Chapter 206 Time for dinner again, brothers!!!

Chapter 206 Time for dinner again! Brothers!!! (4k)

Tenth Street in the West District, an open space outside the mosque.

The 10:30 a.m. sunlight barely pierced through the gray clouds of Seattle and shone on a quirky, secondhand food trailer.

Hassan Imam's methods were clearly unorthodox; it's unclear from which junkyard or bankrupt Mexican gang he acquired this behemoth.

The original white paint on the food truck has peeled off, and there are faded "Super Tortilla" graffiti on the side, as well as several bullet holes that look like they were left by a small-caliber handgun.

On the uneven ground around the food truck, a dozen or so colorful plastic stools and folding wooden tables, all salvaged from a flea market, were scattered haphazardly.

At this moment, several homeless people wearing tattered cotton-padded clothes and pushing supermarket shopping carts were already peeking out from the edge of the open space.

They sniffed, as if they could already smell the free food coming from this strange food truck.

"Are you cutting onions or golf balls?!"

Alex's furious roar came from inside the dining car.

Wearing an apron that I don’t know where he got it from, which was printed with “America’s Best Dad”, Alex stood sweating profusely in front of a huge stainless steel pot that could stew half a sheep.

He was waving a long-handled ladle around his hand, and was spitting it out at his Black roommate Jamal.

"I told you to chop the onions into small cubes! Cubes! Understand?"

"You know, those little chunks that dissolve in the soup!"

"Look at what you cut! It's so big it could crush a homeless person outside!"

Alex pointed angrily at the irregularly shaped onion chunks on the cutting board.

Jamal held a kitchen knife in his hand, shrank his neck in grievance, and his eyes, which were slightly glazed from flying mushrooms for a long time, were filled with clear stupidity.

"Hey bro, I'm a botanist."

Jamal tried to defend himself, saying, "In my field of expertise, preserving the integrity of plant cells helps to lock in its soul—"

"Screw your soul! Go wash the potatoes! If you touch a knife again, I'll chop you up and throw you into the pot to enhance the flavor!"

Alex snatched the kitchen knife and kicked Jamal to the edge of the sink.

Leon led Ray across the pebbles to the food cart.

He curled his fingers and tapped on the greasy metal order window on the side of the food cart.

"Clang clang."

Alex turned his head and saw "RayFong" wearing a mask and baseball cap through the window, as well as a burly black man standing straight behind him.

"Boss!" Ray immediately bowed slightly to Alex, his voice deep and serious.

Alex was taken aback by the booming voice of "boss." He held up the cleaver covered in scallion bits and looked blankly at Leon.

"Who is this?" Alex wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

"thunder."

Lyon explained succinctly, "This is the security guard/laborer I hired. He'll be paid a hundred dollars a day, and the wages will go through my personal account; you won't have to pay anything."

Alex looked Rena up and down, his physique as solid as a wall and his posture as if he were standing at attention, and for a moment his mind couldn't quite process it.

"no----"

Alex leaned out the window and whispered quickly to Leon in Chinese, "Didn't Hassan say he'd arrange for some young men from the community to manage discipline? Why did you bring your own security guards?"

Lyon leaned closer to the window, resting one hand on the tin sill, and replied in very low Chinese, "This is one of the thugs I found. I need to find him something to do, so I'll keep him on your leash for now."

Alex's eyes lit up, and he nodded in sudden understanding.

"Wow, that's awesome, folks!"

Alex suppressed his excitement. "That physique, that aura—is he some kind of talent ready to be packed up and sent back to the East? Which secret laboratory did this bodyguard come from?"

"no."

Lyon interrupted his wild imagination with a blank expression, "He's just a bankrupt American veteran."

"what?"

Alex was stunned. "Aren't you going to send them away?"

"Don't send them away. They don't have much technical value; they're only good for fighting."

"But we will always encounter situations in the future where it is inconvenient for us to show our police identity, or where we need someone to do dirty work in secret. Having a few thugs is always a good thing."

Alex gasped after hearing this.

