After the Rain

blue golf shirt that set off his heavy white arms, throat, and face.

The driver’s seat swiveled, and now he spun it around and sat down, facing her. “Now, about the bomb,” he said.

The word bomb cut through the routine terror. She blinked herself alert as he rummaged around on the passenger seat, plucked up a four-by-eight-inch color photo, and leaned far forward, extending his arm so she could see it. She strained up, squinted. It was some big boxy yellow tractor with a shovel bucket on the front. Like you see on construction sites.

“I sold this used 644C to Irv Fuller. He thinks he took me on the deal. But, trust me, he’s the one who’s in for a surprise.” Dale smiled slowly. “That’s what I do. I surprise people.”

Nina shook her head. Sensed movement. Someone else coming.

“Dale and I have some business to attend to,” said George Khari, as he climbed over the passenger seat, stood in the compartment, and nodded curtly.

“Last night…” Nina said.

George shrugged, waffled a hand in the air. “Fake left, go right, heh?” He was unshaven, haggard, still wearing the same soiled shirt and shorts. He smiled uneasily at Nina, spreadeagled on the bed. Perhaps she saw a hint of disapproval in his brown eyes. Even disgust. If true, it was the last item on his agenda.

Nina tried to focus on him and got an impression of tremendous tension, but also excitement. The guy was practically throwing sparks as he held up a manila envelope and said to Dale, “Trade you.”

Dale handed over the single photo and took the envelope. His thick fingers shook as he opened the flap and pulled out a stack of prints. An almost sweet smile spread over his face.

“Just a peek,” George said softly as he held up a set of car keys. Dale nodded, lovingly set the envelope aside, and took the keys. “Now, make the call,” George said, again in the soft but firm tone.

“Right.” Dale found the cell phone on the dashboard, consulted a slip of paper, punched in the numbers. A moment later he connected. “Hey, Irv. It’s Dale. Yeah. I’m here…About ten minutes out. You gonna come down to the gate and meet me?…Sure. Great. See ya.”

George exhaled, his eyelids fluttered, and he raised his hand to the medal attached to a chain around his neck, fondling it, almost sensually. “Just like that,” he said under his breath.

Dale gripped the keys in his hand, took a deep breath, and said, “I’ll be back.”

George clapped him on the shoulder. “Just relax, act natural. It’ll go fine.”

Dale nodded, spun the seat around, pushed open the door, and exited the camper. George, leaning over the steering wheel, watched through the windshield. Nina heard a car start and then drive away. When the sound of the engine faded, George collapsed into the driver’s seat and placed his hand on his chest.

“My God, it’s going to work.”

Nina waited a few moments, until George calmed down. Then she asked, “What’s going to work?”

George studied her, then said, “I don’t know that I want to talk to you.”

“Why? Afraid you’ll get to know me and that’ll make it harder to kill me?”

Slowly George removed one of the Cuban Lanceros from his chest pocket and began peeling off the cellophane. “You’re some kind of Special Forces, huh?”

“What’s going to work, George?” her voice cracked, not from fear. She was parched.

George pursed his lips, thought about it, then put aside his cigar. He reached down, grabbed a bottle of springwater, unscrewed the top, leaned over, and held it to her lips. She drank, paused, and drank some more. The water shot through her like a current, waking up some parts, shoring up others. For a brief moment she was stuck on an odd point of captive etiquette: Should she thank him? The moment passed.

He returned the water bottle to the front seat, took out a plastic lighter, and lit the Cuban. After he puffed a few times he sat back and studied her again.

“Dale’s really something, huh? I think it’s a form of selective retardation, like autism; he’s got these big social holes in him.” George came forward. “Like, did he say anything about Joe?”

“The guy who killed my…partner?”

“Yeah. Dead himself now, too. It was on the radio. The cops shot him at the border.” George sighed and shook his head. “Joseph, always too ready with that gun. Didn’t work this time. But Dale doesn’t care. All he sees is what’s right in front of his nose. You know what? This whole country’s one big version of Dale. Business can’t see past the next quarter. The Army wears berets made in China. One big case of political autism. Blind to the rest of the world.”

“Are you Al Qaeda, George? Is this some kind of ‘raid on a path,’ like it says in the Koran?” Nina asked.

“You mean like Rashid, who couldn’t keep his mouth shut? Me? Shit, no. I don’t go in for any church. I sell booze as a front and basically I smuggle drugs. I send some money back to Lebanon. From time to time I run people across the border. But it’s like this deal, strictly for money.”

“This deal?”

“You wanna know? Why not. It’ll pass the time. First thing, we got control of Dale.”

“How?”

“I found out he’s one sick fuck. He had this list of three people he wanted to knock off. Because they teased him in high school. So we agreed to help him-you know, like snatching the woman in Grand Forks. We threw you in extra-you’re a freebie. And in return, he agreed to help us.” George reached into the passenger seat, took the color prints from the envelope. “And we promised him a new life.”

George got up and held a Florida driver’s license just inches from her eyes. The name said William Charon. William Charon’s photo ID showed a much leaner man than Dale, with dark hair. With a shudder, Nina observed that William Charon looked a lot like Ace Shuster. Then George showed her the prints; front and side shots; some were head shots, others the whole body. But all were magically slimmed down.

“It’s all digital imaging. Adobe Photoshop, on the computer. Our people in Winnipeg whipped out the license. Drugs, guns, counterfeiting; it’s what we’re good at. This other stuff is legit, from a plastic surgeon in Coral Gables who’s gonna work on Dale.”

“A new identity,” Nina whispered

“Yeah, give him a pretty new face and a backpack full of Epipens. Turn him loose on the female population. Hell,” George laughed, “he’ll be the new Ted Bundy.”

Nina looked into George’s calm, calculating eyes. Legit…like hell. She figured Dale was a one-use asset. He had about an hour left to live.

George put the prints and license back in the envelope and returned to his seat. “Things really got rolling,” he said, “when Dale explained the possibilities of this.” He reached down and picked up the picture of the yellow machine. “See those big-ass tires? That’s where we put most of it.”

“Put most of what?” Nina asked.

“The Semtex.”

“How much Semtex?”

“About four hundred pounds in each tire. Tucked a few hundred more pounds here and there. So we put in about a ton.”

“You need a power source and a method of detonating it.” Nina thought out loud.

“Pagers. Small enough to fit into the valve. We wired each blasting cap to a pager, with a cap booster. Then we deliberately overinflated the tires with foam and capped them up. That way, Irv Fuller would complain that the machine handles stiff, which gives Dale a reason to visit the job site and get in the loader. See?”

George grinned. He reached in his trouser pocket and took out a Globalstar Qualcomm GSP-1600. “I called the phone company and got a group pager number. Just one call and all the charges go at the same time.

“Last thing we did was have the machine power-washed. Then we loaded it on a lowboy trailer. See, that’s the only thing they care about at customs on the Canadian border. They’re worried about bringing foreign agricultural soil into the States. Gave customs the paperwork and Dale just drove it right on through the port at Maida. Dale and Joe tweaked it some more in Langdon, and then had it delivered to Irv Fuller. We let Irv drive it to the target.”

“The target?” Nina said in a numb voice.

“Yeah, it’s a construction site. And the funny thing is, if it hadn’t been raining it would have blown already, three days ago. But work’s been held up because of the mud. So we had to wait till the rain stopped.”