Chuck Logan - After the Rain

Yeager was shouting into his phone. “Irv, Irv…Okay, you calm down, too. Look, Dale sold you some machines, right?…Yeah, two front-loaders. We think-”

Holly shook his head violently.

“No,” Broker put his hand over Yeager’s cell, “not till we’re on the ground and evaluate those machines. They’ll start messing around without knowing what they’re dealing with.”

Holly said, “Tell him Dale’s wanted for questioning in the death of his brother.”

Yeager got back on the phone. “Irv. Ace Shuster was shot to death back home this morning. We think Dale was there. So I need to talk to you fast. And could you locate the two machines he sold you? We want to take a look at them.” Yeager ended the call, grimaced. “He agreed, but he sounded confused.”

“You ain’t seen confused. Just wait till we get on the ground,” Holly said.

They grabbed handholds on the seats as the chopper pitched forward, picking up speed. Broker felt like the rotors were spinning in his chest. The whole wild day. Dale was out there in front of them somewhere, on the ground. And Broker was sure now he had Nina with him. Gotta believe that. She’s down there on one of those roads in a vehicle.

Alive.

Without realizing it, he had pulled the crumpled pack of smokes from his pocket. Holly and Yeager reached over and dug out mangled cigarettes, straightened them, and lit up. Broker joined them. Inhaled, exhaled, looked in the pack.

Two left.

Fields and tree lines and housing developments rushed beneath them as they flew southeast with the St. Croix River on their left. They passed over the confluence, where the St. Croix flowed into the Mississippi.

“Any minute now,” Broker yelled.

The crazed rush subsided and Holly’s face twisted into a disgusted snarl. “Those goddamn motherfuckers. We told them. And we told them. I helped run the black-hat teams out of Special Ops at Bragg. We’d play aggressor to test nuclear plant security for NRC. Fuckin’ private security guards. Bunch of guys who couldn’t make it as cops. Timothy McVeigh became a private security guard when he flunked the psychological test for Special Forces…”

He stared at Broker. “You know what the fuckers did? They canceled the exercise because it was too easy for us to breach security at the plants-when we told them that eighty percent of their guards would shit their pants if faced by a real attack by a serious opponent. Flat run and hide.” He shook his head. “But I got a feeling this thing we’re heading into ain’t something you stop with gates, guns, and guards.”

He alerted to the satellite phone next to his ear. “Finally. Plant security.” He leaned into the phone. “This is Northern Route Six. I am inbound your position in an Army Black Hawk helicopter. We intend to land as near the reactors as possible. Preferably on the construction site. Have a vehicle waiting and get Irv Fuller, the construction contractor. This is not a test. Goddammit! It’s a U.S. Army helicopter and I am an Army colonel.”

Holly rolled his eyes, shouted at Broker, “He wants some confirmation. Says we could be anybody.”

Holly yelled into the phone. “Listen carefully, Jody; this bird is coming in hot. You start plinking at us, we’ll burn you up. We believe your security has been breached. I need to talk to your boss, I need to talk to the most senior person on the site. You must be getting confirmation from NRC, somebody in Washington. This is real serious…Well, goddamn it, find him on his fucking coffee break !”

Holly lowered his phone and went back to shaking his head, furious. He dug into a go-bag lying on the deck and pulled out a picture ID on a lanyard. He hung it around his neck. “The goddamn French put antiaircraft missiles on their nuclear waste dumps to protect them. The Germans decentralize their waste and bury it in huge bunkers. Our defense amounts to public relations, full-page ads, and hardcore denial. We been telling these assholes at the nuclear plants for ten years, since the first World Trade Center bombing…Greedy fuckers, just too damn cheap to-”

Holly interrupted his tirade, cocked his ear to his phone. “Finally, got somebody from NRC. Uh-huh. What’s the layout of the reactor and pool? Oh, that’s great. Typical. Thanks. Bye,” Holly made a face, looked away.

“What?” Broker asked. “The reactors are in hardened containments, aren’t they?”

Holly shook his head vehemently. “It ain’t the reactors I’m worried about. It’s the cooling pool. NRC just told me the one at Prairie Island is just this big tin shed between the reactors. They say the pool is below grade and bunkered. We’ll see.”

The cooling pool.

Broker tried to picture it. He summoned a documentary image of this vast watery honeycomb grid. Robotic arms moving the lethal fuel assemblies into the tight-packed cubbyholes. He knew as much about nuclear plants as the next guy-heavy avoidance laced with a whiff of Armageddon.

The pilot reached a hand back and waved.

“There it is,” Holly yelled. They crowded forward to get a look.

Two rounded gray towers nestled next to the hazy river fringed with trees and parking lots. A large rectangular building with a blue roof crowded the reactors in the foreground. A lower structure was stitched between them. Across a canal, banks of squat towers released a cloud of white vapor. Past the plant an open rectangular area was surrounded by a landscaped, raised barrier. In the center of the open space a number of tall white cylinders were invitingly grouped like bowling pins.

The Black Hawk banked and descended toward an access road that ran past a parking lot from which cars were starting to leave.

“There.” Holly pointed toward a gash of black gray earth in back of the towers. The sun glinted on a chain-link fence erected around the construction site. Coming in lower, they could see the equipment: excavators, bulldozers, and wheel-loaders strewn around the work site.

Several Chevy Blazers jockeyed around on the grass, trying to anticipate the landing point of the incoming helicopter. Holly clamped his cell to his ear. “Finally,” he said. “Prairie Island Security? Okay, listen up. This is Northern Route Six…”

Holly said to Broker, covering his cell phone with his hand, “Guy’s voice is shaking like hell.” He removed his hand. “This is Six. C’mon, c’mon, talk to me.” Holly shook his head. “Negative. We’ll kick up too much dust on the site. We’ll put down on the grass next to the fence.”

Holly leaned into the cockpit and debated with the pilot. Quickly they picked an open plot of grass near the construction fence. The Hawk descended, flared, and landed with a jolt. Holly, Broker, and Yeager jumped off. One of the Blazers pulled up and three men got out. One wore a natty brown private-guard outfit, duty belt, sidearm. The second guy caught Broker’s attention. He wore a dress shirt, tie, and a yellow hard hat. And he had this credit-card-sized plastic gauge in a plastic baggie clipped to his shirt. The card had a gray window in the corner. The numeral zero was displayed in the window. The last man wore jeans, a blue work shirt, and boots. That would be Fuller. All three approached with faces the color of flour, eyes like jelly.

They headed for Yeager, who was in uniform. Yeager pointed at Holly, then shook hands with the guy in the work shirt. He walked Fuller aside and started talking.

While the plant guard and the manager-type struggled with the idea that the guy who looked like a Willie Nelson roadie was a Delta colonel, Broker jogged through the gate in the construction fence. He ignored two heavily armed guards in brown uniforms who nervously flanked him, AR-15s at the ready. Fuck them. He was looking for the front-loader.