Chuck Logan - After the Rain

Wales’ voice was picking up momentum. “I talked to people in Bismarck who never bullshit me. There is no state operation aimed at Ace Shuster currently in the works.”

Broker stared at Wales’ face. It was a rugged, compassionate face, like the perfect uncle or the perfect sergeant. Wales narrowed his eyes. “Let me tell you how it is. I got three full-time deputies for this whole county. There’s one state highway patrol copper…”

Broker interrupted. “I saw a bunch of brand-new Border Patrol Tahoes parked at the motel on the way in.”

“Right. After 9/11 they started sending guys from Texas through here on thirty-day rotations. We got three official border crossings in the county. They close between ten at night and six in the morning. The BP sits at the customs stations each night just in case Al Qaeda comes trotting down the road in platoon strength chanting the Koran.”

“I wish I could help you, Wales,” Broker said.

“Lemme put it to you this way, Broker. You remember Gordon Kahl?”

Broker nodded. “Tax resister, Posse Comitatus type. There was a shoot-out here in North Dakota, early eighties. They got him later someplace down south.”

“Arkansas. But the scene here is what I’m getting at. Feds came strutting into Medina and brushed the local cops aside. Dumb shits. Set up an ambush on the road. Two federal marshals were killed and Kahl got away. Lot of people think that wouldn’t have happened if they let the local sheriff handle it.”

Wales smiled tightly and paused to let his words sink in before he resumed talking. “I got two hundred miles of wide-open border, and, like I said, three official crossings under the watchful eye of the U.S. Border Patrol.” He stood up, planted his wide knuckles on his desk, and enunciated very clearly: “And I got twenty-three prairie roads cutting through the fields that people been using for a hundred years. Some of them are graded and can handle a semitrailer.”

He paused and took a breath. Then he said, “So I only got one question: WHAT THE FUCK IS ARMY SPECIAL OPS DOING IN MY COUNTY!”

Broker left the sheriff’s office pissed, but also experiencing fits of wonder and disbelief at what Nina and her crew were up to. He got back in the Explorer, continued down Highway 5, and found the city park sign and an arrow pointing north. Two blocks later he passed the elementary school.

Like Jane said, it was hard to miss.

Broker stared up at a perfectly restored Spartan missile at the edge of the park grounds. Looming fifty-five feet tall, the antiballistic missile was painted white with accurate black tail and fin markings and a vertical stack of uppercase letters spelling US ARMY.

He left the Explorer on the street and walked up to the missile and read the plaque at the granite base, which announced that the missile was given to the people of Langdon and Cavalier County during deployment of the Safeguard Anti-Ballistic Missile Facility.

Only then, looking at this memorial, did it finally dawn on Broker that he was in the heart of the old ICBM, ABM belt. He remembered back to the 1970s and ’80s, all the talk about the good life in Minnesota until some party pooper pointed out that the state was right in the path of the prevailing winds from the missile fields in North Dakota. In other words, if the worst happened, North Dakota would take the first hit, but Minnesota would catch all the fallout.

Nina had picked an interesting locale.

He crossed the park grounds and entered a low building that abutted the fenced-in swimming pool. He told the employee behind the counter he was here to get his kid and went out onto the pool area.

Summer squeals and splashes greeted him, kids in water wings throwing balls, riding on Styrofoam snakes. Parents sat along the poolside, a few dangling their legs, more of them at tables under umbrellas.

Broker spotted her in the pool putting serious moves on the water. Even in his wounded hand he felt the instant ache of absence, four months’ separation. Kit Broker, seven years old, in an apricot Speedo swimsuit, goggles, hair pulled back tight in a ponytail, was busting her butt, doing a fairly decent crawl, cranking out laps all alone in the right-hand lane.

A watchful presence who had to be Jane paced her up and down the pool. Broker recognized her voice from the telephone as he walked up:

“Long and strong, Kit. Long and strong. Short and fast won’t do it. Let’s try for twenty strokes on this next lap.”

She wore a plain black tank suit over a sleek coat of fast-twitch muscle. Dark short hair, the sides showing a flash of scalp, a touch of style to go with hoops of metal pierced into the edges of her ears. All together it added a glint of pagan wildness to her tired brown eyes. Not flashy and not subtle. And Broker disagreed with Wales. Jane didn’t look especially sexy or dikey. She looked exhausted. And, sure, she was sharp-as in sharpened to too fine a point. And just plain dangerous, the way someone strung out on speed is unpredictable.

As Broker came up to the edge of the pool he scanned the crowd of parents and watchers and settled on the older guy with sandblasted ash hair. He had the deep face and arm tan of a man who works outside. His muscular legs were pale in comparison. The leisurely wide shorts and oversized orange and red Hawaiian shirt didn’t go with the face, whose pale blue eyes, relentlessly tracking the scene, had forgotten how to relax over twenty years ago.

The moment Broker started toward Kit, Hawaiian Shirt uncoiled out of his chair with slow intensity. His large blunt hands, attached to thick-veined forearms, moved to a hover near his waist, eyes scanning.

Then the eye contact, the recognition, the easing back.

Okay. So Sheriff Wales did have excellent instincts.

Kit was swimming with the sharks.

“Dad-deee…”

Kit shot up, gleaming, out of the water, hoisted herself out of the pool, and ran to him, a blur of freckles and red hair. She jumped into his arms. Broker grimaced and grinned at the same time, hugging the happy squirm of his daughter as he got covered in wet kisses and chlorine. Taller by a good inch since he’d last seen her, Kit was starting to show some of the lean lioness density she inherited from her mother. Broker got thoroughly wet in the process and grimaced when her knee banged his injured hand.

“Kit, hey, look at you.”

She had her mother’s eyes and color. She’d acquired her mom’s scary habit of totally focusing her attention. The habit of picking up small details she got from both of them. “What happened to your hand?” she asked.

“Oh, I hurt it working.”

“Can I see it?”

“Okay. But later. So where’s Mommy?” Broker asked, managing to keep his voice cordial.

Kit knit her brows-the brooding expression came from her dad. “Mom’s at work,” she said. Then she brightened. “I helped. We were in a play.”

“You were, huh? So who’s watching you?” He hefted her in his arms, settling her weight on his hip. She laid her cheek along his neck and nestled in, molding into his hollows. She raised her eyes and said:

“Auntie Jane and Uncle Hollywood.”

“Uncle Hollywood?” Broker nodded, turned, and stared at the gaudy Hawaiian Shirt. “And this must be Auntie Jane.” Broker turned to face the woman in the black swimsuit.

She extended her hand. “Jane Singer. How you doing?” Her grip was a little too firm. An edge of challenge in her eyes was ambiguous and sexually nonspecific. Like a dare to guess where she was really coming from. She’s young, overtrained, and very very tired, Broker thought.

Kit interrupted their mutual inspection, squirming from his embrace.