Burn Zone

by James O. Born

  He stepped into the bathroom and wiped his face with the towel on the rack. Looking in the mirror, the first thing he noticed was that the twitch in his left eye was going off like a car's turn signal. What had this woman done to him?

  He looked at his face and shoulders in the mirror, mystified that any woman would be able to resist him. Even if she didn't know about his wealth, he didn't see how she had backed away from his advances. He was so angry he had to spit into the sink.

  She'd pay. The only question was, who would go first? The troublesome ATF agent or the silly female FBI agent?

  Now he had a real reason to stay in the U.S. until his missions in life were complete.

  ***

  Alice Brainard had puzzled about the fact that the shipping notices had given off such a strong signal to the fireman's Geiger counter and was now concerned enough to have moved them into the lab. Not that she thought she'd get sick from it, but why take chances? Working in a lab with chemicals and other things had taught her that being careful was a real plus.

  She had looked on the Internet and spoken to one of the other forensic scientists about the possibility of something being contaminated by a cargo. No one seemed to know the answer.

  She started checking and learned that U.S. Customs used small radioactive "pagers" that would set off an alarm if they came in contact with a ship that was carrying anything radioactive. She called over to the customs office in the Port of Palm Beach and couldn't get anyone but a machine on the phone.

  Finally it started to bother her enough that she decided to take one of the shipping notices over there herself.

  She had already slipped it into a plastic evidence bag and now into an old metal box that had been sitting unused for years in the crime scene room. She lugged the box to her Honda and decided today she would eat lunch in Riviera Beach, conveniently right next to the port. She had her sheriff's office ID and hoped she'd be more successful talking to someone in person.

  35

  ALEX DUARTE OPENED THE DOOR TO THE HOTEL ROOM A CRACK and tried to see inside. The bright sunlight made it difficult to see into the gloomy room. For a reason unknown to him, he slid his right hand to the butt of his pistol. He leaned into the door and opened it a little farther.

  The room still remained too dark to see anything. He went ahead and pushed the door inward, feeling it catch slightly on something. For a moment, he thought he might be finding another dead body. That was starting to get old.

  As the door opened all the way, with his hand still resting on the knob, he looked into the room and saw the white propane gas tank. Then he thought about the slight catch in the door and saw the loose curtain strings on the floor.

  His mind just reacted and he pulled the door to him, hoping to contain the blast he knew would come.

  He saw the flash in the crack of the door and heard the blast just as the door was about to close.

  Orange flames peeked out all around the door, and the window next to him blew out.

  At the same time, he felt the door fly loose from its hinges and lift horizontally off the ground, with him still holding on.

  He flew across the breezeway and into the parking lot like he was riding a magic carpet instead of a propane gas-powered door.

  He made no sound as the explosion filled his eyes and vision.

  He caught a glimpse of Félix instinctively ducking as he passed by him on the floating door.

  ***

  Pelly smiled when he saw the old lady give Duarte the key and then go back to minding her own business. He couldn't have planned it more precisely. It was almost like the ATF agent was following his script.

  Then Pelly saw him hesitate at the door. He opened it a crack and paused. Had he detected the trap?

  Pelly thought back over his actions and tried to see if he could determine what he might have done to give away his plan.

  Then Duarte pushed the door open.

  Pelly let out his breath, knowing the pins had just been pulled from the grenades, and when they detonated so would the propane. He involuntarily squinted his eyes.

  Duarte jumped back outside, but it was too late. The flash of the explosion reached Pelly before the sound.

  That was one less problem as far as Pelly was concerned. The ATF man wouldn't bother him or the colonel again.

  36

  ALEX DUARTE FLINCHED AS FÉLIX BAEZ TREATED A CUT ON HIS head with some peroxide they had bought on their way back to the hotel in New Orleans.

  Considering the size of the blast and the damage to the hotel room, Duarte was still amazed he had gotten away with only a few cuts and some singed hair on the right side of his head.

  Félix said, "You sure we shouldn't have stayed and talked to the responding cops?"

  Duarte shook his head. "No one was hurt." He jumped when the peroxide and cotton struck an open wound. "Except me." He took another breath. "I don't want to give anyone a reason to take me off this case. Someone is going to a lot of trouble to keep us from finding out everything. That pisses me off."

  Félix smiled. "I've never seen you pissed off." He paused. "Or happy or sad or tickled or annoyed."

  "Yeah, I got it, I got it."

  Félix chuckled. "I never seen a flying ATF man. You looked like Aladdin floating across that lot." He laughed louder. "And the old cleaning woman. She looked like she seen a ghost."

  Duarte slipped past Félix and stood, stretching out his back and arms. He wouldn't admit that anything was sore from the blast. But everything below his eyes did hurt.

  "Okay, Félix. Tomorrow I'll find this Jessup character over in Biloxi."

  "What time should I be ready?"

  Duarte held up his hand. "Not on this. I can handle it. You need to stay on Lina and see what she knows. She's got the source, Pale Girl, and anything Staub learns. I don't think she's been sharing like she should."

  Félix snorted. "That's not her, that's the damn FBI. Fucking Bunch of Idiots. They don't like to share nothin'."

