by Chuck Logan
“Uh-huh,” Yeager said, sounding unconvinced. He turned in the front seat. “What do you think, Broker?”
“I think they probably borrowed the helicopter…”
“Yeah, borrowed. Along with a Delta team and an NBC response tech,” Jane said.
“NBC?” Yeager said. “Christ, we got televison in on this?”
“That’s a nuclear, biological, and chemical responder from Department of Defense,” Jane said with a twist of humor in her voice.
“Oh shit!” Yeager said.
“Yeah, see? Now you know who you’re running with? No wonder they’re so strung out,” Broker said.
“Hey, people. Turn should be coming up,” Yeager said.
Jane slowed the Explorer, pulling up hard on a gravel road. They completed the turn and she accelerated again. Off to the left the headlights were almost a mile away.
Several minutes passed. The headlights drew closer. “You should see a clump of trees on your right, and the road intersection,” Yeager said.
“Got ’em,” Jane said.
“There’s a shallow shoulder and a dip, just ride it into the trees and stop,” Yeager said.
Jane didn’t respond, intent on driving. The tires left gravel, then bit into dirt and vegetation. Weeds and shrubs snapped against the chassis, whipped in the dark through the open windows. Broker still couldn’t see anything but an orange glow back toward Langdon. A big clump of brush hit the door. Milt’s Ford was going to need a visit to the body shop.
“Good…stop,” Yeager said.
They stopped, killed the motor, and held their breath as the night air turned loud with insect buzz and the cooling ticks of the engine. The headlights came closer and they only caught the barest flicker of a vehicle a hundred yards away as it passed. Then Ace turned off his lights.
“It’s him all right-a new Tahoe,” Jane said.
“Okay, give him another hundred yards,” Yeager said. Jane did. “Now get on the road.” She drove to the intersection, turned right. Much closer now. “Okay, when he turns off, you turn off into the fields, but the minute he stops you stop. And kill the motor. We play dead. He’ll probably shut down, too, and listen before he does the pickup.”
“Christ, this is like a submarine movie,” Broker said.
They all giggled to break the tension.
“Oh shit,” Janey said. “He just turned again.”
“We’re cool, he’s just turned on a prairie road that runs toward the border. Get ready. Won’t be long now,” Yeager said.
Jane followed the Tahoe through one last turn and they all breathed in sharp when she cranked the wheel and drove into the waist-high field. Damp splatters pelted the sides of the Ford and a heavy, pungent scent came in through the open windows. Tiny wet blossoms tickled Broker’s face.
“Canola,” Yeager said. Then: “Kill it, now!”
They jerked to a halt and the motor stopped. Dead quiet. Just the oily reek of the crushed canola, the engine ticking down, and the whir of mosquitoes.
Jane leaned out her open window, straining her body into the night.
“He’s out, he walking. Walking…Barely see him, more’n a hundred yards. Shit, now he’s walking around in a circle, like he’s lost. Ah, wait. Okay. He stopped. Oh boy, he’s bent over and he’s dragging something heavy, dragging it back to the truck.”
“All right,” Nina said. Sitting next to her, Broker could feel her shift gears as a wave of exhausted tension drained out of her. And the adrenaline afterburners kicked in.
“That’s it, he popped the hatch and he’s manhandling it into the back. He’s done. Hatch is down,” Jane said.
“I thought it would be more of a load,” Yeager said.
“There’s some small packages that pack a hell of wallop,” Nina said slowly.
“Jesus-NBC, huh?” Yeager said.
“Yeah,” Nina said.
They all saw his brake lights as he backed up.
“What do we do?” Janey said.
“Give him some room. We know where he’s going, don’t we?” Yeager said.
“Fine with me.” Jane flopped back in her seat and took a few deep breaths. Then she got on her cell. “Holly, this is Jane. We have a confirmed pickup.” That’s all. She put the phone down.
“Let’s take a minute to work out the ground rules,” Nina said, her voice exploring the darkness in Yeager’s direction.
