The Devil's Eye (The Remnants of War Series, Book 3)

By Patrick Astre

After a bloody tour in Afghanistan with a Marine Recon unit, then a short career with the NYPD, Francois Dupont battles alcoholism, drugs and PTSD.

When a childhood friend and brother of a deceased army buddy asks Francois to find their sister Jasmine "Jazz", Francois sees an opportunity for redemption. Finding the twenty-two year-old woman is easy. Shaking the shadowy tails following them from New Orleans back to Brooklyn is proving more difficult.

The mob is convinced Jazz has the Devil's Eye a 3000 year old gem with reputed powers.

The DOD isn't far behind, intent on acquiring and weaponizing the radiation emitted by The Eye, at any cost.

The secret to The Eye's location lies somewhere in Jazz's haunted past. But can Francois get to the gem before the enemy claims it and the only woman he's ever cared for?


THE REMNANTS OF WAR, in series order
The Last Operation
The Doppelganger Protocol
The Devil's Eye
Twilight of Demons

• Language: English
• Publisher: ePublishing Works
• Release date: Dec 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781614175094

Book preview

The Devil's Eye

The Remnants of War Series

Book Three

by

Patrick Astre

Award-winning Author

Published by ePublishing Works!

www.epublishingworks.com

ISBN: 978-1-61417-509-4

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Prologue

1998

Bayou Cocher, Louisiana.

He sat in the patrol car, right at the edge of Colored Town, as if he belonged there. He did actually, but not really, not at this time of day. Two-thirty in the afternoon and the thermometer on Noel Mielle's Barbeque & Beer joint had topped 97. The air conditioner in the big Ford sheriff's car was set on high, and still it was roaring hot inside. Well that's alright, he thought, ain't gonna be that hot behind the feed store, and he chuckled to himself, a funny gurgling noise that didn't sound amusing at all.

A big man, over six feet three, he filled the sheriff's uniform like potatoes fill a sack, tight, lumpy where the muscles had run to fat. Half moons of sweat lined the underarms of his shirt and sour body odor emanated from him in spite of the shower he'd taken that morning.

The sheriff took off his Mississippi redneck, cop-style, mirror shades and wiped his eyes. His features were not unpleasant, although a bit fleshy. The eyes were serious. Many a driver pulled over on one of Bayou's Cocher's lonely country roads had felt a tremor of unease, a certain frisson, when Sheriff O'Day got out of his cruiser and slowly ambled toward their stopped vehicle while taking off the shades. When he'd reached the driver's door, leaned in the window and penetrated their private space with his physical presence and the mental angst of his gaze, they'd usually stutter a bit. He liked that—especially if they were of color.

Sheriff O'Day put his shades back on, slipped the gearshift in drive and accelerated slowly into the main street that split Colored Town like a harelip.

They called it Colored Town, but a visitor would find all kinds in there, especially at night. Some white men looking for a walk on the wild side with the black hookers, or losing Friday's pay at the illegal games. Mostly though, it was blacks, mulattos and redbones running a street of gin mills, cribs, gambling joints, clapboard corner bars that never closed, matchbox barbeque joints smelling of hickory ribs and crack corners that cut a swath nearly through the center of Bayou Cocher.

On one side were the middle class homes of mostly white folks with an outside ring of high-end McMansions carrying price tags starting at half a mill. Most of these folks commuted to New Orleans and six figure jobs. On the other side lay the black section, small three bedroom ranchers, bungalows, trailers and old frame houses, seldom painted, with clapboard shutters for ventilation and Christmas lights that never come down.

The Marcel Serrano family ran the mob action between New Orleans and Bayou Cocher, taking up residence in the smaller town much the same as Al Capone used to run Chicago from Cicero. Sanctioned by the old Luchesse Family out of the Bronx, Marcel Serrano couldn't run the action in Colored Town. That was sub-contracted to Hap DuPain, a local gang-banger. Keeping the peace over it all was Sheriff Roger O'Day, a lawman crooked as a mile of bad mountain road. O'Day was in the bag to the Serrano's and all power in Colored Town flowed from there.