  Duarte nodded, feeling the exhaustion wash over him. He was glad Félix had agreed so easily to staying in New Orleans. Another reason Duarte hadn't wanted to take him was that Félix had been rough on the Ryder manager, and Duarte didn't want to risk what he'd do to the head of a racist organization, especially with what he felt about Gastlin's death.

  Félix told him to relax and get to bed early, then the DEA man headed out to eat.

  Duarte nodded and eased back on his bed, still in his clothes.

  He heard the door close and started to slip into sleep immediately. Everything seemed to catch up to him at once. As he drifted off, he jerked awake thinking he had heard another blast. How many had he heard in his thirty years? More than most people heard in a lifetime. As he started to drift off again, he realized this might not be the deep restful sleep he had hoped it would be.

  ***

  The young agent from ICE, which stood for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appeared genuinely interested in answering any of Alice Brainard's questions. She didn't think her position at the sheriff's office had anything to do with his attitude either. She could tell it was more the position he had in mind for the two of them. He was young and buff-the customs guys always seemed to have time to work out-and had a cute face surrounded by lots of light brown hair like a surfer's.

  He wore a dark blue uniform and took more than ten minutes to explain his complex and dangerous duties around the Port of Palm Beach.

  She smiled and said, "I'm sure it's hell, but what do you do if there's something radioactive on one of the ships?"

  "Run." He laughed at his sharp wit.

  "I mean, how would you know?"

  "Oh, we have these pagers that sound and take a sample of the emission."

  "The pager ever go off?"

  "Oh sure. Maybe three or four times a year."

  "Is it scary?" She really wanted to know, as well as make sure the young Homeland Security ICE agent thought she cared so he would still help.

  "
No. The first couple of times we got excited, but now we know it's a false alarm. Big loads of timber or tile can set 'em off. Sometimes a larger instrument of some kind with a radioactive gauge on it."

  "Why would tile set them off?"

  "A lot of organic things have natural radioactivity. We send the readings from the pagers to the RAD team so they can analyze them. They usually get back to us within an hour or so."

  "How do they know what it is?"

  "They can tell by the alpha emissions if it is fissionable and from enriched uranium or plutonium. Something that can be made into a weapon."

  She nodded, her scientific mind trying to understand the process as well as the reasons to do it. She could tell the guy was just reciting what he had learned in a class. He had no more idea about fission or the uses of enriched plutonium than a manatee, but he had been told to recite what he had learned. He did it well and looked good doing it.

  Alice said, "Let me get something I found and see if your pager goes off and takes a sample of it."

  "I gotta go get the pager."

  "Where is it?"

  "Locked in my desk."

  "Does everyone do that?"

  "No."

  "Good," she sighed.

  "Only the guys with the pagers. They're expensive, and we don't want to be held responsible for them."

  "So it's possible that something could enter the U.S. undetected?"

  "Yeah, if the pagers aren't out that day or if the container went directly to a special area and none of the customs inspectors went into the area. It could happen."

  "Great." She turned to run out to her car as the ICE agent went to retrieve his pager. She'd find out what had contaminated these pages. Discovering things was her job. And her calling.

  ***

  Alex Duarte tossed and turned for several hours. When his eyes opened, it was only three hours later, about ten-thirty in the evening. He had dreamed about Bosnia, as he usually did. But not about the Drina River and his dreadful mistake. During the Bosnian conflict, he had attempted to stop a Serbian tank by blowing a bridge it was crossing. Shrapnel from the explosion had accidentally killed a Croatian boy on the bank, down the river. Tonight he didn't dream about the agony he'd gone through after the incident.

  He dreamt about small bombs in enclosed places. The SEALs blowing in a door in Sarajevo, his improvised device that had blown a Serb command post, the effects of a grenade on a British SAS barracks. He had seen them all up close and often relived the experiences when he slept. It had robbed him of a full night's sleep ever since he had returned from eastern Europe.

  Now, with a few years' experience in not sleeping, he knew when his night was over. Instead of fighting it, he often used the time to work out, catch up on reports or read one.

  Tonight he knew exactly what he could do.

  He got up, already dressed, and washed his face, cringing slightly at the bruising around his right eye caused by his ride on the door.

  He took his gun from the small safe in the closet and strapped the Glock on his right hip. Tonight it was slightly cooler, so he slid a light tan windbreaker over his shoulders to cover the gun.

  Within a few minutes, he was on his way out to Biloxi, Mississippi, to the home of Forrest Jessup, president of the National Army of White Americans.

  The trip east on I-10 was quick on a weeknight near eleven o'clock. It was dark, and he got little sense of the damage from hurricane Katrina on the trip east. He found his exit and then the three turns that took him to a nearly deserted street with two houses at the front of the block and Jessup's lone, clapboard house on a good rise at the end of the street. There were several cars parked along the dark street as Duarte eased the rented Ford toward the house.

  He parked directly in front in a deep shadow. As soon as he stepped from the small car, it seemed to disappear. He hesitated. The late hour and the distinct possibility that Jessup had moved from the house because of Katrina made Duarte pause.

  Then he noticed a single light coming from what he would guess was the kitchen off the long, twisting driveway to the street.