“The way I explained it to Yeager, he wants in, he accepts that the rules are pretty fluid,” Broker said.
“Yeager,” Nina said, “you got your badge and gun on you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And this place they’re planning to meet, it’s in your county?”
“Yep.”
“You aren’t thinking of like-arresting anybody, are you?” Janey asked.
“How far would I get?” Yeager’s voice was respectful but with just an edge of testing.
Broker joined in. “There’ll be other people where we’re going, people who work with Jane and Nina. I got a feeling that Jane and Nina, they’re the nice ones.”
“What? You’re saying I could disappear?” Yeager said evenly.
No one answered.
“Okay, at least tell me what I’m not a part of here.” Yeager said. “Is Ace Shuster meeting some terrorists? ’Cause that’s what you’re putting out between the lines.”
“This is just my gut read on him,” Nina said, “but I don’t think he knows if he is. I don’t think he has any idea what he just dragged into his car.”
“So what did he just drag to his car?” Yeager said.
“They can’t say,” Broker said, “ ’cause they ain’t here, are they? But I can speculate…”
“Like, you mean, just you and me talking,” Yeager said.
“Just you and me talking.”
“And?”
“They have some pretty good intelligence it could involve a tactical nuclear device.”
Another interval of silence.
Then Nina said, “Yeager, if you or me disappear, well, that’s not cool. But if a big chunk of Chicago or Kansas City disappears…”
“Start the car,” Yeager said, his voice trembling with excitement.
Chapter Thirty
After a tense half hour sneaking around out on the gravel, Ace was relaxing, leaning back, one arm draped over the steering wheel of the Tahoe. He cruised east on Highway 5 with the windows open, enjoying the rush of the summer night in his hair and listening to Linda Ronstadt singing what could be the story of his life-“Desperado,” on KNDK. His other hand came up and he sipped from a bottle of Moosehead Ale. He wondered if Gordy had encountered any hassles. It had been dead quiet on his end.
The easy pickup and a day of drinking had hammered down his spikes and he was sinking back toward mellow. Another day, another dollar; rolling the old boulder up the hill. Ole Camus said we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Ace wasn’t sure about happy, but he did have a moderate buzz going, enough to be charitable-like, maybe they’d been wrong about Nina. Maybe she was just another woman coming up hard on forty in a marriage that didn’t fit.
Woulda been nice to roll Nina Pryce up the hill just once, find out who she really was. Ah well…fact is, she was already starting to fade…
He raised up off the seat slightly, turned on the dome light, and looked over his shoulder at the old-fashioned footlocker in the backseat. Didn’t even weigh much, maybe sixty pounds. He didn’t know a whole lot about George, his dad’s crony. Mostly, Dad and George had played it legal, then every once in a while George would come up with volume he had to move fast, off the books, no questions asked. And everybody made a lot of money.
Sometimes there were small favors, like tonight. Again, no questions asked.
He pushed in the lighter and took out a Camel. When the lighter popped, he lit up. Three drags into the Camel his high beams reached out and caught the crisscross of the chain-link fence that surrounded the old site. He slowed and saw George’s ne
w silver Lexus parked in the driveway. Old George did all right for himself.
“Hey Bugs, Nina. How’s it going?” Nina was on her cell.
“We’re following Khari. He’s in a Lexus RX300, driving west on 5. He’s all alone, no passengers, no other cars.”
“Good. Our guy made his pickup and is driving east on 5 out of Langdon. ETA about five, six minutes to that old base.”
“Okay. We got people in position on site. Holly is standing by with the Hawk. We all roll in when the smoke clears.”
“Let’s hope there’s no smoke.” Nina flashed on a pile of Bosnian corpses and saw Ace Shuster sandwiched in the middle of them. Eyes open, smiling that smile. She remembered the.38 in his desk. She hoped he’d left it there.
“Ah, roger that.”
Nina ended the call. “No need to rush,” she said to Yeager. “From here on in we just watch. They belong to the Hardy Boys now.”
“Hardy Boys?” Yeager said.