There were no signs or markers to delineate Colored Town's boundaries. None of it was ever advertised, yet it remains the hottest spot outside the Big Easy.

At this time of the afternoon, nothing much went on in Colored Town. Sheriff O'Day didn't intend to stop there. His business, if it could be called that, would take place in a different part of town, away from anyone's eyes.

He parked a block away as a school bus stopped with red lights blinking. A single child got out—yellow dress against brown skin.

Only when the bus left did he pull away and turn the corner.

* * *

Ten years later, 2008

New Orleans

The Rochambeaux Museum on opening day.

They'd decided to hit the museum moments before the actual closing, when it would be mostly deserted and least expected.

A solitary guard ushered the last visitors past the door and pulled it shut. The second before the door latched, two men carrying large metal toolboxes forced it open. The men wore white uniforms adorned with the name and logo of a local air conditioning service company.

They pushed by the guard, a moonlighting NOPD officer. As the guard drew his weapon, one of the men stabbed him in the chest in a martial arts move so rapid it took the victim several seconds to realize his last moments had passed.

One of the bogus repairman latched the museum door and activated the electronic locks. The second man shot the remaining guard as he ran, weapon in hand, toward his fallen partner.

Outside, a few bystanders witnessed what had happened through the glass, and steel reinforced door. A woman screamed, someone called 911, some ran, others smelled the coming carnage and pressed forward.

Inside the museum the men bounded to the third floor. One stopped at the hall window facing the street, while his partner ran in the Jean Lafitte exhibit room.

The museum's interior security system had been routinely activated downstairs, seconds before the attack. Laser beams and infrared lines had been crossed, motion sensors triggered. The switchboard at Brinks lit up and the information passed immediately to NOPD.

As the first patrol car roared down the street toward the museum's entrance, the attacker at the third floor window set up the contents of the toolbox he carried. He aimed the RPG, Rocket Propelled Grenade, and fired. The projectile caught the patrol car flush on the hood. The vehicle erupted in a ball of fire, jumping several feet in the air and coming to rest on its side, engulfed in flames. No one got out. Now people ran in all directions, smoke and burning debris filled the street, a woman screamed, her hair on fire. A second patrol car stopped twenty yards behind the first. The man at the window switched weapons with practiced ease. Now machine gun fire walked across the hood of the police car, puncturing the metal in straight rows, blasting out windshield, side mirrors and roof lights. Several rounds caught the driver as he attempted to escape, slammed him to the ground with steel jacketed slugs that passed through his body like stones in a spider's web. The second officer took cover behind a parked car. Nothing, not even the mayhem of Katrina a few years ago, could have prepared him for this.

The attacker remained at the third floor window, firing down into the street like an Islamic fanatic in a Baghdad street fight.

Inside the Lafitte display room the second man took implements of a different sort from his toolbox. Affixing primacord in a geometric pattern, dotted with shaped charges, he ran a wire to a firing device, stepped right outside the door and set off the explosives.

The museum case was about the size of a large dining room table standing on edge. Constructed of unique leaded glass, the front was designed to keep out certain radiation while allowing viewing. The expertly laid out explosives blew it to shards that filled every corner of the room.

The man burst through the smoke and settling pieces of glass and metal, and ran to the open case. He knew exactly what to do, had trained for it repeatedly, and knew full well the danger of the artifact he would carry with him.

Without a single glance at the contents, he brushed the debris from the casket with a gloved hand, slammed the lead-lined cover down, tucked it under his arm and ran out the door.

The second man left his post at the window and met him at the stairwell.

Fourteen seconds, fucking move it, he shouted. The second man didn't reply, just bounded up the staircase behind him. A short flight of steps and they faced a door that opened to the roof. The man placed a device against the electronic lock. LED's flashed, something beeped inside the device and the lock opened.

The men burst onto the roof at the same time that the Vietnam era HU-1 helicopter known as a Huey, settled onto the tar. They jumped in the machine and it took off, turbines whining to full throttle.

