The old "gun-in-the-Bible" trick worked every time.
If Cazaux ever considered hijacking a plane, it would be from Stewart International.
There were a lot of other factors: the large amount of general aviation activity at the airport, with small planes taxiing and parking very close to commercial traffic, made transporting contraband onto an airliner from the aircraft parking ramp easy; the amount of wooded area and the isolation of many parts of the base from all but roving security; the number of large, isolated vacant buildings and hangars on the airport; and the relative safety and security everyone felt by having a large New York State Police, U.s. Army, and Air Force Reserve contingent stationed there at Stewart.
Cazaux used that complacency to his advantage many times. He once dressed like a USAIR baggage handler, commandeered a baggage tractor, and personally loaded several hundred pounds of contraband aboard planes parked at the gates, and was never challenged. He had done the same with an Air Force Reserve military cargo plane, posing as a crew chief on a C-5A Galaxy transport. Cazaux stole whole pallets of weapons and equipment right off the back of the giant transports with a forklift, and was never challenged or questioned.
More importantly, the little city was quiet and peaceful--it was a good jumping-off point to just about anyplace in the world, but it was also a good place to lay low and think and plan. That's why when Henri Cazaux safely made it out of Albuquerque, he booked a flight--not a direct flight, but a circuitous route to Chicago to Cleveland to Pittsburgh--and then on to his base of U.s.
operations in Newburgh. He needed to get the roar of the destruction he had caused in California, the smell of gunpowder and blood and burning civilization, all out of his head for a while.
There were two other reasons for Henri Cazaux to come to Newburgh, of course. It was a convenient place to meet with his logistics officer, a private Wall Street trader named Harold Lake. When a face-to-face meeting was needed, Lake could be in Newburgh in an hour and a half, and banking transactions begun by Lake in a satellite brokerage house in Newburgh at noon would be on the books and in the system by close of business. Cazaux felt too trapped, too surrounded in New York City itself--Newburgh was more to his liking, large enough to allow him to blend into with the citizens but small and isolated enough to remain anonymous.
The second reason was Madame Rocci, M.m. Her real name, he knew, was jo Ann Vega. The "M.m." stood for Minister of Metaphysics--it sounded like a phony show title or something out of a 1940's B-grade movie, but it was not. She was, and had been for several years, the psychic for the world's most dangerous criminal.
For all of Henri Cazaux's intelligence, military training, life experience, toughness, and survival instinct, his one foible, his one departure from clear, perfectly objective analytical thought, was in the realm of astrology--but of course Cazaux would not consider astrology a "weird" science. An astrologer in Denmark whom he visited while in high school told him he would be a great military man--he decided to go into the military based on the woman's advice.
During a United Nations deployment to Africa while in the Belgian First Para, another astrologer in Zaire, a shaman, told him he would be a great leader of men, known far and wide for his deeds. Since going into business himself, he had consulted with an astrologer once or twice a year. Their predictions were uncannily accurate, he thought, and he had never made a bad move based on their words.
He had met Madame Vega three years earlier. During a rare time traveling on foot during daylight hours--tactical considerations absolutely forbade travel on roads during daylight except in an emergency--Cazaux had ducked into the back door of her tiny storefront parlor while getting out of sight of a State Police cruiser.
He surprised Vega as she came out of the bathroom, but she did not challenge him or try to throw him out. She seemed to know instantly that he was on the run and being pursued. She showed no fear, and offered him instant coffee and two-day-old donuts purchased from the thrift shop down the street, the only things she had to eat in her small kitchen.
Vega was in her early fifties, with long dark kinky hair streaked with gray and with small colored beads braided in her hair near her temples, large round dark eyes, a round, pretty face, large round breasts, strong fingers and hands, a firm waist and buttocks, and slender legs.
She looked gypsyish, and said her family were Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia. Vega did not complain when Cazaux checked the house, the exits, and looked for evidence that she had a boyfriend, roommate, children, or husband living with her. She said she knew that he was afraid, that he was in danger, but that he would eventually prevail, and she would help any way she could.
All he wanted to do was hide and sleep. She showed him a hiding place in the attic, which he accepted--after finding at least three ways to escape --and rested. When he awoke, she was waiting for him.
While he slept, she had done a complete astrological analysis on him.
He was interested but skeptical--until she started to speak about the life of Henri Cazaux.
She predicted his birthdate within a week, his time of birth within two hours, and his country of birth exactly--he was born at a hospital in the Netherlands, although raised in Belgium: she guessed all this.
Being Henri Cazaux, and cautious, he realized Vega could have researched his past--Cazaux was beginning to get a reputation in America equal to the one he had in Europe, although at the time he was not well known outside federal law-enforcement circles. But it would have taken a lot of work and a lot of time, far more than what a near-destitute storefront swami in Newburgh, New York, could ever do.
No, she had learned about him simply from looking at the man, then reading her astrological books and putting the terrifying, mystifying pieces together. She talked about his military past, his fearlessness, his lack of regard for others. She talked about his brutal success, his drive for perfection, his intensity. She knew he had once been married, but had no children despite his desire to have them.
