes. Sweat streamed down his swollen arms as they struggled to hold off the inexorable weight pressing down.

Frustrated, Cantrell was now mashing the squeeze clip in his right hand. Inspired, he twisted, pressed the handles together, opening the spring circle, and thrust the clip into Rodney's writhing crotch, probing the cod of bunched blue material for something to clamp down on.

"Okay, okay," Rodney moaned. "What I hear...she's the perfect chick. She loves to f.u.c.k and cook. f.u.c.k bikers...and...cook...meth. Learned her business in some big lab in Washington state. All I know, honest."

"See," J. T. said, releasing the pressure on the bar. "That was easy."

"Spot, SPOT! SPOT!" Rodney hollered in a desperate hoa.r.s.e voice as the bar shivered, descending on his spasming arms.

Shouldering through the gaggle of wide-eyed people rushing to Rodney's aid, Cantrell said, "Not to worry, it's the new Afghan extreme lifting-"

"The near-death school," J. T. said.

Cantrell pointed out an alternate route of egress through the gym. Trailing a contrail of his cigarette smoke amid the aghast aerobics cla.s.s, they beat it down another flight of stairs and out an exit door on the first level, next to the pool.

Chapter Thirty-five.

An hour after he returned from his face-off with Gator Bodine, Griffin heard tires crunch through the windowpane in the puddles of his driveway. He walked out on his deck and saw the green Toyota Tundra pull up. h.e.l.lo? Broker got out from the pa.s.senger side wearing cross trainers and an old blue sweat suit under his jacket. Nina lowered the driver's-side window and leaned out. Kit waved from the backseat. from his face-off with Gator Bodine, Griffin heard tires crunch through the windowpane in the puddles of his driveway. He walked out on his deck and saw the green Toyota Tundra pull up. h.e.l.lo? Broker got out from the pa.s.senger side wearing cross trainers and an old blue sweat suit under his jacket. Nina lowered the driver's-side window and leaned out. Kit waved from the backseat.

"Hey, Harry? You ever been to Dawn's Salon on Main Street?" Nina said.

Broker held up his hands in mock despair. "I was getting used to her hair longer. Now she's gonna cut it all off."

Harry walked up to the truck and studied Nina's face. "Going to the beauty parlor, huh?"

"Me too," Kit said.

Nina nodded. "It's time. Her cowlicks have turned into a briar patch the last two months."

There was an ease in the talk Griffin hadn't seen with these people since they appeared at the rental house in January. Nina said good-bye, put the truck in gear, and steered the Toyota back down the drive. Griffin walked Broker under the deck, into the lower level of his house. "When did she come out of it?" he asked.

"Yesterday, boom, just like that."

"So?"

"If she stays steady, we'll probably be heading back to the Cities in a week," Broker said. "No sense hanging around. Kit needs to get back with her friends and activities."

Their different styles collided awkwardly in the silent interval. Griffin was grinning, waiting for Broker to say more. But he'd known Broker for thirty years and had learned that the man kept his emotions carefully embedded between his mind and his muscles. More like the steady instincts of an elusive wild animal.

Broker had a.s.sessed a problem, laid out a plan, and soldiered through. His expression was not so much relief as a confirmation of the correctness of his decision.

"So," Griffin said, "you ready to grab something heavy and pick it up?"

Broker looked at his old friend, unshaved, fairly vibrating with the caffeine shakes. Probably had one of his bad nights. But he did grin, this fond, indulgent exasperation. His thick eyebrows beetled as his eyes scanned the room where they stood. The walls were a gallery that marked the stations of Griffin's errant life. Griffin had spiraled out of the Army and become an underground cartoonist. After he sobered up, he briefly became a newspaper artist.

Several of his old drawings had been enlarged and framed: a gaunt haunted depiction of Christ could have been a comical self-portrait. The Cartoon Christ trudged under his crown of thorns and a huge picket sign that bore the caption: "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30 Who Hasn't Been Crucified."

Another, a favorite of the old East Metro Drug Task Force, showed two hippie dopers looking up from lighting their weed as a ten-foot-tall t.i.t smashed through the door. One of them said, "Cool it, man, it's a bust."

A talented, conflicted man who had loved and hated their war, Griffin had always rebelled against his true nature. Broker wasn't fooled; he had seen Griffin in the field.

He'd a.s.sessed instantly what Griffin spent his life denying.

Harry Griffin was a natural killer. Broker had always approached this perception with caution. Acknowledging the fact that looking too closely at Griffin was like peering into a mirror...

