He turned west on Highway 97, drove through Scandia, and hooked up with Interstate 35 outside of Forest Lake. Now he was rolling north at 65 miles an hour.

He drank some coffee and ate one of his beef jerkys and continued to think about Rodney, who had this idea about a big score at Camp Ripley when the guard went up to train for the summer. He had stoned dreams of villas on the Mediterranean, sailboats. Rodney wanted to sell tanks.

Broker shook his head. Once he’d barreled through the Black Hills with a semi full of grass and stolen Harleys. He wondered if a Bradley armored vehicle would fit in the back of a semi.

The people he was on his way to meet fantasized in such terms. But mostly they made do with semi-automatics: AKs, Mini 14s, and Colts. But this one guy, Tabor, the money guy, hinted that he had pieces of a.50 caliber and someday maybe he’d let Broker take a crack at getting that baby up and cooking.

It was business. He didn’t share in the dialogue with his clients. Tabor had hired Broker to rewire his house on the side. By the time Broker was done he’d fixed the washer and the dryer and built a screened porch. All the time Tabor was making with the far-right sounds.

Broker told him. Lookit. I used to run a little product into the Cities but I didn’t like it after the demographics started to change and cars full of heavily armed Zulus from Chicago and Detroit started appearing out of nowhere so now I do something else. I’m in it for the money-but mainly when things get busted, I fix it. And then Broker would wiggle his fierce eyebrows and give his wolf smile.

Tabor owned a Ford dealership and a ton of land in Pine County and regularly attended church. He didn’t approve of Broker selling dope. Broker pointed out that he’d been introduced to Tabor by a bunch of neo-Nazi wackos who cooked speed in the piney woods, so lay off the pious crap.