  He felt for his pistol out of habit and started up the long driveway.

  ***

  Pelly looked in the mirror of his room at the Napoleon Arms hotel in New Orleans. The older, family-run motel fit his needs perfectly. It wasn't fancy like the colonel's chain resort in the Quarter, but it was clean, he could park directly in front of his room and he knew all the escape routes. Just like he had been taught in the academy.

  In the mirror, he saw his skin. He had shaved, then used the lady's hair removal system on his face like a doctor back home had shown him. His skin was clear and normal for a change. He smiled as he ran his hand over it, and then his severely trimmed eyebrows. He looked completely human. His teeth were a little pronounced and ears too wide on his head, but that wasn't unusual. It was these features combined with his hair that made people scared and wary of the man who looked like the missing link. Or a gorilla.

  He intended to go out on the town tonight. He had nothing to celebrate. He had seen his little grenade and propane bomb go off and the ATF man fly across the parking lot, only to get up, apparently unscathed and quick as ever. He had fled from his vantage point across the street and knew he'd have to deal with the ATF man again. But that was his job. He didn't let it bother him.

  Right now all he cared about was his lack of facial hair. He had two hours until he looked like the Wolfman again. He lifted his shirt and saw the long tufts of hair from his chest. He'd worry about that if he got a girl back to his room. Right now he had a clean face, and he was going to use it.

  37

  ALEX DUARTE CREPT ALONG THE WALL OF THE DETACHED garage, keeping his eyes on the front door. He had noticed the great number of abandoned houses on the street and wondered if anyone would even hear him if he ran into problems. Or caused them.

  He tried the knob of the front door. It was open. Now he had to make a choice. Knock as ATF agent Alex Duarte or just use terror tactics. As a federal employee, he could explain that he was investigating Gastlin's death and the activity around the container. Perhaps say that the dead Cal Linley had given him Jessup's name. Convince or trick the man into spilling what he knew. The other choice was to skip all pretense and slip into the house and just scare the man into talking.

  Somehow, although the first choice was the proper one, Duarte knew how much easier and effective the second choice was. He hoped it wasn't because he knew that this man led a group of racists who thought that blacks and Hispanics were lower forms of life and that Jews were evil. He hoped he was willing to use his special methods because he had grown increasingly troubled by what was in that cargo container or what Gastlin knew that would lead to so many murders in the United States. Either way President Jessup was in for a shock during this interview.

  Duarte slipped into the small entryway and stood in the dark for a few seconds. He could see the light from the TV and a small lamp coming from the next room. In addition to the television, he heard voices. He took a few quiet steps down a short hallway. On the walls he noticed the same kind of photos he had seen in Linley's house and the clubhouse in Omaha: photos of men in white robes or Nazi uniforms, one photo showing a black man hanging from a tree with the year 1963 scrawled in faded ink in the corner.

  Duarte shuddered. He had seen ethnic violence in Bosnia, but somehow the old history books didn't get across the horror or the violence here in the U.S. over racial issues. Now, in the house, with a man who might have participated in such acts, he understood that it wasn't limited to Serbs, Croats and Muslims.

  He leaned into the TV room and blinked to make sure of what he was seeing.

  An older man, whom he assumed was Jessup, was bound in a chair and another man stood over him with a pistol. The gunman stood back slightly, his face obstructed by shadow. He was lean, with dark hair. His movements from side to side showed his agitation.

  Duarte couldn't hear what was being said, but
knew he had his killer caught in the act. His heart raced at the thought of solving this case. His mind hummed with the questions he had for both these men.

  As Duarte drew his Glock and eased into the room, the killer's head snapped up. The pistol he pointed at Jessup's head fired, blowing blood and brain matter toward Duarte. Without any hesitation, the killer raised the gun and fired two more shots in the ATF man's direction, forcing him to retreat into the next room.

  Duarte controlled his breathing, then realized he had blood on his face. He touched it with his fingers. Had he been hit? He felt for a wound, then realized it was Jessup's blood. He heard the killer scramble through the next room. Duarte darted toward the front door and fired as the figure passed by the hallway. It was unaimed, but it looked like he might have struck the assailant.

  Duarte raced to the door and then took a quick peek to make sure it was safe. When he was able to look out safely, he saw the figure running, apparently not wounded in the legs. The man almost ran into the rental car parked in the shadows. As he slowed, the killer casually aimed his pistol and blew out one of the car's tires, then fired twice toward the house, causing Duarte to instinctively duck back into the house.

  Duarte felt something by the door and touched it with his left forefinger. Blood. He had hit the assailant. As he heard a car down the street race off, he knew he might have another lead. He walked back into the TV room just to make sure Jessup was dead. It was obvious the way the man's head lolled to one side, but if that wasn't enough, he had a gaping hole which had leaked out all possible brain and fluid into a sickening little pile on the floor.

  Duarte moved on to the kitchen. He found a baggie and napkin in the kitchen. As he left the house undisturbed, the only thing he took was a sample of blood from the front door.

  This was a scene he wouldn't tell the cops about. No one would believe him. Now he had to find out what was in that cargo container.