Less than half an hour later they were through the five stations. Broker was covered with sweat and out of breath. Griffin, barely breathing hard, the eternal contradiction, lit a Lucky Strike. “Half an hour a week, it’s the cat’s ass, huh?” Griffin winked.
Shaky on his feet, Broker followed Griffin upstairs, where they poured coffee and took their cups out on the deck. The morning was mild, with a tickle of greening in the air.
Broker sipped his coffee, squinted out over the lake. “Think it’s finally going to be spring?”
Griffin shook his head. “Looked at the Weather Channel this morning. We might have another clipper on the way. Big rumpus kicking around in Manitoba.” He shrugged. “But you could be on your way south before it hits.”
“Maybe,” Broker said.
“You pulled it off.”
“She pulled it off. I just held her coat,” Broker said.
Griffin decided it was time to pop the big question. “So now what? She going back into that good old spooky shit?”
Broker studied Griffin’s face as he said that, always the lilt of the road not taken in his voice. “It’s all changed, Griffin; you wouldn’t recognize special ops anymore. The people are different, the gear, the thinking. Hell, they even have a different map of the world.”
“Yeah,” Griffin said wistfully, slouching back, drawing his neck into his shoulders as a gust of cool breeze blew over them. “I saw that snappy consultant guy, Barnett, give his briefing on C-SPAN. There’s the globally connected core. In the middle you got Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia; all the ragheads in the nonintegrated gap.”
“Face it, man. We’re dinosaurs,” Broker said.
Griffin held up his cup in a toast. “To the old neighborhood, where we grew up,” he said as they clicked rims. “Northern Quang Tri Province.” He settled back. “Guess the only thing I got to look forward to now is whether I’m going to wind up a geezer, a codger, or a coot.”
“Buck up. We got in our licks.”
“Yep. Killed our Communists.” Griffin grinned. “And George W’s and Dick Cheney’s too.” He studied the bottom of his coffee cup for a moment, then looked up frankly. “You never really told me. One month Nina’s an MP captain in Bosnia; the next she’s mobbed up with Delta Force. How’d that go down?”
Broker listened to the wind toy in the trees like a palpable sigh of desire. Decided he owed Griffin that much. “She embodies a concept,” he said finally.
“Say again?”
“She took a course on tactical decision-making at Bragg before she deployed to Bosnia. The Boyd thing. The OODA Loop.”
Griffin nodded. “I read the book. Not sure you can teach that. You got it or you don’t.”
“Well, she aced out all the guys in the course. One of them was a Delta colonel who was into thinking outside the box-” Broker’s voice stuck briefly. “Holly, Colonel Holland Wood,” he said.
“There was a Delta colonel with you at Prairie Island,” Griffin said directly.
“The same.” He paused, closed his eyes briefly, and continued. “Any rate. He ran into her in Bosnia, remembered her, and invited her in for an interview. I only know snatches. After 9/11 she disappeared into the black side. Thing that still pisses me off is, she took Kit with her last time out. Used our kid to set up her cover in that North Dakota thing.”
“Kit,” Griffin said simply. “You want her to turn out like you, or Nina? She’s headed in that direction, you know. Unless you guys change.”
Broker listened to the soft breeze rise and fall, drawing silky through the pines.
“Think about it all the time,” he said.
Griffin backed off. Figured it was as close as Broker would get to answering the question about what Nina would do next.
Broker’s prediction turned out to be inaccurate. When Nina and Kit left Dawn’s Salon, Nina’s reddish amber hair was cleaned up but styled longer than it had been since her undergraduate days. Kit sported a matching cut; the snarl of her cowlick bangs resolved under Mom’s watchful eye. Nina tossed her new do and looked up and down Main Street.
“We’re going out tonight, so let’s splurge a little, maybe get new outfits,” she said. Her eyes prowled the storefronts. Stopped on a funky hand-painted sign across the street, next to the redbrick courthouse: “Big Lake Threads.” “There,” she said. She took Kit’s hand, and they started across the street.
The door jingled when they entered, and Nina scanned a display of hats, gloves, and scarfs that tended more toward fashion than the practical; accessories for women who didn’t worry about getting cold. So it was a boutique that catered to the high-end summer crowd. Probably kept open as a labor of love through the winter. The lady sitting behind the counter looked up, smiled, then went back to reading her book. The store was empty except for one other shopper, a slim, striking woman with long black hair who stood among the racks, holding a blouse at arm’s length, staring at it with a tangible longing.
“Mom,” Kit said urgently, tugging at Nina’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Nina tracked Kit’s sudden alarm, found its source when she saw a stout little boy peek around the dark-haired woman.
“That’s Teddy Klumpe, you know; the boy at school,” Kit whispered.
Their tense conversation was mirrored down the aisle between the woman and her son. Nina saw surprise on the woman’s face and instinctively decided to move before her dazed expression focused into something harder. With Kit in tow, she walked up the aisle and extended her hand.
“Mrs. Klumpe, I’m Kit’s mother-”
The woman drew herself up, wary. “It’s not Klumpe, it’s Bodine, Cassie Bodine.”
“Well, I’m Nina Pryce. I didn’t take my husband’s name either. Although I did give him the option of taking mine.” Her hand was still outstretched.
Nina’s casual remark was just enough to skew the building tension.
Cassie’s face was pinched gorgeous, with nervous blue eyes. She transferred the blouse to her left hand and cautiously shook Nina’s hand.
“My husband tells me we owe you something,” Nina said, searching her memory for just what it was that Broker had said they owed by way of a peace offering.
Cassie swept her arm behind her and hauled Teddy out in plain view. Kit and Teddy looked up at their mothers for clues, then both stared at the floor.
“Actually,” Cassie said, her hand touching her throat and then her hair in a jumpy reflex. “Actually, Teddy… this is Teddy,” she said, dropping her hand, patting the boy briefly on the head.
“Hello, Teddy,” Nina said easily. “You got some shoulders on you, boy. I’ll bet you play-”
“Hockey,” Teddy said, his eyes shifting sideways.
“Hockey,” Nina repeated. Then she patiently looked back at Cassie.
Cassie said, “Well, it was his shirt, it got-”
“Blood on it,” Nina said, nodding, extemporizing. “Probably ruined it.”
“Well, yes, it did.”
“Ms. Bodine,” Nina said carefully, “we’ve had quite a talk with Kit about playing too rough, and we’d appreciate it if you let us replace Teddy’s shirt.” She glanced down the store. “I don’t suppose they have anything suitable here?”
Suddenly animated, Teddy tugged at Cassie’s sleeve. “Mom, they got those X-Men in the back.”
“There is a small kid’s section, but it’s on the pricey side,” Cassie said. Grinding her teeth, that jerky eye movement again.
“X-Men’s cool; right, Kit?” Nina flashed a warning to Kit, who was struggling to contain the mortification creeping up her neck and reddening her cheeks. “Let’s take a look.”
They followed Cassie and Teddy to the rack of specialty T-shirts. He selected a black one, boys’ extra- large.
Nina said, offhand, “Maybe you should get the red one-if you get skinned up playing hockey, won’t show as much.”
