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.”
“Watch your mouth, Ace,” Yeager warned.
Broker gathered that the troubleshooter who’d flown in from the Office of Homeland Security was willing to break the rules for a nuclear event. But not for a box of smuggled cigars. They had nothing on George Khari-who was a Christian, for heaven’s sake, the guy said with a whiff of born-again indignance-not some Muslim fundamentalist crazy. And nothing really on Ace Shuster for possession of the cigars that a good lawyer couldn’t get thrown out of court. Jane and Nina were right. The guy was after Holly’s scalp. He used the words irresponsible, renegade, and rogue.
“You got till tomorrow morning to clean up this mess. Then I want everybody en route to Bragg by noon. Figure out a way to make it so that this didn’t happen. End of story.” The Washington bureaucrat took off his flak jacket, dropped it at Holly’s feet, and stalked back to the helicopter.
“Dry fucking hole,” Holly said, kicking at the dirt. “Rashid fed us a line of crap.” He circled his fist and pumped it. The guy with the Geiger counter and the four shooters trotted back to the helicopter. It lifted off and droned away to the south. The black guy and his partner got back in their van and drove off to the east. Holly gestured to Yeager to come over and talk. That left Broker, Jane, and a very pissed off Nina standing on the side of the road, illuminated by the lights from the Tahoe, looking at Ace and George.
“So this is your real life, huh? Some kinda soldier?” Ace called out to Nina.
“Ace, you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your hole,” Yeager yelled. Then he went back to conferring with Holly. After a few moments, Holly motioned to Nina, Jane, and Broker. When they were huddled around him, he shook his head. “You heard the asshole from D.C. We’re outta here.”
“You mean just let them go?” Jane pushed out her chin and planted her hands on her hips.
“No choice. What’d they do?” Holly said.
“I can take Ace in for possession of contraband,” said Yeager, “but he has a point. It was a classified Army unit opened that box. If we charge him, that could bring this whole operation into court. A good attorney would try to subpoena you guys, take depositions, make you testify in court…”
“You heard the man,” Holly said and jerked his head in the direction of the fading helicopter rotors. Then he turned to Yeager. “Can you make it go away?”
Yeager heaved his shoulders. “I’ll try.” He walked over to Ace and George. Broker, Nina, Jane, and Holly followed.
“Okay, Ace, we’re going to offer you and George a deal, and if you’re smart, you’ll take it.” Yeager took out his cell. “I can call the SO, get a man out here in a cruiser and arrest you two on suspicion of smuggling…”
“Am I under arrest?” George asked, jaw thrust forward, truculent.
“Not at the moment, but I never want to see you in my county again,” Yeager said. “You understand, you little asshole?”
“Fuck this. I’m calling my lawyer,” George hissed.
“Wait a sec, George, let’s hear him out,” Ace said.
“Or,” Yeager said, “we do this little trade. Real simple. You forget what you saw here. We forget what we saw.”
“Who gets the cigars?” George stepped forward and narrowed his eyes.
“What cigars?” Yeager turned and faced the highway.
Broker smiled and said, “Maybe you could spare a few, for sweetener.”
George’s scowl evaporated the more he thought about it. “Sounds good,” he said quickly. He immediately started loading the cigar boxes into the foot locker. Ace helped him load it in the back of the Lexus. Then George shut the hatch and handed two boxes to Broker. “Best fuckin’ cigars in the world.” He turned to Ace, shook his hand, and said, “Say hello to your dad when you see him.” Then George Khari got in his Lexus and drove east, toward the interstate.
As the taillights receded down the highway, Ace turned to the people standing in his high beams and said, “So what’s out here that calls for military helicopters and guys in ninja suits? Do I get an explanation?”
Nina and Jane exchanged glances. “Sorry, Ace,” Nina said.
Ace set his jaw. “I deserve an explanation.”
“Just take off, and keep your mouth shut,” Yeager said. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you. I mean it.”