From start to finish the entire operation filled less than seven minutes. It held all the signs of a special ops mission carried out by consummate professionals.

The helicopter flew at roof top level, brushing the upper edges of antennas, the downdraft blowing out clotheslines and scattering pigeons. It was witnessed by dozens of people but no one saw any identifying marks. Radar tracked it past the 9th Ward and over the newly repaired Mississippi levee, where it disappeared in the electronic ground clutter. NOPD helicopters and nearby Louisiana National Guard flights never even caught sight of it.

Part I

New York

Chapter 1

Present day

Brooklyn, New York.

The Black Plague looked up at Francois's office window and for a moment Francois thought Plague was going to wave. He bolted from the chair, looked again but now Plague had disappeared.

Francois turned away from the window, wondering if some of the flashbacks were returning. It'd been a while since the last one had come down the pike of his psyche, alight with flames, carrying the heat of memories best left untouched.

Francois stood six feet tall, exactly the height of his Cajun father. He had classic western European features with bushy hair that fell on his forehead in unruly curls and a nose that had been broken from a youthful sports accident. Instead of marring his appearance, it lent him an intriguing look, like a matinee idol turned boxer. He was lean, well muscled, wore a short sleeve sweat shirt revealing the tattooed globe and anchor of the US Marine Corp with the words Semper Fi on top and Recon below. He'd just turned thirty but his gray eyes held the fierce light of one who's seen more than he should have. He shook his head, looked out the window once again, and Plague was right there.

Leica growled, alarmed at his jumpiness, and tried to follow him as he headed toward the door. Francois told her stay, as if she had a choice, and stepped out the door.

The hallway smelled of moldy plaster with the particular stink of places that have been damp too long. Pools of darkness gathered where the bulbs had burnt out and never been replaced. Shafts of sunlight lit up the entrance as they shone through the grime of the cracked, front door window. Francois walked outside and paused a moment on the stoop. His office was on the first floor of a four-story brownstone on Bedell Street, between Malta and Crown in the New Lots section. The once gentle neighborhood was rough, filled with gangs, crack dealers and twenty-dollar hookers. But rent was cheap and it suited Francois just fine.

He bounded down the four steps to the sidewalk and saw Plague behind garbage cans that protruded from their normal place under the stoop.

The man nicknamed by some, and with good reason, as Black Plague stood when he saw Francois had spotted him. His head almost reached the top of the stoop, well over six gangling feet tall. He wore a tan shirt spotted with yellowed stains, black pants pegged 50's style, and blue tennis shoes. Dull eyes flashed with a touch of madness in a face the color and consistency of compressed raisins. A tarnished ring went through one of his nostrils, the pierced flesh turning an angry mauve against his black skin. He held a snub-nosed thirty-eight in his hand, the black eye of the barrel dead on Francois' forehead.

Plague took a few steps until he'd closed the space between them. Down the block three black teenagers practiced hip-hop moves to a rap song about multiple murders. A wino clutched something in a plastic bag, his head lolling as he sat with his back against a dingy brick wall.

What're you doing here, Plague?

I gots to talk t'you, and don't call me that if'n you know what's good for you. His voice was high, nearly childlike and soaked with the unique southern intonations of rural Louisiana.

What'd you want to talk to me about, Plague?

I done told you not to call me that. I can fuck you up four ways from Sunday, you know that? Look how easy I got the drop on you. Ain't no wonder they thrown you out of the cops.

Francois shrugged and didn't reply. Up close the man smelled like unwashed sweatshirts left out in the sun. When he spoke, his breath stank of rotted tooth enamel. He grabbed Francois' arm and there was raw strength in the grip.

Get in there so's we can talk, Frankie-boy.

They walked back up the steps and through the front door of the building. Francois turned his head just a bit as he entered and for a moment the muzzle pointed at empty air. That's all it took. Francois slammed his hand against Plague's wrist, driving it into the sharp corner of the doorway. The gun flew out of the man's grip without a shot.

Francois whipped his elbow back, catching him in the lower jaw, snapping his head against the wall. He spun and drove a fist into the lower abdomen.

