After the Rain (25 page)

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 new 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.

“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.”

George Khari immediately sobered.

The shooters moved off with Nina, Jane, Broker, and the two guys from the van. They all joined the white-haired guy and the guy with the Geiger counter. They stood in a little semicircle. Flak Jacket was doing all the talking, in a controlled shout. He waved his hands in tight circles. The guy was pissed. Ace heard the word
circus
several times.

Jim Yeager stood back from the harangue and then moved smoothly into the power vacuum. Hands on his hips, faintly smiling, he said, “Okay, Ace. Why don’tcha explain what’s going on here. Like, who’s this guy?” Yeager pointed at George, who was now furious, trying to dust the gravel stains off his shirt and shorts.

“Assholes!” George yelled. “They put oil on the gravel, or something. Look—brand new, from Cabela’s, fucking ruined.” He shook his fist at the coven of military types and shouted. “You pussies. You got nothing better to do? Is this because I come from Lebanon? I pay taxes, you know, goddammit, and so does my uncle. He was in Korea. First fucking Marines. He walked from Chosen to the coast with shrapnel in his knee, and you fucking Girl Scouts have fought—who, the fucking Panamanians? The Grenadians? The dip-shit Iraqis? Some losers in Afghanistan?”

“George, calm down,” Ace said. He turned to Yeager. “He’s George Khari, an old friend of the family. He’s a liquor distributer from Grand Forks. We kind of run into each other on the road.”

“Uh-huh,” Yeager said. “And what about that?” He pointed to the foot locker.

Ace smiled, enjoying himself. “Well, we were trying to figure out what to do about that. I found it just sitting there on the gravel north of town.” Ace paused, relishing the moment. “Fact is…
I
didn’t open it, Jimmy.
You
did.”

“Who are those fuckers?” George demanded, pointing at Holly and company. “I want all their names and their jobs. I want to talk to my lawyer!”

Yeager said, “C’mon, figure it out. They’re people from the air base across the road. You’re on government property here. They probably scrambled to see why you’re creeping around the site. Like back during the missile time.”

“Yeah, right. Protecting the gophers who live here, huh?” Ace grinned. “You know what I think? I think you should get your ass out there and write a ticket to that fuckin’ helicopter. Looks to me like it’s blocking traffic.”