Burn Zone

by James O. Born

"Ike? Why you want that moron?"

  "I need to talk to him."

  "You a cop?"

  "Would that surprise you?" He didn't offer any identification.

  "Not at all. That boy had a job, but them people he hangs out with, they is trouble."

  "What people?"

  "Them Nazi or Klan people. Whatever they is callin' themselves nowadays."

  "You think he might be over there?"

  The lady shrugged her shoulders, and Duarte thought he might know how everyone else felt now. He didn't own the patent on shrugs.

  "You know where he works?"

  "Nope. Like everyone else in this town, he's some kinda telephone solicitor." She paused, looking down the hall. "You trustworthy?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I don't know if you're a cop or not, but for twenty bucks I'll let you in his apartment, as long as you don't take nothin'."

  He had the twenty in her hand before she could change her mind. He followed her down the narrow hallway to William Floyd's apartment.

  Inside the cramped one-bedroom apartment, Duarte checked a pad of paper on a small table with the telephone. The old landlady stayed by the door and watched to make sure he didn't steal anything. He searched a small, one-drawer desk and found a pocket-sized address book. He was about to take it, then remembered his pledge to the old landlady. He turned and held up the black book. "I'll throw in another five bucks if I can take this."

  "Done."

  He found a brochure for the Omaha chapter of the National Army of White Americans. He held it up and showed the landlady the address. "That around here?"

  "'Bout three miles off Forty-second. Maybe ten minutes away."

  Duarte nodded and looked around some more. He found a single sheet of paper. Cal Linley's phone number was scrawled on it. There was no doubt now. This was "Ike." For his own good, he better have some answers for Duarte.

  He thanked the landlady and got directions to the address on the brochure. Fifteen minutes and two wrong turns later, he was looking at a duplex. One side was quiet, but the other had loud George Thorogood guitar twanging out of the windows. A lanky young man with a shaved head stood by the front door. Duarte doubted he was a chemotherapy patient. One part of him almost hoped these idiots gave him a reason to question them harshly. Either way, he was about to get some answers.

  28

  WILLIAM "IKE" FLOYD WATCHED AS MR. ORTÍZ KEPT HIS GUN barrel on the girl's head. She had shown no interest in the gun since he had placed it there. She reminded Ike of a hound dog who didn't know what a gun could do.

  Craig said, "You wanna know what happened?"

  He looked from Ortíz to Pelly, not knowing who should hear the story.

  Ike's heart started to beat harder, and his grip tightened on the pistol in his hand. He was about to get smacked in the face by the truth, and he had to do something quick. He couldn't let Craig tell them how he had tricked Ike.

  Without thinking, he raised his pistol and said, "Where's the crate, Craig?"

  When the young man hesitated, Ike started to jerk the trigger of the slim SIG-Sauer.380. Three of the first five rounds caught Craig square in the chest.

  Ortíz instinctively stepped back, away from the gunfire.

  Craig dropped onto the couch without another sound, snatching silently at his chest for a moment until he went still.

  Once Ortíz had backed away, the girl stood up. The seventh shot from Ike's gun had caught her in the throat and she tumbled next to her boyfriend, her big eyes staring at Ike.

  When the small pistol was empty and the slide locked back, he stepped up to the couch. He looked down at the lifeless Craig, satisfied he had gotten his revenge. The girl squirmed next to him on the couch, using her small hand to try to stop the blood pouring from the wound in her neck. A gurgling sound escaped from her that turned Ike's stomach. After a few seconds, she lay still, too.

  Ike heard the door burst open and saw the man from the porch. Pelly raised his gun to the man's head and said, "Where's the crate from the truck?"

  The man's eyes popped when they fell on the dead couple in the living room. He stammered, "The satellite?"

  Pelly said, "What satellite?"

  "The one in the crate."

  Pelly looked over to Ortíz. Then back at the man. "Yes, the satellite."

  "It's in the garage in the back."

  Ortíz said, "I'll stay with our friend. You two check the garage."