"Fine, you're so great, you're right."

Alex accepted the arrangement, turned to look at Ray, who was standing to the side looking completely bewildered, and switched back to English.

"Lei, right? Come in! Go to the sink and help that big oaf wash the potatoes, and while you're at it, chop all these onions up!"

Lei went straight to the back door of the dining car, strode in, rolled up the sleeves of his work jacket, and started working.

Leon watched as Ray immediately got to work and nodded in satisfaction. He turned to Alex to check on the progress: "Are all the ingredients ready?"

"All done."

Alex wiped his hands with a towel. "Hassan is quite efficient. He had half a lamb chop and a leg delivered early this morning. They've been bled and recited sutras by the imam. I'm about to start cooking them into soup."

Alex shook his aching arms and looked at Leon: "Those homeless people outside are starving, I can't handle them all by myself. Stop standing there pretending to be cool, come in and lend a hand, help me chop up those lamb legs."

Upon hearing this, Leon's hand, which was resting on the tin window sill, suddenly froze.

His originally cold and imposing posture became slightly stiff.

"I----"

Lyon's lips twitched behind his mask, and his voice choked for once, "I can't."

Alex's hand, which was washing its hands, froze in mid-air.

He slowly turned his head and stared at Leon as if he were an alien.

"ha?"

Alex let out an exaggerated gasp. "Are you fucking kidding me? You're telling me you can't cook?"

Leon cleared his throat awkwardly, put his hands back in his jacket pockets, and tried to maintain his cold-blooded agent persona: "Is it strange that I can't cook? I'm not a chef."

"You're talking nonsense!"

Alex retorted in Chinese, his face full of utter incomprehension.

"Given your past performance, I'd take it for granted if you just whipped up a delicious Kung Pao Chicken or stir-fried beef noodles for me right here!"

"And you're telling me you can't cut meat to make soup?!"

Lyon was rendered speechless by the barrage of criticism.

He couldn't possibly explain that before he transmigrated, he was someone who relied on takeout and cafeteria food to survive in China, and that his greatest achievement in the kitchen was cooking frozen dumplings without breaking them.

"You should know, I used to eat a pot of tomato soup every day for months on end, just boiling it, adding water, and then boiling it again."

"Anyway—I just can't cook."

Lyon looked away and began to act like a rogue, his tone somewhat stiff.

Alex rolled his eyes dramatically, completely amused by the situation.

"Get out of here! Don't get in my way!"

Alex waved the strainer in his hand with disdain.

"Go outside and find a small stool to sit on and supervise the process! I'll call you when the soup is ready!"

Lyon was rendered speechless by Alex's tirade, and could only awkwardly pull down his hat brim and silently leave the dining car.

He found a faded plastic stool at the edge of the open space, put his hands in his pockets, looked at the steaming, dilapidated food truck, and continued to play the role of his new underground identity.

About an hour and a half later.

Finally, a rich mutton soup began to bubble and boil in the huge stainless steel pot.

Half a bone-in lamb, its aroma a blend of onions, carrots, and a variety of cheap spices, spread rapidly through the damp, cool Seattle winds to the surrounding streets.

For homeless people who haven't had a hot meal in days, this smell might not even be as appealing as the enhancer.

Initially, there were only a dozen or so homeless people wandering around the food truck. But in less than twenty minutes, the situation completely spiraled out of control.

Due to a "homeless dumping" conspiracy secretly orchestrated by Mayor Reynolds and Chief Finch, the number of homeless people in the West End has surged dramatically.

Smelled by the aroma, hordes of homeless people, pushing shopping carts full of junk, surged toward the mosque on 10th Street from 9th Street, 11th Street, and even further afield, like a zombie horde from The Walking Dead.

Among them were Black people wrapped in dirty blankets, and emaciated white drug addicts; the vast majority were not Muslims at all.

The crowd grew larger and larger, soon exceeding one hundred people, and it continued to increase.

They jostled each other, their eyes fixed on the food cart window with fanaticism. Some even started banging their broken bowls against the shopping carts in front of them, creating a jarring noise that was almost indistinguishable from a zombie apocalypse in a movie.