Ace decided not to push it. He ambled back to his Tahoe, got in, and drove west toward town. Soon he was laughing, shaking his head, and pounding the steering wheel. What a night. Sonofabitch! I almost got me some Green Beret pussy!
Holly walked off alone and stood staring down the highway at something in the dark. Probably his imminent retirement. Broker figured it was not the best time to talk, so he joined Nina, who sat on the ground where Ace’s Tahoe had been parked, arms drooped between her knees. She shook her head. “That Rashid guy back in Detroit just shined us down the road. And we went for it.”
“We had no choice. Had to check it out. Had to be something going on up here for him to come up with a name, a place,” Jane said, sitting beside her.
“If there was, we missed it,” Nina said.
“Hey, cut yourself some slack,” Broker said “You ran a fast, tight operation. Just didn’t pan out. Human systems are like that. Flawed…Pretty goddamn funny, though, you got to admit. Delta commandos popping out of ditches. Locking and loading on Communist cigars.” He was chuckling as he opened one of the wooden boxes and extended it to Yeager. They selected cigars, nibbled off the plugs, and sat down alongside the women.
A lighter flared as they lit the Cubans. The smoke rose in aromatic billows and sent the mosquitoes pinwheeling off in drunken circles.
Broker continued to laugh softly.
“I don’t see what’s so damn funny,” Nina said.
“I’ll tell you what’s funny,” Yeager said, moving in deftly. “They built this bunker in a peat field, and one night an Air Force guy was having a smoke and he flips his cigarette butt into the ditch and…”
Ace pulled up to the Missile Park, turned off the engine, and got out. No sign of Gordy.
Okay. Just me and about five cases of booze left in this empty building tonight.
After what just happened, I can handle that.
As he started up the steps he sensed them before he saw them, two figures standing in the dark, back against the building, on either side of the porch.
“Hey,” he called out, putting a hard challenge in his voice.
“Take it easy,” Dale said, coming forward. “Just me and Joe.”
“What are you two doing, lurking?” Ace asked.
“Just talking,” Joe said. “Say…you ever meet up with George?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And?”
“Worked out just fine. Tell you about it sometime,” Ace said, pushing past them, getting out his keys. “But not tonight. I ain’t in the mood.”
“What about that redhead, Nina?” Dale asked.
Ace was feeling around in the dark, fitting the key in the lock. He laughed and said over his shoulder, “She’s gone, brother. So gone you could say she was never really here.”
Broker watched Northern Route come apart on a deserted North Dakota highway just as fast as it had been put together. And the.45 he had on loan from his buddy J. T. Merryweather was missing. He’d talk to Yeager about it. But not now. In the morning.
The Cohibas were the only good thing about the whole night.
Well, not entirely. Here he was again, reunited with one really worn out, pissed off redhead. Nina’s adrenaline crash left her numb, and he was careful not to indulge in any more sarcasm. When she hung her head, he put out his arm and she nestled into that cranny in his shoulder where she’d always seemed to fit so well. Amid the wreckage, a rapprochement of sorts was taking shape.
Holly told Nina and Jane to take a down day and rest. The backup team was flying east tonight with the suit from Homeland Security. The helicopter was slated to fly back to North Carolina tomorrow.
Broker drove Janey and Holly to the Air Force radar base across the highway and dropped them at the gate. Nina stayed in the car and they drove Yeager back to his house in town. Then they made a U-turn and drove to the motel.
“I should call Kit,” Nina said when they were in the room.
“It’s too late. Do it in the morning.”
The bed was suddenly irresistible and Nina lowered herself to it and rolled over and propped her head up with pillows.
“We should talk,” she said in a fading zombie voice.
“Yeah, we should,” Broker said. He was sitting at the small table in the corner, taking off his shoes. When he looked up, she was sound asleep.
As he gently removed her pistol belt, her shoes, and clothing, a lot of thoughts passed through his mind. They all came under a simple heading:
Married Life.