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.