James Born - Burn Zone

The younger man eyed Ike's food like a wolf on a farm. The waitress didn't seem interested in visiting the table again.

Ike slid the plate to the center of the table. "You guys want some?"

All three men reached at the same time. After a minute of concentrated munching, Charlie looked at Ike. "Thanks, brother. We're mighty hungry. Not many people stop for three grown men hitchhiking. Best we get is the back of a produce truck once in a while."

"Where are you heading?"

"West, maybe California. We been stuck here in Houston, working as day laborers for the past week." He looked around like someone might wait on them. "What about you? Live here or visiting?"

"Just got into Houston now."

All three men eyed him. Charlie said, "This ain't no place for a white man, brother. We been ousted from a shelter, robbed twice and generally treated like turds. This here place is full of them Katrina refugees, and let me tell ya, they are a rough bunch. New Orleans must be paradise with all their hoodlums over here."

Ike shook his head. "I can tell you from recent experience that New Orleans is no paradise."

"What are you doin' here?"

"Working for the Cause."

Charlie smiled again. "No shit? Need any help? We're outta work. You know how people discriminate against us."

Ike thought about his run-in with Craig and those disastrous results. Then he thought about keeping an eye on the truck. These tired, hungry men weren't predators. They were members of the same kind of outfit as Ike.

"What if I told you I'd pay you in a couple of days for helping me? Would you be interested?"

"We gotta work with niggers?"

"Nope."

"We gotta get up early?"

"Maybe one of you at a time."

"We gotta lift anything heavy?"

"Nope,"

"Then we're your men."

Ike realized that the early schedule and hard labor were what really bothered these men, but it didn't matter. He just needed someone to tell him if the rental van was being bothered. He nodded approval at his new friends.

Staub may not have been in this bar, but Pelly certainly didn't consider it time wasted. He couldn't believe this attractive girl with the broken nose named Lina had sat at the end of the bar, leaned in close to him and talked over the music for almost an hour now. She was fascinating in that she loved to do all sorts of sports and didn't seem to notice his condition in the least. Of course, he had already shaved twice in the past hour. Every time he went to the bathroom, he ran his razor over his stubble.

Lina had seemed very open to him except for what she did for a living. He didn't believe she was a female kickboxing champion, but he didn't want to risk calling her a liar. Not when she was being so friendly.

A song that Pelly did not recognize blared over the speakers, and Lina stood with a bright smile across her crooked mouth. "This is my favorite song."

Pelly said, "I am not familiar with it."

"You will be," said Lina as she took his hand and jerked him onto his feet. "We're dancing." It was a direct order, and she tugged him along behind her like a mother would a child.

He had not danced since one had been arranged for his grade school with the girls from a small school run by nuns. He remembered he liked the smell on one small girl with long, rich hair. Other than that, his experience with dancing was what he caught on MTV when he was somewhere with a satellite.

Lina held his hand as she started to bounce to the rhythm of the music. He felt the bass and instinctively knew to bob to the beat. Shuffling his feet slightly, he felt like no one could identify him as a hairy policeman/killer from Panama. Although he doubted that Lina had completely bought his story of being an art historian from Madrid.

They danced through the song, and then another, older-sounding song called "Shout" came on and everyone seemed to know how to dance to it. He just followed Lina's example.

A drunken woman with outrageously large, fake breasts, kept bumping into Lina and him during the song as her tall boyfriend attempted to spin her every so often. Pelly didn't mind it. In fact, he was enjoying his first night out on the town in the United States. Maybe this wasn't such a bad assignment after all.

Pelly found the rhythm to the song and enjoyed seeing Lina's form move to the beat. He felt his hair below his face mat with sweat, but knew it was unnoticeable under his long-sleeved shirt. He had shaved a small circle near his throat so he could leave his shirt opened one button.

Then the drunken, top-heavy woman seemed to turn an ankle and started to go down hard. Pelly twisted to catch her at an awkward angle, but it was too late. With her long nails she groped out, looking for a way to keep from falling on the dance floor.

She found his collar and grabbed on instinctively.

He felt his shirt start to tear and buttons start to pop even as he tried to catch the woman.

As she landed and rolled slightly, he felt the front of his shirt fall open before he could stop it. Even in the low light of the dance floor, he knew everyone could see him. He felt his thick chest hair untangle and fall out of the tear in his shirt. He touched his chest and realized the shirt was open almost to his stomach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the hair near his shoulder start to pop straight up now that it was free. Dark, tall, proud strands of hair he battled with daily. Now, when he needed to win the battle most, the hair had defeated him and escaped.

Then he heard someone with a thick New Orleans accent say, "Jesus, would ya look at that boy. He must be part monkey."

Pelly's fist was in the man's mouth before he could follow up the comment. Someone stepped up to grab Pelly, then fell to one side. Pelly turned and saw Lina, the girl he had just met, standing over him, her foot coming back to the ground after kicking the man who tried to accost him from behind.

Maybe she really was a kickboxing champ.

BACK IN HIS HOTEL ROOM IN NEW ORLEANS, ALEX DUARTE HAD tossed and turned for the few hours he laid in bed. He got up before dawn and turned on the TV, wondering if there would be any stories about the killing of Forrest Jessup just outside Biloxi, Mississippi. Now he saw some good reasons to have called the cops and explain what he had seen, but it was too late. He'd be tied up for days in the investigation. He wanted to find William Floyd and that truck and its cargo, then get Floyd to explain this whole plan and why so many people had died for it. Duarte had a hard time conceiving of people killing over a load of pot. He knew it had to be more. Cal Linley's idea that it would start a revolution was as cryptic as the kid in Omaha saying it had to do with cranes.

He kept in his mind the connection to oil and the Houston address of Forrest Jessup that the ATF analyst had found. The old man had been in the oil business as a "wildcat" or independent operator. It didn't look like the racist leader had ever made a lot of money in the business. Maybe the item Cal Linley had unloaded at the port had been for the oil business. He had to keep an open mind.

He stretched as he watched CNN until the earliest local news popped on. Shortly after seven, while he was up in the army resting position of a push-up, his three hundredth, his cell phone rang.

He popped up off the floor and found the Nextel with his ID and gun on the small desk in the room.

"Duarte."

"Even at seven in the morning, you answer like that?"

He smiled at Alice's voice.

"Even at midnight. Just habit."

"You doing okay?"

He thought about his night and then said, "Yeah, nothing new, really." His eyes moved over to the baggie with a blood sample in it. Was this the right time?