But that was only the beginning--of what she had to say, and of the astounding accuracy of her predictions: With the Sun, the blood planet Mars--named after the mythical god of wan-the planet jupiter, and the upper limb of the Moon all in the constellation Scorpio at the time of his birth, Henri Cazaux was a quadruple Scorpio--highly intelligent, secretive, passionate, and powerful.
Vega had never seen a chart like his before. If a person could pick all the traits he or she ever desired--the tendency toward great wealth, tremendous sexual energy, animal determination, godlike invincibility, and intelligent introspection-- Henri Cazaux had them. Only a few men in history ever had an astrological chart like Cazaux--such multiple-planet generals like Napoleon Bonaparte, Ulysses, and Alexander, politicians like Hitler and Lincoln, military thinkers like Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz. His astrological chart was confirmed by a palm reading and the tarot, but one look at the man would be confirmation enough for anyone. And if his scarred body did not say that his past lay in some expertise in the combat arms, his chart definitely said his future would be in warfare.
Mars ruled his chart, and all other "peaceful" signs and planets and influences were nowhere to be seen.
Usually Cazaux liked to "rate" astrologers by how many guesses they got correct --he could not even begin to do this with Jo Ann Vega.
It was as if she had written his biography, and then written his eulogy and epitaph. The future she painted was not bright. It was filled with adventure, and excitement, and wealth, and power, but it was a short, violent, lonely life. She said she understood all of those things, and said her life was rich and full despite her loneliness.
She also seemed to understand perfectly when he attacked her.
She was so good at her profession that now she knew too much, and when the snarling, cornered beast in Cazaux emerged, she accepted it with professional patience.
Other than killing, raping a woman is tactically the best way to ensure her silence--few women report a rape, especially if th
ey are alone. It is usually the best way to terrorize a woman into silence and cooperation. Cazaux was forceful and violent, but was careful not to cause any visible wounds that might compel others to act. He made her undress for him, made her perform fellatio on him, made her spread her legs and beg him to rape her-not because he enjoyed any of it or thought she might enjoy acting submissive, but because it further implicated her, further shamed her, gave her more events of which most women will not speak, more things for a woman's consciousness to work harder to suppress.
As helpless as she was, she was, in a horrible and brutal way, a party to what was happening to her.
The rape was an act of violence--none of it could be considered in the least sexual--but the motivation was not robbery or murder or assault or any other crime. It was an initiation into the life of the world's greatest terrorist, a message that she was now, willingly or not, an acolyte of Henri Cazaux's, a minister to the human incarnation of Satan himself. She could accept the fact, and live, or deny it, and die--but he did not have to tell her these things.jo Ann Vega-in fact, all of Cazaux's helpless victims--knew this when they looked into the killer's eyes. The rape was an act of violence, yes, but it was more of a promise of the violence to come if the spell was broken.
He made her clean him with her mouth, then departed without saying a word--no threats, no taunting, no innuendos--leaving a small throwing knife stuck into the woodwork around the window behind the back door.
It was a tiny warning to her, and a promise that he would return.
He did return, two to three times a year.
The violence was gone, and they became lovers. They slept and bathed together, experimented with sex, and talked about each other's worlds in intimate detail.
Making love with Henri Cazaux was like trying to wrestle with a bonfire or control a crashing ocean wave--the heat, the power, the sheer energy he released was enormous. Vega was his spiritual adviser, his charge of quarters, his aide-de-camp, but she also got to experience the man when he unleashed his raw, unchained spirit only toward her, and no one else.
Although they shared each other's passion, he was never close-"settling down" was never an option, although he did see to her needs and offered a level of security and protection unlike any other man in the world.
He provided her with money--not enough to leave her little storefront or call attention to herself--but enough so she would not have to rely on reading horoscopes to survive. Some of Vega's enemies--a city councilman who tried to have her kicked out of the city for being a drug dealer because she had refused to run a house of prostitution for him, a neighbor kid who liked to get drunk and would occasionally try to break her door down to get at her-both mysteriously disappeared. Jo Ann had never mentioned them to Cazaux.
Jo Ann knew that Henri Cazaux was coming to her, knew this visit would be different. She often read his cards in between visits and she had just completed a reading on him before she had learned of the attack in San Francisco. She knew he had engineered the attack long before the news told the world so. The cards told of fire, and blood, and darkness. They did not tell of his death, as they usually did. In fact, none of the dark elements of Cazaux's chart --a short lifespan, pain, loneliness--were present. The man coming to visit her soon was a man no longer--he had been transformed. The cards said so.
It was dark outside, and the rain was pounding down so hard it was forcing itself into the house through closed windows.
Vega was just finishing a cigarette in her tiny living roomstbedroom between the partition to the reading parlor and the kitchen, and was heading back to the kitchen to clean out the ashtray, when she turned and saw him standing in the doorway, watching her. He was already naked from the waist up--he had obviously been there several minutes, judging by the size of the puddle of water under his feet--but he was as silent as a snake.
