Anyway, when Nina doesn’t show up at the motel, Jane calls my deputy as per the arrangement. He calls the contact person who turns out to be the sheriff in Cook County, Minnesota. Now, we get to wondering-why is a county sheriff involved?
“Then Sheriff Jeffords calls me and asks me, as a favor, to make extra sure nothing happens to your kid on account of you and him are buddies. Meanwhile, your Nina runs off with the bar owner. Seems they saw they had something in common from the git. To wit: a drinking problem.”
“Aw god.” Broker sagged forward, elbow on knee, face in his hand. “Go on,” he said. The fever had now divided into a lot of little spikes that started to seethe behind his eyes like flames, or maybe snakes. He struggled to keep a straight face.
Very casual, very sly, Wales hit Broker with his crack shot. “By the way. Nina and Jane rolled into town in this broken-down Volvo.”
“
Wales grinned. “That’s how my guy read it. He said that underneath their bullshit, these two chicks had the look of folks who might arrive by Humvee, or in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, or by fuckin’ parachute…”
Broker held up his hands. “I give up. You’re right. The people she hangs with would turn Volvos away from her funeral.”
“And those people would be…”
“Nina never brought her work home.” Broker clicked his teeth together. “The fact is, she ain’t brought herself home, either, the last couple years.”
“You ever heard of the Purple Platoon?” Wales asked.
Broker shook his head. “Where’d that come from?”
“Your friend Downs, he’s got a photographic memory, I guess. From an article he read. What about the term
Broker stared at him. “Got me.”
“C’mon, Broker,” Wales said softly. “Try D for Delta.”
Broker slumped his shoulders. “Wales, man, I don’t know. I just come here to get my kid clear of whatever’s going on.”
Wales leaned across his desk and said, “Maybe.”
They stared at each other.
Slowly, employing a reasonable tone of voice, Wales said, “Look. The guy she took off with is named Ace Shuster. He did a bit for manslaughter ten years ago. Everybody, including me, believes it was self-defense and the jury stuck it to him. A case of personal and local politics. He drinks too much and considers himself a ladies’ man. And his dad had a moment of notoriety a couple years back as the biggest whiskey smuggler in North Dakota. But the way they do it, they haven’t been breaking any state laws. The dad split for Florida and left Ace behind to sell the family bar. And probably, from time to time, Ace ships a little booze north, like a thousand other saloons between here and Washington State. But his heart ain’t really in it, because the truth is, Ace ain’t such a bad guy. We also believe, but cannot as yet prove, that the little asshole who runs Ace’s bar, Gordy Riker, is moving methamphetamine precursor, and anything else that pays the freight, down from Canada…”
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:
Chapter Twelve
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
