When the Americans had interfered, with air strikes and a massive amphibious landing, Kelbonna had had no choice but to flee. A thousand of his elite guards and closest associates had accompanied him, and all now called the island their home as well. Kelbonna knew that the Americans would try for him here if given the chance, so he had turned the island into a fortress. Even a vastly superior invading force could be repelled by the defenses laid about and manned twenty-four hours a day. Sophisticated radar and sonar equipment had been installed to provide early warning of an approach by sea or air.
Kelbonna stood on his balcony with no concern for his safety at all. Even if by chance a small elite troop managed to slip through his elaborate defenses, they would still have to contend with his heavily fortified mansion. Armed guards patrolled the hallways all day long. At night, when he was within his chambers, no less than four were posted outside his door. Kelbonna was untouchable, so long as he remained on the island.
Of course, he didn’t know exactly how long that would be. Someday he would return to the Central American island country he had built from nothing and claim it for his own again. The Americans had had their chance at him and missed. How they would be sorry for what they had done…. Indeed, Kelbonna was ecstatic to learn that many thousands of them had taken up permanent residence in his former country, lured by the low prices and lush surroundings. They would become his hostages when he made his triumphant return. He would execute them one by one until the American government had made good on the wrongs they had done unto him.
Leaving the balcony doors open, Kelbonna stepped back inside the master bedroom and started to take off his bathrobe.
Rat-tat-tat …
The sound of machine-gun fire echoed in the night. Screams followed and then more fire. Orders were shouted.
Kelbonna felt a numbness in his gut.
They were on the grounds of his residence!
Since his bedroom overlooked the sea and not the front of the walled complex, he could not view whatever was going on. He rushed toward the entrance to his bedroom just as a hard knocking rapped upon it. Kelbonna threw it open to find the captain of his private guards before him.
“We are under attack, Your Excellence.”
“By whom?”
“Unclear at this time, Your Excellence. I have called for more troops. The house is secure. Please stay within your rooms until you hear different from me.”
Kelbonna nodded and closed the door, locking it. He strode to his desk and removed his own pistol from the holster resting atop it.
Poof!
The sound came as he checked the clip. He was trying to identify it when the screams of his men in the corridor beyond began to ring out. Cold fear had already flooded him when the shooting started, bursts of gunfire vying with the sounds of his men’s screams. Kelbonna discarded his pistol and instead grasped the machine gun perched by the head of his bed. He took up a combat-ready stance directly before the door.
The Americans! The damn Americans! … It had to be them, had to be!
The screaming stopped, and what sounded like a guttural, back-throat growl reached Kelbonna.
“Come on,” he urged whatever lay beyond the door softly. “Come on!”
Losing his bravado much faster than he had found it, Kelbonna had started for the balcony to climb for safety when the double-doored entrance to his bedroom exploded inward. He swung his rifle toward it and opened fire, screaming. The clip exhausted quickly, and he discarded the rifle and lunged back toward the balcony’s rail.
He was halfway over it, eyeing the sea, when he felt the scratch down his spine. Strangely, that was all it felt like, but the warm gush he sensed spilling from him and the numbness that quickly ascended told him he had been ripped open. The feeling in his legs deserted him and then his hands seemed to seize up. He tried to hold on to the railing, but there was nothing left to hold on with, and Javier Kelbonna dropped down into the night toward the rocky shoreline below.
“What am I going to do with you?” Heydan Larroux asked the man seated in the chair before her. “You know the rules, Jersey Jack, and you broke them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Heydan Larroux pulled an old fashioned cat-o’-nine-tails from her desk and walked toward the chair. She had men outside the office, but none of them inside with her. The day she couldn’t control her people by herself would be the day she found a different line of work.
The cat was made of tawny leather, almost the same color as the elegant brown dress she was wearing. Heydan Larroux always dressed in colors that highlighted the power and sultriness of her natural features. She had long jet-black hair, which she wore stylishly permed. Her eyes were big and black, too large for the rest of her demure face. Her cheekbones were set high, and she wore little makeup and only enough perfume to let visitors know it was there. Though she was not especially tall, her firm posture and strong build gave her the illusion of height. No matter. Her people looked up to her in any case.
“I’ve got reason to punish you, don’t I, Jersey Jack?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I want none of my stuff ending up in the hands of kids. Never! You been selling to schools.”
“No money in the streets, ma’am.”
“Haven’t I always taken care of you no matter what?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I ever let bad times affect the way I treat my people?”
“No, ma’am.”
“But then you go and sell in the schools.”
Jersey Jack’s black face was dripping with sweat. He had a gold tooth right in the front which seemed to have lost its shine.
“I–I wanted to impress you with my receivables.”
Heydan Larroux slapped the cat-o’-nine-tails against the back of his chair. “And look where it’s got you.” She came back around the front. “Who am I, Jersey Jack?”
He looked up at her. “Ma’am?”
“Describe me in a word.”
It took him a long couple of seconds to come up with it. “Important.”
“People respect me.”
“Hell, yeah.”
“The police leave me alone, even though they know what I do.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Know why, Jersey Jack? ’Cause I make sure my people stay clear of the work that really pisses the cops off. Kind of like an unwritten agreement. They don’t want a war, and they know so long as I’m in charge of this end of things, they won’t have to wage one. You hearing me, Jersey Jack?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Look around you. Tell me what you see.”
Jersey Jack described her office as best he could. The vast book collection, the wood-paneled walls and matching mahogany desk. The Oriental rug that cost more than most men made in a year. The hardwood floors she’d had taken up from a house she’d lived in for the better part of her life and laid down here to remind her of her roots.
That house was a bordello that Heydan Larroux had entered at the age of fifteen, a far cry from this Southern mansion on Chappatula Street in the Uptown section of New Orleans. She had made a name for herself, and by the age of nineteen she had been getting top dollar and booking by appointment only. By the age of twenty-five she had been running the place and three others like it. And when the RICO commission had decimated Louisiana’s crime lords, she had stepped in and filled the void. She’d consolidated power and now ran it alclass="underline" prostitution, gambling, drugs. Never sold to kids, though. That was the golden rule. From the lowest dealer on the ladder to the high-echelon suppliers, everyone knew the rule. Break it and you paid the price.