Plague collapsed, blood and a piece of blackened tooth falling out of his mouth. He whimpered and tried to get into a fetal position. Francois reached down, grabbed a handful of stringy unwashed hair in one hand and picked up the gun with the other. Without a word he dragged him until they reached the open door of his office and shoved him inside.

"Garde," he said in a loud whisper.

Leica tore from the couch and charged Plague with ninety pounds of pit bull fury.

Chapter 2

Francois had named Leica after the camera he'd traded for her. The dog had belonged to a local gang banger and was attack trained. Francois who'd always had an affinity for animals, recognized an essentially gentle nature in the fearsome beast. When he'd heard she was going to be sold for fighting, he'd used a combination of intimidation and bribery to get her. Leica may have been attack trained, but on Francois' terms.

The dog charged Plague and stopped less than a foot from his face. Her teeth barred, saliva drooled from her fangs, and a feral growl came out of some deep, primitive part of her. She looked like a demonic vision from some medieval Hieronymus Busch painting.

Plague curled on the floor. His shriek bounced off the wall, high pitched as a Castrati's.

If you don't shut the fuck up, I'm gonna turn her loose until she chews off half your face, Francois said.

Plague curled against the wall, his shrieks reduced to whimpers. Leica stalked around him, back and forth, as if trying to choose the softest part of his body.

See, I'd rather not do that, Plague. If I let her bite you, I'm going to have to send her in for tetanus shots. They don't call you Black Plague for nothing.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Fran...

Francois. Say it, Fraun-Sua. Say it: Mister Francois.

Mister Fran-cois, Suh, I'm sorry, I was just playin, me. Didn't mean to mess with y'all, honest.

Who sent your sorry ass all the way to Brooklyn from your shit hole in Bayou Cocher? Who sent you?

Hap DuPain, thass who.

Hap DuPain was to Colored Town what John Gotti was to Brooklyn. There wasn't a crack deal, grifter, card game, con artist, whore or pimp that could operate in colored town without Hap's approval —And a little piece of the action in his pocket, thought Francois.

Plague rolled his eyes and looked at Leica. The big dog let out a bark. Plague tried to become part of the cracked plaster wall.

Please, suh, mister Fran-cois, you done beat me already, please.

Not nearly enough. You better start talking sense. How come the biggest gangster-player of Colored Town sends his floating turd, you, to talk to me, instead of using the phone?

I don't know, Mister Fran-cois, tha'ss the truth. I just done what he tells me.

He told you to pull a gun on me?

No suh, that's my doin', me. I'm sorry. You ain't gonna tell him, are you?

What's he want to talk to me about?

I don't know, thass the truth. He reached toward his pocket. Leica let out a growl vicious enough to fire up ancestral memories of hominids clustered around a fire, circled by feral eyes in a primordial night. Plague shrieked, dropped his hand and tried to become part of the wall again.

What you reachin'for, Plague?

It's a special phone number, Mister Fran-cois, Hap give it to me so you can call him, you.

Francois nodded, said "Assi," and Leica sat. Plague reached in his pocket, slow as a snail on crutches, retrieved a piece of paper and held it out. Francois took it.

Ain't but one number, Hap don't never give it out. But he done tole me to give it to you, Plague said.

Francois walked to his desk, sat on the corner and punched in the number. Somewhere in Bayou Cocher, a phone rang.

Lo.

That you, Hap?

You know it is, Francois. How ya doin, man'?

Not too bad considering I got one'a your shitbird lackeys stinking up my house. Want to give me one reason why I shouldn't cut him into little pieces and send him back to you by FEDEX?

I don't give a shit what you do with that motherfucker, you're the one I need to talk to, you.

Well this ain't your day, Francois said and hung up.

Plague sat a little bit straighter as if he'd just found some redemption. Hap tole me you might do that, Mister Francois. He said...

Get the fuck out of here, Plague, before I change my mind.

...I was to give you this...

You wanna die right here, now, when I cut your throat? Or live to die a natural death from syphilis or aids, or whatever shit you carrying?