He shook his head and turned his attention to Griffin's latest Peter Pan fixation. The barbell on the floor, a leg press, an overhead draw-down lift, triceps pulls, a set of fly cables, and the crunch chair.

After Korean karate, yoga, and Transcendental Meditation, Griffin, looking sixty dead in the eye, had discovered high-intensity weight lifting.

So Broker tossed off his coat and actually laughed. "Christ, remember the time you tried to teach me to stand on my head?"

Griffin snorted and pointed to the barbell on the floor. It was fitted with two forty-fives and a twenty-five on each end. "Cla.s.sic deads," he said. "You first."

Broker rotated his shoulders, loosened up, took the lift straps off the floor, inserted his wrists, looped the straps around the bar, snugged them up, and stooped.

"Remember, keep your shoulder blades tight and your b.u.t.t back. Push down with your feet," Griffin said.

"Yeah, yeah." Broker took a breath, held it, and lifted the bar slowly. Ten-second count going up and then back down. By his third slow repet.i.tion, Broker was sweating and panting for breath.

"One more," Griffin admonished with glee as he slapped half a ton of iron on the leg press, getting the next station in the torture ready.

Less than half an hour later they were through the five stations. Broker was covered with sweat and out of breath. Griffin, barely breathing hard, the eternal contradiction, lit a Lucky Strike. "Half an hour a week, it's the cat's a.s.s, huh?" Griffin winked.

Shaky on his feet, Broker followed Griffin upstairs, where they poured coffee and took their cups out on the deck. The morning was mild, with a tickle of greening in the air.

Broker sipped his coffee, squinted out over the lake. "Think it's finally going to be spring?"

Griffin shook his head. "Looked at the Weather Channel this morning. We might have another clipper on the way. Big rumpus kicking around in Manitoba." He shrugged. "But you could be on your way south before it hits."

"Maybe," Broker said.

"You pulled it off."

"She pulled it off. I just held her coat," Broker said.

Griffin decided it was time to pop the big question. "So now what? She going back into that good old spooky s.h.i.t?"

Broker studied Griffin's face as he said that, always the lilt of the road not taken in his voice. "It's all changed, Griffin; you wouldn't recognize special ops anymore. The people are different, the gear, the thinking. h.e.l.l, they even have a different map of the world."

"Yeah," Griffin said wistfully, slouching back, drawing his neck into his shoulders as a gust of cool breeze blew over them. "I saw that snappy consultant guy, Barnett, give his briefing on C-SPAN. There's the globally connected core. In the middle you got Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia; all the ragheads in the nonintegrated gap."

"Face it, man. We're dinosaurs," Broker said.

Griffin held up his cup in a toast. "To the old neighborhood, where we grew up," he said as they clicked rims. "Northern Quang Tri Province." He settled back. "Guess the only thing I got to look forward to now is whether I'm going to wind up a geezer, a codger, or a coot."

"Buck up. We got in our licks."

"Yep. Killed our Communists." Griffin grinned. "And George W's and d.i.c.k Cheney's too." He studied the bottom of his coffee cup for a moment, then looked up frankly. "You never really told me. One month Nina's an MP captain in Bosnia; the next she's mobbed up with Delta Force. How'd that go down?"

Broker listened to the wind toy in the trees like a palpable sigh of desire. Decided he owed Griffin that much. "She embodies a concept," he said finally.

"Say again?"

"She took a course on tactical decision-making at Bragg before she deployed to Bosnia. The Boyd thing. The OODA Loop."

Griffin nodded. "I read the book. Not sure you can teach that. You got it or you don't."

"Well, she aced out all the guys in the course. One of them was a Delta colonel who was into thinking outside the box-" Broker's voice stuck briefly. "Holly, Colonel Holland Wood," he said.

"There was a Delta colonel with you at Prairie Island," Griffin said directly.

"The same." He paused, closed his eyes briefly, and continued. "Any rate. He ran into her in Bosnia, remembered her, and invited her in for an interview. I only know s.n.a.t.c.hes. After 9/11 she disappeared into the black side. Thing that still p.i.s.ses me off is, she took Kit with her last time out. Used our kid to set up her cover in that North Dakota thing."

"Kit," Griffin said simply. "You want her to turn out like you, or Nina? She's headed in that direction, you know. Unless you guys change."

Broker listened to the soft breeze rise and fall, drawing silky through the pines.

"Think about it all the time," he said.

Griffin backed off. Figured it was as close as Broker would get to answering the question about what Nina would do next.

Broker's prediction turned out to be inaccurate. When Nina and Kit left Dawn's Salon, Nina's reddish amber hair was cleaned up but styled longer than it had been since her undergraduate days. Kit sported a matching cut; the snarl of her cowlick bangs resolved under Mom's watchful eye. Nina tossed her new do and looked up and down Main Street.