  Ike followed Pelly out the door and through the house. He still held the empty pistol. He couldn't believe he had just shot a man up close. He'd shot a girl, too, but that was an accident. He was becoming a killer.

  They didn't encounter anyone else in the house as they searched for the back door to the one-car garage. Going in through the kitchen, they found the bomb in the middle of the clean garage with only the top of the crate torn off.

  Pelly stood on his toes and looked out of one of the windows built into the wooden garage door. He turned back to Ike. "The man working on the car has headphones on. He's still there."

  Ike, still shaky from the adventure, said, "How're we gonna move this thing?"

  "We'll get another rental truck. The fat mechanic earned his stolen one."

  ***

  Duarte casually walked up to the duplex and waited for the man standing by the front door to look up. There was no need to be rude. Yet.

  The man's eyes came up to meet Duarte's. He said, "We're not buying."

  "I'm not selling anything."

  "Then get lost."

  Duarte tried not to smile. "I'm looking for Ike Floyd."

  "Who're you?" The man's angular face made him look angry even though he didn't sound like it.

  "I'm the guy looking for Ike."

  "Oh, a smart-ass. You look like you might be an Italian or Spanish smart-ass."

  "I'm from Florida, and I need to talk to Ike. Where is he?"

  "Look, Mr. Florida." Now he sounded pissed off. "I don't care who you are or what you are. This is a private club, and by lookin' at ya, I doubt you could join."

  Duarte kept a calm expression. Something like this made him realize how little his heritage mattered to most people, but when he found an idiot like this, it was all he could do not to take his head off. Instead he simply started to step around the wiry man.

  The man tried to grab Duarte's arm as he said, "Wait a minute. I said…"

  That was all he got out once Duarte had bent the man's wrist in the most unnatural downward position.

  In a quiet voice, he said, "No loud noises or you won't write any letters for more than a year. Understand?"

  The man nodded furiously as he hunched his whole body, hoping for the slightest relief he could get.

  Inside it looked like a comfortable museum, with couches along the walls and shelves of knickknacks. On the walls, vintage posters of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis hung in an orderly fashion.

  Duarte said, "You guys love your memorabilia, don't you?"

  The man just said, "Let up, let up."

  Duarte did slightly and said, "Where're your buddies? I need to talk to someone about Ike."

  The man nodded forward, and Duarte could see two men inside a small room off the hallway. He thrust the man with the sore wrist inside the room, then stood in the doorway until they were done bouncing off one another.

  A wide man, who resembled a pro lineman, stood up from a chair that looked like a kid's prop next to him. "Who in the hell are you?"

  Duarte kept it short. "Look, guys, I just need to talk to Ike Floyd. You know where he is?"

  The man Duarte had seen at the door massaged his wrist and said, "I think he broke my fucking arm."

  The lineman and the third man, a real young guy about Duarte's size, stepped toward him.

  It was on.

  29

  WILLIAM "IKE" FLOYD NODDED TO MR. ORTÍZ AND PELLY. SITTING in the new Ryder rental truck that Mr. Ortíz had secured, he was anxious to get on his way and put some distance between him an
d these two. The men from the house had fled, and Ortíz didn't seem to care.

  Mr. Ortíz looked at Ike and said, "Take no more chances. Contact me in three days. Pelly and I must handle some problems and then we will meet you in Houston. Is this clear?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You surprised me back there. You were decisive."

  Ike didn't tell why he was so decisive. He couldn't let them find out how he was tricked. Craig got what he deserved. He tried not to think about the girl bleeding out from her neck wound.

  Mr. Ortíz said, "I do not believe the men who fled will go to the police. That was a criminal enterprise. They will run."

  Ike nodded. He hoped this crazy Panamanian was right. Then he said, "What about the mechanic? He saw Pelly and me. He could link us to the killing."

  "Pelly and I will decide if we need to talk to this man." He patted the step van's hood. "Now you must go."