A small automatic pistol was stuck in his jeans waistband.
"Welcome home, Henriea"...Jo Ann said, a touch of warmth in her eyes and voice. "I'm glad to see you." He did not respond. That was typical --he rarely said ten words to her even on a chatty day. He looked thinner, but his chest was as muscular as ever, his stomach as rippled and hard as an old-fashioned washboard. He had shaved off all his hair. He changed his hair length and style often, although military short-cropped hair was his norm. But Vega's eyes were drawn back to his chest, his rock-hard arms, and his flat stomach.
For a brief instant, she felt her nipples erect and felt the slight ache of desire between her legs. She looked into his eyes, and the questions in her head only continued. Cazaux's eyes were on fire --not from anger, or from fear, but from desire. Was it sexual desire?
Sometimes she could feel the heat of his need from across a room--Scorpios were all powerful sexual animals, and multiple Scorpios sometimes had an aura of sexual energy that was palpable. Henri was soaking wet, but he was definitely on fire..
No, it was not sexual energy this time. He was after something else, something much more significant than jo Ann. The fire in his eyes seemed to come from visualizing something so vividly that you could see it, touch it.
"Get out of those wet clothes," she suggested.
"I'll make us some tea.
I have hamburger if you're hungry." As if he had read her thoughts, he pulled the gun from his waistband, then unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them down to the floor.
My God, Vega breathed, he was magnificent! But her eyes were drawn from the bulge between his legs to the bandages wrapped around his left leg, with quarter-sized spots of blood soaking through.
"Henri, you're hurt. Go into the bedroom." The big man silently complied.
After drying the floor carefully with a dishtowel and putting his wet clothes in the washer so no one would notice or question the mess, Jo Ann brought hydrogen peroxide, hydrocortisone cream, and fresh bandages to him. She found him standing naked beside her bed, his injured leg up on the bed, peeling off the old dressing.
She sat down on the bed and examined the wound. It was long and deep, like a hot poker or sword had been slashed across his calf.
Blood mixed with water and dirt had caked inside the gash itself-this was going to be difficult and painful to clean.
"This was from the chase with the Air Force, wasn't it?" "Yes," he replied simply. The news of the incredible disaster in San Francisco had of course reached Newburgh. It had been page one in the nation's newspapers, and the lead story on all the networks and CNN.
The dragnet was out for Cazaux, but they were concentrating enos on his way to Mexico.
"You came to me for advice," she said, as if reading from Cazaux's unwritten Daytimer itinerary.
"You are meeting with your senior staff to plan something... but not to hide. You intend on i:.
,.
attacking... attacking many targets, many persons. I saw much blood in your charts, much destruction. Why, Henri? Is it revenge?
I did not see a clear reason..." "You know the reason, Madame Vega," Cazaux hissed in a low voice.
"You know damned well." "Oui, mon cher, "Vega responded soothingly, feeling her nipples harden and the lonely region between her legs grow hot and wet. Oh yes, she knew very well why Henri was on the warpath.
Henri had been a very bad little boy when he was younger. A bastard born in a country foreign to both his parents, now living in a foreign country, Cazaux was a ballistic missile without a guidance system--lots of energy but no sense of direction, no clear path, no destination. He amused himself by stealing and vandalism, and by the age of fifteen had become an accomplished criminal, roaming much of western Europe. He stayed out of the hands of the authorities until 1977. While trying to deal hashish to a U.s. Air Force F-4 Phantom maintenance crew near Antwerp, Belgium, he was caught by Air Force security police and taken to their brig. The Air Force sky cops could not charge him, only release him to the local gendarmes as soon as possible. The Americans had seen many locals get away with vandalism and other crimes because the American
military forces had no authority.
but, either because of manpower shortages, the holidays, or indifference, the local cops had no one to take the boy until Monday, so he stayed in the Air Force brig.
It was the opportunity the Americans had been waiting for to vent their own frustrations at being away in a foreign land among foreign peoples.
For the next forty-eight hours, Henri Cazaux had been passed back and forth between the security police teams so they could practice their "interrogation techniques." Cazaux was stuffed into fifty-five-gallon barrels, hosed down naked with icy cold water from fire hoses, questioned by teams of interrogators for hours at a time, made to kneel naked on bricks while chained to concrete pillars, and ordered to dig his own grave and then buried alive in mock firing-squad executions.
He was never beaten, never physically harmed.
... until the nights, the long, awful nights, when Cazaux was alone with just one or two guards in an isolated part of the brig where no one could hear him scream. Then they took turns with him, tying the strong, lean, handsome young man up to a table and performing the ultimate degradation on him again and again, sometimes with a nightstick, sometimes with a broken broom handle and, ultimately, the engorged penises of the men themselves. If they were afraid of the shift commander hearing the prisoner's screams or cries for help, they would order the prisoner to suck on the end of a Colt M1911 pistol while they ravaged him-- soon, Cazaux was praying they'd just pull the trigger and put him out of his misery.
Dale Brown - Storming Heaven Page 17
