“Good night,” he said simply.
Nina, wary, went into the dark bedroom almost on tiptoe, walking a plumb line to the bed, not wanting to disturb or touch anything, fearing sexual trip wires strung in the dark.
Alert. She braced for him coming through the door.
Chapter Eight
The first moment of truth came in Detroit two days ago, just after they broke Rashid. They’d had a real quick sit-down with the Colonel, who’d provided the intell that located Rashid. One of the “Squirrels,” a pure intelligence network so spooky nobody knew its origin, the Colonel was their unofficial link to the databases back at the Pentagon. He could not say yea or nay to their preemptive mission. He could only evaluate. He had a chalky air-conditioned pallor acquired in some unnamed Pentagon sub-basement. He’d told them, just the three of them who were the sharp end-Hollywood, Nina, and Jane:
“We believe the intelligence is too provocative to pass up. They may have something, possibly a suitcase; one of those KGB tactical nukes. They could be bringing it into the States through North Dakota. Virtually anybody can claim refugee status and enter Canada. We know there’s Al Qaeda activity in Winnipeg, just to the north of Langdon. So it could already be here, and maybe there’s a fresh trail.”
He told them it was a real long shot. They’d be going into a very fragile intelligence matrix. He concurred with Nina’s plan, given the target, to lead with D-girls. He advised them to plan their approach carefully. He bid farewell saying, “This meeting never happened.” Then he packed his briefcase and departed.
Fragile intelligence matrix.
That meant a small town where everybody knows everybody and strangers stick way out.
The information on Ace Shuster was already spitting out of the fax machine.
Wonderful. He killed a guy in a bar fight. Although, even in the official record, the incident looked like self-defense. But Shuster was convicted and did a year on a manslaughter rap at the state farm.
Then-Jesus-the FBI had pictures of him in the spectators gallery at Waco. This raised the specter of anti-Semitic American militias finding common cause with Al Qaeda.
No subsequent arrests. No known militia affiliations.
Shuster’s father had been investigated repeatedly as a major player in the liquor traffic along the border, but the charges never stuck. He wasn’t breaking any North Dakota laws.
The Colonel had put together a fast synopsis after a consult with Shuster’s former probation officer. Shuster had served his time, went back into the community, and caused no real trouble. He’d had his conviction reduced. Probation described him as an underemployed heavy-machinery operator, and real smart. But the brains went wasted, because he tended to brood and drink. The drinking was probably self-medication for moderate depression. He’d dabbled in sports, smuggling, and women. Possibly peripherally involved with the biker gangs who ran the smuggling on the Canadian side of the border. No solid evidence linked him to the looming meth traffic. Remember, he was smart. He could be mixed up in almost anything out in all that empty country. Potentially a very dangerous guy, but not so’s you notice it right off.
A ladies’ man.
Nina had looked out the window toward Ann Arbor, where Kit was staying with her mother’s sister, and came up with the idea.
“It could work if it’s bold enough,” Holly said.
Bold enough…The gloves were off. They were in the serious black on this one.
“You still sure you want in?” Holly said.
The serious black. Lie, cheat, steal.
“We’re not carrying copies of the Geneva Convention in our kit,” Holly said.
Jane, the sharp tack, cracked wise. “There’s killing in combat and then there’s murder. You ain’t talkin’ about combat.”
“Correct. I ain’t necessarily talkin’ about combat. And there’s other things you might have to do.”
“Things?” Jane had said.
“What, I gotta draw you a picture?” Holly said pointedly to the two women.
So Nina told Jane, “He means like whatever it takes. Like you might have to suck some smuggler’s dick. Not your favorite thing, Jane.”
Jane came back fast. “Just as long as it ain’t Holly’s.”
D-girls. Nothing but hardcore. Behind the bravado they were all picturing Paula Zahn on CNN going zombie-cottonmouthed, trying to get her words out while in the background a nuclear plume mushroomed over downtown Chicago, or Kansas City, or…
Fuck it.
Nothing else mattered. Mission first.
But the way the plan worked, Jane drew a pass. Jane was in the motel in town probably reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Kit. Nina got the duty and now here she was in a smuggler’s bed, listening to him putter around in his living room just beyond the closed but unlocked door. Jesus, his place was clean. Did that mean he was clean? What if he was a bareback kind of cowboy who didn’t want to use condoms?
What was the statistical probability of contracting AIDS from unsafe sex in remotest North Dakota, anyway? Better or worse odds than being the first dummy rolling out of a Black Hawk on a hot mountain LZ in Afghanistan?
Numbers. Odds. Probabilities…
Nina slid between the clean sheets.
Downstairs she heard the dolly scurry across the floor. A one-man ant colony, Gordy went back and forth, loading the crates of whiskey. The rhythm of the work, the rolling dolly wheels, the thud of the cases being hefted in place drummed like a harsh lullaby.
Exhausted from the alcohol, Nina’s mind wandered.
The mission.
Her first job was to survive insertion. Boy, there’s an example of military lingo falling flat on its ass.
Think about other things.
Like her ex-husband…no, that wasn’t right, they were just separated. Her estranged husband. Better.
It occurred to Nina that her asshole estranged husband would be right at home in these shadows. He’d lived this life for years on end working the margins, hiding out. A lot of people thought he’d done it too long. Not much for small talk, Broker. Not real great social skills at a cocktail party. Good with Kit, though.
And no one was better in the fog.
It was Broker who had taught her about compartments. The necessity to keep various parts of your life scrupulously segregated. And right now she had her daughter in one box and her husband in another. So she just cracked the door on Broker’s cubbyhole, because if she wasn’t careful all this stuff would come rushing out.
Stuff she didn’t need right now.
Emotional stuff.
She realized she was holding on to her discipline like a chin-up bar. Hanging by it. White-knuckling it. Below her the rest of the night waited.
In order to function she had to sleep.
But sleep would leave her vulnerable.
She had to let go and drop into the darkness.
She had duty-trained herself to do so many things-among them, to drop into a fundamental animal sleep almost at will. She had learned how to sleep standing up, to catnap, to meditate.
So she relaxed her grip on the strange day, finger by finger, and started to slide down into the blackness. Sinking, she caught a fleeting notion of Broker and how he’d handle the news that Kit was left hanging in some motel room in North Dakota.
So, Broker, how many women did you sleep with in the line of duty?
But then she had to smile. He wasn’t gonna like it the way she reeled him into this one. Uh-uh. Boy, was he gonna be pissed.
And that’s exactly how they needed him.
Chapter Nine
The rotary phone in the booth at Camp’s Corner still worked long after the golf course failed and the gas station and store closed. People drove out of their way to show their kids this dinosaur from the days before wireless. The county had originally asked the phone company to keep the line open so farmers working during spring planting and the fall harvest could make calls in an emergency. Which was good, because the man pacing back and forth next to the booth was facing a crisis.