“Yes,” he said, his eyes widening as he accepted her words as truth. He couldn’t rationalize it before, but her words confirmed what he was thinking: the mission he had just completed, escaping the jaws of death so narrowly as he did, had changed him.
“You have completed a deal with the Devil,” she continued as she stroked his right leg, then kissed his left leg, then stroked his rock-hard buttocks. “You have traded what was left of your humanity for a few extra days of life. Show me your right hand.” She opened his right hand when he extended it to her. A fresh three-inch-long bum, caused by his grip on the nylon webbing of his parachute risers during his low-altitude bailout over San Francisco International, was etched across his palm, perfectly perpendicular to his already very short lifeline. “Here is the signed contract, Henri. You didn’t know this wound was here, did you?” Obviously he did not, because he stared at the cut. “I don’t know how long you have — maybe hours, maybe days. Perhaps only… minutes.”
His eyes flared, knowing she had added that last warning selfishly, that she wanted the next few minutes with him. “No — longer,” she admitted. “I see blood, too, a lot of blood. Not all of it is yours.”
“It won’t be. I can guarantee that. ”
“This is a serious contract, Henri, a contract with the dark master,” Jo Ann said angrily, returning to her nursing. “The contract is irrevocable. The dark master offers you incredible strength, a life without pain, with a tireless body, with sharp eyes. He demands a price for these gifts.”
“A price? From me?”
“Yes, damn you, the ultimate price — your very life, your future, ” she said. “Your soul is already his — now he wants control of your mind. He gave you these gifts because he wants to turn you loose on the mortal world, taking your revenge.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Her eyes flared, and she took a deep breath as the excitement welled in her chest. He could do it, she thought. “Then do it, Henri,” Vega said. “I’m telling you, Henri, you’ve been chosen by the dark master to carry out a baptism of fire on planet Earth. He has given you the gift of freedom from mortal pain. You will not feel hunger, or pain, or weariness. You will defy the laws of nature. You will see with the eyes of a hawk, hear with the ears of a wolf, move with the speed of a cheetah. You will think like no other general has ever done before. It is time to set it all into motion, Henri.”
“I have already set it in motion, Jo Ann,” Cazaux said, his voice as deep and hollow as if from the bottom of a grave. “Death from the skies, from nowhere, from everywhere. Men think they have conquered the sky; I say they will fear the skies, fear the machines and the physics that carry them aloft. My lack of pain is the sign that I have been given this assignment and that I must carry it out.”
“Turn your hatred into blood-lust, Henri,” Vega pleaded with him. “You’re not just a soldier, not a machine — you’re the sword of Satan. Be all that he has commanded you to be. Do it. Do it!”
She saw the smile creep to his lips, and it was then that she noticed his erection, and she knew he had indeed changed. Henri Cazaux was not interested in aides, or soulmates, or advisers — he was interested in conquest. The dark master had told him that anything he desired was within his grasp. She had confirmed the voice. Now he was going to act upon that advice.
Her blouse and brassiere ripped off her body in his grasp as easily as if they were of paper. The creature inside Henri Cazaux was free once again, and this time there was no restraining it.
An hour later, Jo Ann Vega wondered with the darkest sense of doom if the country would survive what Henri Cazaux had in mind for it. If the pain and the blood she had just experienced was going to be multiplied by even a fraction of this country’s three hundred million inhabitants, she knew that it could very well not survive his onslaught.
Near Bedminster, New Jersey
That Evening
“That is what I desire,” Cazaux told the men assembled around him. The staff meeting was in an isolated house in rural New Jersey, owned by Harold Lake through several layers of U.S. and offshore corporations, as safe from government scrutiny as possible. The night was warm and humid, but Cazaux’s security forces kept all of the windows and doors tightly closed. Human and canine patrols roamed the thirty-acre walled and gated estate, and electronic trip wires and sensors ringed the compound. Every room of the seven-bedroom home was occupied by an armed guard who constantly checked in with a security monitor.
The men present were members of Cazaux’s “senior staff,” organized much like an army battalion headquarters with operations and plans, intelligence, logistics, transportation, maintenance, security, and munitions staff officer. Of all of them, Harold Lake — who did not consider himself a staff officer but was generally in charge of procurement, purchasing, and finances for Cazaux’s organization — had been with the organization the longest. Surrounded by some of the world’s most wanted terrorists, smugglers, murderers, and mercenaries, Lake was definitely the most out-of-place person there.
The “security officer,” Tomas Ysidro, was probably the most notorious officer besides Cazaux himself, and Lake had to be careful at all times to not do or say anything to piss the bastard off. Bom and raised in Mexico, Ysidro had been one of the Colombian drug cartel’s deadliest enforcers before joining Cazaux’s small army, and he was quickly elevated to a status very nearly equal to Cazaux himself simply because no one else dared challenge him. Ysidro was in charge of recruitment and training, and his tactics and forms of discipline were a lot harsher than anything the Colombian drug lords used. Only Henri Cazaux’s strength and sheer force of superior will could keep Ysidro’s psychopathic tendencies in check. They were like two peas in a pod.
“Henri, you’re insane,” Lake declared. “I don’t believe it. You want to blow up three major airports in the United States?”
“What I want is revenge on the United States government for chasing me like a scared rabbit,” Cazaux said. “What I want is to see the people of this country tremble when they hear my name. What I want is to see this country, this so-called democracy, destroyed by its own military forces. They shot at me, Lake, they dared shoot at me! I want to destroy the American military by creating fear and distrust in them by their own people. I want to show the world what kind of butchers and wild dogs they really are.”
“Hey, Henri, you want it, you got it,” Ysidro said, taking his first post-meeting slug of bourbon from a bottle. “Man, this is gonna be awesome. We don’t just take out one plane, we take out the whole airport, the whole fucking airport! ” He laughed.
“Why, Henri?” Lake protested, ignoring Ysidro for the moment. “Why are you doing this? You’ve already got half the federal government on your tail. You’re already the most-wanted man in fifteen countries—”
“Shut up, Drip, you asshole,” Ysidro hissed to drown out Lake’s voice. Harold Lake shot an angry glance at Ysidro — he hated the nickname “Drip,” but everyone there used it in fear and deference of Ysidro. “The man gave us our orders, and now we march. You just need to bring us the money, mule.”
“Three airports within thirty days, all attacked by heavy cargo planes or commercial airliners filled with explosives,” Gregory Townsend, the British-born chief of plans and operations, mused. Townsend was a former British SAS commando, an expert in planning and setting up all sorts of military operations all around the world. He had lost an eye in a hostage-rescue situation in Belfast several years earlier, and after fifteen illustrious years with the British Army, had been sent packing with only a modest monthly stipend. When Cazaux invited him to join his organization, he readily agreed. “Considering a one- or two- million-dollar deposit per plane, plus a million for fuel, plus a million or two for explosives — we’re talking eight to nine million dollars for this operation, Henri, ten million tops. As I recall, we had a balance of eleven million in the war chest. This’ll tap us out. What sort of deal did you make with the client? I’d say at least ten million per target struck would be reasonable.”