“Delta slang for a tactical team in position at the meeting spot,” Jane said as she eased off the gas. They lagged far behind Ace now, driving the speed limit with their lights on. In a few minutes it would all converge on Highway 5 in the dark.
Broker suddenly became aware of his throbbing left hand. He held it up and placed it on his head. Seeing his awkward posture, Nina laughed, this happy release of nerves. “Hey,” Broker protested, “it gets the blood out of…”
“I know, silly,” Nina said. “Like when we met.”
“When you crashed my undercover scene.”
“Yeah, and that mean redneck almost bit off your thumb and we drove up north with you holding your hand up like that…”
“Hey, cut the lovebird crap,” Jane said. “Situational awareness, remember? Nina, how many in the car coming to meet Ace?” she asked.
“Just Khari, driving a Lexus SUV.”
“Just one guy?” Jane made a face. “Nobody else with him? Or on the road?”
“Nope, just him.”
“Too easy,” Jane said.
“You sound disappointed,” Broker said.
Jane did not answer. Nina turned back to Broker and then to Yeager and said, “Whatever it is, it’s on the rails.”
Ace slowed, made the turn, and parked to the rear of the Lexus. He left his lights on so they could see to make the transfer. He got out and so did George.
“How you doing, George?” Ace said.
George Khari slapped his solid middle. “Too much baklava. Need to get back in shape.” They shook hands.
Ace had known George from a distance, ever since Dad got the bar. That’s how long George Khari had been selling whiskey and beer to the Shusters.
“Quiet night,” Ace said.
George raised his chin slightly and asked, “Anybody in back of you?”
Ace looked back down the road he’d just driven and shook his head. “Not even a deer crossing the road, just me out there.”
“Good,” George said. He was a muscular man of medium height with a strong square face. Another hairy guy, like Gordy, with a perpetual five-o’clock shadow on his chin and cheeks. The headlights gave his olive skin a yellow cast and pocketed his brown eyes in shadow. His thick black hair was carefully groomed, and there was more hair on his forearms. And, like Gordy, he liked to show off the chest, leaving the top two buttons of his short-sleeved shirt open. Ace remembered him wearing gold chains. Not tonight, though. Tonight this little silver medal glinted now and then in Ace’s headlights. A religious medallion, like Catholics wear. “I appreciate this, Ace. Just an extra touch, you know, a favor for my regular customers.” He had a soft voice with the barest foreign tug to the syllables. Born in the old country.
“This is the last time we do this, George. We pretty much cleaned everything out.”
“You going to Florida with your dad?”
“Nah, Dale probably is. I thought maybe Montana, look into raising buffalo.” He cocked his head, heard engine noise to the south, a helicopter maybe, over by the PAR site. Something taking off.
“It’s funny,” George said, looking at the fenced compound. “This place is deserted but they still come in and cut the grass.”
“That’s the government for you. Pop your hatch and I’ll load up this beast.”
George raised a hand. “In a minute. I just want to look around first.”
Ace shrugged, stretched, and took a drag on his cigarette. “Go ahead but there’s nothing left here but stories.” He gestured with his cigarette toward the ditch on either side of the driveway. “Like, they built this control bunker in a peat field. Dug a couple stories down into it, ran the cable out to the remote sites. One night this air-baser who worked here was walking the perimeter, having a smoke, and he flips the butt into the ditch.” Ace paused, then said, “Next morning they smell smoke.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah, set the damn peat to burning. Well, they tried everything to put it out. Nothing worked. Sucker burned down, way underground, for two years, got under and around the control bunker, the electrical conduit. This site controlled ten Minutemen! Can you imagine if a peat fire short-circuited everything and launched a fucking ICBM at Russia.”
“But it never happened, huh?”
“Nope, but no thanks to our high-tech…” Ace took a last drag on the Camel, then bent back his index finger against his thumb and shot the butt in an arc of sparks into the weeds along the ditch. “What the hell…let’s see if we can set her going again…”
Holy shit!
The cigarette came streaking back from the darkness. Along with this real loud no bullshit voice:
“NOBODYFUCKINGMOVE!”
