Chuck Logan - Homefront

Broker shrugged. “Things are looking better. Let’s wait and see…”

Hearing that, Griffin studied Broker for a moment and added, “Uh-huh.” Then he signaled that the break was over. “Enough grabass, we got work to do.”

The early afternoon passed quickly, and Broker felt himself loosening up, enjoying the work tugging at his muscles. The tease and dig of easy male company was an antidote to the estrogen bends, he decided; he’d been too far down in that house with Nina and Kit. When he prepared to leave to pick Kit up from school, Griffin caught up to him at his truck.

“You know,” Griffin said, “I was thinking about what you said-the cat being Kit’s only playmate…”

“Yeah?”

“You met Susan, right, at school?”

“Yeaahh…” Broker drew it out, watching the wheels turning in Griffin’s eyes.

“So I was thinking. Susan’s got this daughter, Amy, same age as Kit. Maybe we could line them up so Kit’s got somebody to hang with…might make it go easier.”

Broker worried his lower lip between his teeth, his eyes weighing the idea. “I’ll think about it.”

“If we get the kids together, could be a good idea for Susan and Nina to maybe talk…”

“This one of your half-assed interventions?” Broker smiled when he said it, amiable.

“Can’t hurt,” Griffin said.

Broker turned and headed for his truck. “We on for tomorrow morning in the torture chamber?” Once a week Broker joined Griffin in his basement weight room, where they went through a lifting routine.

“Sure.”

“We’ll talk about it then, along with how much politically correct crow I gotta eat to make the peace with that asshole Klumpe,” Broker said, getting in his truck.

Teedo walked over to Griffin. They stood watching Broker drive off.

“You heard what’s been going on?” Griffin asked.

Teedo nodded. “Heard the gang talking it up at Skeet’s. How Broker put Jimmy Klumpe on the ground. Started when Broker’s kid knocked Teddy Klumpe on his butt at school. Then yesterday Broker dumped his garbage at Jimmy’s garage, right on the welcome mat.”

“There’s more. Two days ago, after the scene at school, somebody came in on skis through the woods, punctured a tire on his truck, tried to poison his dog”-Griffin paused-“maybe got in the house…”

“Country payback. Except he ain’t got a dog,” Teedo said.

“Yeah. But they took some stuff, a kid’s toy, maybe the cat. Weird, huh? Can you picture a klutz like Jimmy going in on skis?” Griffin picked up two empty gas cans, started to put them in the open lift door of his Jeep.

“Don’t sound like Jimmy. Day before last, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Day before last, I gassed up at the Amoco and the truck in front of me was that old beat-up Chevy Gator Bodine drives.”

Hearing Gator’s name, Griffin stopped in mid-motion, loading a gas can in the back of his Jeep. He turned, giving Teedo his full attention. “What time was this?” he asked.

“Ah, midafternoon. We quit early, remember. And I stopped before I went to Skeet’s for a couple beers. Thing was”-Teedo paused for emphasis-“there was cross-country skis and poles in the truck box. With snow on them. And when Gator come out of the station carrying a bag, he was wearing those ski boots. And winter camos, like for bow hunting.”

“Gator, huh?”

“Yeah. He’s a demon for skinny skis.” Teedo turned toward his truck, climbed in, started the engine, zipped down the window, leaned out. “Griffin, you’re getting that look in your eye. Like when you first hauled me to an AA meeting.”

Griffin shrugged.

Teedo paused to let Griffin appreciate the serious shadow that came into his quiet eyes. “I’d be real careful around Gator. He ain’t true.”

“C’mon, Teedo, what?” Griffin straightened up, prodded by the fast lick of danger in Teedo’s expression.

Teedo gnawed his lip, looked away, and spoke into the distance. “Take a minute to think. You want to go into it, I’ll be at Skeet’s. You can buy me a beer, huh.” Then he zipped up the window, covering the bare hint of an ironic grin, and drove away.

Alone behind the lodge, Griffin lit a cigarette and poured the last of the coffee out of his thermos, thinking about what Teedo had seen at the Amoco.

Gator. It tracked. Cassie’s kid gets thumped. Gator always fought his sister’s battles. And if the story about the meth house fire was true, he had a propensity to go insane deep into vengeance.

He ain’t true? What was Teedo getting at?

It was game time.

Nina sat on the back steps, smoking the one last cigarette allowed to the condemned. Except, in this case, to face the firing squad, she had to take off the blindfold. For the first time since the veil of darkness had cloaked ordinary life, she didn’t avert her eyes. She looked at her sorry ass directly, like a tactical problem.

Among her talents was an unique ability to get inside an opponent’s time, his intent and tactics. Disrupting them. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. Boyd’s celebrated OODA Loop. This reflex, which they now taught at the service schools, was hardwired in her synapses. It had made her military reputation.

Instinctively she understood how to defeat the depression. It required a simple trick of personal jujitsu.

All she had to do was face in the right direction, meet head-on the thing she dreaded more than her own death…

Admitting weakness. Admitting defeat.

She had been here before.

That summer in 1988, the Olympic swim trials were held at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center, University of Texas at Austin.

One of the fastest pools in the world.

Nina Pryce had finished her sophomore year in Ann Arbor. She had medaled in three events in the NCAA nationals, forcing herself through a grueling season, living on Darvoset to block the persistent bursitis in her shoulder.

Mind over matter. Make the cut. Next stop Seoul, Korea.

She knew the shoulder was a time bomb, and she kept it from her coaches. Hell, they’d done a lot to create the problem-an absence of moderation in the weight room, when they threw the girls at free weights with the football team. A dedicated Title Nine

Hari Kari, she held nothing back. Probably the bench press did the damage. Along with too much weight on the fly machine.

Seeded second in the 200 butterfly. Her best event.

Only the top two would go.

She ignored her coach’s advice to go out smooth, stay with the pack for two laps, and make her move on the third lap. Then bring it home hard. Once she got up on the starting blocks and took her mark, she only knew one way forward-get out in front from the buzzer and stay there.

The humid air is charged, drenched with chlorine. The tiled walls rock with applause from the sweating bodies in the stands. In the pool, the quiet blue world of racing water churns with silent screaming muscles. Bursting hearts. Leading the pack, going into the wall on the third lap, she felt the shoulder start to freeze. Ignore it.

Don’t quit, don’t cry.

Make the turn. Now. Bring. It. Home. In mid-lap the shoulder locked. She thrashed on, lame on one flipper. Finished third.

Missed a seat on the Olympic plane by four hundredths of a second. Pride. Vanity. That last obstinate twenty-five meters did more to wreck her than all the previous wear and tear.

Who she was.

It took a year with trainers to rebuild the inflamed muscles and ligaments around the shoulder. At a sobering meeting, the sports doctor stoically told her she had the shoulder of a thirty-five-year-old woman.