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As Michael exited the barracks, the sun was just lifting over the Gulf,its surface shiht have been the first week of October, but the heat was already building, the ocean air tart as ever with salt and the sulfurous stench of burning butane With his sto-food would have to wait-he strode at a brisk clip across the coes and DS barracks to the Quonset hut, where the workers on the ineer, was calling out assignlance

"Are we interrupting your beauty sleep, Fisher? Ourhis jumpsuit "Sorry"

"You’ll be even sorrier You’ll be firing up the Bomb Ceps will be your second Try not to blow up your crew"

Distillation Tower No 1, known as the Boether by a co wire, and prayer Everybody said it was a matter of ti crew halfway to Mars

"Thanks, boss That’s swell of you"

"Don’t ht, everyone Seven days until we ship I want those tankers full, people And Fisher, hang back a minute I want a ith you"

The crews dispersed to their towers Michael followed Karlovic into the hut Christ, what now? He hadn’t been late bydown

"Listen, Dan, I’-"

Karlovic didn’t let hiet it, that’s not what I want to talk to you about" Hitching up his pants, he lowered his bulk into the chair behind his desk Karlovic was heavy in the true sense, not fat but large in every aspect, a ht and heft Tacked on the wall over his head were dozens of sheets of paper-duty rosters, work flows, delivery schedules "I had you on the Boot for hotwork Take it as a co the pair of you on that cranky old bitch If I hadwould be in the scrap pile"

Michael didn’t doubt that this was so; on the other hand, he knew strategically timed praise when he heard it "So?"

"So this"

Karlovic slid a sheet of paper across his desk Michael’s eyes fell quickly to the signature at the bottom: Victoria Sanchez, President, Texas Republic He quickly scanned the letter’s three short paragraphs Well, I’ll be, he thought

"Any idea what this is about?"

"What makes you think I would?"

"You were the last crew chief on the offload Maybe you caught wind of so while you were up there Talk around the depot, extra s a bell" Michael shrugged "Have you spoken to Stark? Maybe he knows"

Stark was the refinery’s chief security officer He was soenerally co both the oilers and DS, if for no other reason than his prowess at the poker table His caginess with the cards had cost Michael a bundle, not that the scrip was any big loss-within the fences of the refinery, there was nothing to spend it on

"Not yet This won’t sit ith hiuys friends? That whole California thing"

"I know hiears a bit Act as a sort of, I don’t know, unofficial liaison between DS and the military"

Michael allowed hilad to see someone from the old days, but at the same time he are of an inner disturbance, a sense of exposure The self-contained life of an oiler had, inhis sister, occupying the mental space she had left behind Part of hi, but the rest of him didn’t care

"It should be no problem"

"I’ll count it as a favor Handle it how you like" Karlovic angled his head toward the door "Now get out of here, you’ve got oil to cook And I "

Michael arrived at the distillation tower to find his crew, a dozen roughnecks, standing around wearing expressions of puzzleo of fresh slick sat idle Ceps was nowhere to be seen

"Okay, I’ll bite Why aren’t you people filling this thing?"

Ceps crawled fro element at the base of the tower His hands and bare aroo "We’ll have to flush her first We’ve got at least two meters of residuu Who was the last crew chief?"

"This thing hasn’t been fired in months You’d have to ask Karlovic"

"How much crude e have to drain off?"

"A couple of hundred barrels anyway"

Eight thousand gallons of partially refined petroleu: they would need a large waste tanker, then a puh-pressure stea at twelve hourselement, twenty-four before the first drop came out of the pipe Karlovic would pop an aneuryset started I’ll call in the order, you get the hoses ready" Michael shook his head "I find who did this, I will kick his sorry ass"

The draining took the rest of theMichael declared the leftover oil unusable and sent the truck to the waste pools for burning Bleeding off the junk was the easy part; flushing the tank was the job everyone dreaded Water injected into the top of the toould clean outprocess-but not all; three o inside to brush down the base and flush out the asphalt drain The only way in was a blind port, a h which they’d have to crawl on their hands and knees The ter up the anus"-not an inaccurate description, in Michael’s opinion Michael would be one of the three There was no rule about this; it was siesture toward morale For the other two, the custom was to draw straws

The first to pull a short straas Ed Pope, the oldest man on the crew Ed had been Michael’s trainer, the one to show him the ropes Three decades on the cookers had taken their toll; the ers sheered off by the thrown blade of a rebar cutter One side of his head and neck seared to a hairless pink slab by a propane explosion that had killed nine men He was deaf in that ear, and his knees were so shot that watching hi him a pass, but he kneas too proud to accept, and he watched as the man made his way to the hut to suit up

The second short straas Ceps "Forget it, I need you out here on the pumps," said Michael

Ceps shook his head The day had left theet this done"

They wriggled into their hazard suits and oxygen packs and gathered their gear together: heavy brushes on poles, buckets of solvent, high-pressure wands that would feed back to a compressor Michael pulled his loves, and checked his O2 Though they’d vented the tower, the air inside it was still as lethal as it got-an airborne soup of petroleus into jerky Michael felt a positive pop of pressure in the mask, switched on his headlao, ho down to find hi muck Ed and Ceps crawled in behind him