After the Rain

“You going to be here for a while?” Dale asked.

“Yeah, I gotta talk to a couple of the managers. Gotta mark some underground cables and tunnels they’re concerned about. And they can’t find the right blueprints. You know how it goes.”

Dale nodded. “Okay, ah, say hello to your new wife-ah…”

“Sydney.”

“That’s some name,” Dale said. He watched Irv carefully. He wanted to remember this moment. All during their visit, Irv had never once mentioned Ginny. The fact that she was reported missing.

“Yeah, well…” Irv’s voice trailed off as he raked the toe of his Timberland boot through the dust. His attention was already moving off Dale. Irv was cordial but smug. Dale was going out the gate without the balance owed on two front-loaders. The Fullers were sticking it to the Shusters again. “Say hello to your folks for me.”

“I will.” Dale waved over his shoulder, then he handed his visitor’s badge over to a very tired-looking Wackenhut guard. The guard took the badge, checked something on his clipboard, and waved him through the gate. True, he reflected, Irv was sticking him for about twenty grand. Let him enjoy it, for about the next fifty, sixty minutes-which was all he had left.

I, on the other hand, am about to earn a million bucks. More, actually, now that Joe’s gone.

When Dale was out of earshot, Irv Fuller grinned and shook his head. “Good old Needle-Dick,” he said.

Groggy but awake, Nina heard them celebrate when Dale returned. Jesus. It’s gonna happen.

Dale hummed as he climbed back behind the wheel after a round of back-slapping and congratulations from George. They proceeded to argue amiably through the open driver’s-side door-how far to drive, where to stop. Then George ran back to his car. Dale started up the camper, wheeled onto the highway.

The curtain was still open. Nina arched her neck, saw the dull, gray, rounded shapes loom above the trees, then disappear.

“Dumb,” Dale said happily, “They did it to themselves. They could build a belt of windmills from the Canadian border down to west Texas. They could generate enough power to serve half the Midwest. But nooo…”

He laughed and pounded the wheel. “You shoulda seen the look on Irv’s face. He thinks he beat me out of a few thousand bucks. Boy is he happy. Well, old Irv is in for a big surprise.” As he spoke he plucked a page from the high school yearbook off the dashboard, took a Sharpie from among the pill bottles piled on the dash, and blacked out the eyes on Irv’s high school picture. Then he came to a red light. He spun in the seat, jumped toward her, and yanked the tape from her mouth. Immediately, he jumped back in the seat, whipped around, and accelerated on the green.

Showing off.

Words were insignificant in the cascading horror, but words were all she had. She couldn’t stop from shouting: “You put that thing in there!”

“Yep. And in about an hour…poof!” He tossed his hands in the air. “Now we’ll take a little drive, back roads west to Le Sueur, then drop down on 169 past Mankato and pick up I-90 west. Somewhere in there, depending on how the wind holds, we’ll make the call. Turn on the radio and listen to the news on the way to Sioux Falls. It’s all really very simple. Stay upwind and put a couple hundred miles between us and the plume. Looks like they’ll be eating cesium 137 for supper in Milwaukee and Chicago.”

Dale wagged his finger. “They’re gonna learn the hard way: a spent fuel pool is forever.” He laughed at his own joke, watching for Nina’s reaction. “You’re no fun,” he said. He flung an arm back and pulled the curtain shut.

Nina pictured the satellite phone in George Khari’s pocket. They weren’t kidding. They were going to set it off with a simple phone call. Jesus…

Nina felt the van move, the rhythm of the road-then cocked her head, picking up a distinctive motor slap, mixed in with the road sound. Then the sound passed over them, faded behind, and was gone.

Weird. Sounded like a Sikorsky Black Hawk.

She refocused on the tension in the cords that held her wrists and ankles. With all her strength, she arched up her whole body.

Chapter Forty-four

Everybody was yelling at once, piling in, falling all over each other as the Black Hawk lifted off Sydney Fuller’s lovely lawn and blew her pink wisteria all to hell. The Hawk gained altitude and nosed over, heading south.

Broker lost his footing in the scramble as Yeager punched numbers on his cell. Holly was already talking to whoever he worked for on the fancy radio console. “Northern Route is active. I say again: Northern Route is active. We have an event, suspicion is high that there is a device inside the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant on the Mississippi River. That’s about forty miles southeast of the Twin Cities.

“I need the physical layout of the reactors and the pool. Get somebody on the horn at Prairie Island and patch them through to me…”

“I got him,” Yeager yelled, “Irv, hey, it’s Jim Yeager from Langdon. Have you… Holy shit!” Yeager thrust out the phone like it was hot and pounded Broker on the arm with it. “Dale was just there in the plant. Left five minutes ago.”

Broker and Holly stopped in place as Yeager’s words upped the adrenaline ante. They locked eyes. Holly erupted with a demented laugh, threw his hands in the air, and crowed, “Hey-here’s to Kit and her blue poop.”

They all joined in a spasm of crazed exuberance. Then the chopper tilted and they all collided as Holly resumed yelling into the radio headset. “I need to talk to somebody on the ground, goddamn it, ’cause we’re coming in hot in a Black Hawk and we intend to land inside the plant. I need a ground contact-security, the plant manager, I don’t care.” He untangled from Broker and Yeager, lurched toward the cockpit. The door was open now. “What’s our ETA?” he yelled.

“About ten minutes,” the pilot said.

“ETA ten minutes. Get ’em ready for me. Of course we need a reaction team, NBC, EOD, the full schmear… No. I don’t know what it is, except we think it’s already inside…”

Holly put his hand to the earphones, banged on Broker’s arm, and pointed to the pilot. Broker went forward. The pilot had a map out and said, “Tell him I’m flying line-of-sight on the river. We’ll come right over it, no messing with the ground clutter trying to read the road net.”

Yeager was shouting into his phone. “Irv, Irv…Okay, you calm down, too. Look, Dale sold you some machines, right?…Yeah, two front-loaders. We think-”

Holly shook his head violently.

“No,” Broker put his hand over Yeager’s cell, “not till we’re on the ground and evaluate those machines. They’ll start messing around without knowing what they’re dealing with.”

Holly said, “Tell him Dale’s wanted for questioning in the death of his brother.”

Yeager got back on the phone. “Irv. Ace Shuster was shot to death back home this morning. We think Dale was there. So I need to talk to you fast. And could you locate the two machines he sold you? We want to take a look at them.” Yeager ended the call, grimaced. “He agreed, but he sounded confused.”

“You ain’t seen confused. Just wait till we get on the ground,” Holly said.

They grabbed handholds on the seats as the chopper pitched forward, picking up speed. Broker felt like the rotors were spinning in his chest. The whole wild day. Dale was out there in front of them somewhere, on the ground. And Broker was sure now he had Nina with him. Gotta believe that. She’s down there on one of those roads in a vehicle.

Alive.

Without realizing it, he had pulled the crumpled pack of smokes from his pocket. Holly and Yeager reached over and dug out mangled cigarettes, straightened them, and lit up. Broker joined them. Inhaled, exhaled, looked in the pack.

Two left.