"We're going out tonight, so let's splurge a little, maybe get new outfits," she said. Her eyes prowled the storefronts. Stopped on a funky hand-painted sign across the street, next to the redbrick courthouse: "Big Lake Threads." "There," she said. She took Kit's hand, and they started across the street.

The door jingled when they entered, and Nina scanned a display of hats, gloves, and scarfs that tended more toward fashion than the practical; accessories for women who didn't worry about getting cold. So it was a boutique that catered to the high-end summer crowd. Probably kept open as a labor of love through the winter. The lady sitting behind the counter looked up, smiled, then went back to reading her book. The store was empty except for one other shopper, a slim, striking woman with long black hair who stood among the racks, holding a blouse at arm's length, staring at it with a tangible longing.

"Mom," Kit said urgently, tugging at Nina's hand. "Let's go."

Nina tracked Kit's sudden alarm, found its source when she saw a stout little boy peek around the dark-haired woman.

"That's Teddy Klumpe, you know; the boy at school," Kit whispered.

Their tense conversation was mirrored down the aisle between the woman and her son. Nina saw surprise on the woman's face and instinctively decided to move before her dazed expression focused into something harder. With Kit in tow, she walked up the aisle and extended her hand.

"Mrs. Klumpe, I'm Kit's mother-"

The woman drew herself up, wary. "It's not Klumpe, it's Bodine, Ca.s.sie Bodine."

"Well, I'm Nina Pryce. I didn't take my husband's name either. Although I did give him the option of taking mine." Her hand was still outstretched.

Nina's casual remark was just enough to skew the building tension.

Ca.s.sie's face was pinched gorgeous, with nervous blue eyes. She transferred the blouse to her left hand and cautiously shook Nina's hand.

"My husband tells me we owe you something," Nina said, searching her memory for just what it was that Broker had said they owed by way of a peace offering.

Ca.s.sie swept her arm behind her and hauled Teddy out in plain view. Kit and Teddy looked up at their mothers for clues, then both stared at the floor.

"Actually," Ca.s.sie said, her hand touching her throat and then her hair in a jumpy reflex. "Actually, Teddy...this is Teddy," she said, dropping her hand, patting the boy briefly on the head.

"h.e.l.lo, Teddy," Nina said easily. "You got some shoulders on you, boy. I'll bet you play-"

"Hockey," Teddy said, his eyes shifting sideways.

"Hockey," Nina repeated. Then she patiently looked back at Ca.s.sie.

Ca.s.sie said, "Well, it was his shirt, it got-"

"Blood on it," Nina said, nodding, extemporizing. "Probably ruined it."

"Well, yes, it did."

"Ms. Bodine," Nina said carefully, "we've had quite a talk with Kit about playing too rough, and we'd appreciate it if you let us replace Teddy's shirt." She glanced down the store. "I don't suppose they have anything suitable here?"

Suddenly animated, Teddy tugged at Ca.s.sie's sleeve. "Mom, they got those X-Men in the back."

"There is a small kid's section, but it's on the pricey side," Ca.s.sie said. Grinding her teeth, that jerky eye movement again.

"X-Men's cool; right, Kit?" Nina flashed a warning to Kit, who was struggling to contain the mortification creeping up her neck and reddening her cheeks. "Let's take a look."

They followed Ca.s.sie and Teddy to the rack of specialty T-shirts. He selected a black one, boys' extra-large.

Nina said, offhand, "Maybe you should get the red one-if you get skinned up playing hockey, won't show as much."

Ca.s.sie blinked, not sure if there was a discreet stinger in the remark. Teddy stuck with the black. They walked back up to the sales counter, and Nina explained to the clerk that she was starting a tab. The clerk removed the price tag, set it aside, then folded the shirt and put it in a bag.

Nina shook hands with Ca.s.sie a second time, saying earnestly, "We're real sorry about what happened. Let's hope things work out for the best."

Ca.s.sie shrugged, eyes and facial muscles flitting. Not entirely certain what had happened here. "We'll see...how it goes," she said. And they left it at that.

As Ca.s.sie and her son walked from the store, Kit elbowed her mother, "Mom, I am so embarra.s.sed embarra.s.sed. He's a bully, and his mom is mean. his mom is mean. She was yelling for his dad to hurt my dad in front of the school..." She was yelling for his dad to hurt my dad in front of the school..."

"Calm down. You'll learn that sometimes you catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

"I don't know what that means," Kit said.