After the Rain

Go find out. He started back toward the explosion. Clods of dirt were still raining down through the sandy half-light. He tripped on something. The flattened fence.

The next thing he tripped on was a twisted section of tread from the dozer. Like a smashed mechanical snake belly, the grouser pads had been ripped from the cleats, the treads themselves bent by the force of the blast.

Broker grimaced. Holly and the driver…They’d essentially been standing under a B-52 strike.

Did it hit the reactor?

Then-Oh shit-his feet went out and he tumbled down a slope of loose sand and- Jesus! — he hit something metal, red hot, that seared his forearm. Scrambling back, waving his hands in the dust, he tried to see.

Coughing bad now, eyes stinging. Impossible to see.

But he had to find out. Was it safe for his baby? Was it in the air, invisible? He balled his bleeding fists. Swung them in helpless fury. Somebody better tell me something, goddammit.

But he was half-blind and deaf, lost in the silent limbo.

Broker sat in a field about a mile from the plant and watched a giant traffic jam still in progress where they were evacuating the Treasure Island Casino. Someone was saying that back in the seventies, the BIA told the Sioux band it was just a steam plant they were being forced to host on their land. Broker, still having trouble hearing, didn’t catch it all.

In fact, he wasn’t catching much. He was vaguely aware of Yeager, keeping an eye on him. Less vaguely, he was becoming aware that all the stuff that only happened to other people-all that stuff he’d kept isolated in his compartments-had busted out and was creeping over him.

He’d always operated on the theory that someone had to accept the duty of being strong; and, usually, that was him. He ground his teeth. Christ, if he couldn’t even bring himself to say Holly’s name, how the hell was he going to tell Kit about her mother?

Missing.

Like the walls that used to shield him.

Broker sat and stared. Yeager watched him.

The men in protective suits had picked their way through the debris field and had checked the walls of the reactors and cooling pool. They returned and took off the suits and assured the exhausted cops, medics, and firemen that some engineers had stayed at their posts, that the damage was minimal. Emergency procedures. Backup systems. Yadda-yadda. They walked through the first responders, showing them the readings on their dosimeters. Very low numbers. Well within acceptable limits. It was under control. No general evacuation order. See?

No one there believed them.

Broker and Yeager had bathed in a makeshift shower, had exchanged their potentially contaminated clothes for baggy National Guard fatigues. They sat numb, dotted with minor dressings, drinking Red Cross coffee. A TV was propped up on the hood of a Goodhue County patrol car, plugged into an emergency generator. The governor of Minnesota was saying everyone should stay indoors, and that it was going to be all right. The hundred-plus cops, firemen, and medics who had been ordered off the blast site did not look convinced.

The governor said most of the blast had been absorbed by the excavation and the heavy dozer. Yes, the shock had caused minor damage to the cooling pool and one of the reactor containment walls. Some of the water pipes in the reactor were affected and there had been a small release of radioactive steam into the atmosphere.

But, the governor assured, it was minimal.

“Sure it was,” quipped a cop from Hastings. “That’s why he’s talking from his desk in St. Paul.”

Nine bodies had been retrieved. Eighty or ninety people had been injured, three critically. Most of the deaths and injuries were the results of flying debris and several car accidents in the dusted out aftermath of the blast.

Broker sat and stared, just barely making it out when Yeager started yelling his name.

“What?”

Yeager held up his cell phone.

“What?”

“It’s Norm, in Langdon. He’d put out a regional BOLO on Dale Shuster, remember?”

“Yeah?”

“They found him, dead, at a rest stop south of Le Sueur. And that Khari guy.” Yeager pounded Broker’s shoulder. “That ain’t all they found. She fucking made it, man.”

All Broker’s remaining armor fell off at once and he began to tremble. It took an immense effort to unclench his fist from around the mashed blue cigarette pack. With shaking fingers, he withdrew the two remaining, battered smokes. He gave one to Yeager and put the other in his mouth.

“You got a light?”

The three men in the corridor outside Intensive Care in the Mankato hospital weren’t wearing uniforms. Broker thought he might have seen the black one before, that night on the highway outside Langdon. They could have been three Extreme Iron Man competitors who just happened to be in the vicinity. To Broker, they reeked of well-thought-through death.

“Where’d you come from?” Broker wanted to know.

The oldest one came forward, extended his hand. “Dr. Warren Burton. I’m a friend of Nina’s.”

“I didn’t know they had healers in Delta,” Broker said.

Burton was affable and rolled with it. “Well, there’s always torture.” He watched Broker for several seconds with his highly trained eyes. Then he said, “It’ll go easier, for you and for her, if you work with us.”

Broker nodded. “No problem. Answer the question. How’d you get here so fast?”

“A Minnesota Highway patrolman found her. Shuster and Khari had her in an RV, parked off in the trees at a rest stop. Some people heard her screaming and called nine-one-one. She was tied down and pinned under Khari’s body. She’d worked a hand free and fought him. It got pretty intense. He bled out and his body lay on top of her for several hours. She tore out his throat.”

“With her hand?”

“No.”

After a moment, Broker said, “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“The cop got her out of there, but she didn’t have any ID. She was in deep shock. Still is. All she’d say was her name, rank, and serial number. That’s how they got to us,” Burton said.

“I want to see her,” Broker said.

Burton nodded. “The docs here are good. They’re letting me sit in. To prepare you, her face is pretty beat up but it’s superficial, just bruising. Her right arm has suffered some major soft tissue and tendon injury and is immobile. We’ve got her pretty heavily sedated, as you can understand. She’s just in here.”

Broker started toward the door to the ward. Burton accompanied him. At the door he stopped and said, “I served with Colonel Holland Wood. You were with him at the plant…”

Broker didn’t trust his voice. So he just stared at Burton, waited until he stepped aside and then went into the ward.

They had her in a corner by a window, screened off. One cheek was bruised and swollen. Purple blood bruises splotched her neck. Her wrists and ankles were bandaged. Her right arm was immobilized in a plastic cuff, an IV drip in her left.

Her instincts were switched on. After this, they probably would be for some time. She jumped alert at the movement when he came around the screen. She tensed and her green eyes acquired him, evaluated him for threat. Then the shrill vigilance sunk back into a quieter narcotic flux.

Did she recognize him? Was that important to her now?

He went to the bed and took her left hand in his.

“Nina.”

Her smile faltered. “Don’t say anything, about Kit or anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“There’s something important I have to tell you about Ace Shuster. But I can’t remember it just yet.” Abruptly, she pulled her hand away and started plucking at the hospital gown over her chest. A scrubbing