"Holy crap—"

Inside the dining car, Alex looked out the window at the dense sea of ​​heads, and his hand holding the large iron spoon trembled slightly.

Before the young men Hassan had assigned could even begin, he turned and yelled at Lei, who was washing potatoes, "Lei! Stop washing! Go out and stop these hungry bastards! Make them line up! Anyone who cuts in line, get out!"

Lei immediately put down what he was doing, wiped his hands on his apron, and strode out of the food cart.

Faced with hundreds of restless homeless people, Lei's stern face showed no fear whatsoever.

He dragged his slightly lame left leg to the front of the crowd, and with his strong physique of 1.9 meters and the cold aura of a former army infantryman, he stood firmly there.

"Line up in one row! Back up!"

Lei's voice was extremely penetrating. He stared intently at the few troublemakers at the front who were trying to push their way forward with his war-torn eyes.

The sheer force of violence worked instantly. Several previously arrogant white homeless men, upon meeting Ray's gaze, instinctively shrank back and obediently took two steps back.

Under Lei's command, the originally chaotic crowd miraculously twisted into a relatively orderly long line.

Just as Alex was about to start making soup, the side door of the mosque opened.

Hassan Imam came out with two young Muslim men.

They were carrying several huge cardboard boxes filled with steaming, slightly charred unleavened flatbreads.

Hassan walked to the food cart and glanced at the long line of homeless people. He clearly noticed that ninety percent of them were not his followers, but his weathered face did not show any sign of rejection.

For this pragmatic religious leader, hunger knows no bounds of faith, and food is the best way to spread faith.

"May God bless these lost souls."

Hassan smiled kindly and gestured for his men to move the flatbread to the soup serving window.

The distribution has officially begun.

Sweating profusely, Alex wielded a large iron ladle, ladling a full spoonful of mutton soup, broth and meat, into each broken bowl or paper cup that was handed to him.

Hassan stood by, smiling, and handed two hot flatbreads to each of the homeless people who received the mutton soup.

Of course, Hassan's flatbread wasn't given away for free.

While handing out the flatbread, Hassan would very naturally slip a small green booklet with excerpts from the Quran or a leaflet from a mosque into the greasy hands of the homeless.

"May God grant you peace, brother."

Hassan spoke in a gentle tone to a white drug addict with tattoos covering his arms.

The drug addict didn't care what was being stuffed into his hand. He gripped the pancake tightly, stuffing it into his mouth while muttering incoherently, "Praise be to Allah, praise be to whatever god you want—"

Lyon, sitting on a small stool, watched this scene, a slight smile playing on his lips beneath his mask.

He had to admit that Hassan's pragmatic approach of perfectly combining charity and missionary work was indeed far superior to those white pastors who only knew how to chant scriptures.

Of course, Lyon wasn't idle either. His eyes scanned the line for food like radar, trying to find prey that matched the characteristics of highly skilled technical personnel.

The procession moved forward slowly.

About half an hour later, instead of the people, an Asian face wearing an obviously ill-fitting, dirty yellow windbreaker sauntered to the soup window.

The man's hair looked like a messy bird's nest, greasy and stuck to his scalp.

Most notably, he was holding a smartphone high in his right hand, with the camera pointed directly at his face and the window of the food truck.

Hello! Hello!

'

He gave Alex a fawning, comical smile and called out in heavily accented, broken English, "Can I get it? Please? I'm very hungry!"

Alex stared at the Asian face, paused for a moment, and the iron spoon in his hand stopped in mid-air.

Before Alex could react, Hassan had already smiled and handed him two flatbreads and a small green booklet.

Seeing this, Alex mechanically scooped a spoonful of mutton soup into his chipped plastic bowl.

The Asian man grabbed the flatbread and placed it on the mutton soup, then held the soup in one hand, his eyes shining with excitement.

He whirled around, held the phone even higher, and roared in fluent, penetrating Chinese, "It's almost time for dinner, guys!!!"

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