Now Plague had crawled to the door and stood on wobbly legs. He reached under his shirt. Francois clipped him in the abdomen. Plague collapsed in the doorway, holding his belly. He managed to pull out a wide cloth belt and drop it in past the doorway into the office. Francois slammed the door shut on him, and it was the only thing that prevented Leica from reaching him.

As Francois walked away from the door, he heard Plague shout at him:

Jimmy, tha'ss what Hap said to tell you, it's for Jimmy, heer?

A dozen years dropped away as it does on flashbacks, when certain events are burned so deep into the synapses and neural system of the brain that perhaps not even death can erase it. The earth tilted in Francois's head and the world changed to colors of deep, violent greens, maroons pulsing like arterial blood, skies the color of scorched metal, and memories that never quit or become diminished by time.

Chapter 3

It hurt. The pain of memories can hurt worse than anything physical. Jimmy had never been out of Francois' mind, not since that afternoon on the outskirts of Kandahar, nearly a decade ago.

Francois still sees it coming down like a skull. The orbs where the eyeballs should be, just holes where blue sky shines through, only it's not blue but deep maroon the color of satiny blood like death approaching. His vision is narrowed and the thwump-thwump of the Medivac's blades hurl down cascades of hot air. It doesn't dispel the acrid smell of cordite and savaged flesh. Francois senses the field dressings tight across his chest and midsection, crusted with blood, dirt and crushed insects. He floats above it all on the morphine. A medic sinks another needle in his arm and adds a line to the M written on his forehead with a grease pencil. Francois turns and looks over at Jimmy. They covered him with a poncho from head to toe but he can see his entrails peeking from beneath the plastic, contrasting with his black skin. An entire body's worth of Jimmy's blood soaked in the thirsty soil of Afghanistan.

He'd been Francois' friend like no other. He loved him as only soldiers in combat can love each other. When that RPG flared toward them, he shoved Francois hard to the side and took the brunt of the explosion.

The chopper lands and they hustle him on board. Jimmy remains behind. The dead lose their priority. Francois spends three weeks at the hospital aboard some navy ship before getting on a freedom bird back to the world.

But he's not free. He believes he'll never be free.

Francois felt something rub against his leg, heard a sound seeming to come from distant reaches. He looked down and Leica was pressing on him, her eyes filled with canine puzzlement, whimpering. Slowly the world returned to Francois. He patted her head, made his way to the chair behind his desk and looked out the window.

The afternoon grew late. Shadows from brownstones speckled the streets. A wind raised some fast food wrappers and other trash. The odor of mild putrefaction from the nearby landfill, and clean salt air from Canarsie Bay, managed to reach the pavement, ease through his window, surround his senses back to some reality. Down the block, he saw the shape of Plague, walking away without looking back, like someone happy to have gotten away with his skin. A Cripps low-rider war wagon slowly passed his office, occupied by four figures wearing gang colors, the booming bass causing the windows to practically rattle.

Francois reached in his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Poland Spring water. He shook some in his hand and ran it over his face.

It must have been at least ten minutes that he sat there, staring at the phone number Plague had given him. By the door, the belt Plague had left, laid crumpled like discarded snakeskin.

His phone rang. Francois slowly reached for it. One more ring then he picked it up. It rang once again and Francois held it to his ear but said nothing.

Francois, man, it's me, Hap. I know's you don't like me, but there ain't no bad blood between us, know what'am'sayin?

Francois blew air from his cheeks, not even realizing he'd been holding his breath, and said softly, Yeah, I know.

So don't be such a hard ass, homie. You callin' me because that fool, Plague said Jimmy's name, and he aint' lyin, I told him to say that.

Jimmy's been dead eight years now, Hap. What's this got to do with him?

Nothin, cept' he'd want you to do this, you'n Jimmy was so tight, I saw it when you's come home on R&R in 02. Y'all remember that, you? My little brother, black as Kentucky coal and you white as a cottonmouth's belly, I remember thinking that maybe there was something to this brotherhood and Martin Luther King shit after all.