  Ike nodded to Pelly, who looked like he had grown his winter coat in the course of the day. Then he pulled the van out onto the street. He was headed to Houston, but first he needed to sleep. Maybe for a long time. It wouldn't take long to get to the Texas city, and he knew he couldn't call for a few days. He was going to sleep; the only question was where. As his eyes blurred from the wave of exhaustion and relief that swept over him, Ike realized he was going to have to find a place here in Lafayette if he wanted to stay on the right side of the highway and not run the van into an embankment.

  He saw a little motel with a yellow sign that said THE CAJUN INN. He slowed the big step van to swing into the parking lot of the motel.

  ***

  Duarte had yet to punch one of the three men who continued lunging at him inside the headquarters of the National Army of White Americans. He simply kept dodging and feinting and watching the men miss him and often stumble onto the hard, wooden floor.

  The big lineman couldn't maneuver well enough past the shelves of statues and memorabilia. He knocked off several pieces, then froze, cursing his size.

  For fun, Duarte turned and kicked over a shelf, sending little ceramic figures flying.

  "Stop," yelped the big man, then he crouched for another shot at Duarte.

  Duarte took the lunging man's arm and redirected him into the nearest wall, literally knocking out the drywall with the man's head. The big man stumbled, then collapsed on the floor.

  The thin man with the sore wrist now had a metal shelving support he swung like a sword. He whipped it past Duarte's right ear, then stepped up to deliver a blow to the top of Duarte's head. The ATF man stepped to one side and watched the heavy metal support slip past him and end up breaking the big man's arm as it came to rest on the floor. The man still made no sound.

  The third man stood motionless as the one with the sore wrist yelled. "C'mon, Sean, kill this motherfucker."

  Duarte had had enough of this skinhead and swung his right foot into the man's jaw, sending him to the floor near the heap of his giant friend.

  Now Sean realized this wasn't going his way. He turned and started to run away from Duarte down a hallway. In three quick steps, Duarte was close enough to shove the man and send him flying to the floor.

  Duarte ducked his head down the other hallway to ensure that no one else was in the building, then went right to the man named Sean. He was the only conscious one, and due to his youth he might be more inclined to talk, and talk fast.

  Duarte stood over him. "Sean, I'm in a hurry. You can tell me where Ike is or I can make you tell me." Duarte cracked his knuckles. "Which is it gonna be?"

  The young man held up his hands. "Last I saw him was Kansas City."

  "What was he doing there?"

  "He rented a U-Haul there. About five days ago."

  "Why?"

  "It had something to do with a crane." The man's voice had a noticeable quiver.

  "A crane?"

  "Yeah. He asked me if I knew anything about these U-cranes. Maybe they're rentals like the vans."

  Duarte talked to the young man and got a clear idea of where he needed to go next.

  ***

  The drive to Kansas City was three hours, and in the little rented Cobalt it felt like five. The manager was immediately helpful as soon as he saw Duarte's ATF identification.

  The older man brushed back his longish gray hair with one hand. "Since the bombing, we don't take no chances in this part of the country. I worked in Oklahoma City. I don't care if it's Ryder, Budget or us, anyone in the Midwest will help you. We don't need subpoenas or nothin'."

  Duarte nodded. "Thanks. I just want to know if a guy named William Floyd has rented a truck and maybe if he gave you an idea where he was going."

  The manager punched up a computer on his desk and said, "Yep, has a step van for ten days."

  "Say where he was going?"

  The man smiled. "Doesn't need to."

  "Why's that?"

  "Because we have a GPS in that truck."

  "You have GPS service in your vehicles?"

  "Not all of them. Just a few of the vans. They been disappearing down in Louisiana and we wanted to see if a GPS or LoJack would solve the problem. It's not public knowledge or nothing. Just the big, corporate stores use them. We stuck a unit on that truck because it was new and like the others that have gone missing."

  "Where on the van is it?"

  "We seal them in the front bumper with the unit wired to the battery for power. No one would even notice it unless they were looking."

  "Does that mean you can tell me where the truck is right now?" Duarte was amazed at the breaks you could catch if you just did a little follow-up.

