“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…”
The cigarette came streaking back from the darkness. Along with this real loud no bullshit voice:
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
