Then he stood silently and watched as the giant started to tremble slightly. Pelly balled his fist.

The big man said, "Look, I think you misunderstood me."

"I thought you said I looked like a monkey."

"No, no, that wasn't what I meant."

Pelly didn't answer. Instead he lifted his fist, drawing the man's hands up to block the punch and instead delivered a crushing round kick to the man's knee. He tumbled like a redwood.

As the giant sprawled on the ground, Pelly stomped on the man's outstretched good leg, crushing that kneecap from another angle.

The man started to cry for his friends to help, but no one was anxious to defend the loudmouth.

Pelly stepped around and grabbed the man's hand, then bent it back and fell on his arm so that his elbow snapped. He repeated the action on the other arm.

The hairy young man stood up, looking down at the man whose limbs now all seemed to be pointing in the wrong direction. He glanced around at the others, who shrank back from his stare.

He heard his name and looked toward the Cadillac.

His boss said, "Pelly, let's go."

As Pelly stomped back toward the car, he saw the look on the men's faces in the truck. He knew they'd never make fun of him and neither would all the men they would tell.

Once inside the SUV, his boss said, "That sort of activity draws too much attention to us. We have an important task."

Pelly turned and looked at him. He wanted to ask if his boss thought whipping half-naked women didn't draw attention, too, but decided he liked his job. Maybe one day he'd address these issues with him.

It was almost sundown when Pelly watched the two men settle the crate into the front of a twenty-foot cargo container, secure the false wall and then lug in over fifty bales of compacted pot. The heavy hand truck strained under the stress of some of the bales. As with any imprecise and unregulated industry, the weight of each bale could vary from three to five hundred pounds. They had plenty, so they usually threw in a little extra to avoid complaints. Much of their success was based on staying out of confrontations. Of course, the boss went a long way toward eliminating problems before they arose.

Pelly saw him approach from the parked Cadillac SUV where he'd been on his cell phone.

"This looks better and better, Pelly." He looked at the men working. "How much longer?"

Pelly shrugged, "Two more bales."

"You want to, or should I?"

Pelly frowned. "Is it really necessary, boss? These two are good workers. They have no idea what's in the crate."

"Pelly, you let me worry about the security and just focus on doing what I say. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," he said, watching as the men shoved the big doors to the container closed. Without a word, his boss walked toward them slowly. He had his hand on the grip of a Walther P-38 behind his back.

Pelly shook his head, knowing that there was no real reason to kill these men, but that never stopped the boss from doing it. At least this time he wasn't torturing the men before they were killed. That seemed to be their only reward for being decent, hardworking employees.

The men turned, pleased that the big boss was apparently coming to thank them for their hard work. The first man, a twenty-five-year-old farm boy from Bocas del Toros never knew what was coming before the bullet to his face stopped him cold. The other man, a much older Colombian, had the time and presence of mind to take a step back, but the instinctive movement only seemed to enrage the boss, who, instead of shooting him in the head, put a nine-millimeter round into each of the man's knees.

The terrified worker dropped straight to the ground, his legs unable to support his large torso.

The boss walked up to him and put a bullet in the man's groin.

Pelly shook his head. This did nothing for the business operations-in fact, now Pelly would have to explain to anybody who knew them how the two workers had disappeared. He decided to say they were informers for the national police, and he'd had to make an example of them. Maybe he could salvage some benefit from this senseless behavior.

Pelly could only shake his head again as he watched the boss stand over the screaming, squirming man and slowly pump bullets into other nonfatal parts of his body while the man bled to death.

William "Ike" Floyd answered the pay phone off Forty-second Street on the first ring. It was eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night in Omaha, and he knew who it was.

"Yeah?" He wasn't tentative; he wanted to show this guy he wasn't afraid.

"William?"

"It's me, Mr. Ortíz. And call me Ike." He'd call Ortíz by his first name, too, if he knew it. Besides, this guy was a heavy hitter, even if his beaner accent made him sound very un-American.

The deep voice with the Latin inflection said, "It looks as if everything is in order. You will want to find a contact at the port in New Orleans or perhaps Galveston. That is where I will suggest as a point of entry."

"Think you can just waltz it right though?"

"I'll have some help, but it will still need to be off-loaded."

"I'll get it done."

"Good, good. I will have to set up two days a week to call you."

"Can we make it earlier? I don't like waiting out here by a pay phone this late."

"Surely the leader of a group like yours is not frightened?"

"You ever seen the wild animals that roam the streets in Omaha? Even the cops don't like to fuck with these niggers."

"Regardless, I will need to be able to reach you both Wednesday and Sunday nights. At the same hour." There was a silence on the overseas line, then he added, "Our mission is too important to be threatened by minor inconveniences. Do you not agree?"

"I guess."

"Very well. I will inform you of our progress."

The line went dead, and Ike, pissed off and tired, slammed down the receiver as the dry wind kicked up off the plains. He was close to his apartment on Fortieth Street, well away from any of the neighborhoods he was bitching about, but he didn't want this beaner thinking it was too easy to wait by a pay phone at eleven at night.

He turned and started to walk toward his building, thinking about what they had in mind. This was big. Bigger than anything he'd ever done, and, considering what else he had been involved in, that was saying something. This time no one had anything on him. He wasn't talking to the cops and wasn't facing any charges. This was gonna be straight and decisive. He would be proud to be known as the man who changed America. No matter how many died to save it.