  The man called up a new screen on the computer. "It's just like putting a Nextel phone with GPS on the bumper. Here, look." He slid to the side so Duarte could look at the screen. "See, it interfaces with a mapping program, and it sends a signal once an hour." He looked at the data. "This van has been in Lafayette, Louisiana, for two days now. Right on this street." He pointed to a map on the screen.

  Five minutes later, Duarte had a hard copy of the map and was figuring the fastest way to Lafayette after a few hours' rest.

  ***

  Alice Brainard was just cleaning up everything at her workstation when Scott Mahovich came to her door.

  "Is it safe for me to come in?" His black eye had turned a pus-yellow color.

  "Are you going to do anything stupid?"

  "I don't plan to."

  "Then you may enter." She was only half playing. She didn't like men who took women for granted and especially those who took liberties. It wouldn't have been so bad except that she hadn't thought Scott was like that. He had always been so quiet and shy. She wondered if Alex would be upset if he heard. He'd probably think it was funny.

  The DNA scientist said, "I'll have a profile from the blood tomorrow. Do we have a suspect yet?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Is the ATF going to reimburse the county for the work I did?"

  "Are you going to be able to handle a sexual harassment suit or another smack in the face?"

  "Point taken."

  She smiled, knowing she owned this guy now.

  30

  IN HIS KANSAS CITY HOTEL ROOM, DUARTE ROLLED OVER AND answered his cell phone on the second ring. He had slipped back into a pattern of insomnia which had plagued him for years after his service in Bosnia. Now, as he felt more and more like he had missed something obvious about the killings, he was awake, lying in bed, when the phone rang.

  "Hello," he said, before even checking the clock.

  "I knew you'd be awake."

  He smiled at the sound of Alice Brainard's voice.

  She continued. "I bet you already worked out, too."

  "Nope, I technically haven't been to sleep yet."

  "Out partying with Félix?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Then what happened?"

  "I'm not sure. I'm caught up in the follow-up to our case, and it's taking more time than I thought." He didn't intend to worry
her with the details of more bodies.

  "At least I can tell you we have a profile from the blood under your informant's fingernail. All you need is a suspect."

  Duarte thought of the Flame of Panama's first mate. "I may have one."

  "Can you get a comparison sample from him?"

  "By what I suspect right now, if I can draw blood on this guy we should have plenty."

  "That sounds like a good, determined ATF agent." There was a pause. "How're things in New Orleans?"

  "Good, I guess, but I'm in Kansas."

  "Why Kansas?"

  "Long story."

  Alice said, "When are you coming back?"

  "Soon as I can. We have a few loose ends to clear up."

  "We'll have a great homecoming date when you do."

  "Can't wait."

  They exchanged goodbyes and he looked up at the clock. It was 5:55.

  ***

  Thanks to Alice, Alex Duarte had already eaten breakfast and traveled all the way from Kansas City to Lafayette by eight in the morning. It had been pure luck to meet a pilot with the Department of Homeland Security, a former customs agent who was flying down to Houston the next day. Duarte had spoken to the uniformed man in the lobby of the hotel, and the good old boy from Dallas had remembered when, before 9/11, both customs and the ATF had been under the Treasury Department and sometimes worked closely together. He knew some of Duarte's friends from the ATF office in Miami and gladly let Duarte take one of the empty seats in the sleek Gulfstream jet. The pilot made a quick stop in Lafayette and was on his way again.

  Now, in another damn rented Chevrolet Cobalt, he slowly cruised down Talbot Street, looking for an obvious place where the rented U-Haul van might be stashed. He had checked with the Kansas City U-Haul manager, who'd said the van was still in the same spot.

  As he drove, Duarte realized the GPS unit might just be in a trash can. But he had to try. He had to admit to himself that he had no idea where this was going. He didn't know what had been taken from the cargo container; he didn't know why Byron Gastlin had been killed; he didn't know who'd killed Cal Linley. All he knew was he had a lead, and he was going to follow it.