Yeah, I remember, Hap. I also remember you were on the road to being a first class pus bag, already dealing skag and running whores in Colored Town.

Word, bro. See if you remember something else.

What?

Jazz.

Jasmine, Jimmy's little sister?

Yeah, my little sister also, remember, I'm Jimmy's big brother?

I try to forget that.

Well you can't, Francois, it's all part of it, m'man.

Yes, Francois remembered Jasmine. She'd been nearly thirteen when he and Jimmy came home on thirty days leave from what they called the pimple on the ass of the world, back in 2002. She was pretty as a child model with skin the color of coffee light, what the Cajuns called caffee-aut-lait. He recalled giving her rides on his shoulders and passing her to Jimmy like a little football, her giggles surrounding both of them with the purity of childhood that war had stolen from them. He remembered taking her and Jimmy and two dates out to a picnic on Lake Ponchartrain, skies so blue it hurt and puffy white clouds like escaped angels. He didn't remember the two women they'd took along, one white, one black, causing folks to stare at the sight of colored and whites mixing in David Duke's hometown where the KKK outnumbered the Rotarians, Lions and Elks put together. He'd remember that as one of the best days in his life.

Two years later they were on their second tour, Marine Force Recon, patrols deep into Injun country, Jihadi territory.

One day Jimmy shared with him that Jasmine had gone to live with her aunt in Boston.

Ah cain't figure out why, Fuck-boy, Jimmy had told him, using the nickname he'd given him that somehow didn't seem insulting coming from Jimmy, although he was always careful not to use it in mixed company, which that year was as rare as cold Budweisers.

What can't you figure out, dude? Francois replied.

Ah mean, why all of a sudden she'd be sent up north. Hap said he'd arranged it. That nigger gone have some explaining to do when I get back. You gonna come with me, fuck-boy?

Fuckin A.

Two days later Jimmy was dead, sewed into a big plastic bag, dogtags in his teeth, entrails sloshing around loose, inside.

Yeah, he remembered Jasmine.

So what's all this got to do with me, Hap?

Jazz left Boston, I told her to. She's hiding in upstate New York. Ain't nobody but me knows where cause there's some awfully bad people want to get to me through her. I want to hire you to go get her, protect her, and bring her back.

Hire me?

Yeah, you're an investigator, bodyguard sometimes, ain't you? That belt Plague left at your door, there's twenty big ones in there for expenses. Get my sister Jazz, bring her back. Don't do it for me, I know you wouldn't wipe shit off your shoes for me, do it for Jimmy, man.

Francois didn't reply. A dark fright overwhelmed him. He wasn't afraid physically—it was way beyond that. He feared being pulled back into that nether world of flashbacks, and mind tearing assaults on his psyche that hit him like a B-52 Arclight strike, and the only escape a frosty mug of draft and Jim Beam on the side, over and over again, until everything took on the blue, mellow glow of oblivion. It'd taken him half a decade to escape. He'd done the Twelve Steps twelve times, that was a gross of steps before it finally took. His last sponsor had told him to never go back on those memories, the mind-fuck he'd undergone would always be waiting to drown him like a dark and corrupt undertow. Yet he knew, as sure as a condemned man knows the certainty of his coming death, that he would do it. He'd go get Jimmy's little sister, protect her, and bring her home.

For Jasmine, Jimmy and himself.

Chapter 4

Francois turned off Linden Boulevard toward his apartment when a Crown Vic shot past him and cut directly across his bumper. He stood on the brakes, cut the wheel hard and wound up on the curb.

A late model Chevy Blazer pulled up behind him, effectively boxing him in. Someone inside the blazer put a bubble gum flasher on the dash.

Two men got out of the Crown Vic. No one exited the Blazer. The red spinning lights from the Chevy's dash washed over the apartment houses on both sides of the street. People started peering out their doors and windows, but no one went outside. It was that kind of a neighborhood. Francois got out of his car and waited by the door.

The man who'd gotten out of the Crown Vic's driver's