The night puckered up tight. Real tight. Real fast.
They rose out of the ditch, four shooters in black watch caps, black vests, blackened faces. They pointed stubby M-4 carbines and moved with strobelike intensity, hyperalert to the slightest movement.
Fingers on triggers. For real.
“What the…” George’s hands started to ball into fists.
“I think you better get your hands up where they can see them, George,” Ace said slowly, doing the same himself, showing they were empty. Already bending his knees. Going down. He knew the position.
“Down on the ground. Hands on your head.” The men approached in a stylized walk, hunched over their weapons.
Like in the movies.
Ace and George dropped to the ground. Rough hands moved over them, frisking them for weapons. Off to the right Ace heard this whole new order of sound and motion. Turned his head.
“Don’t fucking move!”
Ace froze, cheek on the gravel. George raised his head, “What’s that?”
Ace saw it materialize out of the dark: snout-nosed and hump backed, it was lowering to the highway with praying-mantis menace. Shit, that was one of those Black Hawks.
Cops didn’t rate shit like this.
The helicopter settled down under the loud fan of its rotors and landed on Highway 5. The prop wash beat down the crop on either side of the road, bent over the taller shrubs. Three guys jumped from the helicopter. Unlike the shooters, they wore regular clothes. And, okay, uh-huh-Ace recognized the older one, with the white hair. The guy with the lifer eyes who’d been in the bar when Nina showed up. A second guy carried some kind of recorder thing, with a mike on a cord. The third looked wildly out of place in a white shirt, a tie, flak jacket, and a face like a hunk of raw beef. They ran toward the parked cars. Now other cars showed up-a van from the east and a Ford Explorer from the west.
Whoa!
The guy with the recorder thing went right for the back of Ace’s Tahoe, like he knew. He opened the hatch and ran the mike all around the foot locker inside. Through all the commotion, Ace heard the ticking sound. Not a mike.
“What the fuck’s going on?” George shouted. He was one of those ballsy short guys. Feisty when riled.
“Shut up,” shouted one of the shooters holding a rifle trained on them.
&nbs
p; “It’s clean,” said the guy with the Geiger counter.
The other cars stopped, the doors flung open. Ace saw Nina pile out. Jim Yeager, out of uniform. That Broker guy. Jane.
Ace started to laugh.
“I said shut the fuck up,” snarled the shooter.
Ace tried to stifle his laugh as he watched a black dude get out of the van with another guy. Nobody wearing uniforms, but that had to be a military helicopter. Ace smiled into the gravel. I was right. She wasn’t a cop. Gordy owes me. A soldier girl!
Dumb shits. Now whatta you suppose they thought was in George’s foot locker?
“Open it,” the guy with the flak jacket ordered. One of the shooters shouldered his rifle and went to the foot locker which now, in addition to the dome light, had several intense flashlights trained on it.
The locker was secured with several bands of duct tape. The shooter took out a Randall knife and cut the tape. As he peeled it away, the others crowded forward, like holding their breath as he snapped the hasps up and lifted the lid.
Pure stunned silence.
Flak Jacket turned on the older white-haired guy and snarled. “Colonel Wood, you better be able to explain this.”
“Check it. Take everything out and check it,” Holly said in a tight voice.
Ace started laughing again. No one moved to stop him this time. He watched them remove the tightly packed wooden containers and stack them to either side of the foot locker. Open one.
“That’s it?” Nina said in a strangled voice. “CIGARS? I took my fucking clothes off for a box full of cigars?”
“Not just any old cigars,” Broker said, trying to hold down his rising mirth. “Those are Cohibas, honey.”
“Not just any old Cohibas, either,” Holly said in a weary voice. “Looks like forty-two ring, seven inches. Those are Lanceros. What Castro used to smoke.”
The shooters slung their rifles and motioned for Ace and George to get up. Ace turned to George and said, “Better let me do the talking.” Seeing the small catlike smile play across George’s lips, he said firmly, “George, hey man, this isn’t funny.”